Johnson-Johnson 06 – Dolly and the Nanny Bird (10 page)

‘Excuse me,’ said a voice. An accusing, ruched face thrust between us, its earrings swinging. Below the large chestnut head and pouched eyes was a thin, trousered body with many brooches. In the reedy and braceleted hands hung, carefully preserved, Benedict’s carrycot.

‘I cannot believe,’ said the guardian of health and hygiene, ‘that you would willingly abandon this little child. I have not called the state troopers. I wish you to take this second chance. Put yourself in the hands of your welfare officer. You will never regret it.’

She got to the liquid banana at that point and we all watched as she revolved and let fly with the carrycot.

I caught her as she fell, and sat down myself in the same moment as the cot descended to earth, upside down.

There was a tinkling crash, as if a tray had been dropped at a tea-party. A cheek, attached to a long-lashed and lidless blue eyeball, hurried past and coasted to rest near the gutter. With a grunt, the earringed lady closed her own eyes and lay, her lips glossily mumbling.

Can in hand, Denny Donovan confided, over ten feet of ruin, in Rosamund. ‘Well, whadda you know? The darts worked, and the can worked and you know what? I bet that new spray has got the red spider on your begonia all laid out cold too.’

‘Denny,’ I said. ‘Tell me the truth. There are fools who play ice hockey
against
you?’

He grinned at me, and at Charlotte, and at the recurring front view of Grandpa Eisenkopp. The Freud of the plant world. The bodyguard with the most bodies, as of this evening.

There was no trouble getting the candyfloss vendor to talk. The pity was that he had nothing that mattered to say. Someone had paid someone who had paid someone who had paid him to find out whether or not there was a live baby in Benedict’s carrycot, and flip his cap if there wasn’t. End of episode.

In the six hours Benedict had spent at the Mallards‘, he had laughed for the very first time, at a stranger. This is commonplace.

There passed an edgy week. There was no word from Johnson. Simon went off, on unexplained business.

The plant trade remained brisk and the only time I had Denny Donovan’s undivided attention was on pram-walking afternoons in Central Park, when he stalked beside me in a baggy golfing jacket with a banana can in one pocket and a dart gun in the other, eyeing everybody. Since we couldn’t, naturally, have our evenings off together any more, Charlotte had retrieved him, and was giving him lessons in riding.

He was also invited to spend an evening with Grandpa Eisenkopp, who had taken a fancy to him. He went there straight from his riding lesson and returned stoned with a plastic aspidistra: Grandpa Eisenkopp had a sense of humour.

Rosamund attended three committee meetings for various charities and spent the rest of the time locked in the utility room making her dress for the Warr Beckenstaff gala in Venice.

My own evenings off I spent at the English Speaking Union: I was in a mood to play safe. It was seven weeks since, on the advice of the Department, I had got myself attached to the Booker-Readmans because it seemed as if someone wanted me very badly to do just that thing. For seven weeks I had led a life made eventful only by the continual assaults on my poor baby Benedict.

It occurred to me that I had been picked to look after my poor baby Benedict for my incompetence. Except that it was the baby’s own grandmother who had picked me.

It further occurred to me that everyone in the Department was round the twist and Mike Widdess’s death, which closed my last job was really an accident. In which case I had landed merely into a standard kidnapping situation which could happen to any kid with rich relatives.

Bunty, whom I bumped into, surprisingly, coming out of the E.S.U., was in no doubt. ‘Look, ducky: ask around and get yourself another job. I wouldn’t stay with that kid if you paid me. You’re going to get a bullethole through your apron one of these days.’

‘What, with Donovan there? ’ I said. ‘You only want to get me out so that you can move in with the security guard. I can tell you it’s no snip. I’ve crossed the TV camera in my underwear twice already.’

‘You’re fond of the kid, that’s it, isn’t it?’ said Bunty. ‘I warn you. You’ll still be there three generations later, darning their socks and making the drop scones for Rosamund’s tea in the Dower House. The mean bastards might have let you come to Cape Cod.’

I had had an idea that Rosamund would win that particular fight. I said, ‘No. I gather both Booker-Readmans are spending Easter in Florida. I’m to stay behind in New York with the baby and Donovan.’

The sources of Bunty’s training were the only subjects she was ever reticent about, but on one score she was an expert. She knew her rights.

‘Soft, aren’t you’ said Bunty. ‘You’re supposed to have forty-eight hours off every month, aren’t you? Ever get it?’

I hadn’t. I wouldn’t, either, when they came back. Both Simon and Rosamund were flying instanter to the family gala in Venice. In no one’s debt and therefore without the family Eisenkopp. I said, ‘I wish someone would tell me what’s happening in Venice. It’s not that I want to go there, just to know why everyone else wants to.’

