The Young Unicorns

by Madeleine L'engle

  “Mother wouldn’t mind. Would she, Vicky?”

  “I don’t think so.” Vicky sounded a little confused. “She likes us to bring people home for meals. Dr. Gregory says she runs a boarding house.”

  Emily surprised them all by saying in her most definite way, “I think it’s a good idea and I’m sure Mrs. Austin wouldn’t mind. Please come, Canon Tallis.”

  —Then, Vicky thought,—she must trust him because of the way his hands felt.

  The sun had set with winter abruptness, and its rays no longer came through the windows; the brilliance of stained glass was eclipsed by night. The columns were more somber, now, as though the whole Cathedral were settling itself to bear the burden of the dark. Canon Tallis stood in the protection and shadow of one of the pillars and Vicky thought that he looked tired, and somehow sad. But he smiled as he said, “Thank you, Emily. I’ll come, though I’ll have to leave right after dinner.” And to Rob, “Tea, then, old chap, but it’ll have to be a quick one. Vicky?” she looked at him questioningly in response. “You the one in charge?”

  “Yes.”

  “Warn your mother, then, please, and if it’s not convenient give me a ring at the Deanery. I have to be at Columbia at 8:30 to give a lecture, so the timing may be difficult for her. Meanwhile I want you three girls to walk home together. You are not to stray from each other for even one moment. You, Vicky, are to see to this. Can I trust you?”

  “Yes, Canon Tallis.”

  “She thinks she’s so big,” Suzy muttered. “She’s always being bossy.”

  But Canon Tallis heard. “Suzy, you’re not in New England now. New York isn’t your own safe little village.”

  “That’s what Suzy’s always telling me,” Rob said.

  “It’s true for you, too, then, Suzy. The streets are full of people who don’t love you and who don’t even care whether or not you get hurt.”

  “I know that!” Suzy was indignant. “We’ve been in New York since September, and I’ve walked home alone and done errands for Mother and gone places by myself dozens of times. Anyhow, there are gangs in the country where we come from. They broke all the windows at school. It isn’t just New York.”

  “I understand,” Canon Tallis said. “But you’ve seen—we might as well call him a genie—now, and things are different. I don’t want to frighten you, but you must stay together. Do you understand?”

  “No,” Suzy said rebelliously. “I don’t believe in genies. I don’t like this.”

  “It’s not a question of liking,” the priest told her. “Vicky. Emily. Go on home now before its completely dark. The three of you stay together. Come along, Rob. You and I will go this way.” But he waited while the three girls went out the glass doors together, Suzy hanging back a little but not quite daring to pull away, especially as Emily was holding her arm.

  When the girls were out of sight the priest led Rob down the nave, slowing his pace to Rob’s, waiting as the little boy carefully walked around each medallion, not stepping on the polished bronze. They went past the altar, and up the steps to the ambulatory, where the priest turned right and crossed the west entrance to St. James chapel. They went out through a side door which Rob had not used before and descended a flight of steps and walked through the Dean’s Garden. The shadows of rhododendron bushes and chrysanthemums looked like draggled birds in the November evening. Beyond the garden, lights were on in the choir buildings, the Bishop’s house, Cathedral House. The Cathedral offices were closing for the night, and two pretty young secretaries came out, called good night cheerily to Canon Tallis as though he were a particular favorite of theirs, and hurried down the path, talking and laughing. Rob followed Canon Tallis into the building, looking around in open curiosity.

  “Never been here before?”

  Rob shook his head, mouth slightly open, then remembered his manners. “No, sir.”

  “Not very exciting, is it? Mostly offices downstairs. Upstairs there’s a nice dining room and meeting hall you might like to see sometime, and the Dean’s study, which is a room I dearly love. We could have our tea in there, but I think there’s a fire in the library in the Deanery, and this is Martha’s day to clean for the Dean, so she’ll have tea ready, and she sets out a splendid spread and knows all the things I like best. We’ll need the fire there, too. I’ve kept the thermostat all the way down while the Dean’s been away, but he’ll push it right back up when he gets home from Puerto Rico tonight. He likes all your central heating. I don’t.”

