Concluding (7 page)

"It will be hot," she said, as though stroking him.

"I love you," he said. She pretended to ignore it.

"I wonder what brought her down," she said. She might, from the tone, have had in mind a middle-aged woman he'd seduced.

"Oh Liz, I do love you, and love you," he replied.

"Adams won't like this," she said, and turned with a smile which was for him alone to let him take her, and helped his heart find hers by fastening her mouth on his as though she were an octopus that had lost its arms to the propellers of a tug, and had only its mouth now with which, in a world of the hunted, to hang onto wrecked spars.

"Darling," she said in a satisfied voice, coming up to breathe.

"Help," another girl's voice then distinctly uttered, close to these lovers. Sebastian felt Elizabeth go stiff. Neither of them spoke.

"Help," it came again. Sebastian stepped sharp away from his love.

"A snooper," he said with a little hiss. "A Paul Pry."

"Who is it, oh dear . . . ?" Elizabeth called out. She had at once put on her vagueness for protection in the circumstances.

"Help," the voice called once more, louder. By this time both had gathered its direction, which was left-handed to the deepest of the stricken beech. Sebastian began to force his way through and, as Elizabeth cried out, "Now do mind, take care, it's your best suit," he had parted a screen of leaves that hung before him bent to the tide, like seaweed in the ocean, and his pale face, washed, shaved, hair cut and brushed, in this sun a bandit, he looked down on a girl stretched out, whom he did not know to be Merode, whose red hair was streaked across a white face and matted by salt tears, who was in pyjamas and had one leg torn to the knee. A knee which, brilliantly polished over bone beneath, shone in this sort of pool she had made for herself in the fallen world of birds, burned there like a piece of tusk burnished by shifting sands, or else a wheel revolving at such speed that it had no edges and was white, thus communicating life to ivory, a heart to the still, and the sensation of a crash to this girl who lay quiet, reposed.

"What are you about? Come off at once," Sebastian said, unaware that he had been shocked into a close parody of Edge upon his recognising Institute pyjamas. As there were three hundred students he could not be blamed if he did not know the girl, although he was at fault in forgetting, as he did until too late, because of the kisses, that there were two young ladies absent or adrift.

"I must ask you to come away off," he repeated, like Miss Edge.

"I can't, I'm hurt," she said. After which she added, as though terrified, "Oh Mr Birt."

"My dear girl, we can't have this," he said, clambering down. And then became confused. Because her soft body, stretched out, was covered only in thin geranium red cotton, it lay with all grace and carelessness, the breasts lightly covered and the long limbs, and he saw, so that it interrupted his breathing, that she had mud on the white of leg below the knee, with enamelled toes in sandals caked with mud. Sun, through the bright leaves, lit all this in violent dots, spotting the cotton with drips as of wet paint, and making small candle lamps of flesh. Then he was reprieved, now that he was so at her side, for she reached behind and brought out some nondescript overcoat which she pushed over her middle. A schoolmaster mind knew she must have put this away at the back before she called. Thus he was saved because she had made him suspicious.

"Can't you walk?" he asked, unkindly.

"Yes," she said.

"What is it, dear?" Miss Rock demanded.

"You're not to worry, I can manage," he shouted back.

"But what will, in heaven's name, what is it?" Elizabeth insisted. "Look," he said, to the girl he still did not know for Merode, and in his natural voice once more. "Hang on to me." He was frowning.

"I can manage, Mr Birt," she said, awkwardly struggled up to turn a drooping back and shrugged herself into the coat.

"But there must be some explanation," he said, in another severe imitation of Miss Edge.

In reply she just walked out of the place she had made for herself, and this when he had laboriously climbed down to her. She was gone. He found a rent in his own trouser leg and scowled. Then went out after.

He came upon Elizabeth who was being her most warm-hearted with the girl.

"Have my comb, sit here, let me button this up," she was saying, Sebastian imagined, so there might, for not a moment longer, be displayed in full sunlight that expanse of skin how like vanilla ice cream where one of her jacket buttons had come undone. So Elizabeth drew the coat about the girl who, from raised arms, snuffling, and with an absent, ceremonious look, combed out the heavy hair a colour of rust over a tide-washed stovepipe on a shore.

