The Crocodile Bird by Ruth Rendell Page A

daughter.
    “Jonathan,” said Liza.
    “Yes, Jonathan, but you must call him Mr. Tobias.”
    There were history books and geography books and books about languages and philosophy and religion. Liza noted the words without understanding their meaning. Mother said there were also a great many books that were stories, which meant made-up things, not things that had really happened, they were novels. Most of them had been written a long time ago, more than a hundred years ago, which wasn’t surprising since they had belonged to Mr. Tobias’s grandfather’s father, who had bought the house when he got rich in 1862. The books were rather old-fashioned now, Mother said, but perhaps that was no bad thing, and she looked at Liza with her head to one side.
    It grew hot that summer and one day Liza went with Mother to a part of the river that was very deep, a pool below the rapids that came rushing over the stones, and Mother began teaching her to swim. Mother was a good strong swimmer and Liza felt safe with her, even where the water was so deep that even Mother’s feet couldn’t touch the bottom. The second or third time they had been down there they were coming back up the lane— Mother said afterward she wished they’d come through the Shrove grounds as they usually did—when they had to flatten themselves against the hedge to let a car go by. It didn’t go by, it stopped, and a lady put her head out of the window.
    That was when Liza had to revise her ideas on her hair-color-sex-linkage theory, for the lady’s hair was blond. It was not otherwise much like hair at all but seemed to be carved out of some pale yellow translucent substance, a kind of lemon jelly perhaps, and then varnished. The lady had a face like the monkey in the illustrations to Liza’s Jungle Book and hands with ropes under the skin on the backs of them and a brown paper dress Mother said afterward was called linen and made from a plant with blue flowers that grew in the fields like grass.
    The lady said, “Oh, my dear, I haven’t seen you for an age. Don’t you ever come down to the village anymore? I must say I’ve expected to see you in church. Your mother was such a regular at St. Philip’s.”
    “I am not my mother,” said Mother, very coldly.
    “No, of course not. And this is your little girl?”
    “This is Eliza, yes.”
    “She will be going to school soon, I suppose. I don’t know how you’re going to get her there with no car, but I suppose the school bus will come. At least it will come to where the lane joins the main road.”
    Mother said in the voice that frightened Liza when it was used to her, which was seldom, “Eliza will be educated privately,” and she walked away without waiting for the lady to put her head in and her window up.
    That was the first time Liza heard school mentioned. She didn’t know what it was. At that time no school or schoolchildren figured in the books she read. But she didn’t ask Mother, only what the name of the lady was and Mother said Mrs. Hayden, Diana Hayden, whom Liza would probably never have to see again.
    They had the dogs back for a fortnight in October and again six months later. When the time came for Matt to come with the van to collect them he didn’t turn up. Something must have gone wrong, Mother said. There was no means of letting her know, as they had no phone and it was impossible to send telegrams anymore.
    But when he didn’t come on the following day she got it into her head this was because Mr. Tobias would come himself. He had told the man to leave it to him this time, he would collect the dogs when he got back. But he wasn’t due back till today. After he had had a good night’s sleep and got over his jet lag he would get in his car, or more likely the estate car, and drive down here from Ullswater, where he lived but had no one willing to look after his dogs. Mother was sure he would come. She and Liza went over to Shrove early in the morning and Mother gave it a