The Nanny (10 page)

“Who told
you?”

“Your mummy told me, Master Joey. As I said, I knew all about that School. They are exactly the same pills you take, Miss Pen, fancy that! The doctor at school put one of them in a vial and gave it to Master Joey.”

“Five,”
Joey said. “Dr. Bee said it might take me
five
nights to get
adjusted
, so he gave me five pills.”

“That's right, five!” Nanny threw up her hands. “I forgot that!
Five
, Miss Pen!”

Now this, Mrs. Gore-Green decided, was going too far, even for the Red Letter doctor! Trusting a child of Joey's age with five sleeping pills, allowing him to dispense his own drugs! If he took them all at once and killed himself, they would be to blame. She said drily, “Remarkable. Why don't you take yours when I take mine, Joey?”

He hit his clenched fist against his skinny thigh. “I won't! I won't!”

Mrs. Gore-Green put her hands over her ears because the child had shouted. “Then don't, for goodness sake, don't! Nanny, be a lamb and fix that chocolate and toast, and while you do, I'll bathe.”

“Yes, Miss Pen. Wouldn't you like me to help you get ready? Madam likes me to help her.”

“I know,” Mrs. Gore-Green said. Nanny had told her that she didn't believe Madam could get her pretty frocks on or off without help.

“Madam has grown her hair, and it's as long as yours used to be. Do you remember how Nanny used to brush your hair?”

She found that her hand had reached up to her hair, but it was short now, graying now, no longer in need of Nanny's ministrations. She saw Nanny smiling.

“You don't need Nanny any more, do you, Miss Pen?”

“I just can't have Nanny. I just can't think about what
I
need these days.”

“Well, you need your chocolate and that's a fact!”

The moment the old woman was out of the room the child was at it again. His face was creased with thought.

“Look,” he said, bargaining. “Look, I'll take mine if you don't take yours, okay?”

His sleeping pill. “If I don't?”

“I'll take mine if you don't take yours. One of us got to stay awake. Like in the army, like a sentry, okay?”

She saw that he did not mean to take his pill, was trying to trick her. “No, it isn't okay, Joey, not okay at all. You do as you please. It's your bad dream, not mine.”

He was silent, kicking at the leg of the chaise so that it jarred through her body. She stood up and reached for the zipper on her skirt but the boy didn't move, still kicking at the unfortunate chaise. “I'm going to get ready to bathe now so will you please go, Joey?”

Now he saw that the kicks he was bestowing on the chaise disturbed her and stopped. He whispered, “Kin I stay? I'll be good. I'll be quiet.”

“Of course not,” Mrs. Gore-Green said. “Really!” Her voice was knife-sharp and the boy shambled out of the room.

He glanced towards the kitchen, where he could hear
her
moving, sprinted across the big room and gained the chair where, before supper, his father had read the paper. The Queen Anne armchair was very large and, pressed back, his legs stuck out straight and made him poignantly conscious of his size. He sighed and popped his thumb into his mouth, and maybe he fell asleep, because when he looked up there
she
was at the rail of the balcony, looking at him. She didn't say it, but he knew.
“For shame, Master Joey, a big boy like you sucking his thumb! Even little Ralphie doesn't suck his thumb any more, do you, my pet?”
But at school nobody cared if big boys sucked their thumbs. Sarah said to notice how Dr. Bee sucked his pipe. She said,
“What's the difference, Joey?”
She said sometimes she sucked the end of her pen and that comforted her and Dr. Bee's pipe comforted him.
“So what?”
Sarah said. Joey said to
her
, “So what? So what?”

He tried not to remember that Sarah had gone away. She had said she'd be there, but she had gone away. If Sarah had been there … because Sarah … He did not finish the thought or know why it would have been different had Sarah been at the other end of the phone, or why she would have
done
something, but he knew she would have.

She
went down the stairs and up the stairs to Mommy's room. (He had heard water running before, but now it had stopped. He must have fallen asleep. He must not fall asleep!) He could hear
her
talking to the lady and in a minute
she
came back. His toes curled under in his shoes as
she
went past him, but
she
just went back into the kitchen. He had his thumb in his mouth, all right, but
she
just looked at him and didn't say nothing.

