The Touch (54 page)

“Is she in Jade’s league?”

“Perhaps not, but she’s very devoted.”

“I should have ignored Dad and come home,” Nell grumbled. “Let’s go and see them, Mum.”

The nursery might have served as an artist’s model, it looked so perfect in every detail. The new Wong sister was huddled close to Anna, who had Dolly on her lap; two different heads of black hair, one straight, one curly, bent together over an exquisite little fair child, plump and dimpled.

The last time Nell had seen Dolly she was still a baby, but this was a toddler almost two years old, with a thatch of flaxen ringlets above a round, cherubic face in which were set two eyes the color of aquamarines. Her brows and lashes were brown, perhaps suggesting that the hair would darken as she grew older, and she had a look to her that didn’t suggest Alexander or Elizabeth—her father, no doubt.

When Anna glanced up and saw Nell, her face broke into smiles; she flung Dolly away as if she were a lifeless doll—not a new action, Nell deduced, as Peony was ready to catch the child, put her on the floor unharmed.

“Nell! Nell! Nell!” Anna cried, arms outstretched.

“Hello, my darling,” said Nell, hugging and kissing her.

“Dolly! Where Dolly?” Anna demanded then.

“Here,” said Peony, handing her over.

“Dolly, my Dolly!” said Anna to Nell, beaming.

“Hello, Dolly. You don’t remember me, do you?” Nell asked, taking one little hand. “I’m your Auntie Nell.”

“Auntie Nell,” the child enunciated clearly, and smiled.

“May I have her, Anna?”

A frown came; Anna considered her sister from under her fine dark brows, and for a moment both Elizabeth and Nell wondered if she would reject Nell as she had before Dolly’s birth. Then she plucked the child off her lap and threw her carelessly at Nell. “Here!” she said, the impulse of denial dying.

Half an hour with Anna and Dolly left Nell more exhausted than contending with white male university students, but it also left her steeled to say what had to be said. Preferably to both her parents at one and the same moment.

“Mum, Dad,” she said in the library, where the three of them gathered for a sherry before dinner, “I have something to discuss that won’t wait.”

Sensing what was coming, Elizabeth shrank into herself at once, whereas Alexander merely lifted his eyes from contemplation of his drink and raised his brows in an unspoken question.

“It’s Anna and Dolly.”

“What about them?” Alexander asked, stifling a sigh.

“You’re going to have to separate them.”

He looked aghast. “Separate them? Why?”

“Because Dolly is a flesh-and-blood child whom Anna treats like a rag doll. Don’t you remember what happened when she was given a puppy years ago? She squeezed it too hard, it bit her, and she dashed its brains out against the wall. The same fate is in store for Dolly, who’s become big enough and independent enough to strive for a little freedom. Freedom Anna isn’t willing to allow. Rag dolls are at beck and call, you can chuck them away into a corner and pick them up whenever you feel like it.”

“Surely you exaggerate, Nell,” said Alexander.

“Indeed you do,” said Elizabeth. “Anna loves Dolly.”

“Anna loved the puppy too, and I do not exaggerate!” Her voice rose, sharpened. “Dad, did Mum tell you how Anna pinched Dolly’s arm a few weeks ago? Left it black-and-blue?”

“No,” said Alexander, putting down his drink.

“But it was only the once, Nell,” Elizabeth protested. “I told you, it was only the once! There’s been nothing since.”

“Yes, Mum, there has! It happens all the time, but you’re refusing to see it. Dolly gets flung around every day as if she were inanimate, but between Peony—a very good girl!—and her own instincts for self-preservation, she manages to avoid being hurt.” Nell went across to her father and sank down at his knee, her hand on it, her cornflower-blue eyes fixed on his face. “Dad, the situation cannot be allowed to continue. If it does continue, then Dolly is going to be seriously injured. Either Peony won’t be close enough to catch her, or Anna will refuse to give her up if she’s punishing her ‘bad Dolly.’ The same goes for you as for Peony, Mum. Neither of you is half as strong as Anna.”

“I see,” said Alexander slowly. “Yes, I see.”

“We’ll redouble our efforts,” Elizabeth said, casting this traitorous daughter a look of loathing. “They are mother and child! Anna nursed Dolly for eight months! If we tried to pull them apart, Anna would pine away and die.”

