Designs on Life (10 page)

The man made a queer, groaning sound. It distressed Meg, but she thought it might be best not to notice it.

“I think Mr. Ferguson likes snow,” she said, “not like Mrs. Nettle. He went out for a walk when it started to snow.”

“A walk!” her father cried. “Good God, what made you think—?”

“Jim!” his wife said again. “She saw his lights go out, that’s all.
That’s all,
do you hear?”

He drew several choking breaths.

“I can’t go on with this,” he muttered. “I can’t go through with it. It’s no good, Marion, I’ll never be able to do it. I might as well give myself up right away. It’ll be better for you both. I’ll go. I’ll go and tell them …” His voice died away.

The woman stooped over the child. “What a mess you’re making with all that jam,” she said. “Why can’t you just eat it, instead of smearing it all over the plate?”

“I like looking at the pattern on the plate through it,” Meg said. “It makes it look all pink.”

“Well, that isn’t good manners.”

“Marion, for God’s sake—what’s the good of it?” the man whispered. “What hope is there?”

The woman straightened up again, looking at him, and one of those unspoken messages which, the child had noticed, were always passing between grown-up people, passed between them then. He reached for his wife’s hand, clung to it, then started covering it with kisses.

“I don’t know, I don’t understand, why you’re doing this for me—you of all people,” he said. “I thought—when I came in tonight I thought—”

The woman gave a sigh and there was a soft, exhausted gentleness in her voice as she replied, “I don’t understand it either. It just seems … Well, we’ll talk about it later. All you need to remember now is that you came home on the usual train. And came straight home.”

“Yes,” he said, “the usual train.”

“And after tea we’re all going to play cards—just as usual.”

“Beggar-my-neighbour!” the child cried. “All of us—Daddy too?”

Her mother nodded. “But one game only, remember, then off to bed with you and no fuss about it. Promise?”

The child promised eagerly. To have her father joining in the game, instead of hiding himself behind the evening newspaper, far from being usual, was an astonishing privilege, which she was more than ready to earn by going to bed in mouse-like silence. Yet even as she was giving her promise, she started asking herself how it was possible for her mother to believe that her father had returned from work on the usual train, when in fact he had been standing in the doorway of his home at the very time when the lights of his train could be seen going by from the window upstairs. That was a very puzzling thing to think about.

They played the one game of beggar-my-neighbour, which, luckily for the child, was a long one, then she obediently went upstairs. During the game her parents had both been quiet, neither of them responding at all when for a little while Meg had grown uproarious, and sometimes they had spoken to one another strangely. Yet there had been something in the way that they had looked at one another, and at her, which had made her feel that for that one evening they were all curiously at peace. It was a feeling that she had had too seldom lately, though she realised this only as it came to her again, reminding her of something past, something lost, and though she could not recall exactly when she had known it better, she recognised it instantly as sweetly, reassuringly familiar.

When she woke in the morning, she blinked in surprise at the brilliance of the light in her room. It was as dazzling as on a summer morning, though the brightness reflected on the ceiling over her bed had a tinge of blue in it that was not like summer sunshine.

Jumping out of bed, she ran to the window and saw, under a tranquil blue sky, the white covering on the garden and the common and on the bare branches of the trees. She saw too how the boughs of the evergreen bushes in the garden were weighed down by their load and how the path to the gate had quite disappeared.

As she looked, she saw her father come out of the house. He was wearing gum boots and a duffle-coat and was carrying a shovel, with which he started to clear the snow from the path. So, after all, he had not gone to the office. He dug fiercely, as if he were in a great hurry, yet in spite of this, he kept stopping and straightening his back to gaze across the common at Mr. Ferguson’s house.

Mr. Ferguson, the child could see, had visitors. It seemed early in the day to be paying visits, yet a lot of people must have come to call on him, because there were several cars drawn up outside his house.

She had her breakfast alone with her mother, while her father went on working in the snow. Her mother looked very tired this morning. Her face seemed to have grown thin in the night, her fine, clear skin to have shrunk against the bone behind it.

