Death, My Darling Daughters

by Jonathan Stagge

  I could understand why. And as she started up the stairs again, carrying her charm like a lighted candle, I found myself feeling a little sorry for the invisible Rosalind and Perdita of the muddy cello.

  Mrs. Lanchester conducted me to the third floor, tapped on a door, and led me into a small room where Nanny lay in bed, propped stiffly against the pillows. Her round little body had been tucked into a starched white nightgown, and an antique frilly bedcap perched incongruously on her straight gray hair. The aggressive dynamo of a woman I had seen in the general store had definitely run down. The black eyes which had been so needle sharp were lackluster, and a bluish pallor had taken the place of the Scotch ruddiness in her cheeks.

  On a bedside table stood a tray with a teapot of chased silver, a silver tea kettle on an old-fashioned spirit lamp, and a cup containing dregs of tea which looked strong enough to take the hair off a Highland bull.

  Mrs. Lanchester began: “Nanny, dearest, this is Dr. Westlake. He’s come to have a look at you.”

  Nanny eyed me suspiciously, drawing the bedclothes up to her throat with a gesture which was at once prim and defensive.

  “You’re a wayward, headstrong lass, Emily,” she snapped. “I told you I was having no flibberty-gibbety young doctor prodding and prigging me around with my ain Georgie comin’ tomorrow.”

  “Now, Nanny, don’t be silly.” Mrs. Lanchester spoke firmly, as if anxious to prove that she was anything but a “wayward, headstrong lass.” “You know George never doctors the family. Besides, Dr. Westlake isn’t flibberty-gibbety.”

  Nanny’s sloe eyes surveyed me dubiously. “You’ll not be one of those dreary lads tha’ put a body in mind of her coffin with their glooms and dooms?”

  I assured her that I always looked on the more cheerful side of things. She brooded for a moment, apparently contemplating some glooms and dooms of her own. Then, with a wistful sidewise glance at me, she said:

  “It’s a flutter here and a flitter there, Doctor, and a bump and a boom that fair doubles me up. Ca’ you pu’ me on me two feet again?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Nanny sniffed. After a pause she announced: “All right. Mebbe I’ll let you moither me. But just this once.”

  “That’s a dear, sensible Nanny,” put in Mrs. Lanchester.

  The old nurse swung round on her with a sudden return of energy. “Be off wi’ ye, Emily. You’re always the same giddy lass, dangling and angling around whenever there’s a bonny man in the house. Off wi’ ye and your smiles and smirks, or I’ll be minded to ta’ me hairbrush to your backside.”

  The porcelain roses deepened in Mrs. Lanchester’s cheeks as she retreated before this formidable threat. Giving me a rather flustered smile which I interpreted as a reminder to keep Nanny in bed, she withdrew from the room.

  Once she was alone with me, Nanny became surprisingly tractable. It was clear that she had a peasant terror of any physical malfunctioning, and she was still sufficiently weak after her spell of pain to be dourly and Scottishly in mind of her coffin without any outside assistance. She gave me a long history of her “trouble” in her own individual and cryptic jargon. From it and a superficial examination I was able to diagnose a mild anginal condition, with bouts of pain and precordial distress following any undue exertion or emotional stress.

  This latest attack had obviously been precipitated by excitement at the prospect of a reunion with the two other Hilton “children,” coupled with an excess of scrubbing, polishing, and strong tea. In spite of her almost eighty years her condition was not alarming, but since rest was obviously the best therapy, I was able to fulfill Mrs. Lanchester’s request with a clear conscience. I wrote out a nitrite prescription, warned her against too much tea drinking, and ordered her to spend the rest of the week in bed.

  This raised a storm of objections. The bedcap bobbing like a dinghy on one of her tempest-tossed lochs, Nanny began; “I’ll be dommed and grommed if I’ll keep to me bed with me ain Georgie comin’ and puir Belle who’s flown all the way from England. It would be a fine day for me bairns to arrive wi’ no one to greet them but that flichty Emily and her puir wee draggety girls wi’ their puir weak heads.”

  With sudden passion she added: “It’s Emily as pu’ ye up to this—Emily wi’ her sneaky ways. And ye’re nobbut a puir frittery lad tha’s clay in her pretty hands.”

