The Little Girls (6 page)

“If anybody exerted a spell, I did.”

Inclining her head in its pink bower, Sheila let herself smile. She said: “So you thought.” Dibdabbing with her spoon at the disc of lemon afloat in her teacup, she smiled again. “She, though,
was a born ringleader.
She only did not succeed in ringleading us because, unfortunately for her, we were you and me. The two of us being
us
was just too much for her. So we know how that always ended: with her screaming—oh, I can hear her! But she never learned: it was try, try, and try again. Next time, she’d be back at her old game. And here she now is, trying it on once more.—Do as you wish, if you want. I simply instinctively warn you, if I were you I wouldn’t go near her without me.”

“Come along too, then?”

“Thank you, I’d rather die.”

“If that’s how you feel—”

“That is how I feel. Any objection?”

Tea-logged, the disc of lemon submerged—the point of the spoon, however, ran it to death at the bottom of the cup, goring away at it without mercy. Here and there a shred rose to the surface. “Well?” asked Mrs. Artworth, when that was over.

“Though,” tendered Miss Burkin-Jones, a gleam in her eye, “it could be the one way of stopping this. However …”

“Since you can’t wait to see her, Clare, which stands out a mile, exactly why
did
you wait, I should like to know? Her instructions were clear, surely? Why didn’t you dash off a line to her straightaway? Why waste time, I mean, getting in touch with me?”

“Thought, no harm in you and me getting together first.”

“Oh. Oh, then you did smell a rat?”

“Not exactly, but—”

“Did you, or didn’t you? Yes or no?”

“Smart of me, didn’t you think, the way I traced
you?
A typical brain-wave. Occurred to me, c/o Beaker & Artworth, Southstone, could hardly fail to catch up with you —if still living.”

“I can’t see why I should not be,” said Sheila huffily. She reflected, however. “Now that I come to think,
she
could have done the same. First thing anybody might think of, one might have thought—sorry, Clare, but really it does seem obvious! With Beaker & Artworth boards, not to speak of notices, all over Southstone and through the area. There they have always been, and doubtless will be. There they used to be then, just as much as now. If she’d been bona fide, her way lay open. But not her, oh no! No, she had to rouse the world. No, apart from anything, that itself shows …”

“She took little notice of notice boards: too self-centred. And never had any memory.”

“Exactly what,” Sheila wanted to know, “is she having now, then?”

“Some sort of attack, with regard to us—call it a seizure.”

Sheila brightened slightly. “Imagine she’s breaking up? . … It certainly was a relief when I heard from you, Clare. Where you’d disappeared to, of course I had not a clue.”

” ‘Alive but in hiding’—eh?”

“Don’t!
—Trevor pointed out, the best hope was your contacting us. He thought, in view of how rattled we knew you must be, it was probable that you would—and of course you did. Trevor was all in favour of sitting tight until you did show up. ‘Give her time,’ he advised me. He’s attached great importance to our getting together. As he said, once I saw you—”

“Then, what?”

“Then we could talk this over.”

“Exactly,” Clare vaunted, “what we’re doing!”

“Yes and no,” Mrs. Artworth said, less contentedly. “We don’t get far.”

“How far were we meant to get?”

“Somewhere,
surely?” The victim, side-glancing at her watch, complained: “It’s already twenty to five. We can’t sit here all night, you know: this place closes.”

Clare did not seem sorry. “There’s the bar at my club.”

“I dare say there is; but there’s my train. What Trevor hopes, and really I cannot blame him, is that you and I will decide on what we’re to
do.
Once he’s been told what that is, he can think it over. Oh yes, and he also asked me to tell you, he by now has of course already taken legal advice, though he’s not as clear as he’d like to be what that came to. Our lawyer apparently hummed and hawed. Trevor expects you’re in touch with your lawyer, too? The idea is, you and I should take action jointly.”

“Oh. yes?”

“Well?” asked Sheila, extremely guardedly.

“Against whom, about what, and—quite frankly— why?”