  “You’ll be comfortable in our house, then.” Rob followed the Canon into the library. “It isn’t very centrally heated. It’s supposed to be, but the furnace is elderly. But we have fireplaces there, too, and anyhow we’re used to houses not being warm in winter. Our own real house in Thornhill was sort of cold, especially if there was a west wind, and Mother always fussed about our being frozen around the edges until the middle of April at least.” He stood in the center of the library, looking around as he chatted. His gaze was arrested at the portrait. “Who’s that?”

  “Dean de Henares.”

  Rob shook his head. “The Dean has grey hair and he isn’t thin like that and he’s old.”

  “He was younger when that portrait was painted. Does it remind you of anybody?”

  “Dave.”

  Canon Tallis smiled. “The Dean wasn’t at all unlike Dave when they were the same age. If anyone had told Juan Alcalá de Henares that he was going to be a priest, much less the dean of a great Cathedral, he’d probably have bonged him.”

  Rob continued to regard the portrait with his small boy’s gravity. “My grandfather said that Dave would end up a bishop, and Dave almost bonged him. You’d like my grandfather. If you’re here for Christmas—he’s coming to stay with us again for a couple of weeks then.”

  “I’m expected back in England by Christmas,” the Canon said, “but who knows?” He gave Rob tea and crumpets, and poured himself a cup, stirring his sugar absent-mindedly, thinking that during this trip to New York he was spending more time drinking tea and coffee than solving the problem which had brought him across the ocean.

  Rob’s eyes had strayed to a slip of white paper lying on a silver salver on the table between the windows. “Is that a cable?”

  The Canon picked up the slip. “What do you know about cables, young man?”

  “Daddy got one from Dr. Gregory.”

  “Did he? Telling him that Emily’s father was staying away another week?”

  “How did you know?” It had become almost a refrain.

  “My cable’s from one of Gregory’s friends.” Canon Tallis handed Rob the white slip. “Here. You may read it.”

  Rob took the paper and read aloud, slowly and carefully, but not stumbling: “GREGORY STAYING EXTRA WEEK STOP CAREFUL OF FALLS. That’s funny. That’s what Dr. Gregory said to Daddy. CAREFUL OF FALLS. What do you suppose it means?” He held the cable close, then looked at the signature. “SHASTI. Do you know Dr. Shasti?”

  “He’s a friend of mine.”

  “But he’s in Liverpool.”

  “So is Dr. Gregory.”

  “No,” Rob contradicted. “He’s in Athens.”

  “He went to Athens,” Canon Tallis corrected, “but he flew from there to Liverpool. That’s where he is now.”

  Rob shook his head. “But Daddy’s cable said Dr. Gregory was staying another week in Athens.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Rob replied with dignity, “I know the difference between Athens and Liverpool. I’m not that young. This is most peculiar.”

  “Peculiar indeed,” Canon Tallis said.

  Ten

  Rob and Canon Tallis walked back to the Gregorys’ house in a strangely companionable silence. Halfway home Rob reached out for the Canon’s hand. The priest’s grip was strong and steady and he did not let the little boy’s hand go, nor tell him that he was too old for this kind of thing. As Emily learned through touch, so the Canon and Rob learned about each other walking wordlessly along
the crowded streets and holding hands. Neither of them was aware of the boys in black jackets following half a block behind them.

  At dinner Canon Tallis sat on Mrs. Austin’s right. Rob was on his other side, and the little boy unexpectedly moved and touched him by saying, “We have to sing the Tallis canon for grace.” He turned gravely to the priest. “In your honor, you know.”

  The family held hands, singing the simple melody as a round.

  Be present at this table, Lord,

  Be here and everywhere adored.

  These mercies bless, and grant that we

  May feast in Paradise with thee.”

  Tallis, listening, looking at Dr. Austin’s kindly, guileless face, at the family holding hands around the table, understood Mr. Theo’s indignant defense of the doctor.

  But if suspicion were lifted here, then it fell on even stranger and more unlikely shoulders. He had to be sure.