  She had worked herself up to such a pitch that I was becoming more seriously worried for her. Embarrassment at her canny divination of Mrs. Lanchester’s request made me even more firm.

  “Flighty and draggety though they may be,” I said solidly, “Mrs. Lanchester and her daughters will have to take care of the guests without your help. I wouldn’t be responsible for what might happen to you if you got up and started fussing around, running up and down stairs and getting yourself excited.” I gave her my most impressive professional stare. “You don’t want to kill yourself, do you?”

  “Kill meself?”

  Nanny pushed herself forward, gazing up at me. I was startled by the expression in the jet eyes. There was definitely a superstitious fear of death, but there was also something else—another sort of fear which I could not interpret, although I was sure it had nothing to do with her own sickness.

  “There’s some kin die and ithers kin die.” Her little hands were clenched into fists as she glared up at me. “And better it is for a puir old woman wi’ her ailings to meet her Maker than a guid lad wi’ a bricht name for hi’self to go down in a swelter and welter of bluid.”

  She grabbed my arm then, and although her dark forebodings were complete gibberish to me, I felt a queer chill in my spine.

  “Lad, ye canna keep me in me bed wi’ no one but me to look out for my Georgie. Ye canna let the Angel of Death walk and stalk through this house.”

  Thrown off balance, I muttered: “I don’t understand. Are you trying to say there’s some sort of danger for Dr. Hilton?”

  Her hand dropped from my arm. She seemed to have caught herself up and to be shocked at what she had let slip. Her black eyes became evasive, almost crafty. She sank back against her pillows, sliding a look at me.

  “I’m nobbut a silly old woman who’s stashed when she don’t get her own way,” she said. “You’ll no be cross wi’ me and no be gabbling and babbling what I brocht out in me passion.” She smiled almost impishly. “And ye’ll no be worrying your head, for I’ll be lying here meek as a mousie, swallowing your potions and getting me rest.” She nestled back against the pillow. “I’ll be a guid lass.”

  As I ran through my instructions a second time, she remained indeed as meek as a mousie, but I suspected this new pliability. Once she cast a sidelong covetous glance at the silver teapot, and I was sure that, the moment I had gone, she would brew herself another of her own hair-raising potions. After that I was equally sure she would do exactly what she felt like doing.

  I bade her good night and left the room. From a doctor’s point of view it had not been a satisfactory visit. But it had aroused my curiosity as a man.

  As I moved into the passage I was haunted by a mental image of the eminent Dr. George Hilton going down in a “swelter and welter of bluid.”

  The passage was dark and smelt of disuse.

  The vague charm of the downstairs rooms did not stretch this far. Suddenly I found myself wondering whether the elusive aura which pervaded the old Hilton house was not perhaps something more sinister than the mild specter of a dead Vice-President.

  II

  I moved down the passage toward a dim light that showed the head of the stairs. I was so absorbed in my reflections that it startled me when a slight figure emerged from a shadowy doorway.

  “Hello, you’re Dawn’s father, aren’t you?”

  It was a female voice, young and clear, with the same, almost foreign precision which marked the voices of Mrs. Lanchester and Perdita. The light here was strong enough to give me the impression of a mass of fair tumbled hair and the pale narrow face of a girl about nineteen
.

  “I’m Rosalind,” she announced. “One of the problem daughters. Mother’s certainly told you about us.” Her voice changed to a searing travesty of Mrs. Lanchester’s formal charm. “‘The poor dear girls, so difficult and shy with men.’”

  Rosalind, I saw, was dressed just as dowdily as her sister, with the same shapeless frock and the same flat-heeled sneakers. She was peering up at my face from eyes as blue as her mother’s and as sharp. There was, however, no deceptive sweetness about them. Their stare was straight, inquisitive, and cynical.

  “Nice eyes,” she murmured, taking stock of me, “good forehead; enough hair; just the proper height; a sort of gentle virility.” She gave a hoarse laugh which showed small, pointed teeth. “Unhappy man. You might as well give up right now. You’re lost.”

  I grinned at her. “You mean this problem daughter is going to make me one of her problems?”

  Rosalind shook her head. “Not me, worse luck. Mother. You know those heathen idols that have to he stoked regularly with male sacrifices? That’s Mother. All very genteel and unsexy, of course. But you’re already strapped to the altar. Mother’s burnt offering for the summer.”

