Concluding (18 page)

"The Law," Mr Rock tried the Principal out, looking full at her with, behind their spectacles, his enormous, magnified eyes.

"What a shame in this beautiful Place," she agreed, quick as quick.

"Makes you wonder."

"I never wonder, Mr Rock. I take things as they are," she corrected him.

"Daisy," he exclaimed and, indeed, she was nowhere to be found. "Excuse me, Madam," and made as if to move off, stumbling a trifle.

"One minute," she said, in the voice of authority he so hated. "Is she safe?"

"Who are you asking?" he fiercely demanded. She did not understand.

"This is your pig, isn't it?"

"Daisy?" he enquired, and, extraordinary man, she could see he now actually laughed at her. "Wouldn't hurt a fly." She unbent a trifle.

"Yet, you know, where I was brought up in the country, on a black and white farm," she lied, "where all the animals were that, you understand, well, I shall never forget, but I was out to pick apples one day and the pigs were loose in the orchard. It was rather thundery weather, so I had my mackintosh, which I left below while I was up the ladder. But I suppose I must have been preoccupied, because they ate it, every scrap."

He bowed.

"Madam," he said, "never fear, we are not in for rain the next few hours."

Blushing with humiliation, she turned on her heel and left without another word. Really, she thought, the man must be malevolently hostile.

As Baker tramped back to the great house along a ride, fanning herself with a dock leaf, she came to within sight of the fallen beech. She did not know, but the sergeant had not preceded her by many minutes. Neither of them could tell this was where Merode had been found, or they might have stopped to investigate. It was lucky for Sebastian and his Liz they did not do so, because these two were lying stark naked in one another's arms, precisely at the same spot in which Merode had been found. For Elizabeth saw how it was with her lover after he had come upon the girl lying stretched out in pyjamas. And now, a second time, Liz had taken him back to wipe off the memory of Merode, on this occasion by cruder means. As the policeman was coming by, Sebastian and his Liz had lain stark, scarcely breathing for fear they might be uncovered. Then, as Baker minced past, apparently tracking the sergeant, it was far worse, more than the cottage depended upon their not being caught, and Sebastian had nearly burst a vein in his forehead. Yet, before the Principal was out of earshot, Miss Rock thought of the expression there would have been about the Principal's nose if this lady had come upon her lover as he now was, which jolted Elizabeth into such a loud, gurgling laugh of cruel, delighted ridicule, that it sent Sebastian wooden with horror.

When she heard, Miss Baker, her blood run cold, looked back the way she had come, like a hen, at night, watching behind for a fox. She did not stop to investigate. It was all she could do not to break into a trot. Oh, she thought, our beautiful Park seems suddenly full of vile cross currents.

When Edge got to the door behind which Merode was locked away, she still held the doll by its thick neck. She paused before she entered, and tried holding the thing by its middle. But that was ridiculous because, with no backbone, it simply flopped. So she took a blunt hand, and this would not do, for the head, when released, hung sideways. Finally she cradled it on one arm like a baby, turned her key in the lock without a sound and crept forward, not waking Merode, whom she found astride her chair, asleep.

She put the dolly on Merode's lap, under the child's dreaming head which lay, with all her hanging hair, over crossed arms along the chair back. This small weight woke the girl who, when she first opened eyes, saw what she dizzily took to be Alice, exactly as Miss Marchbanks had offered the animal curled up at rest. But in a second she realised, and sprang to her feet.

"Oh," she cried out. "Not puss."

Edge stood there astounded.

"Merode," she said to warn the child, in fairness, of her presence.

"Oh ma'am," Merode gasped.

"What has so frightened you, dear?" Miss Edge demanded.

There was no reply. The girl kept looking back at Edge then away to the doll on the ground.

"Pick it up, won't you, Merode?"

The Principal was relieved to find the child seemed able to do so reasonably quick. She had feared there might be something about the absurd doll, after all.

"Put it over there, dear," she said. "Now tell me, what is this to do with a cat?"

"I was dreaming, ma'am."

"What about?"

"That Miss Marchbanks had given me Alice."

"Mr Rock's cat? But why, Merode?"

"You see, she did, ma'am, when I saw her after I was brought in."

