'Yes, it would be very nice,' said Dame Beatrice. 'I think I hear them calling to you that the car is at the door. Thank you very much for lending Rosamund the clothes. It is most kind and thoughtful of you. If you'd care to give me your address, I will keep in touch with you.' Kitty Trevelyan, Laura's friend, she reflected, had her own salon (the foster-child, incidentally, of a prosperous hair-dressing establishment) and might be willing to give Binnie a trial. 'What are your-let me see now...'
'My statistics?' prompted Binnie. 'I'm classical.'
'By that you infer?'
'I don't infer. I know, Thirty-five, twenty-three, thirty-five-but Humphrey wouldn't like me to give you our address. He's ashamed of our little semi-detached.'
Dame Beatrice made a note.
'I will keep those figures in mind,' she said, 'but, of course, I make no promises. Goodbye, Mrs Provost.'
'Goodbye. I do like you,' said Binnie.
'Your kind words are reciprocated,' Dame Beatrice replied.
(5)
Once clear of Galliard Hall, Dame Beatrice stopped at a public telephone kiosk and rang up the Stone House in her own village of Wandles Parva. Laura answered, and was warned to expect her employer and a companion at some time during the afternoon, probably later rather than earlier.
The Wareham road took them past Sleeping Green and Winterborne Zelston to Blandford Forum, bland indeed in its eighteenth century elegance. This was the result of a fire which, in 1731, had destroyed most of the old town and caused it to be rebuilt in a fortunate style of architecture and with a unity of design unsurpassed except, perhaps, in parts of Dublin and Bath.
From Blandford the road ran due north, and a string of villages with their delightful Dorset names-Steepleton Iwerne, Iwerne Courtney, Iwerne Minster, Fontmell Magna, Melbury Abbas-came and went, along a road almost free of traffic.
The journey had begun with Tancred seated in front beside George, and Dame Beatrice beside Rosamund at the back, but after Dame Beatrice had made her telephone call she suggested that Rosamund might care to have Tancred beside her.
'Would he,' asked Rosamund, 'recite to me some more of his poetry?' So the change-over was effected and from time to time the poet's voice broke in on Dame Beatrice's thoughts. His work, she thought, was largely derivative. It was not difficult to pick out what he had been reading at the time of each short composition, and this, in so young a man, and one who fell short of possessing any very striking talent, did not surprise her. What she did find interesting was his obvious lack of interest in anything much later than the 1930s.
'Oh, were my love the sleeping fields,
And I the all-embracing snow,' intoned Tancred in the snuffing voice of a man reciting his own poetry,
'I would enfold her dreaming peace
And veil her lovely brow.'
There was rhyme, rhythm and a certain artlessness about the stuff which had its own attraction, Dame Beatrice decided. She listened to the rest of the short lyric. Later on-with Rosamund saying never a word of praise or criticism-one of the poems showed an even clearer derivation.
'Greatest Lover, ere my youth be gone,
Give me lovely things to muse upon-
Poets' griefs and songs, and lovers' joys,
Girls and sleeping babes and laughing boys;
Pools where the lazy fish serenely lie,
And ploughland furrows mounting to the sky;
Rounded hills where dream the older gods;
Goatfoot prints of Pan on country roads.'
The sestet which followed, to complete the sonnet, was less derivative and therefore less successful, Dame Beatrice thought. Tancred was seated directly behind her, so that it was easy enough-although she did it only once-to turn her head and glance at Rosamund, leaning back in her corner behind George with closed eyes and a slight smile. Rosamund, there could be no doubt of it, was thoroughly happy. There was a pause-dramatic effect, no doubt-and then Tancred began again. This was meant to be the words of a song, he explained.
'Twine your lovely head with flowers,
For their beauty is your own...'
Poets, even the least gifted of them, have extraordinary advantages, thought Dame Beatrice, when it comes to expressing their love-often, she reflected, insincerely.
Laura voiced these thoughts that same evening after Rosamund had been put to bed in the Stone House.
'The patient,' she stated, 'is rapt and starry-eyed. What have you been a-doin' of?'
'Allowing her to make the journey to Shaftesbury in company with a young poet, so-called,' Dame Beatrice replied. 'I fear she may have interpreted some of his words as personal compliments with erotic overtones, but, then, I believe they slept together last night.'
'Glad it's your responsibility, not mine. Incidentally, I don't notice any signs of nervous instability of the kind that I had envisaged.'
'There are none. The child needs a change of environment, that is all.'
'What was Cousin Romilly's object, then, in representing her as a candidate for the bin?'
'Oh, that was made clear. Go to bed. In the morning I will tell you all. How is Eiladh?'
'Flourishing, and no trouble to anybody. Liable to be ruined by spoiling, I'm afraid. I'm hardly allowed to do anything for her myself. Celestine and Zena have taken her over completely, and Hamish writes his weekly letter from school with extraordinary zest. He keeps begging me to put in for special weekend leave for him, so that he can come home and see her again, but, of course, I shall do nothing of the kind. The holidays come quite soon enough as it is, and he gets five weeks at Easter. I've tried to hound him into going with the school party to Brussels, but he's adamant. He's absolutely hooked on the baby.'
'I told you how it would be.'
'Yes, I know you did. I don't understand Hamish, and I never shall.'
CHAPTER SIX
SARABANDE-DANCING LEDGE
'...when you dance, I wish you
A wave o' the sea...'
The Winter's Tale.
(1)
Dame Beatrice had anticipated that repercussions would follow the abortive family gathering to which, for reasons which still seemed obscure, Romilly Lestrange had elected to invite his relatives. The repercussions which did follow, however, were not what she would have expected. They began in the morning succeeding the day on which she had introduced Rosamund into the Stone House, a move of which Laura did not altogether approve.
'She may be in fear of her life, and an escaped prisoner and all those things,' she said to Dame Beatrice when Rosamund, who seemed to favour plenty of sleep, was not up by a quarter to ten, 'but there's something all wrong about her.'
'Yes,' Dame Beatrice agreed, 'mixed up with all my sympathy for her orphan state, and the really great danger I believe her to be in, I have the feeling to which you allude. I will now tell you something interesting, trusting to your native sense of fair play to read nothing into the information which is not contained in the very slight evidence which is all I am able to give you.'
'All right,' said Laura. 'As a former student of history, I will try to keep an open mind. Does this (whatever it is) concern Rosamund?'
'That is where we have to keep an open mind. I simply do not know. However, this is the story, for what it is worth. I think I told you in my letter about the hole in the wall. This was a kind of squint intended not, as in a church, to give a view of the altar, but (as, thinking of you, I soon realised) to give a fair chance to a marksman in the adjoining room of putting a bullet into the head of anybody lying in the bed.'