Split Code: Dolly and the Nanny Bird

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Or lighting, it appeared. Or . . . ?

  I said, ‘Can we get heat on the stove?’

  ‘The toddy!’ said Johnson’s voice. He sounded aggrieved.

  ‘Never mind the toddy,’ said Simon Booker-Readman. ‘When is the next bloody train due?’

  ‘Not, I hope,’ said Johnson, ‘until daylight.’

  There was a short, heavy-breathing silence, interrupted by a familiar caterwauling. It was forty minutes since Benedict Booker-Readman had had an irregular and less than satisfactory feed and he was intent on lodging a complaint. He also appeared to have either colic or wind. Recalled to his existence, his mother said, ‘My God, the baby!’

  Now was not the moment to question the intelligence of bringing a three-week-old baby out into sub-zero conditions in the first place. I said, ‘There’s hot water still in the taps, and hot water bottles. Why not pack them round him, with a few extra blankets, and put the rest in a thermos to heat his feed with? There’s enough in the pan to keep him quite happy all tomorrow.’

  ‘Joanna is right,’ said the calmer of the Professors. ‘The coach, after all, can sleep seven. There are blankets. There is food. There is water. We are on a main railway line. Life is not threatened so long as there is no collision through the night. One of us must keep watch, with the torch.’

  ‘And through the day,’ Johnson said. ‘The snow will cover the carriage. Especially if there isn’t much heat on the inside.’

  There was a gloomy European silence, underlined by the jabbering of the ethnic element, who were holding a meeting with the German Professor on the opposite benches. You could only track them by the sound, since Rosamund, in even deeper gloom, had gone off with my torch to round up hot water bottles. I said, ‘Can’t we work out where we are from the time we travelled? There must be a timetable somewhere.’

  There wasn’t a timetable anywhere, and no one had looked at the clock when we started. Or when we stopped, for that matter. No one, either, remembered the stations. ‘It goes through Moose-jaw,’ said the Canadian Professor tentatively.

  ‘Eventually,’ said Johnson. ‘On the other hand, the northern line goes to Prince Rupert on the Pacific, also eventually. I don’t suppose there’s a quick shuttle on either.’

  ‘What I can’t understand,’ said Booker-Readman, ‘is how it happened. All right, they made an error at Winnipeg and hitched us up to a through train. But how did we get unhitched here? That was deliberate.’

  ‘Someone,’ said Johnson, ‘wants a corner on Eskimos. What are you worth, Professor, in ransom money?’

  The Professors weren’t worth a button, and neither was Vladimir or the Eskimos or, he swore, Johnson. But Grandmother, we all knew, would come up with the odd million if need be for Rosamund Booker-Readman’s life. The discussion petered away at this point, especially as Johnson had cleared the windows and we all sat looking at one another in the eerie blue light from the snow. It stretched unbroken for miles and miles and miles.

  Rosamund Booker-Readman’s voice called, ‘I can’t find the bottles, but I’ve filled a thermos flask. Simon? The battery’s nearly done.’

  She must have kept the torch on all the time. I said, ‘I’ll come,’ and felt my way into the passage just as the German Professor was saying, ‘It may, of course, be the work of a band of deviationists. Or nationalists. Or those who do not approve of mixed races . . .’

  ‘Or quilting,’ said Johnson seriously. He had got out and lit an old pipe, which illuminated the underside of his unremarkable nose, and his hair and his eyebrows, and nothing else whatever of his physique or his intentions. His Christian name, I forgot to say, is also Johnson, which results in a certain formality, even if you were as friendly with him as my father was.

  I struggled through to where Rosamund had indeed parked the flickering torch on a bed, shut it off and pulled back all the curtains. She had found some blankets already. Working partly by touch I managed to locate the hot water bottles while she picked up and joggled the unfortunate Benedict. I used the torch a moment while I filled them and wrapped them in towels, then packed them with blankets into the carrycot. I retrieved the pan of feed from the fridge where I’d jammed it, filled the bowl of hot water and used it to warm up a cup of the mixture. The cup wasn’t scalded, but that couldn’t be helped.

