SEVEN
FATHER WAS SITTING AT the kitchen table listening to Aunt Felicity. This, more than anything, brought home to me how much—and how rapidly—our little world had been shrunk.
I slipped silently, or so I thought, into the pantry and helped myself to a piece of Christmas cake.
“This has gone on long enough, Haviland. It’s been ten years now, and I’ve looked on in silence as your situation declined, hoping that you’d one day come to your senses …”
This was laughably untrue. Aunt Felicity never missed an opportunity to dig in a critical oar.
“… but all in vain. It’s unhealthy for the children to go on living under such barbaric conditions.”
Children? Did she think of us as children?
“The time has come, Haviland,” she went on, “to stop this incessant moping about and find yourself a wife—and preferably a rich one. It is positively indecent for a tribe of girls to be raised by a man. They become savages. It’s a well-known fact that they don’t develop properly.”
“Lissy …”
“Flavia, you may step out,” Aunt Felicity called, and I shuffled into the kitchen, a little shamefaced at having been caught snooping.
“See what I mean?” she said, darkly, pointing at me with a finger whose nail was the red of exhausted blood.
“I was getting Dogger a piece of Christmas cake,” I said, hoping to make her feel dreadful. “He’s been working so hard … and he often doesn’t take enough to eat.”
I took one of Dogger’s black jackets from behind the door and threw it over my shoulders.
“And now if you’ll excuse me …” I said, and went out the kitchen door.
The cold air nipped at my cheeks and knees and knuckles as I trotted through the falling flakes. The narrow path that someone had shoveled was already beginning to fill in.
Dogger, in overalls, was in the greenhouse, trimming sprigs of holly and mistletoe.
“Brrrrr!” I said. “It’s cold.”
Since he wasn’t in the habit of responding to chitchat, he said nothing.
The Christmas tree Dogger had promised was nowhere in sight, but I fought down my disappointment. He probably hadn’t had time.
“I’ve brought you some cake,” I said, breaking off half and handing it to him.
“Thank you, Miss Flavia. The kettle is just coming to the boil. Will you join me for tea?”
Sure enough: On a potting bench at the back of the greenhouse, a battered tin kettle on a hot plate was shooting out excited jets of steam from lid and spout.
“Let’s rouse Gladys,” I said, and as Dogger filled two refreshingly grubby teacups, I lifted my trusty bicycle from the corner where she had been stowed, and carefully unwound the protective sacking in which, after a thorough oiling, Dogger had wrapped her for the winter.
“You’re looking quite fit,” I told her, making a little joke. Gladys was a BSA Keep-Fit that had once belonged to Harriet.
“Quite fit,” Dogger said. “In spite of her hibernation.”
I propped up Gladys on her kickstand beside us and gave her bell a couple of jangles. It was good to hear her cheery voice in winter.
We sat in companionable silence for a while, and then I said, “She’s quite beautiful, isn’t she—for her age?”
“Gladys? … Or Miss Wyvern?”
“Well, both, but I meant Miss Wyvern,” I said, happy that Dogger had made the leap with me. “Do you think Father will marry her?”
Dogger took a sip of tea, put down his cup, and picked up a sprig of mistletoe. He held it up by the stem as if weighing it, then put it down again.
“Not if he doesn’t want to.”
“I thought we weren’t having decorations,” I said. “The director didn’t want the trouble of removing them when they begin filming.”
“Miss Wyvern has decided otherwise. She’s asked me to provide a suitably sized Christmas tree in the foyer for her performance on Saturday night.”
I felt my eyes widening.
“To remind her of the trees she had in childhood. She said that her parents always put up a tree.”
“And she asked you for holly? And mistletoe?”
“Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full, sir.” Dogger smiled.
I hugged myself, and not just from the cold. Even the smallest of jokes on Dogger’s lips warmed my heart—perhaps made me too bold.
“Did your parents?” I asked. “Used to put up a tree, I mean? The holly and the ivy and the mistletoe, and all that?”
Dogger did not answer straight away. The faintest of shadows seemed to drift across his face.
“In that part of India in which I was a child,” he said at last, “mistletoe and holly were not easily to be had. I believe I remember decorating a mango tree for Christmas.”
“A mango tree! India! I didn’t know you lived in India!”
Dogger was silent for a long time.
“But that was long ago,” he said at last, as if returning from a dream. “As you know, Miss Flavia, my memory is not what it once was.”
“Never mind, Dogger,” I said, patting his hand. “Neither is mine. Why, just yesterday I had a thimbleful of arsenic in my hand, and I put it down somewhere. I can’t for the life of me think what I could have done with it.”
“I found it in the butter dish,” Dogger said. “I took the liberty of setting it out for the mice in the coach house.”
“Butter and all?” I asked.
“Butter and all.”
“But not the dish.”
“But not the dish,” said Dogger.
Why aren’t there more people like Dogger in the world?
Remembering Father’s orders to keep out from underfoot, I spent what remained of the day in my laboratory making last-minute adjustments to the consistency of my powerful birdlime. The addition of just the right amount of oil of petroleum would keep it from freezing.
Christmas Eve was now just forty-eight hours away, and I needed to be ready for it. There would be no margin for error. I would have just one chance to capture Father Christmas—if, in fact, he existed.
Why was I so mistrustful of my sisters’ tales of myth and folklore? Was it because experience had taught me that both of them were liars? Or was it because I really wanted—perhaps even needed—to believe?
Well, Father Christmas or no, I would soon be writing up the Great Experiment in my notebook: Aim, Hypothesis, Method, Results, Discussion, Conclusion.
One way or another, it was bound to be a classic.
Scribbled in the margin of one of Uncle Tar’s notebooks, I had found a quotation from Sir Francis Bacon: “We must not then add wings, but rather lead and ballast to the understanding, to prevent its jumping or flying.”
Precisely what I had in mind for Saint Nicholas! A dose of the old tanglefoot! Later, in bed, my head filled with visions of reindeer stuck fast to the chimney pots like giant bluebottles to flypaper, I realized I was grinning madly in the dark. Sleep came at last, to what might have been the sounds of a distant gramophone.