‘So it is.’ It had had to be, to remain concealed in his hand. ‘Not damaged to any material degree, though.’
‘But how did it get like that?’
‘I haven’t the slightest idea. These things happen.’
‘But why are you so upset?’
‘I’m not upset, I’m just not used to sudden bending and stretching.’
‘I think you got the dog to chew up what you thought was my letter and gave it your own by mistake.’
‘Nonsense. Who on earth would do such an absurd thing?’
‘An absurd man. A man like you.’
Marigold collected her correspondence and left him standing there.
Twenty-Five
That afternoon, Bernard was coming out of the lavatory (after a prolonged and painful session) just as Pusscat was passing. At the sight of him, she broke into a run towards the stairhead. He drew his pistol from its holster with the speed of, say, a middle-grade FBI trainee, followed, squeezed the trigger. A target moving directly away from a sharpshooter is almost as vulnerable as a stationary one: the jet of water found its mark in less than a second and never left it. Pusscat vanished in the direction of Marigold’s room. A loud, repeated miaouing ensued. Bernard was just about to retreat towards his bedroom, with the idea of setting up a rough alibi, when he heard the approach of unsteady footsteps from the kitchen. As he peered down the stairs, he just caught a glimpse of Shorty with a soda-siphon in his hand; he too passed out of sight. A door opened. There was a brief mumble of voices, then Marigold’s was raised.
‘This cat is soaking wet.’
Shorty asked some question.
‘I’ll tell you how: by being squirted with that siphon. To think you—’
‘I wouldn’t do a thing like that, Marigold. I was only just taking it to the sitting-room for tomorrow. Anyway, look, you can see it’s full. No, it isn’t quite, is it? Well, these days you quite often—’
‘Have you gone mad?’
‘Not so’s you’d notice.’ Shorty too was beginning to sound quite angry. ‘If you think I go round squirting cats you’re the one that’s mad.’
‘How do you suggest she got in this state?’
‘I don’t suggest because I don’t know and I’ve got no theories, Marigold. I’m sorry it’s happened, but I had no hand in it, compree?’
‘You’re just like Bernard. It’s not hard to see what drew the pair of you together.’
‘You’d better be careful, Marigold, or you’ll—’
‘Are you threatening me?’
‘Or you’ll find yourself sinking to my level, and I’m sure you wouldn’t care for that.’
There was a pause, followed by the slamming of one door and the shutting of another. Now Bernard did go to his bedroom, where he laughed till he cried.
Twenty-Six
At four-thirty the next morning, Christmas morning, Adela was wide awake. She had had a dream in which she was back at school, but retained her present age. None of the children, including somebody who was Marigold and yet did not look like Marigold, had taken any notice of her.
She knew from experience that her chance of any more sleep that night was poor. If a long and tiring day had not lain ahead of her, she would have filled in the time by reading; as it was, she decided she had better lie in the dark and rest. It should be easy enough: after all, there was plenty to look forward to in that day. Or rather, there ought to have been. But how was she to avoid continually remembering that, ten to one, this would be the last Christmas for which she would have Marigold’s company? It was true that Marigold was given to saying one thing and doing another, or not doing anything, but she had sounded and looked unusually resolved when, last night, she said that Bernard’s and Shorty’s behaviour was intolerable and she had quite made up her mind to leave Tuppenny-hapenny Cottage as soon as her arrangements were completed, within the next fortnight if possible. Just what the respective bits of behaviour had been was obscure to Adela, not that that made the least difference: Marigold would not have listened to her attempts to mitigate or console, any more than Bernard and Shorty would listen to her pleadings or reproaches; she could do nothing.
Adela tried to find a comfortable place on her pillow, which felt, as usual, like a small vegetable-sack stuffed with an assemblage of stoutly-constructed rag dolls. Not for the first time in her life, she wished she had been born with the ability to see when people meant what they said. Perhaps Marigold had no real intention of going after all. But the threat was there and cast a shadow.
