Peter Dickinson - Death of a Unicorn

‘Hear, hear,’ said Simon.

‘Why indeed?’ I said. ‘I suppose the only answer is that it’s a convention of the art-form. I’ve tried to get away from it occasionally. There was a girl I made chuck over both men and go and be a nurse in Ethiopia.’

‘I remember cheering,’ said Simon.

‘At least I didn’t have her pegged out and eaten by ants,’ I said. ‘But my publishers were full of doom and gloom. I didn’t mind, but the next book sold much worse, and that did matter.’

‘Mums always talks about sales figures when she’s near the romantic bone,’ said Simon. ‘Or roof repairs. It means she feels she’s let you get too close to her secret garden.’

‘Where would we be without sales figures?’ I said. ‘Secret gardens don’t pay plumbers.’

‘But they do,’ said Simon. ‘Your books don’t sell because you’ve put exactly the right number of dots on the heroine’s veil for 1911. They sell because somehow or other underneath all that there’s this utterly romantic place which you’re the only person’s got the key to.’

‘Oh, really!’ I said. ‘We’re not here to try and analyse my sources of inspiration. My sources of inspiration are the account books for Cheadle.’

‘See what I mean, Fiona?’ said Simon.

‘I guess account books can be pretty romantic,’ said Fiona. ‘They must go back years and years, uh?’

‘Lord, yes,’ said Simon. ‘If you want to know what a hundredweight of horse-shoe cleats cost in 1796, it’s all there.’

‘Can’t I help with the accounts, Aunt Mabs?’ said Fiona. ‘I get pretty good grades in math and I’m aiming to major in economics.’

‘I suppose you might,’ I said. ‘I hadn’t thought . . . You see, the accounts are done by an outside firm called Burroughs and I’ve been having endless discussions with one of their men about getting it all on to Maxine’s new computer. That’s what I bought it for, after all. The trouble is it involves somebody sitting down and actually doing it. If I let Burroughs it will cost the earth and then they’ll get it all wrong. There’s no one here I can trust and spare. It’s worse than that because my own mind goes blank. I’m frightened of ending up with a system I don’t understand, which’ll mean I’m in somebody else’s hands. I’m not having that. Simon and Terry could do it, but they won’t . . .’

‘Dead boring,’ said Simon. ‘Nothing to it. Endless, endless entries. Stock control. Oh, God!’

‘We could write you a basic programme, Marge,’ said Terry. ‘But after that . . .’

‘The man from Burroughs keeps talking about basic programmes. They have this one they sell to farms which he thinks will work with a bit of adapting. I simply can’t believe it’s not going to turn out more trouble than it’s worth.’

‘Listen, Aunt Mabs,’ said Fiona. ‘Why don’t Simon and Terry and me put our heads together? They write the programme, I do the entries. That kind of thing really turns me on, getting it all cleaned up and running. We did a lot of work with computers, tenth grade.’

Even Simon seemed interested, probably not in the task itself—he takes a very blase attitude to the workaday uses of computers—but in making me see that Fiona was going to be an asset to Cheadle. I did not believe I had shown any hint of the bond I felt between myself and the child, had felt from the moment Simon had brought her into the office that morning. I knew it was vital to keep all that side hidden, to pretend even to myself that Fiona was only in England for a vacation job, in exchange for Jane’s hospitality to Simon a couple of years earlier, but I couldn’t keep my eyes off her as the three of them started on micro-chat. Simon, sulkily, had helped me to choose Maxine’s machine but had made it obvious that he wasn’t going to let it become a means of sucking him into the digestive processes of the Cheadle-ogre. I wondered if he knew what he had paid for his escape. I’m not talking about his homosexuality, though I’m aware of what they say about too-dominant mothers. No, it was what I felt to be a kind of spiritual numbness, not merely to me, but to the world in general. You can imagine a small boy, growing up in the innards of the ogre and in his childishness treating it as no more than the place where he happened to live, but then, around the age of seven, beginning to realise from things that his father had said, and his grandmother, what his relationship with it was supposed to be and deciding with that mysterious inward astuteness children possess that somehow he was going to withdraw from a bargain he had never made. He would begin, wouldn’t he, by building a fence between himself and the priestess of the ogre, me. He would make the facets of himself that turned towards me numb, numb to my demands or offers, to my anger, to my love.

Now, though, as he explained the technicalities of Maxine’s toy—all Ks and bits and other barbarisms—he did not seem numb. Or perhaps he was merely reflecting the energy of Fiona’s interest and enthusiasm. She leaned across the table, eating without noticing, her eyes brilliant, making piggy grunts of comprehension or wrinkling her snout at something she didn’t follow (another Millett trait, frowning with the nose, Mark used to say). Hauling my stare away from her for about the tenth time I saw Terry watching me. He nodded.

On the strength of that I decided to give it a try. Burroughs were not going to like it, not at all. I would have to get them in to explain the accounting system in detail to the children, and the output from the computer they would need for purposes of tax and audit. I would see how things stood after a month. There’d still be time to go back to the adapted farm-account system. Burroughs would try to make all possible difficulties in their chilly, bureaucratic style. Never mind. For the first time in ages I felt the old tingle of anticipation at the prospect of a fight, of imposing my will on some body of reluctant, hierarchical, narrow-minded males. I was going to enjoy that. Why, all of a sudden, now? Because I would be doing it—though she wouldn’t know—to satisfy Fiona. How extraordinary.

‘When can I visit Gran?’ she asked at breakfast.

‘You don’t have to, my dear. She’ll never know. She hasn’t much idea what’s happening or who anyone is, except me.’

‘But I want to. And, too, I’ll have to tell Mom I did.’

‘Oh, all right. Let me finish my toast and I’ll go and see if she’s still presentable. I cleaned her up before breakfast, so she shouldn’t be too bad.’

‘Don’t you have a nurse for her?’

‘Only part-time. She’s like a baby, you see, wanting its mother and no one else. She throws a tantrum if it’s anyone but me for some things.’

‘Wow, Aunt Mabs, you keep busy!’

‘I’ve already done my two hours’ writing this morning.’

I was ridiculously gratified when she looked impressed. Simon and Terry never get up till ten so I had her to myself and would have preferred not to introduce a third person, let alone my mother, but I was ashamed to make excuses. Obviously the visit would have to be paid. I was going to be busy all day, and by evening my mother would be tired and her company yet more painful.

She was sitting up in bed watching the breakfast television (a real boon to me, in the few months since it started). She ignored my presence as I straightened her coverlet and wiped the spittle from her cheek.

‘You’ve got a visitor, darling,’ I said.

She paid no attention but continued to stare at the screen, making impatient little movements if I got in her line of sight. I was glad to have her so preoccupied, and not whining or snivelling.

Fiona tapped at the door, came in and walked straight across to the bed.