When Tom awoke he was in a foreign room, tinged with lilac light, chipper song ringing from the window. A velvet blanket lay tousled about his legs, heavy and lush blue. He sat up, wondering what time it was, blurry snippets of dreams reeling like a long forgotten film.
Through the purple curtain, the sun soldered with steely sky: noon, Tom realised with a jolt, panic arising at the thought — Mrs. Cole would be upset ...
"... doing here?"
His ears latched onto a muffled female voice, emerging from the doorway, beneath which stirred shadows ...
"What's that in your hands?" it snapped, old and gravelly.
"Face towel," was the reply, lively and much younger. "I saw that you forgot one." Maids, his mind provided, a realisation so surreal that for several moments, Tom had to sit there questioning where he was ...
"No, I did not," said the first woman. Through the cracks of age, a faint foreign accent leaked, mounting in contempt. "You came to see the boy."
There was a pause, then Tom had to strain his ears to catch the muttered response:
"Stingy said he looks just like Tom."
"Stingy ought to stop pointing at the sun every dawn!" spat the elder, stamping a foot. "You are neglecting your duties if you have time to speak with him!"
"What's his name?"
"That of his father, of course. Do not stray from the subject!"
The younger scoffed, whining, "Why, no one tells me anything!"
There was a sharp swat as the older maid hissed, "Your tongue! It runs faster than Talia did when she was a fair mare."
"I merely wished to speak with him."
"Why, Dorothy, you could do nothing worse. Go!"
"Everyday I wonder," spat Dorothy, stepping away, "why Lady Mary insists on keeping you."
There was a racketing, whip-like laugh, and Tom had the distinct impression of a cackling crow. "Keep wondering. And trust that I shall have you out of this house if a word escapes to the neighbours' ears!"
Footsteps followed this, fast and heavy, as Dorothy stormed off. Tom puzzled the quarrel for a moment, wondering how he might worm his way into Dorothy's confidence, for clearly the woman was an errant gossip, but then the door swung open and light drenched him like warm water, silhouetting the hunched little figure of the old servant.
"Ah, you wake at last," she said, hobbling in. She was so frail Tom suspected a sound wind could've toppled her, with chalk white hair and limp, leathery skin. In her skeletal hands was a wicker basket full of snowy towels, which she plopped next to the armoire. "Our dear Mary asked us not to wake you, child. So you have missed breakfast, but never fear to ask for anything."
She smiled at him, eyes glinting beneath drooping lids. Unsure what else to say, Tom asked her her name.
"You may call us Saira."
"Has," he began, not wanting to ask it, "has my … father returned?"
"No," she said blandly, shaking her head, "he has not."
Tom had to fight not to sink into the bed at this. Would he return at all, or had he been driven away forever? Bitterly, he reflected that he hadn't been with his family for a day and had already managed to rend it apart.
"You worry without reason," said Saira, batting a grain off her black shawl, doddering towards the door. She nodded firmly, continuing, "till he returns, we shall keep you very well, as we do with your grandmother ..."
Tom could scarcely think of a response to this, but fortunately Saira seemed not to expect one, and shut the door with a satisfied thump, footsteps receding behind her.
Slowly, he climbed out of bed and rummaged through the towels: as soft and spotless as could be expected. The armoire he found stocked with all manner of garments, starched and expensive, enough to clothe all the boys at Wool's for a year. Not in the mood to sift through these, Tom grabbed yesterday's attire and bathed, feeling like an alien in the pristine marble tub, scrubbing with lavender soap and honeyed shampoo.
After much struggle with many a pillow and the hefty blanket, he finished making his bed and left, keen to explore the manor.
*
Dinner at the Riddles', Tom learned that day, was more of a banquet than an evening meal, with platters of rich meats and vegetables, bowls of savoury gravy, and plump loaves of bread prepared at their behest. Golden lamps scattered about the wooden walls lit the room, warm light bouncing off the silver cutlery while steam billowed from a salver of steaks. They sat in silence as Viola, the servant girl who'd found him the night before, poured Thomas a glass of burgundy, Mary's eyes staring blankly at it.
