Concluding (25 page)

"I did no such thing," her colleague said, but did not seem to pay attention.

"The old man really cuts quite a distinguished figure," Baker insisted, to all appearances not having taken in Edge's negligent reply, perhaps because of this great spring tide of music.

"Nevertheless," Edge enquired, "what was it led you to ask them, Hermione?"

"I?" Miss Baker demanded. "I never invited anyone, dear."

Edge leaned over her colleague in one swift movement, as though to peer up Baker's nostrils.

"Then you mean they are here unasked?" she hissed. "Oh no, Hermione, not that, for it would be too much."

"I didn't," Baker promised. They looked wildly at one another. "Now careful, Mabel," she went on. "We don't wish to make ourselves conspicuous."

"But this is preposterous persecution. It could even be wicked."

"Mabel don't, I beg of you. Just when we were so enjoying ourselves. If you could only catch sight of your expression, dear. We shall have everyone look our way in a minute."

"Hermione, they shall leave at once," Miss Edge proposed.

"To brazen themselves like this," Baker hastily agreed. "Why, it's wrong."

In time, however, both ladies gained sufficient control to be able to look straight out over the Hall with a glare above the dancers. But when Elizabeth came by once more, still in Sebastian's arms, hair still disarranged, still dancing as though glued to him, they both deflected their vision through the degrees necessary to take in this orgiastic behaviour, which they had not previously bothered to notice. They then followed the couple with palsied indignation, rooted to valse trembling chairs.

"You saw?" Miss Edge brought out at last.

"Yes, and alas I still do, Mabel."

"Well, whatever else we may decide, dear, their little display of animalism must be stopped at once."

"Whatever you think," Miss Baker agreed. But seemed hesitant.

"Yes, Hermione, and why on earth not?"

"Is it always wise to bring matters of this kind out in the open? The thought just flashed through my mind, that's all."

"Hermione, I wish I could follow your reasoning."

"It's just I can't quite make out that any of the children appear to have caught on, particularly. You see?" Miss Baker asked.

"Should we wait for the girls to copy this themselves?"

"It does seem a most ambiguous style to dance, I must admit, Mabel."

"In a moment, when the first flush of this glorious music has worn off, I'm very much afraid the cat will be out of the bag, Hermione."

"Where has Mr Rock got to, then? I don't see him," Miss Baker said, to draw a red herring across the trail. She was a cautious woman.

"Oh drinking, undoubtedly drinking outside," Miss Edge proclaimed.

"But there's no more than lemonade, dear."

"He had a flask, Hermione. I saw the bulge myself, in his pocket."

"You appal me."

"Ah, if it were only that."

"Oh surely, Mabel?"

"I insist he is far too close to some of the girls."

"Be that as it may," Miss Baker sternly said, pulling herself together, "I do beg you to take this fresh affront in a Christian spirit."

"Why should I?" her colleague demanded. "When he flaunts our authority?"

"You know how deaf Mr Rock is. Perhaps he misheard some time this week. Thought you had invited him?"

"Oh no, no, that simply will not wash. You must realise all he misunderstands is just what he does not wish to hear. Besides I have not said two words to the man in months."

"Of course there may have been . . . but I don't think . . . wait, I'm trying to remember," Miss Baker said. "He might have thought, when I mentioned, when we met by the Lake," she delicately hinted, to scale down Mr Rock's offence. "But of course I'm in no two minds. A member of the staff has no business whatever dancing with the misguided woman. If we don't pull together on occasions of this sort, what good are we, after all? And to go about it in that disgraceful way is too bad of Sebastian. As to her, I cannot believe she can be responsible for her actions. Oh no, don't think I don't agree with you, dear."

"Then, Hermione, I am going straight onto the floor. I shall simply tap him on the shoulder, gesture him Off. I shall not say a word," Miss Edge announced, and made as though to get down from her chair.

"But Mabel, is this wise?" Miss Baker asked, in a sort of shriek to pierce the double basses which, at the moment, held the recorded melody.

"There is more to our duties than a kind of still-born native caution," Edge complained, but stayed seated.

