Child Friday (20 page)

I
I
I

Emily went in to say goodnight to Alice that evening, remembering only then that it was the child’s last night at home.

Alice was sitting up in bed, her hair brushed neatly and her face shining from soap and water. Her school uniform was already neatly laid out for the morrow and her eyes went to Emily speculatively.

“Is Bella dead?” she asked.

“No, of course not, but she’s been hurt,” Emily said soothingly, realizing with compunction that, in all the upset, Alice had been forgotten.

“Is she going to get better?”

“Yes, of course, in a very few days.”

“I don’t want her to get better. I want her to die,” said Alice flatly.

Emily looked as horrified as she felt.

“Alice! What a dreadful thing to say!” she exclaimed. “Don’t you like poor Bella?”

“I don’t mind her. But if Bella died, Uncle Dane would have no one to lead him about, would he? He says it takes two years to get a guide dog because of the waiting list.”

“Well, you needn’t sound so pleased. What’s been the matter with you these holidays, Alice? You’ve been a very different little girl, and not above making mischief, too.”

Emily spoke severely and the child suddenly burst into tears.

“No one wanted me,” she sobbed. “I thought when you got married to Uncle Dane I would have you always, but you only wanted that hateful Mr. Lonnegan.”

“What nonsense!” scolded Emily, but she took the little girl into her arms and was relieved to find her a normal unhappy child at last.

“If—if Uncle Dane had no one to lead him about, you’d have to do it, wouldn’t you?” Alice tried to explain. “Then you couldn’t go away.”

“But I wasn’t thinking of going away,” said Emily, a little dismayed by the way the child’s mind had evidently been working.

“Not with Mr. Lonnegan? Miss
Larne
said
—
”

“I don’t want to hear what Miss
Larne
said,” interrupted Emily quickly. “And Mr. Lonnegan has already gone.”

“Has he?” Alice’s tears were stopping and she already was beginning to look embarrassed at being caught crying.

“Yes. I don’t suppose we shall see him again, so stop thinking about him, and, Alice—don’t tell Uncle Dane tomorrow that you hope Bella will die. He’s very fond of her and quite upset enough as it is.”

“A
ll
right,” said Alice quite happily, and snuggled down in the bed. “I don’t mind going back to school tomorrow now because you’ll be here when I come back in the summer, won’t you, dear Emily?”

“Yes,” said Emily a little unsteadily. “I’ll be here when you come in the summer. Now go to sleep.”

By the next day Bella had rallied sufficiently to be taken downstairs for her necessary runs in the garden. She was
v
ery stiff, but she took her food normally and did a great deal of sleeping.

“She’ll be as right as rain in another week and taking the governor for his walks again,” pronounced Shorty cheerfully, but on the third day the bitch’s breathing became alarmingly bad and she refused all food.

“What is it, Shorty? She was so much better,” said Emily, alarmed.

“Pneumonia,” Shorty replied laconically.

“Pneumonia? But we’ve kept her warm.”

“Shock can cause it,” Shorty said, and shook his head despondently. “Pore old girl, she’ll ’ave a struggle.”

“We’d better get the vet at once, hadn’t we?” Emily asked, but Shorty gave her a snort of contempt.

“Naow! I reckon I know more than these country ’orse doctors when it comes
to pneumonia. The governor can get me all the drugs I need from the laboratory. It’s nursing does the trick, see?” he said and she remembered that Shorty had been a male nurse before he had come to Dane, and hope returned to her.

But Bella grew steadily worse. Chloromycin seemed to have no effect, and Emily’s tender heart ached to watch the bitch fall away to nothing under her eyes, to listen helplessly to the labored breathing and observe the patient resignation with which the animal seemed to await death. She could not bear Dane’s terse enquiries or the impatience she knew he must feel for his own blindness which made him helpless to assist.

Emily and Shorty shared the nursing between them. They had persuaded Dane to let the bitch be moved to Shorty’s pantry.

“You can’t ’ave ’er up ’ere in this state, sir,” Shorty said firmly. “The pore old girl can’t go out when it’s necessary, and you, being blind, wouldn’t know where you’re walking, see?
I’ll
’ave a stove going night and day for ’er.”

Emily grew very attached to the little cockney in those night watches. They would sit together in the old-fashioned butler’s pantry, the warmth and stuffy smell of a paraffin stove somehow isolating them from the events of the present, and Shorty talked of his nursing experiences, of Dane’s fight with blindness after his accident, and of his own hopes and fears for his employer’s future. Tim, and even Vanessa, seemed unimportant now. Humbly, Emily accepted Shorty’s cockney wisdom and was grateful for his unfailing support.

He would make them strong cups of cocoa and as often as not took one up to Dane.

“For he won’t be sleeping,” he would say. “Sleeps badly, normal times, him being blind, you understand?”

Emily remembered the times she had heard Dane moving about in the room next to hers, the times when she had tried to bring him comfort and been sent away.

“There’s so little one can do,” she said forlornly.

Shorty grinned.

“Think so?” he asked, cocking his head on one side like a sparrow. “Seems to me you’ve got it your own way if you do things right—meaning no offence.”

“Yes, Shorty,” she said. “It sounds easy enough but—ther
e
are other things.”

“Cor!” said Shorty, creasing his face in a thousand wrinkles. “What’s that Miss Larne got that you ’aven’t?”

“Beauty,” said Emily austerely, and he sniffed.

“Beauty’s in the eye of the be’older, so they say. You ain’t so bad yourself, and, anyways, he can’t see you, can ’e?” he said.

