Dorothy Eden (2 page)

“She’s perfectly sweet, but I only acquired her when I was eighteen, so naturally she’s not deeply interested in me. Since my father died she has taken up growing flowers for the market. Even when I visit her she forgets I’m there. She’s cutting roses, or transplanting polyanthus, or something.”

“Marriage plans?” Mrs. Dix asked in her friendly, inoffensive voice.

Kate thought of William and said definitely, “Not at present. None at all.”

“Well, that all seems very satisfactory. It leaves you completely free to do these things for me. I like to know my employees are without urgent family ties, when I send them on jobs abroad. Shall I tell you what I have in mind for you? It’s a very important mission, but actually very simple, and only requires travel sense and, of course, responsibility. You’ve been on holidays abroad, Miss Squires tells me.”

“Yes, several times.” On a shoe string, of course, staying at pensions or youth hostels, walking blisters on to one’s heels, living on rolls and spaghetti.

“Splendid. Have you been to Rome?”

“Once only, for two days.”

“You don’t speak Italian?”

“Almost none at all.”

“Well, that won’t matter greatly.”

“But what am I to do, Mrs. Dix?”

“Oh, a very simple little mission indeed. You won’t have a chocolate? I shall, I’m afraid. My husband is to blame, you know. He indulged this passion of mine. I shall tell him, when he comes home, how he is to pay for it, with all these pounds of flesh.” Mrs. Dix chuckled, squeezing at her plump waist. “My dear, you have beautiful blue eyes. With that black hair. Quite arresting.”

Kate sighed. “Yes, but my nose is wrong.” William’s healthy outspokenness never allowed her to become conceited.

“Not seriously wrong. I’m wondering if Miss Squires is right, after all. Are you the right person to send? But if you’re used to travelling, and you promise to behave with discretion—” Mrs. Dix’s pale blue eyes suddenly flew up, looking directly at Kate instead of at the distant door. “Rather a pity, isn’t it? Well, never mind. It’s a very simple thing we want you to do. Merely to bring a child, a little girl, to London. You are to be her courier, in fact, or her nannie, if you prefer to look at it that way.” Mrs. Dix’s plump fingers dipped into the box of chocolates again. She leaned back on the couch smiling benignly. “Well, my dear, how do you like the idea of that?”

Kate privately liked it very well indeed. Her one brief trip to Rome had filled her with a passion for that ancient and fabulous city, and the chance to go back, with all travelling expenses paid, seemed too good to be true. Instinctively, she began to look for the flaw in the plan.

“May I ask you some questions, Mrs. Dix?”

“Indeed. Go ahead.”

“Who is this child? An Italian?”

“Yes; of divorced parents, unfortunately.”

“Does she speak English?”

“A little. Very little, I believe.”

“How old is she?”

“She’s seven, only a baby, poor pet, and her name is Francesca. I can visualize her, can’t you, dark-haired, shy, unhappy.”

“Why unhappy?”

“Because her parents are fighting over her. That’s the story, you see. The court granted the mother, who now lives in London, custody, but the father wasn’t having any of that, so what does he do but nip over to London and kidnap the child. Quite illegally, of course. So there has been more action about that, and now he has agreed to give her up. But someone has to come and get her and travel back to England with her. Naturally, a child of seven can’t travel alone.”

“Why doesn’t the mother go?”

“She’s just recovering from an illness, brought on by all this worry. She won’t completely recover until she has her child again. So see what a good deed you will be doing, besides seeing your beloved Eternal City again.”

Kate hadn’t said that it was her beloved Eternal City, but refrained from pointing this out. Indeed, she was beginning to feel pleasantly excited and stimulated. Perhaps she could arrange with Mrs. Dix to go a day earlier than planned, and have one free day in Rome, to wander about sketching the wild flowers growing tenaciously in the centuries-weathered walls of the Colosseum, the gargoyles, with their noses rubbed flat, on old cathedrals, and the hurrying people along the pavements, silhouetted against the ancient splendour.

“Well?” said Mrs. Dix, with her comfortable smile.

“I’d love to go,” Kate said enthusiastically. “But—”

“You’re wondering about your fee? I think you will be quite happy about that. Francesca’s mother is prepared to be generous. Considering the exertion and responsibility, we thought twenty guineas, and expenses paid. You’ll travel first-class both ways, and there’ll be a night in Rome when, of course, you must be comfortable. Comfort’s such a necessity, isn’t it?” Mrs. Dix’s fingers hovered over the chocolate box.