"Yes, dear," her colleague comforted, satisfied that she had, at least, held off immediate action.

"If we see another woman ridiculed before our very eyes, are we to sit by without a word?" Miss Edge demanded. "There is a double obligation on us, surely. To call Elizabeth Rock to order, for she is leading him along to make a fool of her, to compromise herself with him, Baker; and, second, to show our girls we shall not turn a blind eye upon wrongdoing, which this disgraceful behaviour most surely is."

"You are right, Mabel, of course. But how will Mr Rock react?"

"He should be eternally grateful. You cannot tell me he wants his girl compromised with Sebastian Birt."

"No, Mabel. But you know the way he is. He might take our reproof for an affront."

"And if he did?"

"My dear, he is such friends with Mr Swaythling. This can hardly be a moment to invite publicity, the attention of the Supervisor, just when we are face to face with the enigma of Mary, not to mention Merode."

"Yes, but there must be some justice in our affairs, Baker. If we are to harbour the informer in our midst, let us have nothing to hide, at least."

"Leave sleeping dogs lie, Edge."

"And what have we done? My conscience is clear. Can you point to any single circumstance under which we could possibly be said to have countenanced the girl's disappearance?"

"Of course, this whole thing's absurd," her colleague answered. "At the same time, I didn't quite care for Mrs Manley's attitude. After she had seen Merode she rather made capital out of Mary's being such a favourite of ours."

"I trust, whenever we make friends with one of the Students, that will not be considered sufficient justification for the child concerned to make off at dead of night, and in her pyjamas." Miss Baker laughed elegantly at this sally.

Just then Sebastian bumped Elizabeth, through carelessness, into another couple and she opened hers to find herself gazing into the Principals' four eyes.

"Look out Seb," she said. "They're glaring like a couple of old black herons down in the meadow, over the daisies."

After this, they danced with more circumspection.

"It is a matter of elementary justice, Baker," Edge insisted, but in so much calmer a voice, now Elizabeth was no longer dancing cheek to cheek, that her colleague could be satisfied the danger of an open breach was past. "If one sees wrong done, one cannot sit idly by, dear."

"Of deportment, or behaviour? Even on a special occasion?" Miss Baker asked.

"But really, sometimes you astound me," Edge said, mildly warming to the subject. "That sort of thing is like an infection, surely? I refer of course to the way those two have been dancing. If you find scarlet fever in a community, you isolate it. There is the fever hospital."

"I dare not look at Winstanley" Baker replied.

"Then I will do so for you," Miss Edge offered. "There she is, with a look on her washed out face of weariness, and disgust, poor child. I do not know if we should not get rid of her as well," she ended, but in an uncertain voice.

"No really, dear, there must be limits."

"It is the risk of infection again," Edge explained, all at once rather magisterial. "Jealousy is an epidemic, can even lead to crime."

"Now, Edge, I really should . . ."

"Yes, Baker, but there is so much which is unexplained. That is the reason I feel we must have a clearance, a real spring clean," Miss Edge interrupted. But, now the tension was relaxed, she spoke in almost languishing tones.

Miss Baker became unusually confident. The music, the dance, the air of festivity had loosened her tongue.

"So long as we ourselves don't get swept up into the dust pan along with the wet tea leaves," she said.

"Baker, surely that is rather fanciful," her colleague reproved, in an idle voice.

"This is hardly the time and place to discuss it," Miss Baker admitted. "Why, look at Mr Rock and Moira."

"Where? Dancing?"

"No, Edge, over in the doorway. Really he imagines he has particular manners, to use the Institute idiom."

"So long as they do not sample moonlight," Edge exclaimed. Miss Baker laughed, then she said, "Of course if there was really anything of the sort I'd never hesitate. Out they'd all go, neck and crop. But until we have cleared Mary up, and got quite to the bottom of Merode, we mayn't be absolutely sure, you know. Even his turning up tonight with Elizabeth looks suspicious from a certain angle, I agree. Yet there's Mr Swaythling, not to mention Hargreaves. Both are old friends, remember."

"The way to handle all matters of this sort is to act in the name of the State at once, then congratulate the State on what has been done afterwards," Edge propounded, with a sudden dryness.

