“My God,” Colin roared, “you all know each other, don’t you? You do this regularly.”
“Let’s go,” Sylvia said to him.
“Soon. Soon as we can.”
“Can’t we go now?”
Above the general racket, something penetrated to them all simultaneously, a new noise in the room. It was a quiet snuffling, a sighing, a series of little squeaks. It emanated from Mrs. Toye, who now sat swaying in her chair, crying softly. Colman realigned himself with the table, stumbled back to it, and resumed his seat. He put his elbows into the debris of the food, and peered closely at Charmian.
“I say, pass the port,” Frank said. “It’s going the wrong way.”
“Shut up, Frank,” Frostick said, with no amiability. Charmian was fumbling for her handkerchief. She found it, then looked at it, bunched up in her fist, as if she did not know how it got there or what it was for. Her eyes had become dreamy and huge with tears, her mouth quivered, and her voice had broken down into a plaintive bleat.
“So delighted, so euphoric,” she said, “always the same when you’re pregnant, you don’t want to tell people, tempting fate, you know, not that I expected any trouble but you get that funny feeling and you can’t help worrying, but Edmund goes and tells everybody right away. He can’t contain himself, bursting with pride, well I think men are, don’t you?” Charmian, eyes glazing, addressed the empty air. “I mean it must seem so
sentimental to you, I expect you get tired of people enthusing, but it really is so wonderful, absolutely the most wonderful thing in the world, I remember I absolutely melted when Jerome was put into my arms, and it was the same with Ariana so I know it works with girls too. Oh, and such an absolutely super super feeling, each one like a little miracle, each tiny perfect little finger—”
“She’s cracked up,” Frostick said.
“—and each tiny perfect toe.”
Charmian subsided into muffled sobs. The room fell quiet. Then suddenly Frank rose to his feet with a deafening clatter, slapping his palms down on the table; extending one arm, gripping the table with the other, he commenced a repertoire of humming and twanging which Colin took to be the sounds of an orchestra tuning up. Ambitiously extending both arms, he bellowed two lines:
“Allons enfants de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé.”
“Can’t remember any more,” he said, and sat down abruptly. His whole body seemed to sag, and he made a soft snorting noise. His head lolled, and a trail of spittle ran down his chin. His body lurched over to the left side of his chair, and stayed there, leaning precariously over the arm.
“He’s had a seizure,” Sylvia cried, jumping to her feet.
Frostick looked at her with contempt and annoyance. “He’s pissed,” he said. “He’s had far more than we have. He drinks in the kitchen between courses. For God’s sake, sit down, woman, and give me the port if you don’t want any.”
Charmian was still crying, wiping her nose noisily from time to time. Colin knelt by Frank’s chair and took his pulse. He could not find it, but did not assume from this that Frank was dead; it was more a formality than a practical proceeding.
“Sylvia,” he said, “why don’t you take Charmian upstairs,
and loosen her clothes, and get her to lie down for a few minutes?”
Sylvia dragged her eyes from Frank. “Right,” she said. She took Charmian firmly by the arms and raised her from her chair. Mrs. Toye suffered herself to be led from the room. Colin saw with admiration that, although Sylvia was trembling a little from the multiple shocks of the last ten minutes, her expression was firm and her gait quite steady.
“Upsy-daisy,” she said to Mrs. Toye, when they reached the bottom of the stairs. He heard her retrieve the tiny lady from a tumble, and set her on her feet again. “Up we go, there’s a good girl.”
And up they went. Colin surveyed the wreckage. Frank was still lolling half in and half out of his chair, one knuckle brushing the carpet. Colman and Frostick were mixing port with brandy. Gail Colman had resumed her sulk, and Elvie, whilst sitting bolt upright, appeared only semi-conscious.
Now Yarker sidled up to Colin and took him by the sleeve. He was breathing heavily. Colin saw that his freckled skin was almost entirely covered in fierce ginger hairs like those found in doormats. “I say,” said Yarker, “what’s all this about Frank having no more whisky! It’s nonsense, I say. Of course there must be whisky.”
Colin saw that he must placate Yarker before he would make any progress. He appealed to the table. “Have you any idea where Frank keeps his spare whisky? Yarker seems to think he must have a supply.”
“Yarker is not known to be wrong,” Toye said.
