At Death's Door (8 page)

“In any case,” said Roderick, “it's fairly clear that you can stop the book if you want to. The libel laws are not so very different now from what they were in 1964.”

“You forget: I didn't stop
The V
—your father's horrible book. I merely managed to get certain passages changed or omitted. The book came out, and it did me immense damage. It was to preempt the damage it would do that I took the whole story to the gutter press.”

That seemed to Caroline like taking a can of petrol to a raging fire. Once again she didn't say so. Conversation with Myra seemed predicated on not saying some very obvious things.

“Well, well,” said Roderick, “I don't know that it really helps to rake over old coals. Though that's what the popular papers will do if they get wind of Cordelia's book. I must confess I like the idea of it more than you do. For Father's sake and for ours. And I don't think it will do Cordelia as much good as she thinks to get things out into the open.”

Myra had begun to smile and lean forward during this speech, scenting an ally. At the last words she drew back.

“What things?”

Roderick immediately regretted his words.

“I don't know. They've confided nothing to me, I assure you. Tales of her upbringing? Your . . . husbands, and so on?”

Myra made an impatient gesture, brushing off her husbands as if they were nothing. As perhaps they were.

“I can't see why she should hold them against me. Most of them were perfectly kind to her. Except Louis, of course. Louis was a sadist, in every possible sense of the word. But I was only married to Louis about a year. I soon showed him I wasn't the victim kind.”

There was silence around the table. Then Caroline decided this time to say the obvious.

“A year can be a long time to a child.”

Myra ignored her.

“No. It's me she's getting at. Something I did. . . .” A reminiscent expression suggested she was surveying a whole range of incidents to discover which it could be. But after a moment the warm social manner, a Candida sort of role, was assumed again. “Oh, dear, it's so easy to
do
things and then find other people have taken them entirely
wrongly
, isn't it?” She smiled at Roderick and did that little shrugging gesture that preceded a change of subject. “No doubt I'll soon find out. As you say, maybe we can come to some sort of a
modus vivendi.
Tell me about yourselves. And about poor old Ben. How long has he been . . . in his present state?”

It seemed to Roderick that they were shifting from one prickly subject to another.

“Oh, quite a while. Ten years or more, though not so bad at first, of course. It came on quite suddenly.”

“Suddenly? I thought these things were usually gradual?”

“Perhaps I used the wrong word. Maybe it was our noticing it that was sudden. We were all on holiday in the south of France, at my father-in-law's villa. Ben had just finished one of his travel books, the one on the Dolomites.”

“Godly Heights
?”

“You've read it?”

“Oh, yes. The fact that I detested him didn't stop me reading his books.”

You read it to see if there were any references to yourself, thought Caroline.

“Anyway, when he came to us, we noticed that he wasn't functioning as he always had done: wasn't taking in what we said, couldn't remember what he'd done the day before, would make decisions and then wander round distressed because he couldn't remember what they were. He was half-conscious of what was happening, which made it worse. Sometimes we found him crying. We brought
him back to England, hoping the more familiar scene would jog him back to his usual alertness.”

“And it didn't?” Myra's voice surely had an undertone of satisfaction.

“No,” said Roderick simply. “We found he couldn't cope. He wouldn't go out, or down to the village, in case he made a fool of himself. He couldn't understand his business affairs—and he had always prided himself on that. I remember I had to read the proofs of
Godly Heights.
Quite soon we had to move in and take over the care of him.”

“Such a burden. In addition to everything else.” Myra addressed the remark to Roderick, though it might more justly have been directed to Caroline.

“Does he need much nursing?” Granville Ashe asked Caroline, perhaps to cover Myra's rudeness, perhaps to assert that they both existed.

“Oh, I have help. The royalties from the books provide that. And he is very passive—never troublesome or aggressive, as one might have expected.”

“Would one have expected that?” Myra asked the ceiling. “Ben was always essentially an observer. A silken, soft-spoken observer. . . . It's terrible to think of him with nothing to observe. . . . You know, I've often regretted the fuss over
The Vixen.
In an odd way it poisoned the relationship with Cordelia.”