  Once again this remarkable girl produced a withering mimicry of Mrs. Lanchester. “‘I try to interest poor Perdita and Rosalind in nice young men, but whenever I ask a man to the house I always seem to become stranded with him myself. I can’t understand why.’” The disturbing eyes were still on my face. “Got a cigarette?”

  “I imagine so.” I found a package and gave her one. Rosalind lit it greedily.

  “Don’t tell Mother. The dear girls don’t smoke. They may be plain, but at least they’re ladies.” She blew an almost perfect smoke ring. “Once when we were visiting Mr. Santayana in the Convent of the Blue Nuns in Rome, I snitched one of his Sweet Caporals and smoked it in the bathroom. Mother caught me. She made me read all Mr. Santayana’s books as a punishment.”

  Rosalind’s small breasts rose in a sigh. “Indulgences of the flesh, you see, are not for us, Dr. Westlake. You know something? I’m nineteen and Perdita is almost twenty-one, and only once in our lives has lust reared its ugly head. One day in June—what a rare day—an acolyte pinched Perdita’s behind outside the Vatican and slipped her a note in medieval Latin to meet him in the north transept of St. Peter’s. She didn’t go, of course. She’s a good little girl. I was going in her place, but by the time I’d got the note translated it was too late.”

  I found myself laughing spontaneously. “What your behind needs isn’t pinching; it’s spanking.”

  “For acting in a manner unbecoming to a Hilton and for imitating Mother?” She laughed too. “If you think I’m bad, you should hear Perdita. She imitates everyone.” She hesitated, and when she spoke again there was a subtle change in her tone. I knew she wanted to sound casual, but she didn’t manage it.

  “How’s Nanny? Really sick? That is, sick enough to stay in bed?”

  There it was again, that same veiled interest in whether or not Nanny was going to he up and about to welcome Dr. George Hilton and his sister. I told Rosalind that I had recommended a week’s rest for Nanny.

  “How simply wonderful.” Her face lit up with an unholy light. “I bet she raised Cain at having to be in bed when Uncle George and Aunt Belle come to find”—her voice changed again—“‘no one to greet them but that flichty lass Emily and her puir wee draggety girls wi’ their puir weak heads.’”

  The imitation of Nanny’s voice was as perfect and cruel as her earlier mimicry of her mother.

  “Dr. Westlake, you don’t know what that means to me. A whole week without the Hi’land Gestapo on our tracks. Oh, I could kiss you if you weren’t reserved for Mother.”

  Standing there straight as a young colt with her head tilted backward, she may not have been beautiful as her mother was beautiful, but she was shamelessly provocative—and she knew it. I put my hands on her thin shoulders. They were warm through the flimsy cotton of her dress.

  “One day you’re going to say the wrong thing to the wrong man.”

  She laughed huskily. “I’m always looking for the wrong man, but they always turn out to be the right ones. I suppose you’re respectable too?”

  “Unhappily. All doctors in small communities have to be.”

  “God, what a bore. Never mind. One day I’ll be rich, stinking rich, on my share of Grandfather’s money. Then I’ll be able to buy all the men I want, respectable or otherwise.” She puffed smoke from her nostrils and twisted away.

  Then she turned. “By the way, so far as Mother’s concerned, you haven’t met me. I’m supposed to he practicing the viola. Perdita’s so unimaginative. She uses the dining room where Mother can hear. I pretend I’m practicing in the attic. I have a wonderful time up there reading Proust and flitting mud wasps. Even Nanny hasn’t gotten on to it yet.” Once again she laughed that same pulsing laugh. “Good-by, o toi que j’eûsse aimé.”

  Rosalind Lanchester disappeared into the shadows, leaving me to reflect upon the results of two generations of plain living and high thinking.

  It was not until I had started down the stairs that another thought came. Rosalind’s imitations of her mother and Nanny had not only parodied the two women’s characteristics of speech and revealed the girl’s bitter revolt against her regimented existence. They had also employed almost the identical phrases that had been addressed to me.

  There seemed to be only one explanation for this. Miss Rosalind Lanchester did not spend all her time in the attic reading Proust and flitting mud wasps. She must spend quite a deal of it listening at keyholes.

