The Old Contemptibles (17 page)

Melrose and Madeline exchanged slight frowns that Crabbe Holdsworth took in. “Henry. Southey’s boy.” He nodded toward the book.

Was the man really so dense? wondered Melrose. Dense and insensitive? Quickly, Madeline rose and went to lean her hands against the mantelpiece as if, in not so engaging them, she might hit him. “We were speaking of Jane,
not
Southey.”

“Oh. Oh. I’m terribly sorry.” But his slight frown seemed more puzzled than sorrowful as if he were attempting to place this “Jane.” No, apparently he was aware of the “rotten business,” as he termed it. “Rotten,” he repeated, turning to Madeline, who then returned to her chair.

Crabbe Holdsworth had a long face, a sorrowful face that probably stood him in good stead when he couldn’t actually work up
appropriate sympathy. “I was, as usual, preoccupied. You’re Mr. Plant? Well, what do you think of the library?”

Death (except for the Southey family) held few terrors for Crabbe Holdsworth, it would seem.

While Madeline Galloway pleated her skirt and fumed beside him, Melrose mumbled words of appreciation, accolades being too difficult. “I think I could take it on.”

“Fine.” He picked up the shepherd lad again and, again, replaced it. “It’s a largish house but a small household. There’re just the four of us, my wife, my brother, Madeline, and myself.”

“You’re forgetting Adam.”

“Oh. Yes, there’s father. But he doesn’t actually
live
here, Madeline. My father’s . . .” He seemed to gloom about over this person, trying to think of some way to describe him. “He actually lives at Castle Howe; that’s a retirement home. Tarn House belongs to my father, actually, but he seems to think it a lark to live down the road in that overpriced home.” He still held on to the figurine. “My wife would like to meet you,” he said as if speaking to the figurine.

And then what Melrose had taken for, at best, absentmindedness over the tragedy of death; or, at worst, cold-bloodedness in Crabbe Holdsworth’s concern over a century-old death when such a recent one stared him in the face—was suddenly and surprisingly explained:

“We can’t find Alex.”

“My husband’s grandson,” said Genevieve Holdsworth. “For some reason he got out of the house whilst police were trying to locate his family. Why on earth would he do a thing like that?” She was not asking; she was merely speculating, looking past him. And she sounded more irritated than concerned.

Genevieve Holdsworth was sitting in the chair vacated by her husband. He was, apparently, to be interviewed by all of the household, taking turns. Then she said, “Disregard gossip, Mr. Plant. You’ll certainly hear enough of it if you befriend the denizens of the local public house.”

He wondered not only why “gossip” would be a high priority, but also why she used the stilted language of a Victorian housekeeper,
given her feline look. Perhaps the elevated language was meant to create some bridge between the highbrow mind and low-cut blouse.

Melrose had formed no clear picture of the second Mrs. Holdsworth. If he had, he would have expected more the female counterpart of the husband with the possible addition of more hardmindedness. Good tweeds and sensible shoes, at least. Instead, she gave off the pure and unadulterated scent of sexuality. There was something oddly enticing in her cool manner of address that contrasted sharply with the heaving sense of her presence as she fingered a narrow gold chain whose cross lay strategically placed in the neckline of her silk blouse. At the same time, she was adroitly making little circles with her ankle as if taking the opportunity to turn a leg already done by a master craftsman.

For some reason, Melrose noticed with a slight smile, none of them seemed able to avoid handling the Staffordshire shepherd, still sitting on the table. But whereas Madeline had fingered it nervously and Mr. Holdsworth had picked it up absently, Genevieve dallied with it.

“I don’t pay attention to gossip.” He added nothing, hoping his lack of curiosity would prompt her to assuage it.

“I’m sure Madeline told you about her sister,” adding nothing either.

“I’m very sorry.” He would hardly have called this tragedy “gossip.”

“Yes. Her death was a great loss.” As she rose, so did Melrose. “We dine at seven-thirty.” Death and dinner sharing equally in her thoughts, she walked out of the room.

A new one, thought Millie Thale.

Now there was a new one. Another place to set, another bed to make, another early morning tea.

