Ellis Peters - George Felse 04 - A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs (11 page)

She couldn’t stall any longer, it would only make it worse when it did come out. And besides, she was lonely and frightened and she wanted Paddy back, impertinent or not, disobedient or not, she just wanted him. So somebody had to find him for her.

“It’s too much to hope that you’ll approve, of course, but I was concerned only for you and Tim, and for the child’s own well-being. I told him what he should have been told as soon as he was old enough to understand—that he has to thank you and Tim for taking him in and giving him a good home and the love of good parents, when his own father wanted to get rid of him. I told him he was adopted, and that he should consider how much he owed to you, and try to behave better to you in future, not take everything for granted as he does. That’s what I told him, and you’ll have reason to thank me for it yet”

Stricken, Phil stood clinging to the back of a chair as to the rocking remnants of her world. “Aunt Rachel! You couldn’t! You
couldn’t
be so cruel!”

“Cruel, nonsense! It was high time he was told, you’d have had to do it in the end. I don’t believe it’s done him one jot of harm, either, so—”

“No
harm
!” Groping through the blankness of her misery, Phil arrived at a positive and tonic fury. Her cheeks flushed scarlet, and paled again to a pinched and frightening whiteness. “No
harm
! You drive that poor boy away with the bottom knocked out of his world, not knowing who or what he is, and you say you’ve done him no
harm
!”

“It means we’re probably all wrong about his being in danger from our murderer,” pointed out George quickly, with a gentling hand on her arm. “He’s shocked and hurt and wretched, he wants to hide, that’s all understandable. But it means he’s probably staying away of his own will, and when he’s come to terms with it he’ll come home. It isn’t as bad as what we were afraid of.”

“It is, George, it’s almost worse. He’ll be in such a state he might do
anything
.” She turned frantically upon Miss Rachel, who was backed into her great chair with hackles erect, ready for a fight. “How would
you
feel, you wicked old woman, if you suddenly found you weren’t who you thought you were, and your parents weren’t your parents, and everything you had was borrowed? Even your identity?” She gripped the edge of the table, and demanded urgently: “Did you tell him
who
he was? But you couldn’t—we never told you, thank God, so you didn’t know.”

“Oh, yes, my dear Phil, I did know. His father told me himself—right here in the garden, no longer ago than Wednesday afternoon. He told me quite a lot. But I didn’t tell Paddy. I don’t have to tell everything I know.” She drew breath before Phil could ride over her again, and pursued belligerently: “But
you’d
better. Oh, I know, Simon thinks he can twist me round his finger. Maybe I like it that way. But don’t think I’ve got any illusions about him. I like him very much, but sooner or later he’ll make a bid for what he wants. And if you haven’t noticed that he’s beginning to want Paddy, very much indeed, you’d better wake up, quickly.”

George, whose experience in breaking up fights between women was still somewhat inadequate to such a situation as this, felt profound gratitude to the telephone for ringing just then. It gave him something to do, more constructive than listening to family secrets it would be his duty promptly to forget again, and it distracted the attention of both the embattled females. He picked up the receiver thankfully.

“Treverra Place. This is George Felse. Oh, yes—yes, she’s here. Phil, it’s Tamsin Holt for you.”

Phil clutched the receiver convulsively, afraid to hope. “Tamsin, what is it? Have you—
You have
! Thank God! He’s all right?”

Her knees gave under her, she was suddenly limp as silk, and George slid a chair under her and eased her into it.

“
He’s all right
! They’ve found him. In the Dragon’s Hole. The tide caught him inside there. Aunt Rachel, it’s all right! They’ve found him—Tamsin and Dominic. I don’t care now, nothing else matters. I don’t care what you told him, he’s all right. Tam—we’re on our way down, we’ll meet you. Take care of him! Don’t you let him out of your sight again. The little
demon
! Honestly, I’ll murder him! You’re
sure
he isn’t hurt? God bless you, Tam! We’re on our way.”

She let the receiver slip nervelessly down into its cradle. She was in tears, and trembling. “George, can you drive a Mini? I—don’t think I’m capable—Oh, George,
I want Tim
!”

George got her to her feet and out to the car. No one had even a glance to spare for Miss Rachel, braced and defensive in her high-backed chair.

