Child Friday (5 page)

CHAPTER THREE

EMILY awoke with a certain apprehension on the day that Alice was to return from school. She had, so far, made little impression on the members of Dane’s household. Mrs. Pride, the cook-housekeeper, had been in old Mr. Carey’s service for nearly twenty years and had remained to look after Dane, preferring a constantly changing succession of daily help from the village of Pennycross to another woman living in the house. Like Shorty she was London bred, and also like Shorty, she was unfriendly and obstructive unless she was dealing directly with her employer. Emily wondered if the little girl, too, would look her up and down and tender bare civility because she must
.
At first she had welcomed the thought of the child, for Dane made her nervous. She found it increasingly difficult to refrain from offering help when he fumbled for some object which was within her own reach, and she could not get used to meeting him in the dark, moving with uncanny assurance from room to room. On the second evening he
blundered into an armchair, and, cursing roundly, demanded to know who had moved it.

“I did,” said Emily, unaware at that time of the importance of studying the exact arrangement of everything in the house. “I dropped something behind it.”

“Kindly remember in future that no piece of furniture is allowed to be altered here,” he said sharply. “If you
must
move something, observe the angle with intelligence and put it back exac
tl
y as you find it. Understand?”

She felt inordinately to blame, just as when at meals she absently forgot to return a salt cellar or butter dish to the exact spot where he expected to find it. Her embarrassment
was not lightened by the expression on Shorty’s face as he would ostentatiously replace the missing object.

In fee evenings she would sit with Dane in the firelit library, w
a
tching his thin sensitive fingers swiftly tracing out Brai
lle, n
ot liking to turn on the light in order that she might read herself. When she fidgeted, he would look up with a frown and ask her impatiently if she had no occupation, and when she enquired timidly if she might turn on the light, he exclaimed with what she realized must be very natural irritation:

“Go
o
d heavens, child! Can’t you help yourself? There’s no reason for you to sit in darkness, because for me there’s no difference, between night and day.”

“I’m sorry,” she said nervously. “I’m afraid I irritate you.”

He smiled then and replied wi
th
unexpected gentleness:

“No, I irritate myself. When one is handicapped one dislikes to be thought abnormal.”

The day that Alice was to return to
Pennyleat was bright and crystal clear. There had been no more snow but fee countryside lay white and sparkling in the sunlight. Shorty had gone into Plymouth to meet the train, and Emily, whose suggestion of accompanying
him
had met with little favour, had gone out into the garden to await his return. She did not want to meet this strange child for the first time under the little cockney’s scornful eye.

As on that first morning, she walked with delight through the tunnelled yew hedge, still crisp with frozen snow, and slid wife scant regard for wet garments down the steep, banked terrace which led to a little orchard. There
th
e old fruit trees were a miracle of beauty, their twisted branches a shining tracery of slender icicles, so that Emily was reminded of the little trees of glass and crystal which cost so much in the china departments of the big London stores. One in particular had a natural seat in its spreading branches, inviting to any child, and she scrambled into it, feeling the ice break under her hands as she swung herself on to the dipping bough.

There was something magical and escapist about climbing a tree, she thought, transported at once to those rare occasions of her childhood. You were hidden
and
secure
from those who walked as mortals on the ground; the airy kingdom was yours for as long as you chose. She remembered saying something of the sort to Tim in the days when there had been joy in sharing absurdities, but he had raised a puckish eyebrow and observed with rather bored amusement:

“I’ve never been attracted by whimsical children of nature, my sweet. Why don’t you take a leaf out of your friend Rosemary’s book and smarten up a bit?”

She had tried to follow his advice, but she had none of Rosemary’s confidence, nor, she suspected now, the requisite guile necessary to hold on to young men like Tim. She often wondered what had become of them both.

A voice spoke suddenly immediately beneath her. “What are you doing up there?” it said.

Emily looked down. A plain
little girl stood under the tree staring up at her. Her snub nose was like a cherry in her small, pinched face, and Emily was vividly reminded of herself at the same age.

“Hullo!” she said. “Are you Alice?”

“Of course. And you’re Miss Emily Moon, I suppose.” The child spoke sedately and with an odd indifference, but her eyes were faintly surprised.

“Wait a moment and I’ll come down,” said Emily, aware that for a secretary-cum-holiday governess, she could scarcely appear very dignified, but Alice said quickly:

“No, don’t come down—not for a minute. You’re not a bit like I thought you’d be.”

They stared at each other in silence. Emily could not know that to the child, her face framed in the branches’ frosty tracery had a strangeness that came near to beauty. To Alice, Emily did not seem like any of the grown-ups she had ever known; snow slung to her ruffled hair, and her eyes, wide and enquiring, held a clarity that was instantly recognized as belonging to childhood.

