‘Guess what?’ Carrie said. ‘There was an oil spill out at sea, and there were all these birds, it was awful.’ She started in at once to tell her dramatic story; but Em fussed about the kitchen, pouring milk for Paul, picking up dirty plates, shaking dog hairs off cushions like a grown-up, and only half listened.
‘Lester and I cleaned about twenty birds. You had to hold their necks in the fork of your fingers like this, and rub soap into them. Then they took them off to stay at the wildfowl sanctuary for a year, until they get the natural oils back in their feathers. We Were going to bring one home, but it - we couldn’t bring it back, because—’
‘Did you bring back the money?’ Em was not properly listening.
‘What money?’
‘The job. Your postcard said, “Getting lots of money”.’
‘Oh, the job.’ Carrie had not thought any more about the snack bar. ‘Well, of course, we gave that up to help with the birds.’
Em understood that. Anyone in this family would. But she did not say so.
She said in an airy, sophisticated way, ‘Paul and I made twenty-five pounds, as a matter of fact.’
Now that she had been taken up again by the film people, Em got a bit superior, putting on special voices and faces, wrinkling her nose at things - ants in the cornflakes, Michael belching at the table, Gilbert bringing up frothy chewed grass on the doormat - which were a normal part of life.
She wrote the first act of a new play, and put on a skirt of Mother’s which reached her ankles, and acted it out to three cats on the woodpile, and Rosie and Rubella roosting on the henhouse roof.
Crossing a bridge after school, she saw some boys throw a kitten into the river. Em slid down a steep bank to rescue it, and had to be fished out herself up the slippery bank, soaked and gasping, her hair in dripping ringlets and her long eyelashes stuck together.
Someone took a picture of her and the wet kitten, and it was on the front page of the local paper. Em was going to be awarded a medal for bravery.
‘She can’t just save a kitten like anyone else,’ Carrie grumbled. ‘She has to go and get a crummy medal for it.’
She could not say that to anyone, so she said it to Lester. What did people do who did not have a friend to whom they could say unsayable things?
Em continued to be a bit uppish. When Tom announced that his travelling zoo would be visiting their school in Newtown, she said that it was only for the babies, and would thrill her no more than a glass of tepid pond water.
But when the zoo was set up on the playing field, with farm animals and ponies, and monkeys and exotic birds, Em spent the whole morning at the pony rides. With a rapt and innocent face, she lined up with a crowd of younger children for her turn on the little Welsh pony, was led slowly round in a small circle by Tom, jumped off and ran back to the end of the line to wait for another ride.
She could ride any of the horses at home, any time she wanted to. But she hardly ever wanted to, because Carrie made her ride properly, and told her what she was doing wrong.
What she wanted, it seemed, was to be led round in a small circle on a small pony, as if she were younger than she was.
It was very strange, and rather pathetic. She was no longer Esmeralda, who made business deals with film producers and travelled alone to London to bring back real money. She was just a little girl enjoying feeble pony rides with a rapt and innocent face.
Carrie had disliked uppish Em these last days; even suffered the sharp pain of a hatred that only sisters can feel. But this morning at school, watching childish Em on the pony, she suddenly felt that she loved her.
When sisters fought, and hated each other, grown-ups invented prophesies like, ‘When you’re older, you’ll be the best of friends.’ Was it possible they might be right?
Twenty-Four
Rodge went to London for the annual meeting of Guide Dog owners, and took Carrie with him. Or she took him. Or Wendy took them both, whichever way you wanted to look at it.
Since they could not afford a hotel, they were to spend the night in Uncle Rudolf’s big ornate house, with the silver gutters and drainpipes that honoured Rudolf’s title of ‘The Prince of Plumbers’.
When you travel with a Guide Dog, everybody speaks to you. People in crowds mostly walk alone, not even eyes meeting eyes. But today they kept stopping to talk to Wendy, or about Wendy, or to point Wendy out to each other. Carrie had never talked to so many strangers before.
In the carriage, she made friends with a young couple, smartly dressed, with loud, proud voices, the sort who usually made Carrie tip her head forward to hide blushes under her hair, and wish that she could do the same with her hands and feet, which swelled like heated balloons. But because she was with the team of Rodge and his dog, she was prouder than the smart couple, and could answer their questions.