What would she do if Marigold did go? Carry on, of course; no question about that. It was odd how straightforward, how almost easy, that was, even when there was nothing to carry on until. She remembered the end of the second war in Europe, how she had gone to bed on the night of the German surrender in some apprehension, wondering what it would feel like now that a great effort was finished and her small but all-absorbing part in it was finished too. And then, the next day, nothing seemed to have changed: there was always a job to do, and there always would be, with luck.
Abruptly, she sat up and put the light on. She could not just lie there waiting until it was time to go down and light the gas under the turkey. If she felt tired later in the day, she had only to leave Shorty in charge and slip upstairs for an hour’s nap. But what was she going to do before and after seeing to the turkey? Well, afterwards she could go to Communion in the village. No; the experience would not uplift her, as it would once have done, merely leave her dejected and empty. Instead, what about making some fudge for the children? It would help to keep them quiet until tea if they did not care for the grown-up food in the middle of the day.
That touch of the practical finally got her going. She slipped along to and back from the bathroom and put on her man-made-fibre dress and short-sleeved jacket in navy blue with heavy touches of white, a costume settled upon after some thought the previous day. Soon she had her apron on too and was reviving the kitchen fire. It was not a cold morning – in an hour or so she would go out into the woods and watch and listen as the dawn came up. The fresh air would be invigorating and the experience itself – she had not been out of doors at daybreak for longer than she cared to remember – probably rather inspiring. Meanwhile, there was the fudge to do. Sugar, instant coffee, and condensed milk: Shorty’s old-soldier tastes saw to it that there was plenty of that. Adela settled down to work.
Twenty-Seven
Some hours later, Bernard stood by the just-open door of his bedroom. He was unusually accoutred, with a damp washing-flannel slung across his face in the yashmak position – it was secured at the back of his head by a safety-pinned stretch of elastic purloined from Adela’s work-box – a pair of bellows in one hand and a dustpan and brush in the other. On his bedside table, the radio was loudly relaying some carol or other. Marigold made her fleeting appearance. The nearby door duly shut and the key turned. Bernard moved into action.
He laid down his implements by the door in question and took from his pocket a small transparent sphere. This he placed as near as possible to the crack under the door, a chink measuring nearly a quarter of an inch, and crushed it noiselessly under the dustpan. At once a terrible and tremendous odour was released, so strong as to penetrate easily his improvised gas-mask. Retching almost continuously, he worked hard with the bellows to blow into the lavatory every possible molecule of vapour. He kept this up for twenty seconds or so, then rapidly and efficiently swept up the fragments.
A call came from George’s bedroom down the landing. ‘I say! Bernard, are you there? Bernard?’
‘Coming.’
He was with George after a very short delay, his various tools safely hidden for the moment under Shorty’s bed.
‘I say, Bernard, what on earth is this frightful stink? Oh, merry Christmas, old boy.’
‘Merry Christmas, George. I’ve no idea.’
‘Could you open that window
as wide as it’ll go? It really is awful. What can it be?’
Bernard did as he was asked. ‘Well … the only thing I can think of … I did happen to notice Marigold going into the bog.’
The left half of George’s face expressed incredulity. ‘But you don’t mean … Surely no human … It’s not like any ordinary …’
‘Not ordinary, no. But she has been under the doctor. I suppose there may be something …’
‘It smells to me like a stink-bomb.’
‘Really? I don’t think I’ve ever—’
‘We used to muck about with them at school. Phew! Actually it is beginning to die down a bit.’
It had died down a good deal further by the time Marigold came into the room. She wished them a merry Christmas and kissed them both. It came natural to her to kiss George; Bernard she kissed partly because she hoped to shame him by doing so without the least hint of overt reluctance, partly because she knew he disliked being touched by anyone, and partly because the impending arrival of the young people made her feel generally benevolent.
‘Funny smell in here,’ she said, sniffing. ‘I noticed it out there too.’
‘Yes, we were wondering what it was,’ said Bernard.
‘I expect it’s the drains. I’ll tell Adela. Well, I must be on my way. See you downstairs soon, I hope, George.’