“Can I come down now?” asked Emily, beginning to feel awkward under such critical scrutiny.

“Yes,” said Alice, and stood, politely waiting, while Emily slid to the ground with more haste than grace.

“Is this your special tree?” Emily asked, wondering if the little girl’s unblinking stare perhaps held resentment
.

“Oh, no,” said Alice indifferently. “I never climb trees.”

“Don’t you? If I’d had a garden like this at your age I would have spent half my time up trees.”

“Would you?”

Alice’s voice, though polite, was slightly incredulous, and Emily felt foolish.

“Well, now, have you seen your guardian yet?
”
she asked, feeling that in some way she was responsible for the niceties of Alice’s homecoming.

“No,” the child said, without interest. “He’ll send for me when he’s ready.”

“Then you’d better get unpacked,” Emily said, made a little uneasy by the chilly-sounding relationship between Dane and his ward. “Shall I help you?”

“If you like,” Alice replied with that same polite indifference, and they made their way in silence back to the house.

Alice’s bedroom, though comfortable enough, was like any guest-room of a well-appointed house. The pictures had never been chosen for a child and no toys or favorite books awaited her return. Clothes hung neatly in the cupboards, ready to be exchanged for the school uniform, but otherwise there was no evidence that the room was ever occupied by a child.

“Where do you keep your things?” asked Emily, remembering that she had never come across a schoolroom in the house.

“They are all here,” Alice replied, unpacking her trunk with methodical neatness. “Mrs. Pride looks after them while I’m at school.”

“I meant toys and books and games and things. Haven’t you got a playroom of your own?”

“Not really. There’s a little room at the end of the passage that I’m allowed to use. It used to be Uncle Ben Carey’s dressing-room.”

“But when he was alive, wasn’t there somewher
e—
”

“Oh, no,” said Alice serenely. “Mam’zelle and I used the library for lessons, and if Uncle Ben wanted it we used the dining-room.”

“But had you nowhere of your own to play?” persisted Emily. Even in her father’s small suburban house there had been an attic given over to her.

“
There weren’t any children to play with,” replied Alice, as if that entirely explained everything.

Emily sat watching her broodingly while she changed her frock and brushed out her hair with a calm precision that seemed utterly unchildlike, and reflected that Alice must have had a lonelier childhood than she, herself. The old man had adopted her and then forgotten her, and Dane, however he had reacted to the unexpected legacy of a ward, had probably been wise in sending her to school.

“Are you glad to be home for the holidays?” she asked, feeling at a loss with such odd composure.

“Oh, yes. Do you think the snow will last for Christmas?”

“I don’t know. There’s nearly another fortnight yet. Would you like snow for Christmas?”

“It would be seasonable,” said Alice, and Emily regarded her in a rather helpless silence.

With the discarding of her school uniform she looked a little like her namesake in Lewis Carroll’s immortal work. Her long fair hair was held off her forehead by a velvet band, and there was a neatness about her full, plain skirt and flat-heeled slippers which was reminiscent of Tenniel’s drawings. Suddenly she smiled, and the plainness of her small face was redeemed by a shy expectancy.

“I’m glad you’ve come,” she said. “The others found me a nuisance. Do you like Uncle Dane?”

“I scarcely know him yet,” answered Emily guardedly.

“You never know him,” the child said with placid composure, and Emily felt her earlier uneasiness return.

“He probably hasn’t had much to do with little girls,” she answered evasively. “Haven’t you tried to make friends with him?”

“I never make friends with people unless they want to first. Besides, he’s blind,” said Alice, and a curious look of distaste passed over her face.

Emily’s eyes were clear and
s
uddenly accusing.

“I should have thought that might have been a reason for going out of your way to be nice to him,” she said.

Alice looked up at the disapproving note in her voice and suddenly she became wholly a child. She had the shame-faced air of a little girl who knows she is at fault but cannot find the way to put it right.

“He frightens me
,”
s
he said. “When he looks at me I feel he
must
be able to see m
e
. Sometimes I dare myself to make faces at him, and then it’s worse because he doesn’t reprove me for being rude. And when we’re in the dark, he can see and I can’t. It’s very frightening.”

Emily sighed. She could understand the child’s fear but she could also understand that Dane, with his other senses more finely attuned than most people’s, might understand only to
o
well the aversion he unwittingly inspired.

“Yes, I know,” she said then. “But I don’t think he finds it easy yet to appear ordinary. You must be patient, Alice—patient and understanding. Blind people are just the same as everyone else in most respects, you know—only more sensitive, more easily hurt.”

“Are they?” asked Alice with the disbelieving doubt of the
v
ery young. “Oh, well, it will be all right now you’re here, I expect. Shall we go downstairs?”

