by Joan Aiken
Next day Mrs Invach got up very late and shuffled around the house all day in her threadbare monk’s robe and Turkish slippers. For once, the house was quite silent. She had not the heart to talk to herself, she did not dare play tapes of Jan’s voice. That would be to tempt the wicked spirits. And there were far too many of those about the world, too many and too strong. Some of them inside herself.
What had happened to that girl Amalcja? Where had she gone? What had she done with herself?
We were happy, thought Mrs Invach, just the two of us, until she came along. Some men—the great artists—are better alone. They do not need women. Art is enough for them. Jan was one of that sort.
Was? What do I mean by was? Perhaps he is coming in to Heathrow at this moment.
But at tea-time—not that Mrs Invach drank tea; she drank vodka with homemade elderflower cordial, made from her own backyard trees—the Foreign Office South-Eastern Europe Cultural and Educational Department rang her.
“Mrs Invach?”
“Yes,” she croaked, knowing already.
“We are sorry to bring you bad news—”
“Yes?”
“Your son—the painter Jan Invach—he has been very seriously wounded, on his way to the airport at Rocjau. He was flown out—to Ancona—where he is in a hospital, in intensive care—but hopes for his survival are not high. We think it best to warn you—”
“Should I go there? To Ancona? Should I get on a plane?”
“No, no, Mrs Invach, we cannot advise that. No, but what we are calling to inquire is—”
“Yes? Yes?”
“The painting your son went to verify—to establish—to authenticate—”
“So?”
“He had it with him when he was—it has been despatched to this country. There were some bullet holes and a tear—nothing too bad—”
“The picture is okay but my son is dying?” sourly said Mrs Invach.
“The picture will be delivered to you very shortly, Mrs Invach. This was at your son’s express request. He would not rest until he was assured that it was on its way. We would like to arrange for police protection of your house during the next five days, Mrs Invach—we have made arrangements with the Art and Antiques squad at Scotland Yard—until acknowledgment of the legal ownership of the picture has been definitely established—”
“Established?” she spat.
“It is a matter for knotty legal consideration, Mrs Invach. The Japanese buyer who acquired it—he made it plain that his intention was to give it to your son—give it back to him—”
“Give it back? But my son painted it in the first place. It was his, his own work, his property—”
“Not so, Mrs Invach, for he sold it—the original purchaser is lost, unavailable. But the question is, did the Japanese gentleman have the right to buy it—for it had been stolen, several times—”
“It belongs to my son!”
“And suppose your son should not survive, Mrs Invach?”
She said: “Excuse me. Somebody is ringing at my front door bell. I must hang up.”
“Mrs Invach!”
She put back the receiver on its rest and pattered to the front door. There a delivery man handed her a rolled-up package three metres long, lavishly wrapped in plastic wadding, secured with heavy tape and gaudy labels and numerous lead seals.
She was asked to sign in nine different places.
The delivery man drove off, having first subjected the house, in its untidy garden, to a long, careful scrutiny.
Mrs Invach shut, bolted, and chained the front door. Carrying the package through to the kitchen she began tussling with the formidable wrappings. Kitchen scissors and a razor blade at last defeated them. She took the rolled canvas into what had once been the dining room. Now the huge mahogany table, bloomed over with damp, held old maps, boxes of family papers, rolls of patchwork, an old-fashioned wind-up gramophone, and a Singer sewing machine, period 1890.
All these things were thrust onto the floor, and the canvas unrolled, weighted down at the corners with large lumps of rock brought home from the Dolomite Mountains.
The Monkey’s Wedding blazed up at the ceiling, and Mrs Invach stood, hands on hips, a crease between her brows, estimating what must be done to it. The bullet holes, there and there, yes, a dark stain of blood, and patches of damp—from the turnip-heap, probably—and a tear, quite a bad tear at one corner . . .
Sombrely, lower lip outthrust, frowning still, she left the room, head bent. She locked the dining-room door and put the key in her skirt pocket. Went to watch the six o’clock news.
“The well-known painter, Jan Invach, died of bullet wounds this afternoon in a military hospital in Ancona after a successful bid to rescue his world-famous picture The Monkey’s Wedding from the war-torn town of Rocjau. The painting is now on its way to the National Gallery in London, where . . .”
Is it, though? thought Mrs Invach, scowling, switching off the TV set. I’d like to see them get their hands on it before I come to a decision about it.
She ate her soup and conducted her evening search, more random than usual, but triumphantly unearthing a set of croquet mallets and an album full of Siberian stamps. Then she went to bed, after feeding the peregrines. But in the middle of the night they woke her, keening and mewing in the darkness of her bedroom.
“What is it, what’s to do?” she demanded.
And was answered by a frantic cry from the floor, somewhere near her bed.
“Murder, murder, they’re killing me, they’re digging their claws into my brain! Make them get off, make them let go of me! Arrgh, you brutes, you monsters!”
Both birds had settled firmly onto the head of someone who had been crawling towards the bed from the doorway: beaks and talons were embedded in his scalp. Mrs Invach observed the situation in the dim starlight from the huge windows, and smiled grimly.