Rodge always stammered with strangers, even when he talked about Wendy, so Carrie gave a lecture on Guide Dog training, which lasted until they had run between the backs of the London houses, and the filthy brick walls closed in on them to squeeze the train into the station.
‘You ought to be a dog trainer some day,’ the young husband told Carrie.
‘I’m going to be. Horses too.’
Carrie and Lester had sworn in blood that they would never grow up, so the question of a career might never arise. But you had to have something to say when grownups asked you what you were going to be when you grew up.
There were dozens of blind people at the meeting, and dozens of dogs, all lying quietly by their owners. The only place on earth where you could find so many dogs in one hall together without pandemonium. Wendy behaved beautifully all day, but when Aunt Val saw her standing politely on her front step, ears cocked and tail waving amiably, she went into one of her flurries, and obviously regretted having said that Carrie and Rodge could stay the night.
‘Where will that animal sleep?’
‘W-w-w-with me.’ Rodge followed Wendy into the house, and stood with his head up, looking about him to sense the atmosphere of the wide shining hall, with its stained glass windows and barley sugar pillars.
‘I don’t want him on my new carpet.’ Val never got the sex of animals right, even when she knew their names. She had been calling Charlie ‘She’ for ages. It was her subtle form of insult. ‘Oh dear, I shall have to put you in another room. Oh goodness, now let me see … Carrie, you can go in your old room, but don’t touch the ornaments or put grubby clothes on the clean spread. Mr Weston—’ she never got people’s names right either - ‘let’s see - no, he can’t go in the green room because the window’s stuck and I’ll never air out the smell of dog …’ etc., etc.
One thing Carrie was not going to be if she ever grew up was a fussing housewife.
While Aunt Val fussed over the dinner, Rodge and Carrie sat uneasily in the easy chairs, with Wendy - ‘On that yellow rug, Mr Weston, where his hairs won’t show.’
‘She’s not sh- not sh- not sh-’ But Val’s hard heels had rattled back to the kitchen before Rodge could get out, ‘Not shedding hairs.’
The telephone rang.
‘Answer the phone!’ Val yelled from the kitchen.
‘You answer it,’ Carrie told Rodge.
‘I’ll never get to it.’ Rodge had already found out that the drawing room was cluttered with knick-knacks and occasional tables and lamps and stools. He had tripped over a wire, and cracked his shin on the corner of a coffee table. When Val went out of the room, he had rolled up his trouser leg to feel if it had drawn blood. It had.
The telephone went on ringing. Carrie looked at it. Uncle Rudolf was not yet home from the plumbing factory. She didn’t want to take a message for him, all wrong, as she used to when they lived here before they found World’s End.
… and ringing.
‘Answer that phone!’ Val yelled again.
Carrie crossed the polished floor, rounded the sofa, skirted a whatnot, stepped over a stool to the table where the telephone stood behind a vase of
artificial flowers. Just as she put out her hand to pick it up, the ringing stopped. Just as she had finished the obstacle course back to her chair at the other side of the room, the ringing started again.
She went back. ‘Hullo?’ Aunt Val had tried to teach her to say, ‘Mrs Fielding’s residence,’ but it hadn’t taken.
‘Hullo?’
There was no one there. She put down the telephone. It rang again. She picked it up.
‘Hullo?’
Nothing.
‘Is anybody there?’
Yes. Somebody. Somebody breathing. Carrie could hear it faintly.
She smothered it by putting down the receiver, but waited by the table, looking at the white telephone, which sat there so innocently, but held mystery.
‘Who is it?’ Rodge asked.
‘Nobody.’
The telephone rang again. Carrie put out a hand, then hesitated, with her hand in the air. If she counted six rings, there would be a voice.
… three, four, five, six - ‘Hullo?’
Nothing. She held her breath to hear the breathing. Very slow and quiet, sensed rather than heard, as if the telephone itself was breathing.
She put it down. When it rang again, she did not pick it up.
‘I said, answer the phone.’ Val came in, wearing a comic frilled apron that said, ‘chief cook and bottlewasher’.
