Pix (Volume Book 24) (Harpur & Iles Mysteries) (20 page)

‘I wondered if
she'd
observed a change in Matilda.'

Sybil might notice if Matilda grew another ear or became suddenly see-through, but the state of the children was not never one of her
main
things. ‘I'll certainly consult her about this,' Shale said, ‘and refer to your concern.'

‘I wondered, you see, if your wife had come here on impulse to give Matilda a special outing, having seen she was a bit down. That would explain the rather irregular way the absence occurred. And perhaps she wouldn't even tell Laurent.'

Ah! Bingo!
‘Impulse. This could be it, indeed,' Shale said. ‘Sybil does have impulses. Shrewd of you, if you don't mind me remarking.' Wasn't it a bloody impulse that took her to Ivor? And another bloody impulse brought her home. Syb would love people to think she ran on impulses – someone dashing and free. She and Manse spoke about impulses only a little while ago. ‘You told me Matilda wouldn't talk about where she went. That's because she doesn't want to land her mother in any bother with the school, I should think.' He had a small laugh. ‘Known as
omerta
in the Mafia, which I learned from TV dramas.' He could tell this sweetheart would like to ask how long Syb had been back at the rectory and if she would stay. ‘Sybil's very quick to pick up on anything unusual in one of the children. Like radar? And Sybil will respond, immediate.'

‘A fine quality in a mother.'

‘Oh, yes.'

‘I fear not all have it.'

‘Really?' The headmistress's room looked out through big french windows on to a square courtyard. Her secretary had done cups of tea for both of them. Now and then kids in blue and black uniform crossed the yard on
their way to classes, boys and girls, mostly girls. Manse tried to imagine what that steamed-up prick peddler, ACC Desmond Iles, would be like if he sat where Manse sat now, watching. Answer – trouser-tight, short of breath and twitchy.

The headmistress was about thirty-six, with a pretty good short nose, not one of them curlew jobs of some women teachers. Perhaps he'd been cruel to regard her as snobby. He thought her teeth looked like her own and no lines on her neck yet. Manse did not at all mind talking to her, as long as she kept off anything in depth. But, of course, in depth was just where she wanted to go. Most likely she got her job because she could do stuff in depth. Fine, as long as this stayed at study of the pyramids or pond life or the Psalms. He did not want crafty, roundabout questions re other matters, such as the personal elements. But maybe some of her questions was to do with a genuine schoolmarmy fret over Matilda. ‘And nothing exceptional in your daughter's life that might have unsettled her?' she asked.

‘Not that I can think of right off, no.' Here was someone else who wanted to know about the staircase without knowing she wanted to know about the staircase. It would really puzzle her if he said most likely Matilda felt upset because of the blood, and unable to find out whose. But, naturally, he decided against that. ‘I'm going to give it thought, and so will Sybil, I'm sure,' he replied. ‘I know I speak for her also when I say I'm very grateful you took the trouble to raise this with us.'

‘It's how the school relationship with parents and pupils should be, I feel,' the head said. She did not have no rings on. Her name was Ms D. Norvenne. ‘This is very much a three-sided concordat.'

‘True.' If Syb went again, it would obviously be impossible to have this headmistress in the rectory for spells, although being thirty-six did not by itself kill the idea. Manse hated ageism. Think of Charlotte Rampling. But the arrangement would be wrong for the children. They'd feel mixed up – this woman, chief of the school for the day, and
then around the house in the evening and weekends, showering and out on the patio wearing flip-flop sandals with a coffee. And what would they call her? To them, Patricia was Patricia and Carmel Carmel and Lowri Lowri and Sybil mother or mum. They could not call their headmistress Delphine or Daisy or Debbie. And they could not call a permitted, partnerly resident, Ms Norvenne. Now and then it could be vital to keep different facets of your life with a good gap between, although they all added up to the youness of you. Facets was what Manse believed a personality had plenty of.

‘Some shock, for instance?' Ms Norvenne said.

‘I don't think so. Or, let's say “Not to my knowledge.” '

‘A change in the pattern of things?'

