When Anne explained, ‘Dorothy, we only saw your mother once. She drove up not long after she and Father agreed on the deal. I’ll never forget her. She was wearing white.’
Dorothy’s voice grated. ‘Even as an old woman, white was one of her affectations.’
Basil was moved to defend their mother. ‘She could never resist her sense of theatre.’
‘I’d say Mrs Hunter was a flirt.’ Macrory lolled remembering. ‘She asked me hadn’t we met before. Or perhaps we hadn’t, she decided. Anyhow, she hoped we would meet again.’ His eyes, his lips were licking at prospects he might still be considering.
Anne was unperturbed. ‘Yes, she liked to flirt. With either sex. And although you knew what she was up to, it didn’t matter. You let her seduce you with her eyes. What great persuaders her hands were! And her lovely voice.’
‘She was all right,’ Macrory agreed.
‘I loved your mother,’ Anne said.
While it was Dorothy her daughter they were looking at. Basil too, was beginning to take notice. He had raised his head. Surely to God Basil was not in love with Elizabeth Hunter? With her arms Dorothy de Lascabanes tried to cover as much of herself as she was able; though she probably only succeeded in suggesting that she was suffering from a stomach ache.
Basil had continued looking past or into her, when the telephone shattered the whole house. Anne went slommacking to answer; she was wearing a man’s felt slippers tonight. Dorothy opened her bag and took out the mirror, then was afraid to look in it. Nor did she dare look at her brother.
Anne was not gone for long. ‘That was Mrs Emmett again, to tell me nobody understands her, and couldn’t I help.’
‘You can’t ’uv thrown ’er much of a lifeline to be back so quick.’
‘I told her she’d better ring another number. We’re out of business.’
‘Bankrupted!’ Macrory beat so hard with the spoon on one side of his plate, a bit flew out.
‘Ah, dear!’ Anne laughed; she pressed against her husband before stooping to gather up the piece; she said she was going to bed.
Basil too, left the kitchen: the telephone’s false alarm had unnerved him; and Macrory lounged out, his slow gross manner emphasizing that neither his wife’s silent invitation nor his guests’ presence would influence his true, his secret life.
Ashamed for expecting deliverance by telephone, and for wearing her innocent white dress, Dorothy directed her anger at the ostentatiously unconscious Macrory long after he had left the room. Alcohol had intensified his insolence; it had glazed his eyes more brutally, and brought out the snakes of veins in the whites. His muscular attitudes were odious; she disliked his smell; body hair revolted her.
Her own sober breath was finally rasping.
Not only was she allergic to Macrory physically, she resented his memories of Mother: of Elizabeth Hunter revealing possibilities (to Macrory of all people) as she stepped from the car. (How much had Basil realized at the telling?) In a white dress. Had the glass been conscious of it when you put it on in Mother’s room? Macrory had sat palming off those suggestions of Mother’s nymphomania to mask his actual thoughts. Were you the Second Nymphomaniac? The one who hadn’t found her feet? When God knew, everything in your experience of that, disgusted. Thoughts even. (What had Basil been looking at?) Thin arms are incapable of shielding anything vital.
Looking down, Dorothy found her dress exaggerated a nakedness which had never occurred to her before. (But Basil, a preoccupied, cultivated man — Shakespeare in his pocket, could not have noticed.)
Macrory would have.
The hall was not so dark that an oval rosewood mirror failed to reflect a steely light. The ugly mirror must have been one of the few bits of Robertson loot brought with them from ‘Kirkcaldy’ to ‘Kudjeri’. It should have mocked a Hunter, but seemed instead to cajole: hips still impeccable; faintly mauve gloves of skin ending at the elbows; face wavering behind glass dissolving into water.
She was not drunk. It was most likely this glimpse of herself in Mother’s white which inspired Dorothy de Lascabanes to prove to Elizabeth Hunter she could play the game of generosity, or self-aggrandizement. She groped in her bag for the notecase. She could not remember its ever having been so fat: it was money from Mummy’s gift cheque. It both thrilled and hurt Dorothy to take hold of so much ready money. She decided against counting. She would make a grand gesture. But after crumpling the notes in a careless handful, she could not resist confirming the extent of her generosity, and found that nobody would be able to accuse her of stinginess after this.
Though she could hear a crackling from the fire he had lit in the study, there was no sign that Macrory was still inside the room. She paused at the door, to listen; more irrevocably, she pushed it, however gently, from ajar to open.
He was lying on the hearth, his offside knee drawn up, so that his shoulders, his head were forced back, to help the other tensed leg balance his body. Though his eyes were closed, he was hardly relaxed: his Adam’s-apple, which moved once after she entered, looked too self-conscious. She found herself glancing, by accident, at what she supposed they call the ‘crutch’ of this repellent man, to whom she was in any case only about to discharge a debt.
‘Mr Macrory,’ she began, when once or twice during their stay she had addressed him by his first name (not without ironic overtones) Tm afraid my brother and I have been imposing on you far too long;’ only a lethargy descending on her prevented her adding, sponging on you in fact.
As she spoke she stood squeezing the handful of notes; they should have dripped sweat, but were so dry, they could very easily have emitted sparks, or caught fire.
Macrory opened his eyes and looked in her direction. Did he notice the nakedness which the dress had revealed for the first time tonight in the kitchen? Or was he, rather, listening for echoes of Elizabeth Hunter as she stepped radiant out of the car?
Madame de Lascabanes blundered on. Td like you to accept this — from both of us — in appreciation of all you’ve done. Your wife too, of course.’ Macrory cocked an eyebrow, as though sceptical of Anne and Basil’s part in it.
‘Please!’ The princess heard herself trumpeting.
Macrory turned on what was, for him, an exceptionally agreeable look. ‘I never thought of friendship as something you pay for, Dorothy. Not like love.’
If he had left it at that, but he didn’t: he carried on smiling at her, for an improbable proposition she had made, or worse, a professional service she demanded and he could only half-heartedly perform.
The Princesse de Lascabanes had never experienced a similar situation, except in her imagination. ‘I’m sorry to have explained myself, apparently, so crudely. I also realize I misinterpreted a metaphor you used at dinner.’
It was humiliating to have chosen a word the fellow might find laughable for never having come across it. Her double gaffe produced in her a frisson as though somebody had drawn a wire brush across her slackening skin.
Then she remembered to drop the handful of notes back into the darkness of her bag. It was in one sense a relief.
‘Such full lives,’ the princess murmured, ‘and your children — you must find the children most rewarding.’
He was still looking at her; so she went.
Passing through the house she did not hear the sound of her own movements: it was Elizabeth Hunter in pursuit. Whatever the name — Hubert Edvard Rory — didn’t you know Dorothy it’s the same man one chases? With Mother forcing you to look back it was impossible to escape shame. The frisson revived on Dorothy’s arms, along the passages, and up the stairs. Stairs are worse: the sounds made by comparatively modest garments will swell voluptuously when thoughts are attuned to them. Nobody — least of all you Dorothy — likes to admit to all the names Arnold isn’t one is it would be too ridiculous but what about …?