The Crocodile Bird (12 page)

After that there was no post for weeks, nothing from Mr. Tobias until a postcard came, a plain one, not even a picture, with just a few lines on the back asking them to have the dogs.

“Not if it’s a nuisance,” he wrote. “Matt will willingly have them. It is only for two weeks while I go to France to see my mother.”

“Caroline,” Liza said.

Mother said nothing.

“Does she live in the house in the place called Dordogne?” Liza had spent a long time studying the large maps of France in the library atlas. “Does she live there by herself? Is she called Mrs. Tobias?” She remembered the fierce eyes and the red, mouth-colored dress.

“She is now. She is called Caroline Tobias. When she was married she was called Lady Ellison, but our Mr. Tobias was always called Jonathan Tobias because that was his grandfather’s wish. She lives in a house in the Dordogne her husband gave her when they were divorced.” Mother gave Liza a speculative look as if she was considering explaining something, but she must have thought better of it. “Mostly, she lives by herself. Mr. Tobias goes to see her.”

“We can have the dogs, can’t we?” said Liza. “Even if Matt really wants them, we can have them, can’t we?”

“Of course we shall have the dogs.”

So that Mr. Tobias would be sure to come. Liza knew that only in retrospect, not at the time.

It was the day of her first French lesson
(“Voici la table, les livres, la plume, le cahier”)
that Matt came with the dogs. She was pursing her lips, trying to make that funny sound which is halfway between an E and a U, when they heard the van coming and then the knock at the door. It was rather a cold day even for April, she remembered, and the old electric heater was switched on.

The dogs were pleased to see her, as they always were, jumping up and licking her face and wagging the bit at the end of their backs where their tails had been chopped off. But Rudi was less violent in his affections than in the past, his breath smelled, and his muzzle was going gray. Dogs had seven years to every year of ours, Matt said, and that made Rudi over seventy. Heidi, of course, was only six, or forty-two.

“Will he die?” Liza said.

Matt’s hair was much longer than last time, hanging down in greasy hanks. “Don’t you worry yourself about that,” he said. “That’s a long way off.”

But Mother said, “Yes, he’ll die this year or next. Dobermans don’t live much past eleven.”

Liza knew her tables. “Or seventy-seven.”

It had the effect of making Matt ask her why she wasn’t at school. Before she could reply Mother said coldly, “It’s Easter. The schools have broken up for Easter.”

Some years went by before Liza realized a vital fact about that statement, though she knew there was something odd about it at the time. Mother hadn’t told a lie, it
was
the Easter holidays, but just the same the impression she had given Matt was a false one. Later on she observed other instances of Mother doing this and learned how to do it herself.

Mother asked Matt how long they were to have the dogs this time and he said two or three weeks, he couldn’t be more precise. But they’d let her know.

“Still haven’t got no phone, I see.”

“And never shall have.”

“It’ll have to be a postcard, then.”

“I think we can leave that to Mr. Tobias,” Mother said in the very cold way she sometimes had, and then, less coldly, almost as if she was asking for something she didn’t want to have to ask for, “Will he come for them himself?”

Liza didn’t like the look Matt gave Mother. He wasn’t smiling but it was as if he was laughing inside. “Like you said, we’ll have to leave that to him.” With one of his winks, he added, “It’ll depend on what Miss Fastley has to say.”

Liza had never heard of Miss Fastley, but Mother looked as if she had, though she said nothing.

“When him and her get back from France,” Matt said.

As soon as he had gone, Liza thought they would return to the French lesson but Mother said that was enough for today and to take the dogs down to the river. They wrapped up warmly and went down through the Shrove garden. A couple of trains had very likely passed by, Liza couldn’t remember details like that, but it was probable at that hour. Likely too that she had waved to the train and one or two passengers waved back. There were never more than a few to wave back.

Mother stood looking across the valley and up to the high hills where the white road ran around among the greening trees. The woods were white with cherry blossom and primroses grew under the hedges.

“It’s so beautiful, it’s so beautiful!” she cried, spreading out her arms. “Isn’t it beautiful, Lizzie?”

