The Carousel (9 page)

"I'd better go." I found an old raincoat of Phoebe's and a man-eating sou'wester that had once belonged to Chips and let myself out the garden door. It was now raining hard and very wet, but as I crossed the grass Daniel and Phoebe appeared at the gate, Daniel holding the camp stools under one arm and the umbrella high over Phoebe's head with the other. Phoebe, except for her hat, was dressed as though for a sunny outing, and her cardigan, buttoned bulkily over her plaster cast, was sodden, her shoes and stout stockings mud-splashed. She carried in her good hand her painting bag, a sturdy and familiar piece of equipment made of canvas, and as Daniel opened the gate for her, she looked up and saw me.

"Hello! Here we are, a lot of drowned rats!" "Lily and I wondered what had happened to you all." "Charlotte hadn't quite finished, and she wanted to." "Where is she?"

"Oh, coming. Somewhere," said Phoebe, airily.

I looked past her, down the hill, and saw Charlotte at the foot of it. She stood with her back to me, peering into the depths of a dripping bramble bush.

I said, resigned, "I'd better get her," and set off down the wet and slippery slope. "Charlotte! Come along."

She turned and looked up and saw me. Her hair clung to her head, and her glasses were misted with rain. "What are you doing?" 

"I'm looking for blackberries. I thought there might be some."

"You're not meant to be looking for blackberries, you're meant to be coming up to the house for tea. Lily's made pancakes."

She moved reluctantly. "All right." Even the lure of hot pancakes did not kindle much enthusiasm. I thought that it would be easy to be maddened by her, and yet I understood her reluctance to end an afternoon spent in Phoebe's delightful company. I remembered myself at Charlotte's age, trailing home after a day with Phoebe, spent perhaps on the beach or picking primroses or riding in the little train to Porthkerris. It had always been an effort to drag oneself back to routine, and meals, and everyday, mundane life.

I held out my hand to her. "Do you want a pull up the hill?"

She took her hand out of her anorak pocket and gave it to me. It felt thin and small and wet and cold. I said, "What you need is a good rubdown with a towel and a hot drink." We set off up the slope. "Did you have a good afternoon with Phoebe?"

"Yes. We've been drawing."

"I don't suppose you even noticed the rain."

"No, not really. My paper was beginning to get a bit wet, but then that man came and held the umbrella over it and I could finish."

"His name is Daniel."

"I know. Phoebe's told me about him. He used to live with her and Chips."

"He's a famous artist now."

"I know that, too. He said my drawing was very good." "What did you draw?"

"I tried to draw some gulls, but they kept flying away, so I did a made-up picture." "That was enterprising." "He said it was very good." "I hope you haven't left it behind?" "No. Phoebe put it in her bag."

Breathless by now, we toiled on in silence. We reached the gate. I opened it, and as Charlotte went through, I said, "I've been wondering how you've been getting along. I would have rung you up or asked you to tea, only I've been so ..." I hesitated, searching for the right word. "Busy" seemed scarcely truthful.

"It's not much fun," said Charlotte with a child's uncompromising honesty.

I made a cheerful face. "Well, perhaps tomorrow we could do something together." I shut the gate behind us. "Go somewhere in the car if Phoebe doesn't need it."

Charlotte considered this: Then, "Do you think," she said, "that Daniel would like to come too?" 

As soon as we were inside the kitchen, Lily, half-irritated and half-laughing, pounced on Charlotte, unzipping her drenched jacket, kneeling to struggle with the buckles of her sandals.

"I don't know, some people can be that silly. Miss Shackleton, well, I've never seen a soul so wet. I told her to go upstairs and change down to the skin, and all she would do was laugh and say it didn't matter. It'll matter all right when she gets pneumonia. Didn't you notice the rain?"

"Not really," said Charlotte.

Lily produced a dry towel, removed Charlotte's spectacles, carefully dried the lenses, and then gently put them on again, setting them straight across the bridge of Charlotte's small nose. Using the same towel, she began to dry the child's hair, rubbing as though she were drying a wet puppy, scolding on. I left them to it and went to take off the mackintosh and the sou'wester and drape them over the radiator in the hall to dry.

