Tom however accepted this masterpiece with a vague ‘Oh yes - thanks — ’ He crumpled up the carefully ironed dress into a clumsy ball and stuffed it into the bag which Gabriel had provided.
Gabriel retired to the window and looked out, concealing sudden tears. She knew her ‘weepy’ tendency annoyed Alex. She was upset in any case because Adam’s birthday (last Saturday) had been spoilt because Brian refused to take her and Adam out to lunch at the Running Dog, an unprecedented treat which Adam had asked for. Brian had said that it was ridiculous to spend money on going to snobbish restaurants to have rotten food thrown at one by sneering waiters. Brian had also vetoed Adam’s request for a ‘malachite egg’. ‘What on earth put that idea into his head? At his age I hadn’t even heard of malachite. I’m not going to encourage him in expensive useless tastes!’ But Gabriel had secretly bought a (small) malachite egg, and was now in an impossible position, as she dared not confess this extravagance to Brian, and realized it would be immoral to ask Adam to keep it a secret. The guilty egg, in a cardboard box, meanwhile reposed at the back of the wardrobe.
‘What is that thing up in the ginkgo tree?’ Alex had moved to the window.
Brian followed her. ‘Some sort of plant.’
‘Plant?’
‘I mean like mistletoe.’
‘That’s not mistletoe.’
‘I said like mistletoe.’
Looking over their shoulders, Tom saw Emma’s (or rather Judy’s) blond wig hanging conspicuous and odd among the branches.
‘It doesn’t look like a plant. It’s more like a cardboard box or an old sack. Would one of you boys climb up to see?’
‘Bags I not. I’m too old. Tom will.’
‘I’ll get it down,’ said Tom.
‘But if it is a plant, leave it.’
Tom had lost all sense of time. It already seemed a week since his fight with Emma and Pearl’s news that ‘those two’ had departed. Tom wanted to feel now that Hattie and John Robert had been gone a long time. He wanted mountains of time, mountains of experience, to divide him from those dreadful events. Tom was in process of revising his past so as to explain his suffering. So much misery must imply either a dreadful loss or a dreadful crime or both. But that was, was it not, long ago. He stood, clutching the bag with Judy’s dress, and gazing from the window at the green roof of the Slipper House. He thought, they’ve gone. I needn’t hide. But already the hiding was unintelligible and long past.
Adam slipped into the room carrying Zed (who had difficulty with the stairs). He set the little dog down, and Zed ran and hopped across the carpet, wrinkling up his nose in what Adam called his social smile and greeting everyone in turn with lowered head and white tail-wagging rump. Tom squatted and caressed the dog. Zed rolled over in ecstasy. Tom thought, how innocent I once was, and could have been made so happy simply by this.
Alex was thinking about Bill the Lizard and how much, she felt now, she had loved him and relied on his presence, and how stupidly little she had seen of him. He was to be always there, making life more significant and secure, in a way which did not need to be continually checked. Alex had a strange terrible black feeling which she understood as the realization that nothing of equal significance now separated her from her own death. There was no more stuff of life, no more ardently desired events, no more wise and beloved older persons between her and the grave. Her love for her family, always a diminishing consolation, was invaded by pain, as by the scalding water which people imagined was going to flow through all the pipes of the Institute. And this morning she had received a horrible and menacing letter from the Town Hall, it said, ‘Dear Mrs McCaffrey. We are sorry to hear that you have been seriously annoyed by a vicious and savage fox. It has come to our notice that there is a fox’s earth in your garden, and our pest control officer will attend at your convenience to deal with the matter. There will be no loss of amenity. The exits of the earth will be stopped and poison gas introduced. You will appreciate that, in view of the possibility of rabies, we have a responsibility to act promptly in such cases, and we look forward to receiving your notification of a suitable date.’ Alex had written in reply that there must be some error, she had not seen any foxes, savage or otherwise, and there was no fox’s earth in her garden. She felt frightened and hunted, as if it were she herself who was to be locked in and gassed. She felt angry too. How had they found out? Ruby must have spread the story around. Alex had wanted to cry out angrily to Ruby, but had found herself strangely and ominously unable to. She had stared at Ruby. Ruby had stared back. And then something else had happened which was senseless and ill-omened and weird. Alex began telling it to Brian.
