“Hasn’t Mr Saporta been?” he asked.
“Oh, I think so. Yes. Of course.”
If he had not known her to be genuine, her manner could have appeared false. Perhaps, it now occurred to him, Dulcie herself had not yet realized. Otherwise, she must surely have found the means for grief out of her love for Mr Saporta.
It was then he conceived the idea of giving Dulcie Feinstein one of his solid mandalas. Supposing he had been wrong, that she was not intended to marry the carpet merchant, that she would never sit down with her children at that over-crowded, over-laden, family table after the service at the synagogue — then without his help she would have no means of relieving her continued drought, of filling her dreadful emptiness.
They sat together for a little. They talked about the price of flowers, and in greater danger, the migration of birds. The room had been abandoned by all those ever connected with it.
Dulcie leaned forward at last, and wiped his mouth with her handkerchief. Perhaps her kindness was to soften an expression which suggested she wanted him to leave.
When he had got up, she said: “I shall let you know when you are to come. Probably at Sarsaparilla. Daddy, I expect, will sell “Mount Pleasant”. There is not what you would call point in it now.”
She kissed him when he left soon after.
Then — he did not want to think it — she forgot.
Even after it was known they were at Sarsaparilla to collect their belongings and sell the house, he hardly dared wonder at the reason for Dulcie’s neglect. Waldo even had found out Feinsteins were there, though naturally Waldo made no mention of a death. Waldo had begun looking at himself in the glass. So Arthur decided not to delay. He went up to “Mount Pleasant” uninvited.
Dulcie said: “Oh, Arthur, I am so glad! We made an arrangement, didn’t we? I forget exactly what. But now you’ve come. So perhaps I’m not so much to blame.”
If Dulcie had been different, again he might have suspected her of putting it on. She was still dressed in black, though. She was standing amongst the packing cases, in the smell of dust from a dismantled room.
“Why, Dulcie,” he said, in his excitement over a genuine discovery, “I didn’t know we have the same colour of eyes!”
“Yes,” she said — like that.
Whereas on the previous occasion Dulcie Feinstein’s face had been whittled down to the yellow bone, this afternoon she was restored to flesh, out of which the eyes were shining, not, he saw, with the dry fever of wordless grief, not inward-looking, but steady with a lovely confidence.
“Come and let us sit down,” she said, pushing aside a packing case.
So that Arthur, too, grew confident.
When they were seated on the sofa, knee to knee, Dulcie could not suppress a little, passing, unexpectedly humorous whimper.
“My poor darling mother,” she said, “it has turned out exactly as she always expected it to!”
With her hand she might have been smoothing Mrs Feinstein’s perpetual earth.
“I mean, she predicted I would decide to marry Leonard Saporta,” Dulcie said, looking straight at Arthur.
There was now no need, he saw, to offer the mandala, but he would, because he still wanted to, because they were all four, he and Dulcie, Mrs Feinstein and Leonard Saporta, so solidly united.
“I want you, and Leonard has agreed — ” said Dulcie, “I want you to come to our wedding, Arthur.”
“Oh, no!”
He had to sit back. She could not have been more astonished.
“Oh, no!” he repeated. “Waldo would be far too — far too shocked.”
She drew her mouth in rather uglily, against her teeth, down against her gums. She could have been sucking a lemon the moment before.
Then she said, averting her face: “Waldo is only your brother, you know. At least he’s no more than that to me. Arthur’s brother.”
“Oh no,” said Arthur, “he’s more than that.”
She hung her head.
“It’s necessary to escape from Waldo.”
“Necessary for you. Not for me.”
It was too obvious. But Dulcie had made her own escape. For the moment at least she did not see very clearly.
“I know you’ll be kind to him, Dulcie.”
“Oh,” she said, “by nature I’m not at all kind!”
Shaking herself with a little frilly movement he would have loved less if it had meant more.
“Yes,” she said, biting her lip, still not looking, “I know I shall be kind because you want it.”
Then Arthur took the mandala out of his pocket. It was the blue taw which Norm Croucher had traded for liquorice straps. The mists rolled up, to be contained by the perfect, glass sphere.
“Dulcie,” he said, “I brought you this.”
Scarcely moving his hand he worked it into motion on the open palm.
“It’s one of the solid mandalas, the blue mandala,” he explained.
“Oh,” she cried, lowering her head.
He had always known the blue mandala would be the one for Dulcie. Her beauty would not evaporate again.
Though first she had to denounce herself, saying: “I have always been — particularly lately — hideously weak. You,” she said, gasping for breath above the glass marble, “were the one, Arthur, who gave me strength — well, to face the truth — well, about ourselves — in particular my own wobbly self.”
Then she was laughing for the riddle solved. She was holding up her full throat, the laughter rippling out of it.
Exactly when Waldo walked in, perhaps neither of them saw. Dulcie, on noticing, tried to strangle her laughter, but she couldn’t.
They both sat looking at Waldo, who had put on his blue serge, and was wearing one of the butterfly collars. He must have been working on his glasses with the shammy for them to shine with just that expression of enquiry. His smile was tight. It had almost reached the point where the twitch began.
So Arthur decided to say the one or two necessary things, and go. He, who could not help himself, could not have helped his brother now. Arthur is the backward one. That was the way the relationship had been arranged. Of the twins. The twin brothers. Waldo had wanted it. Waldo is the one who takes the lead. Joining them together at the hand. And because Waldo needed it that way, only the knife could sever it.
Like Mother’s breast.
The year the Poulters came to live down Terminus Road Mother had gone into hospital at Barranugli for the operation Waldo would not talk about.
“What operation?” he hedged, and decided almost at once: “It’s something that isn’t mentioned, do you hear?”
So Arthur had to tell Mrs Poulter.
“Our mother has lost one of her breasts.”
“That need not be so serious,” said Mrs Poulter, herself a serious and kindly woman.
“But a breast!” he said, wrinkling up.
He could not help looking at their neighbour, so full and firm.
“I expect women are pretty attached to their breasts,” he said.
Mrs Poulter looked the other way. She began to tell about her sick turkey.
Because of its firm whiteness, its generosity at least in theory, he would have liked to discuss the breast with their mother, but as though she knew what to expect she always quickly silenced him.
“Mrs Poulter says,” Arthur said.
“I can’t bear to hear the Name,” said Mother.
“Why?”
“Repetition becomes monotonous.”
He was considering that.
“Besides,” she said, “a grown man — nearly twenty-eight — surely I don’t have to tell you, Arthur, where your thoughts should and shouldn’t lie?”
“I can’t help it,” he said, “if she’s started to live here.”