  Mother Booker-Readman was sitting down in the bedroom with her offspring, largely unfurled, yelling into her bosom. I draped them both with a fresh towel, shoved Benedict back into the crook of her arm and handed her the cup of feed with the spoon in it. She tilted the edge of the cup against the baby’s pursed mouth, and half the feed ran down his face, while the spoon missed his eye by a fraction. They both opened their mouths and screamed with frustration.

  I took Benedict from her while she went to get the milk off her skirt. There were only two ounces left in the cup, and he was as full of air as a bubble bath, but we managed. I had him hitched on my shoulder and was massaging his round shoulders absently, when I happened to gaze at the window.

  It was still dark, and snowfilled, but the plain was no longer empty.

  Instead, like the teeth on a snowman, a line of minute black dots had appeared in the distance, enlarging second by second. Dots which, in the dimness, might have represented very large men very far off on skis, or very small men rather close to on skis but which, since the ground appeared flat, were probably travelling much too rapidly to be manpowered at all. I yelled ‘Johnson!’ and Johnson’s voice said peaceably from the sitting-room, ‘I see them.’

  I could hear everyone saying ‘What?’ and the coach trembled as the complement lunged for the windows. It was not the moment to go into the matter of whether or not Benedict should have a dry nappy. I planted him down, to his annoyance, among the blankets and bottles and joined everyone else in the sitting-room, which was reeking of alcohol. One of the Professors was saying, ‘Snowmobiles! Thank God they’ve found us!’ As he was saying it, one of the Snowmobiles, which are sort of powered toboggans, gave off a burst of red sparks followed by a succession of reports.

  The Eskimos all lay on the floor. The Professors and the Booker-Readmans stayed upright, thinking perhaps that the toboggans were merely pinking. I got hold of Rosamund round the knees and felled her. Johnson also lay down, on one elbow, while his pipe gently pulsed in the darkness. ‘The point is,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘who has found us? And which of us have they found?’

  We were all prostrate by then, mostly on top of the Eskimos. The Ukrainian said, ‘It is a kidnapping then?’ He sounded hopeful. No one bothers to kidnap a launderette owner. On the other hand, Challenger power toboggans cost about eight hundred dollars apiece, and it might have been an anti-Soviet capitalist plot financed by Big Business. The Canadian Professor, his nose rammed into sealskin, had gone into paroxysms of nervous sneezing, while the other, I noticed with surprise, had got out a revolver.

  I said, ‘I suppose we’d all fetch a few pence, but they’d be better to try and kidnap one man than twelve. They can always relieve the rest of us of our cash and our watches.’

  Simon Booker-Readman got up and crouched at the window. ‘Why do we need to let them take anyone? A train is going to come sometime. Meanwhile they’re out there in the cold.’

  ‘With guns,’ said Johnson.

  ‘I have a gun,’ said the Professor, waving it. ‘Living in New York, you understand, I am never without it.’ I got on my knees too.

  There were six rushing black shapes on the snow, with possibly two men on each. I said, ‘If they come through the doors and windows at the same time, there’s not much one revolver can do. But the galley’s steel-lined, and ventilated.’

  Rosamund was already half-way there. I just had time to pick up her son’s carrycot and shove it through the door before it shut behind her. I hammered on it, and when she opened, dived for the drawer with the knives in it. Emerging, I prodded people and handed out knives.

  The two Professors and Vladimir had pulled the curtains across and
were manning an eyehole apiece: the flower arrangements were in ruins. I said to Johnson, ‘Why don’t you get into the galley? You’re worth a mint and you know it.’ Five thousand smackers a portrait, so my father used to claim. More, for royalty. I discovered I was offering him the point of the knife, and reversed it. There was another volley of shots.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Johnson suddenly. He turned his back on the knife and fumbling out of the room, made his way into the passage.

  The next moment there was a bang, and a blast of cold of freeze-shrinking intensity. Through the window, England’s best-known portrait painter could be seen hurtling feet first from the coach doorway into the snow, there myopically to begin an advance, waving his knitted waistcoat and calling.

  The Snowmobiles, which had fanned out in a half-circle, came to a halt, with Johnson in the eye of the daisy.

  One of the Professors said hoarsely, ‘There is Hope for Mankind, while one man can do that.’ Slowly dismounting, the Snowmobile riders were stalking forward. One of the Eskimos burst into tears. The intruders closed around Johnson. There was an exchange of sentences.

