It must have been an hour or so later when Arnold returned to the flat, his afternoon’s stint of tour-guiding at an end. Whatever bits of gossip might already be circulating about his errant wife’s reappearance and eccentric behaviour, they had not so far reached his ears; and so when he arrived at the flat and found the front door wide open to any intruder who might happen along, his sense of outrage was directed – not unnaturally – against his wayward daughter. Typical! Wasn’t it just exactly like her – casual, sloppy, inconsiderate; utterly indifferent to any concerns other than her own. She was impossible! She could pack her bags and go, right now! He just wasn’t standing for it!
But, stepping into the little hall and closing the door securely behind him, he paused, and thought again. Had to think again, actually, for was not Flora right now saving the day in the Tea Room for him? Entirely of her own accord, and also entirely at variance with the character he had just been attributing to her, she had actually offered to help him out. Had spoken – almost – as that fantasy daughter had spoken inside his head a few hours earlier. Though in her own idiom, of course:
“It beats me, Arnold, why you make such a production of it! It’s a doddle, just a hundred or so teas in a whole afternoon! I’ve often served twice that number in half the time when I’ve had that sort of a job. Teas, for heavens sake! It’s not as if it was seven-course dinners! Those two whinging ninnies could manage it on their heads, easily, they’re just stringing you along. Why don’t you tell them where they get off? I could soon sort them out …”
And sort them out she obviously had. Like Mildred a little earlier that same afternoon, Arnold had been impressed, when he peeped in, at the unwonted speed and efficiency with which the customers were being served, and in particular at the ease and professionalism with which his daughter was both supervising and undertaking – apparently effortlessly – what looked like a lion’s share of the work. In the course of scratching herself a living in the unsalubrious part of London she had chosen for herself, Flora must have undertaken a number of poorly-paid catering jobs, and being highly intelligent (as he knew she was, despite her scornful rejection of any form of higher education) she had learned quickly and well everything that could be learned about how to tackle the low-grade tasks which had come her way.
Thus her offer of help – motivated though it appeared to be by a desire to put her father in the wrong, and show him up as a fumbling old fuss-pot who couldn’t even handle a simple catering problem – this help was nevertheless welcome. As he checked over the few valuables in his small domain, and found nothing missing, his anger cooled, and it dawned on him that his hasty impulse to throw the girl out had been not merely unkind and ungrateful, but downright crazy. That she was capable of being of enormous help to him was now beyond doubt. Her continued willingness, of course, was an unknown quantity, but all the same … And as to the locking of doors – well, he’d just have to have a strong word or two with her some time when she was in an amenable sort of mood. It was difficult, because he’d learned already that she had these tiresome egalitarian principles about locked doors. Why should anyone be locked out of anywhere? Why shouldn’t everyone be free to come and go, to enjoy everything there was to be enjoyed? Only last night, when she’d accompanied him on his locking-up rounds, they’d almost got into a quarrel about it. He didn’t want this to happen again.
Meantime, he must do something about that window, whose safety-catches she had so blithely wrecked the previous night. He must try and fix it so that it couldn’t be opened more than three or four inches; that would save a lot of arguing.
Collecting hammer and nails from his own private tool-box – no way was he going to involve himself in borrowing anything from Norris’ closely-guarded store – he went into the room that had been Mildred’s, switched on the bedside light – and now, for the first time, he noticed the curious hump beneath the coverlet. In his previous scrutiny of the room he had been concentrating on what might be missing – the radio set, the contents (not many) of Mildred’s abandoned jewel-box, and the rather nice etchings on the wall above the bed. But now the alien lump, suddenly floodlit by the bedside light, caught his attention and, just as Mildred had done earlier in the afternoon, he pulled back the cover to investigate.
For a second – no, less than a second, for the extent of his general knowledge was somewhat wider than Mildred’s – he reacted with total horror, just as she had done; but almost at once the initial shock had subsided into a residual thumping of the heart as he realised that the empty eye-sockets staring up at him were those of a sheep, or perhaps a goat. The skull nestling so cosily against the pillow was one of those that holiday-makers bring back from the Lake District, with tales of the shock they had had when they saw it glaring at them, white on white among the pale stones and rocks on the high reaches of the fells.
