Canarino

Elizabeth resigned herself. She went to the door and craned her neck around it. The room was paneled in walnut, just as she had instructed, and the carpet was beige. There were built-in bookcases and a big fieldstone fireplace and beige Venetian blinds overhung with beige raw silk Roman blinds in the windows. Otherwise the room was empty.

Hope said, ‘This is Daddy’s study.’

Elizabeth eyed her. Of course Hope was right. It was completely obvious. And, to Elizabeth, it was terrifying. She was in her children’s hands; they knew enough to expose her entirely.

‘Why doesn’t Daddy have anything?’ Hope asked.

‘Daddy’s things will come in plenty of time,’ Elizabeth replied firmly.

Upstairs, Norma was unpacking the children’s bags. She had laid Gordon’s clothes out in neat piles on top of the red-piped, dark blue bedspread on his bed.

‘I know you’d like to say, Mrs Judd, how you want the drawers arranged. I haven’t put anything away yet, nor in Hopie’s little room either. It’s just the summer things?’

Elizabeth took a deep breath, then she put her pale hands to her forehead. Just the summer things? Was Norma going to question her, too? After a moment, she dragged her hands back across her temples, curling the thick strands of her hair around her ears and then down toward her shoulders.

‘Just do the same as at home, Norma. Underwear and pyjamas in the top drawers, then the polo shirts. Shorts in the bottom drawer. Trousers and long-sleeved shirts you should hang up.’

‘Yes, Mrs Judd, I remember.’ Norma was already opening the top drawer. ‘I’ll just get on with it, then, shall I? I expect the children will be feeling quite tired by now. How shall I order their tea? Or will they be having anything more?’

Norma was quickly setting the little stacks into the drawers, smoothing them smartly, snapping the drawers shut with her strong, jiggly-fleshed arms.

‘Don’t bang the drawers, Norma.’

‘No, Mrs Judd.’ Norma didn’t look up.

‘I’ve had them painted by hand, the soldiers. And the chairs and the bed in Hope’s room are handpainted, too.’

‘Yes, Mrs Judd.’

Norma hung up a few small items in the walk-in closet, and then she shut Gordon’s suitcase and disappeared with it inside the closet behind the clothes.

When she came out, she said, ‘Where are the children, Mrs Judd, if you’ll excuse me?’

Elizabeth had gone into Gordon’s blue-and-white-checked bathroom to look at his linen; she didn’t hear.

Norma refrained from clucking. She went straight out the bedroom door calling their names. ‘Gordo! Hopie!’

It’ll take me days to learn this house, she was thinking. I’ve no idea of the trouble they can find. They’ll have to mind me. And they will, too. They’re not bad children, those two. But anyone can make mistakes in a new place.

Sure enough, Hopie set up a wail all of a sudden in the very next room.

‘How do you know it’s for you? I want to ride it, too! You have to share! You’re horrible!’

It was all about a rocking horse.

‘Isn’t that lovely!’ Norma sang, finding her way into the nursery. ‘What lucky children you are to have such a shiny gray horse! Do you know what these are called, these spots at the back, when they’re on a horse?’

They stopped fighting; they knew they could count on Norma to sort it out. Norma was good at being fair.

‘I don’t know what the spots are called.’ Hope sidled up to be caressed.

Norma looked at Gordon, giving him time. He was silent.

Then Norma said cheerfully, stroking Hope’s back, ‘You children have some things to learn about horses this summer, don’t you—if you’re to catch up with your mummy? She loves horses, doesn’t she? These are dapples, these spots. This horse is a dapple gray. By the look of him, he’s antique, so you’d best find something else to fight over. Don’t be spoiling this horse.’

Norma looked around. ‘There’s plenty here. Look at this farm. Gorgeous, isn’t it? And we can build it how we like, and make it look exactly like your mummy’s new farm we’ve just come to. Oh, and Noah’s Ark! Look at that! That’s a special one, too.’ Her voice fell a little. ‘You’d better be careful not to touch those animals.’

What’s wrong with bloody plastic? Norma was thinking. Out loud she said, ‘I’ll ask your mummy if the secretary can order a few more things for you tomorrow, that you can play a bit freer with. I’m sure there’s space for more toys.’