"Why, you poor dear, there, that's better," Elizabeth was saying to Merode, "well... I can't think . . . but we needn't bother now, shall we? Sib, she must go back with us, it's too far all the way up to the house. We're only a few yards, really, from our little place," she said to the girl. "Then we'll get a cup of hot tea, I mean to put inside you, d'you think you can manage?"

There was no reply.

"You take her on that arm," Elizabeth ordered Sebastian. "Now lean on me, dear, d'you see, that's right, only a step," and in this fashion they started off to Mr Rock's, neither Birt nor Merode speaking so much as one word.

Meantime, some five or six of those who had been sent to collect azalea and rhododendron had wandered through the woods, had stopped here and there, braving wasps and bees and even a hornet to cut out great bundles of bloom and were overlade now, for, even with arms outstretched, the red and white flowers came half up over their faces; the gold azalea nodding next their gold heads, in all this flowering they carried like a prize. Although they were so burdened, they had decided to move on to see Daisy, and had arrived to stand by emerald nettles at the edge of her sty.

She lay, very white, on a froth of straw and dung which fumed to the warm of day. She was on her side and twelve most delicate fat dugs in pink struck out from a trembling belly in a saw toothed frieze. She had violet, malevolent small eyes under pink cornucopia ears. Her corkscrew tail twitched as though its few inches could reach, in a hog's imagination, far enough to plague the brilliant, busy flies on her white, dirt dusted flanks. She was at rest.

"Isn't she sweet?"

"Do look,"

"Oh fancy," they cried out one to another through a frond of flowers held to bursting chests, "There, doze Daisy,"

"Isn't she a beaut."

Mr Rock came out of the cottage with two buckets of boiled swill. His eyes burned behind spectacles at this bevy of girls. And, when she heard his step, Daisy got up with a start and a heave to squeal with anticipation while her audience, crying out in the alarm they affected, backed from the now simmering pen.

But he did not feed his pig at once, because he had not gone three yards before he heard Elizabeth call 'Gapa,' and then there she was, tearing towards him, hair straight out behind, running with her legs extended sideways from the knees. The group round Daisy ceased to exclaim the better to watch the woman old enough to be its mother. And, in watching, they saw emerge down a ride behind Elizabeth the figures of Birt and the girl they knew at once for Merode. This set them off in whispers, as a cloud passes the moon, like birds at long awaited dusk in trees down by the beach.

While Elizabeth explained to her grandfather in a low voice, obviously with difficulty in making it plain, Merode and Sebastian drew near, and the child began to limp. When she was quite close to the others, who had drawn together, one of them cried out, gurgling, "Why what on earth's happened to you, Merode?"

Whereupon Birt knew for the first time who she was, and doubted his wisdom in bringing her to the Rocks. He also knew he must keep Merode away from friends until she had made out her account; because there would be reports to be written to Edge, and beyond, and that lady was certain to say the girl had been given an opportunity to concoct the tale.

"Dear me what a crowd," he suggested to Merode, in Edge's accents. "Don't you think we'd better take you back?"

"My leg hurts so, Mr Birt," she complained.

"You never said," he expostulated shrilly, becoming even more like the Principal. "Where does it pain most? Tell me."

By this time the crowd of students was upon them.

"Why, Merode," they cried, "Merode, just look at you," and "What on earth have you done to get in such a state, Merode?" and they giggled.

Upon which the redhaired girl burst into loud, ugly sobs. She put up hands to cover her face.

Elizabeth hastened back to the group followed by Mr Rock, who had set his buckets on the ground. Daisy set forefoot on top of the timber of the pen, and, at the sight of that dinner laid by, redoubled the squealing, to do which there had to be opened a great pink mouth to make display of golden fangs.

"Now my dear, you mustn't," Elizabeth told the girl, and put thin arms about her. "Really not, you'll be fine. We're looking after you now," she said, with a wild look around.

"Oh isn't it awful?" the child moaned.

"We'd best rush her up to the Institute," Sebastian suggested, in his common or garden voice.

"Whoever heard of such a thing, how could you, and in her state," Elizabeth replied, leading this girl in the opposite direction, towards their mauve and yellow cottage.

