Nursery Crimes Part 1

Nursery Crimes.

B.M. Gill.

One.

When she was quite sure that Willie was dead Zanny began to scream. She screamed shrilly and with all her might. In all her six years she had never screamed so loud. Even the goldfish were scared. They swam around Willie's submerged yellow head like aquatic dancers caught off-beat.

One frantically nibbled the lobe of Willie's ear before Zanny pushed it away with the toe of her sandal.

She climbed out of the goldfish pond, wet to the armpits, and roared l.u.s.tily once more, her face upturned to the sky. Spitfires returning to base waggled a victory roll as they burst through cream c.u.mulus, their engines making a staccato racket as if noise were released in small explosive quant.i.ties. Temporarily silenced, Zanny watched the squadron depart. Daddy flew aeroplanes, too. Bigger than those. Daddy flew bombers. She began screaming again. For Mummy.

Clare Moncrief was in bed with the local doctor when Zanny's screams shattered the post-coital calm.

Usually she and Peter made love when Zanny and the two little evacuees from Birmingham -- Dolly and her brother, Willie -- were off the premises in the infants school down in the village. But today was a holiday and the children were spending the morning in the garden, playing peacefully. Until now.

"It seems," she said, hurriedly pulling on her clothes, "that my daughter needs me."

"Rather urgently," Doctor Tolliston agreed, suppressing his annoyance. He had three children of his own and knew how to interpret the varying degrees of vocalised distress.

He was the first to arrive at the goldfish pond, but Clare was the first to look in.

"Dear G.o.d!" she gasped.

Later that day Graham Moncrief arranged compa.s.sionate leave from his air base and arrived home in Wales at seven o'clock. Zanny heard him going into Dolly's bedroom and then, after spending some time with her, he came into hers.

She was delighted to see him. "Hi, Daddy!"

"Hi, Zanny!"

He kissed her and she twined her arms around him and hugged him.

"Mummy said you were coming. I stayed awake specially. You shouldn't have gone to see Dolly first. I love you. Love you. Love you!"

Graham released himself gently and sat beside her on the bed. How in h.e.l.l, he wondered, was he to broach this most appalling subject and keep relatively calm? The knowledge that Clare, sick with worry, was waiting downstairs while he tried to find the truth of the horrendous business, didn't help. The truth might not be desirable. Quite the reverse. So why seek it? But he must.

"Dolly is very sad about her brother's accident, darling. We all are." He did a little careful probing. "When little boys of four fall into ponds - shallow ponds - they usually get out again. I wonder why Willie didn't?"

Zanny arranged her pillow more comfortably and didn't answer.

"Don't you know, sweetheart?"

She smiled and shook her head.

He tried the oblique approach. "I see that Monkey has crept back into your bed." The cuddly toy had been given to Willie, he remembered, as a forcible peace offering after Willie had poked his tongue out at Zanny and she had retaliated by jabbing her finger in his eye.

"You must be kind to your little guests," Clare had said, sounding impossibly prissy.

"b.u.g.g.e.r!" Zanny had replied, "and I learnt it from him."

Zanny rubbed Monkey's ear up and down her cheek. Monkey was hers again now. For ever. She said she had fetched it from Willie's bed.

"Willie won't be sleeping there any more, Zanny."

"No," Zanny agreed happily. "His body will be put in a box - like Mick. And his soul will go to Jesus - like Mick." Mick, the labrador, had died of old age six months ago. She asked her father if Willie would be buried in the garden.

At that point Graham nearly lost his cool and it was a moment or two before he could answer. He told her that only animals and birds were buried in the garden and that Willie would be buried in a cemetery.

"With his Mummy and Daddy?"

Graham said yes. Willie's parents had been killed in an air-raid and you didn't bury bits, but you didn't hara.s.s your six-year-old daughter with that kind of information.

Zanny chewed Monkey's toe. It was a beautiful long toe like a hand. When she had caught Willie chewing it she had pushed it down his throat and then withdrawn it quickly before he was sick.

"That's all right then," she said.

"What is, Zanny?"

"Willie will have his Mummy and Daddy -- and Jesus -and Mick."

"Well - yes - but - " Graham got up from the bed and began roaming around the room. He had slept in this same room when he was a boy. There should be something comforting about the place. The walls should be steeped in normal happy memories. His father had beaten him here once at the age of ten for drinking an illicit whisky. Sane - occasionally painful - pre-war days. No evacuees. No Willie.

No beloved daughter with honey curls and eyes as serenely blue as the summer evening sky.

Oh, Christ.

"Darling, you did like Willie, didn't you?"

The clouding of the serenely blue eyes answered him. He interrupted the truth before the lips formed it.

"Well, of course you did. He was a nice little boy. Awkward at times -- you quarrelled at times -- well, naturally. But you liked him. You liked him like you would a brother."

He went and sat on the bed again and took her hand in his. A ridiculously small hand, though Willie's had been smaller.

"You know what policemen are, don't you, darling?"

"Good, kind men who tell you the time and find you when you're lost," Zanny parroted.

Graham stroked her hand. "And ask questions about little boys who run too fast and fall into goldfish ponds." He looked closely at her - and wished he hadn't. She couldn't dissimulate. She didn't even try.

"Zanny," he spoke urgently, "when the good, kind policeman comes here tomorrow and asks you questions about Willie you won't tell him anything silly, will you?"

"No, Daddy, of course not."

"Remember you liked him very much. You didn't push him - or anything. You are very sad about the accident. You did your best to get him out of the pond, but you couldn't."

The fact that Willie was small for his age, and frail, was something the police might not think about. Anyway, Zanny hadn't been expected to save him.

It seemed wise to leave it at that. Well, there was nothing more he could do, d.a.m.n it!