The Crocodile Bird Page 8

  Liza thought she heard the front door close. She jumped out of bed and ran across to Mother’s room and the window. Mother was letting herself out by the front gate. It was a warm evening, still daylight, but the sun was low in the faded blue sky. Mother hadn’t a coat or a shawl. She was going toward the gateway. Liza ran back into her own room, the turret room, stood on the chair, and watched Mother passing through the open gateway and starting up the drive to Shrove.

  Liza had never been left alone before, unless she was locked in and safe. Mother was walking under the trees, through the park and up to the house; she had never gone so far before. Fear sprang within her and, as it does when one is a small child, touched off immediate tears. In a moment she would have screamed and sobbed but in that moment, while her breath was held, Mr. Tobias came strolling out from the back of Shrove House. He stopped and held out both hands and he and Mother looked at each other.

  Somehow, Mr. Tobias being there, knowing that all Mother was doing was meeting him, made everything all right. Mother took both his hands in her hands and said something and laughed. He walked around her, looking her up and down, nodded, touched the beautiful shiny plait with one finger. Then he took her hand and hooked it over his arm and they went on toward the house, walking very closely side by side. Liza no longer much minded Mother going because they were together and would only be at Shrove.

  She minded a very little bit because she wasn’t there with them, she felt left out. But not afraid anymore. She ran back into Mother’s room to see if anything was going on at the front, even if it was only rabbits feeding on the grass verges. There were always rabbits in the evening, that wasn’t exciting. They couldn’t get at Mother’s vegetables because most things were covered in nets, the lettuces, the cabbages, the peas, and the carrots, but not the beans and the strawberries because rabbits never ate them.

  The sun was setting behind the woods, turning the trees black and the sky almost too dazzling a gold to look at. She watched it dip and sink until all the gold was drained away and the sky turned from yellow to pink to red. Once the sun went the bats came out. Mother had explained how they can hunt for insects in the dark, by their squeaks, which humans can’t hear, bouncing off flying objects and echoing back at them.

  A moth flew up to the window and Liza identified it as a privet hawk, though its body was yellow and brown instead of pink and brown and its lower wings were yellowish. Perhaps it was just a common yellow underwing. Mother had brought her a moth book from the library at Shrove as well as Frohawk’s Complete British Butterflies. She ran downstairs and fetched the book. Perhaps she would have an apple too, but there were no apples at this time of the year. Instead she ate some of the strawberries she and Mother had picked before Mr. Tobias came.

  She couldn’t find the moth, or a picture she could be sure was of the one outside the window, and she must have fallen asleep when she got back into bed, for she remembered nothing else from that night and it was the following evening or the next that she looked out of Mother’s room much later, in the dusk, and saw them at the gateway of Shrove, standing close up against the wall of the little castle. Mr. Tobias had his arms around Mother and he was kissing her in a way Liza had never seen anyone kiss anyone before, on the mouth.

  The truth was that she had never seen anyone kiss anyone ever except Mother kissing her, which wasn’t the same thing. Mr. Tobias let Mother go and Mother came into the house. Liza crept very quietly across the landing on her way back to her own room and as she passed the top of the stairs she heard Mother singing down there. Not very loudly but as if she was enjoying singing. And Liza knew the song and that it was something called Mozart, for she had often heard Mother play the record where the lady sang how she would make her lover better with the medicine she kept in her heart.

  When the weekend came, so did a lot of visitors to Shrove. They were all friends of Mr. Tobias, Mother said, two men and three ladies, and they came along the lane and past the gatehouse and right in through the gates of Shrove up to the house. Liza said, could they go up there, she and Mother, and see the people, but Mother said, no, she wouldn’t be going there again till Monday and Liza certainly would not.

  “Why?” said Liza.

  “Because I said no,” said Mother. “Mr. Tobias invited us but I said no, not this time.”

  “Why?”

  “I think it best, Liza.”

