The Young Unicorns

by Madeleine L'engle

  Slowly, thoughtfully, paying no attention to Suzy, Emily removed her hand from under Dr. Austin’s. “What did Papa mean by CAREFUL OF FALLS?”

  For a moment nobody answered. “You can clear the table now, Rob,” Mrs. Austin said. “He probably meant you, Emily.”

  “Papa knows I fall half a dozen times a day. He doesn’t give me warnings. He gets angry.”

  Mr. Theo, who as usual at the Austins’ had been eating as though he had just ended a long fast, growled, “I, for another, would like you to be more careful. You may not be able to see your shins all black and blue. I can, and it gives me no asethetic pleasure whatsoever.”

  “Speaking of which,” Dr. Austin said, “aesthetic pleasure, that is, how’s the homework situation tonight? Isn’t this the day nobody has very much? How about an hour or so of music after dinner? Mother and I’ll do the dishes later on. Dave, your horn is here, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, downstairs, but—”

  “Oh, shut up, Dave.” Emily cut him off. “Be nice about it for once, can’t you? Nobody’s going to tease you to play if you don’t feel like it.”

  Mr. Theo shook back his yellowing mane. “Josiah will play. You and I, Miss Emily, will do the Mozart two-piano sonata. I think you have it pretty well under your sash. And young Rob will sing. What will you sing, Rob?”

  Rob stood in the doorway to the kitchen, the empty milk pitcher in one hand, a bowl with a spoonful of leftover lima beans in the other. “We learned a French carol at school. I’ll sing that.”

  Suzy asked suspiciously, “Is it bejeezly?”

  “It’s about the baby Jesus, if that’s what you mean,” Rob called back over his shoulder from the kitchen, “but it isn’t one of the sky-blue-pink ones. What’s for dessert?”

  Dessert was deep-dish cherry pie, after which Dr. Austin told the children to forget about the table and go on down to the music room. He himself picked up the cable, read it once more, and took it to his desk in his study before following them.

  When he got downstairs Vicky and Mr. Theo were lighting a fire and Dave was cleaning his English horn. It was one that had been bought second-hand for him during his choir days in the Cathedral School, and having survived not only that but four years of rather rough and informal rehearsal at trade school, it looked battered and dented and as though nothing but squawks could come from it.

  But when he put it to his lips and blew, the sound was clear and clean and melancholy. He sat in the black leather chair, and the mysterious notes of the horn solo from the prelude to the third act of Tristan and Isolde fell darkly into the room. When he put the horn down on his knees the sound seemed to linger. Rob, who was sitting next to his mother on the small gold sofa, shoved closer up against her, and she put her arm around him.

  Dr. Austin had taken over the fire-making from Vicky and Mr. Theo, who had not been very successful. Now he sat back on his heels and watched the flames take hold of the kindling and flicker brightly up the chimney. “You can have most of Wagner as far as I’m concerned, but Tristan still does something to me. It’s going to be a hard choice for you, isn’t it, Dave? Electronics or the English horn.”

  “Electronics,” Dave said flatly. He took out his handkerchief and began wiping the horn. All during the dark and ancient notes of the solo he had been remembering the journey through the murky tunnel from the Cathedral crypt to the Bishop sitting on his strange throne in an obsolete subway station.

  “The pragmatic choice, eh, Dave?”

  “It’s a pragmatic world.”

  Suzy sighed. “Okay, so what does pragmatic mean?”

  “Practical,” Vicky defined. “What works. Not idealistic. Right?”

  “It’ll do.” Her father left the now blazing fire, shoved his wife and Rob over, and managed to squeeze onto the gold sofa by them. Rob wriggled himself free and got onto his father’s lap. Vicky sat opposite Dave, leaning back comfortably in the broken-down wing chair and enjoying the fire. Mr. Theo and Emily were at the two pianos.

  “Some scales to warm up with,” Mr. Theo said.

