The Girl Green as Elderflower (7 page)

‘I’m going to buy it,’ vowed the boy.

‘All right, you can,’ said the youth, and took up a small card. ‘Just let’s not hear any more about it.’

The child gave some brightly coloured papers to the young man, and received the card with great satisfaction. But his sister said: ‘You are a baby, Mikey. Amabel’s not much older than you, and she doesn’t behave like that.’

‘She’s miles older than me,’ said the boy. ‘She’s nearly eight.’

The little fairhaired girl placed her hand on the young man’s arm, and when he had bent his head to her, whispered in his ear. He nodded at what she said, and spoke to his sister. ‘Just take no notice. Otherwise—you know—he’s easily upset.’

‘Still, there
are
rules,’ said the brown girl. ‘Oh well, your turn, Amabel.’

The other girl threw the dice, and moved a toy thimble along the board to a place on which was written a question mark. From some cards which were piled near the centre she took the uppermost one, and privately read it, at first with puzzlement in her eyes, then with a small smile.

‘It says go to gaol,’ said the boy.

‘No, it doesn’t,’ answered Amabel, and she showed it to the youth.

When he read it, the young man laughed, and seemed as puzzled as the girl. He said to himself: ‘Who could have done that?’ and then: ‘This isn’t the sort of thing you’d do, is it, Lucy?’

‘What isn’t?’ asked the older girl, and the young man reached out a long arm and placed the card on the table between his sister and brother.

The girl stared at the card, and read aloud: ‘GO AND BOIL YOUR HEAD, MIKEY.’

On hearing this, the face of the boy was vacant for a moment, then it went red and he shouted at the youth: ‘Marco!’

‘
I
didn’t write it,’ said the young man, with a convincing seriousness. ‘Did you, Lucy?

‘You know I couldn’t write like that. It’s italic, isn’t it? And I’m sure you didn’t, did you, Amabel?’

The fair child shook her head, and the boy, still scowling at his brother, insisted loudly: ‘I know you did, Marco, I know you did.’

Because of the passion in his voice, the brother and sister looked at one another with concern. Only the fairheaded girl, though grave and quiet, remained apart, and watched her companions with a detached curiosity.

At a moment when the youngest child seemed about to burst into a bellow, a movement caught his eye, and he fell into stillness.

Before each of the players of the game were heaps of paper of different colours, representing money. What the child observed with round eyes was an orange paper lift itself from a pile before his brother, float across the table, and place itself on the one scrap of that colour which was his own.

Then another paper rose, from a pile before Lucy. The brown girl snatched at it in mid-air, but drew back her hand with a cry. The orange fragment continued on its way, and descended before Mikey.

Mikey began to laugh. He asked: ‘What is it, how do you do it?’ And from the air came an answering laugh, and a child’s voice which said: ‘
Numquam scies.’

The face of the brown girl, though a strong face, was full of fear, and the young man was frozen and staring. Suddenly all the play-money which lay before him and Amabel was gathered into a bundle, rose, and fell in front of Mikey. Then Lucy’s money in the same way flew off, and all the wealth of the game was scattered between the hands of the boy.

Out of a box little houses of red and green wood came floating, and settled themselves with sharp clicks around the edge of the board. Then a tiny racing-car of lead, which was Mikey’s counter, began to tear about the London square which had been created. It changed gear rapidly, passed each corner with screeching brakes, and at last crashed into a hotel in Mayfair. There was a hideous sound of rending metal and smashing plate-glass as the tiny car and house quite silently hit the floor.

The tall boy got to his feet, as white as a candle. He reached for the fairhaired girl’s hand, and to his sister he said urgently: ‘Bring Mikey, come to me.’ He retreated to a high carved settle at his back, and sat stiffly down, one arm about the girl. His other arm went out to his sister, while the youngest child, between fear and laughter, made himself a redoubt of his brother’s knees.

The oil-lamp on the table suddenly flared. An intense white light, in which no flame could be seen, for five seconds lit every cranny of the dark hall. Then as quickly it died, and the lamp burned peacefully on.

‘Oh Marco,’ Lucy whimpered. ‘Oh Marco.’

One end of the great heavy settle lifted from the floor. As they slid to the other end, it sank to rest again. Then the end at which they were slumped entangled rose in its turn, to descend when their sliding had brought them to the middle.

Mikey began to scream, and Mark caught him up in his arms. Lucy would not scream, but kept moaning breathlessly.

The tall boy was sick with fear, and sick with shame at his fear. In his hoarse young mumble he cried out: ‘What are you? What the hell are you?’