Roderick did not believe that. The relationship with Cordelia had been poisoned by things that Myra had done to Cordelia. Now Myra was reinventing the past to cast herself in the role of helpless victim. He wondered whether she had ever once considered the relationship in terms of the child's needs, expectations, hopes. Yet for all her selfishness and self-dramatization, Roderick could not help seeing something pitiful in Myra. There is always something pathetic about egotists, for life can never give them all the things they expect for themselves.

“Becky is getting restive,” whispered Caroline.

Myra, in her rapid changes of mood and pose, had presented a fascinating spectacle for Becky for a time. But Myra had taken no notice of her since the first moments. Becky needed some reciprocation, some sympathetic response. Now she was becoming bored, making the little noises that she sometimes made when she was working up to a tantrum.

“Oh, dear, must you go?” asked Myra with no great regret in her voice. “It's been so interesting, talking over old times, renewing old friendships.” There was never any friendship, thought Roderick. Myra looked at her watch. “Well, even if the children are back, there's not much point in sending them down here now. Far better not to enter into delicate matters when one is tired, don't you agree? Best they come to lunch or dinner tomorrow. Tell Cordelia to phone me. We can have a pleasant meal
à quatre.
Talking about any and everything except that damned book. Then Cordelia and I can get down to the nitty-gritty. Though perhaps, Granville, you ought to be present. You do provide a stabilizing influence.”

Granville looked apprehensive.

“No,
thanks.
”

“Darling, it's worth a try. And in a sense you are a sort of outsider. Remember, Cordelia has hardly met you, and certainly not since you became my husband.”

Roderick paused in the business of collecting things together.

“Oh—I'm awfully sorry, Myra. I didn't realize you two were married.”

“It was in the
Times.
”

“I'm afraid I skip over the social pages rather rapidly. Many congratulations, anyway.”

Myra smiled graciously, Granville Ashe awkwardly.

“Yes,” said Myra, “we've been married almost three weeks. It's good to have a husband again, to look after my interests.”

But few people could doubt that Myra Mason could look after her own. As she saw them to the door, the very tables seemed to shift out of her way, acknowledging the concentrated force of her personality.

I
T WAS VERY LATE
when Pat and Cordelia arrived back at the Rectory. Roderick saw them in the driveway, getting out of their ancient Volkswagen, as he went up to bed. Cordelia had a large canvas bag with her and was looking very pleased with herself. Pat looked less happy.

Roderick went down the lawn to give them Myra's message as they sat eating breakfast (ham and large chunks of bread). Cordelia said: “Thanks.”

“You will ring her, won't you?”

She shrugged. “I suppose so. Yes, I'll ring her sometime during the day.”

Roderick lingered awkwardly. “We didn't realize your mother had married again.”

Cordelia was unfazed. “Oh, has she? Who is it?”

“A man called Granville Ashe.”

“Hmm. I
think
I've met him. Can't quite remember. It's a bad sign when she marries them. The marriages always break up quicker than the affairs.”

“He seemed a pleasant enough chap. I think he is hoping to act as a peacemaker.”

Cordelia smiled secretively. “He is unlikely to be successful.”

Roderick was forced to leave it at that.

The Cotterels' day was dominated by the arrival of Isobel. As soon as she reached the Red Lion in Maudsley, she phoned for Roderick to come and fetch her. Caroline greeted her on the front porch half an hour later. She was wearing a Zandra Rhodes outfit that Caroline thought would have looked well on a younger woman. It was flouncy, garish, and it contrasted oddly with Isobel's air of perennial discontent. It also, incidentally, gave the lie to her moans about never being allowed to buy new clothes. This was from this spring's collection.

Isobel's behavior when she arrived at the Rectory was pretty much unvarying. She marched into the sitting room, cast a proprietary glance around it, sat herself on the sofa, made another more leisurely proprietary survey, then took out her cigarette holder and lit a cigarette. All these actions annoyed Caroline intensely. She couldn't make up her mind whether Isobel realized this or not. Certainly it would not have worried her if she had. Watching her swing one leg over another in an attempt at easy elegance, Caroline took refuge in satire: She thinks she's in a Noel Coward play, she thought, but she wouldn't even make it into a Terence Rattigan.

