The Nanny (18 page)

“I know my way about that bit of kitchen blindfolded,” Nanny said scornfully. “Go back to bed, Miss Pen.”

“No, I think I'll have a cup with you, Nanny.”

“And keep yourself up the blessed night?”

It was true. Mrs. Gore-Green hesitated.

“Now, go back to bed. I'll just have my tea and sit here awhile so I won't disturb you before you're off again.”

Mrs. Gore-Green nodded and started back to her room and Nanny disappeared again into the dark kitchen, but, in front of the bookshelves, unable, for some reason to concentrate enough to read the titles, Mrs. Gore-Green tapped her lip, trying to think what was troubling her. She pulled out a paperback mystery. A mystery. Something missing, the mystery of the missing something. But it wasn't until she was up the stairs to the bedroom passage that she realized what the something which had been missing was. It was the pillow which Nanny had laid on the dining room table.

Mrs. Gore-Green went into the bedroom she was using. Of course the pillow wasn't on the dining room table any longer. “The pillow,” she told herself, “Nanny's own pillow with her own ruffled pillow case is back on Nanny's bed.” She sighed at herself. Was she being jealous again? Did she really resent it so much if Nanny had given the boy the pillow after all? It must be jealousy, or at least some emotion stronger than idle curiosity, because an invalid learned not to satisfy idle curiosity at the expense of too much effort, but back she was going, off her bed, across the passage. There she was switching the light on, but then could not see Nanny's bed from the door because the old nursery screen was up around it, just as if there were still a child in this room.

And across the room she went. No. The pillow wasn't there. It wasn't behind the screen on the bed. Nanny had given him the pillow. No mystery. Nanny had broken her word to her to please that child. And she certainly wasn't going to give Nanny the opportunity to call her a dog in the manger again. She had finished with pillows forever.

Mrs. Gore-Green went back across the room again and, as she passed the white chest of drawers, noticed how Mrs. Fane's photograph in its silver frame hid the ones of Mummy as a child and of Althea when she was there, and the one of herself at about the same age, with the infant Drusie. Was she jealous of this, too? That she and Althea and Mummy and Drusie were “banish-ed, banish-ed” as Hamlet said? But they had to be banished—no,
deposed
was the better word. They had to be
deposed
since the essence of Nannydom was, “The King is dead, long live the King.” The reigning child was always King.

She was rather pleased with this conceit and stood staring at the picture of Mrs. Fane until it occurred to her that it, the reigning picture, was not of a child. But she is there, Mrs. Gore-Green told herself, because she is the only child poor Nanny's had since the one small boy was killed and the other taken away from her. She's in lieu of a child, and at the same time, Nanny's last child.

Mrs. Gore-Green shook her head at the pretty face in the silver frame. But actually, she thought, coming closer to the picture, Mrs. Fane is the perfect child since, unlike Mummy and Guy and Drusie and me and Althea, she would never not need Nanny. Or, she corrected herself, would be perfect except for the boy Joey. Because Joey would lose Nanny her last child. His presence would
banish
Nanny. He would force his mother to leave Nanny. How perfect otherwise, Mrs. Gore-Green thought, held by the pretty smiling face, framed by the soft hair which Nanny brushed, how perfect, since Nanny wasn't up to the care of an authentic child—all that running about after—all those modern ways which Nanny was too old a dog to learn! Now, if there were no little Joey, and Althea and Mr. Fane paired off, that would, as Nanny had pointed out to Althea, leave no one for poor little Mrs. Fane except Nanny. Yes, if there were no Joey, Nanny would have had the perfect job which would have lasted until she died!

And now she had brought up the Althea thing, which she had promised herself not to think about tonight. Nanny had known about Althea and Mr. Fane. When Althea rang up tonight, Nanny had told Althea to go to the hospital even though she
knew
Mrs. Fane was there and so might find out about
l'affaire
. Nanny knows Althea's tongue hangs loose at both ends, so one might say that Nanny had arranged for Althea and Mr. Fane to join up and leave her poor little Madam for her, which made sense, always if there hadn't been that one inconvenient stubborn little boy.

“She tried to drown me. She sneaked in and pushed me down. If I diden have soap all over me, she'd a got me.”

