Her grief had dired: perhaps Madame de Lascabanes anticipated an item of which she might disapprove, or it could have been because Mrs Macrory was doing the crying for all of them.
Anne appeared genuinely moved. ‘Whatever else, it’s so terrible for the children!’ Most of her own six had crept up by dribs and drabs and were standing behind her in a loose queue.
It made Dorothy realize that bereavement could become a luxury; she squeezed her friend for showing her what she personally would never enjoy.
Sir Basil frowned; he hadn’t finished. ‘Well, nobody, not even her greatest admirers, can deny that Mother was materialistic. And vain. Shall I ever forget — the night of my arrival — the Lilac Fairy! Laughter revived the golden timbre for which his voice was famous; it conveyed a bounty rather than bitterness, as he heard it.
‘Poor darling,’ Dorothy began to twitter in short sharp laughs, or coughs, ‘alone in that house with all those women! How they imposed on her! Luckily she was able to see the comic side. Mother had a certain superficial streak which is probably what kept her going. But her aloneness was pitiful.’
Mrs Macrory blew her nose on a crumpled mauve tissue she found in her pocket. ‘I didn’t know her,’ she remarked: she might have preferred to keep her vision of a dazzling figure descending from a car at the steps of ‘Kudjeri’.
Sir Basil was composing his last words. ‘For all her faults, she was an enchantress.’ He would not look at Dorothy. ‘I’m fortunate to be her son.’
Dorothy would not look at Basil. The paddocks were coldly steaming by now. She chafed the backs of her own hands, and glanced at her travelling-clock. ‘We must pack our things,’ she announced to the room in general. ‘It wouldn’t be fair to Mr Wyburd to delay getting there. I can imagine his distress: my parents were his close friends, and only incidentally, clients.’
Her excluding him from the relationship may have piqued Basil. ‘To any solicitor over a certain age, death must become just another formality. I shouldn’t worry about the Wyburd: he’s drawn up far too many wills.’
The abrupt descent to reality reminded Mrs Macrory, ‘I ought to be getting your breakfast.’
Sir Basil lowéred his voice, ‘Nothing elaborate,’ he begged, ‘on such a morning;’ and contracted his crow’s-feet at her.
Though a person of serious intentions, Anne Macrory was already enjoying the pleasures of melancholy retrospect. ‘I don’t know what the girls will do without you! The sewing lessons!’
Dorothy had begun the meticulous organization of her crocodile dressing-case: a present from Mummy and Dad. ‘At least we’ve fitted everybody out for the summer. And shan’t we write to one another?’ she suggested vaguely as Anne left, trailing after her the string of children.
The topics they should choose, time would decide, or dispose of, along with other superfluities.
Quenched by anticlimax Sir Basil had gone into the dressing-room, and was throwing his things into his case. ‘Don’t you think, Dorothy, you ought to eat a chop for the journey?’
It was too frivolous for her to answer. She must concentrate in future on those practical virtues her friends saw in her, some of which she had found she actually possessed. In any case, she would not accept to share the blame for any of her brother’s dirty work.
Till Mog, that rather disgusting, au fond frightening, fat child, appeared beside her. ‘What’s a kermode, Dorothy?’ she asked while chewing on a doorstep of bread-and-dripping.
Deprived of her title and her privacy, the princess snapped. ‘Really, I haven’t the faintest idea.’ But shivered.
‘He said she died on the kermode.’
‘Who said? And how do you know?’
‘I was listening when Mr — the solicitor — was telling Mother.’ Mog continued chewing and looking.
One could hardly protest, Go! Go! Leave me to my wretchedness! Instead the princess offered a smile to outdazzle the frost. ‘Don’t you think you should lend a hand with the breakfast?’
Mog said no, it wasn’t necessary; but drifted off soon after, of her own free will, having seen as much as she wanted.
‘Poor old Arnold Wyburd,’ Dorothy called to the adjoining room, ‘he must be upset — for his famous discretion to let him down: to babble about a commode — to a stranger — on the telephone!’
Basil had come to the doorway. ‘I don’t understand.’ She could not believe in him: he was holding his head at too humbly suppliant an angle.
‘Didn’t you hear? Mother died on the commode!’ She would have liked him to join her in a private laugh, herself already racketing in that direction.
But Basil remained serious, she saw. ‘Dorothy,’ he was advancing on her, ‘nobody will ever know what we know. That makes us dependent, doesn’t it? on each other. For kindness.’
She fended him off. ‘There are plenty of others, I should have thought, who’ll dispense kindness more professionally.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘only because they don’t know me as we know each other.’
He waited for a change of heart, which did not occur, or no more than by a flicker of horror.
‘I don’t understand what you’re getting at, Basil.’
‘It seemed understandable enough last night.’
‘Don’t bring it up! Ever! I want — ohhh, to forget about it!’ If only she could lock a door, lose the key, and never again open.
He had, in fact, heard her locking him out.
So they continued their separate preparations, the dividing wall safely between them.
Her husband had put petrol enough in the car to see them as far as Gogong, Mrs Macrory mentioned at breakfast; Rory was sorry: he had left to repair a broken gate he had come across the evening before on the far side of the property.
They would not be faced with Macrory. Like animals, like children, he shied away from association with death. The Macrory children, with the exception of fat Mog and the baby, lowered their eyes in the presence of the bereaved Hunters.
Mog giggled softly into her tea. ‘On a kermode!’
After their release from table, Sir Basil remembered to distribute coins.
The children brightened; while the mother grew tearful. ‘It’s been so wonderful getting to know you both. It’s been like — almost — one’s first experience of the world.’
Thinking of the risks simple people may never be called upon to run, and the deceits they will not recognize, the eyes of the Princesse de Lascabanes moistened.
She looked for her handbag, but seeing it out of reach, consoled herself instead by giving her brother advice. ‘Are you sure, Basil, you’ve forgotten nothing? Your pyjamas, for instance. Hubert always used to leave’, it was too late to prevent its escaping, ‘his pyjamas under the pillow.’
Basil mumbled, ‘No longer wear ’em.’
Mog burst: a mouthful of milky tea flew back into the cup she couldn’t stop fiddling with.
After the kisses and the promises, everyone else stood shivering in the yard as the Hunters were leaving. Tactfully, with the tip of her tongue, Madame de Lascabanes tried to feel whether any of the porridge on the baby’s cheek had come off on her restored lips.
Sir Basil and the princess sat looking out through the car window. By leaning forward and pressing himself against his sister’s shoulder, and by her withdrawing into a more rigid, oblique version of Dorothy, it was possible for him to be seen to advantage. While they all persuaded themselves it had happened. In spite of their dreamy, lingering smiles, the Hunters were probably the most disbelieving of any.
Sir Basil trod on the accelerator, and they jumped forward too jerkily for dignity. Then the princess put out her arm and gave a single long wave. A sword of light from the risen sun clashed with the rings she had not been wearing while at ‘Kudjeri’.