"My dear," Baker replied. "Those tactics may have served when we had to have another corridor of bathrooms, but I venture to think this an altogether different problem."

"I must have that cottage," Edge good-humouredly insisted.

"And so you shall," Miss Baker promised, in the voice she would have used to a little girl who was wanting more chocolate, in the one day, than was proper. "Now, shall we postpone all this until tomorrow?"

"Very well," Edge agreed, content on the whole to let things slide this night of nights. "But I must just mention one thing, Baker," she added, as a last gesture, and in a rising voice, as though to yell defiance.

"They can go too far," she shouted under the music, but kept her face expressionless. It was like a prisoner, confined with others to a workshop in which talk is forbidden, and who has learned to scream defiance as an unheard ventriloquist beneath the deafening, mechanical hammers. "They can outstretch themselves," (she was working herself up), "there is a Limit, and this," when, at that precise moment, the music stopped dead into a sighing silence, "this Rock" she continued, and could only go on, in a great voice, heard throughout the Hall, "upon which our Institute is Built," she recovered, and beamed at the Students.

"My dear, magnificent," Miss Baker approved, in praise of the recovery.

Mr Rock had had a grand time, so close surrounded by children that he was protected even from Moira's pressing attentions.

Very likely because, on this occasion, it would be one way a girl could draw attention to herself, or, at any rate, that was how he explained it, he had been deluged by pretty, laughing invitations to be amongst his partners, all of which he had known how to refuse. It was enough that he had danced with Liz, would be ready again for Edge when the spirit moved her, and that he should be at hand if Liz lost her Sebastian even for a moment. One or two carefully done evenings like this, and she'd come right in no time. Nevertheless he was charmed with the fuss these children were making.

"Why don't you, Mr Rock, this once?"

"You might, you know. It's rather particular, with me I mean."

"We needn't finish the whole thing out. Come on, just three times round the floor."

After the dancing there had already been, these children were hot despite windows wide open onto sky-staring white Terraces, and, as several tugged at his old hands, Mr Rock could feel their moist fingers' skin, the tropic, anemone suction of soft palms over rheumatic, chalky knuckles.

"You do me honour. But no, I think not," he was saying.

"Why can't you leave the man be?" Moira demanded, on the outskirts.

"Well, it's not fair for you to have all," one objected.

"If I were fifty years younger," the old man fatuously said.

"I'll bet you were terrific, Mr Rock."

"Then what I say is, I wish I'd been about at the time," another cried.

"Now, will you let him alone?" Moira objected.

"All right, my dear, I'll call for help when I'm in need," Mr Rock told her.

"But you know you promised," she lied.

"What? Did I?" he asked, contrite at once. These last few years he had been nervous regarding his memory.

The others began to drift away, at this uncalled for intrusion of privacy.

"I wish poor Inglefield wouldn't hesitate so long between," one said.

"I'd something particular I wanted you to see below, now d'you remember?" Moira told him. She spoke right into his good ear, having to stand on her toes to reach.

"I'll not have that nonsense a second time," he said in a low, gruff voice.

"Oh I'm so sorry, and if you don't want, of course you shan't," she answered.

"Well, what is there?" he relented.

"Come and see."

"Certainly not."

"Then I'll never tell," she announced with a voice of authority, as she turned away.

"But need we go just the two of us?" he weakly asked. He considered the suggestion that another might come along must provide the impediment he sought.

"Naturally not. Whoever said?"

He misunderstood what he heard of this last.

"That's that, then," he concluded, much relieved.

She immediately caught hold of his hand once more.

"All right, come with me, tag on," she laughed. "Here, Melissa," she called, and lugged both off. "For better or worse," she ended.

"Where are we going?" he appealed, as soon as he was led into the pantry. A different girl stood guard.

He was ignored.

"Never those stairs again," Mr Rock weakly protested.

"Not much doing yet," the new child said, as she locked up behind.

"Why you managed last time like a bird," Moira said, with greater authority.

"Must I?" he pleaded, horrified at the thought that he could only make a fool of himself a second time on the scramble down. At his age it was a sort of rock climb.