  Mrs. Lanchester was waiting for me in the living room. She heard my report on Nanny without comment, and although she was as faultlessly charming as before, she made it plain that she had given me enough of her time for one evening. As she bade me good night at the door, however, she presented me with a radiant smile, intended, no doubt, to keep me enslaved until our next meeting.

  “I shall expect you about six tomorrow, Doctor. It will be so pleasant—so nice for the dear girls.”

  Her willowy figure, fresh and delicate as a spray of lavender, was still silhouetted against the light from the hall as I moved away down the untidy drive.

  So nice for the dear girls.

  Through the open dining-room window I could still hear the monotonous grinding of Perdita’s cello.

  Darkness had brought an overcast sky. There were no stars as I walked back along the lane to my own house. Fireflies, like hundreds of tossed matches, winked and faded around me. Somewhere down by the Konapic Brook a whippoorwill was mewing out its exasperating mating call. The rich fragrance of early milkweed trailed from the hedgerows. Kenmore, with or without benefit of the Hiltons, went on being the same.

  My house was ablaze with lights when I reached it. I found Dawn lying on her stomach on the living-room carpet, eating peanuts and reading a copy of Thrilling Comics with Hamish, our greedy Scottie, plumped down next to her, his head cocked at the peanut bag.

  I told my daughter about the picnic, expecting her to be delighted that her homespun father had been found acceptable by her new lofty friends. She received the news apathetically. The novelty, it seemed, was wearing off the Lanchesters. Then suddenly her whole face lit up and she sprang to her feet, clutching Dick Tracy against her old gray sweater.

  “Oh, Daddy, the picnic. How wonderful. Lizzle’s going to be there.”

  “Lizzle?” I echoed.

  “Lizzle,” said my daughter. “She was up playing quartets at the Lanchesters’ this afternoon. She’s an Austrian or something funny, and she could be a concert violinist easily if she wanted to. But she won’t because of her rats.”

  I blinked. “Because of her what?”

  “Her rats,” said my daughter ecstatically. “That’s what Lizzle does, and she’s terribly famous for it, Rosalind says. She kills rats.”

  I always seem to be one jump behind my daughter. She had to go over the whole territory again before it
began to sink in that her latest Schwarm, so weirdly named, was some sort of professional associate of Dr. George Hilton’s in Boston who, apparently, was doing research on vermin extermination. This lady, who my daughter insisted was called Lizzle, had fixed over the barn of the house next to the Lanchesters as a laboratory where she could continue her studies while vacationing in the country.

  “Lizzle says she’ll show me her rats,” crowed my daughter. “And, Daddy, she wants to teach me the violin.”

  “But Mrs. Graebner’s already teaching you the violin,” I said mildly.

  “Oh, Lizzle says Mrs. Graebner has all the wrong technique. She listened to me playing in a Haydn this afternoon and she said it made her sick to the stomach. She said she’d teach me if only out of respect for the dead. Oh, she’s so wonderful. And so beautiful—sharp and sort of scuttly like a rat.”

  Completely carried away on the crest of this new wave of enthusiasm, Dawn added:

  “Daddy, it would be wonderful if you married her.”

  “Married her!” I was staggered. Since her cradle days my daughter had suffered from a terrific allergy to stepmothers. Never before had she actually recommended one herself. “You really mean you want me to marry this—this Lizzle?”

  “Oh yes.” My daughter twisted Thrilling Comics in a transport of delight. “Think of it. We could have the rats in our barn and she could teach me the violin free.”

  Lizzle, my rat-bride-to-be, got into my dreams that night. With a furry nose twitching out from a long lace bridal veil, she scurried through a vaguely frightening nightmare peopled with Nanny, the Lanchesters, and Dr. George Hilton going down in a “swelter and welter of bluid.”

  At six next evening Dawn and I reached the lilacs outside the Hilton drive. For years I had been fighting to make my daughter dress respectably, but just as she was starting to show some faint interest in her appearance, the Lanchesters with their plain living and high thinking had sabotaged all my efforts. That evening she wore ancient blue jeans, a faded cowboy shirt, and the inevitable sneakers. She strode along like a boy, her violin case tucked under her arm.