Minor Corruption (2 page)

For the first hour or so the children were
allowed to roam freely about the wide lawns, amusing themselves
nicely with improvised games of tag and Simon Says, punctuated by
frequent trips to the sweets table where peppermints, Turkish
delight and macaroons seemed to be in endless supply. (This latter
miracle was accomplished by three bustling, red-faced housemaids
attired in black uniforms with white caps.) Meanwhile, the ladies
and gentlemen reclined in garden chairs at the base of a
horse-chestnut tree, sipping punch and chatting idly. Marcus Junior
woke up, of course, demanding to be fed, and Maggie waddled happily
in the direction of the nearest celebrant. In addition to various
aunts and uncles were Marc’s party of four, Robert himself, Clement
Peachey, Francis Hincks and their wives. Dr. and Mrs. Baldwin were
inside supervising the parade of goodies. If Beth were puzzled by
the absence of Uncle Seamus, she was too polite to comment.

Marc was beginning to wonder how Robert
planned to corral the free-ranging youngsters, whose squeals and
yips were growing more and more frantic, when the answer presented
itself. Chalmers, the Baldwin’s elderly butler, had emerged from
the house carrying a wooden pail that resembled a miniature
butter-churn. Behind him he was trailed by the two youngest maids –
Betsy and Edie, if Marc recalled correctly – one with a smaller
pail and the other with a large bowl of what appeared to be cream.
Chalmers set the churn-like contraption on a nearby table and
waited for the maids to reach him. He gestured to Betsy and she
carefully poured the frothy contents of the bowl into the churn.
Then he took the pail from Edie and tipped it up to the rim of the
churn. There followed the tinkle of ice-chips into the hollow space
between the churn’s inner and outer walls. What happened next was
as dramatic as a headmistress striking the school’s dinner
gong!

“Ice cream!” a wee female voice trilled.

“Ice cream!”

“Ice cream!”

The cry echoed over the grass and through the
shrubbery. A minute later every child, regardless of age or gender,
had raced to the table where Chalmers was stoically turning the
churn’s handle. He was soon ringed by children, squatting or
fidgeting or hopping from foot to foot. (Even the young maids sank
daintily to their knees and stared.) All eyes were on the magic
bucket that they knew, or surmised, would transform ordinary cream
into a chilled ambrosia you could boast about for the rest of your
days. And almost as magical was the sudden silence, so deep you
could detect a cricket stretching a foreleg.

“It’ll take some time, children,” Chalmers
said.

“We know, we know. And we can help you churn
if your hand gets tired,” offered young Fabian Cobb, who was
quickly seconded by several of his male companions.

“You’re a genius,” Beth said to Robert, who
was observing the scene with some satisfaction.

“It was Chalmers’ idea,” Robert said with his
customary modesty.

“Won’t ice cream spoil their luncheon?” said
the ever practical Diana.

“By the time it’s churned and chilled, the
sandwiches and cake will have been served and eaten,” Robert said.
“That is if the candies haven’t dulled their appetite
entirely.”

“Surely they’ve run off those effects,”
Brodie said.

At this point Maggie went tumbling to the
ground just beyond Marc’s chair. He jumped up, ran over to her,
picked her up in both hands, and raised her over his head. She had
considered crying but decided to turn her protest into a squeal of
pleasure. Marc grinned over at Beth, but she seemed
preoccupied.

She was wondering why they had seen no sign
of Seamus Baldwin.

***

The luncheon went as smoothly as a barrister’s
summation: with the three maids serving up the sandwiches, meat
tarts, and gallons of fresh milk; with Diana Ramsay leading the
children in song; and with Robert cutting the birthday cake with
exaggerated strokes and numerous winks. Chalmers then carried the
ice cream over to the head of table, and Dr. Baldwin had the
pleasure of doling it out as if it were goose and he were Father
Christmas.