  For a while the conversation was general, easy, mostly about and including the children. They talked about the transition from the quiet village and the regional school to the great city and St. Andrew’s. Emily spoke of the change the coming of the Austins had made in her life. Rob talked of his friends, the newspaper vendor, an Irish policeman, people walking their dogs in the park, Rabbi Levy.

  —He will need his friends, the Canon thought.

  “And you, Mrs. Austin?” he asked. “What has the change meant to you?”

  She laughed, looking with affection at her family seated around her. “Not as much as I’d expected. I shop in different markets and cook on a gas stove instead of an electric one, but I still seem to spend most of my time in the kitchen. And this is fine. I’m really happiest in a domestic setting. And I’m no slave. The children all share in the chores. But I’ll admit that I had visions of dressing glamorously and going to the theatre every week.” She indicated her neat but not particularly stylish tweed skirt, her practical drip-dry blouse. Her face was devoid of make-up, and this emphasized rather than detracted from the fineness of her bone structure.

  Dr. Austin apologized. “It’s my fault we don’t go to the theatre more often. I’m up early and I bring home a great deal of work from the lab. But I really should take Victoria”—he looked warmly across the table at his wife—“to more plays. It’s one of the things she was looking forward to in this move to New York.”

  “Mother used to be in the theatre,” Vicky said, with pride.

  Mrs. Austin moved her hands disparagingly, as though brushing off Vicky’s words. “No, Vicky, don’t exaggerate.”

  Suzy said, “She’s not, for once. You were in the theatre, Mother. We have that album of records you made to prove it, so there!”

  “In my extreme youth—” Mrs. Austin started.

  “And pulchritude,” her husband added.

  “I sometimes sang in hospital wards, just folk songs and simple things.”

  “And a night club,” Suzy said. “She sang in a night club.”

  Vicky looked at her mother cutting up meat for Emily. It was quite impossible to imagine this familiar figure in the setting of a New York night club. And yet there were, as Suzy had reminded them, the records to prove it.

  Mrs. Austin flushed. “Just for a brief season. It makes me sound a lot wilder and more glamorous than I was.”

  “That’s just the point,” her husband said. “It was precisely because you were not wild and glamorous, because you were completely unselfconsciously your own self that you were irresistible.”

  —Like Rob? Vicky wondered.—The way he sings? Could be. She looked at her mother’s familiar face, the greying ash-brown hair pulled tidily back. Suzy came honestly by her beauty, but Vicky was not yet objective enough to recognize her mother’s classic features.

  Dr. Austin gave a sudden, very boyish grin. “I wandered into a hospital ward one day, wondering where the singing and laughter were coming from, and there she was.” His wife got up from the table and brought the salad over from the sideboard. “And look at her now, the picture of domestic bliss. Sic transit gloria mundi.”

  “No, it’s Tuesday,” Rob said, and couldn’t understand why everybody laughed.

  “But they don’t make record albums of just anybody,” Suzy persisted.

  “Don’t they?” her mother asked. “When I listen to some of the stuff you kids play, it seems to me that they do.”

  “We have eclectic tastes,” Vicky said. “You wouldn’t want us to be one-sided, would you?”

  “It’s amazing.” Emily spoke in her clear and authoritative way, her brow clearing. “I suppose I’m glad Mrs. Austin stopped singing and married Dr. Austin and had all you kids, but she could have become famous, Canon Tallis.”

  “And rich,” Suzy added.

  Mrs. Austin shook her head. She was both embarrassed and annoyed. “Nonsense. I couldn’t have been famous and I have no desire to be rich. I’m not like you, Emily. I didn’t have any vocation to be an artist. Not everybody needs to, you know.”

  “The only actor I ever knew, even slightly,” the Canon said, “suffered from that desire to be rich and famous, and when it started to slip from his grasp he became bitter and more bitter, until he finally dropped out of sight completely and died almost forgotten. Henry Grandcourt: he was a fine actor in his time.”

  “Henry Grandcourt!” Mrs. Austin said. “What was it I saw him in? Oh, I remember. Coriolanus. He was superb. I wondered what had become of him. So he died?”