Liza nodded, she never knew what to say. There was something about the way Mother looked and the breathy edge to her voice that made her feel awkward.

“I don’t mind the trains, I think in a way the trains make it better, it’s something to do with all the people being able to sit inside and see how beautiful it is.”

And she told Liza a story about a man called George Borrow who sold Bibles, wrote books, and lived in Norfolk, and who moved away and lived away for years because he couldn’t bear it when they built a railway through the countryside he loved.

“Who’s Miss Fastley?” Liza said on the way back.

Mother can’t have heard her that first time because she had to say it again.

“She is one of the ladies who came to stay at Shrove for the weekend last year. She is the one called Victoria.”

“Annabel had the sweater with flowers on,” said Liza, “and Claire had the jacket like your shoes, so Victoria must have been the one in the green silk shirt.”

“Yes, I believe she was.”

They didn’t put the dogs straight into the little castle but had them in with them for the evening. Rudi lay in front of the electric heater and slept. He was tired after his walk, Mother said they had taken him too far. Liza sat on one side of the fireplace and Mother on the other side. Liza was reading
Winnie the Pooh
by A. A. Milne and Mother was reading
Eothen
by A. W. Kinglake. They sometimes read bits aloud to each other and

Winnie the Pooh
was so funny there were a lot of bits Liza would have liked to read aloud but when she looked up she saw that Mother wasn’t reading but gazing sadly at the hearth rug and she had tears on her face.

Liza didn’t offer to read aloud but went silently back to her book. She thought Mother was crying because Rudi was old and would soon die.

The money they earned Liza wanted to save up. Eve had set her an example of thrift. There had been the bank account and the tin in the kitchen. And, of course, the secret box in the little castle. Strict accounts had been kept of what Eve earned and what they spent and these were consulted and referred back to before a length of material was bought to make a dress for Liza or a new skirt for Eve. The biggest expenditure Liza remembered was on the tape player Eve bought so that Liza could learn about music and get used to hearing the works of the great composers. She was nearly eight when that happened.

Sean appreciated her economies. He said that being sensible about money was one thing she
could
teach him. They might have Cornish pasties or pork pies and crisps for lunch with chocolate bars afterward, but it would be wiser not to go into town so much in the evenings for a meal at the Burger King or even Mr. Gupta’s Tandoori. One evening Sean saw a notice in the window of the new supermarket that they wanted assistants. It would be only for sticking labels on packets and putting cans on shelves, but he said he was going to apply for it. The money would be at least twice what he earned at Vanner’s, maybe three times as much.

“I will too, then.”

“I don’t reckon you can, love. They’ll want your insurance number and you haven’t got none.”

“Can’t I get one?”

“Not without giving your name you can’t.”

They found the family planning clinic too—Liza gave Sean’s name and called herself Elizabeth Holford—and a notice board in a newsagent’s window on which five people were advertising for domestic help. Liza studied it thoughtfully. Housework was something she could do.

When they got back, the man with the black dog put his head around the door of his camper, said hi and how about a cup of tea?

Liza could see Sean didn’t want to, but it was rude to say no, so they went into the man’s camper, the kitchen part, where the black dog was sitting on a counter, watching television. Instead of tea the man, who said his name was Kevin, produced a bottle of whiskey and three glasses, which Liza could see made Sean feel a lot better about going in there.

The little glowing screen fascinated her, the picture was so clear and the colors so bright. But at first she was half-afraid to look in case a policeman appeared describing her own appearance or even Eve herself. There was no need to worry. This was a program about small mammals in some distant part of the world, ratlike creatures and squirrellike creatures, which perhaps accounted for the dog’s absorption.

He was much smaller than Rudi and Heidi, less sleek and with a real tail, which thumped on the counter when the squirrels jumped about, but just the same he reminded her of Mr. Tobias’s dogs, now long dead. She and Mother had looked after them for three weeks, not two, on that occasion and at the end of that time, without warning, Matt appeared to take them away. When Mother saw his van stop outside and saw him get out of it, his hair longer than ever and tied back now, all the color went out of her face and she grew very white.

