This House is Haunted by John Boyne

struggled to think of an alternative. (I barely even knew what “in business” meant, other than the fact that a great many men seemed to describe themselves thus and seemed unwilling or unable to define the term in more intelligible ways.) “Is he the local Member perhaps? I understand that a great many wealthy families offer the head of the household to Parliament.”
    Heckling deigned to turn now and he fixed me with an irritated expression. Truthfully, he looked at me as if I was a dog, scampering about his feet, desperate for attention, yapping and pawing at him when all he wanted was to be left alone with his thoughts. Another in my position might have looked away but I held his glance; he would not intimidate me. I was to be governess, after all, and he was merely the Gaudlin man.
    “Who be he?” he asked finally in a contemptuous fashion.
    “Who be who?” I replied, then shook my head, annoyed by how quickly I was adopting his Norfolk style. “What do you mean by who be he ?” I asked.
    “You said Mr. Bennet. I don’t know any Mr. Bennet.”
    I laughed. Was this a trick of some sort? A game that he and the other servants had invented to make the new governess feel ill at ease? If it was, it was cruel and malicious and I wanted no part of it. I knew from teaching my small girls that if one showed the slightest sign of vulnerability at the start then one was lost for ever. I was made of stronger stuff than that and was determined to show it.
    “Really, Mr. Heckling,” I said, laughing a little, trying to keep my tone light. “Of course you do. He sent you to collect me, after all.”
    “I were sent to collect you,” agreed Heckling. “But not by no Mr. Bennet.”
    A sudden rush of wind forced me back in my seat as the rain started to fall in heavier drops and I wished that Heckling had brought the covered carriage rather than the open one. (Foolish girl! I was still adrift in my notions of Pemberley. In my mind there was an entire fleet of carriages waiting at Gaudlin Hall for me, one for every day of the week.)
    “Did the housekeeper send you then?” I asked.
    “Mr. Raisin sent me,” he replied. “Well, Mr. Raisin and Miss Bennet anyway. Between them, I s’pose.”
    “And who, pray tell,” I asked, “is Mr. Raisin?”
    Heckling stroked his chin and, with the approach of evening, I could see the manner in which his dark whiskers were turning to grey in the moonlight. “Lawyer fellow, i’nt he,” he said.
    “A lawyer?” I asked.
    “Aye.”
    I considered this. “But whose lawyer?”
    “Gaudlin lawyer.”
    I said nothing, simply placed these facts together in my mind and considered them for a moment. “Mr. Raisin is the family solicitor,” I said, more for my own benefit than his. “And he instructed you to collect me from the station. Well, who is this Miss Bennet then? She is the master’s sister perhaps?”
    “What master?” asked Heckling and, really, I had had quite enough by now.
    “The master of Gaudlin,” I said with a sigh.
    Heckling laughed, then seemed to think better of it. “Ain’t no master of Gaudlin,” he said finally. “Not no more. Missus took care of that, di’nt she?”
    “No master?” I asked, wondering what ridiculous game he was playing with me. “But of course there’s a master. There must be. Who is this Miss Bennet if not some relative of the master? Why, she is the one who employed me, after all. I assumed she was head of the household but according to you she holds no such position.”
    “Miss Bennet were now’t more than a governess,” he said. “Just like you. Now’t more, now’t less.”
    “But that’s ridiculous. Why would the governess advertise for a new governess? It’s quite beyond her responsibilities.”
    “She were leaving, weren’t she?” explained Heckling. “But she wouldn’t go till she found someone new. I took her in carriage to t’station, she got out, told me to wait, said you’d be along shortly and here you