Part 9 (1/2)

”Anneke isn't anywhere,” I persisted, ”not in the garden and not in the house.”

My mother threw down the blouse she had been folding and confronted me. ”All right, you may as well know now as later-there's no use your looking for her. She's gone. She's been dismissed.”

I grew cold with disbelief.

”Enoch sent her off late last night, bag and baggage. Well, don't look so stricken. I knew you'd be affected, but there was nothing else to do. I paid her for a whole extra month, if that makes you feel any better-G.o.d knows she didn't deserve it! With the situation as it stands-”

I stumbled fearfully, ”You sent Anneke away?”

”We had to, don't you see? Now whatever you do don't cry,” my mother rasped. Her scorched eyes slid from me. ”I can't imagine what made you so attached in the first place. She's a callous type, aside from everything else-didn't the concierge tell me how you screamed to send a chill through the devil himself? She's not responsible.”

”But she'll come back?” I said in horror.

”Not on your life! I told you, she's been dismissed. And after she left you that way, alone-”

”Oh, I didn't mind, I didn't mind!” I wildly a.s.sured her.

”She had no conscience,” said my mother; she was implacable. She pointed her foot this way and that, restlessly, almost like a horse at the barrier; her nostrils widened nervously, her tongue flashed at the edge of her mouth and flicked away. She had determined to, withstand all possible remonstrance. ”You'll simply have to adjust to the idea,” she told me, s.h.i.+fting her hands jaggedly from hair to breast, as though finding her body unfamiliar-”At your age these things are forgotten soon enough.”

Still I held my ground. ”I have to have Anneke,” I maintained, but I was frightened at my mother's exploring instep, so like a hoof, and at the neighing of her harsh breath.

”Eventually you'll stop thinking of her. It's only reasonable,” she continued, very well controlled despite these excessive movements: she was a tree a.s.sailed by storm, with confidence in nothing-yet her roots clung. ”The thing is to get you out of here as fast as we can.”

”I won't go.”

”You can't possibly stay. It's been decided,” my mother answered firmly.

”I don't care if it's been decided.”

”Stubborn!” cried my mother. ”You'll go and that's the end of it.”

I suppressed a wail. ”I'm not a refugee.”

”What? What's that? What do you think you're saying?” she burst out.

Her voice was terrifying, strung and beaded with black threats. I flung myself on the floor and sobbed without interruption until a dozen of those howls and gasps summoned Enoch; he had run up the stairs and stood panting, clutching the underside of one of his list-crammed ledgers, on the threshold.

”Berserk,” announced my mother angrily. ”It's not a child, it's a mad-goat.”

”Ah, be fair,” Enoch said, surveying me.

”Fair!” She gave a fierce laugh. ”All right, you predicted it! Say that you predicted exactly this!”

”I predicted exactly this,” he repeated obligingly. ”What's the matter?”

”She won't go. She's carrying on.”

”What on earth for?”

”I'm telling you. She doesn't want to leave. It's pure defiance.”

”Oh, defiance,” Enoch said, as though he had never before encountered the notion. He came into the room and walked all around me, slowly and with an investigatory air. I felt like a dog there on the bit of rug; Enoch's shoes, thickly creased above the toes, sent out an agile whine close by my ear, and I smelled leather and mud. ”My G.o.d, aren't you packed yet, Allegra?” he suddenly asked, catching sight of the disheveled bureau.

”I'm putting things together. As if there weren't enough tension-”

”There's no need for any of it. We'll see him and talk to him and then leave.”

”And if he follows you?”

Enoch emitted what seemed to be a snort, disdainful and positive. ”How's he going to manage that? I drove by his place. From the looks of it he hasn't got a sou.”

”But suppose-” My mother's fingers leaped to her lips; a little twitch ticked in her cheek. ”Suppose he tries,” she finished.

”What, on a bicycle, with a rucksack?”

My mother looked unexpectedly alert. ”Does he really have a rucksack?”

”Good G.o.d, how should I know? I'm only saying by all appearances he can't have any money.”

”That's just what I'm afraid of,” my mother said, and wandered off a little. ”What that can lead to.” She sank down on the edge of the bed-the mattress whushed air like a pneumatic valve-and worriedly jumped her ankle, narrow as a mare's, up and down. ”He used to have a rucksack,” she vaguely added.

”If you don't want to see him-” Enoch began, and put his ledger beside her on the bed. But he himself did not come near her. ”I'll handle it alone if you prefer.”

”Then you think it needs 'handling'?” my mother wondered, throwing him her fullest gaze.

”You want to see him,” said her husband. He waited, but my mother did not speak; he felt in the pocket of his s.h.i.+rt. ”Here's a cable for you from New York. They gave it to me at the station. The car's practically loaded-I had the boys do it this morning,” he went on briskly; mechanically he brought up his watch. ”I'm putting in the last stack now. You'd better get on with sorting your things.”

”All right.” She rubbed her rings and hesitated, as though antic.i.p.ating a djinn. None came-no apparition of any sort. She asked, ”How did you happen to be at the station?”

”I sent Hank and Joe on ahead, to get started with the work.”

”You put them on the train? They're not driving?”

”I thought the fewer ears in this place this afternoon”-his wave had only a pretense of generality; it swept over me directly-”the better.”

”Ah.” Gravely my mother took the cablegram from him. ”I'm not the only one who's afraid. You think he's too disreputable to deal with safely.”

”It's the disruption, not the disreputability, I mind. I'm used to the other. There's nothing so disreputable as a corpse.”

”Or so safe. I wish he were a corpse,” my mother muttered savagely.

”It would simplify,” Enoch admitted. Unaccountably their two glances converged on me, difficult and incomprehensibly unspontaneous, as by some exterior agreement of which they were hardly aware. But they did not divulge their queer collusion, even to themselves. ”Up till now he's been as good as a corpse,” Enoch mildly pointed out.

”That d.a.m.ned Dutchwoman,” my mother grumbled. ”Obscene troublemaker.”

”There's no sense in putting the blame there,” advised my stepfather in his practical tone.

”Then whose fault is it? I hope you don't think it's mine; I never intended to set foot out of Paris-I a.s.sure you I wouldn't have come to this ragged place on my own,” my mother protested, contorting her mouth. ”And in Paris he would never have found us. He would never have known we were there.”

”Never?” Enoch repeated. ”With the ill.u.s.trated papers full of the peccadilloes of Allegra Vand? No,” he agreed mockingly. ”he would never have known you were in Paris.”