So dealing with Anna and Oliver fell into Caroline’s hands. She thought of telephoning Anna and ordering her to come home, but she knew that that was not likely to have any effect beyond antagonizing or distressing the Hughes-Wintertons, which, however remote she might judge the real possibility of their becoming Anna’s in-laws, she did not want to do. So instead, wanting to find out ‘what was really going on’, to give herself time to think without having to suffer any period of inaction, and perhaps most of all to take a legitimate revenge on someone for the humiliation, she wrote to Oliver, and summoned him to Darton to explain himself. It was not the way in which Henry would have managed things, perhaps, but Henry, to whom Oliver and Anna and Margaret had all in their different ways delegated the dealing of the affair, seemed to have abdicated completely. He was not writing yet, but was obscurely content with this, certain now that it was temporary. He wandered around the house and garden with an air of confidently waiting for something to happen, and answered all Caroline’s questions and suggestions with a vague reassurance that he was certain she knew best. Caroline was not always sure that he even heard her, but that suited her. She needed to deal, at that time, and was really happier if he had no ideas of his own about the dealing.
The letter to Oliver fell into Margaret’s hands, who picked it up at lunch-time, when it arrived by the second post. She heard the squeak of the spring and the flutter of paper, and the light flop of the envelope on her doormat, and hurried out of her bedroom in her dressing-gown, thinking it might be the letter of advice – of information – from Henry, for which she seemed to have been waiting so long. Margaret had changed since Henry’s visit; she had become passive and resigned, and had not energy or will to try and change anything further, even to the extent of writing letters. She had done all she could in writing to Henry, and had now the sense of having put her life into his hands completely. She sat around in a lethargy which was no longer intolerable because it seemed no longer either final or morally reprehensible. She was waiting for Henry; it was not her weakness that caused the lethargy, but Henry’s decree. She was like a woman who has taken religion, abandoned to another putative Will, relieved finally of the need to ask the questions, why am I here, what must I do about it? It would all be revealed in due course. Meanwhile, on the two occasions when Oliver briefly came home, she sat quietly, looking past him, and hardly spoke to him. She felt that she almost needed Henry’s permission to do that. What Oliver thought she did not enquire.
She had largely given up the Bloody Marys because one day they had made her sick, which was altogether too violent an activity for her. She had used them as a medicine, and was not really addicted to the alcohol; she was capable of producing her own anaesthetics, which were more agreeable and effective than drink could ever have been. She ate less and less, and had become so thin that the tendons stood out on the back of her hands, and her nose was almost transparent just above the nostrils, bluish and shadowed where it had been live and warm and golden. Her ankles, on the other hand, were puffy from lack of movement, in spite of frequent scrubbings with the loofah in the bath. Her ribs stood out, the skin stretched over them, but the skin over her stomach, where the ribs curved away from each other, hung in a little fold of unrelated fat. In the face, the same pattern repeated itself – the cheeks were pulled taut, the eyes sunk, the jaw like a knife and all of it greyish-blue – but the skin under the throat hung in a little bag, a shadow of the cheerful plumpness of a double chin. She rarely looked at herself now.
She slept a great deal, much more easily than before, sometimes eighteen hours a day, and was learning to sleep longer. When she was awake, she sat quietly in the living room with the fire on and the curtains drawn, and joined in conversations with Henry and Oliver against a background of soaring melting noise provided by the Light Programme. She felt herself contained helplessly in a great yellow ball, warm as the curtains which bounded it, spotted as they were with large daisies, all bravely turning their stylized pretty heads to the sun within the room. Oliver and Henry spoke with tremendous gentleness to her, they told her that everything was for the best, that in some obscure way she had suffered for them, that she was necessary to them and they loved her.
All this had been more than enough because it was not all, because Henry would write, in the end, and tell her what to do next, when it was time to do it.
She did not at first understand why the letter was addressed to Oliver. It came from Darton, it was postmarked, quite clearly. She was afraid of it when it came to it, afraid in spite of herself that what Henry had to say might make things more difficult for her. But she could not quite believe that this letter was not for her, because she had been waiting for it. Also she did not like the idea of Henry’s having anything to say to Oliver that she did not know about. It was really impossible not to open the letter, and it was only when she had the full sheet of paper in front of her that she realized the handwriting was not Henry’s but his wife’s.
Caroline had hesitated over the beginning of the letter. She had not known whether to put Dear Oliver, or Dear Mr Canning, and had taken some time to decide on Dear Oliver, as a way of showing him that this had always been a mere formality. Since she had also saved most of her anger for where it would be most effective, when she had Oliver in front of her in the house, the letter was not as icy as she had imagined when posting it. It might have seemed obliquely so to Oliver, who would expect it. To Margaret it was numbly bewildering, a series of added complications she was not prepared to understand – what had Caroline, what had Anna, to do with what she and Henry and Oliver were achieving together?
