Kingfisher Morning

by Charlotte Lamb

  He gave her a long, hard look. 'Quite a little shrew, aren't you? Of course you'll stay here tonight. And you will certainly not take the children to a hotel tomorrow. I'll have to try to find someone. What do you do for a living?' he asked, with polite rather than eager curiosity.

  'I'm an artist,' she said.

  His smile expressed cynical disbelief, and she felt her dislike for him growing.

  'I illustrate books and magazines,' she said tartly. 'That's why I'm in Dorset. I'm doing some illustrations for an American edition of Thomas Hardy, and as this is Hardy's part of the world, I came down here to get the feel of the country.'

  His eyes dwelt on her hands. 'I noticed what slender fingers you had,' he said.

  She was surprised and flushed. He grimaced. 'I'm a vet,' he said, defensively. 'It's my job to be observant.'

  Emma got up and began to wash up the china they had used. He yawned, stretching, his whole body visibly weary.

  'Leave that until morning. I'm off to bed. Have you found all you need upstairs? Hangers, a hot water bottle?'

  'Yes, thank you,' she said politely. She returned the kitchen to its previous state of tidiness before following him upstairs. She disliked coming down in the morning to an untidy kitchen. It began the day on a wrong note.

  On the landing she met Ross coming out of Robin's room, smiling to himself. He grinned at her, shamefaced. 'Just checking…'

  'Don't apologise,' she said. 'I'm glad to see you do have some affection for them.'

  'Scold!' he said mockingly.

  Within minutes of climbing into bed she was asleep.

  She was awoken by the arrival of Robin and Donna on her stomach. Giving a suffocating cry, she heaved them off and sat up, gathering them into her arms. Donna came eagerly, Robin with reluctance.

  'Tracy's cooking breakfast,' said Robin. 'Get up.'

  'Tracy?' She looked in alarm at her alarm clock. It showed the ghastly hour of seven. She had set it for seven-thirty. That had seemed an unearthly hour the night before. At this moment she longed for another hour of sleep. 'What about your uncle?'

  'He's gone,' Robin said cheerfully. 'To see a sick cow. He wouldn't take me with him.'

  'Up,' said Donna, patting Emma's cheek with her hand.

  'You two go down to breakfast. I'll follow.' Emma crawled out of bed and surveyed the morning with a jaundiced eye, then went into the bathroom. She felt much better after she had splashed her face with cold water and cleaned her teeth. Dressed, she surveyed the view from her window, and was very impressed.

  The house lay in a leafy hollow below a hilly wood. The garden was entirely surrounded by hedges more than six foot high. Within this irregular boundary lay lawns, apple trees, vegetable garden, flower beds and a couple of casually placed garden seats. The arrangement was informal, flowing. It almost appeared as if the garden had just grown haphazardly, without previous planning—a flower bed here, a tree there—little narrow mossy paths running between them all, winding in and out, round and round. Shrubs and low stone walls made little secret places in and out of which hopped garden birds; sparrows in demure grey and beige, bluetits, bright and darting, robins whose red waist-coats attracted the eye, chaffinch, starling, thrush and blackbird. An enormous marmalade cat sunned itself on a low shed roof, keeping an interested eye on the bird life but without the energy, apparently, to do anything about it.

  'Come on!' Tracy yelled up the stairs.

  Emma laughed and ran down to join the children. Tracy had cooked porridge, stickily bubbling in a big copper pan. Robin was busily making lakes and islands in his bowl. Donna was looking mutinous.

  'She hates porridge,' said Tracy. 'But it's good for her.' She said it with a prim little glance which made Emma grin.

  'What you dislike is never good for you,' she said, removing Donna's bowl. 'How about a boiled egg, Donna?'

  'Yeth, pleathe.'

  'Yes, please,' Tracy reminded her bossily.

  Donna ignored her. 'Negg,' she said. 'Nice negg…'

  Tracy sat down sulkily. 'Mummy makes porridge,' she said.

  'She doesn't make Donna eat it,' said Robin disinterestedly.

  Tracy stuck her tongue out at him. 'My porridge was lovely,' she said. 'Eat it…' poking him in the ribs.

  Emma tasted the porridge with a bright smile. It was rather like wet cement. She smiled at Tracy. 'You're a very good cook, Tracy, for a seven-year-old. Wait until I tell your mummy how helpful you've been.'