The door to Phoebe's sitting room stood open. On the far side the fire blazed, the flames reflected in the brass fender and on all the little polished knickknacks that stood about—a copper jug, a silver photograph frame, a luster bowl. In front of the fire, with an elbow on the mantelpiece and a foot on the fender, stood Daniel. The profile of his downcast face was reflected in the mirror that hung above the mantelpiece, and in his hand he held a sheet of paper, which he appeared to be studying.

I came through the door, and he looked up.

"I've got Charlotte. She's with Lily, getting dried. She was looking for blackberries." I went to stand beside him, spreading my cold hands to the warmth of the fire. "What are you looking at?"

"This little picture she's done. She's very good."

He handed it to me and moved away from the fireplace to sink, recumbent, in the roomy depths of Chips's old armchair. He looked tired, his chin sunk on his chest, his long legs stretched out in front of him. I looked at Charlotte's drawing and saw at once what he meant. It was a child's effort, but imaginative and cleanly drawn. She had used felt pens, and the bright primary colours reminded me of Phoebe's own brilliant little oils. I saw the red boat bowling across a cobalt sea, the sail curved and set full in the wind. There was a small figure at the helm wearing a cap with a seagoing peak, and on the foredeck a large, whiskery cat.

I smiled. "I like the cat."

"I like the whole thing."

"It's a very cheerful picture. And that's odd, because I don't think she's a particularly cheerful child."

"I know," said Daniel. "It's reassuring."

I put the drawing on the mantelpiece, propped against Phoebe's clock. "Tomorrow I said I'd take her somewhere. She isn't having much of a time with her grandmother. I thought we could go somewhere in the car."

"That would be kind."

"She seemed to think it would be more fun if you came, too."

"Did she," said Daniel. He did not seem overexcited at the prospect. I wondered if he was already tiring of feminine company, or perhaps the idea of a day spent with Charlotte and myself had no allure for him. I wished now that I had said nothing about it. "You've probably got better things to do."

He said, "Yes," and then, "We'll see."

We'll see. He sounded like the adults who used to infuriate me as a child by using those very words when they were unable, or possibly unwilling, to commit themselves. 

Chips had made the carousel for me. It was mine. He had said when he gave it to me that if I wanted, I could take it back to London, but I chose not to. The carousel was part of Holly Cottage, and I was such a traditionalist that I chose to leave it here.

It lived where it always had, in the bottom half of the huge French bombe cabinet that stood at one end of Phoebe's sitting room. That evening, after tea had been cleared away and washed up, Charlotte went to take it out. She carried it carefully and set it on the table in front of the fire.

Chips had made it from an old-fashioned gramophone. He had removed the lid and the needle arm and cut a circle of plywood the same size as a regular record, with a hole in the middle to fit over the gramophone's central spindle. This disc was painted a bright scarlet, and the animals were fixed around its perimeter. These, too, had been cut from plywood with Chips's little jigsaw. There was a tiger, an elephant, a zebra, a pony, a lion, and a dog, each coloured with its own stripes or spots and each sporting a brightly painted saddle with tiny bridles and reins made of golden cord.

Various games could be played with it. Sometimes, along with building blocks, farmyard people, and a few wooden animals left over from a defunct Noah's Ark, it became part of a fairground or a circus. But mostly I played with it just as it was, winding the handle to power the mechanism and switching the lever that made the turntable revolve. There was, as well, another lever to regulate the speed. You could start it up very slowly (to give people time to get on, Chips used to say) and then speed it up until the animals whirled so fast you could scarcely see them.

Charlotte did this now. It was like watching a spinning top. Finally the mechanism ran down, and the carousel came slowly to a halt. 

She crouched down on her heels and moved the turntable with her hand, gazing at the face of each animal in turn.

"I simply don't know which is my favourite." 

"The tiger was always mine," I told her. "He has such a fierce face."

"I know. He's a bit like the tigers in Little Black Sambo, isn't he. And you know, when the animals go round really fast they look a bit like the Little Black Sambo tigers going round the tree and turning into butter." 

"Perhaps," said Phoebe, "Lily made our pancakes out of tiger butter, just the way Little Black Sambo's mother did."

"Why did you have to make old-fashioned gramophones go fast and slow? I mean, there's everything on my father's stereo at home, in Sunningdale, but I don't think there's a switch to make it go fast or slow."

