Concluding (16 page)

"But I've had not a hint from the child," the aunt protested. "She's always been so very happy with you both. Of course, I don't say she has no secrets from me. I know I never told my mother a word, and I don't expect any different from my poor sister's girl." Edge sniffed audibly, but was not noticed. "Yet I'm sure, if she'd fallen under the influence of an older child, then I'd have had at least an idea."

"And there's been no sign?" Baker asked, hoping against hope.

"Not one," Mrs Manley answered. "But I'll tell you a perfectly simple explanation of the whole affair."

"By all means," Baker encouraged, dubious to the last.

"Sleepwalking," the aunt announced, in barely concealed triumph. And Miss Baker was so flabbergasted at this forgotten echo of the dawn that, without more ado, she took the woman up to Merode at once.

Edge did not stay to argue. There was no time, she felt. As soon as Baker had led the woman out, she herself hurried off to get the decorations done because, now they had decided to hold their Ball, it must be the most successful ever. The girls simply must enjoy themselves.

She found a number of her charges waiting, unconcerned, by the side of that horrible pile of blooms.

She concentrated on Moira, in whom she had sensed almost an antagonism these last few weeks.

"Here we are, dears," she cried out gaily, at her most genuine. It would be enough, in a day or two, to think of the implications with Merode s aunt, when they came to write out their Report.

"Moira, will you take the satin ribbon out of that drawer and divide it into twenty-one inch lengths? You will find scissors at the back. Then you must cut it square, with two v's afterwards at each end. Be as neat as you can, child. Tie the branches in bundles. Now the others," and she approached the pyre with a distaste they did not seem to share. "We'll have you parcelling bundles up." She flicked with a long handkerchief at the blooms, was relieved to find no flies. They misunderstood the gesture.

"Oh, we sprinkled with water to keep fresh," two or three sang out. "We've put sheets of paper round to save the floor," they added, and then scent from that mass of flowers came over her again. She was heartened to find this sharp as wine, now day was cooler.

"How will I tell the inches?" Moira enquired, while her companions attacked the pile.

"Hurry, Moira," they called. "We'll catch up in no time."

"Marion, fetch the steps," Edge ordered, relieved that the senior had recovered from her last bout of crying. "Judge the best way you can, dear," she said to Moira, and thought I must have been poorly at lunch, it was the heat, forgetting she had felt so bad at tea. "Busy as bees, aren't we?" she added aloud, standing dead still in the midst of commotion, while that heap of lovely blooms was robbed and diminished by her charges.

When several swags of azalea had been tied in neat bows, Miss Edge led a short procession down, through evening sun, to the alcove which looked over descending Terraces towards the trees beyond, the blessed, dear prospect. She closed her mind to Mrs Manley. After she had given directions, she stood at one of the windows and lovingly, sun in her eyes, watched the Park. Until she remembered.

"Oh my dears," she called out. They turned beaming faces which she could not see for sun, for this was the mood in which they most liked Edge. "We are going to be allowed to keep pigs, have you heard?"

There was a descant of small cries.

"But where, we haven't been told, of course," Edge said, her wrinkled face back to the prospect. "How shall we hide them?"

"Down by Mr Rock's, I'd say," Moira proposed, because she would then see more of the old man.

"Not a bad idea at all," Miss Edge approved.

"And he could look after ours," Moira went on. "He's done such wonders with Daise."

"We shall have to think about that," Edge objected, showing signs of reluctance. The idea is you should manage everything yourselves, under supervision of course."

"Oh, what a good plan, ma'am," they said, although several, if she had only known, were no keener than their Principal. And this lady did not disclose her fears. Why should she?

"We shall go into everything," she promised.

"When will it come about?" one of the girls asked.

"All in good time," Edge answered. "Now back with you and fetch more bundles, or we shall never be done." She was, for the moment, left alone with Moira.

"He really would be best," the girl informed Miss Edge. "He knows everything about them."

"I'd not tell him so, if I were you," the guv'nor said, certain the child would rush to do it if advised against.

"Why not, Miss Edge?" Moira asked, and went beyond what was permissible when she omitted to call the Principal madam. However Edge contented herself by merely saying, "Think."

