The question didn’t occur to her until late that night.
She awoke with a stifled scream on her lips. Who was winding the clock? For a long time she lay shivering in bed, groping for logic. Perhaps a maid was coming in. Or they had a house-sitter or someone who made periodic visits. But why wind the clock? She was determined to get to the bottom of this mystery.
Early the next morning, she went back to the house. Spreading some papers under a tree across the street, she sat down and did not budge from the spot all day long. Nothing changed. Cars passed. Their occupants looked at her with curiosity. But she remained, undaunted, determined. But this role of sentry made her uncomfortable. She had no idea what she was waiting for. Godot, she told herself, ridiculing her foolishness. She was, she supposed, acting out her own theater of the absurd. Inexplicably, the role, despite her passivity, was exhausting and she closed her eyes as she slipped into drowsiness. But when she opened her eyes again, she knew instandy that something had changed. Suddenly shocked into alertness, she surveyed the facade. The upstairs shutters of the master bedroom were closed. Her heart lurched. She stood up and stared at the closed black shutters. Then she ran across the street and banged the knocker again. The chimes began to reverberate through the house. Soon they faded.
‘Oliver, Barbara,’ she cried. ‘Please. It’s Ann.’
Listening with her ear against the door, she heard only the relentless clicking of the big clock. A neighbor came out and stared at her.
‘I think they’ve gone on vacation,’ she told Ann politely but with an air of rebuke. ‘Not that it’s my business.’ She went back into her own house.
Paranoia about privacy was endemic to the neighborhood. Everyone lived his own life. But she knew she was not mistaken. Someone had closed the shutters. Someone, she was certain now, was in the house. She had to get in somehow. But she didn’t want to be seen and, perhaps, be taken for a burglar. She patiently waited until it was nearly dark.
Iron bars made it impossible to break in through the ground-floor windows. She went around to the rear of the house and tried the door that led to the basement and Oliver’s workshop. It was shut tight, locked from the inside.
Remembering that Oliver kept a ladder under the eaves of the garage, she opened the garage door and moved the ladder to the rear of the house. Leaning it against an outer wall, she climbed up and peered into the sun-room. A three-quarter moon gave her some light and her eyes quickly grew accustomed to the semi-darkness. The familiar room seemed perfectly normal. Empty flowerpots lined the inner wall just below her. With her shoe she broke the window and carefully picked away the shards of glass. As she crossed, a piece of glass scraped her knee. In her effort to avoid it further, she inadvertently kicked the ladder, which fell to the ground.
The cut stung but wasn’t deep. Disregarding it, she moved cautiously into the kitchen. It was too dark to make out anything but shapes and she had to rely on memory to get around. She moved with extreme caution.
Something, she sensed immediately, was radically wrong with the configurations of the kitchen. Nothing seemed in its rightful place except the work island. She groped around with her hands, taking short, cautious steps. Suddenly something loomed in front of her, a rope. She tugged at it and a rain of pots came down, making an explosive, ear-splitting, clanging noise. She screamed, tried to run, then fell. Nothing was placed as she remembered it. She rose and moved into the corridor that led to the foyer, but as soon as she reached the marbled surface there was no friction. Her feet gave way and she hit the floor, sliding along the surface. She could not rise. Every surface she touched was too slippery to hold.
Under other circumstances, she might have been reminded of a fun house in an amusement park. But this was no fun. It was frightening. Beyond her understanding. The law of gravity seemed suspended, but with a superhuman effort she groped her way backward to the kitchen. Her shoulder touched something and she felt the pressure of a heavy object bearing down on her. It was the refrigerator. Panicked, she managed to jump aside just before it hit the floor. She screamed again, wondering if she was losing her mind.
Feeling for the knob to the basement door, she pushed it open and, reaching for the banister, took a step forward. There were no steps and she felt her legs swinging free. But she did not fall. By some miracle she had locked her arms around the wooden banister. Instinctively, to save herself, she kicked upward and, with her legs against the walls, wedged herself in the narrow space of the stairwell. By careful maneuvering, she managed to lower herself, finally letting go as she touched the basement floor. Just in time. Her back and leg muscles had just about given out.
Bruised and hysterical, she crawled along the cement floor until she found the door. But it was wedged shut. Her groping fingers found the wedge, but it wouldn’t budge.
She was, she was sure, experiencing some bizarre dysfunction of reality. The house and everything in it were conspiring to terrorize her. It was an idea that made no sense; perhaps she had wandered into a madhouse or into someone else’s bad dream. She lay panting on the floor, weakened by fear.
She heard sounds above her. Footsteps. Her impulse for survival forced her now to ascertain the landscape of her surroundings. Some of the dark shapes around her took on meaning. She was in what remained of his workshop. It was a shambles, but she groped around for some tool that might remove the wedge. In a nearby corner she found a sledgehammer. Standing up, she tried to lift it. Fear goaded her strength. Help me, she screamed to herself, miraculously finding the energy to wind the hammer over her head. Swinging it, she crashed it into the door. The blow unloosened the wedge and the door flew open. She ran into the garden. But as she swung open the gate she could not, even in her terror, resist the impulse to turn back.
She saw him through the shattered window of the sun-room. He was gaunt, bearded, his eyes staring out through shadowed sockets. For a moment she hesitated in mid-flight, unable to choose between compassion or fear. Was it the Oliver of her fantasies, of her other life? The Oliver to whom she had given her love?
She did not stay long enough to find out.
27
Barbara had filled all ten sockets of the silver rococo candelabrum with candles. She had never done that before and the glow cast on the dining-room table was beautiful. Flames danced and flickered like fireflies over the polished mahogany surface of the table. She had also put out her silver goblets and plates at either end of the table. On his silver plate she put a large slice of her freshly made pate and a little pile of melba toast.
It was, she had decided, poetically just for her to arrange this meeting in the dining room, her domain. She had cleaned herself up as best she could, and now waited for him, seated at the head of the table. She reached out to the shopping bag beside her right foot, feeling the cool blade of the cleaver. It reassured her about her resolve, her bravery. We are down to basics, she told herself.
At first she had been concerned that he would not come. Perhaps her invitation had sounded too much like a summons. But she had prepared just the same, listening for signs of movement now that the big clock had chimed nine.
She heard him almost at the same moment that she saw him. He was wearing the print robe she had bought him for their fifteenth anniversary. Or was it their sixteenth? It pleased her that she was unsure. Her history with him was becoming vague. The past was disappearing. He was carrying an armful of wine bottles, as well as a crowbar. Lining the bottles up in front of him, he opened two and slid one of the opened bottles in her