Burnt Offerings (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) (20 page)

All he had heard was the question mark, and when Ben shook his head, seriously, Marian threw up two imaginary hands and pushed the tray in his direction. “Go ahead,” she said, “dig in.” She went into the house for their drinks.

Aunt Elizabeth still hadn’t come down when Marian returned with the pitcher of martinis and three chilled glasses – two “ups” and an ice-filled “down” with extra vermouth.

“David opted for the sewing room,” she explained. “Roger Ramjet’s on the tube. I must say, some of those cartoons are damn funny.” Ben was pacing a bit. The caviar, she noticed, still hadn’t been touched. Marian held up the pitcher to catch his eye. “Shall I pour?”

Ben stopped. “I’d better go up and check her,” he said.

Marian said, “Ben,” with less patience.

“She was coming right down.”

“Then she’ll be down.” She began to pour. “Can’t you and I have one quiet, uncomplicated minute together? Like in the old days?” She brought his drink to him and made him take it. “To the old days,” she said, touching her glass to his, “wherever they’ve gone. They seem to have gotten lost in all the confusion, haven’t they? If it’s my fault, I’m sorry.” He was looking at his glass. Exasperated, she said, “Look at me? Please?” He did and she said, “Thank you,” softening it with a smile. “You never told me – do I or don’t I get another chance?”

“Chance for what, Marian?”

She shrugged. “To try to get things back into normal perspective. ‘Things’ being, I suppose, our life.”

He was silent a moment. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know. What I think might be just wishful.”

The pause was longer. She watched for even a slight change of expression. There was none; he simply tapped her glass with his.

“Is that as loud as it comes?” she said.

Ben lifted his glass higher. “That’s good crystal,” he said: “You ought to know that.”

She sipped her drink, watching him over the rim of the glass. And the idea of his leaving her, or even withdrawing temporarily from the house, must have been inconceivable to her to begin with, since she felt neither surprise nor relief at his reaction to the question, which turned out to be the quiet admission that, “I’m not ending anything, Marian.”

She moved away from him and walked slowly beside the balustrade. The hedges were growing fuller beside the terrace; peonies were beginning to flower, and masses of rhododendron. She paused above a rosebush filled with salmon-colored buds. They would open in a day or so, and the yellow roses next to them, and of course the reds with all their different shadings. Their fragrance would fill the sitting room.

She looked beyond them, over the sweep of lawn. “Don’t you love this time especially?” she said to Ben who was silent behind her. “The color gets so intense.” She turned and walked back toward him and there was something commanding in the ease and grace of her movement. “It’s looming bigger and bigger though, isn’t it? The city, the return to reality.” She was beside him. “If for no other reason but that . . . bear with me? Let me – revel in it just a while longer?”

“I told you, Marian,” Ben said, “I have no intention of wrecking your summer.”

“It ought to be a little less grudging than that.” She ran her finger up his chest, then followed the line of his chin and lips. “There’s no such thing as my summer. It’s ours.” She smiled a little ruefully. “ ‘How I Spent Our Summer Vacation’: how many words would you like, Mr. Rolfe?” There
was
no gray, she noticed, not a single strand; and except for the lines in his forehead and that pinched look between his eyebrows, his face was smooth and strong; the crushes his female students developed were reasonable enough. She let her eyes linger, relearning his face. “I love you, you know,” she said.

“And I love you, Marian,” he said simply.

“Despite – ?”

“ – nothing. It’s a fact of my life: I love you.”

The words and the soft helplessness she saw in his eyes silenced her. She could feel a jumble of contradictory emotions rising inside herself, and the frustration of trying to hear one voice above all the others – that and the simple physical closeness of Ben – made her eyes tear. And if she had given in to the impulse the moment it flashed through her mind, if it had lingered just a fraction of a second longer, then she would have said it to him: If you love me,
then for God’s sake help me
.

