A Fox Inside (3 page)

L
ILY BARNES LIVED IN ATHERTON
. She always had, or at any rate so she pretended. She felt there was magic in that name and for that reason she lived there. Of all the suburbs of any city that ebb and flow through fashion, there is always one that manages to hold its own through pride of place. For San Francisco, Atherton was that suburb. Through the years its
grandeur
may have been whittled down to ostentation, but it was grandeur all the same, if you so considered it. And Lily Barnes did so consider it, deliberately.

Once it had been nothing but a sandy waste of tidal land, yellow with straw and brown with dusty oaks. But in the 1850s, when the city had grown rich on fraudulent merchandise, those people who elsewhere were to be called robber barons had built for themselves to the south of San Francisco great wooden houses furnished from France and set in gardens which were without a
fountain
, despite the dry heat. That was Atherton and it was not without its glamour.

Lily Barnes was born and raised a snob, but she had few illusions about her own status. Magic to her had always been glamour in the next room. Perhaps this was because she had been born in the Palace Hotel, had spent her childhood in hotels, and when she married, had
married 
out of an hotel, in that luxurious and squalid way of the American transient rich. Even as a child, far below her, six stories down in the palm-clogged carriage court, she must have heard the dancing and the laughter. And that was how she always heard it.

To marry Jerome Barnes and move to his house was the closest she could get to reality. But the suburb changed. The houses built in her time became discreetly smaller, if no less expensive, just as the site of her own house had been carved out of the old Flood estate. She did not remove. She never thought of removing.
Atherton
was her ambition, and to live there was her
accomplishment
. It was what she had married to achieve. To leave it would have been to leave herself. She enjoyed it. There was nothing about it that she did not know. She felt safe there.

Maggie did not.

Now, as she drove rapidly through the unobservant streets, she felt that old heavy dread of appearances that had always been her emotion there. She also felt a sense of safety, however, in the defensive discretion of the rich, who know just how much they should not see and so have a mutual agreement to go through the world
unwatched
. She was grateful for that.

But if what was behind her bothered her, it did not bother her half so much as the thought of the next half hour. She circled the block once, and then went slowly up the drive, afraid of the gravel popping under the tyres in that still air. The moon had gone down but the stars were bright. They were too bright. She stopped the car and sat for a moment in the cool air, gazing across the lawn towards the to her somehow dangerous bulk of
the house. She had always dreaded coming back to it, and she did not dread it any the less now. Somewhere up there Lily was asleep, and she had reason to know that the night thoughts of her mother were sometimes treacherous. She knew this house and this garden with the clarity of childhood. She knew it too well. And of course she had been married from this house; she was self-possessed enough to know the irony in that.

She got out of the car and stood waiting. She was afraid that the sound of the shutting car door would make a light spring up in the servants’ attic. Then, slim and furtive, she slipped out of the night and into the shadows of the
porte-cochère.
She got the door unlatched, but was baffled by the night chain being on. It took her a moment to remember the trick of that chain; sliding one hand painfully through the opening, she found, as she recalled, that it was just possible to loosen the
fastening
by lengthening her fingers. The chain fell with a rusty clank. She closed the door behind her and stood in the cluttered darkness of the hall.

It was difficult to see. The downstairs doors, open on each side of her, gave into shadowy wastes haunted by furniture, with dim light from windows in the distance. The floor was wood, it smelled of too much polish, and it cracked underfoot. More from knowing where it was than from being able to see it she made her way to the foot of the stairs and began to mount them, keeping, as she had done in childhood, to the outer edge of each tread, where the noise would be least. It took her a long time to go up that way, but she did not want to rouse anybody. Lily’s maid on the floor above was deaf, but she was not that deaf. She pretended to herself that once
she reached her mother she would be safe. She had
pretended
it before when anything went wrong. She knew it wasn’t true, but it helped.

