Concluding (19 page)

"It was the State gave me my place," Mr Rock, who had not meant to answer these bumpkin idiocies, found himself stung to reply about his general position. This mention of the all-powerful sobered Adams.

There was another silence.

"Time I went," Mr Rock muttered, outraged and confused.

"Ah, slink off like you crept out," Adams said, in as low a voice. "But you won't come up on me unbeknownst, not with me on my guard."

The old man waited. It was intolerable. His granddaughter and he had fallen so low that any lunatic could thus address them, and stay unmolested. He blamed it on Miss Edge and the Baker woman.

"I saw," Adams started once more, but not so violently, "I seen you hold your tryst with that shiner and old Edge. The moment I set eyes on you I knew the game. Put it all on a working man who's alone in this world," he said, tears in his voice.

"For all my weak eyesight I only noticed Baker," Mr Rock announced with triumph.

"Which don't alter facts, that you never come upon what you sought," Adams replied. "It takes more'n glasses to see round your kind," he said.

"I'm an older man than you, Adams," Mr Rock answered at last. "Civility between neighbours is worth a coal fire in the grate, any time."

Conscious that he had hardly, perhaps, said all he might, and with a feeling that he had not heard the last in consequence, Mr Rock walked off and out. For his ludicrous position was, he realised, that whether or no he had been elected, he must hasten to curry favour with those two mewing harlots up above for fear they might listen to this madman's ravings.

"Get on off out," he heard Adams yell after him.

When Baker arrived back in the Sanctum, she found Edge ready to take over.

"I was just going up to change," Miss Edge greeted the lady.

"I know," her colleague said, a little out of breath. "It took longer than I thought. I met the police sergeant with Mr Rock."

Miss Edge accepted the statement without comment.

"In many ways," she said, "I think this has been the most miserable day of my life."

"Why dear? There's nothing fresh, then? No bad news, I mean?" She had been thinking that laugh she heard behind her must have been imaginary. Now she was not so sure.

"No, on the whole, no," Edge comforted her. "But the intentional stupidity, Baker, is what I find so fatiguing. Take Marchbanks, now. Merode definitely admitted, only a moment ago, she had told the woman she was a sleepwalker."

"Well," Miss Baker said, and forgot that laugh once more. "It lets the child out to a certain extent, doesn't it?"

"Yes, until we go further into all this," Edge replied, with a weary gesture. "Up to a point, yes," she agreed. "But wait until we know more tomorrow, Baker. We may have a day of decision there. I dread it."

"Marchbanks is so experienced she's hardly likely to have made a mistake over a man," Miss Baker assented. "Although she may have jumped to the obvious conclusion. But we are at one, now, over the dance, aren't we? It must proceed. In the present state of our knowledge at all events. We may even laugh at each other, dear, within the next fifteen hours, at having been so worried and upset."

"I feel that is hardly likely, Baker," Edge objected. "For we still may not have done all we might under the circumstances, which is no trifling matter, placed as we are. Still, I am with you that our little Tamasha shall succeed."

"Then let's not say another word now, even to one another, about what's occurred."

"But the way those two girls could, Baker? On the very day before. Our children don't get much fun here, my dear. We have to keep them pretty well to the grindstone. And then these two little wretches, if they do not merit a harsher word, to endanger the whole affair with an escapade, it is hardly credible, is it?"

The sinking sun partitioned their room into three, as it came in by three windows. Miss Edge sat shaded between the first and second, Miss Baker similarly between the second and third windows, so they addressed each other across a thick wedge of colour-bearing sunlight in which motes of dust descended, now day was done. Left of one, and to the right of the other, was a vase of azaleas that had not wilted yet, a brilliant crown, which one of the girls had saved over from the decorations to place between their desks of office. Miss Edge reached out to push this into shadow, and Baker remembered.

"We still have time before we need go," she said, forgetting that she had just suggested they might leave the whole matter alone for the moment. "I wanted to ask, dear. D'you think the anonymous letter yesterday could have some connection with all this?"

"We should not attach the slightest importance, Baker." Miss Edge spoke with complete confidence. "I know I never do. Whoever stoops to send a thing like it deserves immediate punishment, but, above all, to be ignored. When we have cleared this up, we can try to trace the poison pen, if you like. While, for the present, I strongly counsel you to put it out of mind."