As soon as they were out of the doorway she hopped suddenly out of her sanctuary behind the cold dinner-tray, and danced the length of the room and the library, like an agile girl, until her piled grey hair came down round her shoulders, and she was out of breath. Then, having carefully reassembled her magnificent coiffure and her even more magnificent personal assurance, she rang the bell for Alice, and demanded food.

On their way down through the town they picked up Tim. Phil clung to him in the back seat, pouring out the best and the worst of the news, and swinging breathlessly between rage and joy. Tim held her in his arms and shook with the vehemence of her trembling, and implored her first, and then ordered her, just as ineffectively, to be calm and matter-of-fact, and take the whole thing easily. Hadn’t they agreed from the beginning that with a child not your own you must take nothing for granted, that you had to exercise twice as much care and self-control as natural parents, and earn every morsel of your gift-son’s affection? Restraint, no too greedy love, no too lavish indulgences and no too exacting demands, that was the way. If she let herself go now, she’d push the boy right over the edge, and break something.

“Here they are,” said George at the wheel, and drew the Mini in to the kerb just below the square, the dilapidated trio before them caught and dazzled in its lights. A slim, taut, brittle figure toiled up the hill between two muddy supporters just recognisable as Tamsin and Dominic. He had been drooping badly a moment before, but now he was braced to meet them. The moment was on top of him; he wasn’t ready, but he never would be ready, it might as well happen and get it over. A pale, grime-streaked face stared, all enormous, shocked eyes. Phil lunged for the doorhandle and was half out of the car before it came to a halt.

“Phil, you must be
calm
—”

“To hell with being calm!” shouted Phil, in a splendid flare of wrathful joy, and hurled herself upon her stray in a flurry of abuse, endearments and reproaches.

Paddy’s parent problem was swept away in the warm, sweet hurricane. After all, he didn’t have to make any decisions about how to behave, he didn’t have to do anything at all. The meeting he had been dreading was taken clean out of his hands. He was plucked from between his henchmen, hugged, shaken, even he seemed to remember afterwards with respect and astonishment, slapped, a thing he couldn’t remember ever having happened to him before in his life. Tim snatched him from Phil to feel him all over, swear at him heartily, strip him of his wet and filthy sweater, and bundle him into a warm, dry sportscoat much too big for him. He could hardly get a word in edgeways, all he managed was: “I’m sorry!” and: “I didn’t mean to!” and: “I couldn’t help it!” at intervals. And he had been shrinking from the thought of moderated voices and careful handling, into which he would inevitably have read all sorts of reservations! There weren’t any moderated voices round here, he couldn’t hear himself think; and the way he was being handled, he was going to start coming to pieces shortly. This sort of thing there was no mistaking. He was loved, all right. She was frantic about him, and Dad wasn’t much better. This, he thought, hustled and scolded and abused and caressed into dazed silence, this is
exactly
how parents behave.

“Into that car,” ordered Tim, growing grimmer by the minute now that he had satisfied himself that he had his son back with hardly a scratch on him. “You’re going to apologise to Mr. Hewitt for all the trouble you’ve caused everybody, and you’d better make it good.” And when he had him penned into the back seat, with Phil to cushion him comfortably, he had to rummage out the old car rug and tuck him into it like a cocoon, and all to go the two hundred yards to the police station.

The rest of the evening always remained to him a crazy confusion, from which fleeting remarks emerged at times to tickle his memory. The one overwhelming thing about it was that all of it, every bit, was good, better than anything had ever been before, or perhaps ever would be again. To have happiness and know that you have it, and know how wonderful it is to know it, that’s almost too much for any one day.

He was bundled into the warmth and light of the police station, blinking and exhausted, and made his apologies with quite unexpected grace, out of the fullness of his own plenty. He said thank you to everyone who had gathered there from the great boy-hunt, and requested that his thanks be conveyed to all those who were not there to hear for themselves. Hewitt received the offering with considerable complacency, out of pure relief, but maintained a solemn face.