Caroline had mentioned nothing openly, since she did not know whether Oliver knew about Anna’s pregnancy, or her move to the Hughes-Wintertons. She assumed that there had been a break between Anna and Oliver, but did not know when; she suspected that Anna’s uncharacteristic anxiety to have her engagement posted in The Times and the Telegraph might be to have Oliver informed, impersonally, of a fait accompli – Caroline, unlike Henry and Anna, was not aware of how unlikely it was that Oliver should read either of these papers, still less the Society Column. So her letter had been brief, and vague, and had commanded urgency: the gist was, Oliver must come, and he would know why. Margaret read it and re-read it, gathering only from the urgency and the invitation, and feeling vaguely indignant that Oliver should be asked without herself being informed. And then she thought of Darton, and that Henry would be there, and suddenly everything boiled over, the waiting was at an end, and it was time now, if Henry was at Darton, she must be there too.
She made a muddle of the train journey and was put out to find that there was no taxi and no Henry to meet her at Darton; by the time she reached the house it was evening; too late for a call. When she came round the curve of the drive, she was met by light; light poured steadily through the front windows, light from the lamp over the door in a warm, bright pool on the drive. The place was very still, very substantial, after London almost unbearably silent. She stumbled into a run as she saw the whole house, like a thief coming in for sanctuary. Inside, she would need to do no more, it would be the end, it would be peaceful. She was coming home.
Caroline in a brown dress opened the door for her, with light deep and clear behind her. She had a polite enquiring look, which changed slowly to one of concern.
‘Margaret –’ she said. ‘I didn’t recognize you for a moment. We weren’t expecting … Come in.’
Margaret began to tremble.
‘Are you ill? How did you get here? Give me your umbrella. Let me take your coat.’
‘I came in a van with a pig,’ Margaret said hopefully. But her teeth were chattering so loudly that Caroline must hear them, and her amused smile would not be formed. She tried to take off her hat, forgetting it was transfixed with hairpins, panicked, pulled at it, and fetched down hat, pins, and all the uncertain structure of her hair. This seemed such a disaster that she turned to Caroline choking with apology, wild and defenceless, with her thin neck lost in the slight decolleté of her black dress, and all her brittle straw-coloured hair crackling on her shoulders. Caroline warded off the apology, addressed her like a child, ‘Never mind, let me help with it,’ and extracted a comb from the handbag Margaret was still clutching. She tugged patiently at her hair, said, ‘Have you ever thought of having it thinned?’ and began to coil it neatly in the nape of Margaret’s neck. Under her hands Margaret began to relax; she bent her head submissively, and allowed herself to be dealt with. This was something of what she had hoped for, Caroline’s cool fingers, touching her, looking after her, taking charge. The result was not very successful. There was not enough pins to secure it very firmly, and no woman can ever treat another woman’s hair with the severity necessary to get it under control. There were wisps loose on her neck, and little ends loose all over, lifting with electricity, as though they were in a breeze.
‘It’s obvious I wasn’t trained as a hairdresser,’ Caroline said. ‘The only hair I’ve touched beside my own was my daughter’s and nobody could say I was successful there.’
This reference to Anna passed unnoticed between them; Caroline remembered it and blushed for it five minutes later. Margaret said, ‘You are so kind –’ and began, trembling again, ‘Oh, Caroline –’
‘No,’ said Caroline. ‘Don’t say anything. You don’t have to. I can see you’ve had a bad day, you must be terribly tired. We’d have met you at the station if you’d let us know. Come into the drawing room. Let me give you a drink and you can relax for a moment. That will be best.’
Caroline talked, and poured sherry, whilst Margaret sat heavily in an armchair and answered questions like – ‘Did you have a good journey?’ and remarks on the weather, quite automatically in the expected way. She took pleasure in these questions; it was so long since she had been able to answer them, they were guiding lights, as she saw them, to normal human contact. When she said, ‘I had a long wait in London,’ or ‘It has been rather dismal for the last few days,’ she felt she was passing an examination, proving herself, establishing herself again as a human being. She began tentatively to elaborate on the London drizzle, took her glass with a bright remark about how rarely one now met with a good manzanilla, began, confusedly, to imagine that this was the end of the struggle, that she was paying a perfectly ordinary call.