“This room looks all right,” said Isobel, rather as if she were a building inspector. “But then, it always looks better in summer. Basically it's rather a dreary house. I can't think why Father bought it. I pity you, having to live here. If I do split up from Cyril when Father dies, I shan't live here.”

That, at any rate, was a relief.

“Father's very vague today,” said Roderick.

Isobel shrugged. “I'm surprised you notice the difference day by day.
Don't
ask me if I want to go up and see him.”

“I wasn't going to.”

“Old monster . . . Why should I show any concern for him? He never showed any for us. Especially for
me. . . .
Now, tell me about Dame Myra. She's there, I gather, at the Red Lion, but I haven't seen her yet. I heard a whisper that you were summoned to the Presence last night.”

“That's right,” said Roderick carefully. Why was one always careful with Isobel? Somehow there was a sort of neurotic intensity about her that made her untrustworthy. “We had a drink with her and her husband.”

“
Hus
band?”

“A very new one, we gathered.”

“Really! And what was
she
like?”

“Perfectly friendly, for the most part. . . . Changeable, unpredictable, rather grand . . .”

Roderick was conscious of a door opening, and Cordelia's head poked into the room.

“You're talking about my mother. You have no idea how grand she can be. You should have seen her at the investiture, upstaging her sovereign.”

“Cordelia—this is my sister Isobel.”

He deliberately hadn't said “your sister Isobel.” Isobel had risen and was looking at her appraisingly in a way that verged on the rude.

“Oh, you're the . . .”

“That's right. I'm the . . .” Cordelia gave a quick, nervous smile and turned back to Roderick. “I just thought I'd tell you that I've rung Mother. Pat and I are to go and have dinner with her tonight. So she won't be troubling you again.”

She smiled and withdrew quickly.

“Well,
she's
no beauty,” said Isobel, making no attempt to moderate her voice.

“That's what I thought at first,” said Caroline in a conversational tone, ignoring the spite. “But she has a wonderful
smile, and you realize all the elements of a lovely face are there.”

“Hmmm,” said Isobel, sitting down. “Now—tell me more about Myra.”

And so they mulled over Myra Mason and her husband. Or rather, Isobel shot questions at them, and they answered them carefully and distantly. Why this should be so was pondered over by Caroline as much as by Roderick. Certainly they felt no sort of loyalty to Myra. But Isobel was so patently pathetic, inadequate, and spiteful that there could only have been a mean pleasure in mulling over the shortcomings of someone who, in spite of everything, was in her acting tinged with greatness. Again, neither she nor Roderick was a gossip, but she could make the distinction between gossip that sprang from gusto and gossip that sprang from spite. Isobel's was certainly the latter. But for all their reserve, she hammered on until she was satisfied she had got out of them everything they intended telling her. Then she announced she was going.

“Oh, aren't you staying for lunch?” asked Caroline.

“Not this time.'” She invariably had on past visits, raising her eyebrows over imagined inadequacies in Caroline's cooking or presentation. “I'll get back to the Red Lion, to see what's going on. You'll drive me, Roderick?”

“Of course.”

“Will you be coming to the Red Lion for a drink tonight?”

“I think not. Best to leave Cordelia and her mother to sort out things between them, without us around.”

“Perhaps you're right,” said Isobel, who didn't seem at all disappointed. Doubtless she wished to observe all she could, undistracted.

When Isobel arrived back at the Red Lion, she was cast down to find that Myra was not in the bar. The pub was packed, but she was absent. By dint of throwaway questions (which the landlord laughed up his sleeve about),
she established that Dame Myra and her husband, after taking a call from her daughter, had gone out for a drive, taking a packed lunch with them. They were not expected back before dinner. Isobel became petulant. She teetered on the verge of petulance for most of her waking hours. She drank a couple of gin and tonics, ate a portion of pub lasagna, surveying disgruntledly the customers of the Saloon Bar—locals, motorists, walkers dropping in, hotel guests. Then she went upstairs and treated herself to a long lie-down.