‘There’s no one there. Just breathing.’
‘Oh, that’s ridiculous.’ Val snatched up the receiver. ‘Helleaow?’ Her social, telephone voice. ‘Helleaow, who’s there? Are you there?’ She shook the telephone impatiently, and took off the social voice. ‘I can hear you, you know, so you’d better not play any stupid tricks. I know your sort, and I’m not having it.’ Her strawberry lips curled in anger. Her stiffly sprayed hair bristled.
She slammed down the telephone. It rang again before she reached the door, and she turned and snatched it up furiously. ‘Now listen, you’d better stop this, because the operator is plugged into my line, and she’ll trace the call.’
‘Is the operator really plugged in?’ Carrie asked.
‘No, but they don’t know that.’ Val’s voice was a little shaky, as she put down the telephone and went back to the kitchen.
When the telephone rang again, Carrie took off the receiver and laid it by the vase of garish flowers.
‘Why is the phone off the hook?’ Uncle Rudolf came home from the factory and put it back on.
‘Someone is ringing and not saying anything,’ Carrie said.
‘Those fools. Not again.’
‘Why again? What fools?’
‘I don’t know - that’s just it. I don’t know.’ Uncle Rudolf sat down, and rubbed his long nose with a long finger, his high forehead creased with worry. ‘Someone keeps making these silent calls, and I don’t know why.’
‘Burglars?’ Carrie suggested. ‘To see who’s at home?’
‘Perhaps. Or perhaps just to make trouble. I don’t know. London is full of lunatics these days. Oh well.’ Rudolf slapped his bony knees and stood up. ‘Let’s forget it. They can’t scare me.’
He poured himself a large whisky and sat down with the evening paper. But when the ringing started again, Carrie saw that his hands gripped the newspaper tightly, and his eyes were not reading. He did not answer the telephone.
The dinner was marvellous. Tomato cream soup, roast chicken with brown crackly skin, mashed potatoes with a well full of butter, tiny green peas, fruit salad with strawberry ice. Wine for Rodge, cider for Carrie. They had not had a meal like this for ages, if ever. It was one of the reasons they had asked if they could stay here.
Rodge left the dining room dizzy with food and drink. Wendy ran him into a twisted marble pillar in the hall, and he skidded and sat down on the polished floor.
‘I thought he was a Guide Dog,’ Aunt Val said.
‘She is,’ Rodge said. ‘But she’s a dog too. She’s not a machine. Nor am I. So we sometimes make mistakes.’
‘Not much use in that then.’ Aunt Valentina triumphantly brushed off the whole Association of Guide Dogs for the Blind.
Wendy stood alert, then moved forward.
‘Don’t come at me, you tricky creature.’ Aunt Val jumped back.
‘She hears something.’ Sitting on the floor, Rodge cocked his head like Wendy, to listen.
Carrie’s spine crept. The heavy curtains were drawn, shutting out the traffic and the unknown London night. Was someone outside? There had been no more telephone calls. Was the breather outside in the garden, breathing against the windows, waiting to get in?
In bed in her old room before the others, Carrie at first left the curtains open, so as not to be taken by surprise. Then she got up and drew them closed. Which was worse, if someone was outside - to know or not to know?
She was afraid, but she could not go downstairs. She had tried that once with a nightmare when Aunt Val was having a dinner party, and got blasted back upstairs for appearing among the guests with dirty toenails and shrunk pyjamas.
Carrie could not stay up here alone, so she sat at the top of the stairs. Aunt Val asked Rodge to play the piano, then began to talk quite loudly to Uncle Rudolf while he was playing. Rodge stopped.
‘Go on,’ commanded Val.
‘Wendy hears something.’
‘Oh rubbish, that useless dog. Go on playing, Mr Weston. I’m very musical, you know.’
Rodge didn’t have the guts to say, ‘Then why don’t you listen?’ He started to play again, a jolly tune Carrie knew he didn’t like, but which Aunt Val had ordered. Soon the music put her to sleep. Rodge fell over her when he came up the stairs with Wendy.
