The Solitary Child Read online

  “Let me know if you can.”

  “I will. Bless you,” he said and hung up.

  I opened the letter. It was a single sheet that looked as if it had been torn out of the middle of one of those fat, lined notebooks that children buy to write their first stories in. One of the clips that held the pages together was still there. The print was big and bold, the message unequivocal. “Why did you come. No one wants you here.”

  “I see you got your post, Mrs. Random?”

  I crumpled the page in my hand and, turning, caught the pile of letters with my sleeve. The woman had come silently into the hall from the doorway that led into the unused kitchen, a moon-pale face, a bulky body in a white apron. Bending stiffly, she picked up the letters.

  “There was nothing for you,” she said. “Only for Mr. Random.”

  “You must be Mrs. Evans,” I said.

  She inclined her head. “I came to see if you had everything, if there was anything I could do for you.”

  The offer was a courtesy merely; there was a faint truculence in her manner as if she were afraid I might think I had a right to her services. Her gaze wandered round the dark hall and rested on me with a neutral expression. Her hand wandered to her hair, patting the net that enclosed it in stiff waves like corrugated iron. Her features were flat and broad like her daughter’s, but there the resemblance ended. There was none of Janet’s slapdash humanity in her closed and disapproving face.

  I said, anxious to be liked, “It’s awfully kind of you. I don’t know anything about the house yet. I’ve seen the first floor, but not this one.”

  “It’s very inconvenient. It has not been modernised.” Her voice was carefully genteel as if she spent her life in continual assessment of her social position. “Of course, it would be all right with a proper staff. Have you seen the big drawing-room?”

  The door was on the far side of the hall. The cold, shut-up air came out to meet us. The furniture was shrouded in dust-sheets, the room was wide and high and smelt like a vault.

  She touched her hair delicately. “It’s been shut up a long time. And a good thing too, if you ask me. Nasty, damp, cold stone floor.” She sniffed. “Old Mrs. Random, Mr. James’s mother, was crippled with rheumatism. That’s why she used the upstairs parlour.”

  I felt the chill of the place in my bones. “What’s on the other side of the hall?”

  She closed the door. “Just the big kitchen and the dairy. They’re big rooms on this floor, you see, the drawing-room runs the whole length of the house. The boiler’s in the kitchen, otherwise it isn’t used at all. I’ve been keeping the eggs and poultry in the dairy but I can clear it out for you if you like.”

  “No. Oughtn’t I to help with the eggs and things? Or isn’t that my job?” I smiled placatingly at her stiff face.

  She sounded offended. “You can take it over if you want to, Mrs. Random. But I’ve always dealt with that side of the farm and there haven’t been any complaints. The old lady gave us to understand when Mr. Evans took the place that one day he would be in complete control. So I’ve always done the things that a farmer’s wife would normally do and not grudged the extra work. I must admit it was a surprise to us when Mr. Random decided to run the farm himself. It looks to other people as if he doesn’t trust Mr. Evans.…”

  Her face was faintly reproving. I felt the crumpled paper in my hand. “I’m sure it wasn’t that, Mrs. Evans. I know how much my husband relies on you both.”

  “Perhaps he does, Mrs. Random. But my husband has his position to think of. He was properly trained, you know, spent two years at the agricultural college.” She paused. “Is there anything else, Mrs. Random?”

  “No. No, thank you. It was kind of you to come.”

  She nodded and went out through the front door. I felt as if I had started on a journey that was longer than I had intended. I smoothed out the anonymous letter; the outrageous words stared with horror from the cheap, lined page. From the first floor I heard the murmur of a man’s voice and Janet’s deep, chuckling laugh.

  I pushed open the door by the telephone table and went into the big kitchen. I saw the layers of dust on the wooden table, the old range oven, disused and rusty red. Grey light filtered through the cobwebs on the one, small window. The dairy door stood open; there were marble shelves, stone crocks and hooks hanging from the ceiling. On one of them a hare dripped ruby blood into a tin dish with a thin, regular, metallic sound. The eggs stood in crates on the flagged floor; the air was cold and smelt of milk. The boiler smouldered, crackling, by the wall. I opened the lid and threw the letter on top of the coals. For a moment it seemed as if it would not burn, the edges grew palely brown, the message retained its poison to the last. I poked with the tongs, the paper curled and flared.

