Concluding (26 page)

"Yes," Moira insisted, Melissa laughed, and they began to whisper. As he painfully negotiated the steps, he thought his children were rough with him, but was too confused to protest. He could not understand, nor hear. When at last the thing had been managed, he was hurried along that dead silent, underground passage until, once again, they came to the green baize door and the upended case. As soon as Melissa had clambered up on this, he was so muddled he did not connect the action with what Moira had previously done, perhaps because neither of the girls had yet gone through the door. And he was painfully out of breath because he had been bustled. So, when the child said, "Come over," and Moira gave him a great shove in the back, he went forward, an old lamb offered up. Exactly the same recurred. Melissa laid a cheek against him, then rolled it over until her lips brushed his.

"Stop," he demanded, stepping back, but not so far that he got whitewash on his clothes this time.

"Oh please don't be so dreadful, Mr Rock," Moira laughed. "It's only our Club rules and regulations. I must now enjoin you to silence," she recited.

"Mum's the word?" he asked like a fool, ashamed, blaming his deafness that he had been let in for this, afraid.

"You can talk all you want, you know, once we're inside," Melissa said as she jumped off the case. "Quiet a moment, just the same." She knocked on the door, which was opened forthwith. She gave what must have been the password. Upon which a child opened it wide, and all three came forward into a quick flicker of candlelight.

The first thing that arrested him was a notice, "INSTITUTE INN" The next he knew he was warmly surrounded by six or nine children, who clapped their hands, giggling. Then Moira stepped through them.

"My job's to welcome you," she said in a loud, formal voice. But she grew embarrassed, poor old Mr Rock did look pathetic. "Make yourself at home," she added on a much weaker note, at the verge of helpless giggles.

Melissa handed the old man a glass, as though it were a goblet.

"What is it?" he enquired, glad to be able to ask the familiar question.

"Will you be initiated now or later, Mr Rock?"

"You have to drink this down. The Club Special," Melissa told him.

"I'm not sure if you realise a single thing," a girl severely said. "But you're the first outside one has come down here. When we voted to ask you tonight, it was most particular."

"Yes, and when I'm caught, as will doubtless happen, I'll be the last," Mr Rock dryly said. He was recovering.

"That would be an honour," the child approved. "Oh, for us too," she corrected herself.

"How idiotic."

"You're perfectly sweet," Moira assured him. "And we've our guard up top. They change every three quarters of an hour so they can get some dancing. She's got a bell up there. The moment the alarm goes, look here it is, we just lope out the back way. Though we've never had to yet, thank goodness."

"I see," he said, and at last sat down. He sipped what was in the glass. He judged it to be a kind of medicated syrup.

The girls having begun an argument, he was left to himself for the while. He looked around. He felt rather flattered. At the same time he began to have a gross feeling of immoderate amusement, such as had not come his way in years.

What would those two idle, no good, boasting spinsters say to this, he wondered of the underground passage, widened here like a green bottle from its neck, and blocked off at the far end by a blue rug. More coverings in faded canvas had been hung to cover the walls. Pinned up in a continuous and beautiful arabesque, were single sprays of azalea filched from above stairs. In the light from a row of candles, on a trestle set back, so he found, too close for safety to the canvas, these flowers, laid flat against tarpaulin, cast each one a little shadow by which it was outlined from above; a medieval fancy, he thought; the sweet tented furnishing for a campaign the women followed, a camp in Flanders in an old war of bows and arrows, he opined, and smiled.

The children had come to an end of another of their discussions.

"Lord, it is slow, isn't it? Couldn't we have our music?" one demanded.

"Something's the matter with the thing. Margot's gone to fix that."

"Why don't we all go off, then?"

"Outside? Why Melissa, whatever for?"

"Haven't you heard, even yet?"

"Shut up," ordered another girl.

"Do you relay the music from above down here?" the old man enquired, and thought to identify himself with youth by the question.

"That ancient stuff?" Marion demanded. "You must think us properly out of date. Lord no. We get on to . . ." and she mentioned a source of which he had no knowledge. And he could not be sure he had caught the name.

"I do wish Mary might be with us," he remarked, suddenly regretting the child, ill at ease.