“Don’t you think you’ve heard the last of it, young feller-me-lad. Your next six months’ pocket-money’s going to be needed to pay for police shoe-leather. I’ll be sending you in a bill.” He grinned at Tim over the tow-coloured head that was beginning to be unconscionably heavy. “Take him home, clean him up and put him to bed, Mr. Rossall. I’ll talk to him in the morning, he’s out on his feet now.”

He remembered looking round a whole ring of faces when he said good-night. Mr. Felse was there with his wife, Tamsin was there, and Dominic, and the Vicar, and Uncle Simon. Uncle Simon was looking at him in an odd sort of way, smiling, but without the sparkle, and twice as hard as usual. And he didn’t come with them. Why didn’t he? Oh, yes, of course, he probably had his own car here, so he had to drive it home. But it didn’t look as if that was in his mind, somehow, when he shook his head at Dad, with that odd, rueful smile on his face, and said: “No, I’ll follow you down later, old boy. This is a family special.”

That reminded Paddy of how this extraordinary day had started. There were things he still had to know about himself, but somehow all the urgency was already gone. In the back seat of the car, rolled up again snugly in the rug, with Phil’s arm round him, and Phil’s shoulder comfortable and comforting under his cheek, he drowsed gloriously, too tired to know anything clearly except the one wonderful, all-pervading fact that it was all right. That everything was all right, because his belonging to them was everything.

And whoever he might have belonged to in the beginning, he was certainly theirs now. Heaven help anyone who tried to take him away from them, or them from him!

“I’m glad you know I know,” he said out of his pillows, bathed, fed, warmed and cosseted, and drowning in a delicious, sleepy happiness. “It did come as a bit of a shock at first, that’s why I sheered off from Aunt Rachel’s without telling anybody. I wasn’t trying to frighten anyone, or run away from home, or anything daft, like that. Honestly! I’m not such a clot.”

“I should hope not,” said Tim.

“No, but I was afraid you might think—I just felt shaken up, and not wanting to see anybody, or be talked to. You know! I started for home, and then I couldn’t face it, not until I’d had time to think. I went up on the Head, instead, but it was
swarming
. People everywhere. I just ditched the bike, and nipped down the cliff path and into the cave, where I knew I could be quiet. Just till I got a bit more used to it, that’s all. But then some kids came in, playing, and I backed up as far as I could, to get out of their way.”

Having, thought Phil, who had not failed to distinguish the tear-marks from the general stains of sea-water and cave-grime, an entirely visible and possibly temporarily uncontrollable distress to hide by then.

“Never mind now, darling, you go to sleep. There’s time for all that to-morrow. You’re home, and that’s all that matters.”

“Yes, but I just wanted you to know I wasn’t sulking, or anything childish like that. It was just by accident I happened to find this passage in the top end of the cave. Only a low sort of hole, you have to crawl through it on hands and knees. I was backed up into this corner, and I shoved my shoulder through it in the dark. It goes a long way. That’s how I lost time, having to be careful because of not having a light. In the end I did call it a day and decide to come back some other time with a torch, but what with not being able to see my watch, and forgetting because I was interested, by the time I crawled back through the hole I’d had it. The water was almost up to the top of the cave mouth, and I didn’t dare dive for it, it was too rough. I had to lie up and wait, there wasn’t anything else to do.” He looked up with the remembered terror suddenly brilliant in his eyes, squarely into Tim’s face. “I was scared green,” he said.

“So would I have been. Even knowing that the top part of the Hole’s above high water, I’d still have been scared.”

“And even there you get a bit battered. And deafened! I couldn’t wait to get out, it seemed for ever. I couldn’t tell what time it was, you see, I just had to follow the water down, and you have to be super-cautious feeling your way in the dark. But I was on my way out as fast as I dared when they came and found me.”

Phil turned the shaded light away from her own face, for fear he should see his ordeal reflected there all too plainly, stroked the fuzz of fair hair back from his forehead, and said: “Yes, well, it’s all over now. You just forget it and go to sleep.”

“Yes—all right, I will. I just wanted you to know how it was. I’m sorry I caused everybody so much trouble.” Half asleep and off his guard, he said with shattering simplicity: “I was just so miserable I didn’t know what to do.”

Tim hooked a large right fist to the angle of his son’s jaw, and rolled the fair head gently on the pillow till a shamefaced grin came through.