Frostick looked up. He seemed to be giving the matter consideration. “We could look for it,” he offered.
“Good idea,” Colin said. “It’s a big house, so we’d better split up.”
“Look, I’ll take command of this exercise,” Yarker snapped. “Volunteers for the study?”
“Me,” Colin said promptly.
“You’ll not find it there,” Yarker said. “He spends too much time in there. If it were in there, he’d have drunk it. Stands to reason. Moral: never volunteer.”
“I don’t mind,” Colin said. Yarker glared at him.
“Colman, stand on your feet man when I address you. Kitchens, out-houses, sculleries. Frostick, recce all medicine cabinets. I myself will search the upper floors in their entirety. Toye—oh, leave him, the bloody man’s playing with himself under the table.”
Toye’s expression had become vague and goatlike, and neither he nor Elvie seemed better than stuporous; Frank snored gently, twitching a little at his extremities. Colin bent down and compassionately eased off Frank’s shoes. Then he straightened up, wheeled smartly, and trotted off for the study at a pace which brought a bark of approval from Yarker. Softly he closed the door behind him, shutting them all out.
A smell of damp and old papers, and the healing darkness. Colin felt reluctant to switch on the light, but that was ridiculous; he was working against time, he told himself. For good measure he switched on Frank’s desk lamp too. He pulled out the first drawer and rifled through it, and then the second. Nothing. On the desk, then, actually on it. All waiting for tomorrow, Frank had said, but how could you find anything under all this rubbish, these press-cuttings turning yellow, these ends of string and scissors, and pile upon pile of the
Reader’s Digest
, even in Compendia, even in Condensed Books. Was it possible to do any work in this room? If only she’d told him—what’s this? His hand slid over a buff-coloured folder. He swept the debris off the top of it. Opened it, flicked through.
MURIEL ALEXANDRA AXON
. Yes, this was it all right. Funny, that name sounded very familiar. Where did he know it from? He was beginning to have a headache, and his eyes burned from the cigarette smoke. He rubbed them vigorously. Never mind now, it would come back to him tomorrow, as soon as his head was clear. The important thing was that he’d got the file. He patted
the papers back into it and tucked them under his arm. There was a cough behind him and he jumped violently. It was Frank, swaying alarmingly, smiling, his expression sly. “Ah, Colin!” he said. “Caught you! Cry down my idea, would you, and then creep in here and steal my file? Thought you’d write it for yourself, did you? Wait till the others hear about this!” He raised his voice. “Help! Help! Stop plagiarist!”
Colin heard Sylvia’s voice in the hall. He held the buff cardboard across his palpitating heart. Frank took in a breath, poised for another roar, but at that moment he lost his balance slightly, and clutched at an armchair to save himself, his head drooping over the back.
“Might be sick,” he said. His head hung.
“Will be,” Colin said. “Will be bloody sick.” Colin’s hand closed around the nearest of the Condensed Books—
Kon Tiki
,
I Leap Over the Wall
, and
Father of the Bride
; he raised his arm high, and with the evening’s amassed frustration brought the volume crashing down on the back of Frank’s neck.
It must be two o’clock, Evelyn thought. Two o’clock in the morning. She remembered the whisky. It was true that Florence Sidney had not thought highly of it at Christmas, but then the circumstances had been vastly different. Yes, she would go down and get herself a drink of that. The thought was comforting.
She fumbled with her reading glasses, and thumbed over the pages of the first-aid book. She turned to Muriel on the bed, Muriel with her damp face, crawling up the side of her glassy pyramid of pain. “Take quick pants when you are breathing,” she reminded her. “Short quick pants, the book says. Don’t hold your breath like that. You’ll stop it coming out. It might as well come, now. We might as well see what we’ve got.” Muriel didn’t answer. “It says to put newspaper under you, Muriel. It sounds like what you do for dogs, but that’s what it says. Or a
plastic sheet. I haven’t got a plastic sheet, otherwise you could have it, Muriel. I’m going down to the lean-to, to get some newspapers. You’ll be all right, won’t you? I’ll not be long.”