"All the same, what did the horrible thing say, Edge? 'Who is there fornicates and the goose'. That's rather extraordinary, surely?"

Miss Edge looked. The door was shut.

"Furnicates, dear," she corrected, in a low voice. "F.U.R.N." she spelled.

"Well, don't let's quarrel over details," Baker said, with a sort of laugh. "But it all does rather point one way, you see?"

"Even then I am not certain you are quite accurate," Edge elaborated. '"Who is there fornicates besides his goose?' was the charming message, if my memory serves me right."

Miss Baker gave an embarrassed laugh.

"How should we know about anonymous letters, dear," she agreed. "Perhaps we should ask Mr Rock?"

"Yes, what would two old spinsters, which is, I am led to believe, how Elizabeth Rock describes us, know of such a subject? No, Baker, dismiss it entirely from your mind."

"Does fornicate mean what I mean?" her colleague ventured. But she was to remain in ignorance.

"Forget all this, Baker," Edge said with decision. "I do not know, and I care less. What I have determined is, that our dear girls should have their Time tonight. There will be leisure for every kind of tiring foolishness tomorrow, I'm only too certain. But how curious you should bring that unspeakable message back to the disastrous Rock. However, no more of it, please."

"Well, it seemed the only possible conclusion."

"I agree, dear," Edge said. "But do remember. Only this morning you would not have that."

"No, Edge, we never discussed the note, did we? Surely we were talking about Sebastian Rock?"

"Birt, dear. They are not married yet, and if I know much of the young man, they never will, not if he can help. Such a pity, with Winstanley making sheep's eyes at him. But that is the sort of creature he is, to pick on a half crazed woman like the granddaughter."

"I say now what I said then," Miss Baker warned. "Go carefully. We must not exceed our duties."

"You and I are here to protect our girls, Hermione," Miss Edge announced in her strongest manner. "We stand on guard over the Essential Goodness of this Great Place. And when we sense a threat, our duty is to exercise the initiative the State expects to avert a danger. Now something, we do not yet know what, has occurred, and it is for us to stamp out the evil, or better still, get rid of it quietly, without fuss, as one does with swill."

"You're reverting to the anonymous note, of course."

"Far be it from me, Baker. I refer to two misguided children who have cast a shadow this year over Founder's Day, probably in a fit of pique. Do you know Merode actually claims she told Marchbanks about the sleepwalking."

"Does she?"

"Yes." There was a heavy pause. And then inspiration visited Edge. She saw the way out in a flash.

"What, after all, can one make of it?" she began right away in a great voice. "Creeping down at dead of night in her pyjamas and then, hours later, to be found comfortably ensconsed within a fallen beech, having made herself a nest, thank you, and not forgotten the coat, which she still had with her. What is one to think? Finally, discovered by Sebastian Birt of all people, well on in the morning, as if he did not know where she was the whole time, oh then she is quite composed, of course. A little fuss at first, naturally, when she finds herself the centre of attention, but no excuses, Baker, mark you. So what is the inescapable conclusion?"

Her colleague got up, began to pace to and fro across a thick shutter of sunlight.

"It's all very difficult," she said.

"Do you think so? And how about Mary, after she turns up, as she will? For she must. But let us not meet her trouble half-way. Time enough when the girl returns. Because do you still not see it, dear? At least for Merode. Why, I gave you the answer to our riddle not ten minutes since."

"What riddle, Edge?"

"The quandary in which we find ourselves. How to explain Merode's absence without this horrible rigmarole of Reports. Though we owe it to the Trust, with which you and I have been privileged, Baker, to cast out evil hanging over the heads of our Students root and branch, this we must do, or forfeit all self respect. For I have watched the situation grow, and I have held my hand. Rock, who I deeply suspect, his disastrous granddaughter, and a weak young man. You will agree I have given you my views on them many a time the past few weeks. No, they must, and shall, be sent packing. But don't you, even now, see the way to explain Merode?"

Her colleague, in perplexity turned towards Miss Edge, and was blinded by sun. She screwed her face up into a pathetic maze of bewilderment before a hot dazzle of evening.

