Mrs. Waterhouse clapped her hands, picked up the only naughty child to prevent her from grabbing the ball when everyone else had obediently let it alone, and turned to Mrs. Bradley.
“Good morning,” she said, and as she said it she suffered a sudden, unceremonious return of a peculiar feeling she had always experienced in the old days when she knew that His Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools had arrived on the premises and were seeking whom they might devour.
“My name is Bradley. I am the mother of Ferdinand Lestrange,” said Mrs. Bradley equably. Mrs. Waterhouse went white. Mrs. Bradley could see a vein throbbing in her temple. She said, in the voice of one speaking from a parched, constricted throat:
“Oh—yes? I’m—I’m glad to meet you. Would you like me to take you over to Mother Saint Francis?”
“No. I’ve seen her. I’ve been here since Monday afternoon. I heard you were here, and I thought my son would be interested to know that I had seen you,” Mrs. Bradley went on, in a false, district-visitor voice.
“It’s very kind of you,” said Mrs. Waterhouse. “It’s—I owe your son a great deal—in fact, my life.”
“I know. He always believed you innocent, of course.”
“Yes, but I wasn’t,” said Mrs. Waterhouse suddenly. “He couldn’t have thought so really.” She put down the only naughty child, and it immediately ran to another little girl and pulled her hair.
“That’s what she’d have loved to have done to me while I had her close enough,” Mrs. Waterhouse remarked more naturally.
“Is she an orphan?”
“Oh, lor’, no. She’s the Grand Duchess Natalie —well, over here we call her Smith, because nobody’s supposed to know her name. There’s a rumour that her family know all about the disappearance of that wonderful pearl, the—what’s-it-called?—the—I don’t know—began with P—a French name, somebody told me. It was worth about forty thousand pounds before the war, and got lost from a Russian museum.”
She looked at Mrs. Bradley with the expression of one who seeks feverishly to postpone an evil moment, and then flew to separate the two children, who were now screaming and fighting.
“I suppose,” said Mrs. Bradley, when Mrs. Waterhouse came back again with Natalie whilst the others played nicely together with the ball and two or three hoops which they dumbly gave up to one another on demand (as they had been taught, Mrs. Bradley supposed), “that you never let these children out of your sight?”
“That I do not,” Mrs. Waterhouse replied. “Why, that Natalie would tear the hair off little Pamela, if I left them, and the orphans would teach the others naughty words.”
“I should have thought it would be the other way about,” said Mrs. Bradley. So saying, she shed her benevolent smile, as the moon its light and the rain its mixed blessings, alike on the just and on the unjust, and slowly walked away. She looked back after a moment, for a howl of anguish had arisen. The Grand Duchess had tumbled over, but Mrs. Waterhouse, in a scolding, motherly voice, immediately reduced the howls in volume, and shortly silenced them.
Mrs. Bradley went back to Mother Francis. “In which room does Mrs. Waterhouse teach the little children?” she enquired.
“In the room opposite mine,” said Mother Francis. “I like to have the little ones near me.”
“And were you in your room, do you remember, at the beginning of last Monday week afternoon?”
Mother Francis glanced up at the framed time-table which hung opposite.
“I was, without doubt,” she replied. Mrs. Bradley thanked her, apologised for disturbing her so often, and went outside again. Mrs. Waterhouse was letting the babies collect up the mats and the other apparatus of the lesson. Screams from the Grand Duchess Natalie announced to the world her determination not to give up her mat without a struggle.
Mrs. Bradley grinned, and then sighed. It was impossible to suspect that Mrs. Waterhouse had left her class on that Monday afternoon. The Grand Duchess would certainly have brought Mother Francis into the room if Mrs. Waterhouse had been away long enough to get to the guest-house bathroom, unless— Mrs. Bradley stopped short in her walking and looked back. Holding her teacher’s hand in a pudgy fist, and looking proud, animated and happy, the Grand Duchess was leading the line across the netball court back into school.
“If she’d taken her with her,” Mrs. Bradley decided, walking on again, “that would have been a solution.”
She amused herself by walking over to look at the pigs who were housed along by the north-east angle of the grounds. There were other pigs opposite the little square laundry building, but these were managed, Mrs. Bradley understood, by the gardener. The pigs she was aiming for were the charge of the lay-sisters, who were proud of them. She halted at the sties and then looked over, but, lacking her nephew’s guidance, she failed to appreciate to the full the special points of their occupants, and turned away after a minute or two to stroll past the school and the children’s own small gardens, across the orchard where the pear-trees were already promising blossom, and through the low archway in the hedge towards the gatehouse. There was still Miss Bonnet to be interviewed, but that could be done after lunch.
chapter 12
guests
“What a blessed change I find
Since I entertained this Guest!
Now methinks, another mind
Mores, and rules, within my breast.”
christopher harvey: The Enlarging of the Heart.
« ^ »
Sister magdalene, smiling, as usual, opened the gate for her, and stood beside it, waiting to shut it again.
Mrs. Bradley stopped in the entrance and said:
“Who else has a key to the gate?”
“A key hangs in the Common Room, Reverend Mother Superior has another, and a third is in the possession of Sister Saint Ambrose for letting the orphan children in and out to the guest-house after sunset.”
So that was that, Mrs. Bradley thought. She thanked the lay-sister, passed through the gate and walked into the guest-house just as the gong was being sounded for the midday meal.
The dining-room was twice as long as its width, and a table ran almost the whole length of it with a place set at the head and another at the foot. These places, she found, were allotted to herself and to the Dominican, a merry-looking man of forty or so, with a jowl which no amount of shaving could make any colour but blue, black eyes as sharp and bold as sloes, and a very beautiful voice. He was, Mrs. Bradley learned, convalescent after long illness, and was hoping to return to his monastery in the near future. He had read all her works, and discussed them with her during most of the meal. He was a learned, entertaining companion, and the fact that the length of the table lay between them did nothing to abate his enthusiasm. Mrs. Bradley attempted, now and again, to talk to her neighbours, but the Spanish lady, another refugee, Señorita Mercedes Rio, and one of the two young French girls, who were going to Rome later on for their novitiate in the mother house of the Order, had scarcely a word to say.
“My father, my brothers, my lover, all are killed,” the Spaniard said, and lapsed into a silence which Mrs. Bradley hesitated to disturb. When the meal was over and Dom Pius had, for the second time, said grace, Mrs. Bradley met him, of set purpose, in the doorway, and laid a claw on his sleeve.
“You have something you wish to ask me?” enquired the monk, inoffensively but definitely drawing away from her touch.
“I want to talk to you about something of considerable importance. Will you walk with me in the garden?”