Mr Wrong (13 page)

‘Oh – come – you don’t do too badly. That watch you are wearing would not lead one to imagine you are confined to supposition. Or perhaps it was – given to
you?’

Robin could not help glancing at his Patek Philippe. ‘As a matter of fact I bought it.’

Mr Medusa brought the palms of his hands together with a small papery thud. ‘There you are! It is my opinion that you are quite rich enough for your age . . . One could not wish you to
become – spoiled – in any way. But I admire your watch. I really do.’ He raised his glass – the champagne was very nearly the colour of his hair. ‘And what shall we
drink to?’

Robin felt himself almost blushing. He must not seem unenthusiastic; he must not presume – he did not know what to say.

‘Perhaps we should drink to the memory of poor Le Mesurier.’

Robin bowed his head and they both drank. Ipswich had left the room.

‘You were with that gentleman for some years, I believe?’

‘Nearly five.’

‘Ah yes. And I have been told from – several sources – that he always found you most – satisfactory.’

Robin nodded, and kept his expression grave but reliable.

‘Well! We won’t rush things. What were you enjoying most about this room when I came into it? Apart from your own charming image, that is?’

Now he felt he
was
blushing. He mumbled something about the plants.

‘You mustn’t mind me. I’m a terrible tease. And you
do
look perfectly charming. Yes, I always have flowers growing as a matter of principle. Do you realize that all cut
flowers are simply dying before one’s eyes? And not only dying, probably dying a most slow and disagreeable death. A disgusting thought. I have never understood how people can stomach it.
Death, when it has to come, should be instantaneous, don’t you think? But of course you do. Could I trouble you for a little more champagne?’

When Robin bent to pour from the bottle he noticed that Mr Medusa’s lightly tanned face was completely smooth – not a wrinkle or a fold of flesh to be seen.

‘A good, steady hand,’ Mr Medusa remarked approvingly. ‘But then, one would expect that. I have one question to ask you – of a somewhat delicate nature. Oh – do
help yourself.’

Robin did so, and then sat on the edge of his chair opposite his host.

‘When you were with poor Le Mesurier, I take it you were – exclusively – with him? I have no wish to pry into any arrangements there may have been between you beyond this one
point.’

Here it was: the one question that he had dreaded – that in all his private rehearsals of this interview he had been unable to decide how he should answer. Tell the truth, and he would be
out on his ear: lie, and in all probability he would be detected and out on the other ear. To his surprise, Mr Medusa was not looking at him, was merely gazing intently at his champagne. He took
the plunge.

‘I did once go off – but the whole thing was only a weekend – it was before I realized Mr Le Mesurier’s feelings in the matter, and after that I never did so
again.’

There was a short silence, and Robin, already regreting his choice, added rather desperately: ‘It was only once, and that’s the truth.’

Then Mr Medusa did look at him. ‘I know. I was afraid you might lie and I never look at people when I feel they may do that.’ He drained his glass and held it out for more. ‘I
think we shall get along very nicely. You will have plenty of time to get used to my ways. I shall not want you to kill anybody for at least a month.’

Robin let out his breath.

‘Thank you very much, Mr Medusa.’

James stirred – stretched out of the pitch-warm ditch until his foot struck one of the hard, cold animals who slept in rows each side of him. ‘Polar,’ he
thought, and opened his eyes. The new dark was cold and fresh and stinging, and he moved farther, beyond Polar, down his bed. His mind whirred, working slowly up to waking, and suddenly struck.
Christmas morning! For a moment he lay motionless – stiff with the gorgeous certainty of the high-pitched, mysterious crackle at the end of his bed.
He
knew how it got there: nothing
to do with Father Christmas; one father was enough, by Golly. People crept in before they went to bed and put it there. His sister, Van, thought one’s mother ought to be Father Christmas, but
she thought of nothing but mothers – or rather their mother. People said she was morbid. He did not know what the word meant: a sort of mixture of too much and too bad – a really
grownup word like stair-carpet. He hoped very much he’d be morbid himself one day.

