The Winds of Change (15 page)

He went back to his bench and watched a nondescript dog without a collar moving around, snuffling the dust bin, and Jury wondered if he smelled the sausage roll in there. It was still lying on top. He reached in and got it and separated sausage from bread (although who’s to say the dog didn’t like bread?). Jury broke the sausage into a couple of pieces and put it down in its paper container in front of the dog. The dog vacuumed it up inside of five seconds. Well, he said to the dog, more or less said to him, That won’t do, will it? He returned to the kiosk and bought another sausage roll, which he waved back and forth a few times to cool it off. Then he again broke it up and put down the pieces. Again, the dog gobbled it up.

Jury sighed, ran his hand along the dog’s bony back and asked him, Will we ever be full, any of us? Because what he felt was a huge emptiness that was only confirmed by the cavernous station, the dog, the endless tracks.

His train came. He wished the dog well, walked along the nearly empty platform and boarded, feeling like a man who had nothing for anyone, a man who never brought the news.

THE CHILD THIEF

16

Melrose got out of his rental car–he had decided the Bentley was too showy–and stood on the gravel looking at Angel Gate. It was an impressive great pile of red brick mellowed with age to pink. Georgian, by the look of it. No less impressive was the avenue of beeches along that winding drive up to the house.

He gathered up his pigskin suitcase and made his way to the door.

This was opened rather quickly by a little girl of undetermined age. That is, the age might be a certainty for her, but not for him.

He could never tell. She was just very young, with hair of such a dark brown it looked black. She was wearing unflattering eyeglasses. This welcoming committee was swelled by her dog. Which, Melrose was glad to see, was not in automatic-bark position, one of those dogs that barked and barked whenever something was opened—door, window, package, no matter whether or not someone dangerous was on the other side.

‘Have you come about the gardens?’

‘Yes, I have. I like your little dog.’

‘His name’s Roy.’

‘Peculiar name for a dog.’

It’s not the Roy you’re thinking of.

‘Had I been thinking of one?’

‘It means ‘king’ or ‘your highness’ and it’s spelled R-o-i. It’s French, but nobody says it right, so I just changed it to plain Roy.’ The temperature seemed to have dropped ten degrees since he’d been standing here, but perhaps that was simply the effect of a Melrose-child encounter. He hoped she wasn’t another Debbie-Polly, or he could be stranded here by the door for a week. ‘Look, could we continue this discussion inside? Before we take up the French Revolution?’

Reluctantly (it seemed to him) she held the door wide.

‘Ta, very much.’ He kept telling himself sarcasm should not be wasted on children. ‘I’ll say one thing for your dog–he doesn’t bark.’

‘He doesn’t need to.’

Melrose frowned over this inscrutable explanation.

‘You’re to come to the kitchen. Aunt Rebecca’s making lunch.’

He followed his guide from the lovely marble hall into an equally lovely dining room. Lovely to Melrose because it looked used, comfortably used. The family portraits (if that’s what they were) were not as imposing as portraits usually are. The subjects here all seemed to have been caught doing something and the painter captured the spontaneity, except for the military-looking one up on the horse.

‘Who is Aunt Rebecca?’

‘My aunt.’

‘I gathered that. Is she anything else?’

‘She takes care of me since my mum and dad died.’ (Oh, dear. This was sounding familiar. Would he have to walk softly now?)

‘She’s housekeeper here.’

She had pushed through a swinging door and he quickly raised his hand to keep it from thumping back in his face.

It was a vast kitchen, one of the biggest Melrose had ever seen outside of a hotel. Along one wall ran a row of windows that lent the room a greenhouse effect. Light poured through across a long deal table set with three places.

‘He’s here,’ said the girl. ‘This is him.’ Having done her duty, she went to sit at the table.