  Then the intruders, grasping Johnson, resumed their purposeful march to the railway carriage. It was the sequel the Boys’ Own Paper always avoided: where the Hero who Gives Himself Up becomes the Schmuck who Ends Up a Hostage. Booker-Readman got the gun off the Professor and I hung the tablecloth out of the window. Then we all stood about with our hands up.

  Which made us look pretty funny when Johnson climbed back into the carriage followed by a line of hefty young men clad in Timberwolf, Raccoon, Scimmia, Tibetan Yak and Natural Unplucked Nutria.

  We stood still in the glare of their torches. ‘Hi, chick!’ said the Bank of Canada, and leaning forward, planted an enthusiastic kiss on my face. ‘Jeeze, you’ve sure had a party. O.K. Lights on, folks. The new talent’s arrived!’

  The lights came on, followed by a clicking sound. Heat flowed into the room. Those who were standing on Eskimos got off Eskimos. I said, ‘Johnson.’

  Johnson blinked. ‘I told you,’ he said, ‘that I’d got you a free pass till midnight. Naturally, when your Huskies all went to meet you and found the coach gone, they did the right things. There’ll be an engine along in a minute.’

  ‘The lights?’ I said. ‘The heat?’

  ‘Joanna,’ said Johnson sadly. ‘My glasses were cracked. If there was a switch, I must have missed it.’

  ‘You saw the Snowmobiles,’ I said. It had become a private, and embittered dialogue. Behind us, hysterical laughter was breaking out. I said, ‘You scaremongered all the way through. You created panic. You flunked out of everything. You risked that bloody brat’s life. Why?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘Honestly. In fact, I’ll tell you a secret. I’m the guy who got the train stopped. The telephone wasn’t out of order at all. I knew all the time we’d be rescued.’

  ‘It wasn’t,’ I repeated. After a bit, I got my teeth apart. ‘And who coupled the carriage on to the train in the first place? The Huskies again?’

  ‘No,’ said Johnson. ‘No. In fact that is a mystery. A railway mistake, one might venture. An act of the Lazy Three Fairies. Does it matter? It threw us together. Have a whisky.’

  He put one in my hand, topped it smoothly with water, and passed on his hospitable way. It was Natural Unplucked Nutria, I believe, who laid down his sporting rifle and gave the first howl. ‘What the hell are you drinking?’

  ‘Whisky,’ said Johnson, surprised. ‘We’ve been drinking all night.’

  ‘Well,’ said Natural Unplucked Nutria, ‘have you seen what you’re drinking?’

  We hadn’t. Held in the hand, our glasses contained what appeared to be an attractive straw-coloured whisky.

  Held up to the light, it still looked like whisky. Except that, coursing briskly around it was a large pack of frilly grey foreign bodies filled with intent, and for all I know, winking. I said, ‘Sea Monkeys.’

  I was the centre of attention. Everyone said ‘What?’

  I said, ‘They’re Sea Monkeys.’ I was furious.

  One of the Professors left the room quickly.

  I said to Johnson, ‘That sugar.’

  ‘In your anorak pocket,’ he said. ‘I got it. I tipped it into the water. You remember. Then we couldn’t make the toddy because we’d no boiling water.’

  I dipped my hand into my anorak pocket and came up, in silence, with an untouched pack of airline sugar. Johnson dipped his hand into his mac and came up with a torn pack of something else that he laid on the table between us.

  Instant Life it said, in yellow and red. Ready-to-hatch Sea Monkeys, with a Supply of Special Growth Food. See them HATCH ALIVE. When fully-grown, they can be bred for even MORE adorable pets.

  ‘Murderer,’ I said to Johnson coldly.

  The other Professor left the room. Vladimir said, ‘What is this? Monkeys?’

  ‘Brine shrimps,’ I said, ‘there’s no need to fuss. Fish eat them with no ill effects whatever.’

  Until you put them in water, brine shrimp eggs look like dust. It would be perfectly possible, if your glasses were broken, to mistake them for sugar. Unless you were Johnson.

  Simon Booker-Readman said, ‘What in God’s name were you carrying these about for?’ He looked, blessedly, more entertained than revolted.

