Concluding (20 page)

"Edge and Baker I presume?" he said.

"You see, when you're young and all that," she went on, "starting in the State Service, because I know, Gapa, I've done it, things have so changed since your day, well then, the slightest bad report he gets and he'll never receive promotion. Never. It isn't a story, honest. No redress, nothing. And you realise what an Enquiry means, if you appeal against one of these awful Reports. It's the end. Absolutely. Even if you think you've brought it off, it boomerangs back onto you. So I want you to promise you'll lend a hand." He judged from her tone that she was near tears.

"I'll do what I can," he said for comfort, though he could not but show the bitterness in his voice. She mistakenly took this to be aimed at the two Principals.

"And I do really realise what it costs to say that," she announced, "I understand how you hate to speak to them, even. If you weren't the most splendid man you'd never have promised to talk to Miss Edge." She brought this out quite naturally, and he did not contradict. "You needn't do much, Gapa dear. Get her to sit out one dance, just like that, she'll be thrilled, because they truly appreciate you here, the staff does, despite all you speak against them when you get out of bed the wrong side of a morning. Seb's often told me how Miss Edge talks about you," she lied, while the famous old man had to hold himself back in order not to squirm from his granddaughter, that she should be so transparent. "Get her quietly alone somewhere," then she laughed and it was worse, so that he drew himself away.

"Come back, Gapa," she ordered, hanging her whole weight on the arm to pull his old shoulder back to hers, "just take the woman quietly somewhere she can watch her sweet students dance with each other, because they're fiends, those girls, you simply must believe, I'm a woman and I know, they're sincerely dreadful, I couldn't possibly tell. Of course you must not admit to anything, she'd see us at the bottom, she's quite sharp enough for that, but will you? Well, I mean, you have promised, surely? Just tell her you won't under any circumstances report a word of the evasion to Mr Swaythling."

The old man was alarmed.

"In which respect has Swaythling to do with this?" he asked. "In any case, what evasion?"

"Why, that's Seb's word," she answered, almost gay. "I think it's so smart of him, don't you? Two girls who escape, and a couple of old women who, what he calls, evade the whole issue. But you told Seb you were going to send in a report to Mr Swaythling, Gapa."

"I did nothing of the kind," the old man truthfully protested.

"Must have slipped your memory, then," she said, altogether sure of her facts.

"There are times you remind me of Julia," he said, with a grim laugh.

"Didn't you know a woman will always get her own way," she replied as obviously. She laughed, then grew serious again. "Oh, but Gapa it is so important, this is. You see I'm planning my future on Seb," she said. "If anything should happen to him, I'd die. And what chance has he got, if Miss Edge and Miss Baker turn against Seb, I mean? It's his first post, you see. Oh, wasn't that a pity we came across the wretched girl?"

"Look
Liz,
don't lose your head. What have they against Sebastian?"

"But nothing, dear, nothing naturally. What could they? It's so difficult to explain. After all, you've lived out of things a long time, Gapa. You see, I'm frightened for the reprisals. Don't you understand, and of course, I know, they're so fiendish, those two old creatures, it must be hard to believe, yet Seb has studied them, he's told me, the point is they watch like pussies, they've learned all Seb and I mean to one another, and he's certain they'll strike back, if you should do anything, you see, right at your weakest part, the chink in your armour."

"Which is?" he patiently enquired. She was biting her lower lip.

"Why me, of course," she wailed, but he thought she seemed well satisfied. "They're capable of anything," she explained. "Oh Gapa, I'm dreadfully worried. You will, won't you?"

"What?" he asked.

She stopped dead. She turned, and stamped a foot. Unseen, a rabbit, which had come out of its hole fifty feet away, stamped a hind leg back.

"You know perfectly," she accused. "Only sometimes it suits to pretend you don't, like often when you say you can't hear. No, Gapa, you must promise you'll never let on to Mr Swaythling about what's happened."

"Yet suppose they just hide it up?" he asked calmly. "What then?"

"How on earth?" she demanded, searching over his face with her eyes, as if she feared for his sanity.