It
was
dark! He sat up: it was awfully cold. He would be fish-cold in a minute. ‘Frozen to the spot,’ he hissed aloud, hoping to wake Van, but there was no sound from her. He
had asked to sleep with Van. ‘She cries at night and she likes me there,’ he had explained. Really it was the only way he could borrow her watch, which was large and round with a
second-hand that worked; Van cried every night while their mother was away, and he timed her. He let her cry for nine minutes and gave her thirty seconds to stop. Then he had to give her back the
watch, and they both went to sleep. At home he had to share a bedroom with Marie-Laure, who smelled of parsley and prayed for ages and tried to make him talk French.

He was beginning to freeze. He felt about with his feet until he found the creaking bulk of his stocking. He imagined exactly how it lay for a moment, and then plunged for it – flinging
himself head downwards. He hit his head on the iron rail and said ‘Ouch’ more loudly than it hurt, but there was still no sound from Van. Somewhere in the stocking would be a torch, but
not, he betted, at the top. ‘Bet your life no,’ he said aloud. Wake her up, she’s only a girl, even if she is older, he thought. He could feel the tangerine and, he thought, the chocolate money.
He’d eat those and pinch the paper together to make flat old money. He was shivering with hunger, and rage at the dark, and Van still sleeping. Christmas ruined already: he was sick of
looking forward to things. ‘You may get a train for Christmas, if you’re good.’ Think of saying that to someone who was anyway going to spend their life driving engines.
‘Unfair,’ he muttered, and hurt himself grinding his teeth.
Un
fair –
un
fair –
un
fair – he jolted up a steep incline of resentment, louder and
faster, till he got to the top and thought he might shriek. Better not: wake the silly French thing next door. He leapt out of bed and ran to Van, stubbing his bare foot in the dark. Painful tears
streamed easily down. ‘Van! I had to wake you up! I’m hurt! I’ve hurt half my leg!’

He felt her wake, instantly attentive. She switched on the light. He hopped before her, holding the bad foot, frowning to keep his tears moving. His hair stood in tufts like spare grass.

‘Poor James. Did you have a dream? It’s cold! You must be freezing!’

‘I am. I’m like new ice-cream. You’d freeze to death if you touched me.’ He pushed his fingers under her hair like a small bunch of keys on the back of her neck.
‘Stop your nose bleeding.’ She squeaked, and he danced with joy.

‘It’s Christmas! It’s morning! Get yours, and let’s open them.’ He rushed to his bed and held up the end of his stocking.

Van looked at her watch. ‘James, you know it isn’t even six o’clock. It’s really still night-time. You know they said not till seven.’

He stood up on his bed bouncing gently with rage.

‘I’ll yell. I’ll tell them what you cry about. I’ll put your beastly watch down the lavatory and pull the plug.
Whoosh!
It’ll be gone just like that! Done by
me!’ He nearly fell over pulling the plug. He leaned forward impressively. ‘I’ll be
sick
at breakfast. Widely sick
next to you
! I’ll swallow my pudding
sixpence and then I’ll have to live in hospital and you’ll
never
see Mamma because she’ll live in hospital with me and Dad. You’ll be alone for the whole of your life
– a thousand years at least. Well?’

That worked. Her eyes filled with tears; he saw her imagining the thousand years. He sneezed, and said:

‘But if we open them now I’ll be so nice. I’ll be on your side all day. I’ll kick Desmond if he teases you, and I’ll help you bury your best present.’ He
sneezed again.

Van leapt out of bed. ‘Put on your dressing-gown, then. You’ll catch your death of cold.’ She said it crossly.

Robed, they stood glaring at each other, with the bargain not quite clinched.

‘You promise, James? You absolutely promise?’

He hesitated for the most convincing word.

‘I –
morbidly
promise.’

Her face cleared. ‘O.K.’

They leapt on to their beds and seized their stockings.

‘Happy Christmas,’ he said, carelessly tearing at his top present: he was radiantly happy.

Vanessa left him sitting in a sea of coloured
crêpe
paper and tangerine skins, eating her chocolate money (he had finished his own) and pulling to pieces his best
thing – a clockwork frog. He was wearing a black beard, a patch, and a bus-conductor’s ticket-machine slung over his dressing-gown. His animals were arranged in a double row at the end
of the bed and he was quietly boasting to them about the frog. He was perfectly safe to leave to Marie-Laure.