Millie Thale slapped back another page of
These Glorious Lakes
calendar, trying to decide where to drop another drowning figure. She took a watercolor pencil from the tin on the huge chopping-block table and studied Wast Water. That was the deepest. No, she was definitely saving that for Mrs. Holdsworth. She turned back to February. Derwentwater. Nurse Rhubarb was already in that one: there were her shoes sticking out of the lake’s blue surface over to the side and almost hidden by some bracken in the foreground.

Millie smacked back March and looked at April: Buttermere. That would do; it quite fit him, since his hair was a sort of darkish-buttery color. Well, not
so
yellow . . . oh, no! Daffodils. Over to the right a whole breezy bunch of them. If William Wordsworth (whose name she was sick of) was such a great poet, why did he have to write those old, overused lines?

As Millie licked her pencil preparatory to crowning the center of Buttermere with a half-moon of head, Mrs. Callow shouted in from the butler’s pantry: “Millie, you done them fritters?”

“Yes,” Millie lied, shouting back, pencil poised.

“You know how Mr. Holdsworth likes his bit o’ fritter!”

Millie stuck out her tongue at the butler’s pantry as a peal of giggles (from Cook—as she was wrongly called) and a few duck-honking, indrawn breaths that passed as laughter erupted from Mr. Hawkes, so-called butler. They had, she supposed, found something rude in the comment about the fritter. They should talk, back there drinking up the port they’d brought up from the cellar and leaving her (as usual) to cook the dinner and lay the table. Oh, Mr. Hawkes would take in the cocktails—he was good at that—and announce dinner; he was also good at that, even if he was woozy by the time seven-thirty rolled around.

Her pencil hadn’t touched the paper yet. She was a bit undecided about Buttermere. Millie sighed and looked at August. Patterdale. That was her favorite; it sounded like rain and the Raindrop Poets. But she was saving that one for herself, so she couldn’t use it for him.

“Millie! Remember to put more oysters than mutton in that pie!” And here a low murmuring, punctuated by an
oops!
and glass breaking, followed the command.

She didn’t bother answering as she turned to September. Dove Cottage. She held her nose and rustled the pages back to February. She studied the dark skies above Coniston Water, the mist and low cloud, the slightly shimmering pewter-colored lake. Not bad. Buttermere was more like him, though.

“I don’t smell them fritters, miss!”

This
was the place for Him. And
here
was a bit of poetry she loved:

His flashing eyes, his floating hair.

“Well, it’s hardly gone six yet and they’re supposed to be hot. Anyway, I’m counting out the oysters.” She hummed lightly as she considered this, her favorite poem. It was true. He
did
have “flashing eyes.” They were as green as the grass beside Buttermere from which daffodils were always springing. She gold-penciled in a little hair floating and then thought: it would hardly be fair not to put in the flashing eyes. From the can she drew a lime-green water-color pencil and wetted it. Millie was no good at faces, she knew, so the head she made was a little lopsided, and she dotted in a bright green eye and a lot of gold hair. She frowned. He was going down and she didn’t
really
know him. She tossed down the gold pencil, took an ordinary lead one and quickly pulled an arm and hand out of the water.

A larger hand slapped the calendar shut. “Just as I thought! Thought I didn’t know you wasn’t doing nothing?”

Millie lurched back in her chair as the shadow of Mrs. Callow fell across her calendar and the figure of Mr. Hawkes lounged against the doorjamb, port glass in hand.

“Here, let’s see this—”

“No!”
Millie yanked her calendar from the thick hand of the cook.

Mrs. Callow withdrew, pinning up some strands of hair that had loosened from the rolls on each side of her elderly face. “Well, just see you do the Guinness pie proper tonight.” She straightened her apron, leaving the field to the victor.

Millie was the victor by virtue of being the best cook (except for her own mother) the Holdsworths had ever had. Of course, they didn’t really know an eleven-year-old was doing most of the cooking, but that made no odds to Millie, who quickly opened the calendar to Buttermere and finished drawing the hand, fisted round the rope.

 • • • 

It was her own mother’s death that explained this obsession with the lakes. It had happened five years ago when Millie was only six. Her mum had been found on the stony shore of Wast Water, half in, half out of the lake. No one had seen what happened, but what Millie was told was that her mum had fallen from the rocky cliff outgrowth on the property onto the shore.

