‘Oh, but it’s easy,’ said Sari, enchanted by all this earnest planning, what bliss, after all, what peace, to have everything charted out in advance, to know where one was going! ‘It’s perfect. I’ll come out to lunch with you.’
Phin was slightly shaken. ‘But I’ll have her with me. And darling, she’s—difficult.’
‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Sari happily. ‘I’ll bring her a presie.’
It took her and Rufie all day to find the right presie but she duly turned up with it next morning and confronted Ena Meena who was sitting banging her heels against fine old mahogany chair legs in her father’s very grand waiting-room, fortunately now empty of other patients.
‘Hallo, Ena Mee, it’s me.’ She laughed. ‘That’s rather funny—Ena Mee, it’s me.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Ena Mee. She looked at her curiously. Sari was wearing the tawny leather coat with a bright headscarf tied under her chin and over it, the huge Stetson-shaped black hat. ‘Why have you got that scarf on?’
‘Well, you said you didn’t like the colour of my hair, so I covered it up.’
Ena Mee stared at her in a wide-eyed astonishment. ‘Why should you care what I like? I’m only a child. Nobody bothers about what children like.’
‘Well, I do,’ said Sari. ‘I want you to like me.’ She knelt down and placed a large basket on the floor. ‘I’ve brought you a present.’
(‘And you watch it when she starts giving you presents, Ena Mee. It’s only ’cos she’s after yer father.’) ‘I don’t want any presents, thank you,’ said Ena Mee.
‘You’ll want this one.’ She opened a door in the side of the basket and out walked a tiny black piglet with a large ribbon bow. ‘Pigs make simply wonderful pets.’
Open-mouthed with rapture, Ena Mee flung herself down and on hands and knees confronted the pig. (And that makes two of them, thought Sari.) ‘It’s a little baby pig! Is it mine?’
‘Yes, of course it is, it’s your present. What’ll you call it?’
‘Piggy,’ said Ena Mee, simply. What else?
‘I think we can think of something better than that. Let it trot about a bit and stretch its little legs. It’s been cooped up in that basket. I was terrified it would squeal and give itself away before you saw what the present was.’
‘Can it squeal?’
‘You wait! And grunt like all hell. Oh, my God,’ cried Sari suddenly. ‘Ena Mee!’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘My God, darling—look! It’s made a mess on the carpet!’
Ena Mee clapped her hand over her mouth and spewed out sufficiently pig-like squeals of horrified laughter. Two conspirators, they rootled in the safari bag, found tissues and mopped away at the carpet. ‘Quick, quick!’ said Ena Mee, stricken but safe behind grown-up petticoats, ‘there’s somebody coming. What shall we do with it?’
‘In my bag—?’
‘It’s so smelly!’
Two large and handsome vases stood sentinel on the marble chimney-piece. Shoulders hunched, teeth biting on lower lip in an embodiment of mischievous wickedness, Sari tiptoed across and popped the dirty paper into one of them, and strolled back all propriety and innocence. Ena Mee doubled up in confidential laughter and Phin came into the room.
He had chosen a suitable restaurant for small girls to lunch in, but Sari was adamant. ‘Oh, no, Ena Mee, let’s make him take us to the Ritz!’ Upon Phin’s suggestion that the Ritz might not care to accommodate the third member of their party (What on God’s earth was Nanny going to say?) she poured iced water. ‘He’ll be perfectly all right, he’ll just stay in his basket. If he makes any noises, Ena Mee, you and me’ll have to talk in a terribly gobbling sort of way and cover it over.’ All the way in the taxi they practised the gobbles, interspersed with small, shrill squealings. Phin lavishly tipped the driver.
The luncheon was a riot. The menu was chosen with care, strictly limited to what would suit piglets, and the creature kept silent with contented munchings of offerings surreptitiously passed down from their plates. By the time the second course was over—acceptable for pigs perhaps but highly unsuitable for little girls—Ena Mee was in tears at having to go to Mummy’s. ‘I want to stay with Sari.’
‘Oh, come on, love, of course you want to go and see your mummy...’
‘Mummy won’t let me keep Piggy.’ She assumed, unconsciously, a Nanny voice. ‘She wouldn’t have that creature in the house.’