‘No, can't help, I'm afraid. Days are much of a muchness, as my mother used to say.'

‘A loss?'

‘Again, not to my knowledge.'

‘And any serious loss
would
be to your knowledge, of course, wouldn't it, Mr Shale?'

‘I would certainly expect so.' He would have liked to use her name, but didn't fancy saying ‘Ms Norvenne'.

‘They form bonds, you know.'

‘Who?' Shale replied.

‘Children. The breaking of something like that may cause great distress, even a kind of disorientation.'

Manse had come across this word before almost for definite, and he loved the way Ms Norvenne got her tongue around it, no hesitation or spitting. He spotted the tongue tip for a moment between her top and bottom teeth, which still looked to him like her own, all of them. This tongue tip seemed to Manse of the educated but friendly kind and not frantically pink. He had a chair a little distance off, but could tell her breath would be a treat. The desk looked untidy. This pleased him. He hated show. It was a cool, light square room with framed pictures of buildings here and there, probably the college she went to, really impressive, with big wooden gates like a castle or jail, open in these photos, but which used to get shut and
severely locked to keep women students in in the old days, so they couldn't wander at night looking for experience before the pill.

He thought how strange and out of order it would be now in this schooly room if he said to Ms Norvenne, ‘I had a great, tit-for-tat drive-by massacre lined up which would stop any more violence from a certain, new pushy villain, causing pressure to Matilda, but some holy cop called Harpur put his fucking self smack in the way, I'm not sure whether deliberate.' Facets. Everyone did contain a bunch of facets. They all counted in making a total person – this meeting counted, and the Laguna project counted. Probably she knew Manse must be the sort who'd have things like a drive-by execution and the substances game in one part of his mind, and that would be why she made a fuss about Matilda. Perhaps she felt scared Matilda got dragged into this side of his life somehow and became what the teacher called ‘stressed', which, in a way, could certainly be true – as with the staircase blood. Oh, yes, Matilda did seem upset over that when she mentioned it at breakfast and would not believe the sauce tale.

‘And imagination as well as being sensitive,' he said. ‘Matilda – so strong on imagination. Usually this is a great thing, such as for artists and writers. They wouldn't be nothing without it. Well, I don't need to tell
you
this! The Pre-Raphaelites. They had models to copy from, yes, so you could say they did not need their imagination because they painted the real item in front of them, but it was their imagination that brought the special glow and turned them into the Pre-Raphaelites, I think you'll agree. However, imagination can go a bit far now and then. It unsettles people. On the whole, it's best to have
some
imagination, but, also, you got to watch it.' He thought she'd be quite surprised to hear him speak about the Pre-Raphaelites. This could be just because she'd heard a buzz to do with only one side of him. Although she might be a head teacher, he could give Ms Norvenne a lesson about people being very various within their actual selves and having facets.

‘Well, imagination, yes,' she said. She started digging through some papers in the heaps on her desk.

‘Many's the amusing tale Matilda makes up and tells us, coming from inside herself, not lifted out of books or films or anything like that,' Manse replied. The way the headmistress was on the search for something bothered him and he thought he better get ready a knock-down in case Matilda been talking around the school about difficult stuff from the rectory to do with staining, and Ms Norvenne had notes. If she found unnecessary items said by Matilda, such as blood under the sauce, Shale could try a laugh and reply, ‘Oh, that's so like her – such an imagination!' He would make it sound a little bit fed up with Matilda for her far-fetched stories but also fond and understanding and full of wonder at what she could think of even so young. He didn't really believe Matilda would get too blabby, because he had brought her and Laurent up to be careful what they said. They surely must of learned that habit. But Manse always tried to prepare for what was known as ‘the worst scenario' in case it came. Any executive, any leader of an organization, had to, known also as ‘Plan B'.

‘Her teacher asked Matilda's class to write a kind of very personal pen pal letter to a Third World child, describing their lives in Britain to someone ignorant of our ways,' Ms Norvenne said. ‘Ah, this is Matilda's.' She held up a couple of A4 sheets.

‘It sounds
so
interesting,' Manse said at once.
Oh, what the fuck!

