“Your daughter’s come to see you, Mr. Tibbs. Isn’t that nice?” said the nurse very firmly, as if expecting some denial.
Deidre pulled up a low chair with scratched wooden arms and sat down, saying, “Hullo, Daddy. How are you feeling?”
Mr. Tibbs continued to gaze out of the window. He didn’t look very “tip-top.” His jaw gaped in a sad, loose way and was covered in grayish-white stubble and snail trails of dried saliva. Deidre said, “I’ve brought you some things.”
She unpacked her bag and laid his toilet articles, some soap, and Arrowroot biscuits on his lap, keeping back his special treat, a box of Turkish delight, until the last moment, to ease the pain of parting. He looked at the little pile with fierce puzzlement, then picked the things up one at a time, handling them very carefully, as if they were made of glass. He obviously had no idea what they were, and tried to put the soap in his mouth. Deidre took them all away again, and put them on the floor.
“Well, Daddy,” she said brightly, struggling to keep her voice on an even keel, “how are you?” Oh, God, she thought, I’ve asked that already. What could she say next? And what an incredible question to be asking herself. She who had spent years quietly and contentedly talking and listening to the old man in the basket chair who bore such a strange resemblance to her father. She couldn’t even tell him about the dog, in case it brought back memories of that shocking night at the lake. So she just held his hand and looked around the room.
The young man in baggy flannel trousers was drumming on his knees with the tips of his fingers at tremendous speed. He sat next to an elderly woman with the hooded, gorged glance of a satisfied bird of prey. Then there was a dumpy, bald woman with warts like purple Rice Krispies who was stretching out her arms, palms inward, holding an invisible skein of wool. The third woman was just a bundle of clothing (checks and spots and stripes and patterned lisle stockings) with a tube disappearing up the skirt from which hung a plastic bag of yellow liquid. There they sat, each sealed in an impenetrable bubble of drugs and dreams. They could not even be said to be waiting, since the act of waiting acknowledged the possibility that life might be about to change. Deidre eased back her sleeve and looked at her watch. She had been in the sunshine lounge for three minutes and suddenly felt that she could stand no more. She fastened her coat and started to pull on her gloves. Her father gazed blindly out of the window. I can do nothing here, she thought. I am no help. No use. “I’ll come again soon, Daddy … On Sunday.”
She stumbled out into the ward proper. Before she had reached the swing doors, she heard her father’s voice raised in song to the tune of his favorite hymn, “The Old Rugged Cross.” But the words were strange and garbled, and some of them obscene.
Nicholas, invited to dinner, had arrived bursting with excitement, brandishing his letter of acceptance to Central and sporting a battered nose. He had been at the house half an hour and hadn’t stopped going on about the letter, although, as far as Avery was concerned, you could have covered the subject adequately in two minutes flat and still had time for a lengthy reading from the Upanishads.
“Isn’t it absolutely marvelous?” Nicholas was saying yet again.
“Enough to bring stars to your eyes.” Tim smiled. “Drink up.”
Avery, eggshell-brown tonsure gleaming under the spotlights, was slicing a tenderloin of pork into slices so thin they fell into soft rosy curls on the marble slab. Peanuts and chilies stood by. The fresh tomato soup was keeping warm in the double boiler. Basil, picked the previous summer and immediately frozen into an ice cube, thawed in a cup. Avery moved purposefully among his culinary arcana and drank a little Frog’s Leap Cabernet Sauvignon almost content. Almost, not quite. A cloud, no bigger than a man’s lie, would keep drifting across his horizon. And a tiny scene—hardly a scene even, a vignette, was stamped on his memory.
Tim and Esslyn, standing together in the clubroom, heads close, two tall, dark blades. Esslyn talking quietly. When Avery had entered, they moved apart, not guiltily (Tim never did anything guiltily), but quickly nonetheless. Avery had let several days drag by before he had casually asked what the fascinating conversation had been about. Tim had said he couldn’t recall the time in question. The lie oblique. Bad enough. Avery let the matter slide. What else could he do? But then, much worse, came the lie direct.
While they were all huddling frailly in the wings, as Esslyn’s life blood seeped into the boards and Harold stormed, Avery had whispered, “This will put the lighting out of his mind. P’raps we won’t have to leave after all.”
And Tim had said, “No. We’ll definitely have to go now.”
“What do you mean now?”
“What?”
“You said, ‘We’ll definitely have to go now. ’ ”
“No, I didn’t. You’re imagining things.”
“But I distinctly heard—”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake! Stop nitpicking.”
So, of course, Avery had stopped. Now, not quite content, he watched his love through the yellow-mottled screen of mother-in-law’s tongue relaxing, toasting Nicholas.
“I must say,” Avery called, making a special effort to put his fears aside, “I do miss not being able to bad-mouth Esslyn.”
“I don’t see why you shouldn’t,” replied Tim. “When he was alive, you never stopped.”
“Mmm …” Avery took down a heavy iron pan, poured in some sesame oil, and added a pinch of anise. “Half the pleasure then was the chance that it would somehow get back to him.”
“Tom said I ought to get a solicitor,” Nicholas said suddenly. “I’m sure he thinks it was me.”
“If he thought it was you, dear boy,” said Tim, “you wouldn’t be sitting there.”
Nicholas cheered up then, and asked for the third time if they thought he would have any problem getting a grant for drama school. Avery reached for his chilies and threw a couple in. He shook and rattled his pan a little more loudly than was strictly necessary. He often did this when visitors came. Childlike, he was afraid both that they might forget he was there behind the monstera and philodendron or, if they did remember, might not appreciate just how hard he was working on their behalf.
Nicholas leaned back on a raspberry satin sofa seamed and scalloped like a great shell and drank deeply of his aperitif. He loved Tim and Avery’s sitting room. It was an extraordinary mixture of downy delights such as the sofa and austere pieces of donnish severity like Tim’s Oscar Woollen armchair, two low black glass Italian tables, and a stunning heavy bronze helmet lying on its side near the bookshelves. He said, “What’s on the menu today, Avery?”
“Satay.”
“I thought that was a method of doing yourself in.” Nicholas slithered about on the shiny cushions. “Whoops! Can I have some more of this marvelous wine, Tim?”
“No. You’re already all over the place. And there’s some Tignanello with the meat.”
“Shame!” cried Nicholas. Then: “Did you see Joycey’s daughter on the first night? Wasn’t she the most breathtaking thing?”
“Very lovely,” said Tim.
“Those legs … and that long neck … and eyelashes … and those spectacular bones …”
“Well, you may not be the most sober person in the room, Nicholas,” said Avery. “But my God you know how to take an inventory.”
“Will you come and see me in my end-of-term shows?”
“How the boy leaps about.”
“If asked,” said Tim.
“Maybe in my last year I shall win the Gielgud medal?”
“Nicholas, you really must at least pretend to be a bit more modest, otherwise the rest of the students will positively loathe you.” Avery turned his attention back to his cooking. He frazzled the pork a little, sipped some more wine, checked the soup, and peeped at his little sugar baskets with iced cherries keeping cool in the larder. Then he took hot brown twists of bread from the oven, poured the soup into a warm tureen, and tuned once more into the conversation.