Tree of Hands by Ruth Rendell Page B

with nervousness.
    â€˜Why did you have to have him anyway?’
    â€˜Someone had to. The lady he was going to stay with, she’s his godmother, she fell over and broke her leg.’
    â€˜He’s got a mother and father and grandmother, hasn’t he?’
    â€˜They were booked up for this holiday. They’ve been booked up for weeks.’
    Benet felt cold. ‘Mother, what holiday? What do you mean?’ She recalled something Mopsa had said. ‘What did you mean “going to stay with”?’
    Mopsa faltered. ‘He was going to stay with his godmother.’
    â€˜Yes, you said. Do you mean he’s come to
stay
here?’
    Mopsa bit her lip. She was half smiling while she did so, like a naughty child. She gave Benet a sly sidelong look.The boy was eating his egg and bread, concentrating, apparently enjoying his meal.
    â€˜Where does one go on holiday in November?’
    â€˜The Canary Islands,’ said Mopsa.
    Closing her eyes, Benet held on to the arms of the chair. She counted to ten. She opened her eyes and said to Mopsa, ‘You mean they are going to the Canary Islands and you’ve said you’ll look after this child while they’re away? You’ve actually offered to do that? For how long? A week? A fortnight?’
    A very small low voice whispered out from Mopsa’s faintly tremulous lips, ‘A week.’
    Benet stared at Mopsa uncomprehendingly. It was not possible. How could anyone be like Mopsa? She would never get used to her, never accept her, never understand. How could Mopsa do what she had done, attend to everything, be caring and attentive and responsible, yet also be so brutally insensitive and thoughtless and cruel? To bring that child here where her own daughter had lost her child, a child of the same age and sex! How could she? How could anyone?
    I must not hate my mother . . .
    Mopsa had tied a table napkin round the boy’s neck for a bib. She was pouring milk into a mug for him and he put out his hands for it, making what Benet thought of as idiot sounds, not words. This was just the sort of child that hefty lump Barbara Fenton would have had. Benet thought she could even trace Barbara’s big prominent features in his. Suddenly Mopsa began to talk, to recount in detail the plight of Constance Fenton and the Lloyds, how when she had arrived they had resigned themselves to having to forgo their holiday and lose the advance payment they had made for a reduced-cost flight. Barbara had been crying. It was to have been the first holiday she had had in five years. What could Mopsa do? She hadn’t wanted to do it, she dreaded the thought, but she owed it to Constance, Constance had been so good to her in the past. And she hadn’t been thoughtless, she had known how Benet would feel.But Benet was mostly up in her own room, wasn’t she? It was a big house. Benet need hardly see him. She, Mopsa, would do it all on her own, have him to sleep in the same room with her, take him out . . .
    Benet got up. She looked through the E–K phone directory. Mrs Constance Fenton, 55 Harper Lane, NW9.
    â€˜What are you doing, Brigitte?’
    â€˜Phoning Mrs Fenton to tell her we’re sorry but we’re not a nursery, we don’t board kids, and we’re returning her grandson to her in half an hour.’ Her finger in the dial, the first digit spinning.
    â€˜They won’t be there, they’ll have gone by now.’
    â€˜I don’t believe you, Mother.’
    She listened to the bell ringing. She was beginning to be angry. It was, at any rate, a change of emotion, it was different. The bell went on ringing. No one was going to answer it. Mopsa was right, they had gone.
    The boy had got down from the highchair, his face still sticky with food. He was moving about the room, looking for something to do. There was nothing for him to do, there were no toys, no books, crayons, no television. He went into the kitchen area