“How did you get in? Oliver Twist? Eh?”
“Through the round window—they’ll blind me—it’s torture—oh, please, please!”
“Have you accomplices outside?”
“Yes, in a truck, waiting till I’d pierced the gas capsule and let them in—”
“A gas capsule, huh? Where is that, then?”
It was in his limp hand, already broken. Mrs Invach, without comment, smashed a window with the croquet mallet and switched on the vacuum cleaner to blow instead of suck.
Then she called the police art-theft squad on the special radio line which they had insisted on installing when she refused conventional protection.
“I have a truck full of thieves in my garden. Can you take them away?”
“What about me?” whimpered the defeated figure on the floor. “For pity’s sake, make these monsters leave go of me.”
“You be quiet,” she said, “or I’ll order them to peck your eyes out.”
He fell silent.
Police arrived like lightning, swarming over the garden, seizing the truck and its occupants. But Mrs Invach utterly refused to let them into the house.
“I have my own security system, thank you very much!” she snapped at the sergeant.
After they had gone with their captives, leaving four men on guard outside, Mrs Invach returned to her bedroom and ordered the peregrines to let go of their prey. He struggled to his knees, very dejected, rubbing fingers gingerly through his rumpled red hair. His tartan cap had fallen off onto the mat.
“Well, Oliver Twist?” repeated Mrs Invach sourly. “What have you got to say for yourself?”
He was the boy from McCustody Security.
“I—I thought it would be a good way to get into the house—see the pictures—that was why I got in touch with them—because I’m small—could get through the round hole—”
He gave her a defeated, hangdog look.
“I know who you are,” said Mrs Invach after a long, long pause. “You are Amalcja Kodan’s son.”
He nodded, then shook his head. “No, her grandson. Anatol.”
“Where are they? Your mother? Your grandmother?”
“Dead. Both.”
“Ah, so,” she said. “So I was right in that, at least.”
The boy stared at her uncomprehendingly. “My mother died five years ago. She said—she was always saying—that I should see my grandfather—get in touch—”
The old woman sniffed.
“Why should he want to see you? What use could you be to him?”
Anatol stiffened defensively.
“I am a painter, too!”
“Ha! You? At—how old are you?”
“Eighteen. And I have studied. And I know how to restore canvases—I am an expert—”
At eighteen? At eighteen, she thought, Jan was well under way. But this boy?
“What I wanted—but what I really wanted,” he said, “was to hear the tapes. All those tapes you have. I read about them in the paper. My grandfather, talking as he painted. Well, I wanted to meet him, of course. That was why—it took a long time to get to this country.”
“It would not have been any use, your seeing him,” she said. “He never talked to anybody. Not really. But the tapes—”
Drawing in a sharp breath, she switched on the player in her bedroom.
“. . . clouds like piano keys; shine of water in the shadow dark green and thick like sump oil—tree full of white eyes, each one looking a different way—hand sunk in the fur, very solid, reddish, artisan’s hand, thick with bone—not at all like my hands, mine long and skinny, skeleton’s hands very nearly—like the old girl’s hands, hers on the way to skeleton, her face colour of bleached mummy—now, touch of dark red here, stroke it on—yellow-green light moving towards saffron . . .”
She had switched on the light. She saw the boy had angry tears in his eyes. “Why couldn’t I meet him?”
“He’s dead.”
“I know. I heard on my transistor.”
“But I have all the tapes here. And a lot of the pictures.”
Mrs Invach took stock of the boy, measuring him grimly. “Well, you can come here and listen to the tapes, I suppose. If you like.”
His eyes blazed.
“Yes! And can I see The Monkey’s Wedding?”
“Very well.”
She led the way downstairs to the dining room, where the picture still lay spread out on the massive old table. She switched on all the lights and heard a policeman cough and stamp outside.
The boy began to walk slowly round the table, round and round, stooping sometimes, with his face close to the surface, to peer at a crack, or a bullet hole, or a bloodstain, never quite touching the canvas, but his eyes almost stroking it, his hands making small, blind, fluttering movements, as if they held invisible tools.
Old Mrs Invach, perched on a high stool, watched him.
As he walked round and round, back and forth, he began to mutter, to breathe out an inaudible monologue, to discuss with some unseen auditor how he would do this, would do that, how he would set about repairing the canvas.
After a while Mrs Invach wandered away and left him to it, and began again her own endless search for lost things.
Wee Robin
This story was told me by my aunt Martha. When she was younger, Aunt Martha used to pay regular visits to a rich friend, the Countess of Stoke, who had been a schoolfellow of my aunt some years before. The Countess now lived in a big old house, Tyle Place, which her husband’s family had owned for hundreds of years. The house had twelve bathrooms, my aunt used to tell me, wide-eyed, and on her visits she was always given a room with a bathroom of her own. This was luxury and splendour for Aunt Martha, who, at home, was used to share a bathroom with her five sisters.
