Nursery Crimes Part 2

"Of your ma's comfray oil. I aint wet meself. I aint wet meself for days."

"You've ruined one mattress," Zanny said in a fair imitation of Mummy when Mummy had believed herself out of earshot. "And mattresses," she went on, "don't grow on trees."

The vision this created held them both silent for a moment or two. "They 'ang you from trees," Dolly said at last, moulding the conversation the way she wanted it.

Zanny suddenly realised what ang meant. She said with deep sarcasm. "Hang. Huh - huh - huh. Huh -hang. Apples hang from trees. Conkers hang from trees."

"Little girls do, too," Dolly said inexorably.

She cuddled closer to Zanny. "You're fat - Zanny Fatty. No wonder little Willie drownded. You put your fat b.u.m on 'is 'ead."

"b.u.m," Zanny said, denying nothing because it was useless to deny it, "is rude."

"Better'n bein' dead."

This was incontrovertible.

Zanny for the first time in her life imagined herself being dead. Horribly mutilated and dead. Dead as a pig's head on a butcher's slab. With an apple in its mouth. Why did they put apples in pigs' mouths? Why not b.a.l.l.s - or wooden tops - or Christmas bells? If they put something in her mouth, what would they put? Despite her fear, sleep was buzzing in her head like a bluebottle.

"Your doll's pram will do," Dolly said.

That was daft. In Dolly's language - plain, bleedin' daft. They'd have to unhinge her jaw for a start. It was a big pram with a hood.

"It would never go in," she said.

"In where?"

"My mouth."

Dolly, intent on grabbing Zanny back from the portals of sleep, jabbed her in the ribs.

"It's my mouth we're talkin' about," she said fiercely. "Keepin" it shut. I, don't want to eat your bloomin' pram." She giggled. "Soft, aren't you - funny in the 'ead -- silly Zanny. You gimme your pram and I won't say nothin' to the nice, kind perliceman tomorrer."

Zanny spiralling down into sleep clung on to what seemed a golden, gauzy promise of reprieve. It was better to have one's stomach and one's head and one's neck than to have a beautiful doll's perambulator. Let Dolly have it. She didn't care. Well, not much. In any case she wouldn't have it for long.

"All right," she agreed.

Dolly, overjoyed, leaned over and kissed her. "Thank you very much, Zanny. Thank you very much indeed." It was a parody of Mummy, not intended, but clearly and very distinctly Mummy.

Zanny, disconcerted, wiped off the kiss.

Willie had wiped off kisses.

Willie in a box a long way away.

Willie swinging from an apple tree in heaven. Picking apples for Jesus.

Goodbye, Willie.

Zanny pushed Monkey's thumb in her mouth and slept.

The next morning Daddy appeared at breakfast in his uniform. Zanny liked his Squadron Leader uniform very much, but Daddy on his rare periods of leave got out of it in double quick time and slouched around in corduroy trousers and a jersey. Zanny sensed that Daddy didn't like the war as much as Mummy liked the war, not that Mummy ever said she liked it, she just glowed quietly and smiled secretly even though her back kept on hurting and her doctor friend had to keep on coming to make it better. The fact that it didn't hurt when Daddy was there was puzzling. Perhaps Daddy knew how to make it better, too. He was a wonderful, kind, nice Daddy. Zanny, a finger of toast in her hand, smiled lovingly at him across the breakfast table.

Oh, G.o.d, Graham groaned, looking at her. When a beloved kitten suddenly developed tiger tendencies what could you do? Produce a gun? He and Clare had discussed strategy for several hours during the night. The s.e.xual act, normally long drawn out and pleasurable, had been concluded in a matter of minutes. The spectre of Tolliston might have hovered briefly in the wings, but the drama in the centre of the stage was almost wholly to blame.

Zanny was one h.e.l.l of a problem.

You coupled. You produced a child. All yellow curls and sweetness. And then she went and did this to you -or more accurately, she did it to little Willie.

He asked Clare if Zanny had shown any violent tendencies before Willie and Dolly had arrived. Clare, who up until now had m.u.f.fled the truth, much as black-out curtains m.u.f.fled the light, allowed it to be stated clearly so that all the dangers were revealed.

"On her fifth birthday party she stuck a fork into Jean Thompson because Jean blew out the candles on her cake. She had to have three st.i.tches." She sensed that Graham was grinning in the darkness. "All right-Jean is an odious child and her parents are worse - but she's got a scar and it shows."

She went on to recount several other episodes, the last of which had involved shoving eight-year-old Marjorie's finger into the mangle because she had eaten all of Zanny's sweet ration.