Tom, sitting on the carpet with Zed and Adam, playing listlessly with the dog, half attended to Alex’s chatter.
Alex was saying, ‘I really don’t know what’s happening to the town these days, and with the Teaser shooting up like that, it almost makes one believe that we all have to go crazy at intervals around here, it’s probably something to do with the Druids and the Romans and those old pagan gods or something. I always felt those two girls in the Slipper House were part of it somehow, all the trouble they caused last Saturday. There was something unsavoury about those two. Thank God they’ve gone.’
‘Have they?’ said Brian. ‘When?’
‘At least I hope so. This morning early I found that the keys had been put through the letter box in an envelope. No covering letter, no “thank you”, just the keys. I went over of course to see if the place was all right, and they’d cleared all their stuff up and packed it into a trunk and suitcases labelled “to be called for”. The house looked in order except for some sort of brown mess on the parquet in the hall. So I thought I’d seen the last of them, but no, about an hour later I heard someone come running down the side passage to the garage. I looked out of the window and lo and behold it was little Missie.’
Tom, who had been listening more attentively, gasped and turned, his face flushing violently.
‘There she was with her hair all undone running across the grass like a mad thing. And it annoyed me that she came in from the front, they weren’t supposed to come in our way, but by the back gate. I thought I’d go down and tell her off and find out why they’d left so suddenly, I think they might have told me just out of courtesy, and you know they never thanked me or invited me round for as much as a cup of tea, the maid is a coarse type of course but the girl is supposed to be grown-up, they say she’s a bit retarded and I suppose that’s it, anyway I went out and there she was ringing the bell and pulling the door and calling out at the top of her voice. Then she began to run round the house looking in the windows and trying to open them and shouting, like some sort of little wild animal. She ran right round the house and then she saw me and I said, “Can I help you!” and she said, “Where’s Pearl?” just like that. That’s the maid, and I said, “She’s gone, she returned the keys and all your things are packed up,” and I was going to ask her when the stuff would be cleared out and then I saw that she was completely distraught, she’d been crying and was starting to cry again, and she just stared at me as if she’d gone crazy, and then without a word she ran away down the garden toward the back gate with her hair flying and that’s the last I saw of her. What do you make of that?’
‘She’s not mentally ill, she’s just very shy,’ said Gabriel. ‘She seemed perfectly normal when we were at the sea.’ Gabriel lit a cigarette, then put it out quickly in an ashtray.
‘I thought she was a bit slow,’ said Brian. ‘She never had a word to say for herself all that day.’
‘She’s certainly very peculiar,’ said Alex.
‘Poor child,’ said Gabriel. ‘I blame Professor Rozanov, they say he neglected her terribly, he doesn’t like children.’
‘When was this?’ said Tom. ‘This morning?’
‘Yes.’
Tom, kneeling, sat back on his heels. He began saying out aloud, ‘Wednesday, Thursday, Friday …’ If Hattie was still here … what did it m
ean? When had Pearl said they were gone, on which day did Rozanov take Hattie away, what happened last night? Was Alex simply mistaken, were they dealing with a ghost, what did it all mean? Above all, what ought he to do, was there anything which he should do now, immediately perhaps? Did this make no difference or all the difference? Now it seemed there had been some peace in believing it over. Well, was it not over, in spite of this awful visitation? How horrible it all was, this thing of her coming back, so senseless, so perfectly nightmarish …
At this moment George came into the room.
Although the drawing-room door was shut, George could well have heard their voices as he came up the stairs. Whether he had or not, he enacted surprise.
‘Why, a family scene, drinks too, may I have one?’
‘Hello, darling,’ said Alex, as if she had expected him (which she had not). She did not normally call George ‘darling’ in public, or in private, and the endearment rang out as a kind of proclamation or challenge. She said to Tom, ‘Get your brother a drink.’
‘Whisky, Tom dear,’ said George, taking the endearment cue from Alex and smiling.
Tom poured out the whisky and handed it to him. He said, ‘Is Rozanov still here?’
George said, ‘No, he is far off, he has departed, he is gone from us, he is no more seen, he is obliterated and blotted out, he has been removed into invisibility without thought or motion, the only thing, the necessary thing, in short he has gone.’
‘He has left Ennistone?’
