servants began to complain among themselves. The butler had left before the child was two. Cook put up for a year longer with the irregular mealtimes that the child demanded, then the day came when she, too, handed in her notice. When she left she took the kitchen girl with her, and in the end it was left to the Missus to ensure the provision of cake and jelly at odd hours. The housemaids felt under no obligation to occupy themselves with chores: Not unreasonably they believed that their small salaries barely compensated them for the cuts and bruises, sprained ankles and stomach upsets they incurred owing to Charlie's sadistic experiments. They left and were replaced by a succession of temporary help, none of whom lasted long. Finally even the temporary help was dispensed with.
By the time Isabelle was five the household had shrunk to George Angelfield, the two children, the Missus, the gardener and the gamekeeper. The dog was dead, and the cats, fearful of Charlie, kept out doors, taking refuge in the garden shed when the weather turned cold. If George Angelfield noticed their isolation, their domestic squalor, he did not regret it. He had Isabelle; he was happy.
If anyone missed the servants it was Charlie. Without them he was lost for subjects for his experiments. When he was scouting around for someone to hurt, his eye fell, as it was bound sooner or later to do, on his sister.
He couldn't afford to make her cry in the presence of his father, and since she rarely left her father's side, Charlie was faced with a difficulty. How to get her away?
By enticement. Whispering promises of magic and surprise, Charlie led Isabelle out of the side door, along one end of the knot garden, between the long borders, out through the topiary garden and along the beech avenue to the woods. There was a place Charlie knew. An old hovel, dank and windowless, a good place for secrets.
What Charlie was after was a victim, and his sister, walking behind him, smaller, younger and weaker, must have seemed ideal. But she was odd and she was clever, and things did not turn out exactly as he expected.
Charlie pulled his sister's sleeve up and drew a piece of wire, orange with rust, along the white inside of her forearm. She stared at the red beads of blood that were welling up along the livid line, then turned her gaze upon him. Her green eyes were wide with surprise and something like pleasure. When she put out her hand for the wire he gave it to her automatically. She pulled up her other sleeve, punctured the skin and with application drew the wire down almost to her wrist. Her cut was deeper than the one he had given her, and the blood rose up at once and trickled. She gave a sigh of satisfaction as she looked at it and then licked the blood away. Then she offered the wire back to him and motioned to him to pull up his sleeve.
Charlie was bewildered. But he dug the wire into his arm because she wanted it, and he laughed through the pain. Instead of a victim Charlie had found himself the strangest of conspirators.
Life went on for the Angelfields, sans parties, sans hunt meetings, sans housemaids and sans most of the things that people of their class took for granted in those days. They turned their backs on their neighbors, allowed their estate to be managed by the tenants, and depended on the goodwill and honesty of the Missus and the gardener for those day-today transactions with the world that were necessary for survival.
George Angelfield forgot about the world, and for a time the world forgot about him. And then they remembered him. It was to do with money.
There were other large houses in the vicinity. Other more or less aristocratic families. Among them was a man who took great care of his money. He sought out the best advice, invested large sums where wisdom dictated and speculated small sums where the risk of loss was greater but the profit, in the case of success, high. The large sums he lost completely. The small ones went up-moderately. He found himself in a pickle. In addition he had a lazy, spendthrift son and a goggle-eyed, thick-ankled daughter. Something had to be done.
George Angelfield never saw anyone, hence he was never offered financial tips. When his lawyer sent him recommendations, he ignored them, and when his bank sent him letters, he did not write back. As a consequence of this, the Angelfield money, instead of expending itself chasing one deal after another, lounged in its bank vault and grew fat.
Money talks. Word got out. 'Doesn't George Angelfield have a son?' asked the wife of the near-bankrupt. 'How old would he be now? Twenty-six?'
And if not the son for their Sybilla, then why not the girl for Roland? thought the wife. She must be reaching a marriageable age by now. And the father was known to dote on her: She would not come empty-handed.
'Nice weather for a picnic,' she said, and her husband, in the way of husbands, did not see the connection.
The invitation languished for a fortnight on the drawing room windowsill, and it might have remained there until the sun bleached the color out of the ink, had it not been for Isabelle. One afternoon, at a loss for something to do, she came down the stairs, puffed out her cheeks in boredom, picked the letter up and opened it.
'What's that?' said Charlie.
'Invitation,' she said. 'To a picnic.'
A picnic? Charlie's mind turned it over. It seemed strange. But he shrugged and forgot it. Isabelle stood up and went to the door. 'Where are you going?' 'To my room.' Charlie made to follow her, but she stopped him. 'Leave me alone,' she said. 'I'm not in the mood.'
He complained, took a handful of her hair and ran his fingers over the nape of her neck, finding the bruises he had made last time. But she twisted away from him, ran upstairs and locked the door.
An hour later, hearing her come down the stairs, he went to the doorway. 'Come to the library with me,' he asked her.
'No.'
'Then come to the deer park.'
'No.'
He noticed that she had changed her clothes. 'What do you look like that for?' he said. 'You look stupid.'
She was wearing a summer dress that had belonged to their mother, made of a flimsy white material and trimmed with green. Instead of her usual tennis shoes with their frayed laces, she had put on a pair of green satin sandals a size too big-also their mother's-and had attached a flower in her hair with a comb. She had lipstick on.
His heart darkened. 'Where are you going?' he asked.
'To the picnic.'
He grabbed her by the arm, dug his fingers in and pulled her toward the library.
'No!'
He pulled her harder.
She hissed at him, 'Charlie, I said no!'
He let her go. When she said no like that, he knew it meant no. He had found that out in the past. She could be in a bad temper for days. She turned her back on him and opened the front door. Full of anger, Charlie looked for something to hit. But he had already broken everything that was breakable. The things that were left would do more harm to his knuckles than he could do to them. His fists slackened; he followed Isabelle out of the door and to the picnic.
The young people at the lakeside made a pretty picture from a distance, in their summer frocks and white shirts. The glasses they held were filled with a liquid that sparkled in the sunlight, and the grass at their feet looked soft enough to go barefoot. In reality, the picnickers were sweltering beneath their clothes, the champagne was warm, and if anyone had thought to take their shoes off they would have had to walk through goose droppings. Still, they were willing to feign jollity, in the hope that their pretense would encourage the real thing.
A young man at the edge of the crowd caught sight of movement up near the house. A girl in a strange outfit accompanied by a lump of a man. There was something about her.
He failed to respond to his companion's joke; the companion looked to see what had caught his attention and fell silent in turn. A group of young women, eternally alert to the doings of young men even when the young men are behind their backs, turned to see what had caused the sudden silence. And there followed a sort of ripple effect, whereby the entire party turned to face the newcomers, and seeing them, were struck dumb.
