Paws for Alarm (7 page)

‘It's a stupid law,' Donald muttered.

‘Maybe, but it's the law,' Arnold said. ‘We've got to abide by it.'

‘Well,' Donna said, ‘if we can't have any fun with Esmond, can we go over and play with Angela and Perry?'

‘I think you'd better hold off for a while longer,' I suggested. ‘We aren't exactly Mrs Sandgate's favourite people at the moment. Give her a couple more days to cool down.'

‘Then can we have a pair of roller skates?' Donald spoke as though they were settling for a poor second, but I recognized that they had been working towards this question all along.

‘Okay,' Arnold agreed, before I could reply. ‘Fair enough. You kids learn to skate and keep to yourselves for a while longer. When Angela and Perry see how much fun you're having, they'll want to come over here and play with you.'

‘Over Lania's dead body,' I muttered, but nobody was paying any attention.

‘Today?' Donald pressed home his advantage. ‘This morning?'

‘Why not?' Arnold was in a good mood. ‘We've got to go shopping, anyway.'

On the way, I mailed a letter I had written to Rosemary concerning several things I'd forgotten to mention about domestic arrangements at Cranberry Lane. While writing, I'd taken the opportunity to give our side of the story about the hedge tactfully – just in case Lania had written to complain about us. I hoped Rosemary wasn't emotionally involved with the hedge as well, but I doubted it. Necessarily, the hedge encircled the property on Rosemary's side, too, but it was obviously Lania's baby. Even so, it was a shame Arnold couldn't have managed to ram the car into our half of the hedge. Lania would have had less right to complain then.

We stopped at the garage and got a firm promise for the return of the car by the end of the week. This would have been more comforting if there hadn't been an earlier, equally firm, promise that we'd get it back today.

By the time we'd bought the roller skates, finished our other shopping, and found a taxi to take us back to the house, we were not in the best of collective moods.

It didn't help that Lania was outside pruning that damned hedge for about the eighteenth time since it happened. If only she'd leave it alone, it might recover more quickly. As it was, she'd clipped away at the accident spot and the surrounding area until she had destroyed the original outlines and lowered it about two feet — all the while blaming us for the damage.

‘Good morning, Mrs Sandgate,' Arnold fawned as we went past.

She gave us a curt nod and a withering look.

Properly withered, we slunk into the house and retreated to the kitchen where we could neither see nor be seen. Unfortunately, we could still hear the sharp vicious snap of the pruning shears.

‘What can we do?' Arnold asked plaintively. ‘Do you think we ought to send her a dozen roses – two dozen? We've offered to pay, but she says she doesn't want money.'

‘No,' I said, ‘she wants blood – preferably yours.'

‘Is Dad going to bleed all over the hedge?' Donna asked with interest. ‘Will that make it grow faster?'

‘Sure it will,' Donald said. ‘Lots of the most expensive fertilizer is made with blood. They've got a deal going with the slaughterhouses and –'

“That will be enough!' Arnold thundered.

‘I guess he isn't.' Donna sounded disappointed. The subject is
closed.
' I backed Arnold's authority, although I might just as well have kept my mouth shut. The twins exchanged a grimace and then fell into silent communion. I knew that, at some level beyond the rest of us, they were still carrying on their private joke. Donna giggled abruptly and her twin wriggled his ears – a new trick he had picked up.

‘All right.' Arnold felt it, too. He reached into one of the bags and brought out the roller skates. ‘You wanted these –' He dropped them on the table top. ‘So why don't you try them on and go out and get some practice.'

‘
She's
still out there.' Donna cast an uneasy glance towards the front of the house.

‘Then go and play in the next street over –' Arnold was not so exasperated as he sounded. At least he had broken up the silent exchange. ‘She won't bother you there.'

‘It's started raining again,' Donald reported, turning away from the window.

Esmond minced in through the cat flap, shook himself and settled down to removing the raindrops from his back. Outside, the sudden downpour hurled itself against the windows.

‘Well, that settles that.' Arnold shrugged resignedly. To look on the bright side, the accusing
snip-snap
of shears had stopped out front.

I began putting the groceries away.

