Dance to Your Daddy

CHAPTER TWO

RITUAL DANCE-LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER

'Or, like a nymph, with long, dishevelled hair,

Dance on the sands, and yet no footing seen.'

Venus and Adonis.

Romilly's behaviour on the drive to Swanage and back added nothing to George's conviction that there was 'something funny going on.' He spoke of the girl with affection and concern, and, at Dame Beatrice's invitation, agreed to give a detailed account of what he referred to as 'poor little Trilby's aberration.'

'Although whether you or anybody else can rid her of the obsession is more than I can hope for,' he concluded. 'It seems to be very deep-seated.'

'I should wish to have as complete an account of her behaviour as you can give me,' said Dame Beatrice. 'It will help me to make my diagnosis. Confine yourself, if you please, to those matters which have come to your own personal notice. I may be able to fill in the details from other sources.'

'Very well. I married Trilby nearly three years ago-my second marriage and, as I soon discovered, a mistake. Did you ever read a poem by Charlotte Mew...'

'The Farmer's Bride? Yes, indeed. As I have interrupted you, may I ask whether Trilby is your wife's real name?'

'No, it is not. She was married to me in the name of Rosamund. She chooses to call herself Trilby.'

Dame Beatrice had heard the girl's own version of this, but she made no comment except to say:

'Well, it is quite a pretty name, I suppose, if one dissociates it nowadays from men's hats.'

'It makes no odds what she calls herself, so far as I am concerned,' said Romilly. 'If you have read the poem, you will realise my difficulties. Here was I married to this girl who was more like a pixie than a creature of human kind. I soon found that she was terrified of the physical side of marriage, so I took her to a psychiatrist who uncovered the history of an unpleasant episode in her early life for which she was in no way to blame and which she had forgotten. After that, she seemed much improved, and consented to co-habit with me. A child was conceived, but, as I think I told you in my letter, it was stillborn.'

'No, you did not mention it. How disconcerting for you both! And this threw her off balance again?'

'Well, as a matter of fact, she behaved rather strangely while she was still carrying it. She took to wandering off alone, and if I attempted to accompany her, or went after her in the car, or even went to the length of locking her in her room (as I did on one occasion), she flew into such violent fits of rage that I was afraid she would do the child or herself, or both of them, some serious injury. I believe, in fact, that this is what must have happened. The doctor told me that she was perfectly healthy. There was no obvious reason why she should lose the baby.'

'But, until she lost the baby, she did not have this obsession about drowning things?'

'I did not recognise it at first as an obsession. When she flung gramophone records and a transister radio set into the sea, I regarded it as the slightly unbalanced reaction of a woman under emotional stress, and took little notice of it. It happened before she lost the child.'

'You mentioned in your letter a toy trumpet.'

'That was used at the seance.'

'Dear me! I had no idea that you and she dabbled in spiritualism.'

'My dear Beatrice!' Romilly's tone blended amusement and polite protestation. 'You surely don't think that, with the baby almost due, I would have assisted Trilby to play such a dangerous game as taking part in a seance? Of course I knew nothing about it, nothing whatever. For some three or four weeks previously, Trilby had been less than well, so I engaged a private nurse. It seems that this woman asked what we were going to call the baby, and when Trilby said she did not know, and did not want a baby anyway, the nurse said she knew of a medium and that it would be fun-fun, mark you!-to hold a seance and ask 'those who had passed over' for suggestions, and for an assurance that both Trilby and the child would come through safely at the time of delivery.'

'How did you come to hear of this nurse?'

'My doctor recommended her to me, but, of course, when I dismissed her and explained to him why I had done so, he was appalled that she should have encouraged her patient (who was in a highly nervous state) to indulge in such a pastime.'

'You yourself were not in the house, I take it, when the seance was held?'

'No, of course I was not. The nurse must have known quite well that I should disapprove. I had to go to London for a couple of days, and it was while I was out of the house that this pernicious nonsense took place.

'What appeared to be the effect on Rosamund?'

'She was in a state of semi-collapse when I reached home. The trumpet, as I said, had been used at the seance, and, after this was over, she seems to have taken the trumpet down to the coast near Dancing Ledge and hurled it into the sea.'

'How did you know?'

'When I found that she had gone out alone-she developed a streak of animal cunning just at that time, and evaded me whenever she could-I went to look for her, but I had no idea which way she had gone, and I did not catch up with her until she had thrown the thing over the cliffs. I am glad I did not know sooner where she had gone. I should have been mortally afraid that she would lose her balance and go over with it, but, thank goodness, she did not.'

'And this happened before she lost the baby, but her drowning of the cat and the monkey came later. Is that so?'