"Oh she's all right, don't you worry your head," Moira answered. Unseen by him, she pouted with jealousy.

"But where is she, then?" the old man persisted.

"I thought just everyone had a very good idea," Moira replied. "I'd not trouble myself if I was you. She's not worth it."

"She never bothered much where we were concerned," one of the others elaborated. "She put the whole show in danger. You wait until I catch Merode."

"No, but what has happened to Mary, please?" Mr Rock begged. He was frightened again.

"That's a secret. We're bound to silence, don't you realise?"

How could one be certain these children were not simply prevaricating? Because he felt some true friend of Mary must get to her if she was hidden.

"Not an entirely intelligent mutism in that case," he tried, one more.

"It's the way it is," was all he got for his pains.

"Many of you see much of Adams, nowadays?" he next enquired, across the chatter they kept up at each other.

"Him?" Moira said, and laughed. "We call that man the answer to the virgin's prayer."

"Now Moira, duck," Melissa protested. "Who's gone too far this time?"

"Well, a person has only to look, haven't they? He's enough to bring on anyone a miscarriage."

"You're crazy."

"Am I?"

"What is the matter with Adams, if you will excuse my persistence?" Mr Rock tried once more, floundering after information.

"Look. Some of the girls in East block go out at night to find him."

"Oh no, Moira, it's too much," protested another.

"Not Club Members, of course," Moira admitted.

"But anyway, how are you sure?" the same child asked.

"Because I can afford to save my beauty sleep up, thank you, until I need. I mean, I don't have to go hogging it the whole night through in case I get pimples next morning on account of I stay awake," she proudly answered.

"Careful the stable clock doesn't toll midnight and catch you making faces at the horrid Adams, then. Under a new moon."

"Me?" Moira demanded. "I wouldn't be seen dead beside him." Mr Rock was less than ever at ease. He began to ask himself how it would look if he were caught down here.

"But you do claim you have a lot on him," the first child insisted.

"Why shouldn't I? Who's to prevent me?" Moira demanded. There was rather a pause at this last remark. "After all's said and done, we're only young once," she said, with a trace of malice, at Mr Rock. But when she continued, it was after she had correctly interpreted the lines of distaste that had formed about his mouth. "Oh, you needn't pay attention, please," she said directly to the old man. "This is only a lot of talk. Fun and games," she added, as though to explain everything.

Upon which a couple of atomic cracks sounded from the amplifier up in an angle. Immediately followed, crescendo, by a polka which had been out of date even in the days when the old man had had his few months dancing. So he waited for a howl of protest from the children.

When none came, he looked up, and was amazed. With rapt expressions on their fair faces, they were already rocking to the ancient music.

"Isn't it marvellous?"

"Sh . . . Melissa. How can anyone listen if you . . ."

For the second time, Mr Rock was moved to suppress a smile despite his fears.

Then the apparatus stammered a few notes, gave out, broke down.

"Oh, isn't that just like this beastly hole?" Moira wailed.

"She's hopeless. She'd never repair a thing."

"Perhaps you'd like to go up and have a shot, then?"

"If I did, I wouldn't stop by the old apparatus, thanks. I'd find somewhere else, I expect, a little farther out."

"Will you shut up, Melissa, and for the last time?"

"I say, Mr Rock," Moira said. "If I asked, would you be dreadfully angry?"

"I can't say until you have tried, can I?" he answered.

"Oh, so you will. No then, I'd better not."

"Come on out with it. Get along with you," he said. He had not the slightest suspicion, was even beginning to be thoroughly amused again.

"We've all been so thrilled," Moira began. "In fact we don't know if it will be announced some time upstairs. And if she does, you might send word down, won't you? I mean we'd hate to miss that, through being stuck in the Inn, wouldn't we, girls?"

"What is this?" he demanded, at his most assured.

"Why, your granddaughter's engagement, of course. Don't pretend you haven't kept that dark from us when . . .", but his face so clouded over that Moira bit her fat lower lip. "Oh, Mr Rock, have I said something awful?" she meekly asked.

"Never heard such arrant nonsense in all my born days," he blustered. "Why, Elizabeth's a sick woman."