“Oh, Mum, do you think I haven’t considered that?” Nell cried, head turned toward her. “Do you think saying all of this gives me any pleasure? Anna is my sister! I love her! I always have, I always will. But she’s changed since Dolly’s birth—maybe that’s easier for me to see, because I haven’t been here for such a long time. Her vocabulary has lessened, so has her ability to string words together. Anna’s always been infantile, but she’s steadily regressing. After Dolly’s birth she was so gentle, treated Dolly as if she understood that it was living flesh she cuddled. But now she doesn’t. And her moods are worsening. She’s become—oh, petulant and domineering—probably because she’s been so spoiled all her life. No one has ever slapped her for being naughty, or tried to remonstrate with her.”

“She never needed slapping! Which is more than I can say for you, madam!” Elizabeth snapped.

“I agree,” said Nell, remaining calm. Her attention returned to her father. “Dad, you must act.”

“It’s always you who sees the truth, Nell, isn’t it? Yes, I must act.”

“No!” Elizabeth shouted, jumping to her feet in a flurry of spilled sherry. “No, Alexander, I won’t permit it!”

“Go away, Nell,” said Alexander.

“But Dad—”

“Not now. Just go away.”

“The final phase has come,” Alexander said as soon as the door closed. “I started as Dadda, then I became Daddy, and now I’m Dad. Nell has grown up.”

“Into your living image—cold and hard-hearted!”

“No, into her amazing self. Sit down, Elizabeth.”

“I can’t,” she said, beginning to pace.

“You will sit down! I refuse to have a serious discussion with someone swishing around in an attempt to avoid the truth.”

“Anna is my child,” Elizabeth said, sinking into her chair.

“And Dolly is your grandchild, don’t forget that.” He sat forward, his hands clasped loosely together, and pinned her on his unblinking ebony stare. “Elizabeth, for all that you dislike me, for all that I disgust you, I am the father of your daughters, and Dolly’s grandfather. Do you honestly believe that I am so insensitive that I can’t plumb the depths of this tragedy? That I didn’t suffer for Anna when I learned she was so afflicted? That I didn’t suffer for Jade, who paid the price? Do you think that, if I could, I wouldn’t somehow alleviate the pain and sorrow that has surrounded Anna for all her fifteen years of life? Of course I would! I’d shift heaven and earth, if shifting heaven and earth would help her. But tragedies don’t cease being tragedies. They run their course to the terrible end. Just as this tragedy will. Perhaps no child could be as gifted as Nell without some kind of counterbalance. But you can’t blame Nell for being who she is, any more than you can blame me—or yourself!—for what Anna is. Accept the facts, my dear. Anna and Dolly have to be separated before the tragedy worsens.”

She listened, tears pouring down her face. “I have hurt you dreadfully,” she said through sobs, “although I never meant to. If this is a time for truth, I know how little you deserve what I’ve done to you.” Her hands writhed, fingers screwed together. “You have been kind and generous, and I know—I know!—that if I had behaved differently toward you, none of the bitter things would ever have been said. Nor would you have needed Ruby. But I cannot help myself, Alexander, I cannot help myself!”

Handkerchief out, he rose from his chair and went to her, pushed the linen into her hand and held her head against a thigh. “Don’t weep so, Elizabeth. It’s not your fault that you can’t love me or even like me. Why rack yourself with guilt over something you can’t help? You’re a slave to duty, but I made you one when Anna was a baby.” His hand closed on her hair. “It’s a pity that my natural affection for you isn’t returned. I’d rather hoped that with the passing of the years, you’d grow closer. Instead, you just move farther away.”

Her sobs had quietened, but she said nothing.

“Feeling better?”

“Yes,” she said, using the handkerchief.

He returned to his chair. “Then we can finish. You know as well as I do that the deed has to be done.” A peculiar pain came into his face. “What you don’t know is that I swore an oath to Jade that I would never commit Anna to an asylum. I daresay she knew far more than she ever told us. That she saw this coming, or something similar. So we have two things to do. The first is to separate Dolly from her natural mother, who can mother her no longer. The second is what to do with Anna. Do we keep her here, a virtual prisoner, or do we send her elsewhere to imprison her?”

“Could it work if she were kept here, always locked up?”

“I think Nell would say no. For one thing, she would still be in fairly close proximity to Dolly, and there is a streak of cunning in her—witness how she could elude all her minders when she had her trysts with O’Donnell.”