"My dear," she began, and could not go on.

"Sleepwalking," Edge brought out at last in an even louder voice, jubilant as a trumpet.

"But she . . ." Miss Baker started to object, only to be ruthlessly interrupted.

"Has told three people the same," Edge insisted. "Marchbanks, her aunt, and myself. No doubt Mrs Manley encouraged the child to stick to the truthful account of what had occurred. But I simply cannot understand, now, that I could have been so blind as not to accept it, at once, face value, immediately. Because this is, in an exact measure, sufficient to our purpose, Baker. Of course we do not want the playing truant to be known, for the child's own sake. Not many of the girls have learned. Merode was just sleepwalking, that's all, and the Dance can go ahead. Of course she will rest in Quarantine, until Mary comes back with her tail between her legs. It is amazing to me, after what has occurred, that I always trusted the girl. Yet in justice to ourselves, we must leave no stone unturned to rid the Precincts of the three persons I have named. That's all."

"But Edge . . ." Baker began once more.

"Not another word, dear," Miss Edge said firmly. "And will you do me the favour to look at the Time? If we are to be ready we shall have to hurry, Baker."

Miss Edge watched her colleague out of the room. When the door closed on her, Edge's face took on a look of triumphant satisfaction.

Later, Mr Rock and Elizabeth were on their way up to the house for the dance. She wore a trailing black silk dress, with a yellow ribbon in her hair. Both walked in rubber boots because he feared the dew. He carried his shoes, and hers, in a despatch case which went back to the days of his youth.

Daisy was not home yet, or Ted. He had left some milk outside for Alice, but then she spent most of her time these days away at the Institute, currying favour, as he would, if he were wise, he smiled wryly to himself. And Elizabeth had been too silent, he thought, so quiet there must be something yet to come; from her poor starved heart, no doubt, under that stained mackintosh hung over the shoulders. She was spent and sad, he knew.

The first blackbird, up on a branch, gave heed that night rode near, the light grew ever softer, rhododendrons stared, air was still, the boots they wore gleamed wet so soon; it was cool, and gnats had departed to the last bars of sun which, high above, slanted from one beech to another that dwarfed the azalea bushes where bluebottles no longer waited, whence butterflies were gone, and whose scent had faded, whose honey was now too late for bees in the hush of sunset preparing in the west that would lie red over the sky like a vast bank of roses, just time enough for lovers.

He saw an empty bird's egg lying on grass and glanced upward to find the nest. He then realised his evening heavens, which precisely matched that blue.

He thought she had said something he was too deaf to hear.

"What is that?" he gently asked.

She, who had not yet spoken, told him then, "About Sebastian, Gapa."

"Yes dear," he said. He had known it would be this.

"Oh Gapa, I want you to be marvellous to me now. I mean you always have. But there are times, aren't there? The thing is I'm in terrible trouble. In my mind you understand. About him. And I do so want you to promise."

"You tell me," he suggested, gentle as before.

"But you may not agree, not look at it the way he does. Yet he didn't ask, you needn't think, because honestly he never did. In fact if he thought for a minute I was talking to you he would be furious. Really he would. He's so worried."

"Is he?"

"Yes, oh, you wouldn't know. About that silly girl who's missing."

"Why, dear?"

She swallowed.

"It's not what you imagine at all," she hurried on. "He's absolutely true to me, you can be sure, and they fling themselves all the time at his head. I don't think they ought to have masters, Gapa, at these places, do you, since they're only children, the girls I mean, and sex is unconscious at their age. It's such a temptation for a man." He winced, as Sebastian himself had earlier, at the assumption of sexual knowledge.

"Come to your point, Liz," he said firmly. "I'm so worried for him. It's not what he's actually mentioned, yet he couldn't help but drop hints, poor sweet; you know, underneath, he's half out of his mind with the torture of it all. Oh, everything's my fault, I should never have met him. They blame it all on Seb, you see. Isn't that inconceivable, but so wicked, so wicked of them? You were absolutely certain from the first, oh Gapa you really are the most wonderful man. I know when I was all right, and I used to come down to see you, I had no idea, I thought there was just a bee in your bonnet, but you were sure. They're dangerous. The two of them should be behind bars."