"I've some experience," he told her. "They're caught in a trap those two, like the cruel weasels they are." He spoke with great patience. "They drove that poor child to this," he went on. "She's been over to me about them. Only because they liked the colour of her eyes they pushed her unmercifully, set her to fetch and carry all day through, 'Just bring my pince nez from the Sanctum'," he quavered, in a horrible mimicry of Miss Edge. "No, Mary will never come back now."

"Did she tell you?" his granddaughter asked him, wide eyed.

"Of course not," he said sharply. "If she had, I'd have known where to look, wouldn't I? No, but she has complained, Liz, often and often, the poor girl. All she's got in the "world is out in Brazil, she has no relatives besides."

"Oh, Gapa dear," she cried. "You shouldn't listen, you really mustn't. They're so deceitful at that age, you can't imagine."

"And do you know how Mistresses Edge and Baker will act next?" he went on. "They'll cover up. They have made one or two gestures today but they're only sitting back, they're saying to each other 'Mary must turn up tomorrow', and when she does no such thing, perhaps she's not in a position to oblige, they'll tell one another, Liz, 'Wait for the next day'. And so on."

"Now, Gapa, they can't hide it altogether, I mean they have their lists, haven't they, Mary won't simply disappear into thin air, surely, you see?"

He stayed silent.

"They won't, will they?" she pressed him, with rising terror.

"I'm not one to look into their dark minds," he said at last. "But they must find something, a means to put the blame onto her however it turns out. I do know that," he said.

"And then the cottage?" she wailed.

"Don't let yourself get upset, Liz," he said in a loud voice. "Just allow me to handle this my way."

"But it's our whole future, Seb's and mine," she almost shouted, unmasking herself. "When we're married, where are we to go? I didn't mean to ask you like this, but I've been thinking. Oh Gapa, you wouldn't mind, surely now, I mean you'd hardly notice. But I had felt when we're married we could live on here with you, the both of us."

When Mr Rock heard this, he was terrified for his granddaughter. She could not have them both.

"Dear, you know the Rule," he said gently. "When one of the staff takes a wife the State always moves him to another post."

"Yes, but you could put in a word with Mr Swaythling. You wouldn't mind. You see I'd never get over leaving you. It's hard to set these things to words, but you're my life, Gapa, you understand."

He kissed her cheek clumsily. She began to cry.

"So my little girl is going to be married," he said.

"Oh, there's nothing absolutely fixed yet," she replied, stepping back to blow her nose, and sent a sharp look at his face. "I never meant to tell, then I'm such a fool, I get upset at times and bring it all out. You won't breathe a word, will you, Gapa, not to Seb either, because he's funny that way, and of course, if Miss Edge got to hear before we were ready, it would be the end. I mean, I've considered this for ever so long, because I'm sure the only way is to run off one morning, and get it over, almost before you know you're doing it yourself. Get married, you see. All those tremendous preparations are simply no good. Next, soon as Miss Edge saw it was finished, after I'd shown her my certificate, I mean, there'd be absolutely nothing for her to do, would there?"

"It wants thought," he said, reminding himself, if he were to show opposition, that it would drive her into the man's arms and then he would lose her finally. But he was not so blind, he said under his breath, spectacles or no, he could see Birt coveted the cottage, would move heaven and earth to have him sent to the Sanatorium once the ring was on her finger.

"I hardly know that I should bother Swaythling," he said about the cottage, and began to walk away from the house.

"Wrong way, Gapa," she said. He turned without a word, marched up to, and past her. She followed at his heels.

"You mean you won't get on to him, then," she started. "Not one teeny word, when all the time you've sworn if anything happened to this Mary you'd move heaven and earth?"

"I intended nothing of the kind," he said, over his shoulder.

"No, but that was what you said, didn't you?"

"We shall be late, Liz."

"Why are you, I mean, what's all the hurry?" she called, unable to catch up.

"Justice," he cried. Looking at his back, she thought oh dear he's upset.

"What's that? And must you go so fast?"

"Do you really consider I should leave Mary be? Have you any idea what you've said?"

"Oh I just don't understand," she wailed.

"It is a matter of simple justice, Liz."