There were three yellow Nembutal capsules on the kitchen table. The old woman pulled one of them apart and carefully poured the contents into a paper spill made from a sheet of the kitchen memo pad. She twisted the top together and tucked it into the pocket of her skirt under her billowing apron. Then she took a small mortar and pestle and powdered sugar, cinnamon and the contents of the other two capsules. When she had asked Miss Pen—in the tub—for the sleeping pill, Miss Pen said she was so pleased she was being sensible for once. Miss Pen told her where the vial of them was, and she helped herself, as it were.

Nanny then took a chipped blue kitchen willow-pattern plate from the cupboard and laid a paper napkin on it and made two pieces of toast. While they were warm, she put on a lot of butter and, when this was at its most adhesive spread, the mixture from the mortar on the butter, and folded the edge of the paper napkin neatly around the toast. Then she washed out the mortar, dried it and ground another mixture, this time just sugar and cinnamon. She made two more pieces of toast and prepared them, but these she put on a Limoges plate and in a linen napkin. The hot chocolate was ready and she whipped it up with a French whisk and poured it into a Limoges pot to match the plate, and set it all on a tray, adding two tall narrow chocolate cups with the same rosebuds on them. She carried the tray into the big room and set it on the coffee table between the two small velvet sofas on either side of the fireplace and then knocked on the bedroom door.

“This looks delicious,” Mrs. Gore-Green said. “Where is Joey's toast, Nanny?” Because he was sitting there eying hers.

“I've left it in the kitchen, Miss Pen. That's the way they did at the School.”

“Oh. But won't you join me, Joey?” Mrs. Gore-Green chewed at her toast enthusiastically and popped the end of her middle fingers into her mouth to show it was too good to waste.

“Now, Miss Pen, we're not to coax Master Joey!”

But that child was starving. Now he was watching her sip her chocolate. How could she enjoy Nanny's delicious chocolate—she really did do it well—with that wretched child
starving
at her? “There's another cup here, Joey.…” He shook his head and popped his thumb into his mouth and sucked that. “Nanny!” she said, horrified. “Joey! So unattractive!”

Trying to placate her, he took out his thumb. “I can't help it, honest.”

“Then you can be helped to help it, can't he, Nanny?”

“You mean that bitter stuff
she
used to put on?” He wanted so much to have her on his side. He could tell it wouldn't make any difference if he told her about Dr. Bee's pipe and Sarah's pen. He could tell she didn't think much of the way it was at school.
“She
used to put it on, but I sucked it anyway, honest.”

“But it's bitter as gall! Well do I remember!”

“I sucked my thumb, anyhow.”

“Perhaps when you were a small boy, but you wouldn't now. Have you still got any of that bitter stuff, Nanny? Of course you have. Nanny never threw anything away in her life,” she said to Joey.

“Miss Pen, I am not supposed to …”

“Joey, you want to outgrow that horrid infantile habit, don't you?”

If he did what the lady wanted, she would maybe let him stay with her. Should he let
her
put the stuff on his thumb? Now he was like Simon. He didn't know which was the “imaginaries.” He told himself he'd had the bitter stuff lots of times. His throat tightened with fear but he nodded “yes” at the lady.

“See, he wants it, Nanny! Of his own free will!”

“If you say so, Miss Penelope.” In her bathroom, she poured out all except a bit of the bitter alum into the toilet and put what was in the paper spill into the bottle. She shook the bottle then, so vigorously that her big soft breasts danced. When she came back to where Miss Pen was, she held the bottle to the light and said, “I don't rightly know if there's enough left to spread it properly. Now,” she said, “you're certain you want this, Master Joey?”

With his eyes on the lady and his thumb back in his mouth until the last possible moment, Joey nodded vigorously and was rewarded with a smile from the lady. He took his thumb out of his mouth (it made a popping sound) and, as she approached, held it out to her. She gave it several applications, waiting until each was dry; when she finished, the bottle was empty.

They heard her washing the bottle at the kitchen sink. Joey sat stiffly with his hand extended, the coated thumb up like a periscope while the lady finished the chocolate, and then when she set her empty cup in the saucer, the sound seemed to spread in his empty stomach like a pebble thrown into the pond at school. The lady made a face and covered her mouth, but he could tell she was yawning.
She
came out and saw it, too, and he could tell she was glad the lady was getting sleepy. If nobody talked, the lady would fall asleep. He wet his dry lips with his tongue and tried to think of something to say, but nothing came. (
He was sleepy, too. He was sleepy, too
.) Then the phone rang and he thought,
It's Sarah. She'll know. She'll come
.

