Her boredom with the evening and desire to provoke Richard had led her further than she intended. The look on his face frightened her. It was murderous, dark blood suffused it, his body trembled. He said nothing at all.
“Good Lord, Richard,” she said apologetically. “No need to go all primitive, these are the nineteen-sixties, you know; and I was only kidding, as the Americans say. What
is
the matter with you? You used to be
fun!
”
He smiled then, a smile more frightening than the anger.
“All women are whores,” he said in the bland tone of one saying, “Please pass the salt.”
Myra started. “Well, thanks, dear—that’s one viewpoint, of course, though a trifle crude and sweeping. You’ve hardly considered the modern view that sex is fun, and . . .”
Richard turned and walked away from her. Myra thought for a shocked moment that he was going to the garden to fetch his wife, and make a scene, but he did not. He sat down on the sofa beside Edna Simpson, who bridled with gratification. Behind the spectacles the look she gave Richard was positively doting.
Good God, Myra thought. This whole party’s too damn uncomfortable. It was quite unlike any she had ever attended, but her curiosity had been sated. I’ll remember an important London date tomorrow morning, she thought. Give Gilbert a ring and we’ll go out somewhere. Fed up with Harry anyway, and Richard’s impossible, maybe slightly mad.
She glided across the room and joined the others to find Sue choking back yawns, Igor leafing through an old copy of
Queen
magazine, and Lily feebly protesting that it wasn’t really all that late to the Bent-Warners, who were worrying about little Robin’s cough, and the stupid Danish nursemaid who never remembered the medicine on time.
Just as the party broke up, Celia and Harry returned from the garden. Lily sighed with deep relief though she was even more disquieted about her daughter, whose voice was still high-pitched and who still looked as though she were dressed for a masquerade. Careless, defiant, seductive as she had never been until this evening.
Yet Celia made polite enough farewells to the Bent-Warners, and as her guests all seemed ready for bed, she said good-nights with the same casual brightness, nor was there any perceptible difference in her good-night to Harry, though Edna thought there was. Edna was sure she saw a signal, a flicker of understanding between the shameless pair. So
that’s
it! Edna thought. There wasn’t hardly time in the garden, but they’ll get together later when it’s safe. That poor Sir Richard. A cuckold she’s making out o’ him and in his own house. Ye’ll not get away with that, my girl!
She lumbered upstairs ahead of the rest, and leaving her bedroom door ajar, took two long pulls from the tincture bottle. As the party came up she watched everyone through the crack in the door. The Duchess went to her room, Sir Harry to his, which was next to the Marsdon suite. Sue Blake down the corridor, that nigger doctor, or whatever he was, murmured something to Mrs. Taylor, then they both disappeared into their own rooms. George came in, and gaped at her. “Aren’t you going to undress, my dear?”
“In my own good taime,” she said. “Go to bed, George. In the dressing room. You snore, and I need my sleep.”
He obeyed without further comment. His thoughts were dismal. Something was wrong with Edna. She’d always been short-tempered, dictatorial, but she’d been a good enough wife, barring that she’d borne no children. But, that wasn’t anybody’s fault, the doctors said. And their mutual disappointment made a bond. She had her soft moments, had Edna, or did, until recently. Not exactly soft, but still, reminders of the handsome, blooming Yorkshire lassie he had found working as a waitress in Soho, twenty-five years ago. She had been grateful for his serious interest in her, awed by becoming a solicitor’s wife, and so ashamed of her own origin that she would scarcely mention it. Finally said she was an orphan, and that her father had been a tradesman in Manchester. She’d been a devout chapelgoer, too, until lately. He liked that trait, even if her horror of drink, card-playing and swearing was a bit restrictive. Women
should
be strict and uphold morality.
Funny thing about Edna and Sir Richard’s photograph, George thought, though the incident had never occurred to him before. It was last autumn when Edna, in from Clapham for her semiannual forage at the Army-Navy Stores, had dropped by his offices. Sir Charles Marsdon had just died, and George was working on the contents of the long tin box labeled “Marsdon Estate.” Edna had been rather surprisingly interested. She had pounced on a newspaper clipping about “the new baronet—Sir Richard.” It was a chatty little article in the Sussex County Magazine and included a picture of Medfield Place, along with one of Sir Richard. Edna stared a long time at the latter, which was a good likeness.