Muriel seemed indifferent. She doesn’t seem to care whether I go or stay, Evelyn thought. But it’s nothing new, she’s always been like that, hard-hearted, independent, going her own way. Evelyn gripped the banister with both hands as she went downstairs, bringing her feet together one step at a time; the pain in her knees burned her, as if the muscles were being torn, and getting downstairs was worse than getting up. When she reached the foot of the stairs she steadied herself with one hand against the wall. I do not seem to feel strong, she said to herself. She forced herself to rest for a moment, and then made her way to the kitchen. The room had a derelict, unused air; the night looked straight in at the window, a blue night with a parched moon. She fumbled in a cupboard for the bottle of whisky, found a cup, and poured out the last inch of it. She grimaced as she swallowed it; it burnt her lips and tasted of earth, left her mouth dry. It will brace me, she thought. When she opened the door of the lean-to, a wet and rotten smell rushed towards her, invading the house. Holding her torch carefully she picked her way among her possessions. The newspapers were sodden; she can’t have these, she thought, whatever the book says. That is summertime advice, I am sure. On the top of one bale lay the corpse of some small animal, a mouse or shrew, its tiny mouth gaping. I need some air, she thought. She stood at the door looking down over the garden.
How far and giddyingly distant the moon seemed; there were no visible stars. She thought she heard, blown on the night wind, the wailing and chattering of children. Lights were on in the Sidney house, and once she thought that a window opened, and white faces, no bigger than a child’s, stared out over the dark gardens. She wondered if they were waiting in the dark for her, amongst the shrubs, around the old coal-bunker, down in the shed where Clifford used to go. Perhaps
we should have had more children, she thought, more children of our own. But after Muriel, Clifford had not wanted to risk repetition. He said that he would amuse himself. He would go down to the shed and she must turn a blind eye. A blind eye to whatever he kept in there and whatever comings and goings there were. That was what she had always done, until one day she had seen the child from next door heading down the path, little Florence Sidney; little Florence Sidney, who was that great hulk of a woman now. She had taken it upon herself to shoo the child away, scold her out of the garden. When Clifford came in for his tea at three-thirty—it was a Sunday—she asked him, “Do you take children down there?” How her hands had quivered; milk and sugar had gone all over the table. Clifford’s face then: “A blind eye, Evelyn, a blind eye” the threats in his voice, the promise of a week of bruises, and Muriel tossed into her bedroom unfed and screaming. “What are children to you?” Clifford had sneered. His own eyes not blind, but pale and rimless, turning now to all the wastage on the table, the messy spillings of her fear.
Years passed like this, the nameable fears giving way to the unnameable, the familiar dread of evening muffled under a pall of fog, of blackness, of earth; all the days lived as if underground, and Muriel, she thought, if I could have mourned myself, if I could have drawn breath, I might have pitied you. She pulled her cardigan around her and turned her cheek from the wind. Time to go back upstairs.
To Colin’s alarm and astonishment, Frank slowly stood erect. Colin stepped back. It was beyond his power to deliver a further blow, to knock down a sentient, upstanding Head of Department. But then, as if swaying in some whimsical breeze, Frank leaned sideways, then tottered, then keeled over and crashed to the floor like a dead man.
Giving his victim a cursory glance, Colin secured the file and headed back for the dining-room. Sylvia was coming in from the kitchen with two mugs of black coffee on a tray.
“There you are, Colin,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice.
Colin’s chest heaved, sweat ran from every pore.
“These were all the cups I could find that were reasonably clean and fit to use.” She put the mugs on the table and held up the tray. It had once been the lid of a biscuit tin, with a bit of bilious green lino, sugar-encrusted and stained, forming a top to it. “I wouldn’t give this houseroom. It’s an education, what people have in their backs. That kitchen makes me heave, all that Italian muck plastered all over the place. I’d have thought he could have afforded decent food. And cleanliness costs nothing. I don’t know who’s going to have these coffees. Do you want one?”
“We’re going,” Colin said.
“I’ve got my coat.” Tears sprang into Sylvia’s eyes, glinting like bayonet points. “Colin, do you know what he’d done with it? He said he didn’t know where to put it. He’d dumped it in his rubbish bin. My good coat. It stinks of tomato sauce and fish.”
“Oh, Sylvia. Oh, love, I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was going to be like this.”
“I can’t wear it. It’ll have to be cleaned.”
“Do you want my jacket?”
“No, it’ll do me good to get out in the cold. What’s that under your arm?”
“Nothing, just some papers. Come on, let’s go.”