by Joan Aiken
“Did I hear you talking to someone?” asked Miss Lemarchant.
Miss Pellett threw concealment to the winds and told them the whole story. By the end, Mrs Henderson was beginning to look significantly at Miss Lemarchant, but just then Paul spoke, more to himself than to anybody else. “Women,” he said. “There’s no pleasing them. Either they won’t believe anything, or else they lose their heads and begin looking out for fandangles like angels on the roof.”
It was not evident which part of this remark applied to whom, but from the long, sour look that he gave Miss Pellett before returning-to his firegazing, it was evident that some of it, at least, was directed against her.
The other two were speechless with amazement, but could hardly help being convinced. “His poor sister! Whatever would she say?” exclaimed Miss Lemarchant. “It’s just as well she’s gone to live in Putney.”
Paul gave a snort of laughter. “So that’s where she’s gone,” he remarked. “Matilda was always a fool.”
By the end of the morning, Mrs Madison and the Guestwick sisters had also heard the news, and dropped in separately to verify it. At lunchtime Paul was in a very bad temper.
“I knew how it would be,” he said. “They think I’m the savior of the village all over again. They’ll be asking me to kiss the babies and be Father Christmas at the schoolchildren’s party next. I’m off.”
And before Miss Pellett could prevent him, he leapt through the window and was gone.
A shocking chapter of slaughter among the hens followed, and by the end of two weeks at least five men in the village were publicly out for his blood, in spite of Miss Pellet’s supplications. No one had seen him, though, except a few children who had flung stones after him in the street, but could not catch him.
On Christmas Eve, Miss Pellett had a small party—just Mrs Henderson, Mrs Maddison, Miss Lemarchant, and the Guestwick sisters. By a tacit agreement no one raised the painful subject of Paul, though once they came perilously near it when Miss Lemarchant remarked “Dear me! Last Christmas this time! That beautiful service! So touching!”
Mrs Henderson looked warningly at her, and Miss Pellett went hastily out of the room to fetch more mince pies.
As she stood in the larder, it seemed to her that she saw two green eyes staring in from outside. She went to the back door and called, “Paul? Paul?”
A black form slid past her and went striding into the drawing room. When she followed with her plate of mince pies she found Paul, with his tail swishing angrily, sitting in the middle of the circle.
“Why didn’t you tell me all these people were here?” he said rudely.
“You didn’t ask me,” she apologized.
“Dear Mr Dawson,” exclaimed the younger Miss Guestwick boldly, “now that you are here, won’t you say a few Christmas words to us?”
“Christmas words!” He spat out a catlike expression of scorn and, turning his back on them all, sat and stared into the fire.
“Mr Dawson,” pleaded Miss Lemarchant, “can’t you see the error of your ways? Can’t you see what a terrible life you are leading, the more so because of the beauty of what went before? Can’t you see how you would enhance that beauty by looking after us again in your present form?” She stopped, amazed at her own eloquence, but the cat gave no sign of having heard.
“Bah! What he needs is a good spanking,” said Mrs Maddison. “I’d give him one if he were mine. I always said the man was a hypocrite.” She looked at him vengefully.
The others, however went on imploring him to mend his ways, until Paul grew impatient.
“Oh hiss to all you old hens!” he said irritably. “I never did a thing that was worthwhile when I was the vicar, and now, just when life is beginning to be enjoyable, you all start in on me. But you can talk till you’re black in the face without making any difference. I’ve never had such a good time before. I live on the fat of the land, not a tom in the village dares stand up to me, and I have thirteen families of kittens. There’s Christmas sentiment for you! Which reminds me, I haven’t made arrangements about my turkey yet. I hear there are some good ones at the farm over in Little Linden. Ten past eleven? I must be going.”
In the horrified silence that followed, he walked to the door, waited unblinkingly until it was opened for him, and then passed rapidly through.
They never saw him again.
