Chapter 4

She was still not tanned! Three weeks of holiday were gone, and she was not a bit darker than the day she'd left St. Arnobia's. The problem was that she didn't have the patience to lie around on a beach doing nothing. Maybe only very dull people could get suntans.

'Miss Godwin, why can't I get brown?'

'Hm? Oh, yes.' The governess was writing in her black leather notebook, the cup of coffee on the breakfast-nook table before her forgotten and cold. Alice noticed that her governess had put just enough cream in her coffee to make it the same shade as her skin.

'Do you think I could get brown, if I drank coffee instead of milk?'

'What? No, the food we eat has little to do with the colour we are.'

Alice giggled. 'Oh, Miss Godwin, you haven't been listening to me at all, or you'd know I was teasing. Are you writing another report on me? You'll have to give me a very high score for stupidity for asking that last question.'

Miss Godwin continued to make out the report, imper-turbed. Alice's father came into the breakfast nook wearing a blue seersucker suit from a few years ago that had become a little tight about the waist. His face was puffy from lack of sleep, and he'd forgotten to put on a tie.

Miss Godwin and Alice greeted him, and he replied with a growl from deep in his chest. Emmie brought him a carafe of hot coffee and poured the first cup. After moistening his lips, he could speak. 'God—that sun. Turn it off!'

Miss Godwin reached over to the cord and twitched the Venetian blinds shut. Roderick essayed a smile and felt tentatively to see if his toupee was in place. It was. His smile became more assured.

'My, you're up early today, Daddy,' Alice observed over the edge of her milk glass. This was the first time all summer that they'd had breakfast together.

He nodded, sipping at the hot coffee, then asked, still gruffly: 'Why are you so dressed up? Is this a holiday, or someone's birthday?'

Alice was delighted that he'd noticed her dress. It was cut

exactly like Miss Godwin's, with a full skirt flaring out from the hips, except that Alice's was turquoise while Miss Godwin's was canary yellow. Miss Godwin also lacked a puffy bow on her derriere. Alice's loose blonde curls were caught up in a ponytail by a smaller bow of the same material. 'Do you like it? It's for art class, though I do have to wear a smock over it when I paint. I always have art class on Saturday at the Museum.' 'Oh, really?'

When it appeared that her father had nothing further to say, she re-opened the book beside her breakfast plate and began reading to herself. It was bad manners to read at the table, but both Miss Godwin and her father seemed too preoccupied with their own bad manners to care. After a few moments she giggled.

'A funny story?' Roderick asked, in a manful effort to appear human, despite the hour.

'Sort of, Daddy. It's a math problem.'

'Math? Oh—arithmetic, you mean. Yes, I remember the stories in my old arithmetic book. A giving part of his apples to B, and B never having as many as C, and so on. Very distressing situations. They never amused me'

'We have a new way of teaching math now, Mr. Raleigh,' Miss Godwin said. 'The children are taught logical constructs instead of the old, tedious number-juggling. The new math teaches them to think and, just incidentally, it's much livelier. For teachers as well, I might add.'

'Is that so?' Though Roderick was clearly more interested in his coffee than in the new mathematics, Alice began talking in a rush to explain it all to him, ignoring her governess's warning glances.

'Oh yes, Daddy, it's fascinating. Look at this problem I was just reading—it's about parents and their children,' She read aloud from the book: 'There are more adults than boys, more boys than girls, more girls than families. If no family has less than three children, how few families are there be?'

His weary lids lifted to show more of the reddened whites of his eyes. 'Is that what you're studying?'

'Mm-hmm. How many, Daddy? Do you know the answer? Think!'

He rubbed his hand over his face and scratched his moustache, mumbling about parents and their children. 'Shall I read the problem again, or do you give up?'

'Now now, babydoll. Your Daddy's a very tired man this morning, and he's a little slow on his mental feet.'

'Drink your milk, mademoiselle,' Miss Godwin said brusquely. 'You have to be at art class by nine.'

Alice gulped down her milk in one long swallow, then began explaining the problem while there was still time. 'Daddy, listen—there are more adults than boys, and more boys...'

'All right I But I still fail to see what there is that makes you laugh.'

'Because I could see the answer right away. It looks hard, but, it's really simple. If there were two families, there would have to be three girls and four boys—but there would only be four adults. So there have to be more than two. If there were four families, there would be at least five girls and six boys, eleven altogether. So one of the families would only have two children. And it would be worse for more than four families. So the answer has to be three?'

Alice giggled happily at this piece of induction. Miss Godwin rose from the table, closing Alice's book. 'Come, Miss Logician, we're going to be late.'

Roderick lighted a cigarette and waved bye-bye. Or so Alice thought. To Miss Godwin it had looked more as if he were waving out the match.

Roderick blew a smoke ring and watched it expand till it hit Alice's empty milk glass and broke up. Yawning, he pulled her math book towards him and turned the pages at random. Eight-thirty was a beastly time to get up in the morning.