II

They went by way of Emily’s room in order that she might get tidy for tea and Alice stood in the doorway frowning at the empty grate and cheap furniture.

“Why have they put you in here?” she demanded.

“I don’t know,” said Emily, doing hasty repairs to her face in front of the spotted mirror. “I suppose it was the most convenient room there was. It’s a long way from the other bathrooms, though, and the water in this one is never hot.”

“It’s the old servants’
w
ing,” Alice said, still frowning. “But now no one lives in except Mrs. Pride and Shorty. Do you like Shorty, Miss Moon?”

“Well
—
”

“He’s very good-natured, really. He used to be a male nurse once—that’s why he sometimes seems familiar.”

“Really?” Emily found the little girl’s grown-up observations a trifle disconcerting.

“Yes. Uncle Dane says he has a heart of gold. Are you ready now? I’m beginning to feel hungry.”

As they went down the shallow staircase together, Alice suddenly slipped a hand into Emily’s.

“I shall call you Emily,” she said. “You don’t look very o
l
d.”

Tea was laid in the library and Dane was there waiting, his dog at his feet. Emily watched with curiosity the greeting between the child and her guardian.

Alice said politely:

“Good evening, Uncle Dane. How is Bella?”

Dane replied:

“It’s nice to have you home again, Alice. Bella is very well, thank you.”

They did not kiss. The bitch thumped a welcoming tail on the carpet and the child gave her a rather tentative pat before taking her place at the table.

“Will you pour out for us?” Dane asked, and smiled in Alice’s direction.

“Oh. oughtn’t Emily—Miss Moon, I mean
—
?”

“No, I think that’s still your privilege. After all, you’re the lady of the house in holiday time.”

Emily knew that he was going out of his way to put the child at her ease, but Alice gave him one of her repressed, old-fashioned looks and complied without pleasure.

“I hope you two have made friends,” Dane said, and Emily remembered the child saying upstairs:

“I never make friends with people unless they want to first.”

“I hope so,” she answered nervously. “We introduced ourselves in the garden.”

“I found her up a tree,” said Alice.

“What a curious place to choose on a winter’s day,” observed Dane with raised eyebrows.

“Yes, wasn’t it? She looked very beautiful peeping through the snowy branches.”

“Did she indeed?” said Dane, and Emily felt herself flushing.

After that they ate their tea in silence until Emily held out a piece of cake to Bella and was promptly rebuked by Dane.

“I never allow tit-bits at table,” he said, and Alice, observing Emily’s crestfallen face with interest, asked suddenly in a clear, reproving voice:

“Why has Emily been put in the servants’ wing?”

Dane frowned.

“I
w
asn’t aware that she had been,” he replied shortly. “What room do you mean?”

“The one opposite the bathroom that’s never used. There wasn’t even a fire in the grate,” said Alice.

He gave an exclamation of annoyance.

“Ring the bell for Shorty,” he said. “I’m most terribly sorry,
E
mily. You should have told me.”

“Oh, please—” began Emily, dismayed that he should take his servant to task in her hearing, but the little man was already at the door. He could never, Emily thought, remembering other occasions of promptitude, be very far away.

She did not enjoy the brief interchange between them, nor the discomfiture on Shorty’s face as he tried to put the blame on Mrs. Pride.

“Both of you should have known better,” Dane said sharply. “When I gave orders for a room to be prepared for a guest, it never occurred to me that it was necessary to stipulate which one. See to it that Miss Moon’s things are moved at once to the other wing and a fire lighted.”

The man went sulkily away, muttering: “Guest, my foot!” under his breath, and Emily sighed. Now he would resent her more than ever, thinking she had complained.

“I wish
—
” she began despondently, but Dane gave
her one of those long level looks which were so deceptive.

“He was probably jealous,” he said. “The house has been a good bit upset by the other applicants for your job.”

“But Emily will stay, won’t she, Uncle Dane?” said Alice. “She’ll stay for the whole of my holidays, won’t she?”

“I hope so,” he returned gravely. “Though it wasn’t entirely for your benefit that she was invited here. Incidentally, has she given you permission to use her Christian name on such short acquaintance?”

Emily saw the child flush and said quickly:

“Yes, of course. I hoped it was a mark of—of friendship.”

Alice shot her a look of gratitude.

“Yes, it was,” she said with her rare, shy smile. “You looked so lovely in that tree. I shall always remember.”

Emily’s heart warmed to the little girl in the days that followed. She was a quiet child, evidently brought up to be seen and not heard, and at first her sedate composure worried Emily, used to the uninhibited children of previous employers. Alice was always tidy. She would sit for hours reading or just listening politely to the conversation of her elders, and only when she took her daily walks with Emily did she display the normal appetites of her age, and then with an air of faint surprise. She looked quite shocked the first time Emily pelted her with snowballs, but after a little she retaliated and Emily was relieved to find that Alice could run and fall down in the snow like other children.