"Yes, Gapa."

"I'd do as much for any dog I saw maltreated, I'd report it."

But not for me, she felt. Their skins and hair simply allowed these wretched chits to get away with things. However, she had the sense to say no more. His pace slackened.

"Don't be afraid of life, Liz," he said. "Everything settles itself in the end. I've lived long enough to know that."

"Yes, Gapa," she agreed. Now she could see his face she noted it was red with more than the sunset, and puckered into deep wrinkles, an infallible sign of distress.

"You want me to write to Swaythling about yourselves and the cottage while not mentioning this girl?"

"Oh my dear," she lied. "It's not that at all. I explain myself so badly, ever since I've been ill. You know, sometimes I feel as if I'd something in my head and I simply can't get out the words. Have you ever? No, it's silly to ask. The whole thing, you see, is Seb. He's worried."

"Yes, Liz," Mr Rock encouraged, reminding himself that she must not become distressed, the doctor had been insistent.

"He knows them so well," she was going on. "He lives all the time within sight and sound of Miss Baker and Miss Edge, so he can watch and judge, day in day out, he has to. He really understands, you see. And he's worried for the cottage. Oh, of course, he wants to live there, but he's true, Gapa, you must believe. Because, naturally, I realise you don't like him. But I do know what you don't, that you will in time, you'll come round, there's no-one in the world who wouldn't, once they'd seen the real person underneath the skin. Still, I do realise, it isn't a little thing I ask, I do honestly."

"Don't fuss, dear, we'll find a way," he said.

Then, as they came to where the trees ended, and blackbirds, before roosting, began to give the alarm in earnest, some first starlings flew out of the sky. Over against the old man and his granddaughter the vast mansion reflected a vast red; sky above paled while to the left it outshone the house, and more starlings crossed. After which these birds came in hundreds, then suddenly by legion, black and blunt against faint rose. They swarmed above the lonely elm, they circled a hundred feet above, until the leader, followed by ever greater numbers, in one broad spiral led the way down and so, as they descended through falling dusk in a soft roar, they made, as they had at dawn, a huge sea shell that stood proud to a moon which, flat sovereign red gold, was already poised full faced to a dying world.

Once the starlings had settled in that tree they one and all burst out singing.

Then there were more, even higher, dots against paler pink, and these, in their turn, began to circle up above, scything the air, and to swoop down through a thickening curve, in the enormous echo of blood, or of the sea, until all was black about that black elm, as the first mass of starlings left while these others settled, and there was a huge volume of singing.

Then a third concourse came out of the west, and, as the first birds swarmed upon the nearest beech, these late comers stooped out of dusk in a crash of air to take that elm, to send the last arrivals out, which trebled the singing.

The old man wondered, as often before, if this were not the greatest sound on earth. Elizabeth stood quiet. The starlings flew around a little and then, as sky faded fast, the moon paled to brilliance, and this moment was over, that singing drooped, then finished, as every bird was home.

"I'm glad I had that once more," Mr Rock said aloud. Behind them the first cock pheasant gave a challenge.

"We're to have the most lovely night," Elizabeth told her grandfather.

They went on their way again.

"I want you to know," she said, from the heart, "in spite of everything, whatever happens, absolutely, if Seb asks me to marry him even, there'd be nothing could alter the way I love you, Gapa. I wouldn't let it."

"Don't allow yourself to grow sentimental, child," he answered.

She gave a soft laugh.

"And don't you be gruff with me, my darling," she said. "Not tonight of all nights. Listen, I think I hear their music already. They'll have every window wide. Yes, I'm almost certain."

"Good," he said, alone with blank thoughts, in his deafness.

"I'll dance every dance," she murmured happily.

Down a dank Passage which led to the Banqueting Hall Miss Winstanley, hurrying at the far end, saw a bunch of students outlined against great, wide opened double doors to the ballroom. They were in their long, white dresses. She smiled through her misery, they looked so serious, and thought, as she watched them wait for music, that one and all were in what she called 'the mood', that, once Edge and Baker had opened proceedings, the first waltz would send each child whirling forward into her future, into what, in a few years, she would, with age, become.