"It was great fun," Phoebe told her. "You could put an ordinary record on very slowly and it sounded like an enormous Russian singing basso profundo. And then you'd make it go quickly and it was all squeaky and high. Like a mouse singing."

"But why? Why did that happen?" 

Phoebe said, "I haven't the faintest idea," which was always her very sensible reply to a question to which she had no answer.

Charlotte turned to me. "Do you know?" 

"No, I don't."

"Do you?" She turned to Daniel.

He had been silent all this time. He had, for that matter, been silent through most of tea. Now he was back in Chips's armchair, apparently watching the carousel with the rest of us and yet in some way remote and withdrawn. Now we all looked at him expectantly, but he had not even realised that Charlotte had spoken to him, and she had to say it again. "Do you, Daniel?"

"Do I what?"

"Do you know why the music goes squeaky when it's fast and basso profundo when it's slow?"

He considered this question with some care and then suggested that perhaps it had something to do with centrifugal force.

Charlotte screwed up her nose. "What's that?"

"It's what makes your spin dryer work."

"I haven't got a spin dryer."

"Well, when you're a big girl, perhaps you'll have one, and you'll look at it working, and then you'll know what centrifugal force is."

Charlotte began to wind the gramophone handle again. Above us, on the mantelpiece, Phoebe's clock struck five. 

Phoebe said gently, "Charlotte, perhaps it's time you went home."

"Oh, do I have to?" 

"No, you don't have to, but I said you'd be back about five."

Charlotte looked up, her expression all set to whine. "I don't want to go. And I can't walk back, because it's raining." 

"Prue will take you in my car."

"Aw . . ."

Terrified of tears, I said quickly, "And don't forget, we've got a date for tomorrow. We're going out together in the car. Do you want me to come and fetch you?"

"No. I hate being fetched because I hate waiting. I'm always afraid people won't come. I'll come here. I'll walk down like I did this morning. What time shall I be here?"

"Oh, about half past ten?"

"All right."

Daniel had heaved himself to his feet. "Where are you off to?" Phoebe asked him. "I must go, too," he told her.

"But I thought you were going to stay for dinner with Prue and me. Lily's made a chicken casserole . . ."

"No, really ... I should get back. I've got a phone call to make. I promised Peter Chastal I'd get in touch with Lewis Falcon, and I've done nothing about it . . ."

"Oh, all right," said Phoebe, who always instantly accepted other people's decisions and never tried to argue. "Then you'd better go with Prue, and she'll drive you back to Porthkerris after she's dropped Charlotte."

He looked at me. "Do you mind?"

"Of course not."

But I did mind, because I wanted him to want to have dinner with Phoebe and me.

"Good-bye, Phoebe." He went to give her a kiss, and she gave him an affectionate little pat on the arm; letting him go, asking no questions.

That's the way I've got to be, I told myself, as I went to fetch my coat. If I don't want to lose his friendship that's the way I've got to be.

In the car, he sat in front, while Charlotte perched on the backseat, leaning forward so that the pale blur of her face hung between us.

"Where shall we go tommorrow?" she wanted to know.

"I don't know. I hadn't thought. Where's a good place?"

"We could go up to Skadden Hill. We'd maybe find blackberries. And there's lots of rocks on the top of the hill and one of them has got a giant's footprint on it. Really. A real, huge footprint."

Daniel said, "You could go to Penjizal."

"What happens at Penjizal?" I asked.

"There's a cliff walk, and at low tide a great deep rock pool, and the seals come into it and swim there."

Charlotte instantly forgot about Skadden Hill. Giant's footsteps were tame compared to seals. 

"Oh, let's go there. I've never seen seals, at least not close to."

I said, "I don't even know where Penjizal is." "Will you show us, Daniel?" Charlotte banged on his shoulder with her fist to get his whole attention. "Will you come with us? Oh, do come with us."

Daniel did not at once respond to this impassioned appeal. I knew that he was waiting for me to intervene, perhaps make some excuse for him, but I stayed selfishly silent. Through the windscreen wipers' fan of clear glass I saw the road ahead, awash with muddy water; the oak trees, black against the sky, lashed with rain.