Caroline, who in her first revulsion from Margaret’s oddness and wild appeal had meant to have precisely this neutralizing effect on her, was now slightly annoyed at the completeness of her success. It was all very well to sit there chattering politely at eight in the evening, but Caroline could not now see any opening for the questions she must ask: where was Oliver, what did Margaret know, why had she come?
She had meant to use Margaret’s plight very effectively in the speech she had been preparing for Oliver, but she had not bargained for Margaret’s presence, which would make the plain speaking she was looking forward to almost impossible. She did not even know whether Oliver was coming – had Margaret intercepted her letter and come instead, or first, or had she come independently and if so, why, at this time? Caroline could not feel friendly towards Margaret. She asked as lightly as she could, ‘Have you had any food?’ This question seemed to embarrass Margaret quite disproportionately. She became awkward again, and stammered, ‘No, I haven’t. I meant to. I really meant to. I haven’t for some time, I’m sorry. I came in rather a hurry.’ Why apologize, Caroline thought irritably. She said, ‘I think there’s some cold chicken. I’ll fetch it, in a moment. Why did you come?’ Margaret did not answer. Caroline repeated patiently, ‘Why did you come?’ Margaret looked frightened. ‘I had to. I had to be here. I thought you understood.’
‘Of course I understand,’ Caroline soothed her. She said nothing further, only allowed it to be seen that she was waiting for an elaboration. Margaret shifted herself and then added plaintively, ‘I got your letter. I didn’t quite understand it, but I saw I had to be here.’ She managed a little laugh. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know all that’s going on. But that’s all right – Henry will. Henry will know what to do.’
‘Where is Oliver?’ Caroline asked slowly. She wanted to ask, ‘Where is the letter I sent Oliver?’ She was afraid it was in Margaret’s handbag.
‘I don’t know.’ Margaret was more flustered. Her lip shook, she twisted her hands and looked around unhappily. ‘I thought he might be here.’
‘We have not heard from him.’
‘Oh dear,’ Margaret cried. ‘I’m terribly sorry. Really, terribly sorry. I wish I could help but I don’t know where he is.’
‘I particularly wanted to speak to him,’ Caroline pursued.
‘But Henry has spoken to him already. Henry will tell us what to do.’
‘Henry hasn’t seen him since the latest developments.’
The idea of any development seemed to paralyse Margaret, along with the imputation of even a hint of helplessness to Henry. She murmured, ‘Oh dear,’ and ‘Henry,’ and began to twist her head around, first one way and then the other, as if planning a line of retreat. She said vaguely, ‘I’m sorry. Such a long journey. Terribly sorry.’
‘Margaret,’ said Caroline firmly, and was going to ask about the letter point-blank, when Henry came in. He was on tiptoe, a momentary intruder, wearing his secret smile. He said, ‘Coffee?’
Caroline said repressively, ‘We have a visitor, Henry.’ Margaret rose uncertainly to her feet. She could not see very clearly; the sherry on an empty stomach had fuddled her entirely. The room turned slightly, with Caroline like a curl of brown smoke swaying in one corner, and then righted itself for a moment, although still oscillating beneath her feet, so that she could fix the bulk of Henry in the doorway and the soft white light of his hair and beard. She gave a great cry, ‘Henry!’ and set out across the space of the carpet, holding her hands out to him, and collapsed against him, clinging to his lapels, sagging, so that her head was on his chest, and her knees pressed against his legs. Her hair uncurled and sprang loose again, so that hairpins shot into the carpet and stood there at angles. ‘Henry,’ she said again, more quietly, and then just clung.
Henry pulled clumsily at the back of her dress, trying to straighten her.
‘What is it?’ he said. ‘What is it, Margaret?’ He found it impossible to do anything except clutch her under the arms to support her. ‘Why have you come?’
‘I had to come. I was waiting for the letter. Then I had to come.’
‘I wrote to Oliver, I told you,’ Caroline explained in an undertone. Henry looked at her anxiously over Margaret’s head; both of them were wondering, where is Oliver?
‘I can’t go on,’ Margaret said, ‘any longer, without a meaning. You know, Henry, tell me what to do.’ Henry, for want of anything to say or do, held her closer with one arm, and aimlessly stroked her hair with his free hand. It was Caroline who spoke, with an edge to the reasonable kindness of her voice.
‘Come now, Margaret, you must sit down. We’ll take care of you. Come over here and sit down. Leave Henry alone.’
But Margaret was past Caroline’s reason, and only pressed closer against Henry.
‘Make her sit down, Henry,’ Caroline ordered, faintly flushed. Henry said gently, helplessly, ‘Wouldn’t you like to sit down?’
