Rose in Darkness (26 page)

But the Followers...

Sleepless through the terrible silence of the long night. And yet throughout it all, with no conscience as Sofy had truly said, for the everyday virtues of ordinary, everyday men—it had never so much as entered her mind to commit the one, ultimate betrayal that would long ago have brought an end to all her fears.

The rose in darkness: with the last darkness, closing, closing in.

A
ND NEXT MORNING... ALAS
, no great ringings round, for who was there left to call? ‘Etho? Yes, soundo. I don’t know, I was a dud last night, I couldn’t go on any more; I took a lot of stuff and quietly passed out. I was a bit hopped anyway, well, but natch, at a party.’

‘I’ve already rung Sofy. No hope. She says to be kind, say she’s not furious any more but she just won’t come back. So it’s you and me, Rufie; but there’s still precious Phin—and if he can take her away out of all this, well she can begin again and maybe with the atmosphere a bit more straightened out...?’

‘What do you think?’

‘Essentially very sound. To us he’s a bit stuffed but it’s the other side of the coin and it could be right for her, after all. She’ll soon shake out enough of the stuffing and, you know Sari, she can get away with anything. She’ll have Harley Street painting its faces in stripes and practising witch-doctoring before you know it, everyone simply loving it. And he’s mad about her, it’s pretty real this time. But meanwhile?’

‘A Dunkirk I should think, wouldn’t you?’ said Rufie. The retreat. Refusing to leave the flat, to leave her bedroom, to leave her bed: the retreat to the womb. ‘Well, he’s a doctor, Rufie, the wife was a bit of a psychopath, he must have an understanding mind. Tell him she had a bad shock after he left, one of her friends quarrelled with her and walked out, and she takes things hard; just not to question her or bother her but simply love her and she’ll come to. You know, Rufie,’ said Etho, slowly thinking it over, ‘I believe this may be the right one at last. One can only pray. Meanwhile—Dunkirk. Be at home as much as you can; I’m snowed under myself this week, but I’ll try and help out.’

Rufie accordingly stayed in, rang up Phin and declared a state of ‘flu and when Phin said he’d chance it, wear a mask and all that, most brilliantly transmuted the ‘flu to suspected German measles. Phin would not subject his patients to such risks, and Sari was said to feel too sick and miserable to telephone, so quiet reigned all round. She remained in bed, plied by an understanding doctor with large doses of sedative, Rufie propped his little paint-pots along his pillow and worked upon ever more enchantingly bizarre designs. To Mr Cecil, anxiously enquiring, he replied that for the moment he was going to be reticent, but they’d all go beresk when they saw them—based on the yellow robes that those people wore, hopping along Oxford Street with tambourines...

The retreat lasted its normal three days and on the Thursday Sari awoke, refreshed and calmed by the long quiet rest, and rang up Phin with the glad news that it had never been German measles at all, just a bit of the snuffles and a lot of exhaustion from far too much happiness. Phin was deeply thankful but for the moment hung up by two special cases, terribly tricky, and no cajolements (his love was going to have to learn) would persuade him to desert anyone in need of his professional care. And tomorrow was frantic. The ladies would be safe by then but now Nanny had ‘gone down, what with her tooth’ and was going to have to spend the day in hospital for a minor anaesthetic and dental operation—and it was Mummy’s Day to have Ena Meena. Mummy, though insisting fiercely upon her rights, in exercising them was capricious to a degree and upon this occasion, the Day was to last from three o’clock in the afternoon till half-past five. ‘I’ve rearranged my cases at Harley Street and got them to postpone the first one till a quarter to twelve, so I can bring Ena Meena up with me and she can hang about in the waiting-room, the porter will look after her; and then I’ll have to take her out to lunch and hand her over and then come back to Harley Street. And then pick her up and take her home. So I don’t see how we can possibly meet, my darling...’

‘Oh, but it’s easy,’ said Sari, enchanted by all this earnest planning, what bliss, after all, what peace, to have everything charted out in advance, to know where one was going! ‘It’s perfect. I’ll come out to lunch with you.’

Phin was slightly shaken. ‘But I’ll have her with me. And darling, she’s—difficult.’

‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Sari happily. ‘I’ll bring her a presie.’

It took her and Rufie all day to find the right presie but she duly turned up with it next morning and confronted Ena Meena who was sitting banging her heels against fine old mahogany chair legs in her father’s very grand waiting-room, fortunately now empty of other patients.

‘Hallo, Ena Mee, it’s me.’ She laughed. ‘That’s rather funny—Ena Mee, it’s me.’

