‘Shall I open a window?’
‘Of course not.’
‘I wish you were in it oftener.’
‘It’s like visiting the past, I like the past. I hate the present.’
‘Tell me about the present.’
‘I read books, I write essays, I stuff my head.’
‘And your heart?’
‘Empty. Hollow. Cracked like a broken drum.’
‘I don’t believe it at all. And you sing.’
‘I’m going to stop singing.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Forever.’
‘You’re blathering. I wish you’d bring your friends here.’
‘I have no friends.’
‘Don’t be so morose.’
‘Morose. I like morose.’
‘Tom McCaffrey.’
‘You wouldn’t like him.’
‘I would.’
‘I wouldn’t like that either.’
‘Get away with you!’
‘He’s bouncy and self-confident and beautiful, not a bit like me.’
‘No girls?’
‘Yes, a maidservant with a London accent who looks like an old dry wooden carving.’
‘Be serious. I wish you’d marry.’
‘You do not.’
‘I do so! I wish you’d bring your real life here.’
‘It is here. I visit it occasionally. The rest’s a fiction.’
‘You work too hard at those books. You ought to sing more. You’re happy when you sing.’
‘I hate happiness and hereby forswear it.’
‘Oh darling, you upset me so — ’
‘Sorry.’
‘Shall we play the Mozart duet?’
‘I’ll do the piano.’
Emma removed the embroidered shawl and a lamp and the photograph of his young undefiled self and opened the piano. He had telephoned the Slipper House from Heathrow, again from Brussels airport, and twice from the flat. No answer.
He drew up the second piano stool and sat down beside his mother. They smiled at each other and then suddenly, holding hands, began to laugh.
Brian McCaffrey rang the bell at George’s house in Druidsdale. Stella opened the door. It was late Saturday evening.
‘Stella!’
‘Hello.’
‘Is George there?’
‘No.’
‘Can I come in?’
‘Yes.’
Stella led the way into the dining-room where she had evidently been sitting at the table writing a letter. One lamp was on. There was a book on the table, at which Brian peered. La Chartreuse de Parme. The surviving netsuke were also there in a jumbled bunch. George had taken away the one he had stamped on.
The dining-room looked dead, like a pretentious office. It had a naked artificial unused look with its self-conscious ornaments all in (Stella’s) good taste: Japanese prints, engraved glass, plates perched on stands. Everything was dusty, including the unoccupied end of the table.
‘You’re back.’
‘Yes.’
‘And George?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But is he all right?’
‘So far as I know.’
‘You’ve seen him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is he likely to turn up?’
‘He says he’s living with Diane Sedleigh and they’re going to emigrate to Spain.’
‘But that’s splendid! Isn’t that good?’
‘I don’t know. It may not be true. Whisky? I’ll get some.’
Brian looked quickly at the letters on the table, a long one written in a tiny precise hand, one just started written in an italic hand. He had never, he thought, seen Stella’s writing. He guessed the long one was from her father.
‘What did you want with George?’ said Stella coming back with the whisky and one glass.
‘Won’t you drink?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Gabriel wanted me to come.’
Brian and Gabriel had been talking and arguing ever since the scene with George earlier in the afternoon. Gabriel had been very upset, and then to Brian’s surprise very angry, about Brian’s suggestion that she had deliberately displayed her breasts to George at the seaside. Brian had withdrawn the suggestion, then, when Gabriel had continued to reproach him, had become angry too. They went over the whole usual fruitless argument about George, in the course of which Gabriel remembered that she had had a nightmare last night in which she had seen George floating somewhere, drowned. She then became persuaded that something terrible had happened to him.
‘He was in such a terrible state of mind.’
‘He seemed to me rather pleased with himself.’
‘He’s in despair, I know, please let’s at least ring up.’
Brian rang George’s number but there was no answer. Gabriel then begged him to go round and see whether George had not taken an overdose of sleeping pills and were lying semi-animate on the sofa at Druidsdale. She was so upset by her dream, and likely, if Brian did not go, to go herself, that he had set off.
‘I’m not answering the telephone,’ said Stella, who had listened in silence to a curtailed and improved version of this account.
Brian looked at his handsome sister- In-law of whom he was a little in awe. Stella looked older, her face thinner. Two light hairlike lines rose up between her brows giving to her face a greater concentration. Her dark immaculate hair rose in a stiff springy dome above her brow, like to a crown or ceremonial helmet. Her clever mouth, with its indelible ironic shape, was calm. Her dark eyes gleamed with a light which Brian had but rarely seen in them before, not a quiet communicative luminosity, but a fanatical light, a light of will. She was to him an alien, a phenomenon, a kind of being whom he absolutely could not understand. The whisky emboldened him, however.
‘Where were you?’
‘With N at Bath Lodge. Then with May Blackett at Maryville.’
‘Ruby knew you were there. She finds lost things. She went and stared at the house. Why didn’t you come back sooner? We were worried.’
‘N wanted me to, but — ’
‘You mean you didn’t do what N wanted? Most people do.’
‘I wanted to see what would happen.’
‘To George?’
‘To me. To George too.’
‘So George is getting off scot free, off to Spain with that woman! Fancy old George gone at last, we’ll have nothing to talk about! Aren’t you relieved he’s clearing off? It solves a lot of problems, doesn’t it? You can find someone else, get out of this rotten little town. Go to Tokyo and find a nice man, someone clever, an English diplomat, or a French one. I can see you married to a Frenchman. Forget about us. Why not? God, you can’t love that swine, can you?’
‘Do you mean George?’
‘Sorry, excuse my vocabulary.’
‘You don’t think it possible.’
‘Oh it’s possible, half the women in this town are in love with George or imagine that they are, even Gabriel is. But you, you’re a cut above - I mean you’re special, like royalty - you know, I’ve always admired you so much, though I’ve never had a chance to say so, I hoped you knew - we’ve hardly ever had a real talk together, I wish we could - I feel now, now that you’re going — ’
Stella was frowning and narrowing her eyes, deepening the two new lines on her brow. She straightened her shoulders and leaned back.
Brian thought, whatever possessed me to spill all that, I must be drunk, and I’ve been disloyal to Gabriel, Stella will despise me utterly.
Stella said, ‘But I’m not going.’
‘Why not, if he is?’
‘We’ll wait and see.’
‘God, do you want revenge on George? You can’t forgive him, is that it? Are you still waiting … for something to happen …?’ Stella, who had been writing something down, pushed a slip of paper towards Brian.
‘What’s that?’
‘Mrs Sedleigh’s address. But perhaps you know it?’
‘God, I’m not going there.’
‘Then you’d better go home, Gabriel will be anxious.’
Brian walked home cursing. He felt drunk. He thought, she’s a witch. She made me say all those incredibly stupid things and then threw me out. She’s worse than George. I do believe she’s capable of murder. What is she waiting for?