  The cupboard stairs were in the corner of the kitchen. The door swung open in a little draft, on the other side there was blackness and the dark stair. I remembered Ann had said that this door was locked, sealing off the attic floor. I went to shut it and found the lock was broken; the hasp lay on the stone floor at my feet. The wood was rotten and splintered at a touch, it had been easy to wrench off the lock. I looked into the dairy and saw the door at the far end, shut but not bolted, the bolt rusted and immovable. Anyone could get into the house at night, I thought, and went back to the cupboard stair. The stairs creaked as I trod on them; I stopped and listened. Then I heard a scuffle, like a rat, above me.

  I hesitated, suddenly afraid, my hand on the wall. There was a still, waiting silence. I wondered if I should go back, feeling fear twist in my stomach, and then I was ashamed and went on.

  The stairs ended at a trap-door in the top floor, coming up in an empty, shut-in room where the plaster had crumbled off the walls, showing the white lathes behind. The window was small and barred and spotted with bird droppings. It looked out on to a grey gulley in the roof.

  There were other rooms, all leading out of each other. Occasionally there were signs of living. An iron bedstead and a cracked chamber pot. A marble-topped washstand, a chipped, china basin, decorated with rosebuds. Hanging on a wall, the nail bent and loose in the plaster, a yellowed print of the Rokeby Venus. Not very long ago a staff of servants had lived here, under the roof, but the sense of desolation was a century old.

  Then I heard a sound that wasn’t a rat, but something human. A broken-off, wheezy sound as if someone had tried to stifle a cough. I opened the last door, panic like a drumbeat in my heart.

  She crouched on the floor in a corner, huddled still and small like a hunted animal, plaster powdered like snow on her navy, reefer coat. She had, only recently, been out in the rain. Her wet, blond hair clung sleekly to her head, her eyes, wide and grey and steady, stared at me with a remote expression as if she were only half awake or did not see me properly.

  “You must be my step-mother,” she said. Her voice was light and hasty, trailing into silence. She stood up; her schoolgirl’s coat, unbuttoned, hung about her like a sack. Her brogue shoes were muddy, the leather dulled with damp. Her leather satchel was slung over one shoulder.

  “Everyone has been looking for you. Even the police.”

  She said, undismayed, “I told them I was coming home. I walked the last part of the way. It was raining.”

  “Why did you hide?”

  “I wanted to come home. But when I got here, I was afraid Daddy would send me back. So I came through the dairy and up to the attics. I broke the lock.”

  “I know. Aren’t you hungry?”

  “I took some eggs out of the hen-house and sucked them. Bill—that’s the cowman, always did that. But they weren’t very nice. I thought I could live up here in the day-time and come out at night.”

  “That would have been very silly.” Her face was blank and tranquil. I said, unsurely, “Won’t you come down, now, and get warm? You ought to change your clothes.”

  She looked doubtful. “Will you send me away?”

  “We’ll talk about that later.”

  “Al
l right.” She bent down, touched a bulge in the wall. “Do you know what this lump is? It’s a bee-hive. They swarmed in under the eaves ages and ages ago. They were going to smoke them out but I asked Daddy not to and they’ve stayed here ever since.”

  She looked touchingly young, much younger than her age. I put out my hand to her and she took it confidingly, like a little girl.

  She followed me down the stair and into the kitchen. When we reached the hall she hung back.

  “Is Daddy here?”

  “He’s gone out. He’ll be coming home soon with your grandparents.” I tried to sound responsible and scolding. “They’ve been very anxious about you.”

  “I don’t want to live with them any more. I want to be with Daddy.” There was a faint, mauve stain under her eyes, like a bruise.

  “I’ll run a bath and Janet will make you breakfast.”

  “Who’s Janet?”

  “Mrs. Evans’s daughter. She helps in the house.”