Liza thought she would be bound to ask him where Mr. Tobias was but she didn’t, she hardly spoke to him. The dogs were handed over, Liza having hugged them both and kissed the tops of their heads, and somehow she knew as she watched the van depart that they would never come again, or not both of them, or not in the way they had before. She didn’t know how she knew this, for Mother said not a word about it, didn’t even look out of the window but set the French book in front of Liza and told her quite sharply to begin reading.

That evening Mother said they must go over to Shrove House, which surprised Liza because they never did. They never went there after about three in the afternoon. It was just after six when they walked across the parkland between the tall trees. There were cowslips in the grass and against the hedges cow parsley and yellow Alexanders. But this time Mother said nothing about how beautiful it was. They walked in silence, hand in hand.

Mother took her into the library and set her a task: to find the French books, to count them and then to see if she could find one called
Emile
by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It took Liza no time at all. There weren’t many French books, she could count only twenty-two,
Emile
among them. She took it down from the shelf, a very old book bound in blue with gilt letters, and went to look for Mother.

She was in the drawing room, talking into the telephone. Liza had never before seen anyone do that. Of course she had seen the telephone and more or less knew what it was, Mr. Tobias had told her, and on that occasion she remembered, while he was explaining, Mother had frowned and shaken her head. It was Mother using it now. Liza kept very still, listening.

She heard Mother say, “I’ve said I’m sorry, Jonathan. I’ve never phoned you before.” Her voice went very low so that Liza could hardly hear. “I had to phone. I had to know.”

Somehow Liza had expected to hear Mr. Tobias’s voice coming out of the other end of the receiver, but there was silence, though she could tell Mother could hear him.

“Why do you say there’s nothing to know? If there was nothing, you would have come.”

Liza had never heard Mother speak like that, in a ragged, pleading, almost frightened voice, and she didn’t like it. Mother was always in control of things, all knowing, all powerful, but that wasn’t how she sounded now.

“Then, will you come? Will you come, Jonathan, please? If I ask you,
please
to come.”

Even Liza could tell he wasn’t going to come, that he was saying, no, I can’t, or, no, I won’t. She saw Mother’s shoulders hunch and her head dip down and heard her say in her cold voice, not unlike the one she used to Matt, “I’m sorry to have troubled you. I do hope I haven’t interrupted anything. Good-bye.”

Liza went up to her then and put out her hand. She showed her the blue book called
Emile
but Mother seemed to have forgotten what she had asked her to do and everything about it. Mother’s face was as pale as a wax candle and as stiff….

“You lost in a dream, love?” Sean said. “I offered you a penny for them and you never heard a word I said. Kevin wants to know if you’d like a glass of his Riseling?”

Liza said, yes, thanks, she’d love some, and when she saw the wine box and read the name she somehow managed to stop herself telling them it was pronounced “reesling,” she thought their feelings might be hurt. Kevin was a small man with a nut-brown face and black hair, though not much of that was left. He might be thirty or he might be forty-five. Liza couldn’t tell, she wasn’t much good at guessing ages, and no wonder.

The men talked about football and then about the dog that Kevin said was a good little ratter. It had started to rain, Liza could hear it drumming on the roof of the camper. What would become of them if it rained? Mr. Vanner wouldn’t pay them if they couldn’t pick. She suddenly thought, with a fierce hunger, not altogether unlike the desire she often had for Sean, that if she didn’t soon have a book in her hands, if she couldn’t soon read a book, she’d die.

She asked Kevin how much his TV cost and could tell at once from Sean’s expression that she shouldn’t have. But Kevin didn’t seem to mind. He said he didn’t know, he hadn’t a clue, because it was one of the things he’d brought with him from their household when he and his wife split up and he reckoned it was she who bought it in the first place.

“Not thinking of getting married, are you?” he said when she and Sean were going. “Only you want to think twice. Hang on to your freedom while you can.”

“Of course we’re not thinking of getting married,” said Liza, and she laughed at the very idea, but Sean didn’t laugh.