“Tell me the reason, Joey. Just tell me the reason Nanny would do such a horrible, horrible thing. There has to be a reason for murder.”
Well, now there was a reason for murder. “
If what you say is true, would Nanny have asked me to come here? Nanny said herself I was a witness.”

And I know the answer to that, too, she thought. The answer to that is that Nanny knows I am so egocentric that I see nobody but myself and wouldn't notice a murder under my own nose!
Overlaid!
The word screamed inside her, the Nanny word
overlaid
. “That was why she never would give me a pillow. Because I might
overlay
myself,” she said. “Even when I was Joey's age. Nanny used to say she knew quite grown-up children to overlay themselves with pillows and be smothered!”

Mrs. Gore-Green held on to the chest of drawers so as not to fall. And that was what her nightmare had been about. She had been smothered by—someone had put her into a box. A coffin? Something pinned down her arms, her legs. She had kicked and struggled while someone bending over the lid of the box said, “T—t—t, naughty!” Nanny had bent over saying, “T—t—t, naughty!” to the unhappy infant in the pram.

In the kitchen, the trunk of Nanny's big body still faced the door to Joey's room, but above the waist she twisted around and—oh, God—she was holding the pillow in both hands like a weapon.
Like a weapon
. “What are you doing with that pillow?” Mrs. Gore-Green shouted. “Overlaid! Overlaid! You wouldn't give me a pillow because you said I might overlay myself and smother!”

“Hush, Miss Pen. You'll wake the boy.”

But Nanny wasn't afraid that the boy would wake sufficiently to escape this time. How was that? “You're going to smother him with the pillow! You did try to drown him! He wasn't lying!” She ran to the old woman and began to tug at the pillow. “I won't let you,” she said, and felt a fingernail tear and the blood come to her lip where she had bitten down on it, but she wouldn't release her grip.

“Leave go, Miss Pen, do!”

Nanny's eyes were veiled, oddly meditative, as if she had the strength to fight and think. And she, she was their old Skye terrier, Tom, worrying a mastiff. She wouldn't release her grip any more than Tom would have, and there was a ripping sound, and, gasping, she fell to the floor. “No!” she thought, she screamed, seeing the big loose-fleshed face above her, seeing those firm lips set themselves in the old way just before the room, the building, the stony world, fell on her eggshell breastbone and crushed it.

Then the agony passed and all there was was the cold sweat of it. Mrs. Gore-Green heard her shallow breathing skim the air, then deepen, deepen, plunge as deep as the void where the world had been. She saw Nanny move silently to the door of the servant's room and put her ear to the door. My pills, she thought. That was another reason I must come here tonight, because she wanted my pills to give the boy. She knew that doctor had given him Nembutal. She said so. Of course Nanny didn't want them for herself. Never would take a sleeping capsule. Weakness, she calls it. I am weak, she believes. The boy had to be doped with my capsules, the poor baby. Oh, on the cinnamon toast, she thought. She made me ask him to eat his toast and I did, I did!

Nanny laid the rumpled pillow on the kitchen table before she bent over her. Nanny listened to something, to the way she was breathing, shallow, deeper, deeper, too deep, stop. Shallow, shallow, deeper … Nanny stared closely at her face and Mrs. Gore-Green knew that her lips were blue and that Nanny was studying the blue of her lips as a sailor studies a blue patch of sky to tell him what to expect. Then Nanny lifted her in her arms and, huffing, lurching from side to side, carried her out of the kitchen and across the gallery, the living room, and then she was back in bed again.

Nanny sat on the twin bed to catch her breath, rubbing her thick arms. “See what you've done now, Miss Pen!” She wagged her head and, still huffing, reached across and took her wrist.

Mrs. Gore-Green moaned. “You mustn't,” she whispered. “No.”

“Now, Miss Pen,” the old woman said, reasonably, “don't take on so. If you knew what I knew, you'd know something must be done.”

Shuddering, Mrs. Gore-Green heard that
“something.” “Something must be done.”

“There's simply no hope for a child like that, Miss Pen! He'll do the same thing again, like the bad penny, ready to do more mischief. And no Nanny to keep an eye on him, either! Oh, I do wish you'd heard the doctor, Miss Pen! Now that wasn't my doing. Who was it sent me to the doctor downstairs and on just that day when there was another lady there to see him about that girl of his? This lady told me things you wouldn't believe, Miss Pen! She said she didn't either until Dr. Meducca gave her this book to read about psychopaths. Because that's what Master Joey is! A little psychopath!