  “The one who had a baby? Before I went away everyone was talking about it but she hadn’t had it then. Is it a nice baby?”

  She came up the stairs slowly, trailing her hand along the banisters. “Will she let me play with it?”

  “I should think so. Do you like babies?”

  “I don’t know. I expect I do. Are you going to have one?”

  “I’d like one some time.” I felt ill at ease before her cool, young gaze. “Come along, now. I think you’d better have a hot bath.”

  She quickened her pace a little but I had the impression that she never walked very fast; there was a faintly abstracted air about her as if she always lingered on the road.

  I put her in the bathroom and gave her a clean towel. Janet and the man who had come to install the television set were drinking tea in the kitchen; I asked her to cook bacon and eggs and warm a glass of milk.

  Janet was sitting on the edge of the table, swinging her legs. She looked blowsy and contented and kind. I think the man had been resting his hand on her knee. He looked at me, as I came in, with a faintly guilty air.

  He made conversation. “You’ve got a good set there, you ought to get a good picture. I’m not getting the commercials very clearly yet, it may need a bit of adjustment.”

  “I like the commercials,” Janet said. “Mum doesn’t like them, she says it’s common. But I think the B.B.C. is awful—makes you feel you’re back at school.”

  The man grinned at her as she squeezed past him to the stove. His hand slipped towards her as if he were going to pinch her bottom, but then he remembered me and his hand fell limply on his lap.

  “Do you like the telly, miss?” His face was sharp and sly, his eyes were tiny and dark, like bead buttons.

  “I’ve never had one before.”

  “Must keep up with the times, eh? We’ve had one at home since 1948. My wife has the tea ready as soon as I get home, and then we get our feet up, all set for the evening.”

  The fat sizzled in the pan. “It’s all right, I suppose,” said Janet, “but it’s not life, is it? I mean …” she searched the kitchen with puzzled, cow-like eyes, “it’s not you doing something but someone else doing it and you watching. I mean, my friend and I used to go to whist drives and things, now she doesn’t want to any more because they’ve got the telly. It leaves a gap, somehow.…”

  “Well, we’re quite the philosopher, aren’t we?” said the man.

  I found a tray and a mug for the milk. The man made a choking sound in his throat. He looked beyond me at the door, his mouth open.

  Maggie was standing there, pink and steaming from her bath, quite naked.

  “May I have a hair brush?” she asked. Her smile was sweet and placid, quite unruffled.

  The man stumbled up from his chair and turned his back. His thin, young neck was rigid and crimson with shyness.

  Janet shook with laughter; it rippled over her like sunlight on water.

  “Miss Maggie—well, I never did. You’re too big to run around in your birthday suit.”

  “I didn’t have a dressing-gown.”

  “There’s one behind the bathroom door. Go and put it on.” Her appearance was not, I thought, entirely innocent. She must have heard the man’s voice as she came out of the bathroom and she looked faintly pleased as if she were enjoying the embarrassment.

  I stood over her while she put on the gown and led her into the drawing-room. I fetched the tray and put it at her feet.

  She curled on the hearth rug, cosy as a cat, warming her bare feet on the fender. She ate with adolescent greed, licking the grease from her fingers. The milk left a creamy moustache above her mouth. She smiled at me. She was quite beautiful.

  In most people, beauty is evanescent, a happy chance. The first delight is temporary and becomes critical, the illusion falters. There is a fault of feature or contour, too little flesh here, too much there. Disappointed, you accept a failure in perfection, judge by lower standards and pleasure is renewed.

  Here there was no disappointment. Beauty persisted. Each fresh movement or expression had a new discovered grace. Although her cheekbones were still plump with childhood, her face was narrow; you could see the way that, later, the bones would stand out beneath the skin. Her skin was pale but with a faint bloom on it of reflected colour like the bloom on a flower.

  I wondered if she looked like her dead mother and for the first time jealousy struck openly, a blow under the heart. I tried to dismiss it; it is absurd to be jealous of the dead.

  She pushed the tray away and yawned; her teeth were small and pointed and pretty.