Bunty sighed. ‘What it is to be secure in your employment. When you go through the mill like the rest of us, love, you learn to read your boss’s correspondence. It’s Ingmar’s party, for the fifty years she’s been in the face-painting business.’

I thought of the Booker-Readmans whose combined makeup, even counting in Benedict, was minimal, and Beverley Eisenkopp, who could support the whaling industry single-handed and probably did. The Ingmar cosmetic range may not be the biggest seller in the world, but it’s by far the most exclusive, and the most expensive. I said, ‘I should have thought Mrs Eisenkopp would rate a free invitation, printed in twenty-four carat lipstick.’

Bunty halted under a street-lamp, beside an open red coupé that looked astonishingly like one I had seen Comer drive now and then. ‘Oh, come on,’ she said. ‘Nouveau-riche; in trade; no title? A Warr Beckenstaff party is strictly for those and such as those. I’m surprised they even invite Simon and Rosamund. I expect she’s making her own dress?’ She got into the coupé.

I said, trying it out, ‘Mrs Warr Beckenstaff is Rosamund’s mother…’

‘Mrs Warr-Beckenstaff is Ingmar,’ said Bunty patiently. ‘Face-muck. Cosmetics. Rosamund was heiress to the Ingmar fortune until she decided to marry Simon, and now the kid will inherit. If he survives. Will you get in?’ said Bunty plaintively. ‘I’m not supposed to have this bloody car, and I don’t want any of Comer’s friends exactly to see me around in it.’

I got in. Encounters with Bunty always had their own brand of astonishment.

The next day Johnson arrived in the Mercedes with his painting-case, his portable easel, and a large canvas on which, half-finished, appeared an entirely beautiful portrait of Rosamund Booker-Readman cradling the upper half of a charming, sleeping Benedict.

No one had told me he was coming. I had just spent a concentrated two hours giving Benedict his bath, his Farex and his bottle, and was making up feeds while he lay peacefully sleeping under the eye of the closed circuit camera. I didn’t want to be interrupted and I wasn’t going to waken Benedict for anybody.

I said so, repelling with firmness any other emotion I might have felt at his unlooked-for appearance.

In return, he was soothing. ‘It doesn’t honestly matter. My fault. When does he have his next bottle?’

He had it at 12.30, because he missed his early feed now. It wasn’t Johnson’s fault that the routine was now different I said, ‘I can lift him later, if you want to paint Mrs Booker-Readman in the meantime. You can fold the christening-robe round him. He wouldn’t get into it anyway.’

‘I meant to tell you to stop feeding him,’ Johnson said. Above the spectacles his black hair was flat as an off-colour Labrador’s. He looked more than a trifle the way my Data-Mate Donovan looked after the evening with Grandpa Eisenkopp.

Rosamund smiled. Naturally, she was on the whole pleased to have her portrait sitting unencumbered with Benedict. I, of course, was going to be required to hold Benedict to be painted later that morning.

Which – it belatedly came to me – was precisely what Johnson intended. Two hours later, he had finished with Rosamund, and I took her place, carrying Benedict, for thirty minutes of unexceptionable privacy with my father’s friend Johnson.

He worked as we talked, his eyes on Benedict’s face. I had never seen an artist painting before. If I had thought at all, I had expected something static, like sight-reading from music. Instead he strolled backwards and forwards, palette and brushes in hand. He seemed to spend more time leaning on the walls, chatting, than he did brushing paint on the picture. I interrupted myself, describing the rodeo in detail, to say, ‘You paint really from memory, don’t you?’

‘Type of short-term memory, yes. I like a broad effect. As many methods as painters,’ Johnson said. He was also extraordinarily neat. For a man whose clothes were a shambles, he coped with tubes, oil, turpentine, sticky brushes, rags and palette without spill, drip or smear marring the various worn and/or antique surfaces of Simon Booker-Readman’s sitting-room, and without a mark on himself either. I said, ‘You must have had a bloody good nurse.’

‘I had those feeders with bags in them,’ Johnson said. ‘If I dropped a crumb, a mailed fist shot up and socked me one. You don’t know, therefore, which of the nineteen thousand people at the rodeo was watching for the candyfloss vendor’s signal? It was unlikely, I should think, to be Rudi, who tried the original snatch in the park, whom you might see and recognise again. Also unlikely to be Vladimir from Winnipeg, who helped him escape from the Wonderland, for the same reason. The man inside the Saggy Baggy elephant who delayed us at the Wonderland is probably the best bet, if we assume these three are the prime team against Benedict. And we don’t know what he looks like. That’s their strong point.’