  On the Saturday evening she saw all the people coming back from a walk. She was at Mother’s window and she saw them all very clearly, passing the gatehouse garden. One of the ladies had stopped to admire Mother’s big stone tub that was full of geraniums and fuchsias and abutilon in full bloom.

  The men were just men, nothing special, though one of them had bare skin instead of hair on top of his head, and the ladies were nice-looking but not one of them as pretty as Mother. Perhaps Mr. Tobias thought so too, for he turned his head as they passed and gave the gatehouse a long look. Liza didn’t think he was looking at the flowers. But still, there was something special about the ladies, they looked different from anyone Liza had ever seen before, smoother somehow and cleaner, their hair cut as trimly and evenly as Mr. Frost cut the edge of the lawn where the flower border began. All three wore jeans like the milkman and Hugh, but one had a jacket like Mother’s best shoes, the suede ones with the trees in them that Liza liked to stroke, and a silk scarf with a rope and shield pattern, one a wondrous sweater with flowers knitted into the pattern and her face painted like Diana Hayden’s and the third a shirt like a man’s but long and made of bright green silk.

  Half an hour later one of their cars came down the drive from Shrove House—well, from the stable block, really, where cars were kept—with Mr. Tobias’s Range Rover ahead of it to show the way, and in the morning Mother told her they had all gone out to dinner in a hotel somewhere. By Monday they had gone away and she and Mother went up to Shrove to change the beds and clear up the mess. Or Mother did. Liza talked to Mr. Tobias and he showed her his holiday pictures. He took her into the library and said she must have any book from it she wanted to read. They took the dogs down to the river and waved to the train and when they got back Mother had finished.

  “I’m not at all happy about you doing this, Eve,” Mr. Tobias said and he didn’t look happy.

  “Perhaps I will try to get someone,” Mother said.

  Liza thought she seemed quite weary and no wonder, the house had been an awful mess, Mother had said nothing when they first arrived, but Liza had stared wide-eyed at the sticky glasses, the cups and plates standing about everywhere, the powdery gray stuff mixed up with burned paper tubes in the little glass trays, and the big brown stain on the drawing room carpet.

  “I should have cleared up myself,” said Mr. Tobias, which, for some reason, made Mother laugh. “Come out with me tonight? We’ll go somewhere for dinner.”

  “I can’t do that, Jonathan. I have Eliza, remember?”

  “Bring her too.”

  Mother just laughed again, but in a way that somehow made it clear they weren’t going out for dinner and that it was an absurd suggestion.

  “Then you can cook my dinner. At the gatehouse. It’s a poky little place and I’m going to have it done up for you from top to bottom, but if we haven’t a choice, the gatehouse it must be. Needs must when the devil drives. You’re a bit of a devil, you know, Eve, and you know how to drive a man, but you shall cook my dinner. If you’re not too tired, that is?”

  “I’m not too tired,” said Mother.

  Liza didn’t expect to be allowed to stay up with them. It was a nice surprise when Mother said she could, though she must go to bed straight after. Mr. Tobias came at seven with a bottle of something that looked like fizzy lemonade but had its top wired on and a bottle of something the color of Mother’s homemade raspberry vinegar. The top came out of the lemonade bottle with a loud pop and a lot of foam. They had a salad and a roast chicken and strawberries, and when Liza had eaten up the last strawberry she had to go to bed.
Oddly enough, she went straight to sleep.

  Next morning she did what she always did in the mornings, ran into Mother’s room for her cuddle. Mother had always been alone in her big bed but she wasn’t alone this time. Mr. Tobias was in the bed with her, lying on the side nearest to the window.

  Liza stood and stared.

  “Go outside a moment, please, Liza,” Mother said.

  A moment always meant counting to twenty. Liza counted to twenty and went back into the room. Mr. Tobias had got up and done his best to get his broad shoulders and long body inside Mother’s brown wool dressing gown. He muttered something, grabbed his clothes from the chair, and went downstairs to the kitchen. Liza got into bed with Mother and hugged her, she hugged her so tight that Mother had to say to let go, she was hurting. The bed smelled different than usual, it didn’t smell of clean sheets and Mother and her soap, but a bit like the river in a season of drought, a bit like the dead fishes washed up on the sand, and like water with a lot of salt in it for cooking.