He was still staring at the thing, no longer frightened, but bewildered and angry – what sort of a trick was this to play on anyone, especially your own father? – when a loud impatient ringing at the front door roused him to action, and a moment later he was confronted by the culprit herself. Rosy, bright-eyed, smiling (and how rarely did she smile at him!) and holding by its flimsy handle a plastic carrier bag, weighed down almost to the ground with money. Surely it was in danger of breaking open, money flying everywhere? And what a way to carry large sums of money, anyway. It was almost wicked.
“The day’s takings!” Flora cried, swinging the thing triumphantly towards him. “We’ve counted it roughly already, and Pauline says its nearly three times as much as they usually …”
She broke off: and then, “Arnold, whatever’s the matter? D’you know, I thought for a minute that you might be pleased For once in my life! Crazy, wasn’t I?”
Arnold could feel actual tears pricking behind his eyes – tears of anger, grief and bafflement all at the same time. Why did everything, always, have to be ruined between him and his daughter? Why did she always have to spoil, somehow, anything that might have brought them together? Here she was, having done a wonderful job with the Teas, for which he longed to give her unstinting praise – but how could he? This criminally casual way of treating hard-earned cash seemed like a calculated insult towards – well, everything. Everything that Arnold had always stood for, anyway: it was hard to explain. And on top of all this – linked to it somehow, no doubt – was the unforgiveably spiteful trick with the sheep’s skull. She was tormenting him for fun, like a cat with a mouse: seeking not merely to hurt his feelings, but to hold them up to ridicule.
“But, Arnold, for God’s sake, it was only Charlie!” she protested when, later, he steeled himself to remonstrate with her about the skull. “I told you I’d have to bring Charlie – and then I remembered he was in the bottom of my back-pack already, so I just fished him out and put him in position ready for the rapists. It was your idea, Arnold, that the open window might attact rapists: I’d have thought you’d be pleased to find that your daughter knows how to look after herself.” She went on to explain the rôle played by Charlie in the life of her current squat.
“There’d been quite a few rapes in the local paper, you see, and so when Pete brought this sheep’s skull back from his trip somewhere or other, us girls, we thought, what fun, if rapist does get in. It’s a basement flat, you know, where we are now, and so he’d get the shock of his life! What I’d do, you see, if I heard an intruder, I’d slide down under the bedclothes, leaving Charlie on the pillow, so that when the rapist shines his torch down on what he thinks is going to be his victim’s face …”
The noisy shriek of laughter with which the explanation ended was in one way reassuring, in another unnerving. Reassuring because it meant – seemed to mean – that she hadn’t planted the thing with the specific intention of scaring her father: it was simply an ever-so-amusing facet of her current life-style. And that was the thing that was unnerving.
It was going to be an uncomfortable evening, obviously, and Arnold wondered whether the T.V. programmes – this being Sunday – would be sufficiently to Flora’s taste to render conversation unnecessary. The variegated turmoil of his emotions during the past twenty-four hours had now merged – as the colours of the rainbow are said to merge, if spun fast enough, into a uniform whiteness – into a single emotion, that of embarrassment. He wanted above all to be alone, not so much in order to sort out his thoughts as not to need to sort them out, and certainly not to talk about them.
And so when Flora, a trifle preremptorily, announced that she would be going out this evening, and didn’t know when she would be back, he was greatly relieved. Surprised as well, of course, because where could she be going? Who had she managed to strike up acquaintance with in this short time? His curiosity was such that he found himself asking “Where?” without any regard to the enormity of such a question when addressed by a parent to his child. However, what’s done is done, and he braced himself for one or other of the appropriate responses: “What’s it got to do with you?” or: “Mind your own business!” Something like that. So there was a further surprise for him when Flora not only answered the question, but answered it quite politely.
