Now in fact the first person whom she saw was Zed, right in the middle of the lawn, quite near to the house. She thought, what is that white thing, has someone left a bag there? Then, as she recognized the dog, Adam walked across the grass in the direction of the garage, touching the birch tree and the fir tree on his way. Never before had Adam entered the garden except under licence from Belmont. The back gate had always been kept locked. Now beyond there were figures under the trees near the Slipper House, even a sound of voices. Alex recognized Brian, Gabriel, Pearl Scotney, and coming into view the ill-omened priest in his cassock.
‘The damned impertinence,’ said Alex.
‘Well, you let the place,’ said George. ‘Why did you let it if you hate it all so?’
‘I thought Professor Rozanov would be there.’ Alex immediately regretted this entirely unnecessary revelation.
George said, ‘Oh,’ and then, but without intensity, ‘Don’t mess with Rozanov, he’s dynamite.’
‘Of course they came in through the back gate,’ said Alex. ‘Anyone can come in now. They’ll wear a path across the grass. Oh damn, damn, damn.’
George laughed. He said, ‘The defences are breached. Everything is deep but nothing is hidden. There are meanings in the world.’
The door behind them opened and Ruby came in.
Ruby stood there mute. She was wearing a long white apron, not spotless, over her long brown dress. She stared, not at Alex, but at George.
George said, ‘Hello, old Ruby thing!’ He went forward and touched her shoulder.
‘Ruby, could you get some coffee?’ said Alex.
Ruby vanished.
‘Why should she come in?’
‘She came to look at me,’ said George.
‘Who invited her? She just comes into rooms now, she just walks in.’
‘Maybe she reckons she lives here.’
‘She takes things. I think she takes and hides them and then finds them again. She’s becoming very peculiar. I had to ask for the coffee to get rid of her.’
‘You ought to pet her a little. She wants to be touched.’
‘Really —!’
‘Plato said that everything you say to a slave should be an order. You carry out that advice pretty well. Now I come to think of it, I’ve never heard you say anything to Ruby which wasn’t an order, not even something like “It’s raining.”’
Alex felt suddenly that she might burst into tears, weep bitterly like a child in front of her eldest son. Everyone was against her, everyone criticized her and attacked her. She said, ‘Why don’t you go and join them at the Slipper House.’
‘And spoil the fun?’
‘You want to see the girl. Go and see her.’
‘And seduce her? What about my còffee?’
Alex was silent, calling up old allies, rage and hate, to blunt her grief and dry her tears.
‘All right,’ said George, well aware of those mounting emotions. ‘I’ll go. And when Ruby comes with the coffee ask her to sit down. I’d like to think of you having coffee together.’
He picked up his coat and jacket and faded from the room.
George went downstairs and into the garden by the back door, but he did not go to join the ‘intruders’ who were standing outside the Slipper House. There had been, at this juncture, no glimpse of ‘the little one’. He stood near the garage looking down the garden. Adam, who had been sitting in the Rolls, heard the sound of the opening and shutting door. Standing up on the seat of the car he could watch George through the dusty window of the ‘motor house’. He had never observed George like this before, at such close quarters, unobserved himself. It was exciting. George’s face at that moment was worth observing, being like that of a tragic actor registering indecision together with some deep emotion, then clearing and becoming round and benign. He was carrying his mackintosh and his jacket over his arm. He dropped the mac on the grass, put on the jacket, then slowly put on the mac, still gazing down the garden. Something like what Alex saw as his ‘conceited’ look had returned. Then he turned and went away along the path which led to the street in front of the house (Tasker Road). Adam sat down again and took hold of the steering wheel of the car. Somewhere, he heard Zed utter a bark.
George, though he was indeed curious about ‘the little girl’, decided not to join the group at the Slipper House. Something almost like shyness deterred him, a sudden sense of how it was becoming harder and harder to communicate with anyone. He had visited Alex partly to find out the meaning of her visit to John Robert (of which he believed her account) and partly to reassure himself that, confronted with his mother, he could actually talk to her. Alex would have been surprised to know that in some way his talk with her had fortified him. George was also deterred from going to the Slipper House by a very special feeling of fear which came to him quite suddenly, a sense of taboo. The image of Hattie in her petticoat came back to him with intense vividness. He had thought: that girl, his grand-daughter, is dangerous, she’s the most dangerous thing in the world. It was as that thought came to him that his face had cleared; for he had not at all liked the sense of being, almost, too embarrassed to walk up naturally to those strangers. As he neared the front gate some movement caught the corner of his eye and he saw that he was accompanied by Zed. The little dog, as George’s head turned, barked at him, then retreated and posed, front feet down, back up, the rump and plumy tail aloft. Then he sprang up, stamped his tiny paw, whined eloquently, then barked again. George lifted a threatening fist and Zed snarled, showing white pointed teeth. George thought with satisfaction, even the dogs bark at me now. He went out into the road, banging the front gate after him. He thought, shall I go to the cinema? No, I’ll go and see Diane. She’d better be in.
Zed ran past a viburnum bush and came face to face with a fox.
Zed had not meant anything in particular by barking at George. He had followed George from the garage, sniffing at his heels. George always smelt different from other humans; but today there was a new smell, stronger and more exciting, but also rather nasty. It was an animally smell, yet also it offended Zed in some fastidiousness of his soul, which was clothed in white plumage and burning with ecstasy and love. Zed was endlessly interested in George. He smelt him, when he could get near enough (which was not often) with a special nose-wrinkling fascination. If he had seen George buried he would have dug him up. When Zed saw the front gate he began to run on toward it, but was startled by George’s sudden turning and his threatening gesture. This gesture wakened an old feeling in Zed that George was dangerous to Adam. So he had snarled (which he very rarely did) and then, satisfied with his performance, scampered back toward his master. As it happened, Adam, who was still in the garage, had shut the door, so Zed ran on down the garden; and it was then that he came face to face with the fox. It was the big dog fox.
Zed had never seen a fox but he had smelt the strong frightening odour and he knew what the apparition was. He recognized, as he had never done before, an absolute enemy. Cross humans and snappy dogs were hazards. But this was different. Zed, as he came to an abrupt stop, felt suddenly his solitude and with it the completeness of his doghood, only in which lay now his salvation. It did not occur to him to bark for help. Indeed as his black eyes stared at the fox’s blue eyes he felt incapable of barking.