Free Rose in Darkness by Christianna Brand Page B

work and trouble. ‘Well, you know what our young lady is about a picnic. Them little soft rolls spread with Lipter cheese. Wouldn’t touch them if you gave them to her in the house, but for a picnic—Lipter cheese it has to be. “But, petty,” I says to her, “Nanny hasn’t got any Lipter cheese.” “You can get it in the shop,” she says; and Sunday, but no flies on our young Madam, “The dellycatessing’s open on Sundays,” she says. Well, I ‘d been up half the night, dear, what with my tooth, but never mind that, down to the shop poor Nanny has to go, trit trot...’
    ‘And after all that,’ said Ena, unwilling to pass on to further unlimited detail, ‘he goes off and leaves you on your owns?’
    ‘Yes, and what am I supposed to do?’ said Nanny, ‘—sitting there on a bit of tarpauling with the picnic basket—nothing but a lot of grass and trees, and as for river, well, I don’t call that a river and about half a mile away, right down there below us.’ Nanny came from the wilds of Essex and had a deep contempt—especially now, having gone to all the grand restrongs with Madam—for any but the urban scene. ‘Not even a decent shop, to look in at the windows.’
    ‘Poor Nan ! And how long did he leave you there?’
    ‘Oh, well,’ admitted Nanny, and it did come a bit flat at the end of all that, ‘I can’t say it was so very long. I suppose it just seemed longer. “ You bin a long time,” I said to him and “A long time?” he says, “Exactly ten minutes,” he says, cross as two sticks he was: I thought to meself, so she hadn’t waited in for you after all? I thought—’
    Ten minutes. So if they’d been up at the top there, it must be one of the houses just across Blackheath—well, just somewhere round there, anyway. ‘It really was ten minutes, Nanny?’
    ‘Yes, well, about that,’ confessed Nanny. ‘I looked at me watch. And then what d’you think? “I don’t think much of this place,” says Ena Mee, well, pore child, I don’t blame her; and, “Oh, don’t you?” he says, calm as a cucumber, after having driven all that way. “Well, let’s do something else,” he says, “let’s go to the zoo, after all, we can have our picnic on a bench there,” he says, “and give what’s left to the monkeys...” All that sweat down to the shops for the Lipter cheese!—and then of course she doesn’t eat two bites of it, much rather feed it to them rangatangs.’
    ‘So he didn’t see his bird after all?’ said Ena, disappointed.
    ‘Well, no.’ And what was more, added Nanny, feeling that one might as well get it over with in one go, she might have been wrong after all about his going off to see Her every Saturday evening. He really did seem to have bin to the cinema; last night anyway. She’d played a trick or two on him and he’d never got caught out, not once.
    ‘Oh, lor’!’ said Ena, gloomily. She’d seen a blue mink stole and Ronnie wouldn’t divvy up: she’d been counting on a spot more blackmailing of Phin, via Ena Mee.

7
    B Y SEVEN O’CLOCK, THE police had gone—they had all gone, Etho and Nan, loving and clucking, and Sofa, recovered from hysteria and full of apologies, and Pony, profuse with departing bows of sympathy and regret and Charley; and now the euphoria had long passed away and Sari sat with Rufie on the great, endless couch, arms round one another, knees up to their chins like two sad monkeys huddled together on a branch. ‘Rufie, it is true, it is true, the tree did fall, I did meet the man, I did swap cars with him...’
    Checks had been made with the local police and it was a fact that at some time before half-past ten the night before, the great elm had fallen. ‘Dovey-darling, you don’t think—? Well, I mean, yes, we know a tree did fall across the road. Suppose—? Well, if you’d just that second passed, it would have been such a ghastly shock, don’t you think you might have—well, imagined in your mind what would have