“But, Mrs. Dix—”

“Aren’t you happy about the fee, my dear?”

“Yes, indeed. I think it’s very generous. It makes me feel Francesca must be a very important child.” Or a very difficult one, she thought to herself.

“A bone between two dogs, a poor little creature. Then I take it you agree to go?”

“I’d absolutely love to. But can I see Francesca’s mother first?”

“Rosita? Whatever for?”

“I’d like to talk to her. If the child can’t speak English we may have trouble about the sort of food she likes, and so on.” She refrained from adding that she wanted dearly to see Francesca’s background, to get a complete picture of the situation. Was her mother really ill—or just lazy?

Mrs. Dix hesitated. She said doubtfully, “I shall have to see. I shall have to ring Rosita. But yes, of course, I think it is a very good idea. She would like to see you, too. After all, it is her child whom all this fuss is about. Yes, I think that can be arranged. I’ll let you know.”

But was it Kate’s imagination that now, all at once, Mrs. Dix’s pale blue eyes did not quite meet hers?

Kate didn’t know why she had this curiosity to see Rosita. Was it because the child, Francesca, the unknown little Italian, a bone between two dogs, as Mrs. Dix had called her, wouldn’t seem real until she had talked to her mother? Or was it because she imagined Rosita to be a spoilt, olive-skinned beauty with hypochondriac tendencies, and wanted to see for herself who most needed sympathy, the bereft mother, or the father, obviously emotional and affectionate, who had come to England to swoop up his daughter and fly with her.

It was probably foolish of her to risk getting emotionally involved in the problem of two strangers, but all her life she had never found it possible to stand aside as a spectator of other people’s happiness or unhappiness. She had always plunged in, to share or sympathize. It had not always been rewarding, and William constantly warned her that her quixotic tendencies would finally lead her into some inextricable and insoluble problem. Kate didn’t worry much about that. It made life exciting and unpredictable, and one owed it to people to be interested in them.

As she went down the stairs from Mrs. Dix’s room, Miss Squires poked her head out from her small dark office.

She was a little rotund person with shortsighted brown eyes and an anxious forehead. She had taken a fancy to Kate, and twice had invited her to her prim little cottage on the Sussex downs, where she lived alone, except for a large black and white cat called, unimaginatively, Tom.

“Are you going to do it?” she whispered, as if, all at once, she was nervous of the plump, chocolate meringue woman in the room upstairs.

“Oh, yes. It’s wonderful. Perfectly wonderful.”

The corrugations in Miss Squires’ forehead deepened. “I thought you’d think that. Actually, it was I who suggested giving you the job. You’re reliable, and I thought the poor kid would like someone young and gay.”

“How nice you are!” Kate said sincerely.

Miss Squires, middle-aged and plain, and obviously unused to compliments, flushed.

“I said nothing but the truth. But I hope it will be all right. This trip,” she added.

“Why shouldn’t it be? Oh, you mean Francesca might be unmanageable?”

“That, and her father. We don’t know about him, you see.”

“But if he’s promised to let the child go.”

“Yes, of course.”

“And I’m going to see the mother this afternoon.”

“Oh, well, then—”

As Miss Squires hesitated, Kate laughed. “I do believe you’re one of those old-fashioned people who don’t trust foreigners!”

Miss Squires flushed again and said gruffly, “Not always without reason. Well, take care of yourself. Come down to the cottage for a weekend when you get back.”

Rosita lay on a couch in a high-ceilinged, luxurious room in a house in Egerton Gardens. She was small and dark-haired, with a pointed, sallow face, and eyes that made Kate think fleetingly of Raphael’s “Portrait of a Woman.” It was not so much that they were full of secrets, as that they would like to seem so. No doubt this pose was quite successful with men.

She did not look particularly ill, Kate thought. Her languid hand-shake seemed to be a pose, too.

It was true that she was merely spoilt, probably disliking the thought of the long journey to Rome, or not wanting to risk another encounter with her ex-husband.

There seemed little doubt that he would not be the only man in her life.