On Christmas morning, as she walked up to the church, Miss Pellett heard old Steggle the sexton talking to Henry Lampeter. “I went into the church good and early to put it to rights, like,” he rasped in his creaky old voice, “and what did I see but Mr Monk’s Blackie, that good-for-nothing animal. He scuttered away down the aisle fast enough when he saw me. Ar! And what d’you think ’e’d bin doin’ ’Enry?” He leaned nearer to Lampeter, and whispered stridently. “’E’d bin sitting on the table where the ’ymn books is kept, tearing them up with ’is claws. Whad’you make of that, eh? If you arsk me,” he finished portentously, “that cat is the devil ’imself.”
Miss Pellett knew better.
Girl in a Whirl
Her name was Daisy and she was a smasher, the crispest colleen in Killyclancy. Only, as misfortune would have it, old Mr Mulloon said she was unlucky, he having met her once in the street and gone home to find his finest fowl drowning in a puddle; brandy had revived it, true, but anyway those looks weren’t natural, Mr Mulloon said. Whoever heard of hair like spun milk atop of a pair of eyes black as sloes? Depend on it, the girl was an albinoess, cunningly covering up a pair of cherry-pink pupils with smoked contact lenses. And everyone knew albinos had the Evil Eye.
His croaks of warning were much heeded by the mothers of Killyclancy, and three weeks afterwards Daisy found she might as well look for blackberries in April as find a young fellow to take her to so much as a cheeseparing party. After some rebuffs, she began to have a positive hate for the male sex, and never laughed so hearty as when one of the creatures had his car stall on him at the traffic lights, or dropped a bagful of carpet-tacks in the Market Square.
There were two men in the town, though, who took an interest in Daisy. One of them was the doctor. More of him later. The other was Con O’Leary, who ran the Housewives’ Help Service in the daytime and sang in opera at night. Housewives loved him for the bits of Traviata that would come carolling out from under the sink as he scrubbed, or Trovatore from the upper storey.
He had a little helicopter from which he used to clean the windows with a long-handled mop, and thus he was in a position to know that old Mr Mulloon’s theory as to Daisy’s pupils and the possibility of her hair being a wig was wrong: quite wrong. He had seen her in her bath one never-to-be-forgotten Valentine’s eve, and since then he was a changed being; staggered sometimes as he walked, like one in a daze, undercharged several housewives for cleaning down their paintwork, and sang A flat instead of A natural in the middle of Adelaide. He was in love, in fact.
He never missed Daisy’s act. Fortunately the variety turns came on before the townsfolk settled to the serious opera or drama of the evening. Made up as Acis, or Don Pasquale, he could watch enthralled as she came onto the stage in her white silk costume all printed over with huge black marguerites.
The Dome of Death, it was called. Leaping nonchalantly on her motorbike, Daisy would whizz round a couple of times to get warmed up on the lower lip of the great aluminium funnel, and then suddenly—flip!—she’d be horizontal, flying round inside it like a fly in a pudding-bowl and slowly circling upwards, little by little, all the time calm and bored-looking as if she were doing the kids’ crossword in an evening paper, quite regardless of the fact that one sputter from her engine would drop her twisting down to annihilation.
After a while she’d reach the top and swing there, looping like a crazy white bangle on the twirl round an invisible wrist. Then she’d begin to slow and drop, circling lower, until at last she ran slanting onto the ground in a wide curve. Girl and bike came vertical once more and the engine kicked to a halt. Daisy wou
ld bow once to the applause and walk off, wiping her hands on a clean bit of cotton waste, unsmiling.
She never changed at the theatre but slung a dark coat on and went straight home. And oh, the many times that Con would have wished to see her home, and he with only six or seven minutes to his call.
One Sunday, though, restless and fretful from his landlady’s good dinner, he put on his best suit that was purple as a Pershore plum and went knocking at her door.
When she opened, he was tongue-tied and stood like a rock gazing at his bootlaces.
“Well?” she said. She was a grand sight to see, with her hair, just washed, spraying out in all directions like a dandelion-clock, but Con was so tangled up in his intention that he had no eyes for her.