‘You must tell her,’ said Caroline, seeing how Margaret was. Henry said, ‘I’d like you to sit down, Margaret,’ and she turned her face up to him, with blank eyes swivelling from side to side. Henry hesitated, and then pushed her firmly in the middle, collapsed her, folded her, and carried her effortlessly to the sofa. She allowed herself to be arranged on it, quite passively, but when Henry tried to stand and leave her, she flung her arms around his neck, and pulled him down to her. She said, ‘Henry, Henry, no, Henry, don’t go,’ and then went quite limp, except for her hands, still clasped firmly at the base of his neck.
Henry dropped unhappily beside her, and managed to shift her grip to his own hands. There she clung, and rolled her body over against him, her head on his knee. Once there, she settled herself, and said fearfully, with an undertone of basic cunning, ‘You won’t send me away, Henry, will you? You’ll let me stay?’
‘Yes,’ said Henry. ‘Of course. You mustn’t worry.’
‘I love you, Henry,’ Margaret said. ‘You know that?’
‘Margaret,’ Caroline said, driven by years of protecting Henry, and by her own deepest security, the fact that however little effort Henry put into his marriage, at least he had no relationship outside it; ‘Margaret, pull yourself together please. You must pull yourself together and help us. And let go of Henry – it’s very inconsiderate to treat him in this way, he has worries enough of his own.’
Even to her own ears this sounded petty. Margaret turned reproachful eyes on her and then burrowed even further into Henry’s thigh. She said something indistinguishable, and then, more fearfully, ‘Henry?’
‘For goodness sake do something,’ Caroline told Henry, quivering with anger. ‘You’ve got to put an end to this.’
‘What shall I do?’ Henry asked neither of them, mildly. He had a look of being at their mercy, Caroline thought, making no difference between them, simply waiting quietly until he could get away. Margaret was now quite still, even more prepared than Henry to wait for the next event. There was only herself who was interested in getting anything done, she thought, standing as still as they were, simply from a lack of something she could do. The door opened, tentatively, then quickly. Oliver stepped into the room and closed it behind him.
‘I rang twice,’ he said, ‘and no one answered. But there were lights, so I came in to look. You are lucky to be able to trust your neighbours enough to leave the house unlocked.’
He wore his gunman’s raincoat, and a gunman’s soft hat, which he now removed, and held in front of him. He seemed jaunty, even happy, stood with his feet together, as though on parade. His voice dropped into their pool of hysteria like a series of rough, round pebbles, all concrete, all the same, all finite. Caroline said to him, with an edge of relief in her voice which she had not intended, ‘I hoped you’d come.’
Henry nodded to him from the sofa, and continued to sit, unmoving. Oliver took things in, his wife, her grip on Henry, Caroline’s slight difficulty in breathing and the line of colour on her cheek.
‘I see you’ve been having trouble,’ he said. ‘I feared you might. I found your letter to me, opened, I was afraid this might have happened. So I came straight here, to see how much I could stop. I’m afraid I didn’t think to telephone – it’s later than I thought, an unearthly hour to arrive. My apologies. Now I am here, what can I do for you?’
Caroline embarked on her prepared speech.
‘I don’t suppose you want to be in this house any longer than we want to have you. But there are things I think you ought to know. I can’t believe you know them already, but if you do, we have a right to know what you mean to do about it. You know what I’m talking about?’
‘I believe so,’ Oliver said politely, but with an amused little smile that Caroline did not like. ‘I believe so.’
‘Good,’ said Caroline. ‘I want to know when you last saw Anna?’
Oliver’s smile drew in, as though he liked answering this kind of question less, when it came to it, than he had imagined. He said, ‘I thought you were going to tell me things.’
‘I assume you haven’t seen her for some time. Do you know where she is?’
‘Not here I imagine,’ Oliver said. ‘She didn’t like coming home, overmuch.’
‘That’s immaterial,’ Caroline cried, losing her inquisitorial manner for a moment. Oliver said, quickly and expressionlessly, ‘I don’t think so,’ and drew a breath, sharply.
‘Look,’ he said, taking charge. ‘Let’s not hedge, let’s not recriminate yet. Let’s get it over with. Where is she? Has she done something silly?’
Caroline began to speak, and then could not. Oliver went on, without a trace of a smile, now, ‘Or don’t you know where she is? Is that what it is?’
‘Of course we know.’
‘Well then?’
‘Do you want to discuss this in front of Margaret? I should have thought you’d have preferred to talk it over with her alone, later. Some of it doesn’t concern her.’
Oliver said nothing. Caroline said to Margaret, ‘Perhaps you would like to lie down for a short time on the spare bed? I have something private to say to Oliver. It won’t take long.’
