Child Friday (4 page)

Emily was too discouraged to enquire where the other bathrooms might be. In the morning the cook or the daily woman would, perhaps, instruct her more kindly in the geography of the house.

“Could I—
c
ould I have a hot-water bottle, do you think?” she asked timidly.

“If you likes to come down to the kitchen and fill it yourself,” he replied ungraciously. “It’s time for the governor
’
s nightcap, for all he says he can manage without me.”

But Emily forwent her hot-water bottle. The reluctance to invade a strange kitchen under Shorty’s scornful eye and the fear that she might meet her blind employer with his watchful dog on the stairs drove her to bed with a scarf wrapped round her feet
.

She lay in her narrow bed, listening to the wind, and wondering why the shrewd Miss Pink had recommended her for a job of this kind. Just as she fell asleep, she remembered.

“Perhaps it’s because you’re Friday’s child,” Miss Pink had said with a concession to sentimentality, which was most uncharacteristic.

I
I
I

She awoke to a brilliant day. The wind had dropped in the ni
ght
and the snow lay, innocent and unbroken, in the sunlight. Emily’s window looked out on to an enclosed yard behind the house, but beyond the high wall which seemed to encircle them, she could see tracts of snowy country stretching indefinitely to a jagged horizon where ghostly shapes rose to meet the blue arc of an infinite sky.

It’s beautiful, she thought, pressing her nose against the icy glass of her window, and her thoughts flew instantly to Dane Merritt who could not see it. No one had called her, but she found a can of tepid water outside her door and, wondering if she was late, made a scanty toilet and ran downstairs. The dining-room was empty but she found a small mo
rn
ing-room at the back of the house where Dane was already seated with Shorty in attendance.

“Good-morning,
M
r. Merritt. I hope I’m not late,” Emily said, slipping into the place laid opposite him.

“Breakfast is at eight-thirty. Didn’t Shorty tell you?” Dane asked, and for a moment she encountered that brief, blank stare.

“I’m sorry,” she said, glancing at the clock. “I must have overslept,” and caught Shorty’s smug look of satisfaction. Emily’s grave glance met his for a moment and he looked away.

“Help yourself,” said Dane courteously. “I shan’t want you any longer, Shorty.”

“You always likes a second cup of coffee,” said Shorty insinuatingly.

“Then Miss Moon can doubtless pour it out for me,” Dane replied, and the little man left the room with a vindictive glance in Emily’s direction.

“I hope,” said Dane as the door closed, “you will pay no attention to Shorty’s manner. He’s devoted to me and seems to resent any addition to the household.”

“He’s afraid for his job,” said Emily, helping herself to eggs and bacon. “He as much as told me so last night.”

“A foolish attitude, as I’ve often told him,” replied Dane imperturbably. “I couldn’t get along without Shorty, as he ought to know. You will try, I hope, to bear with him, Emily. He’s been with me a long time.”

Make friends with Bella, bear with Shorty, thought Emily, suddenly mutinous. Had the new employee no rights of her own?

“You will have to bear with me more patiently than the others,” Dane said softly. “Think it over well.”

She looked across at him and swift compassion drove out the momentary resentment. In the morning light he looked older and his eyes had the steady, unseeing stare of the blind.

“If you want something of me, Mr. Merritt,” she said impulsively, “I wouldn’t find it hard to be patient,”

Immediately his face took on a closed, still look which held much coldness.

“I want nothing that you, or anyone else, aren’t prepared to give freely,” he said. “Above all, I want nothing from a sense of pity. What, I have to offer is on a purely commercial basis. I’d like the same in return.”

Emily was silent. She was used to being snubbed by employers who seldom credited their paid help with personal feelings, but in this case the rebuke came hard. For the first time she wondered what Miss Pink’s other two applicants had been like, and if they, like herself, had been doubtful of measuring up to a blind employer’s demands?

They finished their breakfast in silence. The bitch Bella, who lay by her master’s chair, had taken no exception to Emily’s presence, but her eyes had continued to watch, just as they had last night. The silence and the watchful dog began to worry her and she fidgeted.

“You are too young,” said Dane abruptly.

Emily’s pointed chin rose
to meet the challenge.

“Too young for what?” she demanded boldly.

He smiled.

“For matters outside your comprehension, perhaps. What’s making you nervous?”

“The dog watches me,” she said.

“She’s the only one of us who can," he said gently. “You’ll get used to her.”

Emily gathered her lost courage together.

“Mr. Merritt,” she said firmly, “if I’m to be here a month, I would like to know what my duties are. When do you like to give dictation?”

He tossed his napkin on to the table and leaned back in his chair.

“When the spirit moves me,” he replied indifferently. “There is no great hurry for the book’s completion.”

“What are you writing?” she asked.

“A thesis on the effect of nitro-glycerine compounds in relation to cardiac diseases,” he replied, and lifted one eyebrow quizzically. “Not very inspiring from the lay point of view, is it?”

“If it means a new cure—very inspiring,” she said doggedly.

“You have a little knowledge of such things?”

“None at all, but one doesn’t have to understand for one’s imagination to be fired.”

“How unusual—or have you just practised the right approach to a prospective employer? Well, we’ll try you out this morning. Shorty will show you where my study is.
I’ll expect you at ten-thirty.”

She felt herself dismissed and rose uncertainly, making her excuses. There was nearly an hour before he would require her services, and she went into the garden to explore. Someone had already swept the front steps clear of snow but everywhere else it lay in unbroken beauty, clinging to shrubs and trellis-work that bordered sweeping lawns, and making a shining tunnel of the double clipped yew hedge which formed a winding walk through the grounds.