"I'm frightfully sorry, Mr Rock," Moira apologised, while the others watched, mouths open.

"Just gossip," Mr Rock thundered, rather white. He was furious. "Not a word of truth."

"Yes, Mr Rock," they said.

"And if you catch anyone repeating what you've just told I'd be glad if you would deny it, once and for all," he continued, trembling. Then he struggled up. "I'm tired. I shall go back home to bed."

"Oh, Mr Rock, it isn't anything we've said, surely?"

"We live in an ungrateful world," he replied. "I'm sorry, but there are times I have had enough."

He stalked off with dignity, and, for a short while, left behind a silence.

Then someone said, "Oh Gosh," and laughed.

Mr Rock came away in a flustered rage. He banged on the stair door and a new girl immediately opened. She, also, was chewing. He thrust straight past, shambled off uglily and at speed to where they danced.

A white bunch of children, stood in the doorway, fell open to let him through like a huge dropped flower losing petals on a path. Then the thunderous, swinging room met him smack in his thick lenses, the hundred couples sweating glassily open-eyed now it was late; each child that pulled at her partner s waist to speed it, to gyrate quicker, get much more hot, to keep pace.

Elizabeth saw him. She considered if she would hide, but knew it might be wicked. Accordingly she yelled, "See Gapa, darling." Even then, Sebastian, cheek to her mouth, barely caught what she said. In any case, he paid no heed.

At the same moment the old man had a dark sight of them both. He made such an immense gesture to summon Liz, he almost smashed off his nose the spectacles that reflected reeling chandeliers.

"In a minute," her lips shaped back across the shattering valse. He did not take this in, misunderstood it for impertinence.

 
But when, inevitably as tumbled water, the dance delivered them over, two leaves that touch beneath a weir, caught in the eddies, till they were by his side, she awoke Sebastian as she drew
off
from the young man's arms. He said, "Why hullo, sir?"

"We must go. We are not welcome," the grandfather told Liz.

"Hush, Gapa," she said. But he walked away, they followed, and a second time that group of children opened, reclosed behind the couple trailing after, having parted as another vast bloom might that, torn by a wind in summer, lies collectedly dying on crushed fallen leaves, to be divided by one and then two walkers, only for a strain of wind to reassemble it, to be rolled back complete on the path once more, at the whim of autumnal airs again.

The three left music.

"Hush," she at last repeated, when he could hear.

"There is no use. We are not wanted," Mr Rock announced, in a low voice.

"Why? What? I insist, has anything happened?"

"We need never have demeaned ourselves," he said.

"Oh do say," she wailed. "Was it dreadful? But Gapa, you're making me nervous."

"No. We have to get out, that is all," he explained. "D'you hear?" And came to a halt.

"Don't go now, sir," Sebastian cravenly protested.

They stood, a miserable trio in black cloth, in the dank dark; music at their heels.

"What?" Mr Rock demanded.

"I said why just yet?" Birt asked, pale and obstinate.

"I've seen enough," the old man proclaimed. "Miserable children that they are. Too much freedom here. Lack of control. All they have to do is chatter," he ended.

"Was it about your lectures, then?" she enquired.

"They're downright ill-natured," he replied, at a tangent. "And inclining towards a dangerous mentality in which I shall take no lot or part. I hope a man of my years would know better. Come out."

"But Gapa, don't you think, I mean mightn't it all look rather odd if we simply just walked off? Oughtn't we at least to say goodbye, you must agree?"

"Everything comes if one can bide one's time," Mr Rock said, to ignore her. He's certainly waited long enough, Sebastian considered.

"Whatever you say, of course," Elizabeth consented. "But we must at least offer thanks, surely? And I'm sure I don't know where Miss Edge's got to, do you Seb? I've a notion I haven't set eyes on her this last half hour, have you?"

"I don't like it, I don't like any of it. I'll shake the dust from my feet," the old man insisted. He was very upset.

"Yes, Gapa, but at the same time, after all, when we're merely uninvited, I mean you can't just come in and out as you please, can you? We should thank them. Don't you feel we'd better? Come on, of course you . . . you know you do."