Margaret sat up, still grasping Henry.
‘Oliver,’ Caroline commanded.
‘Come along, Maggie,’ said Oliver, taking a step towards her. Margaret winced, and shrank against Henry. ‘Let me take you upstairs,’ Oliver went on, neutrally kind.
‘No,’ said Margaret. She turned to Henry, desperately. ‘Don’t let them push me out. It’s my life they’re taking to bits. My life. Make them give it to me back.’
‘Lie down now,’ said Caroline patiently, ‘and then Oliver will drive you home, and you can talk.’
‘This doesn’t concern you. Honestly,’ Oliver said, with a touch of irritation which seemed to drive Margaret to frenzy. She began to cry, with huge tears rolling down her face.
‘Henry don’t let them take me, let me stay here, let me stay with you. You’re all I’ve got, Henry, don’t let them take me.’
‘They shan’t if you don’t want them to,’ Henry said, as though it was drawn from him.
‘I’m sorry about this, Henry,’ said Oliver, who did not sound particularly sorry. Margaret wept at him, ‘And you, you must admit now, Henry knows what you are. You –’ She began to elaborate, in the terms of her letter to Henry, telling Oliver graphically and in most vivid language, what he had done to her. Oliver seemed, Henry noticed with a curious relief, genuinely completely taken aback. He said, ‘God, I didn’t know it had come to this,’ and then, directly to her, with that gentleness of his that Henry had never seen before, ‘Maggie, don’t do that. It isn’t as bad as that.’
But Margaret turned to Henry and wept on his neck, crying, ‘I can’t stand any more. I want my life. That’s all. I tried, didn’t I, and I can’t take any more.’
Caroline said in a small voice, ‘Henry, please –’ and Henry stood up and stretched.
‘Come along, Margaret,’ he said to her with absolute authority, ‘you must go to bed now. Caroline will make you a hot-water bottle and you can sleep. No one will make you do anything you don’t want to do.’
Margaret stood up suspiciously, and clutched his hand. ‘Don’t let them come near me.’
‘No, I won’t.’
‘You come.’
‘Yes,’ said Henry. He took her by the hand like a child, and led her out. Caroline looked at Oliver suspiciously for a moment, as though if she left him he might steal the silver, or at the least abscond. Oliver did not answer her look, but took up a book from the table nearest him, and settled in Henry’s chair with it, one leg crossed over the other. Caroline turned against the door, to see whether he had tried to do anything furtive whilst her back was turned, but he was still there, and seemed almost rudely settled and at home. She hurried out to put on the kettle for the hot-water bottle.
Upstairs, Henry turned back the spare bed, found that it was not made up, and hunted in a series of drawers for sheets. Finally he found a pair, sprigged with forget-me-nots, and began to make the bed – something he hadn’t done for himself since he left school. He was slow and clumsy, very occupied with the whole business, making unnecessary little journeys round the bed foot, twitching worriedly at the corners of sheets and blankets, pushing pillows into pillow cases and fluffing out the frills. Margaret trotted after him like a dog, making no move to help him, but not letting him out of reach, like the three-year-old that doesn’t sink quite as far as clutching his mother’s skirts, but will not go from under her feet. The room had not been slept in for some time and was cold. Henry found an electric fire, and plugged it in. Then he turned back a corner of the bed and said, ‘There. All ready. All you have to do is get in.’
Margaret sat down on the edge of it. Henry said, ‘Shall I draw the curtains?’
‘No,’ said Margaret. ‘They make me feel trapped.’
Henry moved towards the door, and she began to tremble again.
‘Henry don’t go. Don’t leave me. I don’t know what’s going on, what’s happening, but I know it’s happening to me. It’s terrible.’
Henry came back and said in his voice of authority, ‘You must go to bed now.’
‘I will if I must,’ said Margaret. ‘But don’t leave me. Don’t let them come. There’s only you that isn’t against me.’
Henry did not answer. He sat down beside her, took her ankles, and lifted off her shoes, one after the other.
‘Now, stand up,’ he ordered. Margaret stood up. Henry, quite impersonally and quite gently, unzipped her dress and pulled it over her head. Margaret did not resist, and did not help, she lifted her arms when Henry moved them. Henry laid the poor black dress across a chair, and looked her over critically.
‘You’d be more comfortable without your stockings and that girdle thing, wouldn’t you? Won’t you take them off?’ Margaret nodded affirmatively, but made no move to help herself. Gooseflesh was beginning to form on her thighs and her upper arms. Henry, as though it was his job, undid the suspenders, rolled off the stockings, and unclasped the row of little hooks on her girdle, one by one. It was, he reflected, a parody of a seduction, with himself the victim. He was taking on a great deal that he would have considered himself peculiarly unfit to take on. But it seemed that it did not lie within his choice.
