Across the hall the game room had walnut-paneled walls and a billiard table with a rip in it. Year after year the Admiral postponed having the rip repaired. It unnerved the very good players, thus giving the poorer ones like himself a psychological advantage. Beside the library there was a sewing room where no one sewed. Perhaps when the house had been built it was the custom for the women to do petit point or embroidery while the men played billiards. Now the space was a catchall for steamer trunks and suitcases, the housekeeper’s reducing machine, a pair of carved teakwood chests Iris had carted halfway around the world, a vacuum cleaner that didn’t work, the ski equipment the girls had used at their school in Geneva. Though the equipment was well worn, the boots scuffed, the webs of the poles bent out of shape, he was amazed that the girls had ever skied. Juliet seemed too timid to try, Cordelia too reckless to survive. No matter how hard he attempted to picture them skiing in a nice average way down a nice average slope, he could only imagine Cordelia plunging headlong from Mt. Blanc like an avalanche and Juliet having to be dragged up the smallest knoll and pushed down screaming. Perhaps there never were any nice average slopes in the girls’ lives.
The library was in another wing of the house. It had brown leather chairs that smelled of saddle soap. The floor-to-ceiling shelves of books were behind glass and the mantel of the fireplace was decorated with ceramic songbirds. It was a comfortable room, but the Admiral rarely sat there to read or to watch the fire. The bookshelves were locked and he could never remember where he’d put the key; and because of a defective damper the fireplace smoked badly and all the birds had turned grey as if from old age.
The adjoining room was where Iris spent most of her time. Here, too, there was a fireplace, but its logs were artificial and its flames gas. Iris wasn’t strong enough to handle real logs in a real grate. Sometimes she couldn’t even light the gas without help from Miranda or the housekeeper. The Admiral turned off the gas and the lamp by Iris’s reading chair and the other lamp that lit the table where half a dozen miniature chess sets were laid out, each with a game in progress. These were the games Iris was playing by mail with people in other parts of the world. To the Admiral it seemed a little like war to have unseen opponents in foreign countries planning strategic moves against you. But no blood was shed, nothing was lost but prestige.
The kitchen and the rooms beyond it he left alone. They were the working and living quarters of Mrs. Norgate, the housekeeper, and he depended on her as he would have depended on a chief petty officer to keep her part of the ship tight and tidy.
He returned to the front of the house at the same time as Miranda was coming in the door with the little poodle. She’d put a coat over the formal dress she’d worn at dinner, but it offered little protection from the spring fog. She looked cold and damp and her voice was hoarse.
“Alouette wanted to come home. He acts afraid of the dark lately.”
“He might have trouble with his vision,” the Admiral said. “I understand poodles often do as they get older. Perhaps I should take him to the vet.”
“What happens to their vision?”
“Cataracts, I believe.”
“Like people.”
“Yes. Like people.”
She let the dog off the leash and it bounded up the stairs. “He seems all right now. Maybe he simply wanted to get back to his mistress.”
“Miranda—”
“I’d better go upstairs and open the door for him so that Mrs. Young won’t be disturbed.”
“Miranda, I’m sorry about the dinner tonight.”
“You’re sorry?” she repeated. “That’s funny, I was just going to tell you that I was sorry. It was my responsibility. I should have made better plans.”
“No, no. Your plans were fine. Those ‘questions for a summer night,’ I thought that was an excellent idea.”
“Mrs. Young didn’t.”
“Mrs. Young’s illness makes her hard to please. You mustn’t take her opinions too seriously. She doesn’t mean to disparage your abilities.”
“She means to and she’s right. I’m not qualified for a position like this, I’m not qualified for anything. It’s useless for me to keep on pretending.”
“Sit down, Miranda. I’ll get you a drink to warm you up.”
There was a bench along one wall that looked as if it had once been a pew in a small church. She sat down, shivering, pulling the coat around her. It was several sizes too large. The poodle had been in such a hurry to go out that she’d grabbed the coat out of the hall closet without knowing or caring whom it belonged to.
“A drink won’t change how I feel,” she said.
“It might. Let me—”
“Those questions for a summer night, what a joke. Hundreds of summer nights have passed, and fall and winter and spring, and I couldn’t answer one of those questions positively. I haven’t earned or learned or helped or felt glad to be alive.”
“You’ve made me feel glad to be alive.”
“You mustn’t say nice things like that. You’ll make me cry.”
“Please don’t. I insist you don’t, Miranda.”
Her face was hidden in the collar of the coat, her voice barely audible. “All right.”
“You won’t cry.”
“No.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
“Thank you.” He cleared his throat as if it were his voice, not hers, being muffled in the folds of the coat. “Actually you’re the best thing that’s happened to this household for a long time and we’re all grateful to you. I hope you’re not planning to leave.”
“I’m not accomplishing anything here.”
“But you are. There’s a definite improvement in the girls’ behavior. They’re less self-centered, more responsive to other people. At dinner, for instance, they talked directly to their Uncle Charles instead of around him to each other. Did you notice that?”
“Everyone noticed,” she said. “Especially Uncle Charles.”
“It was a step up from ignoring him, as they’re in the habit of doing. But I’m not only thinking of the girls when I ask you to stay with us. I’m being quite selfish. In fact... well, you must be aware of how happy I am in your presence, Miranda.”
“No.” She’d hardly been aware of him at all except as a figure in the background, like one of Iris’s ivory and wooden chess pieces. Now suddenly he was stepping off the board alive, making sounds, having feelings, being happy and unhappy. It frightened her. She wanted him to step back on the chessboard where he belonged.
The girls, reconciled by this time, were hiding behind the railing at the top of the stairs.
“He said he was happy with her presents,” Juliet whispered. “I’ve never seen her give him any presents. I wonder what kind they are.”
“Use your imagination, stupid.”
“You mean hanky-panky? Surely they wouldn’t commit hanky-panky with Mrs. Young right in the house.”
“They wouldn’t have to. Pops has tons of room in the back seat of the Rolls.”
“Do you think we should tell Mrs. Young?”
“My God, no,” Cordelia said. “She’d probably blame us. Let her find out for herself.”
Miranda stayed for two months.
During this time the weather remained cold and Van Eyck blamed it on the environmentalist members of the municipal government, accusing them of trying to limit the city’s growth by controlling the weather. He wasn’t sure how this was being done, but he wrote letters to alert the daily newspaper, the Chamber of Commerce and, in case more inspired revelations and clout were necessary, the bishop of the Episcopalian diocese.