The seat on the left of the table remained empty.
Conversation was stilted, with Thomas glowering at Tom as he chewed his steak while Mary's fingers slid and shook on many a fork. Tom tried not to care, partially because the food was the best he'd ever eaten, and also because he was beginning to suspect Thomas of an unstable temperament, the kind that twinkled with favour at one moment then smouldered with disdain the next. Currently, it danced towards the latter, but if there was one thing Tom was used to ignoring it was an irate adult. Not so apathetic he was about the sight of the unoccupied chair, and the man who should've been in it.
"Tell me, boy," Thomas croaked at one point, brow weighed with distaste, "about that Alex Flint. Mary says you've met him."
"He was a pleasant man," Tom said, speaking more to Mary, who still stared dismally at her plate, than her husband, "very optimistic."
Thomas grunted, glared somewhere above Tom's head, then swigged his wine. Mary nodded dazedly. The meal resumed in silence.
After dinner there was tea (or whiskey, in Mr. Riddle's case) and cherry tart in the dainty green tearoom, during which Tom had to refrain from fidgeting and had scanned the evening papers back to back. Viola gave him a glass of milk, opaque as a white wall, but he could barely down half of it. Thomas frowned at the walls all the while, a contemplative gleam in his eye.
"He used to read to us," he murmured every so often to Mrs. Riddle, who nodded absently, "Remember? Perhaps we should ... once, he said … do you remember when … I had thought ..." and so on. Tom was nearly enraged by the plain misery of it all, clashing lethargically with the proud grandeur of the setting, the beaming jade fireplace and Byzantine rug, Mr. Riddle's unshaven, grey face sinking into his silk cravat — an old lion, shedding the mane of past glory.
How dare they? he thought desperately, again and again. How dare they mourn so when they have everything?
Eventually, the man retired to bed, leaving only gloom and an empty glass in his wake. For the first time that day, Mary deigned to address Tom, firelight flickering about her.
"I was hoping to speak with you, love."
"Yes?" he said eagerly.
She set down her teacup and leaned back in her chair, with a smile that was more veneer than anything else. Next to her, the pages of The Glasgow Herald fluttered feebly.
"I trust you liked your room?"
"It's excellent."
"And what of the food? You hardly ate. Was it to your tastes?"
Tom nodded, already growing impatient.
"You could always ask Dottie for ..." she trailed off, flicking a mote from her fingertips, then pressing them to the inner corners of her eyes, pencilled brows furrowed. "See, I ..." her voice wavered. "I don't expect you to understand ..."
Did she think him a mindless child, Tom wondered, not privy to the whims and woes of the human condition? Perhaps she thought him dim, too below her beautiful family and their rosy problems to understand a jot of it.
"Why!" he demanded, voice ringing in the room.
The lone word of his summoned so striking a look on her face Tom could only stare in silence: misery misting her eyes, foggy green and loving, a smile that teetered on despair.
"Why, love," she laughed, "because you're a child!" She swiped a thumb across her cheekbone and he realised with confusion that she was crying. "Oh, heavens …" A watery chuckle, almost delirious. "Come here, come ..."
Tom did.
She swept his fringe to the side, caressing his cheek, adjusting his collar, never looking away, never blinking.
"You know I knew, I knew when I saw your picture …"
"Knew what?"
"That I'd die if I didn't bring you home with me."
She said this as if it were the most wonderful thing, a sacred and euphoric verse, but Tom was struck with fright and hung possessively onto her wrist, worming to sit against her warm side. He'd done this before, he thought dreamily, in some other life, somewhere he couldn't remember being ... he thought about asking her, as her graceful hands skimmed his hair, that old question pondered only in daydreams and tear-soaked fantasy, stained so with resentment ...
... will you leave me?
It hung on his lips, about to leap —
The doorbell rang.
Tom blinked, startled. "Oh, God," Mary whispered, standing from her seat, carrying him in her arms as she hastened out of the room. He complied in fearful silence, hating the doorbell, hating himself for waiting so long, fisting his hands in her blouse. He saw the door open, heard from her an exclamation — relieved, angry, so awfully motherly —
"Tom!"