  “A resentful old man.”

  “He was a friend of yours?”

  “In a way. He was brother to an acquaintance of mine. Someone you all know. Bishop Norbert Fall.”

  “That’s who he reminds me of, then,” Mrs. Austin said. “The Bishop, I mean. I knew there was somebody—so I suppose Henry Grandcourt was a stage name, then?”

  “Yes. The Bishop supported him during his last years. He has a small place in Maine, and Grandcourt stayed there much of the time, a recluse, dreaming of a comeback. The Bishop was with him in Maine when he died, and I’ve always been grateful for both their sakes that poor old Henry didn’t die alone.”

  Suzy and Rob began to clear the table and Vicky went out to the kitchen to bring on dessert and to refill the milk pitcher. When she returned, the conversation had shifted from the theatre to Dr. Austin’s work on the Micro-Ray. He looked gravely at Emily as he explained how the laser was being used for cataract operations, so simply that the patient would not even need to be hospitalized once the technique had been perfected. Retinal detachments could also be taken care of with ease and very little danger or discomfort.

  “And brain surgery?” the Canon asked.

  “Yes. Here especially the Micro-Ray can be useful, because it can get at tumors that were inoperable before because they couldn’t be removed without damage to the surrounding tissue.”

  “I read somewhere,” Suzy said, “that grey matter—that’s what we think with, it’s what the brain’s made of—well, the brain’s the only place in our body we have grey matter except the tips of our fingers. Do you think that’s so, Daddy? Emily thinks with her fingertips, doesn’t she?”

  Emily touched her fingers together with an interested expression. “I do. Much more than I used to, at any rate. Sometimes it’s almost scary how much I can see with them.”

  “You’d have to ask a neuro-surgeon about that, Suzy,” Dr. Austin said.

  “If I ever see Dr. Hyde I’ll ask him, then. But he scares me.”

  “Scares you why?” Her father looked at her keenly.

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s because he’s so brilliant it makes me wonder if I have to be that brilliant if I want to be a surgeon.”

  “You want to be a doctor?” the priest asked.

  “Some kind. Maybe I’ll go back to being a vet the way I used to want to be. Animals are okay. They never talk back. Or maybe I’ll just marry, like Mother, and have kids, and lots of dogs and cats and horses. You don’t have to be something.”

  Dr. Austin smile
d. “Hey, there. Don’t you think Mother is something, Suzy?”

  “Well, she’s just Mother. She decided she didn’t want to be something, didn’t she?”

  Mrs. Austin laughed. “It’s not a choice of to be or not to be. It’s a choice of what you want to be, or need to be. And I’m not sure we really have any choice. If I’d been meant to be a singer I couldn’t have given it all up as happily as I did. How much choice do you think Emily has about her music? It chooses Emily as much as she chooses it, doesn’t it?”

  “I’m going to do my own choosing and make up my own mind,” Suzy said stubbornly. “I think it’d be more fun to be a surgeon and perform great operations and cure people, than work on formulas the way Daddy’s doing this year.”

  Canon Tallis picked this up. “Just what is your work, Doctor?”

  “I design and make a small surgical instrument known as the Micro-Ray.”

  “This is on the principle of the laser?”

  “Yes.” Dr. Austin quite obviously did not want to expand the subject. “It’s quite a change for me, who’ve spent so much of my life as a country doctor. In Thornhill we still weren’t too far from the horse and buggy days, and we got very close to our patients.”

  “And here?”

  “I work only in the lab.”

  “But you know something about the patients on whom your Micro-Ray is used.”

  “Yes. It’s important for me to follow their case histories as closely as possible.”

  “How many patients are there, on an average?”

  “It varies. There are three at present in the hospital, one a kidney graft, one a corneal transplant, and one a benign brain tumor which would have presented all kinds of complications a few years ago because of its inaccessibility. The surgeon couldn’t have removed the tumor without destroying part of the brain, so calling it benign would have been rather foolish.”

  “How about the possible misuse of the Micro-Ray?” the Canon asked.

  Dr. Austin finished his dessert, leaned back in his chair. “Anything can be misused.”