In the air, a child’s voice called on the two notes of the cuckoo: ‘Malkin.’

A door opened, and the mistress of the house came in. At the sight of her children huddled together on the settle she gave a vague smile, and asked: ‘What kind of game is that?’ Then she saw the face of her eldest son, and her own face stiffened and whitened. ‘Marco,’ she said. ‘Marco—is it Daddy?’

‘No,’ he called out. ‘No, nothing like that. It’s all right. Only—’

From the table the burning lamp ascended. Its yellow light slowly circled the beamed ceiling, until it was again above the table. Then it floated down, and stood fast, without a flicker. From the air, the small voice chanted: ‘
Nolite timere, amiculi.
’

‘Oh my God,’ whispered the russet-haired lady.

But the little boy suddenly laughed, and twisting about in his brother’s arms, looked expectantly into the room. Slowly, as if by no will of his, his hand lifted from his brother’s, his arm stretched out, and his wrist turned. In his palm there was all at once a red apple, with a sweet smell.

‘Don’t eat it, Mikey,’ his mother called. But the boy had already bitten into it, and chewed with content.

Unexpectedly, Amabel, who had made no sound until then, gave a tiny yelp. ‘You must say thank you, Mikey,’ she said. ‘Thank you, thank you, whatever you are.’

Again the airy voice called, cuckoo-like: ‘Malkin.’

Still white in the face, the boy in his arms, Mark stood up. He said solemnly into the air: ‘In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, be gone from this house.’

Close by him there was a laugh, and the childlike voice spoke again. ‘Nor don’t you come to ours, you lummucken great hippeddehoy.’

‘Oh, please,’ cried Amabel, ‘he doesn’t mean to offend you.’

‘I shall play with you again,’ said the sprite, ‘when that long lob int so fractious. I’m now going hoom.’

‘But tell us who you are,’ cried the fairhaired girl.

From the open door behind the lady there came again the cuckoo-call of: ‘Malkin.’ It was repeated several times before dying away in distant rooms.

The younger man and his mother looked large-eyed at one another. In the mistress’s face was a dwindling fear, which was letting in amusement. In the youth’s, fear was vanquished by mortification.

‘I
felt
it,’ Lucy exclaimed, suddenly garrulous with relief. ‘I grabbed at the money it had in its hand, and it snatched it away, but I’d felt its fingers. Tiny fingers.’

Amabel said shyly: ‘It pulled at—it snapped my knicker-elastic. Then it whispered in my ear: “Lot of thanks I get.” It meant from Mikey.’

The little boy was still skranshing the spirit’s apple.

‘Mikey,’ his mother said, ‘what did it say to you?’

‘It was like this,’ the child said, and putting his lips against his brother’s ear blew a raspberry. ‘That’s what made me laugh,’ he explained. ‘It sounded like that, and I could feel this nice warm mouth.’

In the chamber above the hall the sick man lay in the uncurtained four-poster bed. His melancholy eyes, in a face made the finer by his wraith of a beard, were on the sunny window, and on the tall black figure which stood looking over the walled garden.

‘It will soon be spring,’ said the man in black clothes. ‘I see some daffodils out around your fruit trees.’

‘So early?’ said the man in the bed. ‘How sudden everything seems to be this year.’

The priest, turning back from the outlook, strayed to a chair placed by the bed, and lowered on to it his large, athletic frame. He was a man perhaps ten years younger than the other, with a strong face in which there was nevertheless something ingenuous. The eyes of the older man rested on him for a moment with an ambiguous expression, mingling indulgence with respect.

‘Do you have anything you want to say to me?’ the priest asked. ‘Any question?’

The gaunt man shook his head with a smile in which there was still something boyish. ‘Why disturb our peace of mind?’

‘My peace is nothing,’ said the big priest. ‘But if that’s a consideration with you, you could think about making me feel useful.’

‘Ah, no,’ said the master of the house. ‘I couldn’t think about that. Because it’s calm here, where I am. You’re the stronger man. At a time like this, don’t disturb me by asking for my help.’

The big man seemed made graver, and uncertain, by his friend, but after a moment smiled at him fraternally, and said: ‘You don’t change. No. Ornery as mud.’

In the hall below Amabel and Mikey sat at the table, while their mother’s daily aide whisked about them with duster and broom. ‘I don’t know, I’m sure,’ she said, ‘why you sit here just when I’m busy. It’s a lovely morning out, if you wrap up well.’

‘We’re waiting, Mrs Kersey,’ said Mikey. ‘We’ve been waiting since breakfast.’

