'Holy Moses,' he said, 'the old cow.'
'Now then,' Edith interrupted. 'That's all right,' he went on, 'I'm thinkin' of you ducks. See?'
'No I don't.'
'Well she's got it in for you about that waterglass an' now we've something on her. Get me?'
A noise of high shrieks and the clapping of hands announced Miss Evelyn and Miss Moira, tearing along towards them down passages.
'For land's sake the children,' Edith exclaimed. 'Why I declare I forgot all about…'
Meantime Raunce had dashed out into the pantry snapping his fingers at the dog. It picked up the dead peacock and followed. Raunce shut that further door behind them both. For a moment Edith was alone as those children raced towards her the other way. Then they had arrived. She was holding her breasts.
'Mercy,' Miss Evelyn exclaimed with a trace of Cockney accent, 'why Edith you do look thrilled at something.'
Raunce's Albert came out of the door Mr Raunce had closed. He shut it again after him, on the butler and the dog and its find it carried.
'Hello Bert,' Miss Moira said.
'Hullo Miss Moira,' he replied. He just stood looking pale and miserable.
'You coining with us?' Edith asked. 'It's your afternoon off isn't it?'
'Oh yes,' he said, and a smile broke over his wan face.
'I got to get ready,' she announced. I'll race you two all the way up to my hide out. One three go,' she shouted and they were gone. The boy got out a handkerchief, blew his nose. His weak eyes shone.
As the three of them ran the front way through all the magnificence and the gilt of that Castle Miss Evelyn looked back. She cried, 'Why couldn't Bert race with us?'
'Because he's too old,' Edith called back panting, and steadied herself round a turn of the Grand Staircase by holding the black hand of a life-sized negro boy of cast iron in a great red turban and in gold-painted clothes.
Albert went behind the door to the cellar, unhooked his mackintosh and put on the rubber boots he kept there. It was not long before the others were back ready dressed to meet showers. Edith's head was in a silk scarf Mrs Jack had given her which was red and which had for decoration the words 'I love you I love you' written all over in black longhand with rounded letters.
Albert stayed silent while the rest argued where to go. At last they decided on that walk to the temple. Miss Evelyn had a bag of scraps to feed the peacocks. When they went through Raunce's pantry to reach the back door this man and the dog were gone without trace. But as soon as they were outside rain began to come down so thick that they hesitated. Edith said not unkind, That's a silly thing Bert to come without a hat.' He looked back speechless and plastered his long streaming yellow hair down one cheek with a hand. While those two little girls argued where they should go next to get out of the wet Edith looked at the lad derisively. She added as if in answer to a question, 'Oh it does mine good, the soft water curls my hair.'
Then while he regarded her, and he was yearning in the rain, Miss Evelyn announced they'd decided that they'd go play in the Skull-pier Gallery.
'All right if you want,' Edith replied, 'but not through the old premises or we'll dirty 'em wet as we are,' for this Gallery was built on to the far portion of the Castle beyond the part that was shut up. So they ran along a path round by the back past the dovecote and any number of doors set in the Castle's long high walls pierced with tall Gothic windows. Running they flashed along like in the reflection of a river on a grey day, and smashed through white puddles which spurted.
Squat under this great Gothic pile lay the complete copy of a Greek temple roofed, windowed and with two green bronze doors for entrance. The children dashed through an iron turnstile, which clicked into another darker daylight, into a vast hall lit by rain and dark skylights and which was filled with marble bronze and plaster statuary in rows.
'What shall we play?' the Misses Evelyn and Moira cried. Their sharp voices echoed, echoed. The place was damp. Albert kept his mackintosh on. Edith took off her scarf. She was brilliant, she glowed as she rang her curls like bells without a note.
'Blind man's buff,' she said. 'Oh let's,' the girls cried. It was plain this was what they had expected.
'You won't have no difficulty telling it's me,' Albert brought out as if he held a grievance, 'it's me,' the walls repeated.
'You stay mum or we'd never have invited you. We're not playing for you,' Edith told him.
On this there came a kind of faint mewing from the back. Albert started but stayed where he was while those others went hand in hand to see. Away in the depths, out from behind a group of robed men kneeling with heads and arms raised to heaven something small minced out into half light. It was a peacock which had come in to get out of the wet. 'You see her off these premises,' Edith told Albert, 'we don't aim to catch her when we're blindfolded. We don't want another death, the sauce,' she explained. But it took Albert some time to get the creature out. He had to make it hop over that turnstile which caused it to squawk spinsterish. 'You'll have Paddy after you,' Edith called to him at the noise.
When he came back he found Miss Moira had been chosen, had had her eyes bound with the sopping 'I love you.' She stumbled about in flat spirals under a half-dressed lady that held a wreath at the end of her two long arms. Stifled with giggling Edith and Evelyn moved quiet on the outside circle while Albert stood numb. So that it was he was caught.
'Mr Raunce's Albert,' Miss Moira announced without hesitation, her short arms round his thighs. 'Kiss me,' she commanded. 'Kiss me,' the walls said back.
He bent down. His bang of yellow hair fell at right angles to his nose. He kissed her wet forhead over the scarf. Her child's skin was electric hot under a film of water.
Then it was his turn. There was only Edith tall enough to tie him and as 'I love you I love you' was knotted over his eyes he quietly drew a great breath perhaps to find out if Edith had left anything on this piece of stuff. He drew and drew again cautious as if he might be after a deep draught of her, of her skin, of herself. He was puffed already when his arms went out to go round and round and round her. But she was not there and for answer he had a storm of giggles which he could not tell one from the other and which went ricochet-ting from stone cold bosoms to damp streaming marble bellies, to and from huge oyster niches in the walls in which boys fought giant boas or idled with a flute, and which volleyed under green skylights empty in the ceiling. He went slow. He could hear feet slither. Then he turned in a flash. He had Edith. He stood awkward one hand on her stomach the other on the small of her back.
'Guess then,' he heard Miss Evelyn tell him out of sudden silence. 'Edith,' he said low.
'Kiss her then,' they shrieked disinterested, 'kiss her,' they shrieked again. In a tumult of these words re-echoed over and over from above from below and from all sides his hands began to grope awkward, not feeling at her body but more as if he wished to find his distance. 'Kiss her.'
'Come on then,' she said brisk. She stepped for the first time into his arms. Blinded as he was by those words knotted wet on his eyes he must have more than witnessed her as his head without direction went nuzzling to where hers came at him in a short contact, and in spite of being so short more brilliant more soft and warm perhaps than his thousand dreams.
'Crikey,' he said and took the scarf off in one piece. He seemed absolutely dazzled although it had become almost too dark to see his face.
'You tie it dear,' she said kneeling down to Miss Moira. 'He's that awkward,' she said in a cold voice.
But there was an interruption. As Edith knelt before the child a door in the wall opened with a grinding shriek of rusty hinge and Raunce entered upon a scene which this noise and perhaps also his presence had instantly turned to more stone.
'I figured this was where you could be found,' he said advancing smooth on Edith. She had raised a hand to her eyes as though to lift the scarf but she let her arm drop and faced him when he spoke, blind as any statue.