‘
Prr-hmm
...' Instantly, Esmond was at my feet as I opened the fridge door. One paw raised in that delicate, diffident manner, he looked up at me pleadingly.

‘I'm busy,' I told him. ‘If you ask Daddy Arnold nicely, perhaps he'll open one of the tins of cat food we bought for you today.'

Esmond swung to face Arnold. They looked at each other without enthusiasm. But there was no one else. The twins had taken their skates and retreated upstairs to their rooms.

‘Oh, all right,' Arnold grumbled. He found the can opener and shook it at Esmond. ‘I hope you realize that
real
cats go out and catch their own food. Our Errol would have gone out and bagged himself a rabbit if he was hungry – a squirrel, at the very least.'

Esmond twitched whiskers and tail-tip. He did not like being criticized. For a moment, he looked as though he might spurn the food Arnold was dishing into his saucer, but it had a mackerel base and he decided to overlook Arnold's remarks.

The telephone rang in the study and I went to answer it, Arnold close on my heels. ‘If it's her lawyer,' he muttered, ‘tell him we don't speak English.' Arnold was still expecting legal repercussions at any moment; but I thought Lania would not go to those lengths.

‘Hello, Hazel Davies here –'

‘Hazel!' I went limp with relief. ‘How nice to hear from you. How are you?'

‘I'm fine.' She sounded amused. ‘But I gather you've been having a bit of a time with Lania. She's been telling me all about it.'

‘I'll just bet she has! Would you like to hear our side?'

‘I'd be fascinated. In fact, I'm ringing to invite you both – and the children – over to dinner tomorrow night. If you haven't anything else planned, that is. I'm sorry it's such short notice but –'

‘We haven't and we'd love to!' Behind me, Arnold was nodding vehemently. ‘I'm sorry – what did you say? I can't hear you.' A strange swooshing noise had started somewhere. I strained to hear what Hazel was saying.

‘My line's all right. It must be at your end. Shall we —?'
swoosh,
swoosh ‘... sevenish, then? I'll look forward to it.'

‘Fine, so will we.' I hung up, then realized that the swooshing noise was still going on. It hadn't been the telephone after all. I turned to Arnold.

‘What are those kids -?' There was a tremendous crash in the hall outside. We dashed for the door.

‘Oh, no! No!' Donald lay, strangely humped, by the front door, surrounded by shards of pottery. Donna, unable to stop herself, rolled forward on a collision course with him, shrieking.

‘Hang on, honey!' Arnold dived to intercept her. He caught one arm and whirled her round, but not before there were several nasty crunching sounds from beneath her roller skates. He picked her up and deposited her gently on the lower steps of the stairs.

Meanwhile, I reached Donald and knelt beside him, checking for broken bones. That terrible hump frightened me. I was afraid to move him. If he had broken his back -

‘Is he okay?' Arnold knelt beside me. I could see my fear mirrored in his eyes.

‘I don't know. I — I think so.' Reassurance came only because Donna was sitting there unstrapping her skates so calmly. If anything serious were wrong with her twin, she would not have been so placid.

‘Oh ... wow!' Donald moaned and began stirring.

‘Take it easy, son,' Arnold said. ‘Can you sit up?'

‘Yeah, I guess so.' Donald took several deep breaths – he had been more winded than anything – and pushed himself to a sitting position. Now we could see what had lain beneath him, giving him that humped appearance.

‘No! Oh, no!' The green Victorian jardiniere, spilling its hoard of umbrellas, was decidedly the worse for wear. There was an enormous crack running from top to midpoint and several large spots gleamed obscenely white around the rim where it had chipped.

‘It's not too bad.' Arnold tried to cheer me. ‘Maybe we can glue back the bits.' He looked around vaguely.

‘And maybe we can't.' I remembered the crunching noises as I saw that two of the largest shards had been ground to powder under the wheels of Donna's skates. ‘I hope to God that thing didn't have any sentimental value for the Blakes.'

‘We'll replace it,' Arnold said. ‘Just be thankful it wasn't Ming Dynasty. Although –' His face darkened and he turned to the twins accusingly. ‘Even that's going to cost something. Victorian stuff comes high these days.'

