Rosy Is My Relative (12 page)

“Of course,” said Adrian. “It’s very kind of you.”

“I assure you,” said the fat man earnestly, “the privilege is mine.”

“Her shackles are in the back of the cart,” said Adrian, “and if you could possibly give her something to eat?”

“Don’t worry about a thing,” said the fat man, holding up one plump finger. “I will attend to everything.”

He disappeared through the front door, and Adrian heard his shrill voice talking to Rosy. Presently there was the rattling and the rumbling of the cart disappearing round the back of the pub and within ten minutes the fat man came back, dancing his way, pigeon-toed, across the great flagged kitchen, looking like an enormous pink cloud of goodwill.

“More brandy?” he fluted. “Deadens the pain.” He sloshed brandy into two glasses with great abandon and handed one to Adrian.

“Your very good health, Mister, er um . . .” said Adrian.

The fat man stared, round-eyed, looking ludicrously like a gigantic baby who has just had a safety-pin jabbed into its buttock.

“My dear sir,” he shrilled, “how remiss of me. I never introduced myself. What with the excitement of the elephant and everything. Peregrine Filigree at your service.” He bowed as low as his stomach would permit him.

“Adrian Rookwhistle,” said Adrian, not to be outdone in courtesy, “at your service.”

“Splendid,” said Mr. Filigree, “absolutely splendid. Now all we have to do is wait for Sam. Are you, by any chance, hungry?”

“Actually, no,” Adrian admitted. “I’m feeling too ghastly to eat anything.”

The fat man made his way over to an outsize leather chair and wedged himself into it securely.

“Now, tell me, my dear sir,” he said very solemnly, interlacing his fat fingers, “just before you fainted, you said that you had been attacked by a drain. Everything is possible in this world, I know, but I would simply adore to hear the details.”

“It wasn’t a drain, it was a train,” said Adrian, and he went on to tell Mr. Filigree of his adventures on the railway line. He was feeling warm and drowsy and the pains in his body somehow did not seem to belong to him. He was also feeling slightly drunk, for Mr. Filigree’s brandies were lavish, to say the least.

“Extraordinary,” said Mr. Filigree, round-eyed as he listened to Adrian’s story. “Quite extraordinary. I remember when I had to give orders to build the Great TransSiberian Railway, we had tremendous trouble with the wolves. Not only eating the labourers, you understand, but getting stuck on the lines as well. Huge packs of them, my dear sir.”

“Fashinating,” said Adrian, articulating with difficulty, “abschlutely fashinating.”

“Ah!” squeaked Mr. Filigree suddenly. “Listen!”

Dimly Adrian was conscious of the clop of horse’s hooves on the road outside.

“That’ll be Sam,” said Mr. Filigree beaming.

He leapt to his feet and danced away across the kitchen like an errant balloon. He threw open the front door.

“Sam! Sam!” he shouted into the night “Come quickly, we’ve got an
elephant
.” And then he danced back to Adrian and beamed down at him. “Such excitement,” he said.

For some reason, Adrian had expected Sam to be a tall, thin and rather lugubrious individual to counteract Mr. Filigree’s circular, baby-face charm; so he began to wonder whether the brandy was even more potent than he suspected when through the front door walked a slender girl of about twenty-three. Even her long skirts and the thick shawl that she had pinned around her shoulders could not disguise the slender attraction of her figure. She had a heart-shaped face and a nose with all the retroussé charm of a Pekinese, short bobbed hair the colour of burnished chestnut, and immense eyes that Adrian discovered later were leaf green flecked with gold. She paused in the doorway, looking at Adrian with astonishment, and Adrian, with a groan of pain, threw back the goose-down quilt and tried to get to his feet.

“No, no,
no
,” said Mr. Filigree in shrill anguish. “You mustn’t move. Sam, this poor man has been hit by a train and he’s brought us the most
beautiful
elephant.”

The girl drew off her gloves slowly and then moved across the kitchen towards them. To Adrian’s hazy gaze she appeared to float rather than to walk, but he attributed this to the brandy.

“What on earth are you talking about, father?” she said.

“He’s got an elephant,” said Mr. Filigree triumphantly, as though this explained everything. “Think of
that
, Sam. A real elephant
here
.”

The girl gave a short, exasperated sigh and then turned to Adrian and held out her hand.