She gained the landing. The transverse corridor was open to the hall for the length of the far wall, protected from space by a thin ornamental balustrade. In front of her was the room, almost never used unless someone important was staying in the house, in which her father had once slept. To her it had always been a mysterious, sad place that seemed to be waiting for someone. Behind the other doors were rooms almost as empty, for Lily no longer had any love of guests. She did not like to be seen too constantly or too close.

Lily’s rooms were to the left. Hesitantly Maggie turned the knob and let herself into the small
sitting-room
. She stood there, just inside the door, blinking and somehow wishing she had not come. Feeling her way across the rug she passed under the open archway into Lily’s bedroom and faced what she imagined to be the place where the bed was.

“Mother,” she called. The act of speech somehow destroyed that false calm that had held her together. “Mother.”

There was no answer and she could not bring herself to speak again. She did not like to call Lily “Mother”. But as she stood there Lily, sensing someone in the room, moved uneasily in the darkness and with a heavy rustle of bedclothes came up to consciousness. The room smelled heavily of powder and perfume. The air was thick with it and had an uneasy odour. At first she did not speak. When she did speak her voice was calm and level, the fear in it kept under, as the fear in it always
was. She did not seem surprised and she did not ask who it was. She asked, “What is it?” as though her daughter’s voice was unfamiliar to her. Probably she knew
perfectly
well who it was, but she always treated her
daughter
like that, as a matter of policy.

Maggie cleared her throat. “It’s me,” she said. “Don’t turn on the light.”

“Why on earth shouldn’t I?” demanded Lily. She was using her sensible voice, the one she always used to make objections, as though making an objection tied the situation down. She sat up in bed. Maggie could hear her doing it, but couldn’t yet see her. She did not,
however
, turn on the light. She was silent and then asked again, “What is it?” in a voice that was curiously low, as though she knew what it was.

Maggie could not speak.

“Well,” said Lily. Her voice was drowsy and slightly unpleasant. It was also vigilant. She reached out, a barely definable bulk, and Maggie caught sight of her pale face in the glow of the lighter, as she lit a cigarette. She saw her mother’s eyes, staring inquisitively into the darkness, and knew that Lily would not understand.

Out of some other self than her own self,
impersonally
, she said, “Charles is dead.”

The room became very quiet. Nothing happened, and she repeated the sentence, like a child at school, by rote, her hands clasped in front of her. Now she had said it, it was not her problem any more. Her mother could take care of it. “Charles is dead,” she said.

Lily did not immediately answer. Instead, leaning over, she rapidly flicked on and off the night light. This frightened Maggie, who had been facing the wrong way
and in that instant saw that her mother’s bed had been moved, so that Lily saw her sideways. The light went on and off so fast it was like being struck. And the
darkness
was then deeper than ever.

“What am I to do?” she asked suddenly. “What am I to do?”

Lily grunted, but in the darkness her cigarette
wobbled
, so her hand must be shaking. “What do you mean, dead?” she asked. “I thought he was at Bolinas.”

“He was.’

“What were you doing up there?”

“I drove up.”

“Of course you drove up. I didn’t think you walked,” snapped Lily. She seemed to be thinking hard. When she spoke again her voice was weary. “What time is it?”

“I think about three.”

Lily lay back in the bed. Maggie could begin to see better now in the darkness, but she could not imagine what her mother’s expression was, not, at any rate, by the sound of her.

“How long ago?” asked Lily after a while.

“I don’t know. I came right here.”

“I was asleep,” said Lily, as though taking part in some other private and necessary conversation. She turned on the light again and this time left it on. “Come over here,” she said, not looking directly at her
daughter
, but with a sly glance that Maggie had always feared far worse. “You’d better have a cigarette and sit down.” Leaning out of bed, she fumbled clumsily with her cigarette case, gave up, and threw it to her daughter. Her eyes looked not at Maggie, but at the familiar
details
of the room. She sighed deeply.

“Did you kill him?” she asked. Her voice was bland.

“No.” Maggie was startled not by what was said, but by her mother’s expression. “No. At least, I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

“On yes you can.”