  Vicky enjoyed even this. The scales under their strong and disciplined fingers had the ease and swiftness of fish leaping upstream in a swiftly flowing river, and she imagined the notes as glistening silver fishes. At a signal from Emily the scales stopped and she and the old man began the Mozart sonata; for Vicky, sitting there with closed eyes, all was flickering light and shadow in a series of shifting patterns. In the country in the summer she liked to go down into the apple orchard and lie under the oldest of the trees, a gnarled tree too ancient to bear apples any more; she would lie against grass and roots and look up at the sky through the moving green leaves, green against blue that went up, up, into a gold infinity. When she would come back into the house Suzy would usually say, “Oh, Vicky’s in one of her moods,” and the beauty would break up into a squabble. The Mozart had the same effect on Vicky as the light moving through the leaves. She was glad that nothing more had been said about moving in with Suzy. Emily would not mind, or even notice, if Vicky were silent at bedtime. Emily understood silence, that good silence is something that comes from inside, not outside, and that little, unimportant things can break it more easily than the big ones.—I can be silent, properly silent, Vicky thought,—right in the middle of buses and taxi horns and ambulance sirens, so why do I let little things like Suzy dressing entirely in front of the mirror and not letting me have a look in break it up into noise?

  The Mozart shifted from the introspective slow movement into a frolic of joy and laughter and swirled Vicky’s thoughts along with the soaring melody.

  —Well, it’ll be all right, she thought, her spirits lifting.—Daddy’s here, and he’s listening without that closed look, and I wrote a sort of poem today in English and everybody thought it was good and nobody laughed at it, they really liked it, and maybe I should sort of dig out some of the other poem things I’ve written and go over them …

  When the Mozart had concluded, leaving its joy lingering on the air, Mr. Theo asked Rob, “What’s your French carol, boy?”

  “‘Dors, ma colombe’,” Rob said, and hummed.

  Mr. Theo nodded in recognition, picked up the melody, and played a gentle variation as introduction.

  Rob stood up, then reached down to take his mother’s hand before singing. Even the structured happiness of the Mozart had not been able to take away for the little boy the incomprehensible sense of darkness, of illimitable void, left by Dave’s English horn. Being the baby of his family, he was usually either very young or very old for his age; now, standing close to his mother, unwilling to let go the safety of her hand, he looked small and defenseless. But when he started to sing it was completely unselfconsciously, his treble clear and pure as a mockingbird’s.

  It was being a good evening, Vicky thought, sighing with relaxation. She stretched her legs out to the warmth of the fire, basking in firelight, in music, in sheer physical comfort and the sense of being with her own people, loved and accepted and safe. The idea of the genie was only something out of a dream world, and so it really held no threat …

  Mrs. Austin, holding Rob’s hand, holding this moment of peace, looked around at her family, at Emily and Mr. Theo, who had come very close to her heart, and thought that almost always when she felt this tangible sense of happiness it was followed by trouble.

  Rob, of all the children, was the most fascinated by the Cathedral. Part of this may have been Mr. Theo’s recurring suggestion that he leave the safety of going to the same school as his sisters and Emily, and go alone to the Cathedral School, to an unknown world of all boys and men. But part was simply the pull of the building itself. Its very size had an attraction for him. When he looked at it he felt somewhat the same sense of security that he got looking out of the windows of the house in the country and letting his eyes rest on the gentle hills and then on the great purple shoulders of the mountains beyond.

  So, the next day after school, when the girls wanted to stop at the drug
store for something to eat, he said, “I don’t want anything.”

  “We’ll buy you some ice cream,” Suzy offered.

  “I’d rather go look at the Cathedral. Okay, Vicky?”

  “Okay,” Vicky agreed. “We’ll come pick you up in a few minutes. Don’t hide anywhere.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise. You know what?”

  “What?” Vicky asked.

  “If you went by the Cathedral at night you wouldn’t see any flying buttresses.”

  Suzy turned impatiently towards the drugstore. Vicky, who was older, and Emily, who had never had a small brother, were more tolerant. They both asked, “Why?”

  “Because they’ve all gone to bed. They never fly at night.” He was not making a joke. He left the laughter of the girls, which he considered rude, and walked with dignity to the Cathedral, seeing in his mind’s eye all the buttresses folding their wings like dragons and settling down for sleep.