“I'll answer it,” he said to the lady, but
she
said, “Do, Master Joey.”

But it wasn't Sarah. He laid the phone on the table and
she
went to the phone. The lady was yawning again and because she was, without realizing it, Joey popped his thumb into his mouth and screwed his face up at the noxious taste but went on sucking. He didn't care.

“Yes, Miss Althea,”
she
said. “Oh, that was Master Joey.”

The lady took her hand away from her mouth and made a sad face. (But why were her eyes laughing?) She whispered, “Joey, that's my daughter ringing up. I quite forgot to leave a note saying I was coming here … isn't that dreadful of me? But when darling Nanny needs me, I even forget my own daughter! Joey! Joey!” she said, because, looking destroyed, he was sucking away at the coated thumb as if it were covered with sugar. Whatever had she said? But Nanny was making her way back. “I forgot to leave a note. Was Althea too cross to talk to me?”

“No, Miss Pen. I explained you came here because the mistress and Mr. Fane were in New York Hospital. Miss Althea quite understood.”

“I certainly hope so, Nanny. I am sorry … although she doesn't mind how often she frightens me half to death.”

“Half to death,” Joey heard, sucking and blinking. He shook his head but he blinked again.

“Joey, look at you!” Mrs. Gore-Green said. “You're falling asleep sitting up.” She wanted to talk to Nanny about Althea.

“I'm not.”

“Wouldn't it be a good idea if you bathed now so that when you do get sleepy you won't have to climb into bed all dirty? That isn't a dirty school you went to, is it, Joey?”

“It's a swell school,” he said. School. Sarah. Simon. “I'll take a bath. In the little bathroom. By myself,” he said, sternly, reminding the lady. Looking very small, blinking with sleepiness, he went across the big room to the dining gallery.

Mrs. Gore-Green wanted to tell Nanny that she couldn't imagine how it was that Althea had discovered her absence before midnight. Extraordinary Althea coming home before midnight! She wanted to tell Nanny how she stayed home alone, evening after evening, because even when she felt strong enough to go out, it was her duty to remain and make certain that Althea didn't have a mother-empty flat at her disposal. But now, although the boy had disappeared, darling Nanny couldn't hear her because she seemed to be following the child's progress. Then Nanny turned to her, anxiety all over her darling face. Oh, now what? Mrs. Gore-Green thought, feeling cheated.

Then she understood. This ridiculous school had said he might bath himself, but she knew (how well she knew!) how this outraged all the tenets of Nannydom! Nanny turned to her then and the glance must mean that since the boy was so set against Nanny's supervising, Nanny hoped
she
would volunteer, but really, really, wasn't that asking too much! (With Nanny only children counted, Mrs. Gore-Green decided disconsolately. Nanny would cheerfully go to the stake for a child and expected everyone to be like her!) Mrs. Gore-Green pretended she didn't notice Nanny's distress signal, and insisted on talking about Althea, but it took two to gossip. After a while she had to give up. “Oh, Nanny, I can read you like a book! ‘Is he washing behind the ears? Is he neglecting his grubby little knees? Perhaps he's only playing in the bath?'”

Nanny bunched her mouth. “You've got me to the life, Miss Pen, but you can't bathe children for fifty-five years without it becoming second nature.”

“Then do go in and see to him and then come back so we can have a proper chat.”

“I can't, Miss Pen!” Nanny unbunched her mouth, folding her lips, shocked. “You heard that doctor from the School.”

“That doctor is ridiculous, Nanny! In fact I consider him reprehensible! Giving a child that age sleeping pills!”

“That's just it, Miss Pen! I'm fair worried about Master Joey bathing himself tonight. You saw him, halfway to Dreamland already, poor little chap … unnaturally sleepy I would say knowing the child.
Drugged!
Oh, Miss Pen, he's such a sly child he might have took them without saying, and then if he fell asleep in the bath?” She wrung her soft old hands. “I've known children to fall asleep in their baths and …” she turned her face away. “Miss Pen … if something should happen to this little chap, too!”