“I can’t.”

Lily dragged herself up in the bed and reached for her bed jacket. “He’s dead,” she said. “I believe he’s dead. And even if you didn’t kill him, you wanted to. What I want to know is, how bad a mess did you make of it?”

“He fell against the coal scuttle.” She hesitated. “I went up to Bolinas to ask him for a divorce. He just laughed at me. Then he fell down. He was drunk.”

Lily shrugged and dabbed at her eyes with an edge of her bed jacket. “They’ll think you killed him,” she said. She thought about it. “Why should I help you?”

“No reason.” Maggie tried not to flinch. “I wanted to phone Luke. I didn’t dare. I thought they could trace the call or something. I couldn’t think of anybody else to come to. There isn’t anybody else I can trust.”

“No,” said Lily. “I don’t suppose there is. But I won’t have Luke here. It wouldn’t look right.”

“That isn’t why you won’t have him here, though.”

“That may be true,” admitted Lily calmly.

“If you won’t wire him, I will,” said Maggie. “And I don’t care what happens.”

“You will, though.” Lily watched her avidly. It was not the sort of watching that was easy to bear. She seemed to forget about both Luke and her daughter. “I suppose you followed him there?”

“I went to see him.”

“And hid the car under a tree. What were you
planning
to kill him with?”

“I didn’t kill him. I told him I would, but I didn’t.”

“But you did tell him you would? And if you had, though of course you didn’t, how would you have done it?” It was not exactly sarcasm; it was something else.

“I just said it. I didn’t mean it.”

“But you thought about it,” said Lily. She threw back the covers of the bed, showing that she was wearing a nightgown of pale blue nylon that hugged her big body in uncomfortable places. Slowly she pulled herself up and gathered the bed jacket around her, as though it gave her assurance.

Maggie watched her uncertainly. “What are you
going
to do?” she asked.

Lily did not answer. She went into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. Maggie stood where she was looking futilely at the rumpled bed. When it seemed that her mother was not coming back the door unclicked and Lily came out again, apparently calm, but with her
fingers
twitching. She had changed into a robe; it must have been hanging on the bathroom door. The robe made her look larger than ever, but less clumsy. She was carrying a glass of water and two pills.

“Very well. You’ll sleep here,” she said. She stamped her foot. “Maggie, wake up.” She took her daughter’s arm, though Maggie flinched away from the grasp, and led her out into the dark and now very cold hall. “You didn’t wake the maid?” she asked.

Maggie shook her head and Lily looked relieved. “Ethel’s deaf as a post. I’ll say you came down late last night.”

Maggie could not speak. She wondered uneasily which room she would be put in. It had been so long since she had stayed in this house, and all the rooms in it had an evil meaning for her. They went past her father’s door, that could never be closed too tightly, and Lily led her into a room, switching on the light.

Maggie saw that it was her own old room. She did not like that. Lily looked around the room with some satisfaction and drew down the bedspread from the maple-posted bed.

“But it’s made up,” said Maggie.

“It always is.” Lily sat Maggie down on the edge of the bed and Maggie allowed herself to be undressed. When that was done, Lily went to the cupboard and took out a nightgown. “It’s old,” she said, half smiling, “but it should fit.” Abruptly irritable she threw the nightgown at her daughter. Maggie pulled it over her head, tugged it down, and slipped into the bed. The sheets were stiff with cold and the room had a damp, shut-up smell. Then she remembered and sat up in the bed.

“What is it?”

“I left something in the car. A paper bag.”

“It can wait.” Lily gave her the glass and the two pills.

“But it can’t….” Maggie did not want to tell her what was in the bag.

“I’ll see to it,” said Lily. She went over to the
window
, but did not lift the blind to look out. “You’re right. In the circumstances there isn’t anyone else we can trust. Or that you can, which I guess amounts to the same thing. I’ll phone Luke.” She moved rapidly about the room, setting down the glass. Then she picked it up
again and took it with her. By the light switch she paused to look back at Maggie.