  Mr. Tobias came back, washed and dressed, saying it was terrible they hadn’t got a bathroom, he would have a bathroom put in as a priority. And why on earth didn’t Eve have a phone? Everyone had a phone. He went away after breakfast but came back in the afternoon with a present for Liza. It was a doll. Liza had very few toys and what she had had been Eve’s—a rag doll, a celluloid one, a dog on wheels you pulled along with a piece of string, a box of wooden bricks.

  The doll that Mr. Tobias had bought her wasn’t a baby but a little girl with dark hair like her own that you could wash and legs and arms and face that felt like real skin and a wardrobe of clothes for her to put on when the dress she was wearing had to be washed.

  Unable to speak, Liza stared mutely.

  “Say thank you to Mr. Tobias, Lizzie,” said Mother, but she didn’t seem very pleased and she said, “You really shouldn’t, Jonathan. She will get all sorts of ideas.”

  “Why not? Harmless ideas, I’m sure.”

  “Well, I’m not. I don’t wish her to have those ideas. But you are very kind, you are very generous.”

  “What shall you call her, Liza?” Mr. Tobias said in his softest sweetest voice.

  “Jonathan,” said Liza.

  That made them both laugh.

  “Jonathan is a man’s name, Lizzie, and she’s a girl. Think again.”

  “I don’t know any girls’ names. What were the ladies called who stayed with you?”

  “Last weekend? They were called Annabel and Victoria and Claire.”

  “I shall call her Annabel,” said Liza.

  After that Mr. Tobias slept in Mother’s bed most nights. Liza slept with Annabel and brought her into Mother’s bed in the morning, knocking on the door first as instructed to give Mr. Tobias a chance to get up. He stayed at Shrove for three weeks, then four, and the dogs with him, but no more people were invited for the weekends.

  Mother was very happy. She was quite different and she sang a lot. She washed her hair every day and made herself another new skirt. Every day they were either up at Shrove or Mr. Tobias was with them at the gatehouse, and if anything was wrong it was only that when Mr. Tobias wanted to take them out in the Range Rover, Mother always said no. Liza very much wanted to go to the seaside and the suggestion was made, but Mother said no. All right, said Mr. Tobias, come to London with me for the weekend, come to Montagu Place, but Mother said that would be worse than the seaside.

  “You like it here, Jonathan, don’t you? It’s the most wonderful place in the world, nowhere is more beautiful.”

  “I like a change sometimes.”

  “Have a change, then. That’s probably the best thing. Have a change and then come back here to us. I can’t believe the Ullswater house is more beautiful than this.”

  “Come and see. We’ll all go up for the weekend and you shall judge.”

  “I don’t want to go from here ever and Liza doesn’t. I thought”—Mother turned her face away and spoke quietly—“I thought it might be attractive to you now because I am here.”

  “It is. You know it is, Eve. But I’m young and, frankly, I’m rich. You know my father left me very well-off. I don’t want to settle down in one place for the rest of my life and see nothing of the world. That doesn’t mean I don’t want you to see the world with me.”

  Mother said she didn’t want to see the world. She had seen enough of it for a lifetime, enough forever, it was all horrible. Nor did she want the gatehouse done up and a bathroom put in. She didn’t want him wasting his money on her. Luxuries of that kind meant nothing to her and Liza. If he must go away and she could tell he wanted to, he must leave the dogs with her and that way he would come back.

  “I don’t need a reason to come back. Matt can look after the dogs.”

  “Leave them with me and then I’ll know you have to come. You must always leave them with me.”

  He slept in Mother’s bed that last night and went back to Shrove in the morning. Later on he came to the cottage in the Range Rover and said good-bye. He hugged Mother and kissed her and kissed Liza, and Liza said Annabel would miss him. They waved after the Range Rover as it went down the lane and Liza ran upstairs to watch it go over the bridge. When it was out of sight she and Mother put the dogs in the little castle and Mother said they might as well go up to Shrove to tidy up and put things to rights.