‘For a friend,’ explained Amabel, ‘who is coming to play.’

‘Well, the play-room is tidy,’ said Mrs Kersey, ‘and I’m sure that’s easier to keep warm. That fire make so much dust in here.’

As the rosy woman, with duster and furniture-polish, was addressing herself to the oak settle, a voice said out of the air. ‘Did you ever find your ring, Kitty Kersey?’

Mikey ran to the door, yelling: ‘Lucy! Lucy!’ And Mrs Kersey suddenly found Amabel beside her, holding her protectively by the hand.

With the smile of someone whose good humour was being tested in public, Mrs Kersey gazed about the ceiling. ‘Am I on Candid Camera?’ she asked. ‘Well, if that’s you, Mark, I’ve heard of tape-recorders before.’

‘It int Mark,’ said the voice from the air. ‘You don’t know me, but I know you, Kitty Kersey.’

‘It’s that familiar,’ said Mrs Kersey. ‘If it’s you, Lucy, I shall give you a good slap.’

‘It int Lucy, neither,’ said the voice. ‘Lucy’s just now coming.’ And a moment later the brown girl arrived in haste.

‘Is it Malkin?’ she panted out to Amabel, and the other girl nodded her pale gold head.

Mrs Kersey’s tolerant face was beginning to look imposed upon, and she said a little fretfully: ‘If it’s a joke, there’s jokes that go off, like milk.’

‘Now then, Kitty Kersey,’ said the sprite, ‘don’t get your knickers in a twist. There int so many people see as are sin, and I believe I’ve sin you about for a year or two. Not to mention the times I’ve heard your name from Bill Brooks up at the forge. Old Bill he say: “If ever I marry again,” he say, “Kitty Bugg that was will be the bride, and no other won’t do.”’

‘The cheek of him,’ bridled Mrs Kersey. ‘He’s got no right to be making so free with my name, and he can’t say that I ever give him encouragement.’

‘I don’t say you do, gal,’ answered Malkin, ‘and he don’t say so, and he only talk like that to his old mother, and she’s as deaf as a beetle. But old Bill, he int such a bad old boy, and he fancies you something comical, and widowers int so thick on the ground as widows. There’s others would have him, and Margery Mill is one.’

‘She’s very welcome, I’m sure,’ said Mrs Kersey.

‘I’ll tell you something,’ said Malkin, ‘I hear about Margery Mill. Cor, I thought I’d die laughing. It was during the war, you see, when the Yanks was about with lots of money, and that Margery Clegg, she was then, she give herself a bath in milk. A bathful of milk, I ask you, would you credit it? Iss, she bathed in milk to make herself more beautiful.’

‘She never!’ cried Mrs Kersey, with joyous laughter. ‘Oh, I don’t believe it. How could you know such a thing?’

‘I was in her sister’s house,’ said Malkin, ‘when she tell her husband that story, and I had to go away because I thought they’d hear me laughing. There int many I talk to,’ explained the sprite, ‘and none that see me. But a house like this, with children in it, is kind of cheery, and it’s dismal-like at ours.’

‘Malkin,’ said Lucy, ‘where do you live?’

‘Here and there, dear gal,’ said the sprite, ‘here and there. I’ve been at Kitty Kersey’s before now, when her daughter was younger. I sin Kitty lose her ring, and I know where it is.’

‘My ring?’ cried Mrs Kersey.

‘Iss,’ answered Malkin, ‘that cheap little old ring your Tom give you when you was walking out. That roll under your bed and down a crack, and if your son-in-law lift a board, there it will be.’

While Mrs Kersey exclaimed her thanks, Amabel was watching the stairs. The tall priest was descending, with a thoughtful face, and fingering his lip.

‘Morning, Mrs K.,’ he said absently; and then, puzzled by the scene in the hall: ‘Was it me you were speaking to then?’

‘Oh, it’s just some game,’ said Mrs Kersey, ill at ease. ‘No, I didn’t even see you there.’

Malkin said distinctly: ‘
Abes, praelonge
!’

‘Excuse me?’ said the priest, looking amazed. ‘What was that?’

Again the high, childlike voice cried out commandingly:
‘Abes, praelonge!’

‘I see,’ said the priest, looking, however, quite baffled. ‘Mark has taught one of you to say—er—“Make off, Lofty!” in Latin.’

‘
Mentiris
,’ said Malkin irritably. ‘
Marcus haud Latine loqui potest.
’

‘It’s got to be Mark,’ said the priest, more and more uncomfortable. ‘How are you doing that voice, Mark? Where are you hiding?’