Thus querying, Clare extracted a cigarette from a monogrammed case (which Sheila weighed with her eye), lit it, after some to-do with her lighter, and went on to take two or three tense, inexpert puffs. Clearly (nor was this ignored by Sheila) she put herself through the bother of this performance only when it was needed to mark a crisis, build up a role, or convey an effect, as now. Heaving up her thorax, she supposed herself in the act of inhaling deeply: the brooch on her lapel knowingly winked and twinkled. Then—”Sorry!” she penitently exclaimed, jabbing the case towards Sheila. “You?”

“Thanks, I seldom bother to.—Did I hear you ask ‘why’ take action, and ‘what about’?”

“You did. Exactly what
is
complained of?”

“Innuendo,” said Sheila promptly, colouring deeply. “Insinuations—malicious, insidious, mischievous, damaging.”

“Golly, you’ve got that pat!”

“She so words those things that anyone could think anything. And if
that
weren’t enough, there may well be worse at the back—Trevor considers the tone is distinctly menacing. Not blackmail yet, but that is what it could come to. Incidentally, how do we know that she’s not a gang?”

“How, indeed?”

“Have
you
no character, Clare, that you don’t want injured?—or professional capacity, or something? I repeat, I’m exceedingly sorry I’ve never heard of you. You do something, do you—what do you do, then? Or if you prefer it the other way, what are you?”

At once, Clare’s expression became uplifted. She looked round her at the emptying tables like a big speaker deprecating a small audience. The eyes she at length returned to her friend were dedicated and abstract—not, it seemed, to be focussed merely on one face. “I am MOPSIE PYE,” she made known.

“Mopsie what?”

“You heard me,” said the celebrity, severely.

Sheila could not forbear to giggle: her roses tottered. “Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”

“MOPSIE PYE chain of specialty gift shops operates throughout the better-class London suburbs and outward into the Home Counties. When it extends to the coast, you will soon know. I started, have a controlling interest in, buy for, and operate MOPSIE PYE.”

“Oh.”

“Yes..

“Did that brooch,” Sheila asked swiftly, “come out of stock?”

Clare nodded. “Goes back tomorrow.”

“I wouldn’t mind taking it off you, for cash down. How much?”

“Nope, dear. Not out of hours. What a jackdaw you are, Sheikie, always were!”

“You do really run some quite nice lines, then, at Mopsie Pye,” Mrs. Artworth conceded, though not in the best of humours, frustratedly closing the purse she had whipped out.

“Swedish, Spanish, Finnish, Italian, Provengal, Japanese, and Javanese novelties, and others. Driftwood, primitive art. Witch balls, wind harps. Neckwear, place mats, personalized dog dishes, book ends, saris, door knockers, goat rugs—”

“Yes, I expect so. But stop it: listen! How many people know you are Mopsie Pye?”

“Oh, I show up sooner or later at all my branches. Always have made a great point of that. Personality. Hare round and round in the Mini, six days a week. How am I to count my enormous public?”

“Most people,” persisted Sheila, “do
know,
then, that ‘Mopsie Pye’ is Clare Burkin-Jones?”

“Everyone who is anyone. What about it?”

“That is what I’ve been wondering,” said Mrs. Artworth, not only slowly but in her most ominous tone yet.
“What
about it? You don’t think widely spread innuendo and menacing hints and allusions to secret rites, not to speak of threats to expose your past, will in any way blow upon Mopsie Pye? If you don’t you’re an optimist, let me tell you. Don’t tell me scandal is good for business! And least of all in your line, I should have thought. No one can tell me anything about gift shops: we have seven in Southstone alone, to my certain knowledge. To me they are sissy, but they’re respectable—and ever, ever so their clientele are! Dizzying round with joss sticks and Swedish pepper pots far, far from means their customers are abnormal: quite the reverse. It’s respectable people who need to have fancy outlets… . No, do look, Clare! These days there are so constantly being such revelations, one can hardly wonder at everyone’s being nervous. Spy rings, dope rings, art-thief rings, white-slave rings, Black Mass rallies (or whatever they call them), and of course always naturally Communists. A gift shop, so mixed up with foreign trade, could be cover for any of those, if you come to think— and a chain of gift shops, ever so much more so! You don’t care if everyone’s frightened off?—However, that’s your worry: I’m merely telling you.”

