The Nanny (9 page)

“That's my mom,” he said.

She saw his “mom” in a fine silver frame. “She's very, very pretty.” Mrs. Gore-Green went and lifted the photograph. “Your mom's going to be all right, you know. Chin up, Joey!” And then she wished she hadn't removed the photo because now the one behind it was revealed, a young boy with light hair. Mrs. Gore-Green guessed who this was.

Joey said, pointing, “That's my brother Ralphie.”

“Oh, is it?” she asked, uneasily, inanely. Really, it was too bad of Nanny to let her in for this!

“He's dead.”

The statement was so—
flat
. “He's in heaven with the angels, Joey. He's an angel, now.”

He kicked at the floor with the heel of his shoe. “Ralphie wasn't an angel when he wasn't dead. Dr. Bee says I was playing with the water first and Ralphie shouldn't have shoved in.”

“Now, now, now,” she said wildly. “We don't talk evil of the dead, do we?”

He said earnestly, “Dr. Bee was
glad
when I talked about Ralphie. Dr. Bee says that was a Red Letter Day when I talked about him. Do you know what is a Red Letter Day?”

“A holiday,” she said.
Nanny
, she thought,
where are you? This is bad for me
, she thought. She looked down at Mrs. Fane in her silver frame, hating her.

Now Joey couldn't take his eyes off the photograph of the dead child. “Dr. Bee says all kids push kids. And how! Dr. Bee says, ‘
And how!
'”

When she hurriedly put the picture back in place and fled the room, he followed her closely.

“We had a boy at school, when other kids got into a hassle, he'd run away and hide. You know why? He thought if two kids got into a hassle and one kid hit … Bango! Deaded!”

She said, “Dear me!”

“The first time I pushed a kid back, Dr. Bee said that was a Red Letter Day.”

He was talking about himself. Oh, dear! She went across the passage and pushed open the door and, thank heavens, it was an adult's bedroom this time, so it must be the one Nanny had said she was to have. With the child trailing behind her, she sank down on the chaise longue, and there he stood at the foot of it, an implacable fact.

“Ernest was the other kid's name. Dr. Bee said that was a Red Letter Day.”

Obviously wanted her to agree it was, but, really!

“That must be a very queer school if they celebrate every time a child knocks another about.”

“Only me,” Joey said simply, “because I couldn't. Sarah hugged me when I pushed Ernest. Sarah is my counselor. Sarah Schwartz.”

“Indeed. I'm sure she's very fond of you, Joey. Joey, this is the room I'm to sleep in, isn't it? This is your mummy's room.”

“I call her
Mommy.”

“That's very interesting, Joey, but, forgive me, I'm not feeling very well. If this your mommy's room I would like to rest here for a bit on your mommy's lovely chaise longue.” She put her feet up, stretched out and closed her eyes.

“You're not going to the hospital, are you? Please, you're not going to the hospital, too, are you?”

“No, I'm not.” She opened her eyes. “Unless I am
made
ill.”

He said, “I won't, I won't!”

His terror made her relent and she explained that all she had to have was sufficient rest, because she had been ill when she was no older than he was now. And she'd had to leave home and Nanny and her little sister Drusilla and her brother Guy and stay alone in a nursing home.

“Like me,” he said. “I didn't have my mommy or daddy, either.”

“Not like you,” she said, then, ashamed, explained again that her heart had been weakened. “And it still is, Joey, and that is why I need rest and quiet.”

“I'll be quiet,” he said. “Just kin I stay with you?”

Where
was
Nanny? “I suppose so. Very well, until it's time for Bedfordshire.”

“I'm not going there!”

“Where? What is the matter with you, Joey?”

“She can't make me!”

“Oh,
Bedfordshire!”
She laughed on three notes. “That's just an expression, silly! Just a Nanny expression! Very well, you may, if you're good, stay with me until Nanny says it's time for bed.” But even this concession wasn't enough.

“She can't make me!”

“We all have our bedtime, Joey. Don't we, Nanny?” Heaven be praised, there she was, big in the doorway. “Don't we all have our bedtime, Nanny?”

“Not me! Not me!”