Blind sun, three quarters down the sky, was huge to the right. A soft breeze swayed curtains. Miss Edge regretted her walk, which she usually took about this time. She could have gone by the old man's cottage to prospect for a site to place the pigsties, up wind of course.

"He has ideas about himself, you know," she added.

As they were still alone for the moment, Moira thought she would make the best use of her chances.

"Is that right, ma'am, when they reckon Merode's aunt's here?" The scissors went snip into the ribbon, shiny, primrose yellow.

"Why yes, Moira," Edge answered, then screwed her eyes up against the sun. Was that Mr Rock, or not, afar off there, skirting the beeches to get down to the Lake?

"Is she all right again?" the child asked, about Merode.

"There's never been anything the matter, not so far as I know," Edge replied of Mrs Manley, aloof and absent. For it was Mr Rock after all. Much worse he was deliberately exercising his animal. How intolerable, if she had taken her stroll, to have come upon him driving the slobbery pig.

"But isn't it strange about Mary, ma'am?"

Miss Edge barely heard.

"Moira," she said. "You have younger eyes than I. Look over there and tell me what you see. Is that Mr Rock? And what has he got with him?"

The child collected her face into an expression which the old man, had he been present, would have found adorable in the effort to pierce the slanting sun, which turned her skin to coral, her red hair to live filaments.

"Why how sweet," the child exclaimed. "Yes, it is him. He's taking darling Daise for a run."

The others came up, then, with bunches of red and white rhododendron.

"But not loose, dear?" Edge protested.

"Oh, she's absolutely safe, isn't she?" Moira appealed to her companions.

"Why Mr Rock's often let her out while we've been there, when she's stayed so busy and well-behaved."

At this moment there was the sound of a motor car engine. Coming or going? The Principal looked left, then right. Almost at once their little red State tourer came down the Drive, its cloud of dust not yet martialled but already falling in behind. Mrs Manley was seated in the back. She looked straight ahead. By some trick of the light, perhaps, her face was purple.

"That's Mrs Manley, isn't it?" Moira cannily enquired.

"She's been to see Merode," a child said.

"I'll bet she asked some posers," yet another suggested.

"We'll have to hasten if we're ever to get through," Edge propounded, and saw, or thought she saw, that Mr Rock had stopped to look. Their car, so soon invisible to Edge, must have just been entering the Trees. For a cloud of dust now lay afar, at the Drive's opening, and was a delicate pink.

The old man seemed to stand fast, the better to watch.

The decorations for Founder's Day were already traditional, although the Institute had been open for only ten years. In consequence there was no need for Edge to give orders, her presence was designed to preclude innovation, such as the fir branches Marchbanks had so foolishly suggested. Hooks were fixed permanently in the walls at proper intervals, and the work of tying azalea and rhododendron to hang head downwards in separate, glistening great masses went on apace without Edge having to give a thought to the proceeding. Indeed, despite a renewed preoccupation with Mr Rock, she was already conscious of a glow within her at the prospect of so much that would inevitably please, and which was to be enjoyed and enjoyed; when the trees' shadows crept at last over the mansion, and then there was moonlight; when Baker, with herself, in front of all the students dressed in their clear frocks, could sway out in one another's arms at last to open everything to that thunder of the waltz.

She had dismissed from her mind each carking memory of the Manley creature. The die was cast. They were to go on with the Dance, any other course would be unthinkable. So she was happy in anticipation, culpably at rest. She could even forgive the sage his sow.

Accordingly she had, at first, no qualms when she heard a child back at the pyre exclaim, "Why, whatever's this?" And paid no heed to the giggles which followed. But when, in the girls' chatter, she caught one say gleefully, "It's the living spit of Mary," she did turn, then, with a sickening premonition of the worst, to have the quick comfort to realise they had found what was only a short, small object. Yet she moved down upon them at once.

"What's this?" she demanded, horrified by the agitation in her voice. The students parted. And she saw, and it gave her such a frightful turn she straightaway fainted, a rabbity Rag Doll dressed gaily in miniature Institute pyjamas, painted with a grotesque caricature of Mary's features on its own flat face, laid disgustingly on a bit of mackintosh, embowered by these blooms.