But one year she found herself quartered in a different bedroom with a different bathroom, and her hostess said to her, “We are so sorry about this change, Martha, dear, but the pipes are leaking in the room that we generally give you, so we had to make the change. But still, we hope that you will be comfortable.” My aunt said that she was sure she would be; the new room seemed very pleasant, and the bathroom that went with it was even bigger than the one she was accustomed to.
“There is just one thing,” said the Countess, “one little thing I should mention. It is best if you don’t sing in the bathroom.”
My aunt wondered a little what could be the reason for this, but was too polite to ask. Perhaps, she thought, the partition walls were very thin—for two bathrooms had been portioned off, long ago, from one bedroom; perhaps next door there might be quartered some other guest with highly sensitive nerves who could not abide the sound of singing; some simple reason of that sort there must certainly be. At any rate, whatever the cause, she readily promised not to raise her voice in the bathroom.
A great number of other guests were staying at Tyle Place that year, for it was the Christmas season; there were young folks and older ones, there was present-giving and playacting, games and dancing; day followed happy day and Aunt Martha seldom sought her chamber until well past midnight, when she was too tired to do anything but seek her bed as quickly as might be. But when she did retire she always remembered her friend’s prohibition and never, when she was within her own domain, made the mistake of raising her voice in song.
But one night toward the end of her visit the younger guests had been gaily country-dancing in the huge old raftered hall which was the most ancient part of Tyle Place. Fiddlers and pipers had been summoned from Tyle village, and most of the party had been dancing until well into the small hours. Then the tired players were handsomely fee’d by the Earl and Countess, they took their leave, and the young guests started upstairs to bed, some of them, at least, still wishful to remain downstairs a while longer and go on dancing. Through the closed front door they could still hear the village band gaily playing their way down the hill. The tune they played was “Gathering Peascods,” which, as it happened, had been the final dance before the party came to an end. My aunt Martha heard the music come floating through her bedroom window, which faced forward on to the approach drive.
Without thinking, Martha began to whistle—for she had a clear and tuneful whistle, like a boy or a blackbird—and, still without thinking, in her happy mood after the festivities, she plucked her nightgown off the bed, where it was laid out for her, and danced her way into the bathroom still whistling “Gathering Peascods.” A joyous, lively tune.
What was her astonishment, then, to see a wee boy sitting on the bath mat by the bath, naked as a bullrush, and crying his heart out!
“Who in the wide world are you?” says my aunt Martha.
But he cries all the harder and makes no reply.
Well, Aunt Martha could not bear to see him so cold and shivering—for it was a bitterly cold, frosty December night—so she puts round him her own woollen bed jacket and wraps him in a quilt on her bed.
“Who are you?” she says again.
But all the answer he gulps out through his sobs is: “I want my Mammy! I want my Daddy! I want Nurse Ellen!”
Well, Aunt Martha is as puzzled at this as may be, for, to her knowledge, none of the other guests had brought a child with them to Tyle Place. But she says:
“Wait a little minute, my dearie. I’ll fetch your Auntie Delia and she’ll soon have ye sorted.”
Then she runs along the passageway and down the stairs, to where her host and hostess are still discussing the end of the party.
“Delia, come quick!” she calls. “There’s a wee boy in my room, and, poor little dear, he seems clean moithered! Not a stitch on him and calling for his mammy!” Poor Countess Delia turns white as a pillow-slip.
“Oh my dear!” she says. “Just what I hoped would not happen!”
“But who is the poor child? And who are his parents? Come to him, quick, quick!”
“I’ll come, my dear, but the chances are he’ll not be there . . .”
Sure enough, when they return to Martha’s room, there’s no sign of the child; the jacket and quilt are there, snugged roun
d on the bed as Martha had left them, but the wee boy was gone.
“Where can he be?” cries Aunt Martha, and runs into the bathroom. But the child is not there either and—what strikes Martha for the first time—the bathmat he had sat on was gone, too; but there was still a plain blue woollen mat hanging on the warm towel rail.
“We’ll never know where he has gone,” says the Countess.
“But who is he? And who are his parents?”
“Dead and gone, my love, these hundred years. That’s the pity of it.”
“What can you mean, Delia? And who is the little lad?”
“He’s Wee Robin.”
So the Countess tells his story.
“He had a godmother, Lady Astoria Vane, who was the cousin of his father, the Fourth Earl. Lady Astoria doated on the boy. She was a great traveller, as ladies were at that time—this was early in the nineteenth century—she went to Turkey and the Lebanon, she visited Ceylon and Cashmere and many Arab lands. And from these places she used to send back lavish presents to her godson, many of which he was too small to appreciate. The line of silver elephants on the side table in the dining room, for instance, and the stuffed camel in the conservatory. And, when he was four, she sent him a magic bath mat.”
“A magic bathmat!”
“Such an unsuitable gift for a four-year-old! Of course nobody knew that it was enchanted. They did think, however, that it was too handsome for a child. Well, you probably saw it. It was Chinese silk, wonderfully woven and embroidered.”
Now Aunt Martha remembered that she had been faintly surprised to notice that there were two bathmats, one of plain wool hanging on the warm rail, and the one on which the boy sat, glossy with colour and brilliantly embroidered.