Now he was like the lion tamer Mrs. Gore-Green had seen on the telly, moving towards the back of the room away from the doorway which Nanny filled, keeping his eyes on Nanny as he retreated, holding her at bay while he backed up between the two beds until—really, it did seem like it—he picked up a weapon to protect himself with, in this case, the telephone. “I am becoming too fanciful,” Mrs. Gore-Green warned herself. “It is bad for me to become too fanciful.” Still with his animal-trainer look fixed on Nanny, the boy dialed.

“Long distance,” he said.

Was Nanny going to permit him to call long distance? Apparently, since she made no move.

“I want to call High House School. It's in Fairview, Connecticut.”

Mrs. Gore-Green raised her eyebrows at Nanny who only smiled.

“Hello, who's this? This is Joey. I got to speak to Sarah.”

There was another wait. Then he said, “Hi, Dr. Bee, I got to speak to Sarah.”

Dr. Bee—what a name—was talking. As Joey listened, his narrow shoulders drew together as if to protect his concave chest.

“Yeah. Okay.” He said to Mrs. Gore-Green, “Sarah
left
. Dr. Bee's going to make sure. He says I can call her in the morning. In the morning,” he repeated, with such a vast distance between tonight and tomorrow, with so deep an icy crevasse between them that Mrs. Gore-Green was startled until she reminded herself that hours are eons to all children. Now he was listening to Dr. Bee again. “Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Bee, my mom and daddy got sick and they're in the hospital. There's a lady here, Dr. Bee. What I want, I want you to tell her what I don't got to do. You know. Dr. Bee will tell you,” he said, holding out the telephone. “Then you'll see.”

“Do I have to?” she asked Nanny wordlessly, and Nanny nodded, so Mrs. Gore-Green lifted herself carefully out of the chaise. “Mrs. Gore-Green here.” First he asked her to explain and she told him about the food poisoning. “Yes, it is unfortunate, most unfortunate.” She put her free hand to her heart because, really, people did make too much of illnesses from which sufferers would recover shortly, whereas she.… This Dr.—not
Bee
, but Berkrar or something—went on about being so relieved that she was there with the child with such … such
Oriental
overemphasis that she held the phone at a fastidious distance from her mouth and ear.

“Well, Joey wants me to tell you the procedures we follow here. His parents were carefully briefed, since these things seem to be essential to Joey's security, Mrs. Gore-Green, and his parents promised …”

“Promised!”
Like children! Mrs. Gore-Green's thin lip curled.

“You see, Mrs. Gore-Green, before he came here, this nursemaid, this Nanny, had forced Joey to eat, to evacuate … on command. He was made to stay clean and scrubbed each night in his tub as if he were a dirty repellent object instead of a child.”

She drawled, “And so he must have been! I was brought up that way, too, Doctor, and so were all children of a—of a certain class.”

“No. Not quite, but we won't argue about it.”

“Doctor, don't you think it might be better since Nanny is the one who will take care of Joey that you tell her these sacred rules?”

“Tell who, please?”

“Nanny.”

“The nursemaid? But she was to be discharged as I understood it.”

“Do you understand it? I don't. I beg your pardon, Doctor. Nanny is only here because the new servant refused to take responsibility and marched off. Very characteristic, I would say. At any rate, Nanny kindly volunteered …”

“I see. I see.”

“It is because Nanny knows that your school doesn't approve of her that she asked me to stay overnight.”

“Now that was extremely thoughtful. Very kind, very kind. Well, Mrs. Gore-Green, Joey wants you to know how we do things here. Perhaps he wants you to
see
that the nursemaid follows our procedures, do you think so? Anyhow, let me tell you.…”

He told her, then asked to speak to the boy again. This call was going to cost the Fanes a fortune.

The boy said, “Yeah. Yeah. Tomorrow, yeah.” He hung up and pulled his narrow shoulders straight.

“Now you tell
her
. Now,” he repeated, realizing that she intended to put it off. “Please. Now.”

“Very well. Nanny, you must not force Joey to eat.”

“No, Miss Pen.”

“Or to bathe himself.”

“And
she
can't come in!”

“Master Joey …” Nanny began.

“She can't come in. She can't come in!” Joey spoke as rapidly as possible, machine-gun fire, and to her and not to Nanny. “There's no lock on the bathroom door any more, so she's got to promise—
swear!
She's got to
swear!”

“Very well, Master Joey. I only wanted to tell you that Madam told me all these things. Miss Penelope doesn't need to tire herself out telling me again.”

