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The Empty Frame
Ann Pilling
For Joe, with love always
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment.
1 John 4, 18
The Admiral relates how he was sitting up late one night with his brother, over a game of chess, in a panelled room overlooked by the portrait of Lady Hoby. “We had finished playing, and my brother had gone up to bed. I stood for some time with my back to the wall, turning over the day in my mind. Minutes passed. I suddenly realised the presence of someone standing behind me. I tore round. It was Dame Hoby. The frame on the wall was empty. Terrified, I fled the room.”
from The Story of Bisham Abbey
by Piers Compton
Table of Contents
Floss was fed up. She was looking at herself in the mirror and she didn’t like what she saw, neither her mop of dark hair, so frizzy and so coarse (“panscrubbers” a boy had said once) nor her stupid little nose, nor the fact that she was too short to be an actress and seemed to be putting on weight. She didn’t even like her name.
Floss was short for Flossie, and both were short for Florence. She hated all her names this morning, she wanted something dignified and mysterious, a name like Hepzibah or Beatrice, something with history behind it.
“Sam, what do you think Lady Macbeth’s name was?” she asked her brother, who was sprawled across the floor looking at a map. He too was stocky and short and he too had pan-scrubber hair, though it didn’t seem to bother him.
“Dunno. Mavis I should think.”
Floss threw her book at him. It was Mum’s Complete Shakespeare, it was big.
“Ouch! For heaven’s sake, Floss.”
“Sorry.” She rescued the book, relieved to find that it was still in one piece. “It’s just that I’m so depressed. I’ll never get this part. My hair’s not right and I’m too short. They’ll give it to Anna Houghton. She’s tall and she’s got the most brilliant hair.”
“Looks aren’t everything,” Sam said. “Anna Houghton’s dim, anyhow. I bet she doesn’t understand what the play’s about. Which bit are you doing, anyway?”
“The sleepwalking scene, where she comes on wringing her hands, when she can’t get rid of the guilt about them having murdered the old king. It’s funny, when they actually kill him she’s the strong one. Macbeth behaves like a real wimp. But when things start catching up with them she’s the one that goes mad.”
“And what happens?”
“She kills herself – but not on the stage.”
“Glad about that,” Sam said. “I don’t fancy watching you do that to yourself. Go for it anyhow, that’s what Mum and Dad said. I bet you’ll get it.”
Floss curled up again in her chair and tried to get the lines into her head. Their year was putting on Scenes from Shakespeare for the school’s Christmas drama competition, and she wanted to be Lady Macbeth. She had planned to get the part word-perfect by the end of the summer holiday, but now they were going away and she wasn’t sure she’d be able to learn all the lines. Perhaps she’d relax, instead of swotting up Shakespeare. The audition might be too nerve-racking. Anyhow, there was Magnus. Mum and Dad had said they must look after him.
“Do you think it’ll be all right, going away with Magnus?” she asked Sam. At first he didn’t answer, merely crouched lower over his map. Magnus, the boy their parents were fostering and who now lived with them, was a subject they found it difficult to discuss. They both had strong feelings about him.
“It’s on a river,” he said, “quite a big one. It looks like a tributary of the Thames. There’ll be boats I should think. It’ll be great if this hot weather keeps up. There’s a swimming pool too.”
“But what about Magnus? I don’t think he can swim.”
“He’ll be fine. We can teach him,” Sam said easily. He was the unflappable type, a good foil for Floss who tended to panic.
“What do you really feel about Magnus living here?” Floss asked him, shutting the book. She was definitely abandoning Shakespeare for the day.
Sam folded his map up, very precisely and slowly. Then he took in a deep breath and let it out, also very slowly. “I’m not sure,” he said. “It’s not that I don’t like him.