“I’m going over to Joyce’s. I promised her I’d go and sit with her old father while she goes to the movies. Lost Days of Love is on at …”
“The movies? But Joyce never goes …”
“I know she never does, She never gets the chance. Do you realise she’s stuck at home with that crazy old man every single evening of her life? Nobody’s ever offered to help her out, not ever! All you people here, who are supposed to be her friends and colleagues, not one of you, ever, has thought of offering …”
So that was it. An opportunity for needling her Dad under the guise of compassion for Joyce’s plight! And, of course, there was an element of justice in the implied criticism. Sorry as he had been for Joyce, in a vague sort of way, it certainly hadn’t occurred to him to do anything about it. Perhaps he should have done?
“If she’d ever asked me,” he began, “but she always seems so …”
“Seems! That’s all your generation ever notices, isn’t it, how things seem! So long as things seem all right, that’s all you want to know. Doesn’t it ever occur to any of you to dig deeper, to look beyond the seeming to the reality?”
Actually, no. Arnold didn’t say it aloud, of course, but he thought it, quite forcibly. It isn’t all that often that everything seems all right, and when it does, why hazard so happy a state of affairs by looking for trouble? If open-cast is producing a good supply of coal, then why go to the expense, not to mention the danger, of deep mining?
Pointless, of course, to pursue the question. The metaphor from an industrial process was enough to damn his argument before it had even started, for wasn’t Flora against industrial processes in general, particularly those in which her parents might be presumed to have shares? Not that he still had shares in British Coal, he’d sold them out some while ago; not, alas, on any sort of socially significant principle, but simply because British Gas had seemed, at the time, to be offering a better return.
And anyway, Flora was by now preparing for her errand of mercy, rather noisily, and causing (it seemed to Arnold) maximum disturbance. Tipping the contents of her back-pack all over the carpet in a fruitless search for something or other. Asking if he’d got a scarf she could borrow? And where was the magazine with the “All about Your Horoscope” article that she’d left on his desk? And hadn’t he got any sharp scissors, not these grotty things?
She was gone at last. What peace! Seated in his most comfortable chair, the one with the high back and the big capacious arms, Arnold switched on the television. There was a Berlioz opera juat starting, what a piece of luck, and he settled down to enjoy it without having to worry about Flora being bored. And so superior about it, too, as if being bored was a particularly desirable state, far more so than being interested.
*
It was past eleven o’clock when he woke, and the telephone was ringing. He had an uneasy sense that it had been ringing for some time; and so indeed it must have been, for by the time he had managed to get himself out of his chair and across the room, it had stopped. He stood for a minute, uneasily, the humming receiver still in his hand. Who could be ringing at this time of night? Was something wrong somewhere? He was reminded, uncomfortably, of that other call, a couple of nights ago, when the anonymous caller had simply breathed into the telephone and then rung off without a word.
Not that the present situation was at all similar. It was earlier for one thing – quarter past eleven isn’t all that late and for another there had been no mysterious silence at the other end. Whoever it was this time had simply given up and rung off before he’d managed to reach the instrument. And in any case, that former call hadn’t in fact been the prelude to any sort of disaster. No intruder had materialised, nothing had been stolen. It now occurred to him that the call had probably been from Flora – wanting to check that her father was indeed in residence, but not wishing to get into real contact with him lest he should raise objections to her planned visit. That he might be worried by receiving an anonymous telephone call in the small-hours probably didn’t occur to her, inconsiderate girl that she was.
Reassured, he began to prepare for bed. A pity about the Berlioz, but there, he must have needed the sleep. Maybe there would be a repeat some time.
And just then the telephone rang again.
Not any anonymous caller, Joyce. Joyce in a state of almost stuttering anxiety, so that he could hardly take in what she was saying, and she had to say it all over again.
Where was Flora? That was the gist of it. What had happened? Because she, Joyce, had come back from the cinema expecting to find her father asleep in bed, where she had left him, and Flora comfortably ensconced in the living-room, watching television. Instead of which she’d found the whole place empty. Flora was gone – and, much more worrying, the old man was gone too. His bed was rumpled and empty, and his dressing-gown gone from its hook on the door.