‘Rum go, that,’ said George when she had left. ‘You’d have thought she’d have noticed it most when she was, well, closest to the drains. I think you can shut the window now, if you would.’
Bernard again obeyed. He did not try to speak. So much for his hopes of suggesting to Marigold that her insides had started to decompose! The patent and total failure of Operation Stink was mainly due to two factors unknown to him. He had not risked an indoor trial, and his outdoor one, while useful in establishing the fragility of the capsules, had told him nothing of the speed with which their contents were dispersed; thus only a small fraction of the gas had ever got into the lavatory. And that small fraction had been promptly blown out again by the draught from its window, which the fastidious Marigold invariably threw open on arrival there.
Bernard’s Christmas was off to a bad start.
Twenty-Eight
‘Now it’s for the client to decide. We’re running a full presentation in the first week of January,’ said Keith MacKelvie to Marigold. He was twenty-nine and, so she understood, being more and more successful in something to do with advertisements. By his side, held rather tightly by the wrist, stood Finn, his five-year-old son; a yard away was Keith’s wife, Finn’s mother and Marigold’s granddaughter, Rachel, who was twenty-six and was holding, also by the wrist and a little more tightly, Vanessa MacKelvie, aged nearly four. Adela and Bernard were within earshot. The group was standing between the piano and the sitting-room window, where there was a view of the rock-garden with iris and narcissus in flower. To one side stood a large mountain ash with a great many berries on it, and the woods stretched beyond. In the moments of sunshine, bright for the time of year, it was a pleasant outlook. A total stranger paying a call of not more than thirty seconds’ duration might quite well, thought Keith to himself, mistake the house for a tolerable place to live.
‘I see,’ said Marigold, nodding hard. ‘That’s the man who … What does he do, Keith?’
‘He makes pet food.’
‘What?’ asked Bernard.
‘He makes pet food.’
Surely not all those nearby, including the children, could in fact have spoken as one, but it seemed very like it to Bernard. ‘Pet food,’ he said, conveying reluctance to believe that anyone who enjoyed rights of entry to the house should have to do with such a monster.
‘Yes, pet food.’ Keith, as well as having started to detest Bernard on sight, several years before, had not gone far and fast in his profession by accident, without, that is, the aid of a quick insight into others. ‘The main ones,’ he went on as slowly as he dared, ‘are Bow-Wow and Mew. They’re for dogs and cats’ – pause – ‘respectively. Then … of course … there’s the stuff they call … Chirrup.’
‘That’s for budgies,’ said Finn.
‘Budgies.’
‘Budgerigars,’ said Keith sonorously, then speeded up. ‘Small cage-birds, very popular with the—’
‘I know. I know what they are.’
‘Is it a big firm?’ asked Marigold.
‘Enormous. Quite e-nor-mous. The chief shag must be a millionaire several times over. Came here from Hungary in 1956 without a penny. I must say I admire a chap like that. He’s Jewish, as you might expect.’ This last Keith knew to be untrue, but, with justifiable confidence, he had inferred that Bernard was anti-semitic. ‘They’re brilliant at making money.’
‘Indeed they are,’ said Bernard in a high monotone.
‘And at playing the violin and the piano and things like that,’ said Adela quickly. ‘I mean the Jews are brilliant at that too. They’re very artistic. We mustn’t forget that.’
‘Mustn’t we?’
‘And you’re making up all this man’s advertisements for him, Keith,’ said Marigold.
‘No, I’m only to do with Bow-Wow. I’m in charge of—’
‘Is it good?’ asked Adela. ‘I was thinking Mr Pastry might like it.’
‘Mr … ? Oh—’ Keith managed to suppress the blasphemy that sprang to his lips as he remembered who Mr Pastry was. ‘Er, yes, he probably would. I’ve had many a worse portion of tinned meat than Bow-Wow. They sell a—’
‘You mean you’ve tasted it?’ asked Marigold.