“I think I’ve seen him somewhere,” she murmured in explanation. “Good-looking lad, he takes my fancy.”
George had no use for the clipping, and Edna had asked for it, perhaps, he thought, to boast a bit about her husband’s grand client at her Woman’s Institute meetings. It had never occurred to them then, that they might be invited socially to Medfield Place. And I wish we hadn’t been, George thought. Whatever’s in it, there’s been too much of that tincture, and she’s quite altered. Really shocking, I don’t know what to do. He finally went to sleep.
His wife continued to lurk behind the bedroom door in the dark, and presently saw her host and hostess enter their suite in utter silence. Edna nodded, she had expected this. Now to wait until two doors opened stealthily, Celia Marsdon’s and Sir Harry’s.
She settled her bulk on the desk chair, leaned her head against the door jamb and watched, dozing then jerking herself awake.
In the Marsdons’ bedroom, the atmosphere was thundrous. Richard stood on the edge of the rose Aubusson carpet staring at Celia with a black intensity which almost penetrated the barrier she had built.
“You aren’t,” said Richard without expression, “the woman I thought I’d married, and never should have done.”
Her spasm of sick fear Celia noted objectively, as a physical happening in midair, as it were. She took off the earrings, put them in a drawer; she wiped off her lipstick on a Kleenex. “No doubt you are quite right, Richard. I’m beginning to agree. Divorce may be a trifle difficult in England, but certainly can be managed.”
He stared. Even without those earrings and the lipstick she was a stranger, a hostile stranger, yet her answer astounded him.
“The Marsdons don’t get divorces . . .” he said, “I didn’t mean that, I . . .” He heard the wavering in his own voice and was angered afresh. “Did you enjoy yourself with Harry Jones in the garden?” he asked. “Did you also enjoy forcing me to open the schoolroom so as to show your power?”
She did not answer, and he watched her slide out of her flame-colored dress, then her slip and panties. She stood naked a moment in front of the mirror, a tanagra statuette, tanned to bronze except for the tiny ivory breasts with rosy nipples, and the triangle around her hips which the bikini covered. She began brushing her hair with slow voluptuous strokes, arching her slender back. Richard watched the insolent, taunting, naked woman until the throbbing in his head descended to his loins.
“By God,” he cried hoarsely, “
that’s
what you want! But you’ll not get it here!”
He grabbed her around the wrist, and turning, jerked her across the carpet. Her wrist bones crunched in his grasp.
“What’re you doing!” she cried. The fears so long contained burst through in terror. “Richard, you hurt me! Let me go! What are you doing!” She slapped his face, then let out a strangled scream as he cut his hand across her windpipe with a quick karate chop. She went limp, and he picked her up. He threw open their door and carried her through the passages and down a short flight into the old schoolroom. He flung her on the stained drugget where she lay gasping and naked, half stunned by his blow.
Richard went into the alcove and lit the two candles. He then removed his clothes and hung them carefully on the
priedieu
; he arranged his shoes at the base. He went to the phonograph and put on the Tudor “Merry Songs of Love-Sport.” He turned up the volume. Lute, bass viol, and recorder resounded through the schoolroom in a sly, rollicking tune. Celia moaned and put a groping finger on her larynx where he had hit her.
“Hurts . . .” she whispered. “You hate me, Richard!” She stared up at him in the wavering candlelight. “
You’re
naked—what are we doing here . . .”
He clapped his hand roughly over her mouth. “Listen! . . .”
Above the instruments a raucous tenor voice was singing,
Celia the wanton and fair
Hath now no need to despair
She hath used shameless art
To inveigle lust’s dart
. . . And she shall suffer it now
. . . And she shall suffer it now.
“No!” she cried against his hand, “not like this, not in hate, please, not like this . . .”
But he pinned her down and raped her savagely, while she whimpered and struggled.
Neither of them heard the door open, nor heard Edna’s cry, “God Almighty!” Nor knew that the polka-dotted bulk stood over them. Until the song ended, and there was a pause, then Edna’s voice rose shrill and shaking. “So, I’ve caught you out, you filthy little whore, in the act, the very act! Hanging’s too good for you.”