“I am Samantha Filigree,” she said, smiling in a way that made Adrian, for no apparent reason, blush to the roots of his hair. “I’m afraid that my father’s not very good at explaining things. Perhaps you would care to fill in the gaps?”

Once more, his eyes fixed firmly on Mr. Filigree’s excitedly heaving stomach, Adrian told about his accident. Samantha drew in her breath sharply when he had finished and then turned and surveyed her father ominously while he made vague, flapping motions with his hands and turned pink.

“And what have you done about this?” she enquired. “Done?” said Mr. Filigree with injured innocence. “Why, everything, my dear. I’ve given him brandy and put the elephant in the barn.”

“Really,” said Samantha, “you are hopeless. Here’s this poor boy lying here, mortally injured for all you know, and all you can do is prattle on about elephants.”

“Well, I thought I’d leave it until you came back, my dear,” said Mr. Filigree placatingly. “You always do these things so much better.”

Samantha gave him a withering, look and turned to Adrian.

“I’ll get a doctor for you straight away,” she said. “But first, let me make sure how serious it is.”

Deftly the removed the quilt and examined Adrian as swiftly and as impersonally as though he had been a joint of meat. Adrian bit his lips in an effort not to cry out as she gently manipulated his right arm.

“Yes,” the said at last, going over to an oak dresser, pulling open a drawer and taking out an enormous pair of scissors, “you’ve got a broken arm, probably a cracked rib, and a lot of minor bruises.”

She walked back to the sofa twirling the scissors in her competent hands.

“I say,” said Adrian, nervously eyeing the flashing blades, “don’t you think we ought to wait until the doctor . . . ?”

“Don’t be silly,” said Samantha coolly. “We’ve got to get that coat off you before your arm swells up any more. It will be agony taking it off the normal way, so I’m afraid you will just have to sacrifice the coat.”

Skilfully, and to Adrian’s surprise without causing him any pain, she cut neatly up the sleeve of his coat and then performed a similar operation on the sleeve of his shirt.

“There,” she said with satisfaction. “Now, you just lie still while I go and get the doctor.”

“More brandy?” suggested Mr. Filigree, determined not to be outdone in medical proficiency by his daughter. “I remember in Egypt when the slaves were dropping off the pyramids, at sometimes two a day, we always got them brandy.”

“
He
can have some,” said Samantha firmly, “but I want you to remain sober. I shall be back in half an hour or so.” She nodded molly to Adrian and floated out into the night.”

“I do assure you,” said Mr. Filigree, handing Adrian a glass of brandy, “I do positively assure you that I, my dear sir, have never been drunk.” He gave a surreptitious look at the door then poured some brandy into his own glass. “Women,” he fluted, “women in moments of crisis are always apt to lose their heads and say things they do not mean.” He gulped the brandy down thirstily. “It’s the fragility of their nature,” he went on earnestly. “Samantha’s a good child, but rather apt to have a sharp tongue when she loses control of a situation. Do you follow me?”

To Adrian it appeared that Samantha had the situation under considerably more control than her father, but he did not like to say to. So he nodded portentously Mr. Filigree wedged himself once more into his arm chair and sat back beaming rosily and expansively at Adrian.

“I’m always telling Sam,” he said, wagging an admonitory finger at Adrian, “I’m always tailing her that if one follows the Scriptures one can’t go far wrong. ‘Take a little brandy to settle your stomach after a train accident.’ I think you’ll find it in Nebuchadnezzar, or somewhere like that, but alas, women are so frail compared to us men.”

He drank thirstily from his glass, shot a quick glance at the door and then leaned forward as far as his stomach would permit and fixed Adrian with a baleful eye.

“Do you realise,” he said, with such earnestness that his voice disappeared into a falsetto squeak like that of a bat, “do you realise that women cannot remember the past?”

By now Adrian was enveloped in a warm rosy haze of brandy and he was not following Mr. Filigree’s arguments with any great attention.

“Wash that?” he said.

“Women,” repeated Mr. Filigree very solemnly, “cannot remember the past.”

“All the women I’ve met do,” said Adrian bitterly. “Generally in the most ghastly detail.”

“Aha!” said Mr. Filigree, wagging his finger again, “the immediate past perhaps, but no further than that.”

“Well, how far do you want them to go?” asked Adrian, leaning back and closing his eyes.

“You can go right back,” squeaked Mr. Filigree, “if you try hard enough. But it’s the fact that women have such limited intelligence that makes my task all the harder.”