‘We have to teach them how to write a formal letter, because the skill is disappearing, owing to e-mail. And the art of description is called for when the letter cannot assume the recipient knows anything at all of the writer's circumstances and setting. So, it's a doubly useful exercise, you see.'

‘Very, very true.' Although Manse felt scared, it delighted him to hear that things got planned here, not just catch-as-catch-can. When you read
Daily Mail
reports about ordinary comp. schools, in what people called ‘the
state system', you saw how teachers and heads used most of their time making sure kids didn't strangle or rape one another or the staff, or spend all the French lesson screening porn on mobile phones under the desk. But if you paid out lavish for your children in a school like this one, Bracken Collegiate, you expected plenty of good schemes to do with true education, such as this Third World idea. Although he thought they might of stolen it from a movie called
About Schmidt
, where Jack Nicholson writes to a lad in Africa, telling him about America, Manse would not say this to Ms Norvenne because he liked her confidence and the way she got words, big and small, to line up for her without no trouble, like an army drill squad.

He still thought it must be awkward to bring her into a stay at the rectory for a while, but, if he did, he could tell she would be great for conversations when he felt like it on many subjects. To reach Bracken Collegiate from the rectory was simple – just go left out of the drive, on to the Spoor roundabout, third exit and then more or less a direct bit of country road. This would be a plus if he did ask her.

‘We supplied each of them a name to call their pen pal by, so as to make it seem vivid, you see. A one-to-oneness, the essence of good letters. I don't know whether you've come across the letters of the poet, John Keats, for instance, Mr Shale.'

‘You don't get more one-to-one than him.'

‘Matilda's pen pal we named Dauda.'

‘I wouldn't be surprised at all if there are people called that over there.'

‘Well, yes, there are. We took names from government lists in Whitaker's Almanack.'

‘This makes it seem truly real,' Shale said.

‘That was the idea. Verisimilitude.'

‘Yes.' Manse enjoyed all this, watching her enthusiasm and the playful way she fingered a proper, fully nibbed fountain pen, not a Biro, on her desk. But, also, Manse did worry about the real real, instead of someone from this fucking Whitsun Almanack. Where did Matilda go in the lunch hour? It was not to see Third World Dauda, and
Dauda didn't bring her back and drop her where it would be secret. He had the car number and make, but the lad who used to sell info from the police computer had been picked for an accelerated promotion course. The replacement officer seemed short of talent, and was scared of Harpur and Iles, so would not play. ‘I see this Dauda idea as really exciting,' he said. It all showed Manse again that people had different aspects, and these could be present at the same time. One part of him felt thrilled to think of Matilda writing to somebody cooked up, with a genuine foreign name. But another part of him wanted a good long sight of that genuine woman driving the Astra and, of course, not Syb. He must decide whether he could ask Matilda about this. He did not like the idea of making her uncover things in her life if she wanted them private. That was the wrong way for a father to treat a daughter.

Manse had thought Ms Norvenne would give him the letter, but, no, she read it to him. He liked her voice. Some voices did not suit the faces they came out of but her voice did. This was a voice he wouldn't mind listening to now and then or even oftener. It didn't have that sickening boominess and clatter some women's voices did. It was just a voice that told you things, like serving up a fair meal on a warmed plate. She said: ‘Here goes, then: “Dear Dauda, I'm going to let you know first about my house, which was once upon a time a rectory. That's where a clergyman used to live but my father bought it although he is not really a clergyman at all at this moment in time.” '

At this moment in time
. Did she think Manse would want to become a clergyman one day, so it would be more suitable for him to live in the rectory? Or, probably, she'd just heard that saying, ‘at this moment in time', and liked sticking it in. ‘It's clever to tell Dauda about the house, because it could be absolutely different from where he lives, such as a mud hut in one of them villages,' Shale said.

‘ “There are a lot of pictures on the walls in the rectory. Many people have pictures on their walls because of the colour and scenery. The other day when I wasn't there my
father changed them all round. It was terrible, Dauda. I came home and had a bad shock. It made the house seem like somebody else's house. I don't know why he did that. I became upset. I felt like lost.” '