Because Miss Godwin's Saab was back at the garage for repairs, they had to take a bus to the Baltimore Museum, which suited Alice perfectly. Buses were more fun than cars. On Saturdays the Gwynn River Falls bus was always full of screaming teenagers in bright clothes on their way to the municipal beach. Alice would be at the beach herself—in the afternoon—where she would meet her friend Dorothy, after she'd had lunch at Howard Johnson's. She knew it was considered gauche, but despite herself she still liked Howard Johnson's best of all the restaurants in Baltimore.

She sat very quietly on the green plastic seat so that she could hear the Number One Song in the Nation which was blaring out of three transistor radios that boys on the bus were holding outside the windows. At home she wasn't allowed to listen to the Big Beat stations, so she was always hungry for

e sound of it. Some of the older girls wore shorts, some stretch pants—all in the wildest electric blues and oranges and fuchias. One girl had a blouse that was candy-apple red. Very vulgar, Alice thought. She wondered what Miss Godwin would say if she used candy-apple red on her nails. The boys on the bus were excruciatingly handsome—though Alice wasn't really interested in boys. They wore blue jeans that were practically in rags and the longest, longest blond hair—and they were so brown. She decided she would try to recapture the vivid chaos of the scene in art class. But however was she to get the feeling of the Number One Song into the painting? From the bus stop it was three blocks to the Museum. Miss Godwin would take her to the door, then go further downtown to take care of her shopping.

This summer the children's art teacher was an older New York woman who said her name was Lonnie Braggs. Miss Braggs was, to Alice's way of thinking a complete ninny. She strolled around in riding breeches from student to student, praising everyone's work indiscriminately, no matter how bad it really was. Last week she'd told Alice that her collage was as good as the Braque on the third floor of the Museum, when Alice knew perfectly well it was a wretched mess. Even the pasting had been botched. When she'd pointed that out to Braggs (who didn't like to be addressed as 'Miss Braggs'), Braggs had said: 'The crucial thing, darling, isn't what it looks like or how neat it is, but how honestly it expresses your emotions. Self-expression—that's the ticket! When I said it was as good as Braque, I meant it was as honest.' How could you ever talk to someone like that? Maybe Braggs really did believe what she said and wasn't able to tell any difference between a good painting and a bad painting.

When they reached the side entrance to the Museum, Miss Godwin took Alice's hand. 'I'll see you at this door at twelve o'clock exactly. Our table is reserved at Howard Johnson's for half-past. Remember, when you paint, to look sloppy and wild-eyed. From what I've heard of your Miss Braggs that'll put you right at the head of the class. Au revoir.⁹

'Miss Raleigh? Miss Godwin?' A tall Negro in livery strode up to talk to them and touched his cap. T am Mr. Duquesne's chauffeur. Mr. Duquesne has had a stroke, and you are to come with me to his house.'

'Uncle Jason!' Alice shrieked. 'Oh, not Uncle Jason.' Miss Godwin held her hand very tight as they walked to the

waiting limousine. The chauffeur helped them into the spacious back seat. His hps showed no more expression than a cat's, and his eyes were hidden behind heavy sunglasses.

'Is he going to die?' Alice implored. Without answering, the chauffeur closed the back door and got in behind the wheel. The back seat was closed off from the front by a glass window.

Miss Godwin found the microphone that communicated to the driver and switched it on. 'Will you describe Mr. Duquesne's condition, please?'

The chauffeur spoke into another microphone, and the sound of his voice seemed to come out of the floor of the car. 'I can't say, ma'am. I didn't see his Honour, myself. The doctor's with him now. It was the doctor gave me my orders.'

I see. Thank you.'

Alice almost made the mistake of giggling when it occurred to her that Miss Godwin should have ended the discussion by saying 'Over and out.' It was really a magnificent car. Much bigger than the Horners' old Caddy. Funny, that Uncle Jason had never mentioned having such a car. Maybe he'd been saving it as a surprise. But why did he want a car like this when he hardly ever left the house? And a chauffeur!

It was terrible, his having another stroke, and it seemed very strange and ominous that he should want to see her immediately afterwards. Unless—but Alice didn't want to consider that unless.

The limousine came to Boston Street and drove right on past. 'Say,' Alice shouted, 'that was Boston Street! He should have turned left there! I think the driver must be lost. Don't you think you should tell him he's lost, Miss Godwin?'

But Miss Godwin made no reply. She stared straight in front of her with a queer, tense expression that Alice had never seen before. At last Alice herself picked up the microphone, pressed the button, and said: 'You're going the wrong way. You've gone past Uncle Jason's street. It was blocks ago!' But the microphone must have been broken, for the chauffeur didn't answer or even look around.

It wasn't until they entered the waterfront district that Alice knew the man had been lying all along. They hadn't been going to Uncle Jason's at all. Alice was being kidnapped! At last!

How thrilling!