In the middle of the night, everyone was woken by barking in the hall. They came down, Val in a flouncy nightgown, Rudolf in striped pyjamas which hung like a tent on his spare frame, Carrie in Mrs Mismo’s son’s pyjamas, because there had been nothing else at World’s End fit to bring to London.
‘What on earth is going on, Mr Weston?’
Rodge was by the door with Wendy.
‘I let her bark. She heard s-s-someone outside. So did I.’
‘Nonsense, how could there be? I heard nothing.’ But Val was nervous. Nervous enough, Carrie saw with some surprise, to have forgotten to put in her teeth.
‘We did hear s-s-s—’
He was never going to manage ‘someone’, so Carrie filled in. ‘Blind people are better at hearing, because—’
‘There. In the garden. Speak, Wendy.’
Her double bark, deep and baying.
‘Shut up!’ Val put her hands over her ears. ‘I can’t stand that noise. Go out and have a look, Rudolf.’
‘Have you gone out of your mind, woman?’ he asked, and she clutched her hair net and said, ‘I’ve had enough to drive me there, heaven knows.’
Rodge opened the door and unclipped Wendy’s lead, and she ran out through the shrubbery and across the lawn, with her labrador’s deep, baying bark, chasing, hunting. If there was anyone out there, he would think the hounds of hell were after him.
Wendy stopped barking. She came back and rustled round a bit among the bushes. When Rodge whistled, she came back to him, looking mild again.
‘I told you.’ Aunt Val shut the door, and shot the bolts. ‘There’s no one there.’
But in the morning when Carrie took Wendy out to run, she found the footprints of a man in the flowerbed underneath the side window.
Twenty-Five
When she went into the house, there were some letters on the door mat. Carrie picked them up and put them on the hall table. The top envelope had a foreign airmail stamp. A Greek stamp. It was addressed in familiar writing. Her father’s writing.
She turned it over, handling the paper that he had handled, seeing him sitting on deck in the sun, dashing off a letter to his brother in his careless scrawl.
The flap was not properly stuck down. Carrie’s first two fingers slid under the side of the flap that was unstuck, got into the envelope and held the letter. No
t to pull it out, or read it. Just to prove it could have been done, then stick the flap down properly.
She pulled out the folded paper. Not to open it. Just to turn back the top to see the name of the boat - Mariner, and the date - two weeks ago. He must have forgotten to post it. The envelope was creased, as if it had been in his pocket, and there was a beer stain in one corner.
Carrie glanced up the stairs. Uncle Rudolf’s electric razor was going like a buzz saw. Valentina was singing whoopily in the bath. Rodge would not come down in this strange house until Wendy went up for him.
If she was going to read the letter, she must do it quickly. She read it. She had known all along that she would.
‘Dear Rudolf,
Just a few lines from the sun-drenched isles of Greece which today are drenched with nothing but blackness. For me and Alice.
As you know, we’ve been saving all wages to make a down payment on the house at World’s End. Our boss, the mad millionaire, has a thing against banks, so pays us in cash. Wot a luvverly pile. But there are light fingers all along these shores, so I hid the cash in the pockets of an old jacket under the bunk. Forgot to tell Alice, and she gave the jacket to a poor old beggar on the dock. He begs no longer. Nor is he poor. Nor is he on the dock - or anywhere in sight.
I know you’re in a hurry to sell. I’m asking you to wait. Please, Rudy? Don’t tell the kids. I’ll do that, somehow.’
Carrie re-folded the letter and put it in the envelope, licked the gum his tongue had missed, and stuck the flap down tightly.
She went upstairs like a sleepwalker, her hand on Wendy’s collar, her legs numb, her mind turned off like a stopped clock.
Her mind was still numb when she left with Rodge to get the train for home. Aunt Val saw them off quite gaily from the door - she was always gayer when you left than when you arrived.
‘See you soon!’ she called. ‘We’ll be down next week on business!’
‘Business,’ muttered Rodge. ‘Is he really planning to sell your house?’
‘It isn’t ours,’ Carrie said miserably. Thinking of Dad’s terrible letter, tears clouded her eyes, and as she turned out of the gate, she bumped into a man who had stopped by the wall to light a cigarette.
Spring Comes to World's End Page 10