She dipped her flannel into the icy jug and rubbed her face. She had to do her hair in one plait because she had lost the other elastic band. The photograph of her mother in her Presentation
dress, with white feathers, very black thin lipstick, and fat, long, white gloves, watched her while she dressed. The picture was not at all like her mother, but she accepted its appearance as an
alien, almost mystical extravagance: her mother could look like anything and be always the most beautiful of all people. Her watch said ten minutes to nine.

She, James and Marie-Laure – the visitors – slept on the top floor. Downstairs was the floor on which her grandmother, her uncle and aunt and her cousins slept. Here were two
staircases, one at each end of the corridor: the children called them major and minor. You slid down the banisters of major and chased Ruby, giggling madly, up and down minor. Groucho, the black
Labrador, lay at the bottom of minor, and thudded his tail mechanically at her approach. With a deep sigh he heaved himself up and jostled heavily against her down the passage to the garden door
– their difference in weight was like wrapping up her outdoor shoes in tissue-paper, she thought.

The door had their heights marked against it, with dates: she and James always spent their
holidays here, but usually their Mamma had spent some of the time with them. They had never spent Christmas Day without her – but this time Dad was really ill and she might not be able to
join them at all, she had said.

‘If we
put off
Christmas Day, could you?’

‘Darlings – we can’t do that. But I’ll ring you up specially – at tea-time – how’s that?’

‘That will have to do, then,’ Van had said stiffly, wanting to cry so badly that she hated Dad –
hated
him. Christmas without Mamma seemed to her an unbelievable
disaster: pretty well the worst thing that could happen in the world. The very worst thing, something dreadful happening to her Mamma, had for so long now been her chief preoccupation and terror
that she had become quite business-like about it. One gave things up – adventures, presents, chocolates, anything at all nice whenever Mamma was away, in return for getting her back safely.
So far it had always worked. Of course, one had to balance what to give up against the length of Mamma’s absence – the bargain had to be fair; but she had had years of practice because
Dad had been ill – off and on – ever since Van could remember.

Outside was bright grey – breathlessly cold – but without snow. ‘I’m
glad
there’s no snow,’ she thought, crunching the frosty grass
with her feet. It was the most anti-Christmas thing she could think. Groucho was following her, pretending to be very faithful. ‘First we’re going to the potting-shed, and then to the
dirty old Place,’ she told him, and he wriggled self-consciously, as though she had paid him a compliment.

The potting-shed smelled like slightly burnt rich cake, and was beautifully, neatly untidy. ‘You can’t be really tidy about earth,’ she thought, ‘except at a
distance.’ The thought pleased her. ‘What old thoughts I have to myself. No: I mustn’t be pleased. Really I’m awfully sad – I simply save up my crying and do it all at
once, but my sadness is spread over the whole day.’

The dirty old Place was behind the kitchen garden, through some laurel bushes where was embedded a vast disused water-tank in which they played ‘Prisons’, a gloomy, domineering game
invented by her oldest cousin – and finally to an ash-heap. Beyond this was a small stretch of rough grass. Here she was going to dig the grave . . .

It was a grave designed for her most extravagant expectations in the way of a doll (with real hair – which was the whole point). Surveying it, she felt that nobody could be expected to be
any kinder than that. (The grave was about three feet long.) She knelt down to smooth the frozen, lumpy earth, so that the doll – whoever she was – should be more comfortable. ‘I
hope she won’t have a name,’ she thought.

‘With a name she would have to die. If she hasn’t got one, I can pretend she’s dead already.’ She sat back on her heels. ‘I’ll put her here as soon as I can
escape after they’ve given her to me. I’ll try not even to look properly at her first. I won’t sing in church; I won’t have bread sauce or mince-pies; I’ll kiss
Desmond under the mistletoe; I’ll give my cake icing to James; I’ll even pull bare crackers; if the doll is small I’ll put my second-best thing in as well. She
must
ring up
at tea-time, and if she doesn’t say she’s coming tomorrow, she must at least come before the end of the holidays.’ She paused, and shut her eyes tightly to stop the tears coming
out. ‘And nothing awful is to happen to her – nothing – specially not catching whatever Dad has got. Nothing awful is to happen,’ she repeated.

It was done: she walked slowly back. If the doll was small but had long golden hair, surely she needn’t put her second-best thing in the grave as well?