‘I think I can hear the dogs upstairs.’
I too could hear scratching sounds travelling in patterns over our heads.
‘They went up there,’ said Vivian. ‘I couldn’t get them down.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Adam.
‘I went out into the hall and they came down the stairs and barked at me.’
‘They barked at me too,’ said Caris. ‘They were lying on my bed.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ said Adam. ‘They never go upstairs.’
‘I shut them out last night and they went wild,’ said Vivian. ‘Marjory Brice could hear them all the way down the hill. She telephoned to see what the matter was. In the end I let them in and they just ran upstairs into our room and got on to the bed.’
‘So how did you get them out?’ demanded Adam.
‘I didn’t. I locked them in and slept in the spare room. All night I could hear them panting through the keyhole.’
‘What about Brendon? Didn’t Brendon come?’
‘They wouldn’t go with him either. He managed to get their leads on — the problem was that then we couldn’t get them off again. They got all tangled around his legs and then they sort of each ran off in different directions and pulled him over. He hit his head on the chest of drawers. Then Nell bit him on the hand. He was terribly upset.’
‘This is completely ridiculous,’ Adam said.
‘It’s a bit much, really, isn’t it?’ said Vivian, to all of us. ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit much?’
We listened to the tapping sounds, running in rapid figures of eight over our heads.
‘It’s as if they know dad isn’t here,’ said Caris.
‘Of course they know dad isn’t here,’ said Adam. ‘They can see he isn’t here.’
‘But it’s as though they’re worried. They know something’s wrong. Dad has an amazing rapport with animals,’ she informed me. I noticed that her early, impressive contralto had now risen by several tones. ‘They speak to him, they really do. They’d defend him to the death.’
The black fumes of Vivian’s breakfast were billowing across the kitchen. With a feeling of submission, almost of defeat, I felt my palate rise in anticipation, not just of food but apparently of repetition itself. It seemed that the quality of Vivian’s breakfasts was insignificant, compared to my willingness to make a habit of them. For some reason this caused me to think of Hamish. It was both sad and relieving to imagine him adjusting to each new latitude, each substitution of day for night, with a physiological routine bent not on understanding things but merely acclimatising to them. Already he seemed perfectly happy living with Lisa at 22 The Meadows, which in terms of time zones was as Sydney to Rebecca and Nimrod Street’s London. Whatever feelings spilled out of him at the transits of his fate the mechanism of his body set about busily mopping up. Caris had risen from her chair and moved to the window, giving me the opportunity to examine the other half of her outfit. Below the peasant blouse she was wearing a very full dark-red skirt with beads sewn around the bottom, a pair of white lacy tights and high-heeled red shoes. She looked as though she were wearing the national dress of a small, high-spirited country. I wondered how she had planned to climb Egypt Hill in this attire. The skirt emphasised the solidity of her hips in a way that was more intimidating than unflattering. She folded her arms and stood with one leg thrown out to the side, contemplating the grey prospect of the courtyard. Vivian put my plate in front of me. I looked down at the steaming, gory spectacle and experienced a return of the previous day’s aversion, along with the feeling that by eating amongst the Hanburys I would in some way implicate myself, confer a solidity upon myself that might make it impossible for me ever to leave; that by this complicated, laborious act of ingestion I would surrender not only something of my impartiality but some of the space, too, in which my loyalty to my own life was housed.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘It’s so strange being back,’ said Caris, from the window.
‘Is it?’ said Vivian vaguely. ‘I expect it is. It’s rather a shame the weather isn’t better. If you’d waited until the summer we could have used the terrace. Not that we ever get the evenings they get in Spain of course. At Las Pitunas they sit out half the night, with people turning up at the most extraordinary hours in just a T-shirt and a pair of flip-flops. Nobody seems to mind,’ she said gloomily. ‘They’re all terribly free. There’s none of this calling up and arranging Sunday lunch in three months’ time. By the time you’ve thought about it for that long you don’t actually want to do it, do you? The other day someone rang and invited us to dinner next autumn! She claimed they didn’t have a free weekend until then. I didn’t know whether to accept or not. It seemed a bit presumptuous. I thought, well, who knows, I might be dead. I suppose if I am someone will let them know.’
‘But we were never like that!’ exclaimed Caris. ‘There have always been people at Egypt, always, without anyone arranging it or planning it! Do you remember the time that man stayed, and after he’d gone everyone admitted they hadn’t got a clue who he was?’
‘I think he’d come to fix the boiler,’ said Vivian. She gave a snuffling little laugh.
‘Yes!’ shrieked Caris, delighted. ‘And someone offered him a drink!’
‘Didn’t he end up getting off with Fiona Lacey?’ She pronounced it ‘orf’.
‘No — no! He can’t have!’
‘She was still married to Dan in those days. God!’ she expostulated, gloomy once more. ‘He was the most terrible pig.’
‘I remember their daughter,’ said Caris. ‘She went to our school. The two boys were at some boarding school where you wore black tie and got to have your own horse, but she went to Doniford Middle because she was a girl.’
‘Yes,’ said Vivian vaguely, ‘I think Fiona’s a bit like that.’
‘It’s incredible, isn’t it,’ said Caris. ‘In this day and age — do you remember her? She had red hair. I wonder what happened to her. She might as well have gone around with it branded on her forehead, you know — “I’m not important”.’
‘Maybe they just couldn’t afford it,’ said Adam. ‘It might have been nothing to do with her being a girl.’
‘In that case,’ said Caris, ‘none of them should have gone.’
‘So if everybody can’t have everything, nobody should have anything, is that what you’re saying?’
‘It’s called justice, Adam,’ said Caris sarcastically. ‘You may not have heard of it.’
‘I’d just like you to explain where the justice is in denying two people a decent education.’
‘There was nothing wrong with the education you got at Doniford Middle — in fact, they’d probably have been better off there.’
‘Well, what are you complaining about then?’ said Adam, sitting back in his chair triumphantly. ‘In that case she got the best deal.’
‘I just happen personally to regard being manufactured by a patriarchal institution as a handicap in life. Not everyone agrees with me.’
‘I suppose I should never have sent Jilly and Laura away,’ interposed Vivian. ‘When they came back they were never quite as I remembered them. They seemed very big and sort of frightening. I remember they were always looking in the cupboards. Almost the minute they came home they’d start going around the house opening everything and looking inside. It was like having burglars to stay.’
‘You don’t really regret sending them, do you?’ said Caris.
‘I didn’t at the time,’ said Vivian. ‘But now they say I did something awful to them, although I don’t see how I can have done, when I wasn’t even there. I had quite fond memories of school. The nuns were always terribly nice, although I don’t think they taught us anything.’