"Now all you others hurry back then," Sebastian ordered, Edge once again. "How d'you think the decorations will get done if you stand here?" he demanded. They went off. One or two still giggled. "They didn't say a word, not a word passed between her and that lot, you're my witness," he continued in all seriousness, but in a low voice for Mr Rock, unconsciously imitating now the manner of his colleague Dakers.

"Witless?" the old man asked, and laughed. "They don't go by their wits at that age."

Sebastian was so agitated he could not find it in him to answer.

"You should know, whose work it is to teach the creatures," Mr Rock finished, went back to his buckets. At this moment Sebastian noticed the pig's outcries for the first time. It might just have seen the knife the butcher was about to use. He was disgusted. To get away, he hurried after Elizabeth and the girl, into the cottage.

They took Merode back to the Institute as soon as they thought she was a little recovered, and handed her over to Matron, who sent for Marchbanks.

"Miss Edge and Miss Baker's in London," Miss Birks told the child. "You rest yourself while I fetch a cup of tea," she said. "And dear," she added, "I'd pull myself together if I was you. In their position they have to make reports. There'll be a lot of answers they'll be requiring, to know how you came to find yourself with

that Mr Birt, not to speak of the old prof's granddaughter." Merode opened her wet, red mouth, as though to explain. Then she thought better, and did not say a word.

"Why just look at you," Miss Marchbanks cried out the moment she entered.

The child was a sight indeed, lying in the surgery, on the couch covered in deep blue rubber with great highlights from tall windows, while she looked sideways over this older woman.

At the ends of her arms lying along her, she scratched with dirty thumbnails about the caked skin round the red nails of her third fingers.

"It's shock," Matron said, in a satisfied voice.

There was a silence. The girl did not cry, did not speak, just lay there, cautiously watching.

"Well I can't talk while you're in that state," Marchbanks announced, making up her mind. "Have you had anything to eat, at least?" But there was no answer.

"It's shock," Miss Birks claimed again.

"You'd better have a hot bath first," Marchbanks ordered, "and Matron will get you breakfast. Then we can have a little chat, Merode," she said, giving a sign for Miss Birks to follow so they could speak in the passage.

"I don't want anyone to see the child," Miss Marchbanks instructed, when they could not be overheard. "Not a soul, mind. Poor thing," she said. "It will go hard with her, I'm afraid, out and about the Park at night in those pyjamas."

"But you'd want me to call in Dr Bodle, naturally?" Matron enquired.

Miss Marchbanks pondered this. "You see," she replied, "it's not fair to ask a word in her condition. She must get herself straight, and then she can make an account. Because we don't want anyone to put ideas into her head. You know what girls are once they come together. Besides, there are the Rules. So my instinct is, not even Dr Bodle, though, of course, a doctor's different. Nevertheless, not unless she has a temperature. Yet I leave it quite to your discretion."

"Very well ma'am," Matron said, and obviously found this unfair.

"Don't let her speak until she sees me. I leave that particularly to your judgement," Marchbanks ended as she made off, having regularised everything, as she thought, for the best.

Matron unlocked a door leading to the bath corridor and then shut the girl into a cubicle. "There," she said from outside. "Mind you have it hot."

"Yes, Miss Birks," Merode replied, quickly turning on water so there could be no conversation. For, in her perplexity, she had resolved she would say not a word to anyone, whatever happened. Matron looked into the remaining cubicles to be sure there was no other child could get in touch with Merode, then left, locking the outer door into the passage. She said aloud, "Poor mite". After which she made her way to Mrs Blain, to see about something hot for the little wretch.

In next to no time the bath was run, with Merode stretched out under electric light and water, like the roots of a gross water lily which had flowered to her floating head and hands. This green transparency was so just right, so matched the temperature of the hidden blood, that she half closed her eyes in a satisfied contemplation of a chalk white body. She felt it seemed to sway as to light winds, as though she were bathing by floodlight in the night steaming lake, beech shadowed, mystically warmed.

Then came a loud whisper from somewhere, out of the air. So that she covered herself with her hands, exactly in the pose classic to plaster casts.