"Hardly hers to give, was it?"

"No, she put puss on my lap, ma'am."

"And then you fainted?"

"Oh that was later, ma'am," the child said, quite collected.

"So the animal did not frighten you," Edge pointed out. "Is this doll yours, Merode?"

The child winced.

"No, ma'am," she said.

"Look at her well, dear. Whose is it, in that case?"

Merode swallowed.

"Mary's, ma'am."

"Are you quite sure now? I should have thought a big, grown girl, would be too old for such things."

"The others did laugh at her," Merode said unwillingly.

"I expect so," Miss Edge encouraged. "And did she mind?"

"Oh, not really, ma'am," the child replied, in a bright voice.

Edge felt it was curious how confident the bit of a thing seemed.

"And one point you are sure of, this is not yours, Merode?"

"Oh no, ma'am."

"The others were not laughing at you, then?"

"Me? I wouldn't have bothered."

Edge sat down in the only chair. She picked the doll up, placed it on her lap. Her face took a peculiarly innocent expression. Merode again got the idea that all this had happened once before. But she felt better, now she had seen her aunt.

"Why would you not have bothered?"

"I just don't pay attention to them, ma'am."

Yet, for all her being confident, Edge felt, the girl seemed never to take her eyes off the doll while this was in evidence.

"And Mary did?"

Merode swallowed, then joined hands behind her back.

"She was so tired, ma'am."

"Tired? What about? I'd like to have seen myself tired at her age."

"It was all the work she done."

"Oh, do speak English, child. But how do you mean? She is quite well on in her work."

"It was the waiting," Merode explained, with a kind of limpid simplicity.

"Waiting for what?" Miss Edge demanded.

"Orderly duties, ma'am."

These words came as a complete, and genuine, surprise to the Principal. So much so that she even doubted her own ears.

"Say that again, Merode. The orderly duties?"

"Yes, ma'am."

A cramp was forming round Edge's heart, or that was how the lady felt. Then a reasonable explanation occurred to her. Mrs Manley must have put the child up to it. Because they all knew that attendance on Baker and herself was an honour for which every one of the girls longed, it was just the little extra to be intimately close to them both. Nevertheless, she saw how the whole thing could be made to look if Mary did not come back soon, how black if this latest fantastic story was allowed to creep around. She managed to bring out a laugh.

"Really, the ideas you children do get hold of," she exclaimed. "Honestly, Merode, I never heard such silly stuff and nonsense in
my life. It might even be ill-natured, I am sorry to say, from one aspect. Now, who told you?"

The girl had flushed under Miss Edge's blue eyes. The lady thought really, in time, she is going to be extraordinarily attractive. There was no answer.

"Very well, then, we'll leave it. Now, about yourself, dear. Have you written your Account yet?"

"Must I, ma'am?"

"We shall see," Edge answered, affable but, at the same time, at her most wary. "You know what the Regulations are. I am not sure whether we shall have to make a Report, that depends on a number of things, quite a number of things. But until you have written out your story, you understand, I cannot ask questions. Which is to say, there is nothing to prevent me asking, but you are not obliged to respond. I think it very fair of the State. Now then, where were we?"

"I'm afraid I must have been sleepwalking, ma'am." The girl spoke up easily, with every appearance of candour.

"Sleepwalking?" Edge demanded, as if this were the first she had heard of a dishonourable, yet prevalent custom. "I trust you don't often engage in that."

"Me, ma'am? I did when I was a baby."

"Does anyone else know of this?"

"Auntie does."

"Of course," Edge took her up with a heavy irony that was wasted, because the girl did not notice. "But anyone here? Were we told? There is the essential point, isn't it?"

"I told Miss Marchbanks, ma'am."

"When?"

"After I got back."

Edge was stupefied, but did not show a sign. A pause ensued. "When she came up to see you after you were locked here?" she tried again.

"Yes, ma'am."

Another silence began to  stretch between them. Then the Principal thought she saw light at last.

"Merode, tell me something," she said in a voice full of hope. "When Miss Marchbanks asked her questions, did she caution you? What I mean is, did she tell you as I have done, about your writing an Account and not being obliged to answer before you had written it?"