“If you'd read that book, you'd have seen this is the only way. It's all down in the book. Bad he was born and bad he'll be until the last breath! I had the training of Master Joey for two years.” She pressed her lips together. “A willful stubborn child!”

“That's what she used to call me,” Mrs. Gore-Green told herself, breathing, shallow, shallow, deeper, deeper.

“There's trouble, I said! For he defied me from the first, Miss Pen. He set himself against Nanny!”

So did I before I was ill. And she did something about me, too, didn't she? Wasn't I sent away to the nursing home?

“And then, if you please, Mr. Fane takes it into his head Madam must take care of the child without Nanny! Mr. Fane didn't like my ways. Oh, I saw that, and if it had been God's will, I would have bowed my head. I know my duty, I suppose! But wasn't it a sign when I took that note and knew that he and Miss Althea were in love? God in His mysterious ways His wonders to perform. That I found that note was a sign I wasn't to bow my head, Miss Pen! Mr. Fane hadn't ought to send me away when any day he might go off with Miss Althea and then who would protect Madam? I had to stay.

“Now, if Master Joey hadn't been so stubborn! If he'd been willing that I should look after him and Madam! So be it! I would have done my best as I always have, but Master Joey wouldn't have it that way! No, Nanny must go and leave poor little Madam to his tender mercies! So I had to do something, hadn't I?”

Her big face shone with righteousness.

“You don't think my poor little Madam could cope, do you, Miss Pen? Not any more than poor little Master Ralphie could. No, someone had to cope, and as I see it, I'm the one.”

If she had all her strength back, if she had a silver tongue—all her strength and all her eloquence couldn't reverse this old woman. What she planned to do was right. It was meant. Thy will, not mine. “Strike her dead,” she prayed. “Why don't You strike her dead? Nothing else will stop her!” She did not faint, could not faint.

The old woman took a handkerchief from the pocket of her robe. Mrs. Gore-Green tried to turn away, refusing to be touched by her. She had, she thought, her own handkerchief in her hand and lifted her hand to show, but the old woman, her stays creaking, bent and wiped the bloody foam from the corners of her mouth. Then, absent-mindedly, doing it while she talked, she pulled the bed covers up and smoothed them.

“Oh, dear, you're bad, Miss Pen! You shouldn't have fought with Nanny. You've killed yourself with your willfulness this time!”

She had broken out in a sweat again and, to forestall Nanny, she touched her face with her handkerchief, to dry the sweat.

“I'll do it, Miss Pen. Why, what's that in your hand, dear?”

That was when Mrs. Gore-Green saw that it was a piece of the ruffle on Nanny's pillowcase. Mrs. Gore-Green slowly made her hand drop and clench around the bit of ruffle. “Handkerchief.” With infinite trouble, she got the word out.

The old woman walked to the window. “You know what, Miss Pen? It shall be suicide, after all, as the bath was to have been, and not an overlaying, not an accident, do you see? I will say that I warned Master Joey that with your poor heart you couldn't cope with his naughtiness, but he wouldn't listen to poor old Nanny. When would he ever listen to Nanny? No, he
would
go on at you and torment you and keep you from your rest, and your poor heart couldn't stand it and you took a fit.

“I will say that the child understands he killed you, the same as he knew he had killed Master Ralphie. He saw you die, I will say, because when you took the fit I had to attend to you, Miss Pen, didn't I? I couldn't trouble with what Master Joey saw or didn't see. Ah, it was Master Ralphie all over again, I'll say, only—” she creaked forward and smoothed back Miss Pen's faded hair, wet with the cold sweating—“only this time he'd be that frightened, see? This time he'd be afraid they'd do more than send him to a school where his punishment was his wish was law!” She straightened up and wiped her hand, damp from Miss Penelope's hair, on the dark red robe. “You saw that thick rope in Master Joey's room, Miss Pen? Madam herself was terrified the boy might hang himself with the rope we found in my closet. She took that away but that school went and gave him another and said he could keep it by him. A thick, dangerous rope like that, if you please!