“Really?” said Adrian, half asleep.

“Yes,” said Mr. Filigree firmly, pouring himself some more brandy. “Even when they do remember, it’s some stupid, footling detail, like the colour that was being worn at court, or who was whose lover.”

Adrian mulled this over for a minute or so while Mr. Filigree watched him anxiously.

“Do you know?” said Adrian, opening his eyes suddenly, “I haven’t the least idea what you’re talking about.”

Mr. Filigree sighed in remorse, his double chins and his vast stomach rippling with the reverberations.

“You are not yourself,” he said sorrowfully. “To-morrow, when you are better, I will explain it all to you. Now you go to sleep, the doctor should be here very soon.”

“Thank you,” said Adrian, and he dosed his eyes and immediately sank into a deep and peaceful sleep.

Adrian lay looking at the oak-beamed ceiling, flooded with early morning sunlight, in some satisfaction. It was a week since he had arrived at the
Unicorn and Harp
and it was the first morning on which he had woken feeling really fit. The evening of his arrival Samantha had returned with Dr. Hunchmould, a short stocky little man who walked like a clockwork toy and whose breath whistled through his nostrils like bagpipes. With Samantha, coolly efficient, helping him and Mr. Filigree dancing about ineffectually, Dr. Hunchmould had stripped Adrian down, put three stitches in a long gash in his thigh, bound up his cracked ribs and encased his broken arm in plaster from wrist to elbow. The pain Adrian suffered was considerable, and by the time the doctor had finished he was exhausted. Mr. Filigree, delighted at being able to perform a useful function, bad carried Adrian up the narrow stairs to a small bedroom–cuddled under the thick thatch of the roof–and put him to bed. For the next two days Adrian hardly remembered anything except that Samantha always seemed to be there, smoothing his pillow, holding his head as he vomited into a large china chamber pot covered with rosebuds, and giving him soothing, cooling drinks when his fever got high. He wondered hazily how she managed to get any sleep, for whenever he opened his eye; either during the day or the night, she always seemed to be there, sitting patiently on a chair by his bed, concentrating on some tapestry she was making. Now that he felt better, he was overwhelmed with embarrassment at the trouble he must have caused her. He wiggled his toes into a cool part of the bed, stretched experimentally, and then wished he had not, for his body still ached and twinged.

The door opened suddenly and Samantha came in bearing a tray with his breakfast.

“Good morning,” she said, smiling. “Flow are you feeling?”

“Much better,” said Adrian, blushing as he always did when she fixed her large green eyes on him. “I think, in fact, I could get up. I’m afraid I’ve caused you far too much trouble as it is.”

“Nonsense,” said Samantha briskly, placing the tray on his lap. “You get these eggs down you. They’re fresh this morning. Father went into the village for them.”

“How’s Rosy?” asked Adrian anxiously.

“Fine,” said Samantha raising her eyebrows. “Why? Shouldn’t she be?”

“She doesn’t normally take to women,” explained Adrian.

“Well, she’s taken to me,” said Samantha, “and she adores father. I think she thinks he’s a kind of elephant.”

She sat quietly watching him while he ate the eggs and drank the tea; then she deftly removed the tray and straightened his pillows.

“The doctor’s coming to-day to take out your stitches,” she said. “So you’ll just stay where you are until he tells us whether you can get up.”

“Look,” said Adrian, “there’s something I must tell you. Can you spare five minutes?”

“You’re looking a bit flushed,” said Samantha surveying him critically. “You sure you haven’t got a temperature?”

“No, no,” said Adrian, “I’m just worried.”

Samantha sat down in the chair and folded her hands in her lap.

“Well?” she said interrogatively.

Stumblingly at first, and then with greater fluency, since Samantha listened with rapt attention and did not interrupt, Adrian told her how he had inherited Rosy and of the terrible trail of carnage that they had left across the countryside. Instead of the look of horror which Adrian had expected, and which indeed would have been the accepted reaction of most young ladies to such an improper tale, by the time he had finished Samantha’s face was flushed with suppressed laughter, her eyes were sparkling and her lips twitching.

“So you see,” concluded Adrian, “I’m probably wanted by the police. God knows what they’ll do to me if they catch me, and I can’t deny it. Rosy is the sort of clue that not even a policeman would overlook. So I must get down to the coast and get rid of her. While I’m in your house, Fm a danger to you. I think they call it ‘aiding and abetting’ or something.”