It was all very normal. That was the sort of thing that children did. But they stopped short of murder. Perhaps by the grace of G.o.d? Perhaps Zanny was just unlucky. Just that much too strong. Willie that much too weak.

"The common denominator, as I see it," Graham said, "is that Zanny was dispossessed of a monkey. Of the blowing out of candles. Of sweets. She's got her b.l.o.o.d.y monkey back - make sure that everything of Zanny's remains Zanny's. And get Dolly packed back to Birmingham."

Clare had argued that it was her moral duty to have evacuees and that if Dolly went more would be billeted on her. "And what can I say in refusal? That my daughter is going to pick them off one by one?"

The truth, they both agreed, whilst an effective deterrent to the appalling nuisance of having strangers' children around the place, was better left unsaid. Silence and vigilance were the order of the day.

Detective Inspector Humphreys and Sergeant Pritchard arrived at eleven o'clock. Their elderly Austin Seven wound its way up the drive with a degree of reluctance and much belching of exhaust fumes. Zanny, used to seeing the sergeant on his bike, believed he had been promoted to four wheels on her account and felt a glow of pride. Mummy, who was brus.h.i.+ng her hair prior to putting pink ribbons in it, said something under her breath that Zanny didn't hear, and then she knotted the ribbons hastily and crookedly and patted Zanny on the cheek.

The child, Clare thought, looked lovely.

Dolly didn't look too bad either. Her ribbon was a dark blue and she had had more time with it.

As she had groomed the two little girls for the interview she had brainwashed them to the best of her ability. Brainwas.h.i.+ng was Graham's name for it and new to her. But it was apt. It fitted. She hoped it worked. Accident, she kept saying - accident - accident.

Graham ushered the two policemen into the living room after the bell had rung a couple of times and it had occurred to him that it was up to him to answer it. Sarah, the maid, had just taken a job in the munitions factory where the wages were somewhat better. The war had caused domestic disruptions and social change which took a little getting used to.

He indicated the chintz-covered sofa in the window recess and told them politely to sit. An offer of a drink came next. They declined.

The three uniformed men looked at each other in silence for several moments. That he belonged to the community gave Graham a certain feeling of ease. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather had lived in the village and though that didn't qualify for total acceptance (their roots, way back in time, were in Northumberland not Wales) it certainly helped. Having owned this house for two generations helped, too. Families, like ancient monuments, became part of the scenery. One didn't kick the foundations.

Graham launched into his prepared speech of regret and then went on to embellish it with tales of little Willie's wildness. The slums of Birmingham, he implied, especially in war-time, bred a toughness of spirit even in a four-year-old. He had been used to freedom and having his own way. He couldn't be watched constantly. He catalogued all the minor accidents that Willie had survived and then went on to speak of the major one that he hadn't. It was a difficult thesis to conclude -- that little Willie, little desperado Willie, had swaggered through bomb-torn Birmingham and emerged whole only to drown himself in two feet of water in a goldfish pond in Wales - but he had to try.

"He ran in at some speed, fell and struck his head hard." Graham raised his voice a little, noticing Zanny at the door. "As my daughter will tell you."

Both the police officers rose as Clare came into the room flanked by the two little girls. Sam Humphreys, despite a lifetime of police work, had a streak of sentimentality and thought the trio quite the prettiest picture he had seen for a long time. Mrs. Moncrief with her shoulder length brown hair wore a dress of Madon na blue which exactly matched her eyes -- her questioning, anxious, troubled eyes. Her child, Susannah, plump and pretty in pink with matching bows, stood gravely at her side. The other child, not prepossessing, but clean and neat and obviously cared for with Christian charity, was on her right. British motherhood, Sam thought, at its finest and most beautiful. At this particular moment it couldn't even be bettered by Welsh motherhood, and that was saying a great deal.

Sergeant Pritchard, also man enough to be impressed, mentally congratulated Peter Tolliston on making hay in this particular pasture and wondered if Squadron Leader Moncrief knew. He felt a touch of sympathy for him. h.e.l.l of a war, this. You metamorphosed yourself from a likeable lad with a degree in accountancy into an airman with a flashy uniform (why was he wearing it now?) who would deal out death and destruction while your wife cuckolded you and your evacuee got drowned. He imagined - quite accurately - what Clare Moncrief was doing while Willie Morton had met his end and his sympathy for her husband grew. He had sired a nice kid there. No doubt about the paternity, at least.

He smiled at Zanny.

Zanny, relieved, smiled back.