  'She made us get up,' said Robin. 'Am I getting an egg? This porridge is sticking my teeth together.'

  'All right,' Tracy shouted. 'Don't eat it. I don't care!'

  When the eggs were ready Emma gave Tracy a thoughtful look. The little girl was valiantly attempting to finish her own large bowl of porridge, but the effort was clearly reflected in her face. A grim expression, gritted teeth, a clenched jaw…

  'Good heavens, you mustn't eat as much porridge as that,' Emma said lightly. 'You won't have room for an egg.' She whisked the half-full bowl away and replaced it by a brown egg in a yellow egg-cup. Tracy gave an involuntary sigh of relief, then pretended hurriedly to be reluctant to make the exchange. She was, Emma saw, a child with whom losing face could spell disaster.

  When they had all finished breakfast, Emma sent them out to play in the garden while she washed up. Tracy's offer of help was gently refused. Tactfully, Emma explained, 'I need you to keep an eye on the two little ones.'

  Tracy self-importantly nodded and shepherded them out. Robin gave Emma a sidelong, almost adult wink. Emma stifled a giggle. Robin was a very unusual little boy, she thought—oddly clearheaded for a four-year-old. He had a habit of putting his finger on a situation in a few crisp words. She wondered what sort of man he would grow up into.

  Later, she joined them, wearing a pleated tartan skirt, light woollen sweater in a pale lemon shade and a pair of sturdy leather walking shoes. 'We'll make a tour of exploration, shall we?' she asked the children.

  They shouted with glee and began to run ahead towards the gate. The grass was already littered with windfalls from the mossy apple trees. Robin bent, picked up one of them; a large russet, encrusted with greeny-grey mould on the side which had rested nearest the wet grass, chuckled and flung it haphazardly over the hedge.

  Idly, they all watched it disappear. Then, to Emma's horror, an enraged cry arose from behind the hedge. Robin, giving her an alarmed glance, scuttled behind her skirt.

  A face appeared over the white gate. Sapphire blue eyes spat furiously at Emma. 'Who threw that?' The eyes skimmed over them all, settled unerringly upon Robin, peeping sheepishly out from the security of Emma's shadow. 'You? It was you, you little…'

  'Hey!' Emma put in sharply before the angry expletive could escape from those scarlet, enamelled lips. 'Hey, not in front of the children, if you please!'

  The other girl switched her gaze back to Emma. She was exquisite, Emma noted dispassionately, her pink-and-white complexion assisted by cunning artifice but nonetheless clearly based upon real beauty, her delicately moulded features framed between the smoothly brushed wings of silvery blonde hair. She wore a timelessly elegant suit in palest sand-colour. The blouse beneath it was the same vivid red as her lips. She would have looked superb, had it not been for the splash of mouldy apple juice which lay across the left shoulder of her suit.

  'Oh, dear, I am sorry,' Emma lamented. 'If we had known you were there…it was an accident…'

  'My suit is ruined! I shall have to go home and change…it really is too bad!'

  'Of course, I'll pay to have it cleaned,' Emma assured her. 'And we are really sorry, aren't we, Robin?' looking down at him commandingly, her eyebrows lifted.

  'Sorry,' he whispered, clutching her skirt with one tight little fist.

  The sapphire blue eyes were studying Emma. 'Who are you, anyway? The nanny, I suppose?'

  Emma hesitated. It was too complicated a story to go into again. 'I'm in charge of the children,' she hedged.

  'You d
on't look much like a nanny,' the other girl said coldly. 'Far too decorative.' Her eyes were hard, her mouth unsmiling. 'Don't get any ideas. It won't do you any good. He's impervious. Better women than you have tried and failed, and I warn you, if you queer my pitch, I'll make you sorry!'

  Emma was baffled and angered. 'What are you talking about?' she asked.

  The other laughed. 'Oh, come off it! You know who he is, and I wouldn't blame you for getting ideas, but take a gypsy's warning and keep your hands off.'

  'Who is he?' Emma repeated. 'Do you mean their uncle? He's the local vet, isn't he?'

  The other gave a sharp, unamused crack of laughter. 'You're kidding!'

  Emma stared at her without replying, completely bewildered.

  The other girl's hard blue eyes searched hers, a narrow pencil of light focussed on her. Then, very slowly, the other smiled. It was a strange little smile. Emma did not like it at all.