‘
If
we could ever match it.' I looked despairingly at the fallen jardiniere. It was looking rarer and more valuable by the moment. Furthermore, there were telltale streaks now marring the parquet flooring. ‘What on earth did you kids think you were doing, anyway?'

‘You told us to try out our skates,' Donald mumbled.

‘And it's raining outdoors,' Donna whined. Both of them were on the verge of the ultimate weapon: tears.

I hadn't realized Esmond had followed us into the hallway until I heard an unpleasantly familiar little hacking sound. I whirled around just in time to see him sicking up his dinner in the corner.

‘Oh, no,' I wailed. ‘Not him, too. Why can't we ever get a cat with a strong stomach?'

‘That's it!' Arnold roared. ‘Upstairs! To bed! All of you!'

Cat and kids scattered, leaving us to survey the damage in what passed for peace.

‘I've just written to Rosemary to break it to her about the hedge.' I gathered up a couple of still-intact chips and tried to fit them into place on the rim of the jardiniere. ‘And now – this. I'll have to write again. She'll begin to dread my letters.'

‘Give it a couple of days, Babe.' Arnold patted me on the shoulder. ‘We'll see what we can do with this tonight and things will look better in the morning.'

Things
were
better in the morning. Arnold had always been good at jigsaw puzzles and I had discovered that my green eyeshadow was almost the same shade as the jardiniere. I rubbed it well into all the chipped places until they lost their glaring whiteness and acquired a slightly mossy aspect. I could never kid anybody that they were supposed to look like that, but at least it gave the impression – that the damage had been done some time ago. We moved the jardiniere to a darker corner and decided that was as much as we could do for the time being.

If only we were at home,' I said wistfully, ‘we could ask Viv and Hank to find a duplicate jardiniere. It wouldn't take
them
long. We don't even know where to begin to look for one here.'

‘If we can't find one,' Arnold said, ‘we'll just have to give Rosemary about three times what it's worth and let her find another one herself — or buy something else. Maybe we ought to do that, anyway. For all we know, she doesn't like it, anyway. It may be something she got stuck with – a Christmas present, or a bequest from a relative.'

‘Maybe she'll be glad we did it.' Donald was even more optimistic than his father. ‘Maybe she's hated it for years and always wanted an excuse to get rid of it.'

‘I wouldn't bet on that,' I told him. ‘Just keep quiet and eat your breakfast.'

‘That's right,' Arnold said. ‘Hurry up and finish your breakfast and run out and play.'

‘It's still raining –'

‘You won't melt. English kids have been playing out in the rain for thousands of years and it hasn't done them any harm.'

‘Angela and Perry are out in their backyard now.' I looked out of the window at the exquisitely ordered garden aligned with ours. ‘Why don't you go over and play with them? Or, better still, invite them over here – they don't seem to have any swings.'

‘Are you kidding? Their mother would kill us.'

‘Don't get my hopes up,' I snapped.

‘Look, kids –' Arnold intervened. ‘I'm the one who was driving. Lania will have it in for me – she won't be so mad at you by now. Just you go ahead out there and see if that isn't so.'

After Arnold had left to catch his train, the twins settled down to play on the swings. I gave them some paper towels to mop the seats, vetoing Donna's suggestion of removing a couple of cushions from the sofa to put on the seats. We would not add muddy cushions to the damage already done.

Sure enough, the prospect of cadging rides on the swings brought Angela and Peregrine first to the dividing fence, then over it and into our yard. If Lania disapproved, she evidently was not about to make an issue of it. Maybe, like me, she felt it was hard enough to keep children entertained on a rainy day and anything that kept them out of the house and happily occupied was not to be discouraged. I wondered why they weren't in school. It was probably some local holiday I didn't know about.

I settled down with another cup of coffee and the morning paper to enjoy a few peaceful moments before I started the chores.

There was the perfunctory ring of the doorbell, then the scrape of a key in the lock. Arnold must have missed his train.

Footsteps came along the hallway, too light and quick for Arnold's. I looked up from my newspaper to see a strange female walk into the kitchen and set down a shopping bag. She was obviously quite at home.