The Little Girls (32 page)

“She was not in her chair but in the middle of the sofa —there, where I’m pointing to. She was leaning back. The back of her hand was against the middle of her forehead— where that great bruise, they tell me, has since appeared. She did
not
see me.”

“How do you know she did not see you?”

“She did
not
see me. I said, ‘Is anything the matter, madam?’ She did not hear me.”

“How do you know?”

“She did
not
hear me.”

“What made you think she was not asleep?”

“Her eyes were open, under her hand.”

“What did you think?—you thought she was dead?”

“I thought I was still looking at that film.”

“Anything else strike you?”

“How cold the room was. They’d had a big fire going in here, by the look of the ashes, but it had burned out. She was alone.”

“So you’ve already said, in so many words.”

Francis, for the first time, curtained himself in a look of stupidity. He said: “Everybody had gone.”

“What
induced
you and Major Wilkins not to get a doctor?”

“We did what we could; we got her to bed. She then said: ‘If you bring anybody in here, I’ll go through that window. I don’t mind glass,’ she said, ‘I’ll go through the glass.’ “

“That doesn’t sound like her.”

“She was not like herself. So the Major said: ‘Let her be.’ He stayed up there with her through that night, in that chair Mrs. Artworth’s sitting in now. Major Wilkins was satisfied that it was not a stroke; he’s seen many strokes. And Mrs. Artworth is satisfied that it is not a stroke, and she’s had experience of nursing.”

“It could have been severe concussion.”

“Mrs. Artworth is satisfied that it’s not concussion.”

“Mrs. Artworth came on the scene late. You two took the most frightful responsibility.”

“That,” said Francis, fixing one then the other of them with a Roman eye, “I have never shrunk from. Nor, I should imagine, has the Major.”

“I see. Thank you,” said Roland. He turned to his brother. “The thing is, to see her.”

“If you can,” said Francis. He picked up the glass of gin and bottle of tonic, to go away with him to be put on a tray. “Thank
you,
Mr. Delacroix,” he said, dividing the appellation between the two.

While trays went to and fro, up and down (Mrs. Artworth, having taken her tea tray down with her to the kitchen, where she had a word with the widow about
bouillon
, was while down there run to ground by Francis, who handed over the tray with the gin and tonic, which
she
had to take up), one of the Delacroix children effected entrance by means of the front door, and by means of the stairs ascended to her grandmother’s room.

She first stared in, in a general way, from the threshold. She then came in far enough to assure herself there
was
no one in the fireside chair. No, no one: nothing left of the keeper but a cocoon of knitting skewered by glass needles. The field was her own—she advanced, humming like a bee. From the foot of the bed, she gazed along the perspective which was her grandmother with some interest. “Hullo?” she inquired (no harm trying).

“Hullo, Emma.” (This was the child’s name, after the book. She was eight.)

“When are you going to get up?”

“When I have a bath.”

“Can you have a bath when you’ve got a cold?”

“Where have you been?”

“We can’t go into the cave, it’s tied up with string. And the
swing’s
gone
.”

“No, the swing’s there.”

“No, it isn’t; the swing’s
gone
—you go and look out of the stairs window!”

The grandmother stirred in the bed—an event, had the child known. Moving herself up, so far as one could, on the flat pillow, she looked about over the expanse of the bed for her yellow dressing-gown: she was allowed to keep it there. She saw it, but it was out of reach. “Now,” she said, “go and turn the taps on. I want my bath.”

“Have you still got that duck I gave you?”

“Yes.”

“Does it still swim when you have your bath?”

“Yes.—Give me that yellow thing, Emma.”

“Shall I put the duck in when I turn the taps on? Or won’t the lady want you to have a bath? She isn’t the big lady who was in the garden, is she?
She
tried, but
she
couldn’t undo the knots of the cave; that string has all got itself swollen up. She said, if we want to go into the cave we must have a knife; she says you have a knife made like a thumb—
is
it?”

“I’ve lost my slippers.”

Emma looked under the bed. “They’re there,” she reported. “Why are there so many people? Why does there have to be Coralie? She was hiding here when we came; she keeps rushing after us. She keeps telling us things. We don’t like her—yet.”

“She belongs to Mrs. Coral.”

“Why are we sleeping at Mrs. Coral’s?”

“Are
you sleeping at Mrs. Coral’s?”

Emma sneezed. “I think
I’m
getting a cold,” she said competitively. “Down there at the bottom where the cave is, it
was
cold.
Coralie says no fox will go down those steps.”

The grandmother threw back her coverings, pushed the needlework stool out of the way, and sat on the edge of the bed pulling on the slippers. When Emma’d provided her with the yellow thing, she stood up, garbing herself in that. Now that she was out of the dark tent (in which it had no more than looked like a dark stain) the bruise she wore stood out in full magnificence—a marble boss in the middle of her forehead. The child ran to righten the tilted lampshade, the better to admire the bruise’s colours—she returned, devotedly staring, saying: “May I touch it?” (Seeing was not enough.)

“Not hard, Emma.”

“What
did
you do?”

The grandmother blinked.

“Hit against something, or something hit against you?”

The owner lightly explored the bruise with her own finger—evidently, however, its history was either a puzzle or a secret, for all she would say was: “Now, my bath …”

Emma bustled ahead. She turned on both taps, full blast, then launched the duck on to the churning waters.

Not best pleased at finding the bird flown, Sheila Artworth straightened the empty bed, then returned to her knitting. (She
had
extracted an explanation through the bathroom door. “All right, Sheikie, I’m not opening a vein.” “I dare say, but are you all right in there?” “I can swim, you know.”) She tipped the lampshade the way it had been before—who’d fiddled with it? Resorting from time to time to her gin and tonic, she thought about sons —or, glancing from the breast of her orchid blouse to a flowery arm of the chintz chair, thought how well the two colourings blended.