Bella died in the night, peacefully and without struggle. She lay on her side, her thin flanks heaving with each difficult breath. She gave a little sigh and then was gone, and the silence in the small room was complete.

Emily stood looking down at her, while Shorty folded the blanket over her.

“Poor Bella
...”
she murmured softly. “What will your master do now?”

“It
might
’ave been ’im,” said Shorty gruffly, and Emily turned away. Yes, she thought, it might have been Dane.

It was three in the morning. Emily made he
r
way upstairs, unutterably tired. The folds of her long dressing
-
gown brushed each step with a sad little sighing sound. She went quietly into her own room but Dane heard her and called. She opened the door between their rooms and stood there without speaking.

“She’s gone?” said Dane sharply.

“Yes,” said Emily. “How did you know?”

“There was something in your footsteps that told me—something, even, in the way you are standing there in the doorway,” he said, and she burst into tears.

“Oh, Dane, I’m so sorry
...
I’m so terribly sorry
...
” she cried and ran to the bed, flinging herself across it.

The strain of those broken nights had snapped her control at last. She could not stop weeping and she felt
his arms go round her and he held her as she had sometimes held Alice in moments of stress.

“Don’t, my dear,” he murmured. “Don’t tear your heart
out ...
you did all you could, you and Shorty
...
I shouldn’t have let you break yourself up like this.”

She shivered violently and he got out of bed and picked her up and put her in his place, tucking the bedclothes round her with gentle hands.

“There,” he said. “Keep warm
...
sleep, if you can.
I’ll be here.”

He put on his dressing-gown and sat on the bed beside her, talking quietly, soothingly. Even in her distress it seemed strange to Emily that he should be bringing comfort to her and not she to him.

“Dane, will you let me take her place?” she said, feeling for his hands in the darkness. “Will you let me be your eyes instead of poor Bella?”

“Yes,” he said, his fingers closing on hers. “Yes, my dear, if you’ll have the patience. You shall be my eyes. Now try to sleep.”

She must have fallen asleep almost at once for she did not remember him saying any more. When she awoke he had dressed and gone and the morning sunlight was streaming into the room. Shorty brought her breakfast in and she felt suddenly shy, sitting up in Dane’s bed with his discarded night things thrown across the foot. Shorty winked as he put down the tray, a meaning wink which made Emily blush.

“What did I tell you?” he said.

In the days that followed the house settled back to normal. Emily missed, more than she could have imagined, Bella’s silent padding about the house, and she knew the deeper keenness of loss than Dane must feel. He would stand and listen, as if for the sound of the bitch’s piping cry, and, sometimes, he would absently stretch down a hand beside his chair, as if expecting to find her there, but they never spoke of her.

Emily accompanied him on his daily walks, trying to make herself into a living automaton which would obey commands and guard against unforeseen obstacles but otherwise possess no will to direct
.
It was very rarely that
she failed him but if she did, her distress was out of all
proportion.

“Don’t be foolish,” Dane would chide. “You’re an excellent guide dog, Emily, but don’t try to emulate your canine counterpart too successfully, will you?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, I’m quite willing to be shown new ways—new paths. I’m dependent on you rather more than I was on Bella, remember.”

“Yes, I’ll remember,” she said, and from that dependence
,
she thought, a fresh bond was growing between them, at once so delicate and intangible, that she sometimes wondered if she imagined it.

She
h
ad forgotten Vanessa, and it was with a sense of shock that she saw her one evening turn in at the gates. She had not visited them for nearly three weeks.

It was late April, and Dane and Emily were sitting on the terrace enjoying the unusual warmth of the evening. The moor had taken on the early promise of the richness of summer, the tight green fronds of bracken had unfurled and the gorse was in bloom; away i
n
the coombs a blue haze of fine weather hung over the village. Vanessa walked through the dappled shade and her beauty marked a period to the day.

“Hullo, you two!” she said. “Did you think I had deserted you? I
w
ent back with Tim actually, for a few days of frivolity in town. Aunt Gertrude’s dreary house gets me down after a time. Was your London trip a success, Dane?”

“Yes, thanks. It’s unlike you to walk up from the village, Vanessa. Car out of order?” he said
.

“No, I thought it would be good for my figure.” She laughed, with the happy assurance that her figure was the last thing she need worry about, and sat down on a bench beside Emily.

“How hard and unyielding,” she said. “Don’t you go in for more luxurious garden equipment, Emily?”

“I don’t know,” said Emily flatly. “I haven’t been here in the summer.”

Vanessa gave her a look which said plainly that in her place she would have made it her business to find out, then turned to Dane.

“I’m sorry about your dog, darling,” she said. “Are you going to get another?”

“No,” he replied impassively. “Emily’s kindly taken on the job.”

“Really? Well, let’s hope it won’t be for long. What did the specialist say?”

“T
h
e
specialist?”
Emily exclaimed before she could stop herself, and saw Dane’s frown of annoyance.

Vanessa looked amused.

“Didn’t you tell her why you went to London?” she drawled.

“No,” said Dane shortly, and she made a small grimace.

“Sorry if I’ve been tactless, darling,” she said. “But
naturally I thought your
wife
—
Well, what did he say?”

“That it was possible now to have the operation.”

“And you’re going
to,
of course?”

“I haven’t decided.”

“But, darling, that’s crazy! There surely can’t be any
q
uestion of a decision in a case like this. A corneal graft is usually successful, isn’t it?”

“I don’t want to discuss it, Vanessa,” Dane said coldly and got to his feet. “I’ll go in and see to the drinks. Come when you’re ready.”