𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐋𝐀𝐊𝐄𝐒 | henry winter

𝐯𝐢. divine blood, ichor

❝I am a fountain of blood

in the shape of a girl❞

.·:*¨༺ ༻¨*:·.

I wonder now that I was around them so much and yet knew so little of what was happening at the end of that term. Physically, there was very little indication that anything was happening at all - they were too clever for that - but even the tiniest discrepancies that squeaked through their guard I met with a kind of wilful blindness. This is to say: I wanted to maintain the illusion that their dealings with me were completely strait forward ; that we were all friends, and no secrets, though the plain fact of it was that there were plenty of things they didn't let me in on and would not for some time. And though I tried to ignore all this I was aware of it all the same. I knew, for example, that the six of them sometimes did things - what, exactly, I didn't know - without inviting me, and if put on the spot they would all stick together na die about it , in a casual and quite convincing fashion.

Of course I could see traces of what went on - to their credit, quite small traces - in retrospect; in the way they Ould sometimes disappear, very mysteriously, and hours later be vague about their whereabouts; in private jokes, asides in Greek or even in Latin which were obviously meant to go over my head. There seemed, however, nothing alarming at the time although those jokes and comments would have alarming significance later. For instance how towards the end of the term, Bunny had a maddening habit of breaking out into chorus's of ' The farmer in the Dell.'

Of course I noticed things I suppose, being around them as much as I was, it would have been impossible not to. All of six of them, Lily in particular, seemed accident prone. They were always getting scratched by cats, or cutting themselves while shaving, or stumbling over foot-stools in the dark - reasonable explanations, certainly, but for sedentary people they had an odd excess of bruises and small wounds. There was also a strange occupation with the weather; strange to me, because none of them seemed to be involved in any sort of activity which might be aided or impeded by the weather. And yet they were obsessed with it. Henry in particular. Weather drops in particular. I wondered what he would do when winter came; but by the first snowfall, the preoccupation had vanished, never to return.

What should I tell you? About the Saturday in December that Bunny ran around the house at five in the morning, yelling 'First snow!' and pouncing on our beds? Or the time Camilla tried to teach me the box step? Or the time Lily recited poetry in french while we were all coming down from a hangover and could do little other than lie around the living room like children as she read to us; or the time Bunny turned the boat over - with Henry and Francis in it - because he thought he saw a water snake? About Henry's birthday party, or the two instances when Francis's mother - all red hair and alligator pumps and emeralds - turned up on her way to New York and kissed Lily twice on the cheeks speaking to her in rapid French with the second husband an d Yorkshire terrier trailing her?

One day however remains particularly vivid, a brilliant Saturday in October, one of the last summery days we had that year. The night before - which had been rather cold - we'd stay dup drinking and talking till almost dawn, and I woke late, hot and vaguely nauseated, to find my blankets kicked to the foot of my bed and sun pouring through the window.

I made my way downstairs, my feet creaking on the steps. The house was motionless, empty. Finally I found Francis and Bunny on the shady side of the porch. Bunny had on a t shirt and a pair of Bermuda shorts; Francis, his face flushed a blotchy albino pink and his eyelids closed almost fluttering with pain, was wearing a ratty Terry-cloth bathrobe that was stolen from a hotel.