“Then you say them! You got to say them!”

The sentences emerged from a doughy face, perfectly expressionless, the words from a ventriloquist's mouth, and only one who had been properly brought up in Nanny's nursery could know how outrageous they must seem to the poor darling.

“And I am not to see that you eat. And you didn't, did you, Master Joey? No nice supper at all, did you? You must be as hollow as a well by now, but Nanny is only to fix a snack and leave it for you and you may have it or not as you choose.”

Mrs. Gore-Green remembered Nanny sitting huge at the round table in the nursery on the third floor of Kingsfordhouse. “You must finish your nice cabbage, Miss Penelope.” How she loathed cabbage! “The lumps in your porridge don't matter, Miss Penelope.” Her gorge rose even at the memory of those lumps.

“And I am not to bathe you,” Nanny said placidly.

The flannel with which Nanny had cleaned one's ears, she thought. The rough splintery wood of the old nailbrush with which one's knees and elbows were mercilessly scrubbed. “Cleanliness is next to godliness,” Nanny used to say when one protested. “God hates a dirty child.” For a moment, just for a moment, she could feel what it had been when Bedfordshire was a place and not an expression, a dread place, a place of torture to which, implacably, Nanny's voice condemned her each evening. Oh, whenever she saw a film of the condemned criminal being led, first struggling, holding back at each step, then proceeding to the execution, knees sagging, head on chest, wasn't it going to Bedfordshire which she remembered?

“You didn't have to make that long distance call, Master Joey,” Nanny was saying with a vast solemnity which could hide a thousand smiles. “Your mummy told me all these things herself.”

“My
mommy
, my
mommy!”

“Well, isn't it a Yankee Doodle Dandy!” Mrs. Gore-Green said.

“Do you know what is a mummy? A mummy is dead a thousand years. You can't tell a mummy nothing!” He had frightened himself. “My mommy isn't dead. My mommy is just in the hospital!”

“Just in hospital,” Nanny agreed, smiling now.

But he couldn't stop being frightened, for now he edged himself back to the chaise longue again, fastened those eyes on her again, and their ferocious questioning, that sense that she held the answer to life or death, made her heart beat against her rib cage. Mrs. Gore-Green glanced at the clock on the night table where the telephone was and it was only eight-thirty-five. (It seemed much later, much, much later.) “What,” she asked, feeling that she had to pry his attention loose, “shall we do now? Shall we play a game perhaps? Do you have Ludo, Joey, or Happy Families, or Parcheesi?” He looked as astonished as if she had suggested that they fly to the moon. “Scrabble?” she substituted. “I'm sure you're good at word games, Joey.” Good at one word, she told herself, good at making the one word “help,” over and over again, with his enormous dark eyes, with his nervous little hands which now picked at the satin cording of the chaise longue until she wanted to slap them off, and with the very curve of his bony spine as he bent towards her like a flower to the life-giving sun. Why
“help”?
Help against
what?
Oh, she thought, why didn't they keep that boy in that ridiculous school with a Dr. Bee to help the flowers? Darling old Nanny caught her distress. (She would, of course.) Darling Nanny knew that if she was subjected much longer to this searching passion, she would go to pieces.

The old woman's hands smoothed down her apron front. “I don't know what Master Joey wants, but, as for you, Miss Penelope, Nanny is going to fix you a nice cup of hot chocolate and some cinnamon toast, and I suggest that you take your sleeping pill to it.”

At this, the boy grabbed at her, positively
grabbed
at her. “Are you going to take a
sleeping pill?”

His piping voice positively quivered with horror. She said, patting his hand, but removing it all the same, “Why shouldn't I?”

“Because you'll be asleep!”

Mrs. Gore-Green smiled at Nanny. “But that's the point of a sleeping pill, isn't it?”

He had not noticed that she had unplucked his hand, but now he did and looked down at it as if she had amputated it. “Don't take a sleeping pill! Please, please!”

Nanny said comfortably, “Of course she's going to take it. Miss Pen must have her rest. Miss Pen, did the doctor at the School mention about Master Joey's sleeping pill? What do you think Miss Pen? Master Joey was afraid he was going to have one of his bad dreams tonight, and that kind doctor said he wouldn't if he took a sleeping pill.”