Henry Green - Concluding

"Good evening, sir," the policeman said. "Just the weather for a stroll."

"So I notice," Mr Rock innocently answered, but Miss Baker's heart began to pound.

"We fancied we heard you call, sir?"

"Only after Ted." Baker noticed the pig watched them with disrespect, thought it seemed to hold a muttered conversation half under its breath, judging by the petulant squeaks which issued from that muddy mouth.

"Now she's not disappeared, I hope, sir?" the sergeant asked, in fat jocular tones.

When a man, such as he, becomes civil it is just the moment his type wants watching, Mr Rock told himself. But the truth was the sergeant had come only for a look around, in which he felt he could not indulge with so many present. Also he was parched for a cup of tea, and had been of the opinion that Mrs Blain was an understanding sort of woman who knew better than to offer a glass of flat beer, this had been his thought as Miss Baker stole up on him.

"Disappeared?" Mr Rock echoed. "I know nothing."

"That's good," the sergeant answered absentmindedly, his eyes to the ground.

"They stray," Mr Rock added, and once again agitated Miss Baker. "According to their age," he added.

"Yes," the sergeant said, as vague. "Well, if you'll excuse me now, I'll have to get on, miss," he said, to the lady's surprise. And he went off without another word, left her flat.

"The Law," Mr Rock tried the Principal out, looking full at her with, behind their spectacles, his enormous, magnified eyes.

"What a shame in this beautiful Place," she agreed, quick as quick.

"Makes you wonder."

"I never wonder, Mr Rock. I take things as they are," she corrected him.

"Daisy," he exclaimed and, indeed, she was nowhere to be found. "Excuse me, Madam," and made as if to move off, stumbling a trifle.

"One minute," she said, in the voice of authority he so hated. "Is she safe?"

"Who are you asking?" he fiercely demanded. She did not understand.

"This is your pig, isn't it?"

"Daisy?" he enquired, and, extraordinary man, she could see he now actually laughed at her. "Wouldn't hurt a fly." She unbent a trifle.

"Yet, you know, where I was brought up in the country, on a black and white farm," she lied, "where all the animals were that, you understand, well, I shall never forget, but I was out to pick apples one day and the pigs were loose in the orchard. It was rather thundery weather, so I had my mackintosh, which I left below while I was up the ladder. But I suppose I must have been preoccupied, because they ate it, every scrap."

He bowed.

"Madam," he said, "never fear, we are not in for rain the next few hours."

Blushing with humiliation, she turned on her heel and left without another word. Really, she thought, the man must be malevolently hostile.

As Baker tramped back to the great house along a ride, fanning herself with a dock leaf, she came to within sight of the fallen beech. She did not know, but the sergeant had not preceded her by many minutes. Neither of them could tell this was where Merode had been found, or they might have stopped to investigate. It was lucky for Sebastian and his Liz they did not do so, because these two were lying stark naked in one another's arms, precisely at the same spot in which Merode had been found. For Elizabeth saw how it was with her lover after he had come upon the girl lying stretched out in pyjamas. And now, a second time, Liz had taken him back to wipe off the memory of Merode, on this occasion by cruder means. As the policeman was coming by, Sebastian and his Liz had lain stark, scarcely breathing for fear they might be uncovered. Then, as Baker minced past, apparently tracking the sergeant, it was far worse, more than the cottage depended upon their not being caught, and Sebastian had nearly burst a vein in his forehead. Yet, before the Principal was out of earshot, Miss Rock thought of the expression there would have been about the Principal's nose if this lady had come upon her lover as he now was, which jolted Elizabeth into such a loud, gurgling laugh of cruel, delighted ridicule, that it sent Sebastian wooden with horror.

When she heard, Miss Baker, her blood run cold, looked back the way she had come, like a hen, at night, watching behind for a fox. She did not stop to investigate. It was all she could do not to break into a trot. Oh, she thought, our beautiful Park seems suddenly full of vile cross currents.

When Edge got to the door behind which Merode was locked away, she still held the doll by its thick neck. She paused before she entered, and tried holding the thing by its middle. But that was ridiculous because, with no backbone, it simply flopped. So she took a blunt hand, and this would not do, for the head, when released, hung sideways. Finally she cradled it on one arm like a baby, turned her key in the lock without a sound and crept forward, not waking Merode, whom she found astride her chair, asleep.

She put the dolly on Merode's lap, under the child's dreaming head which lay, with all her hanging hair, over crossed arms along the chair back. This small weight woke the girl who, when she first opened eyes, saw what she dizzily took to be Alice, exactly as Miss Marchbanks had offered the animal curled up at rest. But in a second she realised, and sprang to her feet.

"Oh," she cried out. "Not puss."

Edge stood there astounded.

"Merode," she said to warn the child, in fairness, of her presence.

"Oh ma'am," Merode gasped.

"What has so frightened you, dear?" Miss Edge demanded.

There was no reply. The girl kept looking back at Edge then away to the doll on the ground.

"Pick it up, won't you, Merode?"

The Principal was relieved to find the child seemed able to do so reasonably quick. She had feared there might be something about the absurd doll, after all.

"Put it over there, dear," she said. "Now tell me, what is this to do with a cat?"

"I was dreaming, ma'am."

"What about?"

"That Miss Marchbanks had given me Alice."

"Mr Rock's cat? But why, Merode?"

"You see, she did, ma'am, when I saw her after I was brought in."

"Hardly hers to give, was it?"

"No, she put puss on my lap, ma'am."

"And then you fainted?"

"Oh that was later, ma'am," the child said, quite collected.

"So the animal did not frighten you," Edge pointed out. "Is this doll yours, Merode?"

The child winced.

"No, ma'am," she said.

"Look at her well, dear. Whose is it, in that case?"

Merode swallowed.

"Mary's, ma'am."

"Are you quite sure now? I should have thought a big, grown girl, would be too old for such things."

"The others did laugh at her," Merode said unwillingly.

"I expect so," Miss Edge encouraged. "And did she mind?"

"Oh, not really, ma'am," the child replied, in a bright voice.

Edge felt it was curious how confident the bit of a thing seemed.

"And one point you are sure of, this is not yours, Merode?"

"Oh no, ma'am."

"The others were not laughing at you, then?"

"Me? I wouldn't have bothered."

Edge sat down in the only chair. She picked the doll up, placed it on her lap. Her face took a peculiarly innocent expression. Merode again got the idea that all this had happened once before. But she felt better, now she had seen her aunt.

"Why would you not have bothered?"

"I just don't pay attention to them, ma'am."

Yet, for all her being confident, Edge felt, the girl seemed never to take her eyes off the doll while this was in evidence.

"And Mary did?"

Merode swallowed, then joined hands behind her back.

"She was so tired, ma'am."

"Tired? What about? I'd like to have seen myself tired at her age."

"It was all the work she done."

"Oh, do speak English, child. But how do you mean? She is quite well on in her work."