Richard raised his head and turned to look up at her.
“God Almighty . . .” gasped Edna again, “I didn’t know it was
you,
Sir Richard.” She stumbled backwards, muttering and heaving. She backed out of the door, and shut it behind her with a resounding thud.
Celia heard the thud. She lay tight and still on the drugget, waiting for the next thud—the slap of a trowel against mortar. And beyond the thuds, in the shadowy candlelit Hall, that gloating woman’s face was watching.
Richard turned off the phonograph, switched on the light, put on his trousers and shoes. He blew out the altar candles. He looked down at Celia. “I’m sorry, my dear,” he whispered, “terribly sorry. It was disgusting, all of it. My behavior and that unspeakable woman’s . . .”
Celia did not move. Her transfixed eyes were strained towards the wall on her left. They showed white around the irises as they stared, unblinking. “How long will it be, Stephen?” she said in a faint, reasonable voice. “How long must it take one to die?”
“You won’t die,” he said sharply. “I’m sorry I behaved like such a bastard. Here—” He bundled her inert body into his shirt.
“You are going to let me die,” she said. She did not speak again.
Her face grew pinched and bluish around the great staring eyes.
Beneath Richard’s guilt and grinding resentment that she had, in a way, precipitated the whole degrading scene and his own loss of control, there was horror. Why did she call me
Stephen?
He picked her up and carried her back through the passages to their bedroom. She was hardly breathing as he laid her on the bed. Suddenly, she reached her arms straight up above her head, her fingers curled as though grasping at a ledge. Her face flushed purple, she began to gasp.
“It’s all right, now,” he whispered, trying to take her rigid, clawlike hand. “A beastly happening, but you must forget it. Celia—put your arms down!”
She made no response. There was only the gasping noise, and a bubbling sound from her throat.
“Oh, my God . . .” he cried, and rushed out of the room.
S
UNDAY MORNING THE
weather still held fair. Mellow sunlight illumined the garden room as members of the house party straggled in for breakfast. Sue came first, then Harry, Igor, George Simpson, and finally Myra who had enjoyed a refreshing sleep and looked vibrant in green jersey lounging pajamas. Nobody spoke much until the impassive Dodge poured out coffee, and the guests helped themselves from the hot table.
“No host or hostess?” Myra inquired, nibbling a piece of dry toast, “or Mrs. Taylor—? Harry, you look definitely warmed over, my pet. Night on the tiles too taxing?”
Harry swallowed a mouthful of kipper and gave her a resentful glance. When he had discovered last night in the garden that there was definitely nothing doing with Celia, his hopes had reverted to Myra. After midnight he had tried her door. There had been only a muffled derisive laugh in answer to his discreet knocks. I’m sick of women, Harry thought. Wasting what’s left of my life on them. God, I wish I was back in that other June, twenty-eight years ago. Fighting, struggling, retreating, but too busy surviving to get the wind up. Leading my men down that sand dune, the one place we could have got through, and that moment when I shot the Jerry when he thought he had
us.
God, I wish I were back then, or even later with the blitz, the doodle-bugs—but at least an enemy you could fight. Purpose—and youth.
Harry got up from the table. “Need some exercise,” he announced. “Think I’ll have a ramble over the Downs. Examine that white horse someone’s cut in the hill. Tell the Marsdons when you see them.”
The others finished breakfast and drifted towards the pool where they riffled the Sunday papers, and were silent. Even Myra’s energy and Sue’s exuberance faded into the general vacuity.
Igor made the only remark as he idly shied a pebble at a clump of iris. “Is there something absolutely dire in the atmosphere, I wonder, or am I just hypersensitive? I mean, it’s past eleven, and one might reasonably expect . . .” He broke off; they all stared at each other as they heard an ambulance klaxon blaring from the quiet Sussex lane outside the garden’s brick wall.
At the same time, Lily Taylor came rushing from the house towards them. She was still in a blue dressing gown, her blond hair bristled with rollers, her glistening face drooped woefully, but she had managed to remember Medfield’s guests.