‘I don’t know why Stella hasn’t come back and neither do you. I don’t see why Stella should never be blamed.’
‘I know why you’re against Stella — ’
‘Oh stop, stop!’ said Tom, holding his head.
Alex, her eyes shining, murmured, ‘Go on.’
‘It was an accident,’ said Gabriel, ‘and so was the Roman glass.’
‘Oh hang the Roman glass,’ said Brian.
Gabriel went on, ‘George hasn’t really done anything bad at all, it’s we who are living in a fantasy world when we blame him so. Perhaps he just drinks a bit, that’s all. But we drink, look at us now. He’s really quite an ordinary person.’
‘I don’t think that’s quite true,’ said Alex.
‘I don’t mean it in a nasty way,’ said Gabriel.
‘I’m sure you don’t,’ said Brian. ‘There you were, down at the seaside, exposing your breasts to him.’
‘What?’
‘You were pretending to look after Zed and you undid your blouse to let George see your breasts.’
‘I didn’t.’
During the argument Adam had crawled away from the centre of the room and was sitting in a corner with Zed curled up beside him. Zed, not unaware of hearing his name mentioned at intervals, suddenly uncurled himself and trotted across the carpet straight to George. George promptly picked him up and set him on his knee. Adam then jumped up and followed Zed, posting himself on the floor near George’s feet. George laughed.
‘There!’ said Alex.
‘You - you bewitch - everyone — ’ said Brian, hardly able to speak.
‘I don’t think George wants to be an ordinary person,’ said Tom.
Gabriel said, ‘I didn’t mean it like - and I didn’t - do that - what Brian said — ’
‘George,’ said Brian, ‘let me ask you straight, and under God or whatever you believe in, whether you did or did not try to kill Stella that night. Now tell the truth for once, if you dare to, if you have any guts, if you’re a man and not just a mean vicious little rat.’
There was a moment’s silence. George suddenly lost his look of bland assurance, the ‘shining’ look which so much puzzled Tom. He said, ‘I’m … not sure … I can’t remember …’
‘Well, you’d bloody better remember, hadn’t you,’ said Brian. ‘It is important, you know. At least it’s important to me to know whether or not I have a murderer for a brother!’
‘He hasn’t killed anybody,’ said Alex to Brian, ‘he hasn’t tried to kill anybody, and he wouldn’t and couldn’t! Just stop attacking him, will you! Can’t you be charitable for once? You think you’re the righteous one, you seem to me just a pharisee, you can’t even be decently polite to your wife in public.’
Gabriel started to cry.
‘Oh go away all of you!’ said Alex. ‘Not you,’ she said to George.
George put Zed down on the floor. Adam rolled away and got up. Before she became too upset to do so, Gabriel had been observing her son and trying to decide to tell him to go out into the garden. He might be damaged by hearing the grown-ups fight so, but equally perhaps by a peremptory banishment. Adam had at first seemed bright-eyed, rather amused, suddenly resembling his grandmother. Now however, near to tears, he picked up Zed and ran to Gabriel.
Gabriel made for the door. Brian followed saying, ‘Oh hang it all!’ Tom looked at George.
George was sitting with his hands squarely on his knees, with vague unfocused eyes, his lips parted, frowning with puzzlement.
Alex said, ‘Go, Tom, go, dear, I’m not angry with you.’
Tom went out, closing the door. He went down the stairs. The front door stood open where the Brian McCaffreys, in their disordered retreat, had failed to shut it. Tom turned toward the back door. He emerged into the garden and ran across the grass to the Slipper House. Like Hattie, he rang the bell, tried the doors, peered through the windows. No one.
It was beginning to rain. Tom ran on along the slippery mossy path under the trees and out of the back gate. He closed the back gate. He stood in the street with the rain quietly soaking his long hair and running down his face like tears, and he held his head firmly between his two hands, trying to think.
As the door closed after Tom, Alex said to Ruby, who was still sitting on the chair near the door:
‘How dare you sit in my presence and how dare you come into the drawing-room and listen to our family talk! Go away at once, please.’
As Ruby rose, George said, ‘Ruby love, be a dear and bring us some sandwiches, would you? You know the ones I like, tomato and cucumber, and cress and cream cheese.’
Ruby vanished.
‘I’m frightened of her,’ said Alex. ‘She’s become different, as if there were an evil spirit in her. She’s even become larger, like a sort of big robot.’
‘She’s practically one of the family,’ said George, ‘and she’s old now. She knows all about us. It’s her one interest in life.’
‘Yes, and she tells everybody! She gossips spitefully about us at the Institute. I’m sure she told someone about your looking at that girl through the glasses. She saw from the garden. She’s everywhere.’
‘Oh never mind,’ said George. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He sneezed.
‘You’ve got a cold.’
‘Yes, I got it from Tom.’
‘I think that Gabriel is the silliest wettest human-being I’ve ever met. And she’s in love with you.’
‘Yes. That doesn’t matter either.’
‘Sit down,’ said Alex. ‘Why did you come now?’
‘Because of Bill the Lizard.’
‘I thought so.’
She sat down near to George and looked at him quietly. It was a long time since she had done that. George looked older and almost strange to her in a way she could not measure. Perhaps some general idea which she had had of his face was now suddenly seen to be out of date. His hair had grown a little longer than usual (he had not been to the barber) and showed daubs of grey at the temples. There were new discoloured wrinkles round his eyes. He was again looking worried. The charming boyish look was in abeyance. Now the older face appeared, George as he would be when he was sixty or seventy, less plump, more gaunt, more lined. The lines were already faintly sketched on the brow which had been smooth so long. Alex looked, feeling the pain of her love for him. She thought, I have somehow relied on George being invulnerable, untouchable, youthful, somehow like myself, a guarantor of myself. But now he looks just like an ordinary worried muddled mediocre shop-soiled man. She saw his shabby suit, his dirty shirt, his need of a shave.
Meanwhile George was looking at Alex and thinking, how old and stiff and sort of ailing she has become, and she stoops and her skin has become brown and loose and dry, dirty-looking, and her mouth droops into those long gloomy furrows and her eyelids are stained and puffy, and why must she still paint them so. She looks pathetic and touching, and I’ve never seen her look like that before.
George smiled and wrinkled up his short nose rather like Zed and showed his short square wide-apart teeth and looked young again.
‘Nice to see you, Alex.’
‘Nice to see you, George.’
‘Bill was somebody. I might have talked to Bill.’
‘I wish you had.’
‘It doesn’t matter, but it’s sad. His death touched old things, things before it all began.’
‘What is “it”?’ she asked, but he did not answer that.
‘You know, I feel changed. Perhaps Gabriel was right. What did she say? “Saved”, “Come back.”’
‘Changed? How?’
Ruby came in with the sandwiches then withdrew.
‘I’m peckish. You have some?’
‘No, thanks,’ said Alex.
George began to eat the sandwiches voraciously. He had not eaten since noon on the previous day. He said, ‘We’re going to Spain.’