Kate looked around the room, noting the couch with its pale green brocade covering, the curtains of rich crimson Italian damask, the gilt-framed mirrors, the cushions and small tables. Was this a good environment for a child of seven—a tense, unhappy and probably maladjusted child? With a hypochondriacal mother lying on a couch extending a languid hand to callers?

She spoke in English that had only the slightest accent.

“Miss Tempest, it is so good of you to come to see me. Mrs. Dix told me how thorough you are. That you want to find out about Francesca before the journey.”

“It’s a long journey,” Kate said.

“You are so right. That’s why I can’t possibly go myself, much as I would like to. But I really can’t stand it. All this upset has made me ill. Antonio behaving like this—”

Her face puckered as if she were going to cry. She hastily controlled herself. If she were not ill, she was extremely nervous, Kate thought, and wondered why. Although the reason seemed obvious enough. A kidnapped daughter, and all the entailed fuss.

“You’ll find Francesca a very good child, Miss Tempest. Even a little—how do you say it—solemn? She won’t give you any trouble. She doesn’t speak much English, but enough to get by. She’s well-grown for her age. Oh, and don’t forget her doll. She must always have her doll or there are fireworks at bedtime. Miss Tempest, you will take good care of her, won’t you?”

“Of course I will.”

“Mrs. Dix said you could be trusted. I wish I could go myself. I might have flown, but Francesca’s crazy, but crazy, about trains and boats, the Channel ferry—ugh!—and the Eiffel Tower.”

“The Eiffel Tower?”

“Yes, she adores going up it. To the very top. I hope you have a head for heights. I haven’t.”

Rosita shuddered, and Kate suddenly wanted to laugh. This was going to be a light-hearted odyssey after all, with a child who adored continental trains, and Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower. Now she had become a person, and a person of definite character. Suddenly Kate was looking forward to meeting her.

“Why are you smiling?” Rosita asked suspiciously.

“I like the Eiffel Tower, too.”

“Good heavens! How very extraordinary! Then the two of you should get on very well.”

“Indeed we will,” Kate said cheerfully.

She got up to go. The limp hand came out again. But this time, to her surprise, it clung to hers with surprising strength. It was cold and a little damp. It was, strangely enough, like the hand of a person who was afraid…

Mrs. Peebles had to be told, of course. Apart from her grudging but fairly accurate delivery of telephone messages, she liked to know what Kate was up to. Since all Kate’s visitors had to come through the front door and negotiate the stairs to the basement they had to endure the sharp surveillance of Mrs. Peebles, and this was another source of interest for that lady who was frank and uninhibited in her comments.

“That young man last night, Miss Tempest. Bit of a weed, wasn’t he? You can do better than that,” or, “She’d be a flighty piece, that Miss Edwards. Pity the man who gets her.”

Of William, surprisingly enough, she approved, which was rather boring. Kate felt that a few waspish comments from Mrs. Peebles would have made her fly hotly to William’s defence, and perhaps have made her fall in love with him. As it was, they disagreed about almost everything, from the latest play to the colour of William’s tie. William was slow in his movements, and untidy and forgetful, and appallingly frank about either Kate’s work, her appearance, or her behaviour. He treated her, she complained bitterly, as if they had been married for years. But somehow they stuck together. Or rubbed along. And the odd, weedy or more flamboyant types of whom Mrs. Peebles disapproved did not take her out a second time. Perhaps it was this quality of outspokenness that drew Mrs. Peebles and William together. Whatever it was, Kate suddenly felt enormously relieved at the thought of escaping, for a brief time, from both of them.

Mrs. Peebles was sharp, small and spry. At the sound of the front door closing she appeared, like a mouse from the wainscoting, ready to dart back into her hole the moment she had seen all that was necessary.

“Oh, it’s you, Miss Tempest. Only one message. From Mr. Howard. He said to tell you to keep tomorrow night free because he had tickets for the Old Vic.”

“He’ll have to take someone else,” Kate said pleasantly. “I’ll be halfway to Rome.”

“Rome! Whatever do you want to go there for?”

“Just a job. I’ll be away about three days, so if anyone rings—”

“Oh, yes, scribbling away at that telephone when I should be doing my work. Then you’d better ring Mr. Howard.”

“Later,” said Kate, going towards the stairs.

“He’ll be around.”

“Not if I know it. I have to pack and have an early night.”

“Rome!” muttered Mrs. Peebles. “What are they sending you there for? Turning you into a spy?”