  'Well, well, well!' murmured the other girl ambiguously. There was a pause, then she said softly, 'Least said, soonest mended.'

  'Look,' Emma began sharply, 'what are you talking about? I haven't the foggiest idea…

  'Never mind,' came the reply crisply. 'I must rush back and change. Just remember, in future, look where you're throwing things!'

  The girl disappeared, leaving Emma staring after her.

  Tracy was standing at the hedge, quietly picking elderberries. 'That's Amanda Craig,' she now said in a flat voice. 'She lives at Queen's Daumaury.'

  Emma looked at her interestedly. The name was familiar. The house frequently featured in magazines as a perfect specimen of the English country house, set in a tiny park in which roe deer roamed, with silver pheasants and peacocks wandering along the rose-embowered terraces. It belonged to old Leon Daumaury, the financier, a bitter recluse who disliked publicity yet, necessarily, attracted it by shunning it so fiercely. Was Amanda Craig related to him, or employed by him? Her expensive appearance could indicate either. But what was her interest in their uncle, and what had she meant by her odd remarks about him?

  Donna had slid through the gate and was running off along the lane on her short legs, heading for the inviting shade of the wood.

  'Come on,' Emma called to the other two children. 'Catch up with Donna!'

  On the far side of the cottage, in the shadow of the wood, Donna was peering over a fence at some donkeys, their great eyes curious as they stared back at her.

  'Barnaby and Jessie,' cried Tracy delightedly. 'They belong to Mrs Pat.'

  Emma looked back at the cottage as they climbed up the steep side of the wood. It lay below them, the low creamy stone roofed with a thatch a shade deeper. The walls were thick, and bulged here and there, beneath the eaves and window-sills, yet they had a look of enduring strength. The windows were latticed, diamond-leads, twinkling back in the morning sunlight as though the house was pleased to have them beneath its thatch. Roses, pink and plentiful, climbed everywhere around the walls, scenting the morning air.

  'It looks like the cottage the Three Bears lived in,' said Emma to Donna.

  The little girl chuckled, nodding.

  The wood was alive with birdsong. Squirrels raced up and down the trunks of beech trees, at their most active now as autumn approached and they finished laying in their store of foods. Wood pigeons cooed far away. A jay gave a harsh call and flitted past them, making the children cry out with pleasure in his vivid flashing colours, the electric blue and chestnut brown. Emma followed sympathetically in their wake as they ran ahead, kicking up beech mast and oak leaves, collecting shiny chestnuts from the wet grass, gazing at delight at the millions of cobwebs of all shapes and sizes which decorated the gorse bushes, glittering in the sunlight as it filtered through the leaves.

  They came down through the wood, emerging on a sandy lane, and wandered along beside the hedge. Robin gazed into the tangled, twiggy depths, pausing to gloat over the ripening black-berries. 'Can I eat them?' he asked.

  Emma nodded. 'Yes, you may eat those, but always ask and show me before you eat any other berries. I'm sure Mummy told you that.'

  Donna nodded primly. 'Yes, she did.'

  Tracy broke into a run as they reached a long garden which ran up to the little whitewashed inn. A woman came out, a large yellow plastic clothes basket under one plump arm, a capacious white apron enveloping her waist, her greying hair tied up behind her in a neat bun, her rosy face twinkling with smiles. 'Mrs Pat!' called Tracy.

  'Well, now! If it isn't Tracy…my word, you've grown! Leggy as a young colt, you be.' She put down her basket, with its snowy white contents, and bent to scoop up Donna, giving her a large warm kiss. 'You're a proper little lovie, aren't you? And that's Robin, is it? My word, you've grown too…last time I set eyes on you, you were a baby, and now you're a young man.'

  'I'm four,' Robin informed her, his smile kind but pitying.

  Mrs Pat laughed, winking at Emma. 'Aye, so you are! You remind me of your uncle Ross when he was your age.'

  Emma looked at Robin, open-eyed. Yes, she thought to herself, that explained a great deal. So that was how the chicken came out of the egg!

  'Come along in and take tea with me,' Mrs Pat invited, smiling. 'I've got the kettle on.' She winked. 'I always have it on!'

