Kingfisher Morning

Emma caught her arm. 'You can't! Not alone, Tracy. I'm afraid you must come with us. I can't allow you to go wandering off alone, you know that.'

'Mummy doesn't like our grandfather,' Tracy repeated.

'I don't think you're old enough to be certain what your mother likes or does not like,' Emma said very carefully. 'You may think you know, darling, but grown-ups sometimes don't even know themselves. Things are often more complicated than they seem on the surface. I think we should let Robin and Donna talk to Mr Daumaury if they want to—I'll explain to your mummy when I see her.'

'She'll be furious with you,' Tracy said with undisguised triumph.

'Oh, Tracy,' sighed Emma, 'why are you so difficult?' Was it because Tracy was the oldest? Did she feel the pressure of her younger brother and sister, did she feel the need to assert herself whenever she could?

Emma looked down at the pale, set little face and was suddenly filled with pity and affection for the child. She knelt and held her, pressing her close, her lips touching Tracy's cold cheek. 'Don't look like that,' she whispered.

Tracy suffered the indignity for a moment, then broke free and ran off into the park calling to Robin wait for her. Emma felt the pain of rejection for a moment, then she smiled and stood up. After all, Tracy had changed her mind, hadn't she? She had joined the others instead of sulking here alone. Some sort of contact had been made.

Walking behind the little quartet, Emma thought with some amusement of the enormous education she was receiving from these children. She was supposed to be in charge of them, to be guiding and teaching them—she was supposed to be the clever adult. Yet she knew that she had learnt far more than she had taught. Tracy, Robin and Donna had opened her eyes to many hitherto unnoticed facets of human feeling and thinking. She was much the wiser for having known them. Each day she learnt something new. They were so fascinating, so complex, so enchanting, so maddening.

Was this how mothers feel? she wondered. When they're not completely baffled, exhausted and drained of all their energies?

Perhaps it was because one had to concentrate on another human being for so many hours, watch and anticipate its needs, its griefs, its nature. Usually one only observed oneself with that sort of depth, and one learned little from such internal scrutiny. Watching children revealed much about human nature in the raw.

Through the landscaped vistas of the park they wandered while Leon Daumaury explained, showed and boasted of its marvels. He pointed out a silver pheasant, pale ghostly birds which shyly hid as they passed, their routed plumage making it hard to see them when they hid in shadow, although they were so large, stately as dowagers when they walked through the long grass. Robin was not enthusiastic.

'I like the pheasants we see in the fields better than them,' he said simply. 'They're a jolly colour, brown and fat—like Mrs Pat's teapot. Or,' he added thoughtfully, glancing sideways at her, 'like Emma.'

Emma laughed. So did Leon Daumaury, on an astonished bark. 'I hardly think your Emma is fat,' he added, though. 'She does have something of the colouring of a male pheasant, I grant you. Who is Mrs Pat, though?'

'Don't you know Mrs Pat? She knows you,' said Robin.

'And Edie,' Donna added loyally, nodding like a wise little Mandarin.

'Edie?' The old man looked down at Donna, smiling encouragingly. 'Tell me about Edie and Mrs Pat. They sound very interesting.'

'I love them,' said Donna, and the words encompassed volumes. Leon Daumaury looked a little taken aback, as if suddenly shown a glimpse of something he had not suspected existed.

'They run the inn in the village,' Emma said swiftly.

'Oh, those people,' Mr Daumaury said, in astonishment. 'Well, of course, I've seen them— from a distance.'

'They've seen you, too,' Robin encouraged kindly.

The old man was watching Donna's small face with wonder. 'Why do you love them?' he asked her abruptly.

She lifted wide eyes. 'I do,' she said, baffled by her lack of the necessary words. She could not explain—she could state the fact, that was all. His question worried her, and she frowned.

Emma slipped a hand over the tiny fingers which curled and clung to hers at once. Quietly she said, 'Donna loves Edie and Mrs Pat because they love her. They're kind and loving people, both of them.'

'So,' said Leon Daumaury with a faint trace of disdain and a wry amusement, 'my silver pheasants are too grand for you three, are they? You prefer the common or garden pheasants you see every day?'

'Common or field pheasants,' said Robin.

His grandfather laughed again, that sharp, surprised bark of a sound. He looked at the boy with respect, then he looked at Emma. 'Sharp as a needle, this one,' he murmured.

'Where are the flowers?' Donna asked Emma.

'The gardens are nearer the house,' said Leon Daumaury himself in reply.

They were walking along a wide path through open parkland, elegantly laid out by some genius of a landscape artist so that wherever the eye rested it fell upon some charming scene—a clump of rhododendrons, an oak tree, a silver birch. Suddenly the path twisted to the right and there, through the trees, they saw the house, surprisingly close to them.

It was well deserving of its fame, an almost perfect specimen of its kind; exquisitely proportioned, built of creamy stone, with a portico over the front door, a row of flat, elegant windows and that air of being in good taste which was somehow typical of the eighteenth century.