The woman who turned at this announcement Melrose supposed was Rebecca Owen. She looked surprised. ‘Lulu, I told you you were to come and get me when Mr. Plant arrived!’ She wiped her hands on a kitchen towel and said, ‘I’m so sorry. I’m Rebecca Owen, Mr. Scott’s housekeeper. He was called away and asked me to be sure you were comfortable. He’ll be back later this afternoon, around teatime.’

Melrose was glad to know he would be staying in a house where tea was still a ritual. It warmed him to know this.

She turned and picked up a platter of sandwiches. ‘I thought you’d like some lunch.’

‘That’s kind of you. You know, what I’d really like is some coffee.’

‘We’ve got that, too. If you’ll just have a seat.’ She nodded toward the long table where Lulu was already ensconced, sitting with her back to the window through which a dazzle of sunlight made her straight dark hair look like licorice.

Melrose took the seat opposite her, the better to survey the grounds beyond. The platter of sandwiches appeared and Lulu helped herself to one from which she took one slow bite after another, handing down little bits to Roy–at least Melrose assumed she wasn’t just throwing them down on the floor.

Rebecca Owen poured Melrose coffee and Lulu what looked like lemonade. She then sat down.

Melrose said, ‘I have a question about your dog.’ They both looked at him, Rebecca Owen more surprised by this question than Lulu, who probably had a question about every thing on God’s green earth.

‘At night, if a robber came in, how would you know, seeing that Roy doesn’t bark at strangers?’

Lulu looked thoughtful and pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose. ‘I expect Roy would think of something.’ She drank her lemonade, watching Melrose over the rim of the glass.

Definitely a Polly type. He turned to Rebecca Owen. ‘It looks as if Mr. Scott is having extensive work done.’ He nodded toward the wall of windows, which he was facing.

‘He is. Everything had pretty much gone to seed over the last few years, and now he’s decided it wants sprucing up.’ Melrose took umbrage. Was he to be no better than a sprucer? He said, ‘Has he someone overseeing it? Or just the gardeners working?’

‘He has a landscape fellow. I think he’s called a garden architect. It seems everything these days has its specialist, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes. It’s hard to find a general practitioner anymore. They’re all specialists. And specialists within the specialty. The whole thing’s going to hell. Oh, pardon me–’

Lulu smiled.

He said to Miss Owen, ‘And you, do you specialize?’

‘Lord, no. I’m general dogsbody: cook, housekeeper, doorbell answerer – that is, except when Lulu decides to be the welcoming committee herself.’

Rebecca Owen was an attractive woman who didn’t spend a lot of time in front of a mirror. He put her in her late forties or early fifties.

Lulu, who looked as if her weight could be measured by quantities of air, was now eating a watercress sandwich. Roy had come out from under the table to sit stiffly by Melrose’s chair. Why was it that other people made dogs want to frolic, whereas all he provoked in them was this blind staring?

He drank off the rest of his coffee, finished his cheese sandwich, pushed back and said, ‘Tell me where I’m to stay and I’ll be off.’

‘Of course. Lulu can show you to the cottage; it’s just over there.’ She pointed across the gardens.

‘Okay,’ said Lulu. ‘I can carry your suitcase if you like.’

‘Certainly not. I’m much bigger than you.’ Melrose picked up his case and they went out.

The kitchen was in, or perhaps constituted, the short left wing of the house. They crossed a patio and walked down several wide, shallow terraces that gave a sunken garden effect to the land beyond. They passed a bronze statue of two boys with buckets, one lad holding his bucket higher than Melrose’s head and could have doused him had there been water running and had the boy, of course, been animated. Melrose thought this sculpture amusing and a pleasant respite from draped and armless maidens.

Lulu pointed off to the bottom of the gardens. ‘We had a murder here.’

Triumph or pride registered in her tone, as if the place had done something wizard.

He expressed surprise. ‘Good lord, who was murdered?’

‘Nobody knows, not even the police.’

They were walking a path that was outlined in yew hedges and crisscrossed with other paths. ‘Your gardens are beautiful.’

‘I like it when it snows. When the snow tops the hedges and shadows move back and forth.’