‘I’ll take him back with me and you and Daddy can pick him up on your way home; and then you can see my house.’
‘Can’t I come with you and wait for Daddy at your house?’
‘Ena Mee,’ said Phin, ‘of course you want to go and see Mummy.’
‘I don’t like Uncle Ronald. He’s fat and his face is all dark round the edges. Nanny says never mind five o’clock shadow—it looks more like midnight coming on, and Mummy said her skin was getting like a nutmeg grater. Why should Uncle Ronald being black on his chin make Mummy’s skin like a nutmeg grater? Daddy, why should Uncle Ronald’s black chin—’
‘And for that matter, what is a nutmeg grater?’ said Sari. But she recollected that it was something that you grated nutmeg with to make simply horrible things like junket taste even worse. ‘Do you hate junket, Ena Mee?’
‘Yes, I do, and I hate custard.’
‘Oh, custard can be lovely if it’s caramel custard. I’ll have some for my pudding and you can taste it.’
Ena Mee accepted a taste of the Ritz version of a caramel custard, compounded largely of Jersey cream, seized the plate and gobbled the lot. ‘You must ask Nanny to make you something just like it,’ said Sari, evilly smiling.
‘We must go,’ said Phin.
More tears. ‘Come on, love, you don’t want to hurt your Mummy’s feelings? And at the same time you can be watching Uncle Ronald, because I’ve got an idea, I’ve thought of another name for Piggy.’ She hung an arm round the back of Ena Mee’s chair and whispered in her ear. Ena Mee outdid Piggy in ecstatic squealing.
With the child dragging on her arm, she went off down the wide corridor, breaking into a little skip and a hop, the newly christened Ronald grunting in his basket in alarm. Heads turned to watch them go, the tall girl, slender in her tawny leather coat, the face with its high cheekbones unbelievably beautiful, tied close around with the coloured scarf under the huge black hat, the stout little girl skipping along at her side. Phin following half embarrassed, reflected ruefully that in his life there were going to be changes he had not accounted for; but he saw his child more happy and carefree than she had been for many, many days, and his heart overflowed with the tenderness of his love.
Triumphant, she went home to the flat, Ronald in his basket at her side, replete with his gourmet luncheon, contentedly grunting. Rufie would have gone off to Christophe’s with his drawings but he’d be back by the evening and she’d get Etho to come in and they’d help her with Ena Mee. Fellers were money for jam, thought Sari, compared with trying to enchant small girls. Really one felt sorry for poor exhausted paedophiles...
The late post had come and a large squarish envelope lay face down in the letter-box. No note this time, pushed surreptitiously through. The front was decorated with enormous highly ornamental stamps.
She put down the basket carefully and ripped the letter open; and a moment later was lying in a dead faint with the piglet squealing at her side.
No Etho to be contacted; no Rufie. She rang up Mr Charlesworth. He thought it over carefully. He said at last: ‘You opened the door and there it was?’
‘In the letter-box.’
‘By the perfectly ordinary mail?’
‘Yes, it’s post-marked, dates and all.’
‘So you can’t really tell me any more? You don’t recognise the hand-writing?’
‘No, just that terribly boring emasculated continental script.’
‘The same as the last one? Oh, but that one had no writing on it, did it?’
‘But
the sketch is by the same person. At least, the same sort of style.’
‘And the seal?’
‘Yes, the same seal. I mean, the seal of San Juan, but I think it’s the same actual seal, a bit worn and battered.’
‘OK, well... Now look, Miss Morne, will you do this for me? We’ve got men at the flats, the porter will know. Get hold of one called Jenkins. From now on, don’t touch the sketch or the envelope more than you can possibly help; Jenkins will collect them from you and bring them to me.’
‘Yes, all right.’
‘You’re not scared?’
‘I got a bit of a shock but I’m all right now. Besides,’ said Sari cheering up at a grunt from the piglet. ‘I’ve got a friend with me.’
‘Well, there’ll still be someone on duty there and I’ll replace Jenkins. Thanks very much. I’ll be in touch with you.’