‘Now,’ he said. ‘To bed.’ He saw that he would have to lift her in, and was just doing so when Caroline knocked and came in, carrying the promised hot-water bottle, two sleeping pills, and a mug of Ovaltine. She had wondered about the cold chicken and decided against it – the idea of food seemed to upset Margaret so. When she came round the door Margaret’s limpness changed to a vice-like grip on Henry’s neck.
‘Here is your bottle,’ Caroline said with forced kindness, ‘and a hot drink and something to make you sleep. You’ll be all right, won’t you?’
‘Yes, she will,’ said Henry, still making decisions. He slid Margaret’s body in between the sheets, pushed the bottle down beside her, switched on the bedside lamp, and tucked her in. She gave a little sigh and settled back into the pillows. Caroline hovered in the doorway; she said, finally unable to endure Henry’s patient arranging any more, ‘Do you mind coming now, Henry? We really must get this over with.’
‘Henry –’ said Margaret in alarm.
‘I’ll wait outside,’ said Caroline. Henry knew as well as she did that she could not bear to go down and sit alone with Oliver.
Alone with Henry again, Margaret became slowly rational. He kept a distant silence, until finally she sat up of her own accord, and drank down the pills and the Ovaltine. She said in an almost normal voice, ‘What is all this, Henry? About Anna?’
‘That it was Anna Oliver went to see in Cambridge.’
‘I see. I hadn’t thought of that. I was fond of Anna, I thought she liked me.’
Henry was ashamed that he could not remember enough of Anna to be able to reassure her about this. He did not want to think about Anna; he came back doggedly to the business in hand.
‘Anna hasn’t come home, and Caroline thought Oliver might persuade her.’
Margaret did not examine this vague version of the truth, which was as well. She said, ‘Everything I’ve done was a lie. I love him so much, and he wasn’t there. What shall I do now?’
‘What do you want to do?’
‘I don’t know. I shall probably just drag about, doing nothing, just keeping alive, eating and sleeping, until I die. It doesn’t seem to matter, except when I’m with you. I used to despise people like that, didn’t I, Henry?’
‘And Oliver?’
‘He was all I had. He was all I wanted,’ Margaret said in her wild voice.
‘I think you should leave him now,’ Henry committed himself. Margaret said, ‘I know you know better than I do.’ She picked up his hand, and held it against her face. ‘I’ll do anything you tell me, Henry, you know that. You know how to live, you’re alive, you’re the only person I’m sure is. You’ll let me stay here, Henry, won’t you?’
‘Until you feel better, yes.’
‘I’d kill myself if I went away from you now, just for pointlessness. That’s terrible. But I love you, Henry. I’d do anything for you.’
‘You must do something for yourself.’ He saw that this was not something she would want to take in, but was unprepared for her taking it as a compliment, as an expression of his personal sense of a bond between them. She cried triumphantly, ‘You do care for me,’ and reached for him. He said, ‘You must go to sleep now,’ and disengaged himself. She settled back onto the pillows, and distaste for himself came over him, as it did every time he exacted this obedience from her. He did not want it, the tie, not the power, not the contact. And now he had apparently brought it on himself indefinitely. He said gently, ‘Goodnight,’ and let himself out.
Caroline came after him and caught his arm in the hall. ‘Really, this is intolerable,’ she said. ‘Quite intolerable. Did you have to undress her?’
‘Yes,’ said Henry simply. He could hardly bring himself to be considerate in yet another direction; who was he, where was he, where was his occupation, in all this? But he made an effort. ‘I don’t like it,’ he said, ‘I don’t like having to touch people. But at the moment she can’t do anything for herself.’
‘You enjoy having power over her.’
‘No I don’t. You should know it isn’t that.’
Caroline did know, and did not want to know that she knew. She would have preferred to be able to think her almost bodily rage reasonable. Henry said, ‘Well, Oliver.’
Oliver was still sitting where Caroline had left him. He had smoked one cigarette from Caroline’s silver box for visitors, and was beginning on another, his dark face bowed over the flame of Caroline’s silver table lighter. Caroline, when she saw him so unconcerned and at home, would have torn at him and shaken him until he was properly distressed, until he bled. Instead, she drove her nails into her own clenched fists, and said, ‘Now let us get this over.’
Henry, coming in behind her, moved across the room to the window, lifted a fold of the deep rose velvet curtain, and looked out, distancing himself, detaching a flicker of Oliver’s attention from Caroline, making him frown slightly, as though he would rather have had Henry drawn into his circle with his wife. He said to him, ‘Did you manage?’