“I wondered if I might,” he began, and then he faltered, lost courage, and ended up, “might have left a bucket here last Tuesday week when I washed the distemper?”
“Took you long enough to miss it, faith,” said Daisy, ironic. “Well, you didn’t.”
“Then perhaps,” he went on doggedly, “perhaps a bar of yellow soap?”
“Neither yellow soap, nor pink, nor green, nor white,” said Daisy. “After I’d paid your ten shillings, I had a fine old clear-round getting rid of the muddy footprints of you.”
“Then maybe ’twas my stepladder that I’ve been seeking the length of the town?” he suggested, but with despair in his voice. She took a step back and began to close the door.
“No, wait,” said Con in agony. “Perhaps—perhaps you’d kindly consider marrying me?”
She looked him over from top to toe, her eyes fairly blazing with scorn.
“Shall I tell you what I admire, Con O’Leary?” she said, speaking slow and biting. “What I admire most in the world is courage. Look at you, standing there with your white face and your shaking hand. Begorra, there’s not an inch of courage in the whole footage of ye.”
And this time she did shut the door, and left Con on the outside of it.
Now she was unfair, had she but known it. Though he never went out of his way to show it, Con was as brave a man as any in the town, only for the little matter of the courting. ’Twas common knowledge the way he’d rescued old Mr Mulloon from the church tower, and him with the drink taken. He was bold as a lion with the housewives, did they try to flirt with him in corners or haggle down his price, and the way he cleaned windows was a wonder to all, jumping over the ten-foot gap from his helicopter to the sill for a final polish, leaving the machine to hover by itself, and then jumping back again with the duster the way you’d be thinking he was a chamois, and no notice taken of twenty foot of emptiness under the soles of his boots. Indeed, he had been given free membership of the Daredevils’ Club, though he seldom went to the meetings and thought them great foolishness.
That evening, though, sore and spurned from head to heel, he took a fancy to attend. All the bold young sparks of the town belonged, and he felt the need for company. When he got there they were in a fine distraction and turbulence.
“Look what’s come in it, will you!” exclaimed Michael Whelan. “’Tis herself, the unchancy one, has sent in an application to be considered for membership. Yerra, what then, at all?”
“Is it Daisy you mean?”
“Ah, ’tis. And a fine misfortune ’twould be for the lot of us did she set foot in the club. Many’s the death she’d encompass, whether in the rock climbing or the dirt-track riding or the swimming or the horse-breaking. And a woman, at that! That I should ever live to see the day! ’Tis not to be considered.”
“She must have a trial, though,” said Danny Mayhew, president of the club. “The rules have it so. A fair trial to anyone applying, they say.”
Con sat silent, for he was unhappy in his mind, while the men discussed in shocked voices what trial would ensure Daisy’s failure.
“Look at it this way,” said Michael. “Sure, we wish no harm to the girleen, for what’s a bit of an Evil Eye when there’s goodwill in it? ’Tis how we must be thinking of some grand and terrible exploit will daunt her entirely, the way she’ll not even attempt it.”
“Ah, sha, he has the marrow of it,” said several approving voices.
Danny said, “We could ask her to ride her bike on a tightrope across the Deeps of Kilglore.”
“She might agree,” Michael pointed out. “’Twould be no unaccustomed thing for her, waltzing over the tightrope the way she do when the Dome of Death’s dismantled for the de-rusting.”
“But the Deeps of Kilglore, man! She’d never dare. And the river’s risen lately, with the deal of rain we’ve been having. ’Tis a fearsome place.”
“Supposing she tried it, and fell?”
“Sure then, wouldn’t we have Con here at hand with his grand little broth of a plane to scoop her up like a hurley ball?”
Con was startled, but after a minute he thought, Well, why not? Maybe she’d be grateful then. Maybe she’d run to his arms, crying out, “My hero!” Maybe she’d give up this unwomanish notion. Maybe ’twas not a bad suggestion at all.
The club was unanimous in approval of the plan.
It was a sharp, gray day, the Saturday fixed for the trial. The sky had rained itself out and blown itself dry. Leaves and trees shone with a glitter and heeled over, and a bitter white wind drove a flock of cloud scurrying to the west.