‘All right. But not between six and—say, half-past seven, if you don’t mind. I’ve got my fiancé bringing his kiddy wink to see me and we don’t want invasions of the fuzz into our happy little family gathering; complete with pig.’
‘Complete with what?’
‘Well, with pig. Ronald, his name is, the world’s charmer. But anyway, don’t come till they’ve all gone.’
She prepared with scrupulous care for Ena Mee’s reception; rang Etho and briefed him, hilariously briefed Rufie when he got home. But he saw that her eyes were deeply shadowed, that her horrors again beset her. ‘Dovey, everything’s not all right. You’re scaring me.’
‘I’m a bit scared myself. I wasn’t going to say, I’ve got to put on an act for this kid, we’ve all got to, it could mean my whole future. But... Well, I can’t keep it in, at least I’ll just tell you. A letter came from San Juan, a real letter all stamps and postmarks, addressed to me and sealed. And Rufie—inside it was another sketch.’
‘Oh, Sari, my God! And you all alone here!’
‘Well—only me and R. Pig. I was so frightened that I actually passed out, at least I came to and I was on the floor and poor Ronald, frightened out of his wits, I suppose, by the great hump of me falling, squealing like a—like an Ena Mee.’
‘But where is it? Let me see it!’
But no, a chap called Jenkins had collected it, all surgical steel nippers and a little plastic bag, terrifically impressive, and taken it off to Mr Charlesworth. Only, said Sari, shuddering, the sketch ...!
Crudely drawn. A child, a boy, one leg at an unnatural angle, with smudged-in, witless face: holding a dagger in its little hand.
15
THERE WAS SOMETHING IN the post for Mr Charlesworth also, that came like a great gust of wind, blowing away a thousand obliterating feathers, leaving the collage clear of all but patches of harder and sounder materials, beginning to jiggle themselves at last into some sort of form. ‘And by God, Ginger, they’re all going to be there this evening, Master Devigne and even that kid that went on this famous picnic; and here’s the perfect excuse to visit them!’ He peered for the hundredth time at the seal on the envelope. ‘You’re certain it’s the same?’
‘You’ve only to compare them. This ridge here, this roughening. Tomaso di Goya—’
‘OK, OK, I’m sorry I asked. No handwriting on the first to be compared; but, spare me the National Gallery and just answer in one word, you agree these drawings are by the same hand?’ He repeated threateningly: ‘One—word.’
‘D’accord,’ said Ginger, falling back upon the last line of offence.
‘If you mean yes, say yes.’
‘Yes,’ said Ginger.
‘And on the same paper?’
‘Yes,’ said Ginger.
‘But the envelope is different?’
‘Yes,’ said Ginger. Without actually saying it aloud he asked: ‘Permission to speak, sir?’ and taking it as granted, added, ‘But that you’d expect, sir, wouldn’t you?’ Mummy had been suffering less, of late, from the nutmeg-grated skin and was beginning to be afraid of losing grip, and assiduous in blandishments. ‘I know what a bore it is, Ronnie dear, and lord knows I have her here as little as I can. If I’d known you were going to be at home today... Another time, I’ll just take her out somewhere, only it’s so dreary, hanging about, what shall we do next Mummy?—all those ghastly cinemas and if I ever again hear the word ice-cream—! You must say, darling, I’m a bit of a heroine?’
‘Nothing in the world is such a bore’, said Ronnie, adopting without too much difficulty a Cockney accent, ‘as yer actural heroine.’
Typically she transferred the onus to the child. ‘You’re so tiresome and silly, you get on Uncle Ron’s nerves; if you go on like this, you won’t be able to come here any more.’
‘I don’t care,’ said Ena Mee, rudely. ‘I didn’t want to come anyway, I wanted to stay with Sari.’
‘That woman!’ Unfortunately, That Woman appeared not to be a patient; a very positive threat. ‘And letting you eat such a lunch! No wonder you were sick; all that disgusting mess...’
‘It didn’t worry you,’ said Ena Mee resentfully, having in fact sicked up very neatly into the loo and been left to do any clearing up by her small self. ‘And don’t call her That Woman!’
