Chapter five

I waited and watched carefully for some days. The children were so lovable and happy that I nearly forgot my worries sometimes. They enjoyed studying, and were clever and funny in our lessons together. Sometimes they seemed to have a plan: one of them talked to me, while the other disappeared outside. But this did not really worry me.

Then, one evening, I stayed up very late in my bedroom. I was reading a book by the light of a candle. Flora was asleep in her little bed in the corner. Suddenly, I looked up and listened. Something was moving in the house. I remembered my first night, when I heard sounds like this.

I took my candle and left the room. I locked the door behind me, and walked to the top of the stairs. My candle went out, but I noticed that it was already quite light, and I could see without it. I realised that there was someone on the stairs below. It was Peter Quint again. There was a big window by the stairs, he stood by it and stared up at me. I knew then that he was both wicked and dangerous. But I was not afraid. We stood and stared silently, and that was the strangest thing. A murderer can talk, but a ghost cannot. Then he turned, and disappeared at the bottom of the stairs.

I returned to my room. A candle was still burning there, and I saw that Flora’s bed was empty. I ran to her bed, frightened. Then I heard a sound. She was hiding by the window. She looked very serious.

‘You naughty person! Where did you go?’

I sat down, and she climbed onto my knee.

‘Were you looking for me out of the window?’ I asked her. ‘Did you think I was in the garden?’

‘Well, someone was out there,’ she said, and smiled at me. Her face was innocent and beautiful in the candlelight.

‘And did you see anybody?’

‘Oh, no!’

I knew that she was lying. But I did not say anything.

Each night now I sat up late. Sometimes I went out of my room to look, and listen. Once I saw a woman on the stairs. She sat there in sadness, with her head in her hands. She did not show me her face, but I knew that it was dreadful and that she was suffering. I only saw her for a second, and then she disappeared.

After eleven nights, I could not stay awake late, and I went to sleep quite early. I woke up at about one o’clock in the morning. Flora was standing by the window, staring out. She did not notice me. There was a full moon, and I could see her face in its light. She was giving herself to something out there, to the ghost that we saw by the lake. I got up – I wanted to find another room with windows that looked out onto the garden.

The room in the tower was the best one. It was a big, cold bedroom, nobody ever slept there. I put my face against the glass of the window. The garden was very bright in the moonlight. Somebody was standing on the grass and staring up above me – at the tower. So there was another person out there, on the roof of the tower. But the person in the garden was not the ghost of the woman. It was little Miles.

When I went down into the garden, Miles came in quietly with me, back to his bedroom.

‘Tell me now, Miles,’ I said. ‘Why did you go out? What were you doing in the garden?’

‘Will you understand?’ he asked me, with his wonderful smile. I felt almost sick while I waited to hear. He planned to tell me everything!

‘Well,’ he said. ‘I wanted to be bad!’ He kissed me. ‘I didn’t go to bed! I went out at midnight! When I’m bad, I’m really bad!’ He spoke like a naughty, happy child. ‘I planned it with Flora.’

‘She stood at the window-‘

‘To wake you up!’

‘And you stood outside in the cold. Well, you must go to bed now.’ I was the governess again, and Miles was just a naughty boy. He was too clever for me.

I told Mrs Grose everything. ‘We think that the children are good, but they’re not. They live with them – not with us. They want to be with Quint and that woman!’

‘But why?’ Mrs Grose asked.

‘Because Peter Quint and Miss Jessel are wicked, and they taught Flora and Miles to love wickedness. They’re bad!’

‘Yes, they were a wicked pair,’ Mrs Grose said. ‘But what can they do now? They’re dead.’

‘They’re still here! Their ghosts are looking for our children. They can still take Miles and Flora from us!’

‘Oh, my goodness!’

‘They wait in high, strange or dangerous places – the roof of the tower, the other side of the lake. It’s dangerous but exciting, for Flora and Miles. They’ll try to get to those wicked people.’

‘And a terrible accident can happen – I see,’ said Mrs Grose. ‘We must stop this. Their uncle must take them away from here. I can’t write, so you must write to him.’

‘What can I say? How will he know that it’s true?’ (‘My employer will be angry with me,’ I thought. ‘I wanted so much to be brave and to help him.’)

Mrs Grose took my arm. ‘He must come!’ she said. ‘He must come back and help us!’