Half the town had assembled near the Deeps of Kilglore, for, since Daisy’s scornful acceptance of the club’s terms, the news of the test had somehow got abroad. To be sure, the club’s activities were strictly against the law, but, as the sergeant said, “A bit of a ducking will do the girleen no harm at all, and maybe souse the Evil Eye out of her. And the more souls there is watching, the more to catch her if she falls.”
It was a fearsome place, indeed. The club members had already strung a cable across the Deeps, the high gorge where the Kildeggan river arched its back before plunging over the falls into St. Piumail’s pool, reputed bottomless. The heavy rains had swollen the river to a torrent and the roar of it would have overshouted Gabriel’s trump.
Daisy was as white as a wand but calm enough, as Danny Mayhew tested the cable and Michael Whelan helped wheel the bike to the cliff’s lip. Con kept himself out of sight, hovering round the windward side of a rock point, for he could not bear the torture of watching her start. The cable ran cut across the gorge, slender and silver as a spiderweb, and on this he fixed his eyes.
All at once it trembled, as the web does when the spiderwife’s at home, and a moment later the little shining toy ran out and down, more like a raindrop on a telegraph wire than a live creature balancing over death and vacancy.
Con brought his helicopter alongside. He had no fear of startling Daisy, for, though he felt he could hear his own distracted breathing, the roar of the falls drowned even the sound of his engine.
Daisy was halfway across now. Just as she began the slow climb to the opposite cliff her bike seemed to slip and stagger.
A sort of a sigh went through the watching multitude as the machine wavered to the right. She brought it back, and then, slowly as a leaf fluttering down, the front wheel slid to the left and the bike dangled crossways over the cable for a full half second while Daisy catapulted head over heels into space and down in a leisurely curve towards the white teeth of the pool.
Con dropped like a stone after her and had her snapped up in his nylon catch-net before she’d fallen more than thirty feet. It was a noble catch. The cheer that went up from the watchers might have been heard from Dublin to Doon Point.
The sergeant hugged Danny Mayhew, Michael Whelan beat old Mr Mulloon on the back and pulled a black bottle out of his pocket. Only the doctor looked thoughtful as Con pitched his helicopter back to the clifftop.
Con had drawn in his net and now gently let Daisy down to the ground while he hovered; the doctor unloosed her and then Con landed alongside.
“All right is she, man dear?” he called.
He was not prepared for what followed.
And first she broke out crying—then she slapped Con’s face, and then fell fainting to the ground.
“She’s dead!” Con shrieked at the doctor.
“No, asleep,” the doctor contradicted. “Shock’s all that’s in it with her. I’ll take her to my home and give her a sleeping-tablet that’ll settle her sounder than a babe in arms.”
And far from the roystering crowd he took her, though several voices were heard to murmur that a dram from Michael’s black bottle would suit the case better and maybe put some cheer into the colleen.
When she woke up she was on the doctor’s couch in the doctor’s beautiful house, and the doctor was handing her a cup of tea, the strangest-tasting brew she’d ever laid lip to.
“Ah there, poor dear,” the doctor said to his sister. “She’ll be better in the blink of an eye.”
He was a striking-looking man, Dr. Phillimore Madrassi, tall, lean, and black-haired as the devil, with a gleam in his eye. Behind him stood the old-maid sister, Miss Merlwyn, with a flat, square face like the back end of a tin loaf, and a bit of black hair atop, as if the loaf had been burnt. Daisy had the concern on her, looking at the pair of them.
“How are you?” creaked Miss Merlwyn.
Daisy struggled round and sat up. Rare and lovely the doctor’s room was, with Sheraton, Chippendale, and Venetian glass, the walls as delicate as a duck’s egg and the Persian carpet all dove and rose. But the first sight that struck Daisy’s eye was her own feet in sneakers all covered with dust and oil, planted in the middle of this carpet that was worth a queen’s ransom. She tried to hide them out of sight.