“Isn’t Daddy going to have any breakfast?” the child asked as she spooned up her porridge.

“He’s had all he wants,” her mother said.

“Isn’t he going to the office?”

“Not yet.”

“Isn’t he well?”

“No—no, he isn’t very well.”

“Why doesn’t he go to bed then?”

“He isn’t ill enough for that.”

The sound of the vacuum-cleaner, operated by Mrs. Nettle in one of the bedrooms, stopped abruptly and Mrs. Nettle’s heavy footsteps came pounding down the stairs. She put her head into the dining-room.

“Looks as if some of them are coming here now, Mrs. Ellis,” she said. “I saw them from the window.”

The younger woman looked at her vacantly and said nothing.

“They’ll be wanting to ask if you saw or heard anything, I suppose,” Mrs. Nettle said, “like they did with us. He isn’t bad, the inspector, he was quite polite. He won’t worry you.”

The child twisted in her chair to look out of the window and see who was coming, but she could not see beyond the laurel hedge.

Her mother got up, putting both hands on the table and leaning on them, as if her legs for a moment had become too weak to carry her, then she walked slowly out of the room. The child dropped her spoon and was going to jump off her chair and run after her, when Mrs. Nettle said sharply, “Now then, you get on with your breakfast and don’t go sticking your nose into everyone’s business.”

“But, Mrs. Nettle, I want to know who it is,” the child said.

“It’s no one you know,” Mrs. Nettle said, and went out and shut the door.

Meg waited for a moment, then she got down from her chair, walked softly across the room, turned the doorknob, quietly opened the door a few inches and peeped out.

Through the door opposite, which was wide open, she saw her father and mother in the garden, standing side by side on the cleared path, her mother’s arm through her father’s, while two men approached them from the gate. Listening eagerly, Meg heard her father say that it was a terrible thing that had happened, and her mother add that they had heard about it from the postman and had at once decided that her husband should stay at home that morning, in case he could give assistance of any kind. Then they all turned towards the house and the child, swiftly closing the dining-room door, ran back to her place at the table and went on hastily eating her cooling porridge.

A few minutes later Mrs. Nettle returned to the dining-room, bringing Meg a boiled egg. Unexpectedly she sat down at the table with her, watching her with a distressed and wondering stare, as if she had just become a problem about which the old woman had to make up her mind.

“Isn’t Mummy going to finish her breakfast?” Meg asked presently.

“Yes, when the gentlemen have gone,” Mrs. Nettle answered.

“What have they come for?”

“Now, didn’t I tell you to mind your own business?”

Meg wriggled in exasperation. “But Daddy said something terrible’s happened. What’s happened, Mrs. Nettle?”

The old woman gave a sigh and said, “Well, for sure you’ll hear about it, I suppose … There’s been an accident, love.”

“A motor accident?”

“No, a different kind of accident.”

“In the snow? Did Mr. Ferguson fall down and hurt himself?” But before Mrs. Nettle could answer, Meg went on, “D’you know snow can blow straight through a window, even when it’s shut? I didn’t know that before, did you? I stood in front of the landing window and snow was blowing right into my face. I opened my mouth wide and the snow came into it and tasted just like ice-cream, only it didn’t exactly taste at all. And the window was shut all the time.”

“Oh, that window,” Mrs. Nettle said. “It fits that badly, it always does that when there’s a strong wind that side of the house. The snow wasn’t coming through the glass.”

“But I
saw
it, Mrs. Nettle.”

“There’s lots of things people think they see what they don’t,” Mrs. Nettle said, “and if they’d talk less about what they see, even when they
have
seen it, there’d be less damage done.”

Before the child could puzzle this out, the door opened and her father, her mother and the two strange men came into the room.

Mrs. Nettle got to her feet, but instead of leaving the room, as Meg expected, she went to stand behind her, and in passing, she let her hand rest gently on Meg’s shoulder. It was as if she thought the child needed reassurance and did not trust anyone else there to give it to her.

Meg’s mother spoke to her. “This gentleman wants to ask you something, darling. He thinks perhaps you can tell him something he wants to know.”

