介绍:
Jackson was tearful too, but he was still capable of speech. “It won’t be soon. You’re just saying that. We can’t go home anyway . . .” He paused to gather his courage. “It’s a divorce!”
Pierrot and Lola froze. The word had never been used in front of the children, and never uttered by them. The soft consonants suggested an unthinkable obscenity, the sibilant ending whispered the family’s shame. Jackson himself looked distraught as the word left him, but no wishing could bring it back now, and for all he could tell, saying it out loud was as great a crime as the act itself, whatever that was. None of them, including Lola, quite knew. She was advancing on him, her green eyes narrowed like a cat’s.
“How dare you say that.”
“ ’S true,” he mumbled and looked away. He knew that he was in trouble, that he deserved to be in trouble, and he was about to run for it when she seized him by an ear and put her face close to his.
“If you hit me,” he said quickly, “I’ll tell The Parents.” But he himself had made the invocation useless, a ruined totem of a lost golden age.
“You will never ever use that word again. D’you hear me?”
Full of shame, he nodded, and she let him go.
The boys had been shocked out of tears, and now Pierrot, as usual eager to repair a bad situation, said brightly, “What shall we do now?”
“I’m always asking myself that.”
The tall man in a white suit standing in the doorway may have been there many minutes, long enough to have heard Jackson speak the word, and it was this thought, rather than the shock of his presence, that prevented even Lola from making a response. Did he know about their family? They could only stare and wait to find out. He came toward them and extended his hand.
“Paul Marshall.”
Pierrot, who was the nearest, took the hand in silence, as did his brother. When it was the girl’s turn she said, “Lola Quincey. This is Jackson and that’s Pierrot.”
“What marvelous names you all have. But how am I supposed to tell you two apart?”
“I’m generally considered more pleasant,” Pierrot said. It was a family joke, a line devised by their father which usually made strangers laugh when they put the question. But this man did not even smile as he said, “You must be the cousins from the north.”
They waited tensely to hear what else he knew, and watched as he walked the length of the nursery’s bare boards and stooped to retrieve the brick which he tossed in the air and caught smartly with a snap of wood against skin.
“I’m staying in a room along the corridor.”
“I know,” Lola said. “Auntie Venus’s room.”
“Exactly so. Her old room.”
Paul Marshall lowered himself into the armchair lately used by the stricken Arabella. It really was a curious face, with the features scrunched up around the eyebrows, and a big empty chin like Desperate Dan’s. It was a cruel face, but his manner was pleasant, and this was an attractive combination, Lola thought. He settled his trouser creases as he looked from Quincey to Quincey. Lola’s attention was drawn to the black and white leather of his brogues, and he was aware of her admiring them and waggled one foot to a rhythm in his head.
“I’m sorry to hear about your play.”
The twins moved closer together, prompted from below the threshold of awareness to close ranks by the consideration that if he knew more than they did about the rehearsals, he must know a great deal besides. Jackson spoke from the heart of their concern.
“Do you know our parents?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Quincey?”
“Yes!”
“I’ve read about them in the paper.”
The boys stared at him as they absorbed this and could not speak, for they knew that the business of newspapers was momentous: earthquakes and train crashes, what the government and nations did from day to day, and whether more money should be spent on guns in case Hitler attacked England. They were awed, but not completely surprised, that their own disaster should rank with these godly affairs. This had the ring of confirming truth.
To steady herself, Lola put her hands on her hips. Her heart was beating painfully hard and she could not trust herself to speak, even though she knew she had to. She thought a game was being played which she did not understand, but she was certain there had been an impropriety, or even an insult. Her voice gave out when she began, and she was obliged to clear her throat and start again.
“What have you read about them?”
He raised his eyebrows, which were thick and fused together, and blew a dismissive, blubbery sound through his lips. “Oh, I don’t know. Nothing at all. Silly things.”
“Then I’ll thank you not to talk about them in front of the children.”
It was a construction she must have once overheard, and she had uttered it in blind faith, like an apprentice mouthing the incantation of a magus.
It appeared to work. Marshall winced in acknowledgment of his error, and leaned toward the twins. “Now you two listen carefully to me. It’s clear to everybody that your parents are absolutely wonderful people who love you very much and think about you all the time.”
Jackson and Pierrot nodded in solemn agreement. Job done, Marshall turned his attention back to Lola.
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