Dance to Your Daddy

'No, it is not. She was married to me in the name of Rosamund. She chooses to call herself Trilby.'

Dame Beatrice had heard the girl's own version of this, but she made no comment except to say:

'Well, it is quite a pretty name, I suppose, if one dissociates it nowadays from men's hats.'

'It makes no odds what she calls herself, so far as I am concerned,' said Romilly. 'If you have read the poem, you will realise my difficulties. Here was I married to this girl who was more like a pixie than a creature of human kind. I soon found that she was terrified of the physical side of marriage, so I took her to a psychiatrist who uncovered the history of an unpleasant episode in her early life for which she was in no way to blame and which she had forgotten. After that, she seemed much improved, and consented to co-habit with me. A child was conceived, but, as I think I told you in my letter, it was stillborn.'

'No, you did not mention it. How disconcerting for you both! And this threw her off balance again?'

'Well, as a matter of fact, she behaved rather strangely while she was still carrying it. She took to wandering off alone, and if I attempted to accompany her, or went after her in the car, or even went to the length of locking her in her room (as I did on one occasion), she flew into such violent fits of rage that I was afraid she would do the child or herself, or both of them, some serious injury. I believe, in fact, that this is what must have happened. The doctor told me that she was perfectly healthy. There was no obvious reason why she should lose the baby.'

'But, until she lost the baby, she did not have this obsession about drowning things?'

'I did not recognise it at first as an obsession. When she flung gramophone records and a transister radio set into the sea, I regarded it as the slightly unbalanced reaction of a woman under emotional stress, and took little notice of it. It happened before she lost the child.'

'You mentioned in your letter a toy trumpet.'

'That was used at the séance.'

'Dear me! I had no idea that you and she dabbled in spiritualism.'

'My dear Beatrice!' Romilly's tone blended amusement and polite protestation. 'You surely don't think that, with the baby almost due, I would have assisted Trilby to play such a dangerous game as taking part in a séance? Of course I knew nothing about it, nothing whatever. For some three or four weeks previously, Trilby had been less than well, so I engaged a private nurse. It seems that this woman asked what we were going to call the baby, and when Trilby said she did not know, and did not want a baby anyway, the nurse said she knew of a medium and that it would be fun-fun, mark you!-to hold a séance and ask "those who had passed over" for suggestions, and for an assurance that both Trilby and the child would come through safely at the time of delivery.'

'How did you come to hear of this nurse?'

'My doctor recommended her to me, but, of course, when I dismissed her and explained to him why I had done so, he was appalled that she should have encouraged her patient (who was in a highly nervous state) to indulge in such a pastime.'

'You yourself were not in the house, I take it, when the séance was held?'

'No, of course I was not. The nurse must have known quite well that I should disapprove. I had to go to London for a couple of days, and it was while I was out of the house that this pernicious nonsense took place.

'What appeared to be the effect on Rosamund?'

'She was in a state of semi-collapse when I reached home. The trumpet, as I said, had been used at the séance, and, after this was over, she seems to have taken the trumpet down to the coast near Dancing Ledge and hurled it into the sea.'

'How did you know?'

'When I found that she had gone out alone-she developed a streak of animal cunning just at that time, and evaded me whenever she could-I went to look for her, but I had no idea which way she had gone, and I did not catch up with her until she had thrown the thing over the cliffs. I am glad I did not know sooner where she had gone. I should have been mortally afraid that she would lose her balance and go over with it, but, thank goodness, she did not.'

'And this happened before she lost the baby, but her drowning of the cat and the monkey came later. Is that so?'

'And, of course, she also drowned the baby doll. That was the latest of all. I thought the baby doll was highly significant. It proved to me that, not only did she not want her baby, but that she might have murdered it if it had lived.'

Dame Beatrice offered no comment on this opinion. She said, 'And that was when you decided to consult me.'

'Just so. I thought things had gone far enough.'

'I shall be interested to hear her own explanation of these actions.'

'I doubt whether she will remember anything at all about them. Besides, do you think that total recall is necessarily a good thing?'

'All things are relative, of course. Is it possible for you to set aside a room in the house solely for my use as a consulting-room?'

'That presents a slight difficulty. I have to find sleeping accommodation for eight extra people, as I think Judith told you, and as only two of them can be asked to share, space is at a premium. I wonder whether you could use your own room? It is spacious, and I can supply you with a table on which to write your notes, and a couch on which Trilby could lie. I thought that, if you had your sessions with Trilby between tea and dinner, you could still take your afternoon walk, or your nap, or anything else you choose to do, between lunch and tea, and so have that time and your mornings and evenings to yourself or with us.'

'That would appear reasonable. Very well. I will see her at a quarter to six.'

'Excellent. Then we will dine at eight, if that will suit you. I don't know how long you will spend with her each day?'

'Not more than an hour, and it may be a good deal less.'

'I suppose you use the "stream of consciousness" method.'

Dame Beatrice did not reply to this. She said, as though she had not heard him, 'Or we could use Rosamund's own sanctum, I suppose. She might be more at ease there than in my bedroom.'

Romilly laughed.

'She might, but I do not think you would,' he said. 'She is the most untidy young creature in the world. The servants try to maintain some kind of law and order among her things, but I'm afraid it's a thankless task. However, they are quite devoted to her in their bucolic, country-bumpkin way. Not over-blessed with intelligence, I'm afraid, but there seems to be so much inbreeding in small villages that it is scarcely surprising to find the indigenous people not much better than morons.'

Dame Beatrice thought of the willing, kindly Amabel, who 'loiked poertry' and who, with her sister, had given George some information which he, a notably intelligent man, had certainly accepted at its face value, and she found herself by no means in agreement with Romilly's summing-up of his servants' mentality. However, she did not contradict him. She was interested to hear that she was expected to turn her bedroom into a consulting-room. She had not been shown the whole house, but it was a three-storey building and, even allowing for the long gallery which went from the front to the back of the house on the first floor, and the loss of the floor or floors over the great hall which had been demolished to leave the three-sided inside balcony from which her own and other rooms opened, Galliard Hall must contain at least twenty bedrooms, apart from those occupied by the servants.

The only conclusion she could come to was that possibly all the rooms on the second floor, except the servants' quarters, were unfurnished and out of use. With only two maids, a manservant, a cook (whom Dame Beatrice had not seen) and a housekeeper, it was probable that not nearly all the rooms in the mansion received attention.