‘
I
don’t think so,’ said Ena Mee. She looked at her curiously. Sari was wearing the tawny leather coat with a bright headscarf tied under her chin and over it, the huge Stetson-shaped black hat. ‘Why have you got that scarf on?’

‘Well, you said you didn’t like the colour of my hair, so I covered it up.’

Ena Mee stared at her in a wide-eyed astonishment. ‘Why should you care what
I
like? I’m only a child. Nobody bothers about what children like.’

‘Well, I do,’ said Sari. ‘I want you to like me.’ She knelt down and placed a large basket on the floor. ‘I’ve brought you a present.’

(‘And you watch it when she starts giving you presents, Ena Mee. It’s only ’cos she’s after yer father.’) ‘I don’t want any presents, thank you,’ said Ena Mee.

‘You’ll want this one.’ She opened a door in the side of the basket and out walked a tiny black piglet with a large ribbon bow. ‘Pigs make simply wonderful pets.’

Open-mouthed with rapture, Ena Mee flung herself down and on hands and knees confronted the pig. (And that makes two of them, thought Sari.) ‘It’s a little baby pig! Is it mine?’

‘Yes, of course it is, it’s your present. What’ll you call it?’

‘Piggy,’ said Ena Mee, simply. What else?

‘I think we can think of something better than that. Let it trot about a bit and stretch its little legs. It’s been cooped up in that basket. I was terrified it would squeal and give itself away before you saw what the present was.’

‘Can it squeal?’

‘You wait! And grunt like all hell. Oh, my God,’ cried Sari suddenly. ‘Ena
Mee
!’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘My God, darling—look! It’s made a mess on the carpet!’

Ena Mee clapped her hand over her mouth and spewed out sufficiently pig-like squeals of horrified laughter. Two conspirators, they rootled in the safari bag, found tissues and mopped away at the carpet. ‘Quick, quick!’ said Ena Mee, stricken but safe behind grown-up petticoats, ‘there’s somebody coming. What shall we do with it?’

‘In my bag—?’

‘It’s so smelly!’

Two large and handsome vases stood sentinel on the marble chimney-piece. Shoulders hunched, teeth biting on lower lip in an embodiment of mischievous wickedness, Sari tiptoed across and popped the dirty paper into one of them, and strolled back all propriety and innocence. Ena Mee doubled up in confidential laughter and Phin came into the room.

He had chosen a suitable restaurant for small girls to lunch in, but Sari was adamant. ‘Oh, no, Ena Mee, let’s make him take us to the Ritz!’ Upon Phin’s suggestion that the Ritz might not care to accommodate the third member of their party (What on God’s earth was Nanny going to say?) she poured iced water. ‘He’ll be perfectly all right, he’ll just stay in his basket. If he makes any noises, Ena Mee, you and me’ll have to talk in a terribly gobbling sort of way and cover it over.’ All the way in the taxi they practised the gobbles, interspersed with small, shrill squealings. Phin lavishly tipped the driver.

The luncheon was a riot. The menu was chosen with care, strictly limited to what would suit piglets, and the creature kept silent with contented munchings of offerings surreptitiously passed down from their plates. By the time the second course was over—acceptable for pigs perhaps but highly unsuitable for little girls—Ena Mee was in tears at having to go to Mummy’s. ‘I want to stay with Sari.’

‘Oh, come on, love, of course you want to go and see your mummy...’

‘Mummy won’t let me keep Piggy.’ She assumed, unconsciously, a Nanny voice. ‘She wouldn’t have that creature in the house.’

‘I’ll take him back with me and you and Daddy can pick him up on your way home; and then you can see
my
house.’

‘Can’t I come with you and wait for Daddy at your house?’

‘Ena Mee,’ said Phin, ‘of course you want to go and see Mummy.’

‘I don’t like Uncle Ronald. He’s fat and his face is all dark round the edges. Nanny says never mind five o’clock shadow—it looks more like midnight coming on, and Mummy said her skin was getting like a nutmeg grater. Why should Uncle Ronald being black on his chin make Mummy’s skin like a nutmeg grater? Daddy, why should Uncle Ronald’s black chin—’

‘And for that matter, what is a nutmeg grater?’ said Sari. But she recollected that it was something that you grated nutmeg with to make simply horrible things like junket taste even worse. ‘Do
you
hate junket, Ena Mee?’

‘Yes, I do, and I hate custard.’

‘Oh, custard can be lovely if it’s caramel custard. I’ll have some for my pudding and you can taste it.’