Angrily Mrs. Nettle exclaimed, “How can she tell him anything? She doesn’t even understand—”

“Please,” Meg’s father said. He lifted a hand to check her.

“She can answer this question, I’m sure,” one of the strange men said, smiling at the child as he came towards her. His breath smelt strongly of tobacco. He was a very big man, with smooth ruddy skin and grey hair.

“It’s a very easy question,” he said, “nothing to worry about at all. You don’t mind answering it, do you, my dear?”

She looked at her mother, then at her father, then back at the big man.

“No,” she said uncertainly.

“Well now, you remember you were in the other room yesterday afternoon, and you went to look out of the window?” “Yes.”

“What did you see?”

She again searched the faces of everyone else in the room before she committed herself to an answer.

“The snow,” she said.

“Ah,” he said, “the snow. You like snow, eh?”

“I—I don’t know.”

“Now, that’s queer, a little girl not knowing what she likes and what she doesn’t,” he said. “Most of the little girls I know, know much too much about it.”

“But I never saw snow before in my whole life,” she explained.

“Well, well!” he said. “So you were very excited, I expect. And you went to the window to watch the snow falling.”

“Yes.”

“And what else did you see?”

She returned his steady, smiling look warily. She knew at once that this was the question that he really wanted answered and that the other questions about the snow had not meant anything. But this knowledge confused her, so that she could not remember anything at all of what she had seen from the window.

At length she said, “I didn’t see anything.”

“What, nothing at all?”

“Just tell the inspector what you told me,” her mother prompted her. “Don’t you remember what you told me you saw?”

Breathing heavily, Meg screwed up her forehead and twisted about in her chair.

“I saw the lights in Mr. Ferguson’s house,” she said.

“The lights? Yes, and then?” the big man asked.

“I saw them go out and I said—I said to Mummy, Mr. Ferguson’s going for a walk in the snow.”

“That’s fine, that’s just fine,” he said. “Now, I don’t suppose you could help me a lot more by telling me when this happened.”

Her mother answered for her, “I’m afraid she isn’t very good at telling the time yet, Inspector. But Mrs. Nettle might be able to tell you that.”

He looked up at the old woman. “You were here?”

“I was,” she said sourly.

“And do you know what time it was when the little girl saw the lights go out?”

“Is that when—when it happened?” she asked.

“Seems likely,” he said. “Most of the curtains weren’t drawn, only the bedroom curtains, and he must have been afraid someone could see in.”

“Well, it was about five then, because it was just before I went home,” Mrs. Nettle said, “and I got home about quarter past.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Thanks very much.” He looked round and addressed them all. “I’m sorry to have troubled you, but you understand we have to ask these questions. And we’ll have to corroborate that you came home on the five-thirty, Mr. Ellis, as you said. That’s just routine, of course.”

The child’s parents nodded silently.

The big man looked down at the child.

“I expect you saw your father come home, didn’t you, young lady? But you wouldn’t know just when it was, if you aren’t very clever at telling the time yet.”

“Oh, I do,” she said.

She looked up into her father’s face as she said it. Even before she saw the sudden panic in his eyes, she knew that she was on dangerous ground. But she had confidence in herself, because, although she had not understood it at the time, she had learnt her lesson well the evening before, and she knew that she could repeat it accurately.

“I know just when it was,” she said, “because I saw his train come in. I watched it from the landing window, like I always do—well, almost always. And then—then—” She choked with the effort to be clear, to make no mistake. Apart from her own high voice, stumbling on, there was an extraordinary silence in the room. “Then of course he came home, like he always does, and I—I met him at the door. And he came in looking like a snowman!”

With the last sentence she burst out laughing. This was not only because she had suddenly remembered vividly how funny it had been not to recognise her father, and actually be frightened of him. More than that, it was because of the relief of being able to tell the easy truth again, instead of the incomprehensible, memorized lie.

The big man smiled at her again. “A snowman?” he said.

“Yes, he had snow on his eyebrows and his moustache and all down him,” she said.