  He trudged up the long front steps. Behind him were two sightseeing buses waiting for their loads of tourists. Before him the building lay.—I will lift up mine eyes, he thought, and tugged at the heavy glass doors to the right of the great bronze doors; these were opened only on special occasions; Rob often stood and studied the scenes depicted on the panels. But now it was cold and he was in a hurry to get into shelter. The wind blew up the steps after him, and he could not, for the moment, get the door to yield against its power.

  Behind him a voice said, “Let me help.” He opened the outer door and smiled down at the little boy. “Hello. I’m Canon Tallis.”

  “Hello. I’m Robert Austin.”

  They stood looking at each other, both half smiling, half questioning, and indeed there was an odd resemblance between them, the little boy and the middle-aged priest, something about the firmness of gaze, the expression of the mouth, ready either to laugh or to steady into seriousness, that had nothing to do with chronological age, that was neither too old for Rob nor too young for the Canon.

  Canon Tallis opened the inner door. “Heavy, isn’t it? Especially with the wind from this direction. I’m just taking a short cut through the Cathedral to the Deanery. What are you up to?”

  “Nothing,” Rob said. “I just like to look.”

  The sun fell lingeringly against the west front of the Cathedral as the Canon and the little boy entered; the long rays of light were refracted by the rose window over the state trumpets, by the crown of windows in the brilliant lantern of the Octagon, so that the stone columns soared upwards in the light, no longer massive supports of granite, but a structure made of color and air, rose, lavender, blue, holding the Cathedral in weightless effort.

  The Canon followed Rob’s gaze. “Beautiful, isn’t it? At this time of day it’s easy to see how light is part of the architect’s plan, how sunlight itself is part of the skeleton, realized by stone.”

  Far ahead of them, looking small, so long was the nave, a group of sightseers trooped down the steps of the ambulatory by St. Ansgar’s chapel and the baptistry. The guide’s voice, sounding like a drone of bored and meaningless gibberish, echoed back to where Rob and Canon Tallis stood.

  “Dave said the tour guides don’t always tell things right.”

  The Canon picked up the name, not the information. “Dave?”

  “He’s a friend of ours. He’s almost grown up. But he used to be a chorister here.”

  “That would be Josiah Davidson, then, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes. How did you know?” Again Rob fixed the Canon with his piercing look. “You’re the man who spoke to Emily when we saw the genie. And then I saw you again the next day by the newsstand and I knew you, and you knew me, and then you went away very quickly. And just now we both knew each other, but we didn’t say anything about it.”

  The Canon looked at Rob thoughtfully. “Young man, how would you like to come over to the Deanery and have tea with me?”

  “Can’t,” Rob said. “The girls are at the drugstore and they said they’d pick me up at the Cathedral. I didn’t want any ice cream or anything, and they made me promise not to hide.”

  “The girls?”

  “Vicky and Suzy, my sisters. And Emily.”

  “The musician.”

  “Yes. She’s my friend.”

  “Where’s Dave?”

  “If he doesn’t meet us after school he comes to the house around five to read for Emily.”

  The tourists were coming down the nave now. The guide had finished his spiel and was eager to herd his motley flock out of the Cathedral and into the bus. It was an oddly assorted group, some of the women conventionally dressed with hats and gloves, some casual, some with tissues on their hair (“Tissues are to blow your nose on,” Suzy had said ferociously the first time she had seen one used as a head covering), some in slacks, some chewing gum, some already taking cigarettes from pockets or handbags to light as soon as they left the building.

  In this conglomerate assortment the three boys in leather jackets did not seem particularly out of place, but the Canon, glimpsing them, abruptly took Rob by the hand and, holding him firmly, pulled him down the side aisle towards the sacristy.

  “Hey!” Rob started to protest, loudly.

  The Canon put his hand firmly over Rob’s mouth, holding the little boy in front of his dark bulk until all the tourists, including the three boys, had gone out the glass doors, which closed slowly, protestingly, pushed by the cold wind which blew an icy draft down the length of the Cathedral. “Rob, you must not wander about alone, particularly here.”