“I’m glad you’ve come,” Alice said on that occasion. “Will you be here next holidays?”

“Well
—
” began Emily doubtfully, and Alice sighed.

“I thought you were staying on to help Uncle Dane with his book and things. Do you think you won’t be able to stand it when I’ve gone back to school?”

“What an absurd question
!
Your guardian is very considerate. Why should you suppose I mightn’t be able to stand working for him if you’re not here?”

“Now you’re being grown-up and putting me in my
place like Uncle Dane. I only thought
—
”

Emily glanced at her quickly.

“
Why don’t you like Mr. Merritt? He seems very kind to you.
”

Alice wriggled.

“Oh, yes, but he doesn’t really want me.
”

“That’s nonsense!” Emily spoke with firmness. “He wouldn’t have made
hims
elf responsible for you otherwise.”

“He couldn’t help himself,” said Alice simply. “I went with the house. He couldn’t have one without the other, you see.”

Emily knew the old disquiet. She remembered that Miss Pink had said that Dane’s inheritance had been dependent on his willingness to care for the child, but it was not pleasant to think that Alice should know that she was only a means to an end.

“I think you misjudge your guardian,” Emily said uneasily. “After all, you are not his own child.”

“Does that make a difference?”

“Of course.” But even as she spoke, Emily remembered her own father who had wanted only the bewitching beauty that had been Seraphina’s and had nothing left for his daughter.

“You look sad, Emily,” said Alice, slipping a warm, gloved hand through Emily’s arm. “Did no one want you either when you were a little girl?”

“Of course,” said Emily, suspecting that the conversation was in danger of becoming invitingly morbid “Solitary children tend to think too much about themselves, Alice, and at your age one doesn’t understand grown-up problems. Who lives in that house down in the combe? I’ve often noticed it and it always seems to be shut up.”

They were walking along the moorland road which would take them over the ridge to Pennyleat, and Alice’s eyes followed Emily’s pointing hand to the snow-capped turrets and gables of a house on the outskirts of the village of Pennycross.

“That’s Torcroft,” Alice replied indifferently. “It’s been empty for ages.”

“But it’s still furnished.”

“Is it? Perhaps old Mrs. Mortimer will come back one day. She spends most of her time abroad, Shorty says.”

“No children?” asked Emily, thinking of Alice in her adult isolation at Pennyleat
.

“No,” said Alice, her attention already wandering from a familiar landmark of little interest. “There used to be a niece, I think, who came to stay when Uncle Dane visited Uncle Ben Carey, but that was long ago and they went away.”

“Was your guardian a relation of Mr. Carey’s?”

“I don’t
think
so. They just liked each other. Mrs. Pride says Uncle Dane was one of the few people who ever stayed at Pennyleat. Uncle Ben was a relic.”

“A what?” Emily laughed. “I think you probably mean a recluse.”

“Perhaps I do. Mrs. Pride says that Uncle Ben was once in love with Uncle Dane’s mother and would really like to have adopted him instead of me, only he was too old. Uncle Dane wasn’t blind, then, of course. Mrs. Pride
says
—
”

“Mrs. Pride, it would seem, talks too much to a little girl who shouldn’t be concerned with such matters,” broke in Emily quickly, and Alice gave her a scornful look and withdrew her hand.

“That’s grown-up talk,” she observed with displeasure. “I didn’t
think
you would be like the others, Emily.”

They walked the rest of the way home in silence, Emily wondering, for not the first time, how this strange child fared at school. Alice never talked about her school and if she had made friends there, which seemed unlikely, her companions were never mentioned. Emily resolved to speak to Dane about the child. It could hardly be possible, she thought, that isolated though the house was, there could be no young families in the district to provide companionship in the holidays.

But Dane, when she broached the subject with him that evening, after Alice had gone to bed, was not helpful or even particularly interested.

“Old Ben Carey had been a recluse long before he adopted Alice,” he said. “You’d hardly expect him to alter his habits at his age, would you?”

“I suppose not,” said Emily dubiously. “Only
—
”

“Only what?”

“Well—if you adopt a child when you’re too old to care any longer, I should have thought you owed it something.”

In the now familiar semi-darkness of the room his lean face had a sudden ironic weariness. “How young you sound,” he said. “Are you thinking that I, too, neglect the child?”

“No—no, of course not, only
—
”

“Only what?” he said again on a warning note of coldness.

Emily felt she was being impertinent. What, after all, did she, know about an affair which so little concerned her?”

“I only meant that I don’t feel security—material things—are enough,” she continued courageously. “A child needs affection.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he retorted dryly. “Don’t we all?”