When Edge came to, she was laid out on her chaise longue in the Sanctum. Miss Baker ministered with smelling salts, while Marion stood at a cut glass bowl in which were cubes of ice. The late sun caught these with sufficient force to distress Edge, and she closed her eyes once more. The minutes passed.

"It's been so hot," Baker said finally, with vexed accents. Miss Edge looked at her, and again had to turn her face from the intolerable insistence of salts on top of light. She even squirmed in protest.

"That's right, dear," came Baker's voice. "Now rest." Upon which, Edge raised a hand to her hair and looked about. She fastened on Marion.

"What a remarkable thing," she said, not without effort.

"Don't give it another thought," Miss Baker ordered, bright as the day outside.

"But did you see too, Marion?" Edge enquired. The girl seemed so weighed down by guilt, almost as though she were in for another bout of crying. Her Principal noted this from a vast distance of lassitude, which allowed her to ask questions out of a calm, almost intellectual curiosity.

"Yes, ma'am. Oh, I have it here."

"Plenty of time, Edge," Miss Baker warned. "Now, wouldn't you like Dr Bodle?"

"So foolish of me," Miss Edge lied to the child. "I thought it was a ... a dead rabbit," she said in anticlimax, voicing the secret, known throughout the Institute, that she had a terror of rabbits dead. "And then I did realise, only too late, too late." A tear began to roll from each of her blue, old eyes.

"I'll never forgive myself," she ended, in a small voice and a hiccup.

"Nonsense," Baker said, "It's the heat. You're overstrained."

A silence followed, while Miss Edge pulled herself together.

"But was there, really, a Doll?" she asked. Her colleague turned away, anguished. Miss Edge did not notice.

"Oh yes, ma'am. Someone in the kitchen said she'd lost hers."

"Someone said . . . ?"

"Who was that then?"

"I can't remember exactly. But she did know Mary had lost it," Marion explained.

The older women could not disguise the fresh shock this was to them. Miss Edge sat bolt upright even.

"Who?" Baker gasped.

"Mary, ma'am."

"No, but who informed you?"

There was another pause.

"I can't seem to remember, quite," the girl told Baker.

"Well," Miss Edge said, better already now that she was following a cold scent. "Suppose you go up to Matron and inform her from me that you are to stay with her until you do?"

"Oh but ma'am, and the dance?"

"It will come back before then. Yes, run along, Marion."

The moment the door was closed on the girl, Miss Edge burst out, "Were there Pins in? Had it a painted Heart?"

"My dear," Baker expostulated. "This is practically no more than a golliwog."

"Oh my heart," Edge said. "How terrible."

"Now, I'm sure it isn't what you think," the other tried to comfort her colleague. "This is all a mistake."

"I knew, right through lunch," Miss Edge insisted.

There came a knock on the door.

"Come in," Edge cried, trembling, and sat up straight again.

"I thought I ought to tell you, ma'am," Marion said, as she sidled in, "But I just remembered I heard Mary got a wire. She's gone home."

"Gone home?" the two Principals burst out.

"When?" Edge demanded.

"Mrs Blain told us there was a wire to say the sister was sick," Marion announced in a shocked voice.

"Did any telegrams come last night?" Baker asked her colleague, because all communications to the students were read before being handed over.

"You can go to Matron now, Marion," Edge ordered.

"And remember, not a word about any of this to the others. You still have something to tell us, child."

As soon as the girl was out of their room Miss Baker got on the telephone to Marchbanks. The reply was that nothing had come for Mary in the past week.

"She could have stopped the postman," Baker suggested.

"My dear," Edge said faintly, "I still cannot believe it, and now this terrible Doll in her image. At her age too."

"Then what d'you really think?" Baker asked, her voice trembling.

"The Lake," Miss Edge insinuated, almost hoarse.

"Oh no, not that, dear."

"You see, Baker, I understand now why Rock should have been on his way down."

"Last night?"

"No, just a moment ago, with his pig."

"With his pig!"

"In South Eastern Europe, Hermione, they are used for tracking."