  Mr. Tobias had left a lot of mess, though for the past three weeks he hadn’t been there much. While Mother was running the vacuum cleaner over the bedroom carpets, Liza went into the morning room and looked at the door that was always locked. She tried the handle just in case it was, for once, unlocked. It wasn’t. Squatting down because she was quite tall by then, she put one eye to the keyhole and closed the other. She was surprised to find she could see quite a lot, a piece of the red upholstery of a chair and the braid on its arm, the corner of a kind of table with drawers in it, the bright-colored spines, blue and green and orange, of books on a shelf. What could there be in there she wasn’t allowed to see?

  Liza now wished she had told Mr. Tobias about the locked room on the several occasions he and she had been together in the house while Mother was cleaning upstairs or in the kitchen. But of course they had never been in the morning room, it wasn’t much used and there was no reason why it should be when there were a drawing room, a dining room, and a library as well. Liza was convinced that if she had asked Mr. Tobias he would have fetched the key and opened the door at once.

  Next time he came she would ask him. When he came back to fetch the dogs. But the weeks went by and he didn’t come. He didn’t write, not even a postcard, and after nearly a month Matt came in the Range Rover and took the dogs away. Mother happened to see the Range Rover coming across the bridge. It was the right color, though she couldn’t see the number, she was sure it was Mr. Tobias himself coming and even more sure when she saw it in the lane. Mr. Tobias had never before sent Matt in the Range Rover but he had this time, and when Matt had gone and Heidi and Rudi with him, Mother went into her bedroom and cried.

  Liza had never told anyone about that. Well, she had had no one to tell until now, but she didn’t tell Sean, she kept it locked up and secret inside her head. And when Sean said, this guy Tobias, the one that Shrove House belongs to, did he ever come, she said only, yes, he did, but he didn’t stay long.

  “And didn’t you never go to school?”

  “No, I never did. Mother taught me herself at home.”

  “It’s against the law, that.”

  “I expect it is. But you know where Shrove is, the back of beyond, far away from just about everywhere. Who would know? Eve told lies about it. She was very open with me. She said it was important not to tell lies unless you had to, but if you had to the important thing was to know they were lies. She told some of the people that asked that I went to the village school and the other people that I went to a private school. We met Diana Hayden in the lane and Eve told her we were in a hurry because she was taking me to catch the bus for sch
ool. You have to remember there weren’t many people. I mean, basically, there were just the milkman, the postman, the man who read the meter, Mr. Frost, and the oilman, and they weren’t going to ask. None of them was there for more than five minutes except for Mr. Frost and he never spoke.”

  “Didn’t you want to go to school? I mean, you know, kids want friends.”

  “I had Eve,” Liza said simply, and then, “I didn’t want anyone else. Well, I had Annabel, my doll. She was my imaginary friend and I used to talk to her and discuss things with her. I used to ask her advice and I don’t think I minded when she didn’t answer. I didn’t know, you see. I didn’t know life could be different.

  “When I could read, I mean really read, Eve started teaching me French. I think I speak quite good French. We did history and geography on Mondays and Wednesdays and arithmetic on Tuesdays. She started me on Latin when I was nine and that was on Fridays, but before that we did poetry reading on Thursdays and Fridays and music appreciation.”

  Sean was staring at her aghast. “What a life!”

  “I really didn’t need to go to school. We talked all day long, Eve and me. We walked all over the countryside. In the evenings we played cards or did jigsaws or read.”

  “You poor kid. Bloody awful childhood you had.”

  Liza wasn’t having that. She said hotly, “I had a wonderful childhood. You mustn’t think anything else. I collected things, the gatehouse was full of my pressed flowers and pine cones and bowls with tadpoles in and caddises and water beetles. I never had to dress up. I never ate food that was bad for me. I never quarreled with other children or fought or got hurt.”

  He interrupted her and said perspicaciously, “But you know about those things.”