Her father’s reproaches on the following morning made little impact. Flora’s remorse was perfunctory, and laced with impatience.
“I took him for a little walk, that was all! It didn’t do him the slightest harm, even Joyce herself admits that it didn’t! In fact it did him good, he really enjoyed himself out there, he loved being under the sky instead of cooped up indoors. It’s awful the way Joyce keeps him, like a prisoner, under lock and key. I mean, literally under lock and key. Do you know she locks him in his bedroom whenever she has to go out and leave him alone? It’s awful!”
Clearly, Flora’s free-floating compassion had switched during the evening from the plight of the trapped carer to that of the trapped recipient of this caring. Trying to sound as if he hadn’t noticed this turn-around – because where would that get him? – Arnold attempted to extract from the girl a straightforward account of what had actually happened last night? With a shrug of her shoulders to indicate that the matter really didn’t merit all this attention, she complied, albeit rather sulkily.
“I still don’t see it was any big deal, I can’t understand why Joyce had to throw fits about it, ringing you up and everything. All that happened was, I was sitting there watching some grotty kind of a quiz show on the telly, when I heard a thumping and a bumping upstairs, and I knew he’d got out of bed. Well, why not? He has to go to the loo, doesn’t he, even if he is dotty. But then I heard the thumping and the bumping on the stairs, and there he was, his pyjamas all anyhow and his hair on end, and looking a lot taller than I’d remembered. Where was his breakfast, he asked me? He’d got to be at the office by nine, he said, so could I hurry it up. Just coffee would do, he said, coffee and a piece of toast. Well, why not? It was no skin off my nose. So I went out into the kitchen – Joyce had shown me where everything was, even the egg-whisk, for God’s sake – what was I going to need an egg-whisk for? Well, by the time I’d got it all ready, the smell of the coffee and everything, I quite fancied it myself, and so we had it together. At least, I did, he didn’t really have anything. He didn’t seem interested any more once he had it in front of him; and soon he was on again about this nine o’clock office thing. So I thought, well, let’s go along with it, see what happens.
“‘Oughtn’t you to get dressed?’ I asked him, ‘if you’re going to the office; but he didn’t seem to understand, so in the end I just helped him on with his dressing-gown, and made him put on his slippers, and off we went.
“Oh, Arnold, you should have seen him! Out there under the stars, with the air and the darkness all around, he went quite mad! And I don’t mean what you mean by mad, I mean mad with joy, like a child, laughing and waving his arms about and kind of skipping and scuffling along the gravel in his slippers. I asked him which way he wanted to go – well, I didn’t mind, did I? – and he seemed surprised I should ask. ‘To the office, of course,’ he said, and kind of sobered up, walking along quite briskly, and saying he was afraid we were going to be late. After a bit we came to a door – no, I’ve no idea what door it was, it may have been the office for all I know – but anyway, he was terribly upset because it was locked and he hadn’t got the keys. He felt about in all his pockets – his pyjamas and dressing-gown – but of course there was nothing there. ‘We must go back for them,’ he said, and we turned around, but somehow we didn’t go back to Joyce’s, we set off down towards the lake. By now he seemed quite happy again, he’d forgotten all about the keys, and he was telling me all sorts of things about history as we walked along. Honestly, Arnold, he’s not mad at all, it’s all nonsense about him being senile. He’s got a wonderful mind, quite crammed with knowledge. You know Bloody Mary, who’s supposed to have been so wicked, burning Protestants at the stake and everything? Well, apparently she wasn’t like that at all, she hated them being burnt. At heart she was a very kind lady, and what’s more he’s descended from her, Sir Humphrey is! Isn’t that exciting? He’s got all sorts of ancient documents proving it, he’s been researching it for for years, and now he knows for certain …”
“But Mary Tudor didn’t have any children,” Arnold couldn’t help interrupting. “No one can be descended from her –” but even while he was still speaking, he could have kicked himself. He’d done it again! Just as his daughter was, for once, talking to him in a friendly, natural way about something that really interested her, he had to spoil it all by interrupting, putting her right! Already he could see the closed, hostile look spreading across her face; the familiar, sarcastic tone was back in her voice.