My arm had gone numb. I looked down and found Benedict’s eyes were open. I smiled and he smiled, and I shifted my arm. He shut his eyes again. I said, ‘The tickets for the rodeo came from the Eisenkopp grandfather. He gets them every year. There’s no reason to think he’s involved. But if he isn’t, how did anyone know we’d be there?’

‘The nanny network,’ Johnson said. ‘Bunty. Charlotte. Grandpa’s Buckle-Bunnies, if you like. The same means by which it became known that we were all going to Missy’s American Wonderland. The great inter-staff grapevine. The alternative is even weirder.’

It was the alternative that was bothering me. I said, ‘I thought of that. The whole thing could have been phoney. The police could have been induced to stage that stupid trap which was bound to lead nowhere. Who in their right minds would try to kidnap a baby among all those witnesses? But why go to that trouble? If they want Benedict,’ I said, trying to keep my voice as even as his was, ‘why don’t they shoot me and Donovan and take him?’

‘Because he’s too young,’ Johnson said. ‘They know that now. If they’re to keep him alive they need you, Joanna, as well as the baby.’

I swallowed. I said. ‘Then—’

He stepped back, brush in hand, and moved his eyes from Benedict’s face to mine. He wasn’t smiling. He said, ‘Then the nonsense at the American Wonderland and the nonsense at the Rodeo had no meaning at all except as a careful preliminary. They were meant to frighten. They were meant to frighten you, and Benedict’s parents. Especially Benedict’s parents. So that when the real snatch comes, they don’t tell the police.’

Benedict stirred. His mouth made eating movements and he opened his eyes again. His arm, untucked, moved about vaguely and I collected it and turned his head into my arm with the warm palm of my hand. Then I said, ‘The Booker-Readmans are going away. To Florida, and then on to Venice… I’m sorry. I forgot not to move him.’

‘It doesn’t matter. I’ve nearly finished,’ Johnson said. ‘It’s lucky, in a way, I’ve got so far with Rosamund. I was surprised myself when she said they were leaving for Easter. I’d hoped to finish the thing at Cape Cod.’

Benedict grizzled, but this time I paid no attention to him. I said, ‘You’re going to Cape Cod?’

‘I thought you knew?’ Johnson said. Above the glasses, his black eyebrows arched in surprise. ‘Comer Eisenkopp invited me. A bit of sailing, a bit of loafing. You remember. You can let go now, he won’t settle. Come and look, if you like.’

He was sweeping up paint with his palette knife as if nothing had happened. I said, my hand under Benedict, ‘You’re going to Cape Cod for Easter? Leaving me here alone?’ I got up.

‘With Donovan,’ said Johnson reprovingly. I had used the same tone myself to Bunty. But this was different.

He folded his scrapings into a rag, dunked and wiped his brushes; wiped his palette. I walked round and stood over him and then, as he didn’t jump to attention, glanced at the canvas.

There was the likeness of Benedict, with the quarter-inch of dark fuzz, and the sucking-blister, and the cleft chin, and the line across the broad, sunken bridge of his nose. I said, ‘Oh bloody hell,’ and upended the live, wet, reeking, grumbling Benedict so that my eyes lay against his round forehead and cheek, which is a very bad thing to do, since they just suck off your makeup, thereby adding to the Warr Beckenstaff fortune. It is, however, comforting to the upholder.

Johnson said, after a pause, ‘It’s all right. I have eighteen sleepless nights in a row which say that nothing will happen to Benedict. Otherwise, of course, I might not get paid for the portrait. Ah, there you are,’ said Johnson as Rosamund Booker-Readman, without preliminary, pushed open the door. ‘Come and see. We’ve just finished.’

1 took the baby away, and changed and fed him.

The next day, a Sunday, Donovan went riding with Charlotte, fell off his horse, and returned with his right arm in plaster.

Despite a vivid demonstration with a can of liquid banana in his armpit the Booker-Readmans were not impressed, and informed him, with extreme irritation on Rosamund’s part, that they were not prepared to entrust their son’s life to a cripple. He was in the nursery, telling me about it and asking me to mind a bad case of leaf curl, when Comer Eisenkopp phoned.

He had heard from Bunty who had heard from Mrs Mallard’s girl that we were in trouble. Why didn’t Nurse Joanna bring that nice little kid up to stay with them at Cape Cod for Easter? It’d be great for Bunty, and the kids could all play together.

Play together, I ask you. You could put a hand grenade into Benedict’s hand and he wouldn’t even know he was holding something. And all the playing together Grover did was steer tricycles over his sister. Great for Bunty, it would be. All the time off she wanted, and someone else – me – to take all the trouble. And great for Comer who wanted – who so much wanted – to attend the Warr Beckenstaff gala.

But when Rosamund called me down to tell me about it, I didn’t make any objections – quite the contrary. For in other ways it was the most promising news I’d been offered since February.