She came forward, stopping at the sideboard to take a cigarette from the box and light it with the fat heavy lighter. She was conscious of the three of them watching her. She was accustomed to being the center of attention, but this was different. Becoming a widow had given her a new role. It was a curiously pleasant, light-headed feeling. A widow, at her age! It seemed absurd, like something in a stage musical. The merry widow. She was still herself, of course, and yet she was someone else at the same time, the Mona Vanderweert she had always been and now Mrs. Victor Delahaye, whose husband was dead. It made her feel-well, it made her feel grown-up, in a way she had not felt before.
“Oh,” she said, “am I late for tea?”
It was not tea she wanted, anyway, but a drink, though she supposed she had better not ask for one. It had been a trying day and did not seem set to get any easier. Everything felt flat. She would have liked the mourners to come back to the house after the funeral but her father-in-law had not wanted it. It would have been interesting to stand here being sad but brave among all those people.
Maggie had risen from her chair by the tea trolley. “How are you, my dear?” she asked. As if she cared, Mona thought.
“I’m fine, thank you. I seem to be a bit-dizzy.” Her sister-in-law stood before her with her hands clasped under her bosom, what there was of it, gazing at her with a forlorn expression. All at once she had a vision of time stretching before her like a tunnel, or no, like an avenue in a cemetery, lined with dark trees, and a person standing mournfully under each tree, looking at her in just this way. A silent scream formed inside her. Boredom was one of her acutest fears. “Really,” she said, turning away, “I’m fine.”
None of them liked her. She had taken their precious Victor away from them, which was bad enough, but now they seemed to think she was somehow responsible for his death. They would not say so, of course, but she could feel them thinking it. She looked at the twin-was it James? for she was never quite sure which of them was which, even after all this time-and wondered what he knew. Both twins had been very cold towards her at the funeral, not that they were ever exactly warm where she was concerned. She would have to be careful. She supposed she had been foolish, had taken a foolish risk. Had Victor done it just because…? No: she would not let herself think that, she would not, it was too absurd.
She turned to the young man in the armchair. “Where’s Jonas?” she asked.
He sighed, and his mouth tightened. “I’m Jonas.” He held up his left hand and showed her the ring on his little finger. “Jonas is the one who wears this, remember?”
She laughed, and put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, sorry, yes, I didn’t look.” His angry sarcasm amused her. Did they really expect her to check their little fingers every time she met them? It was not her fault that he and his brother were a pair of freaks. “Sorry,” she said again, and looked around for an ashtray.
Samuel Delahaye sat slumped in the wheelchair with his chin sunk on his breast, glowering out into the garden. Mona went and stood beside him. He was the only one of them she had any time for. She had tried to get him to like her, and believed she had been successful, though of course he would never let on. He was such a grouch, shouting at everyone, insulting everyone. Often, when he was in one of his rages, she had an awful urge to laugh, but knew that if she did he would probably come rearing up out of that chair and slap her face. It would be interesting, to be hit like that. Old Sam was still handsome, and rather cruel-looking, like his grandsons only not weak like them; when he smiled, if what he did could be called a smile, he bared his lower teeth, just as Victor used to do.
Suddenly, at the thought of Victor, she felt sad. It was hard to grasp that he was actually gone, that he was in that wooden box, in the ground, already beginning to rot. She shivered. She had liked Victor. He had been handsome too, more handsome than his father, in fact, but in a different way: softer around the edges, she thought. Yes, that was it, softer around the edges.
He had known nothing about her, she knew that. She had preferred it that way. Being married to Victor had been like living inside a fine, sound, well-appointed house, a house that was not hers but that gave her shelter and protected her and yet left her free to come and go as she pleased, a little gold key safe in her palm. She recalled his smell, of tobacco and pomade and that special soap he used to wash his hands with-the skin of his hands was sensitive and chapped easily. She tried now to see those hands in her mind, and was slightly shocked to realize that she could not. Had she ever really looked at them? Had she ever paid genuine attention to her husband? These were not questions that troubled her, but it was odd to find herself asking them. She was always careful how she positioned herself in front of things, looking, and being looked at. Sometimes she thought of herself as a separate object, a figure outside herself that she could regard from a distance, appraising, approving, admiring.
Victor had thought she loved him. It would have been unfair to let him think otherwise.
“Look,” her father-in-law said suddenly, dragging himself up in the wheelchair and pointing beyond the window to the garden with a trembling finger. “Robin Redbreast! Aha, the wee warrior.”
It was nearly midnight when he left Bella’ s house, after his second visit. It was not two weeks since Victor had died, but it seemed far longer ago than that. Bella stood in the doorway watching him go. When he was turning the corner at the bottom of the road and glanced behind him she was still there, he could see her figure silhouetted in black against the light from the hall. He stopped, and stood looking back at her, hearing himself breathe. Why was she still there? The night was calm and mild, and the soft feel of the air made him think of summer nights in the past, and of himself walking away from some other girl’s door, smelling the dew on the privet and the salt reek of the sea and hearing the birds far out in the bay calling and crying. He had an urge suddenly to hurry back, before Bella closed the door, and make her take him inside again, and lie down with him and hold him in her arms. He did not want to be out here, alone.
He went on, and turned the corner.
There was a big moon shining above the bay, it seemed to him a huge gold eye watching him askew. He hoped Sylvia would be asleep, but probably she would not be. She knew he was in trouble, and that the trouble was connected with Victor Delahaye’s death. She had not challenged him, of course, had not made even the mildest inquiry. That was his wife’s way, ever careful, ever discreet.
He knew he should have told her what was going on, what he was up to, surely he had owed her that. Instead he had kept it all to himself. It was not that he did not trust her, only how could he have told her, what would he have said-how would he have phrased it? Well, you see, dear, the thing is, over the past couple of years I’ve been positioning myself to elbow Victor aside and take over the jolly old firm-what do you think of that? He knew what she would think of it. He knew very well. Would she leave him? She was English, and the English had a funny sense of what was right and proper and what was not. He could say to her it was just business-and what was it except business? — but she would throw that back in his face. Yet what did she expect? Did she think he should be content to spend the rest of his working life with his neck under Victor Delahaye’s boot-no, under the heel of his John Lobb penny loafer with the hand-stitched seams and scalloped tongue?
Victor Delahaye was what Sylvia would have called an ass: stupid, smug, conceited, and lazy. All his life Victor had coasted in the shelter of the business that both their fathers, Samuel Delahaye and his partner, Phil Clancy, had built up through hard work, shrewdness, and unremitting ruthlessness. Had Victor been in sole control, the thing would have done no more than drift and, who knows, might have foundered, if Jack had not been there to keep a firm grip on the tiller.