‘Yes,’ said Henry, his eyes on the dark grass.
‘She took two sleeping pills,’ said Caroline, ‘and is lying down. Although I don’t see how it could be much more tiresome for any of us, I’m afraid you won’t be able to move her tonight. I don’t know how anyone could be so – wantonly destructive. You must have known – even you must recognize some responsibility.’
‘I know what you think about me,’ Oliver said. ‘I didn’t come here to be told that, though I saw I’d have to take some of it if I was to find out anything I wanted to know. Let’s take the lecture as read, shall we? And tell me, for God’s sake, where is Anna?’ He turned to Henry. ‘Where is she? What do you want me to do?’
Caroline said, ‘She is in York. Staying with Peter Hughes-Winterton. She wants to marry him … As soon as possible.’
Oliver said, very slowly, his eyes still on Henry, ‘That sounds like a happy ending.’
‘I want you to tell her to come back.’
‘Why? I should have thought you’d have wanted her to stay there. Or don’t you think she is fit to associate with the Hughes-Wintertons after sleeping with me? Is that what it is? You want her ashamed? You would, wouldn’t you –’
Caroline whitened. ‘Henry,’ she said, furious with him, ‘this is your decision too, you know. You tell Oliver – Henry – you tell Oliver, why …’
Henry turned his great head from the contemplation of the garden, looked briefly at Oliver, and said, in a colourless voice from a great distance, ‘Anna is pregnant.’ Then he turned his head back again.
He felt sick for a moment, and for a moment as he said Anna’s name his imagination touched at her, and love tore him. But under that, he was still and cold, waiting quiescent. And under that again, the old life stirred, a tiny flame, which warmed him, in spite of himself, which he knew he must protect before anything.
Oliver seemed to shrink for a moment, and caught at one of his hands with the other, as if for support. Then he cried angrily, ‘Why the hell didn’t you begin with that?’
‘I thought you should know,’ Caroline said, in charge again. ‘Naturally, we feel she must come back here to have the baby, and not put it all on this unfortunate boy. We must look after her, of course, it’s our place. But we – don’t know if we can make her come. We thought – you might do that –’
‘Why me?’ Oliver asked, in the same small, outraged voice. Caroline hesitated, she was not quite sure why: her greatest need had not been for someone to fetch Anna back, but for someone to punish, someone to hurt. And she did not want to say that she thought Anna might love Oliver enough to listen to him, might trust him enough to see that she must abandon her entrenchment, because she could not say that there was no such love between herself and Anna, and that Henry would not help. She had meant Oliver to betray Anna to them, to her. But it was not, she saw suddenly, moving that way. She said, ‘It will be your child. It is your responsibility. You must help to provide.’
‘Be quiet,’ Oliver said. ‘I know, I know it is my child. But I will do this my way. Anna –’
‘You must know why she went there. You must tell her to come home.’
‘She has no home,’ Oliver snapped. ‘Let me think.’
‘It’s clear enough …’
‘Henry!’ Oliver broke across Caroline’s talk. ‘What does she want, Henry? What does she want?’
‘What she wants is immaterial, at the moment,’ said Caroline.
‘Henry, what does she want?’
‘An abortion,’ said Henry flatly. His large fingers pleated the curtain, and released it.
‘You must see –’ said Caroline.
‘All right, I see that. Of course I see that. I’m not having that. She’s not killing my child for any bloody Hughes-Winterton.’
‘He doesn’t want her to,’ Henry said. ‘It’s Anna.’
‘Oh, but why?’ Oliver demanded, as though in pain. He said to Henry, ‘I love Anna, have you thought of that? More than you – any of you – have guts to begin to imagine. I’d give her anything, anything, something enormous – but I’d have to know what she wants. If I thought she loved me – or could love me –’ He thought fiercely, moving his brows, rapidly. He said, ‘Henry, do you think she’d come?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know if she knows,’ Henry said judicially.
‘Will you give me the telephone number?’ Henry put his hand in his pocket, and hesitated. Oliver said, ‘What can you do – what will you do – yourself?’
‘I’ll give it to you,’ Henry said slowly. ‘The telephone is in the hall.’ He took Anna’s letter from his pocket, looked for the number, was about to hand the letter to Oliver, and then instead, carefully wrote out the figures on a piece of card. ‘It’s late, to telephone now.’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ said Oliver. ‘Excuse me.’
He swung out of the room, and a moment later they heard his voice in the hall, dry and authoritative. ‘Operator. Can you get me this number via York. I’m in a hurry. Thank you.’