Ena Mee accepted a taste of the Ritz version of a caramel custard, compounded largely of Jersey cream, seized the plate and gobbled the lot. ‘You must ask Nanny to make you something just like it,’ said Sari, evilly smiling.

‘We must go,’ said Phin.

More tears. ‘Come on, love, you don’t want to hurt your Mummy’s feelings? And at the same time you can be watching Uncle Ronald, because I’ve got an idea, I’ve thought of another name for Piggy.’ She hung an arm round the back of Ena Mee’s chair and whispered in her ear. Ena Mee outdid Piggy in ecstatic squealing.

With the child dragging on her arm, she went off down the wide corridor, breaking into a little skip and a hop, the newly christened Ronald grunting in his basket in alarm. Heads turned to watch them go, the tall girl, slender in her tawny leather coat, the face with its high cheekbones unbelievably beautiful, tied close around with the coloured scarf under the huge black hat, the stout little girl skipping along at her side. Phin following half embarrassed, reflected ruefully that in his life there were going to be changes he had not accounted for; but he saw his child more happy and carefree than she had been for many, many days, and his heart overflowed with the tenderness of his love.

Triumphant, she went home to the flat, Ronald in his basket at her side, replete with his gourmet luncheon, contentedly grunting. Rufie would have gone off to Christophe’s with his drawings but he’d be back by the evening and she’d get Etho to come in and they’d help her with Ena Mee. Fellers were money for jam, thought Sari, compared with trying to enchant small girls. Really one felt sorry for poor exhausted paedophiles...

The late post had come and a large squarish envelope lay face down in the letter-box. No note this time, pushed surreptitiously through. The front was decorated with enormous highly ornamental stamps.

She put down the basket carefully and ripped the letter open; and a moment later was lying in a dead faint with the piglet squealing at her side.

No Etho to be contacted; no Rufie. She rang up Mr Charlesworth. He thought it over carefully. He said at last: ‘You opened the door and there it was?’

‘In the letter-box.’

‘By the perfectly ordinary mail?’

‘Yes, it’s post-marked, dates and all.’

‘So you can’t really tell me any more? You don’t recognise the hand-writing?’

‘No, just that terribly boring emasculated continental script.’

‘The same as the last one? Oh, but that one had no writing on it, did it?’

‘But the sketch is by the same person. At least, the same sort of style.’

‘And the seal?’

‘Yes, the same seal. I mean, the seal of San Juan, but I think it’s the same actual seal, a bit worn and battered.’

‘OK, well... Now look, Miss Morne, will you do this for me? We’ve got men at the flats, the porter will know. Get hold of one called Jenkins. From now on, don’t touch the sketch or the envelope more than you can possibly help; Jenkins will collect them from you and bring them to me.’

‘Yes, all right.’

‘You’re not scared?’

‘I got a bit of a shock but I’m all right now. Besides,’ said Sari cheering up at a grunt from the piglet. ‘I’ve got a friend with me.’

‘Well, there’ll still be someone on duty there and I’ll replace Jenkins. Thanks very much. I’ll be in touch with you.’

‘All right. But not between six and—say, half-past seven, if you don’t mind. I’ve got my fiancé bringing his kiddy wink to see me and we don’t want invasions of the fuzz into our happy little family gathering; complete with pig.’

‘Complete with what?’

‘Well, with pig. Ronald, his name is, the world’s charmer. But anyway, don’t come till they’ve all gone.’

She prepared with scrupulous care for Ena Mee’s reception; rang Etho and briefed him, hilariously briefed Rufie when he got home. But he saw that her eyes were deeply shadowed, that her horrors again beset her. ‘Dovey, everything’s not all right. You’re scaring me.’

‘I’m a bit scared myself. I wasn’t going to say, I’ve got to put on an act for this kid, we’ve all got to, it could mean my whole future. But... Well, I can’t keep it in, at least I’ll just tell you. A letter came from San Juan, a real letter all stamps and postmarks, addressed to me and sealed. And Rufie—inside it was another sketch.’

‘Oh, Sari, my God! And you all alone here!’

‘Well—only me and R. Pig. I was so frightened that I actually passed out, at least I came to and I was on the floor and poor Ronald, frightened out of his wits, I suppose, by the great hump of me falling, squealing like a—like an Ena Mee.’

‘But where is it? Let me see it!’

But no, a chap called Jenkins had collected it, all surgical steel nippers and a little plastic bag, terrifically impressive, and taken it off to Mr Charlesworth. Only, said Sari, shuddering, the
sketch
...!