“Thank you.”

“You hadn’t thought?” asked Sheila, tilting a glance.

Clare’s upper lip drew down to its glummest length. Her jaw sank into her chins. She returned no answer.

“Then really I think you should,” said the other earnestly.

“You mean, I’m in more of a spot than you are?”

“Oh, I should hardly say
that”

“One thing I won’t do,” Clare blustered. “Come hell and high water, won’t do it. Won’t get myself snarled up in a law-court case. Fine old figure of fun I’d be made to look —and you too, also, my Rosy-Posy! Even apart from the fact that in point of law I doubt whether we’d have a leg to stand on.”

“How is
she
to know that?
I didn’t mean bring a case, stupid (and nor did Trevor, to do him justice). I meant, threaten one. We could give her a fearful fright.”

“With a lawyer’s letter? If she’s still our Dicey, nothing short of a gun would.—Besides, damn it an, I still think she’s just being friendly!”

“Oh, yes?” The pointed tip of a tongue licked its way slowly round Sheila’s lips.

“Let me think!” Clare commanded.

“I’m not stopping you.”

Before thought took place, it became devolvent on Clare again to go through the act with a cigarette. This time, it miscarried—she choked, spluttered, while water from her smarting eyes made gutters out of the pouches under them. A mannish, also monogrammed handkerchief set about (when it could at last be come at) to make good the damage. Mrs. Artworth meanwhile examined her faultless fingernails. Yet the would-be smoker did, in a way, profit by her mishap: it gained time for her, also the mopping handkerchief hid the spasm by which her face was apt to betray thought. Once back in order, and after one steady puff (to show that it could be done), she announced: “Leave this to me—I’ve had an idea.”

“What ?”

“Leave that to me. Just wait.”

“Oh …” said Sheila, moodily, indecisively. Swooning back in her chair, to denote exhaustion, she nonetheless keenly searched the other one’s face. Though the prospect of handing over, of being quit of things, should have been grateful to Mrs. Artworth, it dissatisfied Sheila and thwarted Sheikie. “I can’t see,” she admitted, “why I should miss the fun, if there’s to be any.”

“Oh, there’ll be heaps.”

This was still ambiguous. “I hope it’s a good idea?—a quite nasty one? When I think of that fat little bossy beast…”

“Those were the days.”

“Well,
go
for her, Mumbo!”

The big woman, eyeing the pretty one with genuine fondness and affability, asked: “Ever had any?”

“Children? No, not—funnily enough,” Sheila said with aggressive lightness, an air less of regret than revived surprise. She added: “However, Trevor, by means best known to himself, had already two.”

“Wh-at?”

“What d’ you mean, ‘wha-at’?” asked the unblinking wife. “He’d been married before. Any objection? She was Phyllis Sissen—used to go to St. Monica’s, not St. Agatha’s. Fell off her bike if anyone yelled at her. I don’t think you met her.”

“When you found you required Trevor, you got her out?”

“She had died already. A chill, after German measles. Anyway, there you are.—What about you?”

“No issue. Ilie fact was, Mr. Wrong gave me but scant chance to show my form.” Clare’s eyebrows went up jaunty, came down lugubrious. Then she pondered. “Wonder if Dicey’s multiplied?”

Sheila shuddered.

She then asked: “What do I tell Trevor?”

“To hold his horses.”

Bill on salver, the waitress stood like a conscience. They were quite the last. Everything had been spirited away. But that outgoing footprints bruised the bloom of the carpet, there might never have been a soul here—stretching into the distance, the sea of tables was disembellished neither by crumb nor speck. Agoraphobia threatened. All that there was not yet was silence: in the void, the clatter of tea tray stacking and china piling and tea spoon counting sounded ever more loudly. Not to be daunted, the Southstone lady slowly reread the bill. “I pay at the desk?”