  “Why not?” Rob asked. “What’s the matter? You scared me! Let me go!”

  “Sorry, old man,” the Canon said, releasing him. “Rob, you realize that I’ve been keeping an eye on you?”

  “Yes.” Rob rubbed his wrist, which hurt from the priest’s grip. “I told you so, didn’t I?”

  “You did. And did you tell your parents about me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Of course.” Canon Tallis echoed him. “Quite. Dave said all you Austins talk too much.”

  “How would you know what Dave said?”

  “He told me when we were having tea together.”

  “Dave had tea with you!”

  “Twice, as a matter of fact.”

  “But he didn’t say anything to us about it—”

  “If Dave told me that the Austins talk too much, then perhaps it’s not to be wondered at that he himself doesn’t?”

  Rob thought this one over. “Has anybody else—I mean like Emily or my family—had tea with you?”

  “Vicky—that’s your elder sister, isn’t it?—didn’t have tea with me, but we did have a talk. Or at least we started one.”

  Rob’s voice rose in indignation. “Okay, then, if nobody’s telling me anything and everybody’s treating me like a baby, they keep telling me to grow up but how can I if—well, okay, then, I’ll go have tea with you.”

  “Hold it, Rob. Didn’t you make a promise?”

  Rob stamped, the rubber sole of his red boot muffling the noise against the marble floor. “Okay. Yes. I promised. I suppose I can’t, then.”

  “And I don’t think, Rob, that people are hiding things from you just because you’re the youngest.”

  A fresh blast of cold air whipped about their legs as the glass doors opened again and the three girls came in, their striped red and navy school scarves up about their necks and faces.

  “There they are—” Rob waved his hand, still in its scarlet mitten, “—my talkative sisters and Emily. Come and meet them.”

  Vicky called, “There you are!” to Rob, and her words continued to echo as she saw the man beside him.

  “Hello, Vicky. We meet again. I’m Canon Tallis. Emily: hi, we met briefly one afternoon in the rain.”

  Rob walked deliberately around the bronze medallions set in the floor, not hurrying to meet the girls.

  Emily scowled, recognized the voice, pulled off her right glo
ve and stuck out her hand.

  Canon Tallis took it in both of his. “Emily. Hello. You’ve a good hand for the piano.”

  Vicky was by now prepared to have the Englishman know things: her name; Emily’s; that Emily was a pianist. Even to have him with Rob did not seem strange to her, though she could not have said why. As she watched the priest with Emily it seemed to her that he was examining the younger girl’s hand only partly out of personal interest, and rather more to give Emily a chance to feel his own hands, to learn him a little, and this pleased Vicky and strengthened her instinctive feeling of confidence in him.

  It was Suzy who demanded suspiciously, “Who are you and how do you know Emily’s a musician?”

  “Hello, Suzy Austin. Canon Tallis. I’m a friend of the Dean’s and Mr. Theo’s. And I’ve been making the acquaintance of your friend Josiah Davidson.”

  Suzy and Emily said simultaneously: “That beast Dave, why didn’t he—”

  “Why didn’t Mr. Theo—he must have known—”

  Rob had been standing silently beside the priest. Now he said, “I’m going to go have tea with Canon Tallis.”

  “Why don’t we all—” the Canon started.

  Rob’s face had the stubborn look that both Vicky and Suzy had reason to know. “No. Just me. You asked me. You didn’t ask them.”

  Canon Tallis understood at once that this was important to Rob, that the little boy wasn’t just being disagreeable, that he knew that if the girls came to tea he would be the baby, an afterthought, left on the outskirts of the conversation, so he spoke to him seriously, man to man. “That is true, Rob. But there are things I would like to say to the girls, and questions I’d like to ask that you might not be able to answer. And I would very much like to meet your parents.”

  “Okay, then,” Rob said. “I’ll come to tea and then you can come home with me and have dinner with us.”

  “Rob!” Suzy said. “Grow up.”

  “It’s very kind of you, Rob,” Canon Tallis said, “but it might not be convenient for your mother.”