He shoved away from her and she let him to the floor, running.
Tom Sr stood a few steps from the dark doorway, hands on his mother's back, her arms thrown around his waist as she cried. His cold eyes found Tom's over her shoulder, a glint in them that made Tom feel somehow known, in all the sickly ways he didn't want to be. He wished to run, perhaps to tear Mary from her son, perhaps out of the door and far from here, this skeleton of a home, grand as it was diseased ...
"Mother, please," Tom Sr said, in an unexpectedly imperious voice. "Let us go in."
Mary released him, wiping tears from her flushed cheeks, streaked with dark makeup. Tom did not move, though truthfully he yearned for refuge, even if refuge was a room as unfamiliar as his father's frigid gaze.
"Come forward, boy."
Tom trudged closer, with a scowl black with disdain, though inside he felt impossibly small. His father simply studied him, eyes so intense and indecipherable, on his fine, intimidating face. Tom wondered if he'd look like this one day, so impenetrably present yet impossible to touch, could remember the caretakers at the orphanage remarking how handsome a man he'd grow into, before he'd unnerved them with his unsmiling strangeness, the tricks and rage he could barely control.
"What did she name you?"
The question jarred him. From the shadow of resignation in the asker's expression, Tom harboured an inkling that he already knew, and thoroughly despised it.
"Tom," Mary answered before he could, looking frantically between them. "Tom Mar — Marvolo Riddle."
But for a split second of utter disgust, his father's expression remained blank. Tom imagined if he might melt into the floor, the lacquered wenge or was it polished oak, he did not know ...
"I see," Tom Sr said, white as bone. "Good night, Mother ..."
He went upstairs without a second glance. Hands touched his shoulders, the warmth of love so hungrily craved in the cold past, leading him to an armchair by the fire. It blazed, light dancing on the flowery pattern of the chairs, rosy petals and leaves limned in gold. Mary embraced him, sobbing, murmuring incoherently in his ear. Her rings pressed against his back as she stroked it and Tom wondered bitterly if perhaps he should never have left Wool's at all.
With his watch ticking against her neck, he fell asleep in her arms.
January 2nd, 1934.
It was as if God himself had smote him.
Insomnia on New Year's and the journey back from Greater Hangleton meant Tom wrangled only a few hours of sleep before morning, cold and distorted, and by five he stood before the bathroom sink listening to the water trickle down, swaying in his mind the sound of the boy's voice.
Tom's voice.
Icy water splashed his face and he felt in his palms the hills and hollows of it, this curse he'd unwittingly passed on to the bitter child, already so splintered, resentful …
… by that shade of oddness, touched.
Touched in the head, was what Saira had crassly suggested when first Tom had returned, and it had been enough to silence him better than any magic. All imaginary, assembling a vase from its withered dust, shards of a time broken. She'd looked at him as if she'd never seen him before, except she'd been the first to see him at all, bloody and weeping, at the bed of the girl she'd raised, Mary, dear Mary, forever grieving her son, dead and not dead ...
Yet he had been the one to smell heaven, its copper-skied mornings, blossoming roses, the sea and her horrors ... and where Hellfire had failed, Heaven had torn him apart ...
A pain pierced behind his eyes, blood beating in his ears. Vividly, Tom remembered that green spring day he'd ridden by the shack, boiling heat in his skin, blood and a torturous itching; Gaunt, laughing manically, cursing as if lost in prayer; he'd barely made it home, staggered through the doorway and knocked over a vase of tulips. Mother had come running, had gasped at the sight of him, torn and stinging.
Gaunt and his father had been dragged away not long after, by some strangely dressed men if rumours held true — arrested, and at the time Tom had rejoiced, already too much in the sun, like a fool, such a fool. He'd always ridden past the shack after that, flaunting victory to men who couldn't see it, but she had seen, and her stare had raked down his back, that crooked smile gnashing its joy ...
He looked to the woods through the window, shivering in the rolling light of morning, a pale fear painting the back of his mind but ...
He would wait, he had to — much though he wished to purge the blood from the boy's veins.