Kingfisher Morning

'Are you my grandfather?' Robin asked, in his patient but unshakeable fashion.

Leon Daumaury looked at him, and something passed over his old face, a flicker which he quickly eradicated. After a pause he said flatly, 'Yes, I am.'

'Do you live in there?' Robin peered through the green gate into the rolling vista of parkland. 'Where's your house?'

'Would you like to see it?' Leon Daumaury asked him, his eyes fixed on the child's face.

Robin lifted excited eyes. 'Yes, I would. It must be very small and round, like an elf house…'

The old eyes widened, as if Leon Daumaury had had a shock. 'An elf house? Small and…' He sounded almost as if he were breathless. He looked at Emma, searching her face with his fierce hawk-like eyes. 'What does the child mean? Surely he knows…?'

'He knows nothing, I imagine,' Emma said gently.

The old man winced. 'Nothing?' He looked through the green gate. 'Nothing of Queen's Daumaury?'

Emma nodded.

Leon Daumaury held out a frail, gnarled hand towards Robin, and the boy confidently slid his own tiny fingers into the old ones.

'We'll go and see, shall we?' Leon Daumaury looked at Emma over Robin's head. 'Will you bring the others, Miss…?'

'I'm Emma Leigh,' she said.

'Their nurse, I understand?' His fierce eyes were penetrating, shrewd.

'Yes,' she said flatly.

'I don't think we ought to go,' Tracy said suddenly. 'Mummy wouldn't like it.'

Emma hesitated, uncertain and troubled. Tracy might well be right. She did not know what to do. It was not really her decision, was it? She ought to let Ross decide. But what was she to say to this old man who held Robin's hand so tightly?

'I think, perhaps, Tracy is right,' she said haltingly. 'I'm sorry…'

'Tracy doesn't know what Mummy likes,' Robin said in his most adult, careful tone. 'She guesses— and usually she's wrong.' He looked at Emma seriously. 'Like she was about porridge and Donna. Tracy's bossy, awfully bossy.'

Donna was staring into the parkland, her face suddenly full of shining excitement. 'I see something…what that?' Her words slid together in her eagerness to communicate, but Emma understood the drift of what she meant.

A hundred yards away, beyond a clump of bushes, a young roe deer grazed peacefully.

'A doe,' Leon Daumaury told Donna gruffly.

Donna's smooth brow wrinkled. She lifted puzzled, doubtful eyes to his face. 'A doe?'

'A female deer,' he told her, clearing his throat. 'You're very like your mother, my dear.'

Donna giggled. So did Robin. Their grandfather looked at them in half-offended astonishment. 'What's funny?' he demanded.

'You called Donna my dear,' Robin said. 'That's a deer, and Donna's a dear…' He and Donna giggled explosively. Tracy looked at them in silent disapproval, her face as stony as a monument.

Mr Daumaury smiled, his face transformed as if by a miracle into a warm and living countenance, all his coldness and remoteness falling away.

'The English language is very strange, isn't it, my dears?' He emphasised the word and was delighted by their immediate response.

They shrieked with laughter, and Robin began to run forward, dragging the old man after him, while Donna toddled along beside them. Emma looked helplessly at Tracy who was staring at this scene in icy disgust.

'I think we shall have to accept a fait accompli,' Emma said gently.

Tracy set her lower lip in mutinous rejection. 'I'm going home!'