“Oh, well, naturally an expert like you must know better!” she sneered. “After all, Sir Humphrey is only a famous historian who has written no end of books about the Tudor period and has umpteen letters after his name! Nothing, of course, compared with your qualifications!”
For a moment, truth hung in the balance, as Arnold weighed it against his relationship with his daughter. Was any relationship worth the sacrifice of truth? The denial of a known fact for the sake of peace?
“Queen Mary thought she was having a baby at one time,” he explained. “She wished very much to have one, as an heir to the English throne; but it turned out to be all a mistake – pseudo-pregnancy, it’s called. And that’s a fact. You can read about it anywhere – in all the books …”
“Read about it! That’s all you’ve done, isn’t it – you’ve read a few books! Sir Humphrey has researched it properly, from the original sources. When did you ever look at an original source? Oh, Arnold, if you’d heard him …! We were down in the wood by that time – he just loves the wood. You’ve no idea how huge the trees look at night, we were right underneath them, and he was so thrilled to find someone who listened to what he was saying. He stood there, under this great oak, explaining it all, and even in the dark his eyes were shining. This pseudo-pregnancy business, it was all a lie made up by the Protestants who wanted to put Elizabeth on the throne. The last thing they wanted was for Mary to have a baby, and a boy too, who would be brought up as a Catholic. They hated the Catholics. So they had it snatched away from her the moment it was born. They bribed the midwife to pretend that none of it had happened, and that Mary had never been pregnant at all …”
She rattled on, and this time Arnold didn’t interrupt. The old man’s delusion was surely a harmless one, and if it made him happy in his old age …
“By the time we got back,” she was continuing, “he seemed twenty years younger, really he did. You should have seen him – so full of life, and talking away! It had done him so much good, honestly it had, Arnold. Getting out of the house … having someone really listen to him – take him seriously …”
This indeed sounded entirely plausible, Arnold only hoped that Joyce would see it that way, too.
Mercifully, she did. When, later in the morning, he dropped in at Joyce’s kiosk to apologise for his daughter’s share in last night’s alarms, Joyce seemed as friendly as ever, and wholly forgiving.
“Of course, she should have left me a note before going off like that; but there, she’s only young. She didn’t think. Besides, she hadn’t thought they’d be out that long, she reckoned they’d be back before I was. And I daresay they would have been, too, if I hadn’t managed to catch the bus straight away. My goodness, that was a piece of luck! You can wait the best part of forty minutes for that bus, especially at night. I was specially thankful because I’d been a bit on edge all evening, wondering how Father was getting on. He can be very funny, you know, with anyone new, that’s why I hardly ever leave him in the evenings. But your Flora – she’s wonderful. She seems to have perked him up no end, given him a new lease of life, you might say. This morning he’s been at his papers again for the first time in I don’t know how long. I quite thought he was past all that, but when I left after breakfast, there he was at his desk, just like the old days, sorting through the notes for the book he was working on before he – before he got – well, you know. There he was, mulling them over, arranging them in piles, as if he really knew what he was doing. I was so glad. Often when I leave he’s just sitting in his chair, staring at nothing, and doesn’t even notice that I’m going. Ida tells me she often can’t rouse him even for his lunch. I’m really grateful to your daughter, Arnold, and I’m sure she’s right. He does need to get out more, and to meet other people besides me and Ida. But it’s difficult, you see. He can be – well – funny, sometimes …
Arnold felt mightily relieved. His trouble-making daughter hadn’t, after all, caused trouble in this quarter; quite the reverse. Apparently Flora had now volunteered to drop in whenever she had time and to take the old man for a little walk, giving Joyce a chance to “get on with things”. Like washing the kitchen floor, for instance, without Father padding in and out, carrying wet footsteps all over the house. Like reading the whole of the Letter Page in the Daily Mail without being interrupted. These are the sort of delights that can become the height of ambition for anyone in Joyce’s position, rivalling even a trip to the cinema as liberators of the soul.