‘Do you get snow in Cornwall?’

‘Sometimes we get a lot.’

Melrose seriously doubted it. Down toward the bottom of the garden he saw two figures, a man and a woman, planting or hoeing or whatever people did in that world which he would prefer not to mess about in. None of the Ryland experience as (so-called) undergardener seemed to stick except filling and emptying wheelbarrows full of dirt.

‘That’s the Macmillans. He’s her father. They have a big garden shop outside Launceston. Here’s the cottage.’

Architecturally, the cottage bore no resemblance to the main house. It was built of stone and knapped flint in a checkerboard design, with a thatched roof, and even a thatched porch overhanging a wide step flanked by two narrow columns. It was surrounded by a hedge out of which had been carved a topiary to hang over the pebble walk. Only a one-up, one-down, it was the fussiest little place Melrose had ever seen. The fuss continued on the inside with the curtains patterned in blue and pink hydrangeas and sofa and two armchairs covered in a cretonne full of pansies, roses and lilies–a regular flower garden of furniture.

No wonder Lulu liked it. ‘I’m going to live in this someday’.
 

‘How long are you staying?’

‘Five, ten minutes and then I’ll clear out and leave you to it.’

‘The kitchen’s in here. Come on!’ she demanded. Melrose was not allowed to linger. ‘See, there’s everything you need, like a teakettle.’ She pointed out the mismatched, but very colorful crockery on the open shelves; the pots and pans; the various appliances, small, but clearly big enough for the one or two (at most) people who’d be occupying it.

‘You should be a tour guide. Blenheim Palace would suit you.’

‘I don’t know if I’d care for a palace.’ She had a way, when she was thoughtful, of wrapping a strand of hair round her finger, which was an unsuccessful maneuver, since her dark hair was so straight.

‘The Churchills will be inconsolable to hear it. Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get settled in–’

‘Okay.’ And she was through the cottage door quicker than a rabbit.

Here was someone who made up her mind and acted on it immediately.

Melrose decided the first order of business was to go upstairs and take a nap.

17

You’re to come for drinks.’ Lulu intercepted Melrose at the cottage door as he was standing in the doorway contemplating food. Sleeping always made him hungry.

‘I am?’ He looked at his watch. It was five o’clock, he was surprised to see. ‘And by that, do you mean tea with you and unidentified others?’

She squinted in thought, as if the decision were hers to make.

‘Mr. Scott said maybe you’d like whiskey.’

‘Mr. Scott couldn’t be righter. So he’s home, is he?’
 

She nodded. ‘I’m supposed to tell you and bring you.’

‘Right. Hold on while I get my jacket and we’ll go.’ He did this as she hopped from one foot to the other in one of those energy-wasting displays that kids seemed to favor. Following her along the pebble path, he said, ‘My name, incidentally, is Melrose Plant.’

Now, she was walking backward to talk. ‘My name’s really Louise, but I don’t like that name. I want people to call me Lulu.’

‘I don’t care too much for mine all that much, either. But I don’t want people to call me Lulu.’

‘You can use your middle name.’

‘I don’t have one.’

‘Oh.’ Interest in his name went completely south and probably interest in him, too. She hopscotched her way now on the wider path to the terrace and the house.

It tired Melrose to watch her expending all of that energy. He took solace in the wild growth around him. Solace? Why should he need it? He must; otherwise it wouldn’t have sprung to mind. Although a goodly part of the gardens had come under the purview of the landscape designer and the horticulturists, there was still this wild space around the cottage and its wintry flowers—drifts of snowdrops against the far wall, shoots of narcissus, a handful here and there, the dry fountain, the path from cottage to house in patches slick with moss or covered in bramble, ivy rampaging up the perimeter wall, the white birches at the back, their trunks looking too delicate to withstand any heavy wind (but which were protected by the brick garden wall), bare coppery stems of Rubus grass, thick brown tangles of clematis–it was, he supposed, what any serious gardener would call a right mess, but for him it had a strange charm.