“I never let him go out after dark, never!” Joyce was sounding quite frantic. “He wanders, you know, Arnold, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, and the evening is his worst time! Oh dear, I told her – I told your daughter to watch him carefully and see he didn’t slip out of bed and start wandering. He does, you know, sometimes, even after he’s had his pills. That’s why I never go out in the evening. I was so grateful when your daughter – she seemed to understand, but now …! Oh dear, whatever can I do? They’re not there by any chance are they, Arnold? At your place? Either of them …?”
They weren’t of course. Arnold was sure of that already, but obligingly he went to look and returned to the telephone with his negative report.
“The police?” he suggested tentatively. “Shall I ring them for you?” He must do something to help, especially as it was clearly his own daughter who was to blame for it all. “I’ll ask them if they’d …”
“No! Oh no!” Joyce sounded terrified. “Not the police! They’ll set the social workers onto me again, you’ve no idea! Besides, they won’t know where to look for him any better than I do. In fact they’ll know less, because at least I’ve got an idea of some of the places where he likes to go. He was the Curator here, you know, before he … and so he has a tremendous knowledge of the place, except that the knowledge is all gone. It rattles about in his head like dried peas, he can’t get hold of it.
“Listen, Arnold, I’ve though of a possibility. The Knot Garden. That’s where he might have been making for. He loves the Knot Garden, it was he who had it restored, you know, with all the original shapes of the beds. He did all the diagrams, worked out how it must have been. Arnold, could you possibly … I mean, it’s more on your side of the grounds, isn’t it, you can almost see it from one of your windows … and I daren’t go myself, he might come wandering back any minute, I’ve got to be here …”
There was no other option, obviously. Changing out of his slippers, and reflecting briefly that it was at least a mercy that he had fallen asleep in his chair instead of in bed, and so was fully dressed already. He donned his raincoat – not that it was raining, but he needed something against the chill of the night air – and set off.
*
The Knot Garden was easy. Indeed, just by peering through the ornate iron-work gate, ice-cold against his forehead, he could see clearly that there was no one there. The moon, a little past the half, was just setting beyond the great cedar which dominated the stretch of lawn behind him, and under its grey, uncluttered light the flowers in the Knot Garden – some of them rather common-place by day, antirhinums and pansies and the like – took on a sort of grandeur, as an old black-and-white film sometimes does in contrast to its gaudy and somehow cheapened successor. Larger than life they looked, and somehow more significant, just as if they really did possess the powers – healing or otherwise – attributed to them by the wise women of four hundred years ago. Wise or foolish, according to how you took it, for they could be burned at the stake for seeing magical properties in things, and for speaking too freely about what they had seen.
Old Sir Humphrey loved the Knot Garden, Joyce had said. This was where he might be inclined to wander, if he could still find the way. Did he seek here the long-ago magic, whose healing powers might yet cross the centuries, and bring healing to his wrecked and shrunken brain?
Well, he wasn’t here now, that was plain. Where else might the poor creature have wandered? Turning away from the garden, Arnold scanned the pale, starlit stretches of park land which ended abruptly with the black line of the woods. From somewhere in that strip of darkness came the cry of an owl. And then another. Being woken by the owls during the short summer nights had been one of Mildred’s more low-key complaints; but now she wasn’t here to complain any more. Besides, with the onset of autumn the owls would soon be falling silent anyway.
With a small sigh, whether for the inexorable passing of things or for the failure of tonight’s errand, Arnold padded back towards the house, first across the wet, silent grass, and then, with a faint scrunching sound, along the gravel; and it was as he passed the lighted window of his own sitting-room that he heard the telephone.
*
It was all right! Father was safe home again, had just walked in this very minute, and Flora with him! No, Joyce didn’t know yet what had happened, but anyway, here he was, he hadn’t come to any harm, wasn’t it wonderful? Her relief was such that she seemed not to have got around to reproaching the sitter for her flagrant neglect of duty. It was all right. That was the main thing.