Millie had come to know this had to be a lie. It would have been almost impossible to
fall.
Yet she had never been able to sort out what actually had happened.

The Holdsworths had wanted to send her to London to live with her only relation, her Aunt Tom. Thomasina, her name was, but Millie called her Aunt Tom. It made her sound as hard as Millie claimed the woman to be, and she had told Alex’s great-grandfather that she didn’t want to go to London. She hadn’t told him why, though: that she’d stay and stay until she found out what really happened to her mother.

So Millie had stayed.

From the time she was tall enough to see the top of a cooker, Millie had been fascinated by cooking, and had learned so much that
when Ma would be sick with “cramp” and didn’t want the Holdsworths to know, Millie could prepare whatever meal her mother told her was expected, and no one was the wiser. After her mother had died, of course the family had got Mrs. Callow, who was, at best, a mediocre cook, and who’d left more and more of the actual cooking to Millie.

More giggling from Cook and the butler, who was reaching over the cooker to grab at something. The rich aroma of Guinness pie came from the oven, but Mrs. Callow hadn’t remembered that Millie had only just said the oysters weren’t in it yet.

Millie had cleared up her calendar and watercolor pencils and sat with the heels of her palms pressed against her eyes.

He dreamed about his mother. They were walking along a narrow road, straight through a landscape so barren it was blank, as if the road itself had no verge but melted into the outreaching land. It was the very opposite of the English Lakes, the fells and dales, becks and waterfalls. But this did not seem to bother them; they were holding hands as tightly as if the fingers had been welded together. And the blankness of the land was not their concern, for they were walking toward a horizon of such breathtaking loveliness that the dream—Alex felt it was the only thing worth reaching in the world, full of rainbow lights, pale colors melting into one another and a light so glorious that it was less seen than felt. He supposed that that was God up there.

Except that as far and as long as they walked, they did not get closer to the horizon. The colored light did not dim, did not recede; it was just that the distance between them never shortened. The horizon was always
out there,
but they drew no closer to it.

Then Alex became aware of something heavy he was carrying in his other hand. He felt its heft and weight more and more, and the more he tried to drop it, the more it stuck. When he finally raised his hand, he saw a pack of cards Sellotaped together. But his mother, although he did not look at her, was unaware of the pack of cards; he knew she was smiling and that her face was aimed toward that horizon and did not seem to know that they never drew closer.

He could not take his hand from hers because he was afraid she would disappear if he didn’t hold on; so he could only get at the Sellotape by picking and picking with fingers of the hand that held the cards. He was terrified; he was terrified that what he had been “getting up to” all of these years would keep them from getting to the end of the road. He wanted to get rid of the cards. And magically, the cards separated and he fanned them out with his one hand. Their faces were blank, all blank except for one: the Queen of Hearts. His heart turned to ice, and when he looked at his mother, her face was draped in a kind of cowl, her features smilingly rigid—the Queen of Hearts.

The cards, tiny bits of confetti, were swirling away toward the horizon, still full of all that pale, colored light, and his hand, both hands were empty. Alex screamed.

 • • • 

And woke up, fearing he was screaming, moving his hands before him trying to part the darkness like a swimmer trying to part water, and was as drenched with sweat as if he had been dropped in one of the lakes. His heart was pounding; he was gasping for breath, hunched up into the corner of the hut, wondering if he could get to a phone to call his mother.

What he had been fearing happened. Full consciousness and the reality it brought with it returned. He squeezed his eyes shut, put his hands over his ears and knew he would scream, for real. The glass bell had surfaced, finally, up from the bottom of the lake and here he was, unprepared, unarmed. Before whatever animal-feeling sound could reach his lips, he heard a rustle and opened his eyes.

The verdigris-green eyes of Millie Thale’s cat pinned him to the wall. There was a message in them. The message was
No.

Alex slowly relaxed. “Hullo, Sorcerer.”

The cat blinked slowly.

Millie had found him five years ago. Or, rather, the cat had found Millie. He had appeared from nowhere, down by Wast Water; she’d seen him through tearful eyes, sitting there as if he’d been expecting someone. Later, she had looked for (with a lack of thoroughness that had made Alex smile) but could not find the cat’s owner.