The Old Vengeful

enjoyed, it was dangerously addictive.

'Oh ... I like both of them,' said Cathy loyally. And then looked around quickly. 'But I ought to go now, Miss— Miss—

Elizabeth. Mummy said—'

'Don't go! You can show me where to plug in the hair-dryer.'

The game played itself, almost. 'And you can help me dry my hair—I'd like that, Cathy.'

dummy3

'Oh—yes . . . The point's just down there—by the little table

—' Cathy scurried obediently to obey orders dressed up in the uniform of appeals for help.

'Is Dr Mitchell still here?' She applied the Audley-Treebeard rule hastily.

'Paul? Yes. He's phoning Daddy at the moment—with the scrambler on, so it must be jolly important,' said Cathy over her shoulder, from under the table. 'He's staying for dinner—

I don't know when Daddy will be back, but Mummy's laying for five— there, it's ready now—just in case, she says . . . and that doesn't include me, because she says dinner will be late—

ready!'

Elizabeth smiled as she lifted the dryer. Five counting everyone she could think of meant one more from somewhere . . . maybe Humphrey Aske, whom Paul clearly didn't like?

'You switch on there—the little button . . . I'll hold it—I do it for Mummy,' said Cathy helpfully.

''Scrambler'?' Mercifully, it was a very expensive hair-dryer, which made shouting unnecessary. 'What's that?'

'Oh . . . it's a thing that scrambles up words in the telephone, so no one else can hear them, except at the other end. Daddy doesn't know how it works, because he's not scientific—

Mummy will tell you, if you're interested.' Cathy held the hair-dryer away for a moment. 'But don't you work for Daddy? I thought you did—?'

dummy3

That had been a mistake. But then perhaps this was all a mistake— to assume that the child knew more than was good for her, like all her pupils.

'What made you think that?' The sharpness of the question belied the false smile that went with it, warning her that she was still a beginner at Paul's game. 'Of course . . . I'm helping your father— naturally . . . but...' She pretended to be more interested in her hair, which was frizzing out abominably, as it always did. 'What made you think that?'

'Mummy said you'd had a bad time—that's why I'm not supposed to bother you—but you don't need to worry —not with all those men of Daddy's, I mean—'

'What men?'

'At the back—on the hill . . . and there are another two down the drive, by Clarkie's cottage—I saw them when I came back from Lucy's. And Uncle Jack phoned—my godfather, he is—I know, because I took the call—'

'Uncle Jack?'

'Colonel Butler—don't you know him? He's awfully nice, and frightfully important—and, d'you know, he's got three daughters— but they're all much older than me, of course—

do you have any sisters ... or brothers?'

The mixture of prosaic family detail with the casual revelation of the guards Audley had set around his home for its protection— her protection—was somehow all the more frightening. 'No, I'm an only daughter—no sisters, no dummy3

brothers, Cathy.'

'Me too. Rotten luck!' Sisterly sympathy loosened the child's inhibitions further. 'And Mummy too—although she was meant to be one of three, all named after Gloster Gladiators, you know—'

'What?' Confusion enveloped Elizabeth.

'Gloster Gladiators. 'Faith, Hope and Charity'—they were three aeroplanes at Malta during the war. But Mummy's father—my grandfather—was killed before Hope and Charity could be born—he was an RAF pilot, you see ... And Daddy's father was killed too—that's why I've got no grandparents, like everyone else . . . And that's why Daddy does what he does—and Uncle Jack too—like the Rangers in The Lord of the Rings—you remember, Miss Loftus, Elizabeth, I mean—

Aragorn's people, who fought 'the dark things from the houseless hills' in secret.' Cathy plied the hair-dryer expertly.

' 'The last remnant of a great people ... the Men of the West'—

I always think that's a sad bit of the story, about them.'

So that was what they'd told the child, thought Elizabeth.

And it was a clever way of handling an inquisitive child, too—

not to cut her off from the secret, but instead to make her part of it so that she could take it for granted.

' Cathy!' Faith Audley's voice came from somewhere outside the room. ' Are you bothering Miss Loftus?'

Cathy switched off the hair-dryer and went to the long, low window. 'No, Mummy—I'm drying her hair. She