And then a long silence.
Caroline said, ‘I don’t understand. What does he mean to do?’
‘To take her away. If she’ll go. To marry her eventually, I suppose.’
‘And you mean to let him?’
‘I can’t decide for Anna. I think he should see her. I think he has a right.’
‘She’s too young, and you know it. It’s your duty, Henry – you have to stop him, you have to. Can’t you see? It’s disgusting –’
‘You know,’ said Henry, slowly, ‘there’s nothing for her here. Not now. She would be better not to come here.’ He thought that was not the whole truth. There was something he himself should have done, and he had not found it. In a short time it would seem as though that had been inevitable, but not now, not quite. He stirred his body, and looked out of the window.
‘And Margaret?’ Caroline demanded, flinging from one trouble to the next.
‘We shall have to look after Margaret for the time being.’
‘How could you let him do this to us?’ Caroline cried, and was heard by Oliver who had come quietly in again.
‘She took some persuading,’ said Oliver. ‘I told her I had a right to see her. It wasn’t nice. She sounds – I don’t like how she sounds. She says she will come and meet me in York tomorrow. I think there is only half a chance that she will, but that’s a risk I’ve got to take. So I’ll drive up there tomorrow. She didn’t want to speak to you. She was very angry with you, incidentally, particularly with you, Henry.’
‘Yes,’ said Henry. ‘She would be.’
There was an embarrassed silence, which prolonged itself. It was broken by Henry, who suddenly, without speaking, almost absent-mindedly, dropped the heavy curtain with a swish over the dark glass and the garden, turned from the window, and strode out of the room. He had obviously not felt anything to be intolerable; had not meant to finish anything grandly, or make a gesture. He gave, rather, the impression that he had suddenly realized that he ought not to have been there at all, that his presence was a mistake. Caroline and Oliver, the tidy-minded, the arrangers, swung to each other in momentary sympathy; they felt deeply and indignantly discarded. For a moment Caroline felt that Oliver was nearer to understanding – no, to appreciating – the wrong that had been done to her than Henry would ever be. She clicked her tongue in exasperation, and shrugged her shoulders, as if inviting Oliver to speak. Oliver voiced both their thoughts.
‘I don’t suppose we had any right to expect him to pay us any more attention. He has better things to do. He always has had better things to do. That’s what makes it more difficult for the rest of us.’
‘It depends what you mean by better things,’ Caroline said sharply, and recollected herself. She lifted her head, and said, more stiffly, ‘However awkward it may be, I don’t see that you can leave her, tonight, now. I’ll make up Jeremy’s bed for you.’ She had been going to say Anna’s bed; she did not like to let anyone else sleep in Jeremy’s room, it was his sanctum. But Anna’s bed was obviously out of the question, and now she had to resent Oliver on Jeremy’s behalf too.
‘It may be convenient in a way. We must obviously discuss this matter further. Your – your plans – are obviously impossible, you must try and see what she – Anna – will want in – ten years, say. Henry – believed too much in letting her have her own way, he is over-indulgent, he won’t see how immature she is. I should be grateful if you’d wait here whilst I put an electric blanket in the bed. It will need airing.’
Oliver did not answer; he took, and lit, another cigarette, which Caroline took for acquiescence. She went out, head high, and closed him in behind her, like a naughty boy, set to wait in the headmaster’s study.
For a moment he stood there, quite still, and smoked, dark and self-contained, leaning against the chimney. Then he turned, wrenching his whole body round violently, and threw the cigarette in amongst the burning logs. He looked around, unsatisfied, carrying his arms tense from the shoulders, bent slightly out and forward, like a prize-fighter moving in for the clinch. His gaze flickered over the silver box and lighter, and came to rest on the tray with the glasses. He took up Margaret’s glass, and Caroline’s, and all the unused ones, fragile, exquisite, clean-cut and slender, like everything of Caroline’s, carried them over and threw them down on the blue and white Dutch tiles in the hearth. After a second’s hesitation he pitched the decanter, silver label, contents and all, in amongst them. Then he ground the fragments deliberately with his heel, until they were powdered, and the sherry and glass dust seeped out under the fender onto the hearth rug. Still unsatisfied, he dropped the delicate little brass clock, with its glass dome, in on top of them, where it clucked, and died. He gave it a kick so that it flew against the fireback, and lay on its side. Then, suddenly still again, he wiped his feet carefully on the carpet and mopped his brow. It had only been a moment’s work, but he was sweating, and breathing heavily; he straightened slowly, as though a load had eased from him, and went out, closing the door behind him.