Emily ran into the tunnel with childlike excitement, feeling the snow cold and light on her face as she brushed by, lost for the moment in a forgotten enchantment. She had lived most of her life in a London suburb, but there had been days spent in the country and she remembered one such day as this with her lovely mother running in the snow, and herself a wonder-struck child tongue-tied with so much beauty.

“Poor mite!” her mother had laughed, holding a little round muff to her glowing face. “Your nose is like a cherry. I’m afraid you’re going to be plain, after all, my poor sweet.”

Her father, laughing, had said:

“One beauty in the family is quite; enough, my darling. Emily was
born
to be a foil, that’s all.”

She had been too young to understand then, but she had known they were laughing not with her but at her and years later their words came back to taunt her. For ever after snow had been a symbol of beauty to Emily, bound up with a heartache which found no explanation.

She came out at the other end of the tunnel and was confronted by the wall which, as she had thought, circled the whole estate and had no break.

“It’s like a prison,” she thought and shivered, and she knew then that Dane Merritt had shut himself and his blindness away in isolation, afraid of the compassion of others just as she, now, was afraid of the tolerance of the Tims and the Rosemarys of her own little world.

“Oh, dear! How silly he is, running away from life,” she sighed, and never thought that the same could be said of her.

She was late for her appointment. Shorty had to come out on to the terrace to shout for her and Dane, already seated behind a large desk with his back to the light, was tapping impatiently on the arm of his chair.

“I don’t expect to be kept waiting,” he said brusquely. “You’re ten minutes late.”

“I’m sorry,” she said breathlessly. “I was in the garden. You should have
seen
how lovely that yew hedge is in the snow-like a fairy tunnel.”

Immediately she blushed, scarlet, and as if he was aware of her embarrassment he observed dryly:

“Don’t let an innocent reference to my blindness cover you with confusion. I assure you that tactful avoidance of the subject is much more irritating. Now, if you’re ready, perhaps we might get started.”

He dictated for a couple of hours and after the first ten minutes or so she lost her nervousness and found she could keep up with him with reasonable speed. It was dull work on the whole, too technical and, at time, too intricate to make much sense to her. Once he paused to observe a shade sardonically:

“It’s scarcely firing your imagination, despite your brave boast, is it?” and when she read the morning’s work back to him, stumbling over the pronunciation of unfamiliar words and phrases, he remarked that her education had been sadly neglected.

“Such chemistry as we did at school was very elementary, I’m afraid,” she retorted, and he smiled.

“Very probably. One doesn’t look for budding research chemists among little girls, as a rule. We’ll stop now, I think, for a glass of sherry.”

There were glasses and a decanter set out on a small table at his elbow and he turned his chair a little sideways. With the li
ght
behind him she had so little impression that he was blind, that it was not until she watched his hands feeling delicately but surely for the glasses that she remembered that he could not see.

“Let me do it,” she said instinctively, jumping to her feet, and was appalled when his hand jerked at her sudden movement and one of the glasses went crashing to the floor.

“Sit down!” he ordered, so harshly that she felt her mouth go dry. “I am by no means helpless and I dislike intensely the unnecessary attentions of well-meaning persons.”

Emily sat down, tears of mortification springing to her eyes. Bella, under the desk, had risen protectively at the sound of his breaking glass, but she lay down again, her eyes fixed distrustfully upon Emily who watched helplessly while Dane filled the glasses a little too full.

“Sorry,” he said, handing her one across the desk. “Afraid I’ve slopped it
.
”

She did not want
the sherry but hardly liked to refuse. She sat on the edge of her chair in silence, sipping the pale, dry wine without enjoyment, and presently he said:

“Sorry if I barked at you. You’re probably a nicely brought
u
p girl who was taught to consider elderly people and invalids.”

His v
o
ice still had a bitter sound and she said unhappily: “Yes, I suppose I was. But in any case, to be of help is surely a natural instinct.”

He sighed.

“Very probably, but the afflicted are touchy, you know. It takes a long time to rehabilitate oneself ... years of achieve a semblance of normality ... if one ever does. Always it’s the little things that find one
out ...
the small, everyday occurrences which we all take for granted
...
” He see
m
ed to be explaining to himself as much as to her, she thought, watching him slowly twist his glass of sherry this way and that, feeling with sensitive fingers the familiar cutting of bowl and stem.

“At the same time,” she argued, made bold because she knew he could not see her discomforted face, “there’s no need to deny privileges to others on account of pride.”

“Pride!” For a moment his lingers tightened on the stem of his glass. “Well, perhaps you might call it that—it’s the thing that keeps you going at your worst times, I suppose. You’re a nice child, Emily. Louisa didn’t do so badly, after all. Alice comes home the day after tomorrow.
You’ll stay till the end of the holidays, I hope.”

“Of course. Will you know then—if you want to keep me, Mr. Merritt?”

He swallowed the rest of the sherry and pushed back his chair.

“Oh, yes,” he replied with an odd little twist to his lips. “The ultimate decision is more likely to rest with you. Now, fetch me Bella’s harness from the hall, will you? It’s time for our walk before lunch.”

She fetched the strange-looking contraption which lay on a chest by the door and watched him fit it on the bitch. He did not ask her to accompany them and she stood in the doorway to see them set out. Dane’s hand on the leather handle attached to the harness was light and sure and the bitch waited, looking up at him eagerly, her plumy tail waving in anticipation.

“Forward
...”
said Dane softly, and the pair went assuredly down the steps and turned across the white expanse of lawn.

As Emily watched them she felt her throat constrict, not in pity, but with an emotion too new and unfamiliar to be explained. When they were out of sight, she slowly shut the door and went upstairs.