Slowly, like a clockwork figure, Dogger reached up and released the lock on the umbrella's handle, allowing the ribs and the waterproof cloth to fold down like bats' wings, until his upper hand was enveloped in black.
'Do you know anything about polio?' I asked at last.
Without removing his eyes from the moon, Dogger said: 'Infantile paralysis. Heine-Medin disease. Morning paralysis. Complete bed rest.
'Or so I've been told,' he added, looking at me for the first time.
'Anything else?'
'Agony,' he said. 'Absolute agony.'
'Thank you, Dogger,' I said. 'The roses are beautiful this year. You've put a great deal of work into them.'
'Thank you for saying so, miss,' he said. 'The roses are beautiful every year, Dogger or no Dogger.'
'Good night,' I said, as I got up from the bench.
'Good night, Miss Flavia.'
Halfway across the lawn, I stoppeda and looked back. Dogger had raised the umbrella again, and was sitting beneath it, straight-backed as Mary Poppins, smiling at the summer moon.
* TEN *
'PLEASE DON'T GO WANDERING off today, Flavia,' Father said after breakfast. I had encountered him rather unexpectedly on the stairs.
'Your aunt Felicity wants to go through some family papers, and she's particularly asked that you be with her to help lift down the boxes.'
'Why can't Daffy do it?' I asked. 'She's the expert on libraries and so forth.'
This was not entirely true, since I had charge of a magnificent Victorian chemistry library, to say nothing of Uncle Tar's papers by the ton.
I was simply hoping I wouldn't have to mention the puppet show, which was now just hours away. But Duty trumped Entertainment.
'Daphne and Ophelia have gone to the village to post some letters. They're lunching there, and going on to Foster's to look at Sheila's pony.'
The dogs! Those scheming wretches!
'But I've promised the vicar,' I said. 'He's counting on me. They're trying to raise money for something or other--oh, I don't know. If I'm not at the church by nine, Cynthia--Mrs. Richardson, I mean--will have to come for me in her Oxford.'
As I expected it would, this rather low blow gave Father real pause.
I could see his eyebrows pucker as he weighed his options, which were few: Either concede gracefully or risk coming face-to-face with the Wreck of the Hesperus.
'You are unreliable, Flavia,' he said. 'Utterly unreliable.'
Of course I was! It was one of the things I loved most about myself.
Eleven-year-olds are supposed to be unreliable. We're past the age of being poppets: the age where people bend over and poke us in the tum with their fingers and make idiotic noises that sound like 'boof-boof'--just the thought of which is enough to make me bring up my Bovril. And yet we're still not at the age where anyone ever mistakes us for a grown-up. The fact is, we're invisible--except when we choose not to be.
At the moment, I was not. I was fixed in the beam of Father's fierce-eyed tiger stare. I batted my eyelids twice: just enough not to be disrespectful.
I knew the instant he relented. I could see it in his eyes.
'Oh, very well,' he said, gracious even in his defeat. 'Run along. And give my compliments to the vicar.'
Paint me with polka dots! I was free! Just like that!
Gladys's tires hummed their loud song of contentment as we sped along the tarmac.
A Jersey cow looked up from her grazing, and I stood on the pedals and gave her a shaky curtsy in passing.
I pulled up outside the parish hall just as Nialla and Rupert were coming through the long grass at the back of the churchyard.
'Did you sleep well?' I called out to them, waving.
'Like the dead,' Rupert replied.
Which described perfectly what Nialla looked like. Her hair hung in long, unwashed strings, and the black circles under her red eyes reminded me of something I'd rather not think about. Either she'd ridden with witches all night from steeple to steeple, or she and Rupert had had a filthy great row.
Her silence told me it was Rupert.
'Fresh bacon ... fresh eggs,' Rupert went on, giving his chest a hearty pounding, like Tarzan, with his fists. 'Sets a man up for the day.'