‘How dare you speak to me, Ena Mee, like that? I’ll call her what I damn well please. And one thing more, my child, if you think I’m going to allow you to keep a pig—a pig, Ronnie, can you believe it?—in my house—’
‘It isn’t your house any more,’ said Ena Mee. ‘You went away so it’s my house now and Daddy’s. And if I say so, it could be Sari’s too.’ She assumed the Nanny voice and added, cockily: ‘And if you don’t behave yourself, my dear, I might.’
All the more soul-stirring then, the reunion with the piglet. Sari, alive to the passion in human beings for stuffing food down the throats of dumb animals, had considerately prepared it a supper which remained as yet uneaten. Rufie was shocked by her resistance to its pitiful squeaks of protest; the creature was obviously at starvation level. ‘Well, a couple of drags then, just to jolly him up till she gets here?’ He himself was more than a couple in advance; the episode of the Juanese letter had terrified him anew—he could not understand Sari’s comparative calm. ‘Rufie darling, if you knew the ordeal I’ve been through today, you’d know that the Grand Duke in person, scimitar in hand, couldn’t shake me.’
But he knew her too well. ‘It’s because of Phin, Sari, isn’t it? Because of what Sofy said about Phin doing the murder? While we know, and the police know, that the Followers really are around, then they can’t get on to Phin. And you’d rather have them after you, than the police after Phin.’
‘But then I’ve always known they were around, so it’s no great shock to me.’
‘It must have been, if you passed out.’
‘Well, the sketch, so disgusting, my poor little orphling with this huge, big knife dripping blood!’
He had contacted Etho meanwhile and informed him, but warned him to know nothing until after Phin’s departure. Phin must leave fairly early to get the child home to bed. ‘Well, Rufie, a quick wee and a new face on, and Luigi will have to appear, so I hope she loves me now enough to accept him.’ And she departed, reappearing duly aflame, in the Garden of Eden pants and a bra painted with two apples, the whole half-concealed by a long, palely shimmering kaftan. ‘I thought she’d adore Adam and Eve; and of course Phin’s never seen it.’
‘Just the job, he’ll think, for shopping with the other medical wives in the Wren’s Hill High Street.’
‘Oh, Rufie!—you don’t know how wonderful—yes, shopping-lists and knowing what you’re going to eat, right up till the day after tomorrow. The plans, my dear, and all worked out, everything so convenient, we’ll bring Ena Mee here, we’ll go to lunch there, everything booked in advance, no having to flash one’s teeth and eyelashes to get a banquette table. It’s like Bernhardt said—the deep, deep peace of the feather bed.’
‘I’m happy for you, darling,’ said Rufie, who had no idea what his own next bed would be or where;
on to what pillow he would lay his cuckoo head.
Excited squeakings outside the door, the extraordinary idea apparently prevailing in Phin’s mind that it would be locked, one wouldn’t just push it open and walk in. Luigi and the Biblicals were lost in the rapture of huggings and kissings for Ronald Pig. ‘God knows what Nanny is going to say,’ said Phin, in mock despair.
‘Sack the old bag,’ said Sari, ‘because I promise you I shall, anyway, on Day One.’
His heart shook a little, My God he wondered, have I gone mad?—have I gone mad mad or have I gone mad sane? ‘Dearest, darling, what do you know about bringing up children?’
‘Nothing at all,’ agreed Sari. ‘But just look at her now.’
And Etho arrived with a bottle of champagne straight off the ice and it was all tremendously civilised in a weird sort of way; as Etho had said to Sari in another context, there was more than one answer and to Phin, as once it had to Nan, a new light began to shine upon one’s way of life; the excellent restaurants robbed by familiarity of any excitement, the agreeable friends with not a new thought in their heads, the exactly right clothes... That his lady should open the hospital bazaar in her present costume, was clearly not on; on the other hand, what fun, what charm, a bit of foolishness in the privacy of one’s home.... And Etho was delightful in his cool amusability and the little queer was a little queer but so vital and original and one could always choose carefully and explain first, when one had people to dinner. And his little girl was not mopily whining; and what was wrong with a pig? confined of course to rather less vulnerable quarters. And his love was so sweet and so funny and so beautiful and kind....
Rose in Darkness Page 21