  “I’m awfully tired. I didn’t go to bed last night.”

  “You can go to bed now. And sleep all you like.”

  “Can I sleep in my own room?”

  “I don’t know. The bed may not be made. Shall we go and see?”

  As we passed the kitchen, the man came out. He turned his head away, but Maggie smiled at him openly, a confident, delighted smile.

  Her room was long and narrow, painted white. There was a frieze of rabbits and gnomes round the walls. The bed was covered with a white, crochet spread, the room was empty of personal possessions. There were sheets in a drawer and I made the bed.

  Her head on the pillow, she held out her hand to me. It was a small hand with fragile bones, the palm roughened like a boy’s.

  “Please, will you make them let me stay?” Her fingers tightened. “Please.”

  It was the first sign of emotion I had seen in her. Her eyes stared at me with their curious, myopic look, and I saw that they were set closely together in a way that in most people would have been ugly. In her, the effect was opposite; the departure from ordinary standards set a seal on beauty, provided the distinction without which perfection palls.

  I said, “It won’t be anything to do with me. It’s your father’s decision, not mine.”

  Her eyes flickered. She said, quietly, “If only you knew how much it meant … if only you knew. Is he still so angry with me? He was so terribly angry before I went away and for a little while I was so frightened that I didn’t want to stay. But it didn’t last, you know,” she went on wisely, “nothing ever does last, does it?”

  She raised her head from the pillow. “You’re so nice. He’ll do what you ask. And I’ll be so good—you’ll see. They’re lots of things I can do to help. Don’t send me back.”

  Her taut hand signalled frantically to mine. I released it gently and tucked it under the blankets.

  “Don’t worry about it now. Try to sleep.”

  “I’ve hated not being at home. Do you like me?”

  “Of course I like you.” The childish directness clutched at the heart, evoked pity.

  “Then you must, you must be on my side. Not just now—for always. Please, please say you are.”

  “All right. I’m on your side.”

  She relaxed, her smile was full of love and trust. “Thank you. You’ve been so kind to me.”

  “Why not? Sleep well, now.”
r />   “Would you—would you kiss me?”

  I kissed the damp forehead and smelt her scent. It was faint and elusive like the scent of a Siamese kitten. She was still smiling, her mouth was wet and rosy like a baby’s mouth.

  I left her and telephoned the police station. James was not there, the sergeant took the message. He didn’t seem surprised when I told him the girl had been found.

  I looked at Maggie a little while later. She was snoring gently in the deep abandonment of sleep, her head on her bent arm. The satchel was open on the bed, it contained two Noddy books and a shiny, red notebook. The pages were loose in the cover as if some of them had been torn out.

  Mrs. Tenby said, “I am sorry your wife has been imposed upon. As soon as our granddaughter is rested, we will take her home. We will have a taxi to the station.”

  She sat on the edge of her chair, her head rigid on her neck. Light, inimical eyes stared out of a cultured, aquiline face. She was a handsome old woman, taut as a bow string.

  Their attitude had been settled before they arrived at the house. There was no decision to be taken; we had only to wait until Maggie woke up from her sleep. Their view of the matter was reasonable and kind. Maggie would be unpunished for her escapade and only gently chided. It was as much their fault as hers, she was the centre of their lives and they had spoiled her. She had run away on an impulse woven out of fantasy; perhaps the initial motive had been curiosity and she had exaggerated her feelings as a young girl will. There might be tears, an outburst of childish temper, but it would soon be over, she was not really a wilful girl.

  They were all, James and the grandparents, completely united. If their decision seemed arbitrary, had I any right to question it?

  Faced by their placid wisdom, I was tempted to forget my promise. I clutched at the arms of my chair.

  “You said I had been imposed upon. That wasn’t true. This is her home, she had a right to come.” My voice cracked with nervousness. I saw their shocked eyes. Mrs. Tenby looked as astonished as if one of the arm-chairs had spoken. I went on. “She said she wanted to stay, that this was her home. After all, James is her father. If she feels so strongly—shouldn’t we talk about it?”