Elizabeth pressed the little buzzer on the table beside her. “Mrs. Surtees,” she said when the housekeeper came, “would you ask Nell to come back to the library, please?”

The moment Nell appeared, chin up, Elizabeth went to her and held her, kissed her brow. “I’m sorry, Nell, truly sorry. Please forgive me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” said Nell, sitting down. “It was shock, I know that.”

“We need to talk to you about Anna,” Elizabeth said.

Alexander leaned back, his face in shadow, while Elizabeth labored on.

“We have agreed that Anna and Dolly must be separated, which means we have to decide what to do with Anna. Should we keep her here under lock and key, or send her away?”

“I think she has to be sent away,” said Nell slowly, eyes misty. “O’Donnell opened a door for Anna that cannot be closed. I believe that has accounted for some of her deterioration. No, she doesn’t know what it is she misses, yet she misses something that she once had and once enjoyed. There’s an element of—of—of frustration in her behavior that she’s taking out on Dolly. It’s all so hidden, so mysterious! We don’t know anything about how the mentally retarded view their world, or what kinds of more subtle emotions they experience than rage and happiness. I can’t help but think they live in a more complex way than we assume.”

“What did you see today, Nell?” Alexander asked.

“An element of spite directed at Dolly—honestly, Dad, Anna does fling her around quite viciously. And the fact that Dolly can cope with it suggests that it happens all the time. But that it didn’t happen before she grew old enough and clever enough to evade injury. It’s Dolly who matters more, because Dolly has a future. She’s a dear little girl with a normal brain. How can we allow her to be exposed to Anna? Yet if we keep the pair of them here, Anna will find her.”

“Are you suggesting,” Elizabeth asked, “that Dolly not be told Anna is her mother? That, for instance, I should become her mother?”

“For as long as the fiction can be maintained, yes.”

Alexander had been only half listening, part of his mind engaged in finding a way out of his oath to Jade. “What if we send Anna not to an asylum but to a secure private house? Her minders will have to be women, given O’Donnell. A place that has a big courtyard where she can walk and play in a garden, that has the feel of a home? Would Anna learn to forget us, Nell? Would she learn to love at least one of her minders instead?”

“I’d rather that than asylum care, Dad. I’d rather that than try to keep her here. If you can find a suitable building in Sydney, I’d be willing to police her care.”

“Police it?” Elizabeth asked, alarmed.

Alexander Kinross looked out of his daughter’s eyes. “Yes, Mum, her care will have to be policed. People can be so deceptive, especially the assortment of people who care for the helpless. They are natural victims for petty cruelties and needless inhumanities. Don’t ask me how I know that, I just do. So I’ll police the place—drop in unexpectedly, look for injuries, see how clean she’s kept, all that sort of thing.”

“It will tie you down,” said Alexander with a growl.

“Dad, it’s high time I contributed something to Anna. Mum has had to do it all so far.”

“I’ve had good help,” said Elizabeth, in a mood to be just. “Imagine what it would have been like if I couldn’t have afforded help. There’s a family in Kinross with the same problem.”

“But unlikely to have a Dolly from it. Their girl is very stigmatized—harelip, cleft palate, stunted growth,” said Nell.

“How do you know that?” asked Alexander, astonished.

“I used to see her when I lived here, Dad. She interested me. But she won’t live nearly as long as Anna might.”

“And that’s a mercy,” said Alexander.

“It won’t be to her mother,” Elizabeth said abruptly. “Or to her brothers and sisters. They love her.”

A WEEK LATER Anna broke Dolly’s arm and attacked Peony when she tried to rescue the frantic child. Suddenly no one had the time for remorse as the fighting, kicking Anna was subdued and her child permanently removed from her. Until an alternative in Sydney could be found, Anna was relegated to a guest suite owning a tiny entrance foyer that could be locked before unlocking the rooms themselves. Worst of all, the windows had to be fitted with bars, as the suite was on the ground floor.

Alexander and Nell hurried off to Sydney to look at houses, an ideal opportunity for Nell to put her proposals to him during the journey. Though the train was approaching Lithgow before she summoned up the courage to begin.

“I think,” she started, “that eventually we’ll have to build a house, Dad. No one puts a courtyard at the center of a house, and we have Donny Wilkins to design it for us. That keeps it in the family, don’t you agree?”

“Go on,” said Alexander, eyeing his daughter with a mixture of amusement and skepticism.