They concentrated on setting up the farm for a few minutes. Gordon drove the tractor up and down the brown driveway that was painted onto the green board fields. He buzzed his lips for the sound of the engine until spit ran down his chin. Hope set up horses in groups of three on another board field: a mother, a father, a baby. There were no brother or sister horses. Norma arranged the barn and the stables for them, but the children didn’t use them.

After a while Norma said, ‘I have to get your things into the chest of drawers, Hopie. You play nicely here with the farm, so I can finish up, and then we’ll have a little explore outside.’

They had all forgotten just how hot it was outside. The roaring, airless brightness took away their breath when they opened the front door and went out into it from the magic of the air-conditioning. The children felt a lazy heaviness climb up their legs, so that it seemed to take forever to walk across the portico and down the steps. By the time they made it over the gravel to the lawn, they only wanted to lie down in the humid, springing grass. The shade of the trees gave no relief; it was as if the temperature had permeated the landscape and radiated from the very ground itself. The air felt moist and thick, like a wet, weighty cloth, but the ground was hard underneath the grass, parched despite being watered twice a day by automatic sprinklers.

Norma found herself hoping that the children wouldn’t run off; she felt she would never be able to chase them, let alone catch them. In fact, she felt like collapsing altogether, and she struggled with herself to stay focused on her lifelong priority: the safety and happiness of her charges.

They need exercise, she told herself. We’ve been traveling all day. Their little legs need a good stretch and their lungs need filling with fresh air or they’ll not sleep well tonight. And she pulled them up from the grass and coaxed them around to the back of the house.

‘Listen to the cicadas, children. I think it’s cicadas, here in Virginia. That sort of singing, whirring sound. Do you hear it?’

They stood in the grass and the singing swelled at them, in big pulses. It seemed to make the air feel even closer, even heavier.

Behind the house, they came upon an enormous box hedge, higher than Norma’s head, running away in both directions like a green wall, bellying and ballooning with its ancient growth, the tiny leaves glittering in the afternoon light. There was a way through the hedge right at the center, a natural arch over brick paving. The arch led them onto a wide brick walkway running left to the shadowy veranda at the back of the house and right to the lawn which spread and fell away downhill until lost to view. There was another box hedge facing them on the other side of the walk.

Gordon was in front, then Hope.

‘Look, Hope, there’s another tunnel!’ And he led the way through the matching archway in the next hedge with Norma right behind them.

Through the second archway, the narrow brick path curved and disappeared in both directions. The box towered above them, dimming the light.

‘It’s a maze,’ said Norma, suddenly realizing it. ‘You’ve got to follow the path and see if you can make your way to the center.’

So they started slowly, expectantly, along to the left, turning, winding back near where they had just been. Then they found another fork, tried right this time, came to a blank wall of springing box, fell against it, laughing.

‘This is not the way!’ said Hope. And she slapped at the bushes in front of her, then swung her arm backwards and forwards through them. They gave off a dry, rich smell, a mixture of dust and crushed foliage.

‘Don’t break the branches,’ Norma cried out, grabbing her arm, ‘it takes forever to grow something like this, and it’s been very well tended, too.’

Hope wriggled free and twirled around with her arms extended, her fingertips just clearing the hedge encircling them, reaching for it, daring Norma. She checked to see whether Gordon was watching her. She stopped twirling and touched a leaf, pinched it between her fingertips, let go. Then she looked at Norma; it was a very saucy look. Norma did nothing.

‘I’m the leader now,’ Hope shouted, and she flew past Gordon back the way they had come.

Now there was calling and laughing, sweating and puffing, all along the old brick paths for ten or fifteen minutes until they finally found the center of the maze with its stone bench and its sundial.

Norma was dripping; all three of them were out of breath. Norma sat down on the bench and pulled at her tights, lifting them off her skin and letting them pop back.

‘I’ve never been so hot!’ she exclaimed. ‘We must all drink plenty of water. Pity there’s no fountain here inside the maze. Wouldn’t it be nice?’ She felt done in, utterly. ‘We’ll get used to the heat, I’m sure.’