It was with some effort that I arranged a suitable face to wear above my linen frock for the picnic, an effort which I surmised from Donald’s greeting was not wholly successful.
‘You look dreadful, Mother,’ he said, reminding me very much that he was his father’s son.
‘You don’t half need this picnic,’ said Teddy. ‘But it’s a shame you’re so big or you could come in the trap with us instead of the boring old motor. Now I wonder…’ He looked at the picnic things and unflatteringly at my figure, gauging their relative weights, I supposed, but Alec nipped this firmly in the bud.
‘No, we’re not getting it all out again when we’ve just spent such ages stuffing it in,’ he said. ‘You get in and drive the pony with Donald, and Mummy and I will crawl along behind and tell you what we think of your prowess.’ This proved the magic touch, although I pitied the poor pony, envisaging much more liberal application of the whip if the boys were playing to the gallery. Still it gave Alec and me talking time as we puttered along in their dust.
‘You do look ropy, actually, Dan,’ said Alec as we set off.
‘It’s just…’ I began, but could not go on. ‘I really am all right. In fact, it’s being all right that’s so shocking.’
‘I know,’ said Alec. ‘I remember this from the war. One gets used to more and more and more until one is quite happy to countenance things which would have been the stuff of nightmares in normal life. I remember -’ He broke off.
‘Please tell me, ‘I said. ‘I shan’t mind, because I know exactly what you mean. Every so often I hear myself saying “But since Lena killed her child that must mean…” and I think I shall faint or burst out laughing because it seems so impossible.’
‘Faint, if you’ve got a choice,’ said Alec. ‘When one starts to laugh one’s really in trouble. What I was going to… I once had this pie. It was in the trench, you know, and instead of the usual dried beef and mouldy biscuits, somehow from somewhere we had got these pies. Anyway, I found myself thinking that yes, I knew I had to do something about old Pinner, Sergeant Pinner, I knew he could not stay there for ever, but I was bloody well going to have my pie first and then a fag and then I should take him away, and it wasn’t as if he could see me anyway because his head was blown off all over the shop and that made it better. I started to laugh then and couldn’t stop, kept going until the whites of my eyes were red all over with burst blood vessels and then Pinner and I had to be carted off together. Look, one of them is still a bit pink.’ He turned towards me and opened his eyes very wide close to mine. I could not see anything in the dim interior of the motor car, but I nodded anyway.
‘So,’ said Alec, horridly brisk all of a sudden, ‘let’s at least see if you’ve been wading through the same horrors as me this morning, shall we? I concluded that… that… the nature of the attack points towards its being Lena’s sudden discovery that Cara was with child which brought it on.’
‘Yes,’ I said thankfully. ‘That on top of all the strain of what she was about to do. And, as well, there’s the fact that she is, must be, an extremely unstable woman. In our midst all the time, looking perfectly normal.’
And yet. Lena’s madness seemed to come and go so conveniently. Mad evil thoughts, and cool sane plans. Mad, ugly rages, and calm, brave solutions. I had heard of people who had hordes of unwanted guests inside their heads, independent agents each ploughing a different furrow, and I wondered again for a moment if Lena’s madness could be of this type. But no. Even when she acted like two separate people, one cleared up after the other. They were in it together.
The boys had veered off the lane and were trotting the pony over the rough ground towards our favourite picnic spot, Donald driving the trap and Teddy, totally unnecessarily, standing up waving his arms to show us where they were going. We turned and began to bump over the grass behind them.
‘What about the diamonds?’ said Alec ‘Have you got anywhere with that?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘At best a lot of incompatible wisps.’
‘Me too, ‘said Alec. ‘Such as what makes Lena so sure that the Esslemonts’ ball is anything to do with it? After all, Cara told you that the jewels were in and out the bank more than once since then. To be cleaned and valued and have pastes made.’
‘Everything except to be worn,’ I agreed. ‘If I had anything as beautiful as those I should wear them all the time. Every day. I should be wearing them now.’ I was forcibly trying to lighten the mood as we drew to a halt and got ready to jump down and rejoin the children.
Mrs Tilling might not have been up all night in preparation of the feast but that was clearly the effect she wanted to achieve. As well as tomato sandwiches there were chicken legs and a glorious raised game pie which Alec and the boys fell upon but which I, still trying to dispel the story of Sergeant Pinner, could not touch. A splendid luncheon, then, which would have been quite delicious freshly served in the dining room or even on the terrace, instead of damp and dishevelled on the ground a mile from home. The hardboiled eggs, as ever, were taken by Teddy and shied into the river.
‘Where they belong!’ he cried after them. ‘Mummy, why can’t you tell her? It’s a fearful waste of eggs apart from anything else.’
‘Write me the script, Teddy darling, and I shall deliver it with feeling,’ I said. ‘And if you come up with a winner we can adjust it slightly and I’ll use it to stamp out my birthday cologne from Granny.’
After lunch, a row broke out.
‘Oh, come on, Mother,’ said Donald, ‘What’s the point of coming if you’re not going to join in?’
‘I am not playing hide and seek,’ I insisted. ‘There’s nowhere to hide.’
‘There’s heaps of places to hide,’ said Teddy with his arms spread to the heavens and a look of incredulity on his face. ‘Look around. The riverbank, dozens of good trees, long grass…’
‘You’re wearing a pillow case anyway,’ said Donald, looking disparagingly at my rather crumpled linen, ‘so it can go in the tub for a boiling. Come on!’
‘We’ll let Mr Osborne decide,’ I said, and turned pleadingly to Alec.
‘I say let’s,’ said Alec, leaping to his feet and brushing away pie crumbs. ‘You boys can hunt for Mummy and me first.’
The boys draped themselves over the bonnet of the motor car and started counting. Around the next bend in the river, I knew, was an ancient and rather sickly beech tree with a hollow in its trunk and I thought Alec and I might fit there, snugly but not beyond the boundary of propriety, so I dragged him off in that direction. When we got there, however, I saw that this hollow – so commodious in my recollection – was actually only the size of an average bathtub, and while it might have done very well for one of the boys and myself, it was out of the question for Alec and me. He looked at it with one raised eyebrow and then scanned the upper branches.
‘You get in there, Dan,’ he said, chivalrously kicking out some old leaves, ‘and I’ll shin up a bit and keep a lookout.’
‘It won’t be long, I hope. This is bound to be the first place they look.’
Resigning myself to the ruin of my frock and to Grant’s censure on my return I backed myself in and snuggled down, while Alec, with a great deal of grunting and rustling of leaves, climbed into the crown above me.