  The enormous, cosy kitchen faced three sides, airy and bright, with the wood through one window, the open fields on view through another and the garden through a third. A small black kitten slept on the rag rug in front of the stove. A kettle hummed busily on the hob. The children were soon seated round the long deal table, eating with the appetite of youth from a plate piled high with hot, fluffy scones. The butter was pale and cold, the jam home-made.

  Mrs Pat gave them cold milk, at their request, but made tea for herself and Emma, in a fat teapot the colour of the shy chestnuts they had found in the wood.

  Emma told her how she came to be in charge of the children, and Mrs Pat laughed. 'Ross won't like that.'

  'He doesn't,' agreed Emma. 'He wants to find someone to sleep in the house at night…to chaperone us!'

  'I'm sure he does,' nodded Mrs Pat.

  'It seems a bit old-fashioned,' Emma said, 'with three children there.'

  'Ah, well, sometimes one has to be very careful,' said Mrs Pat. She studied Emma closely. 'Tell me about yourself, m'dear…come from London, do you? You're a long way from home.'

  Emma found herself talking. Mrs Pat skilfully, tactfully, almost unnoticeably, drew from her every detail of her life and background, listening intently. Emma even found herself confessing to her abortive love affair, to her pain over Guy, her decision to run away and leave him to Fanny.

  'In a way, I'm grateful all this happened,' she admitted with a grimace. 'So much has happened in the last twenty-four hours that I've almost forgotten Guy.' Certainly the sharp sting of the pain was less. She could think of him with less grief.

  A squawk from the garden attracted the children's notice, and Emma glanced out. A large, white-haired woman stood by a far hedge, scattering food for a flock of small, brown bantam hens which excitedly fought for it, wings flapping, leaping at each other with loud cries.

  'My sister Edie,' said Mrs Pat, with a sigh. 'She never married, Edie didn't. A loving, gentle creature, works like a demon, but she was never what you might call bright…slow thinking, see. I don't see why Edie shouldn't come down and give you a hand while you and the children are at the cottage. She's scared of men, though, so while Ross is around she'll shrink into herself. That's why he never asked her to come. He knows how she is…But she does love children so! It would please her to be with them.'

  Emma watched as the three children raced out to talk to Edie, to help her feed the hens. They saw her look round at the house, alarmed, trembling a little.

  'She's afraid Ross is here,' said Mrs Pat, sighing.

  Then Tracy talked, and Edie visibly relaxed, bending to let Donna take a handful of hen food to scatter. The grains fell haphazardly, and the hens fought and squawked. Donna laughed ou
t loud. Edie laughed, too. Despite the gap in their age, they looked oddly alike at that instant. Emma was touched.

  Edie came shyly into the kitchen later, pink and nervous as she glanced at Emma. Her skin was weathered and innocent of make-up, her blue eyes gentle and wistful. From time to time she looked at Donna, eagerly, with uncertain but touching delight. Once she offered Donna a biscuit, her wrinkled brown hand briefly touching the child's smooth cheek in an infinitely touching gesture.

  'They're needing help up at Rook Cottage,' Mrs Pat said quietly. 'I said you might be willing.'

  Edie looked uneasily around her, alarmed at the idea.

  'Please come and help,' Emma asked softly. She gave Donna a little push. 'The children would like it, wouldn't you, Donna?'

  Donna willingly went forward and leant against the old woman's lap, her bright gaze lifted. 'Yeth,' she nodded.

  Edie fingered a wisp of Donna's hair, her face aglow with loving tenderness. 'Well, I might…' she said in her slow Dorset drawl.

  They went back to the cottage together. Donna held Edie's hand and talked softly, confidingly, as they walked alone, at Donna's stumping pace. Edie was totally intent, her face happy. Robin had found a forked stick with which he intended, he said, to capture snakes. He practised, meanwhile, with pieces of grass and branches as he passed. Tracy walked with Emma, talking about her father. She clearly missed him very much. Emma gained the impression of a happy, united little family, and worried in case Tracy might be secretly unhappy beneath her bossy exterior.

  Ross was in the kitchen, banging cupboards and looking like a thundercloud.

  'Where the devil have you been?' he burst out as they entered.

  Edie turned white, and Emma looked at her anxiously. 'Take the children upstairs to wash, will you, Edie, please?' she asked her.

  Edie hurried to obey. Ross stared after her, his brows black above his imperious nose.

  'What's she doing here? By the way, I've fixed up a chaperone…she'll be here at any moment.' He spoke tersely.