  Johnson picked up my anorak. ‘You’d be surprised. You don’t mind, do you, Joanna?’ And without waiting, he turfed out my things on to the table. The sugar, which I’d saved from the airport. A picture postcard of a plane and two cocktail stirrers. A miniature pepper and salt. A pack of fruit gums, a box with a Mexican bean in it, a Matchbox tractor and three very poor cracker mottoes.

  ‘I’ve got nephews,’ I said. Simon Booker-Readman was looking at me in a very odd way.

  ‘You have no nephews,’ said Johnson precisely. ‘I, personally, am going to blow your cover.’

  ‘Shut up,’ I said. I knew, from the amused looks on their faces, that I had turned tie-dyed magenta with annoyance.

  ‘Don’t tease her,’ said Simon, but his voice had a questioning ring.

  ‘I wouldn’t dare,’ said Johnson mildly. ‘I only thought you would like to know that our gorgeous Joanna is a fully-qualified gold-medalled graduate of the world’s finest college of Nursery Nurses. How do you imagine Benedict got the perfect handling he did despite everything? The girl is a Margaret Beaseford trained Nanny.’

  I scarcely felt Raccoon and Scimmia settle one on each side of me. Nurses of any kind only mean one thing to Huskies. Simon Booker-Readman said, ‘You’re a Nanny?’

  I’ve heard that tone of disbelief before as well. I had hardly finished nodding before he had streaked out of the room and was unfastening the galley door. Rosamund’s questions and Benedict’s screams died before the sheer violence of Benedict’s father’s voice, explaining.

  Silence fell. Then the Booker-Readmans came back, all three, and gazed down upon me and my furry companions. Rosamund said, ‘We will pay you any fee you care to name, to come back and look after Benedict.’

  I agreed, after persuasion. It was, after all, why I had been sent to Canada. To pay for my original Italian knits I am not only a Maggie Bee nurse. I have another profession.

  I thought no one knew about that. I was wrong.

  We got back to Government House at five in the morning and were met by the Governor and his wife, who hauled me off for hot coffee and a family post mortem in their private sitting-room. I was sitting in the Aide’s camelhair dressing gown inhaling steam with both eyes semi-closed when the door opened and Johnson came in, wearing striped winceyette pyjamas and a kimono.

  His hair was on end. and if he had bags under his eyes, the glasses hid them. He said, ‘I’ve been a hell of a nuisance: I’m sorry, beautiful,’ and kissed his hostess, who got up and left, followed smartly by her husband, the rat. Johnson said ‘Two minutes’ to me and, pouring himself a mug of coffee, sat down.

  ‘I’ll time you,’ I said. M
y eyelashes had been filed off with emery board and my nose in the steam was expanding like a Japanese paper flower in warm water. Even for a family friend, I wasn’t going to volunteer anything more.

  ‘All right. Listen,’ said Johnson. ‘I helped arrange that because I know a bit about you. Your father is one of my friends. So was Mike Widdess, your last employer, whose kid’s toys you have in your pocket. I know that Mike lost his life in a car crash and that’s why you’re out of a job now. I know how he really died. And I know what you and he were doing together.’

  With some of his friends, my father is too friendly.

  I said ‘Prove it.’

  The glasses flashed: perhaps with approval, perhaps with irritation. ‘All right,’ said Johnson mildly. ‘Mike Widdess was a lawyer who did some confidential work on the side for the government. He found you had some spare time and were bright, so he got you from time to time to help him. Then came the car crash.’ The car crash which ended it all. I was coping with his kid to let Mrs Widdess sort things out after the funeral when I got the news that the crash had not been accidental, but connected with Mike Widdess’s job. And further, that the people who had rigged the accident, whoever they were, had also been discreetly through all Mike’s classified papers.

  They had known what he did. And now they knew what I did also.

  That much, Johnson had found out. He also knew about the alternatives which Mike’s Department had offered me. To hide, or to help them by carrying on as if nothing untoward had been noticed, either about Mike’s accident or his papers.

  It had been tempting to hide. But I wanted to help flush out Michael’s murderers; and perhaps I had. For, one week after his death, a Mrs Warr Beckenstaff had applied to the Margaret Beaseford Nursery Nurses’ Training College for a nanny with my qualifications. My qualifications down to the smallest detail. And at a time when no one outside my own friends and the Department knew that I was out of a job.