"Why no, ma'am, I don't think so."

"Well all right," Miss Edge cried out in triumph. "Nothing you told her has any substance. Indeed you might just as well not have said a word. That is to say that as far as we are concerned you did not speak."

Thereupon she quickly got up and left the room, locked the door behind. At least I have left the whole thing open, she congratulated herself. We are not committed to any story yet.

For her part Merode was well pleased. Really, she thought, old Edge may not be such a bad old stick, when you get to know her.

Evening was drawing in. Mr Rock had decided willy nilly it would be best to attend the dance. So he must get back to wash and change. Only there was Daisy. He had found the animal once more but she had been recalcitrant, would not be driven, and, when he did catch up, she looked back over a white flank, waited till he was within three paces, then, with a toss of that drooling, overweighted head, with a flurry of grunts, she trotted off a short distance and halted, to allow the whole business to start all over again. This happened two or three times, until, in making her escape, she was frightened, made off through the reeds with high squeals, and he lost sight of her altogether as he squelched about over soft ground that bordered the water. He stayed to search a little, because he feared she might have sensed the girl's cold, wet, crumpled body. But he did not find a trace, and, by the time he was about to desist, sweat fogged his spectacles and the shirt was plastered to his body. He chanced to be hard by a dense withy which he thought he would investigate before he gave up both Mary and the pig, when a voice addressed him from the heart of it, in querulous tones which could only belong to the forester Adams.

"What would you say you're after?" the man enquired.

"Who's that?" Mr Rock asked, knowing full well, but put out by the brutal question.

"I know what I know," Adams said. He spoke in a higher voice than usual.

Mr Rock straightened his back to wave a hand at the cloud of gnats which rose and fell before his eyes. He reached for a handkerchief to clean the glasses, and, when he had done so, searched from where he stood for the still invisible Adams, while he put a finger between his collar and wet skin.

"Have you seen my sow?" he demanded.

"She's been gone this long time since," the forester replied. There was a pause. Mr Rock felt hotter. Really, amongst the reeds it is intolerably warm, he said to himself. And what an idiotic situation.

"Where are you, man?" he insisted.

"Where I can remain unseen," the fellow answered.

"Then come out and have done," Mr Rock sternly said, turning slow on his heels, in a circle.

"I've as much right as the next man to ask my question and receive the answer," the man replied. "I'm not the one single one round here," he said. "Ask this, ask that, 'Adams, where were you?', 'Adams what're you doing', "Ow about your work, Adams?' Well then, perhaps you can tell me, Mr Rock," and he stressed the Mr. "What might you be after?"

The old man was facing the withy again. The insulting lunatic could only be hidden away there. So Mr Rock said not a word.

"I've kept me eyes open this long time to what goes on around," Adams continued bitterly, after a pause. "I may not be educated but I wasn't born yesterday, not by many a year. I saw the shape of things right enough this morning when you asked after my cottage. You people, you, and your granddaughter, and her boy," he said, "you're as mean as wood ashes, every one."

He waited for an answer but the old man said no word just stood to wipe at his face with a handkerchief in a palsied hand.

A gnat got up Adams' nose so that he sneezed. He scratched at his leg. Then, beside himself, he went on, "You never intended to give me the wire," he accused. "I saw through that like I look out of my windows, it was clear as day you sought how you might get me shunted, shift it over on to me, while up at the house as they're scheming to lay their hands on your place. Likely enough you or your girl done away with 'er yourselves, for a dark purpose. Because I tell you, from now on you and me is strangers of another country, so we don't pass the time of day even. You and me speak a different language, Mr Rock. You and your sort." For the last few words, Adams had dropped his voice. The old man could not entirely catch what had been said. So it was with intent to make the fellow ridiculous that he asked, "Lose the fort?"

The forester began to laugh. "Booze the port" he echoed, to make a mock of his adversary. "Ah, and after every meal I don't doubt," and slapped his thighs. "Living like a lord," he went on. "There you are, back at your lies once again," he yelled. "Makin' out you're better nor the rest of us." He dropped his voice. "Like enough you've forgotten the spot you dug the hole, and you're back to see where you can recollect."