Play Dead by Peter Dickinson

grasp.
    â€˜I’m terribly sorry,’ she began, but the rest was drowned by Toby’s yell. Why, after days of angelhood, must he choose this moment for a tantrum?
    â€˜If you go on like that, Deborah, you will be shut in your room,’ said the woman, dim-seen through wet lenses but obviously Mrs Capstone, though somehow not what Poppy had expected from the public image. Of course the scene in the bathroom was different from the average photo opportunity. Mrs Capstone seemed not to need to raise her voice to penetrate the yells but Poppy had to mouth her answers.
    â€˜Toby will stop in a minute or two,’ she said. ‘I’m terribly sorry. I’m afraid they’re drenched.’
    â€˜I’ll find him something. This way. Close the bathroom door, please.’
    They carried the yelling infants into Deborah’s bedroom. Mrs Capstone put Deborah down, opened a cupboard and began to pick out clothes. Deborah stood where she’d been placed, concentrating on her note.
    â€˜More baa! More baa!’ bellowed Toby.
    Poppy had never seen him so outraged. Perhaps he had sensed her own discomfort at the visit to this formidable woman’s home having begun with such a display of ill-discipline, mess and temper. (Mrs Capstone’s latest campaign was for stiffer penalties for football hooligans.) He was making more noise than Deborah, so much so that she must have noticed that she was being upstaged. Her scream continued but the look in her eyes changed. She took a couple of paces forward. Her hand rose to her mouth and moved to and fro, making the note waver.
    Poppy knelt and twisted her threshing burden round till he faced Deborah.
    â€˜Look, darling. Look what Deborah’s doing.’
    He took no notice, still wrestling, still trying to make for the door. Deborah came up and put her face only inches from his, yodelling away, and all at once he gave in. Poppy could sense a sort of inner male, ‘Oh, well. Women!’ He gave one more sulky look towards the door before he set up an alto hoot, stopping and unstopping his mouth with his hand. At last Poppy was able to let go and wipe her specs dry.
    The children kept the game up, with variants, while they were laid side by side on the bed, stripped and changed into dry clothes. The noise was possible to talk through.
    â€˜I haven’t heard her do that before,’ said Mrs Capstone.
    â€˜It’s something they invented. Deborah’s taught him to sing, too, after a fashion. She’s very musical, isn’t she?’
    â€˜I wouldn’t know. If she is it comes from her father. You’re Mrs Tasker, aren’t you—his grandmother?’
    â€˜Poppy Tasker.’
    â€˜I’m Clara Capstone.’
    â€˜I’m terribly sorry about the mess in the bathroom. He’s never seen a bidet before. He simply has to find out how things work and what you can do with them, but then Deborah joined in and it got out of control.’
    â€˜Would he be allowed to play with a bidet at home, supposing there were one?’
    â€˜He’s pretty good, really. He knows where he’s allowed to make messes, and my daughter-in-law organises it for that.’
    â€˜I discourage messes of any kind.’
    Time, Poppy decided, to rise above the level of acquiescent contrite worm, though it had in fact taken her time to get used to what Janet regarded as acceptable levels of chaos—painting sessions, for instance, in which floor and walls, clothes and flesh, moved towards a sort of visual entropy of puddled blue and yellow smears.
    â€˜I brought my own children up like that,’ she said. ‘Now I’m not sure I was right. Of course it’s so much easier with the kind of paints you can buy, and everything washable.’
    Mrs Capstone rose without replying.
    â€˜There,’ she said. ‘That’s better. You’re dry now, Deborah, so you can stop making that racket and we’ll go and