Following such unalloyed excitement,
Governess Ramsay concluded that a few minutes quiet time was in
order. So, while the adults partook of
their
luncheon – cold
chicken, cucumber sandwiches and chilled champagne – the boys and
girls slumped down in the nearest shade and dozed contentedly in
the early-afternoon sun. Robert had just finished making a toast to
his assembled friends and neighbours when the first notes of a pipe
fluttered upon the breeze. The guests followed Robert’s gaze and
the source of the music. There upon a knoll at the far edge of the
yard stood the piper. At first blush it appeared to be a leprechaun
materialized out of the greensward itself, for the figure was short
and bandy-legged and loose-limbed and clothed entirely in
Kendall-green broadcloth. Its shoes were of green leather and as
pointed as an elf’s foot, and they were hopping merrily to the
ethereal ditty his long, nimble fingers were producing on the Irish
fife they held as lightly as a pheasant’s plume. Upon his head, but
barely covering the wild sheaf of his grey-white hair, there swayed
in time to the other rhythms of his body a pointed cap, topped by a
tinkling bell.

Uncle Seamus had made his entrance.

While the adults gaped, this incarnation of
the god Pan danced a sprightly jig that brought him floating – it
seemed – across the lawn towards the resting children. Then one by
one, as if awakened and entranced by the music, the little ones
rose to their feet and, without guile or prearrangement, fell in
behind him, prancing and lalling some wordless child’s song in tune
with the melodious notes of the fife and its manic master. The
white lace and muslin of the girls’ dresses and the flagrant
blouses of the lads behind them fanned out on a musical breeze like
so many pristine petals. It was all so innocent and beautiful and
ephemeral that there was not one of the adults watching whose heart
did not lurch at the sight. The melody and the gay parade seemed to
go on forever, but it was less than a minute before Pan and his
pipe reached a grassy knoll and the music stopped in mid-note and
their goat-footed deity planted both feet on the ground, stared
blue-eyed at his acolytes, and blew a single, high, fierce note –
so loud the air itself seemed momentarily stunned.

“All right, my children, it’s time for the
games to begin!”

At this exhortation the nymphs and dryads
instantly became children once more. They cheered and chattered,
and broke into their constituent groups. Pan himself, with a
satisfied smile, sat down cross-legged on the knoll and proceeded
to observe the games, whose nature and rewards had been
predetermined by the Baldwin boys and under whose aegis they were
to be executed. The adults, after giving Uncle Seamus a
well-deserved round of applause, moved their chairs over to that
part of the lawn where the various races and contests were to take
place. Beth excused herself in order to slip a short ways off and
once again feed Junior before he began making his own brand of
music.

Marc noticed the two young maids begin to
edge over in his direction, but they were summarily brought back to
the business of clearing the luncheon tables by their superior,
Miss Faye Partridge, a mannish-looking woman in her late thirties
with a wizened face and a permanent glower. Marc felt sorry for
Edie and Betsy, who could be no more than fifteen or sixteen years
of age. They were children too, but compelled by necessity to
perform adult drudgeries. Still, Robert had seen to it that they
had had a share of the ice cream and had been encouraged to join
Diana’s sing-along.

The games lasted almost an hour, and were
ajudged a success even though two skinned knees in the sack race
and a bruised elbow in the wheelbarrow event threatened to bring
the party to a halt. Eliza and two other younger girls found the
excitement too much, and were seen sitting in the grass near Pan
the piper, pretending not to doze. Robert gave out the prizes with
unashamed generosity: trinkets and toys lovingly wrapped in tissue
and tied up with ribbon by Diana Ramsay days before the event.
Robert would miss her as much as his four children would when she
finally left to marry Brodie Langford. (A woman’s touch was needed
around Baldwin House, but Robert had had only one love, and she had
been taken from him.) When the last bauble had been given out, to
one of the mill lads, Robert looked over the gathering and opened
his mouth in order to announce that the party was over. But it was
the voice of Uncle Seamus, who had not stirred from his Buddha-like
position on the knoll, that carried over the assembly.

“We can’t end a birthday party,” he shouted,
bouncing to his feet, “without a game of Blind Man’s Buff!”

Tired and sated as they were, the children
seemed energized merely by the sound of the piper’s voice and the
sheer possibility that he might raise the fife to his lips and
improvise a jig. Which he did, in a brief flurry of pretty
notes.

The children cheered and ran towards him. His
blue eyes danced.

“Now who’s gonna tie this scarf tight around
my eyes?” he called out, pulling a green scarf from around his
throat and letting it flutter between a thumb and a forefinger.

“Me! Me! Me!”