‘Yes, they have what they call quality testing sessions where it’s made, and you’re expected to join in if you happen to be there. The thing to do is keep to the Bow-Wow side of the room. Mew’s worth steering clear of unless you’re a cat. Chirrup’s not bad if you don’t mind a mouthful of seeds and gravel. Yes, they take a lot of—’
‘You’ve eaten a dog food?’ Marigold was exchanging glances of unabated shock, horror, outrage and so forth with Adela.
‘Yes,’ muttered Keith, muttered that he might not bawl at the top of his voice. ‘It’s got to be fit for human consumption, you see, which is why—’
‘But who would eat it?’ asked Adela. ‘For an actual meal, I mean.’
‘I suppose the blackle-packles might,’ said Marigold.
Keith had been on general alert all along, and he made not the least sound or facial movement; it was Finn who staggered and nearly fell.
‘Stand still, Finn.’
‘I was. You pulled me.’
‘Be quiet. Yes, Goldie, very badly-paid people might eat Bow-Wow, and they wouldn’t come to any—’
‘But why can’t they just say it’s unfit for human consumption?’
‘Well, then a lot of people wouldn’t give it to their dogs.’
‘No doubt,’ said Bernard, and turned away.
Keith was seized by boredom – a poor word for the consuming, majestic sensation that engulfed him, comparable in intensity to a once-in-a-lifetime musical experience, or what would be felt by the average passenger in a car driven by a drunk man late for an appointment. Needling Bernard had given temporary relief, the couple of minutes a member of a forced-labour gang might spend leaning on his spade. All too soon, the overseer was back with his whip. Rachel took the now writhing children off to do a jigsaw puzzle, or watch while she did it. He could not blame her; not all that far from crying (the fellow who coined ‘bored to tears’ would have made a fortune in the slogan-writing game), Keith led the two old women through a sort of explanation of how television commercials were put together, an explanation preceded by an explanation, for Adela’s benefit, of what a television commercial was.
After a week or so, Marigold said, ‘So this advertisement you’ve done, they’re going to put it on the television.’
‘That’s what I hope. I’ve got the brands manager, the, one of the important
blokes behind me. Now it’s up to the marketing director, the, an even more important bloke.’
‘And he has to see it, privately,’ said Marigold with deliberation, ‘and decide whether he likes it, and if he does like it, then, then they’ll put it on the television, and you’ll have succeeded.’
‘That’s it!’ Keith’s despair waned for a moment.
‘And when is this happening, this private … show?’
‘The first week in January.’
‘Now Trevor, Keith, you’re to telephone me as soon as you know the result. I insist on being told straight away. Promise me.’
‘All right, Goldie,’ said Keith, deciding that at the same time he had better inform President Allende, who must have quite as much at stake in the matter of the Bow-Wow commercial as Marigold had. He added with a vague sense of precaution, though quite truthfully, ‘I’ve sometimes had trouble getting through to here.’
Adela looked puzzled for a moment. ‘Getting through? Oh, you mean on the telephone. That’s me, I’m afraid. Or it might have been me. Once I forgot to pay the bill and they cut us off. No, twice. I must try to—’
‘It’s not surprising you forget something once in a way,’ said Marigold, smiling with her head on one side, ‘considering how much you have to remember. Adela runs the whole show here, you know, Keith. She does a marvellous job.’
‘I’m sure she does.’
‘Oh, I only—’
‘She pampers me in the most outrageous way. I don’t deserve it the least little bit. She won’t let me lift a finger, will you, Adela? Mind you, I’m such a wash-out I couldn’t be trusted to boil an egg.’
Adela’s red face had turned a deeper red. Her Christmas was made, whatever might be going to be unmade. In a little while she moved off, to let Marigold have Keith to herself, and joined Rachel and the children, not pushing herself forward, just sitting near them on her tapestry chair in case they wanted her to join in. Vanessa turned and stared at her thoughtfully for a quarter of a minute or so before staring at her mother with an expression that told of some question, or entreaty, not quite brought to the point of speech. Finn had not had to turn in order to stare thoughtfully at Adela, who went over to the Louis Quinze area. Here George, propped on the sofa, was telling Trevor and Tracy that Communism was a system founded on fear.
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