The patient, back from her bath, trailed past as though her nurse were part of the chair. She got back into bed again and lay flat as ever, saying, in the voice of one aloud continuing a train of thought: “You huffed and you puffed and you blew my house down.”

“Macbeth!”

“What?”

“Macbeth
, I suppose.”

“‘
Was my father a traitor, mother?
’
—that’s
Macbeth
.
”

“Isn’t it about witches?”

“Not altogether… ‘All is the fear and nothing is the love’—that’s
Macbeth.
And, ‘What are these faces?’ I don’t think most tragedies are sad, they are only tragic; but Macbeth is. It’s full of particles of sadness which are seldom noticed—deluded expectations, harmless things coming to a dreadful end. King Duncan arriving to stay with the Macbeths in such good spirits.—’This castle hath a pleasant seat.’ I know the feeling, driving up to a friend’s house in the evening, enjoying the smell of the air as one gets out of the car, looking forward to everything—but one isn’t murdered. And Banquo going out riding with his son, coming back in the nice dark fit as a fiddle, looking forward to dinner. And Banquo talking about the nesting swallows. ‘This guest of summer, the temple-haunting martle,
’ ”

“That bath has brightened you up, I must say.”

“Say, ‘This guest of summer, the temple-haunting martlet.
”’

“You’ve just said it.”

“I want to hear it.”

” ‘This guest of summer, the temple-haunting martlet,’ ” said Sheila, with justifiable coldness.

The patient listened. “It didn’t make me weep this time —but never mind… . Yet Macbeth is the one I’m sorriest for.”

“Ought you to be, from anything I’ve heard?”

“He’d done an irrevocable thing.”

“I wouldn’t worry, if I were you.”

“He did at least, though, know what it was. Could one fear that one
had
done an irrevocable thing, without knowing exactly what it was?”

“That’s beyond me, frankly. Better ask Mumbo.”

“She’s gone.”

“Look, Dinah, you’ll have to sit up: there’s some
bouillon
coming.”

“Oh, dear. I—”

“If you can march about, you can sit up.”

“Yes; but I’d rather have curried eggs.”

Alerted by sounds outside, the justly incensed nurse flounced to the door, saying not without satisfaction: “Here
comes
your
bouillon!
”

But it was Mrs. Coral. “Thought I’d just look in—I’ve come for the children.” She looked consideringly at the bed. “Better, are you, this evening? I expect you are.” She held up a small pot of special jelly. “I’ve brought you a little something to make a change and cheer you up and so on.” The patient lifted her head to gaze at the nostrum: the jelly gave forth a cornelian glow. “
And
it’s nice for you having your friend here now.” Mrs. Coral turned her candid, wide, carven face to the chintz chair. “Mrs. Arkword, isn’t it?”

“Artworth,” said Sheila crisply.

“Sheikie,” said their hostess-in-absence, “this is Mrs. Coral.”

“Oh, you
are
brighter!” rejoiced the visitor. “(She really is brighter this evening, isn’t she!) And wasn’t it a surprise about your sons! Either of them had a peep at you, so far?’”

“Have either of them had a peep at me, Sheikie?”

“They’ll be coming up later, for a little,” said Mrs. Artworth.

‘They wouldn’t of course want to over-tire her,” Mrs. Coral agreed, hastily if a shade perplexedly. She sighed. “I’m afraid what
they’re
going to want to know”—instinctively, she continued to address herself to the authority now in the chintz chair— “is, why a doctor hasn’t seen her.”

“And well might they,” said Mrs. Artworth, looking down that nose of hers at her knitting—swifter and brighter flashes flew from the needles. “
only took over this morning, as you may know, and I
do wonder. Oh, they’ll wonder, aU right!”

“No, they won’t,” said the patient.

Mrs. Coral, still holding the pot of jelly, betrayed an unusual indecision by not seeming to know where to put it down. Might it feel more at home amongst pots and bottles? —She went over and lodged it among cosmetics. “Why, it is dark!” she remarked, standing at the dressing-table, looking outdoors through the bay window. “We shouldn’t,” she asked of the chintz chair, “soon be beginning to think of drawing the curtains?”

“No,” said the patient.

“All your books gone, I see?” remarked the visitor, eyeing the bare stool.

“She can have them back,” said the nurse. “She has only to ask.”

“No, don’t bother, Sheikie.”

“Still, that leaves some place for anybody to sit, doesn
‘t
it?”

“Won’t you come and sit on it, Mrs. Coral?”

“No, you’ll have to excuse me—
I
have to go. Mrs. Delacroix, you wouldn’t want to worry your boys, would you?”

“Would
they
want me taken away in a sealed van?”

“Now, that’s
no
way to talk—it’s silly; it’s really wicked!”

“Stop it, Dicey!” commanded Sheikie.

“Or perhaps, Sheikie,” went on the unsubdued one, “you could get me a room at Number 9? Since you say I’m not dotty, then I’m just failing.”

“That’s not funny,” said Sheila, in a voice like a whip.

“And Major Wilkins worries,” said Mrs. Coral.

The patient not only lay flat, she appeared to have pasted herself to her lower sheet. No squeak more from her, for some little time.

“You’re accustomed to nursing, I expect?” said Mrs. Coral, turning to Mrs. Artworth.

“I could have made a nurse,” agreed the other, reaching into a synthetic leopard-skin knitting bag for another ball of wool, “I expect, yes. But for one and another reason, I never trained.”