Uncle Seamus laughed heartily and handed the
scarf to the nearest tot. He squatted down until she was able to
reach up and wrap it loosely around the upper half of his face,
making the bell on his cap tinkle.

“Now I need a strong young fella to tie it
tight,” he chuckled. “We don’t want any peeking, do we?”

A chorus of “no’s!” confirmed this
conclusion, and Fabian Cobb stepped up and drew the folded scarf
back until it was opaque and snug, and then tied a perfect reef
knot to hold it in place.

At this moment, a small female voice called
from the far side of the knoll, “Can
we
play, Uncle
Seamus?”

“Edie Barr, you keep yer mouth shut or I’ll
wash it out with soap!” The naysayer was Miss Partridge, the senior
maid.

“Let the girls join in,” Uncle Seamus
shouted. “And anyone else here who’s not forgotten how to be a
child!”

Robert nodded in the direction of the two
maids, and cautiously they moved into the gaggle of boys and girls
surrounding Uncle Seamus. Uncle Seamus let out a whoop, tucked his
fife in his belt, and began to lurch and lunge towards the
children, who taunted and teased, as children have always done,
just beyond the blind grasping of his fingers. Close calls produced
shrieks of joyful terror or yips of satisfaction. Uncle Seamus
played his role for all it was worth. His gestures were exaggerated
and deliberately clownish. He hopped about with his knees bent
spider-like and his arms waving like the tentacles of an octopus,
and all the while hissing out a futile “Gotcha!” Whenever a tardy
child did come within his reach, he pretended to stumble over a
tussock of grass and let the laggard squeal away. The children were
frantic with delight. Their clamour swelled to a maelstrom of
uninhibited cries, like a Greek chorus that had lost its conductor.
The adults looked on, open-mouthed.

Suddenly the tumult ceased. The blind old
fellow had caught someone. He was clutching her waist with his bony
claws. The others watched in disbelief: the game had turned. The
captive stood stock-still. It was Edie Barr, her baby face and
blond curls a vivid contrast with her dark maid’s uniform. She was
holding her breath and trembling.

“You gotta guess who it is!” shouted the
birthday girl, and her suggestion was taken up by the other
participants until it became an insistent chant.

“Ah, now, that’s gonna be easy, isn’t it?”
Uncle Seamus cried, and he began moving his hands down along the
girl’s waist and hips, his fingers tracing but never touching their
quarry.

“It’s a large boy! Right?”

“No!” came the roar of denial and
delight.

The fingers now moved up the front of the
girl’s body, again they lingered and wriggled, to instant laughter
from the jury, but did not touch. Then Edie appeared to totter
abruptly and contact was made in several, and highly inappropriate,
places. It lasted for no more than a second or two, but no-one
watching, even casually, would have missed the emboldened widening
of the girl’s eyes and the sudden stiffening of Piper Pan’s
fingers.

“
It’s Miss Partridge!
” he trilled.

The hysterical response of the boys and girls
doubled them over with laughter. Quick as a wink, Uncle Seamus’s
fingers were up over the girl’s spray of curls, and he wheeled
about and just before whipping off his blindfold, shouted, “It’s
Betsy Thurgood!”

“Wrong again!”

“You lose!”

“Put the mask back on, you’re still it!”

Uncle Seamus – his wrinkled, rubbery features
set in a calculated grin – sank slowly to his haunches and threw
his hands in the air. “Thank you, children, for a most exhilarating
afternoon. But your old uncle is all elved out.”

Robert took the cue, and within minutes the
children were being herded, happy but reluctant, towards the house.
Meanwhile, Marc took notice of two events that might easily have
gone unremarked. As she walked away from the slumped figure of
Uncle Seamus, Edie Barr turned and gave him a look that was part
puzzlement and part reproof. Then she glanced at Betsy Thurgood as
if somehow it were her fault that she had been named captive out
there, even though the girls were unalike, opposites even. Where
Edie was shapely and tall and luxuriously blond, Betsy was plump
and short with straight brown hair arranged in bangs. When Betsy
smiled and tried to take her friend’s hand, Edie pulled away and
ran towards the house. Then, at the back door, with Maggie in his
arms, Marc looked back for a moment and saw, to his surprise, Uncle
Seamus still seated on the grass, his head between his knees.
Exhaustion? Or something else?