‘He and the little charmer both. What a little girl that was, what an ivory head, what a milky body, what great mauve eyes and how they could flash! What breasts, what pale thighs, and how she fought and wept and kissed.’
‘What are you saying,’ said Tom.
‘He’s implying that he’s had her,’ said Brian. ‘Untrue, of course. George lives in a fantasy world. Typical.’
‘Cheers, Alex,’ said George.
‘Cheers, darling,’ said Alex.
‘Cheers, Gabriel, cheers, sweet Gabriel.’ George raised his glass.
‘Cheers — ’ said Gabriel, flushing with startled pleasure and smiling and lifting her glass.
It was suddenly evident that Ruby was in the room. She must have followed George in and had sat down, a big brown spectator, on a chair against the wall.
‘Look who’s here,’ said Alex, but she did not tell Ruby to leave.
‘I suggest George goes now,’ said Brian. ‘Go on, get out, go.’
‘It’s my house,’ said Alex. ‘If you don’t like it, you go.’
‘All right, let’s play it differently,’ said Brian. ‘I think we’ve got a right to ask George some questions.’
They had all been standing, with the exception of Ruby, and of Adam who was still sitting on the floor. George now sat down near the fireplace. His face had the plump exalted tender shining look which Tom had seen on it on Thursday evening and which had made him wonder if his brother were mad.
‘Oh, what’s the use of asking George questions,’ said Tom. ‘He’ll just tell lies and I don’t blame him!’
‘You don’t blame him?’ said Brian, turning to Tom. Brian was by now clearly very angry, but controlled.
‘Well, I do, but oh what the hell, what a muddle, you can’t mend it or clear it by asking a few questions.’
‘I don’t quite know what you mean — ’
‘Let’s question Tom,’ said George. ‘Ask him where he was on Thursday night.’
‘Well, where were you?’ said Brian.
George said, ‘I suppose you all know that Rozanov offered the little girl to Tom. Did you know that, Gabriel?’
‘No,’ said Gabriel, again red.
‘Didn’t you read about it in the newspaper?’
‘Yes, but it all sounded like nonsense, I didn’t understand it, I didn’t even try to — ’
‘You ought to try to understand things,’ said George, smiling.
Gabriel said timidly, ‘Yes.’
‘Rozanov was very angry with Tom, he wrote me a letter about it.’
‘Rozanov wrote to you about me?’ said Tom.
‘Yes, he thought you had behaved very badly. You see, that was what that riotous party was all about, which people blamed me for. Tom, with his usual discretion and good manners, decided to serenade the lady with his drunken friends.’
‘That’s not so — ’ said Tom.
‘Isn’t it?’ said Brian. ‘Where were you on Thursday night?’
‘With Diane Sedleigh.’
‘There you are,’ said George.
‘But not like that.’
‘You seemed to be on very intimate terms when I arrived,’ said George. ‘You were reeking of face powder.’
Gabriel said, ‘Oh — ’
‘Nothing happened between me and Mrs Sedleigh,’ said Tom. ‘You know that. You’re confusing everything, because you want to cover up your own beastly crimes.’
‘I don’t know what you did with Rozanov’s little girl,’ said George, ‘but it certainly looks as if you behaved like a cad and she behaved like a — ’
‘Stop,’ said Tom.
‘You can’t now claim to be a defender of her honour. Isn’t it strange? It seems that Tom can do anything and still be Sir Galahad, and any ordinary mistake of mine is labelled a crime. You heard him just now talking about my crimes.’
‘I don’t mean anything grand, just malicious lies!’
‘George brings disgrace on the family — ’ said Brian, finding himself incoherent and made angrier thereby.
‘I agree with George,’ said Alex.
‘So do I,’ said Gabriel, ‘I feel George has come back to us, ever since he rescued Zed, he is saved, he’s back, we lost him, it was our fault, we all exaggerate what he does, everyone exaggerates, we pounce on every little thing and call him wicked.’
‘Isn’t it wicked to …’ Brian began.
‘It’s like a conspiracy,’ said Gabriel, unconsciously waving her hand about.
‘Isn’t it wicked to try to kill one’s wife? Wouldn’t you think I was wicked if I tried to kill you?’
‘But he didn’t. It was an accident.’
‘Then why hasn’t Stella come back? Think that one out. Stella’s afraid. That brave strong woman is afraid.’
‘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.
Gabr
iel 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.