It passed, however, and the image of the sitting room banked with roses flashed into her mind, and the hum and the way the maze in the door caught the light. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and when she felt a little less vulnerable and sentimental, she laughed apologetically and said instead, “Now how about some of that caviar?”

He left Marian spooning caviar onto wedges of toast, and went back up to Aunt Elizabeth’s room. He opened the door a crack without knocking, and called, “Aunt Elizabeth?” There was no reply. He opened it wider and saw her lying on her side in bed. “Hey,” he said, “you stood me up.” She was lying absolutely still. He moved more anxiously into the room, keeping his eyes on her back. She might not have heard. “We had a date – ” he started to say, and then stopped beside the bed. He hesitated – she was so still and, what he could see of her right arm and legs, so white – and then leaned over and touched her shoulder.

She moaned, deep in her throat, and even that came as some relief. He touched her again and whispered her name. This time the sound was deeper, more pained. Her face was turned away from him, pressed into the pillow; she began to draw short, racking breaths, and when Ben rushed to the other side of the bed to face her, he saw that her left arm was twisted hideously under her. Her mouth was open, her upper lip pulled out of shape against the pillow. Grotesquely, the upper plate she wore had come loose in her mouth.

Ben dropped to his knees beside her and gently smoothed the hair back from her face.

“
Aunt Elizabeth
.”

Her breathing became quicker, more agonized. The side of her face was cold, almost bluish. He lifted his hand. If he could at least turn her onto her back, off the arm, or somehow cover that pathetic humiliation which, stupidly enough, he found especially unnerving. He touched the top of her head lightly to trace the pain, and then her feet and her legs, the moans growing as he touched closer to the arm crushed under her.

The realization jolted him: she’s going to die. And if he tried to turn her over or move her in any way she’d probably go right in front of his eyes. She was going to die.

He brought his face closer, his lips almost touching her ear. His chest pressed against the side of the bed. Aunt Elizabeth trembled, and her cry made him pull back in alarm.

“Aunt Elizabeth!” he whispered, pleading. He watched her face for some hint of recognition. There was nothing; only that steady, terrible sound in her throat. He waited, scarcely breathing himself, until watching her, and his own helplessness, became unbearable. He rose to his feet slowly, looking down at her in disbelief; as he did, her face blurred, almost mercifully, and then the room. Ben covered his eyes and then pressed his fingers against the shocks of pain. He stumbled away from the bed, and when he found himself against the opened door, the pain had intensified and the film over his eyes grown more opaque.
Oh, Christ, please,
he thought,
let it pass
.
Let it pass
. He started the numbers to distract himself, and it was eleven this time before the hall outside came into focus and he could move unsteadily toward the staircase.

“The doctor I took Davey to – where’s his number?” He was calling out to Marian from the open terrace door.

The urgency in his voice startled her. “What’s wrong?” She had been sitting, looking over the rear lawn. She stood up.

“Where’s that doctor’s number?” Ben repeated.

“On the hall table, next to the phone. Why?”

She heard him say, “Aunt Elizabeth” as he disappeared from the doorway.

Marian came into the hall. Ben was flipping through the pages. “What’s wrong with her?” Marian said.

“I don’t know.” He pulled a page free and threw the others back onto the table. “Christ, I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“Just what I said.” He lifted the receiver and started to dial. “She’s unconscious, she’s – ” He broke off and slammed his fingers down on the cradle. “Christ, I can’t even think straight.” He redialled the number.

Marian looked toward the stairs. “I’ll go on up,” she said.

Ben said, “
Goddamn
!
” and lowered the receiver. Marian could hear the busy signal at the other end of the line. She stopped at the foot of the staircase and watched him pace, three or four steps in either direction. “Is there a hospital, anything you know of?”

Marian shook her head. “If it’s busy, he’s there at least.”

“She’s going to need more than a hick doctor.” He started to dial again, and Marian went up the stairs quickly.

She stood at the foot of the bed, watching Aunt Elizabeth in the fading light. She tried calling her name, and when there was no response, only that pitiful gasping for air, Marian moved back from the bed, toward the lamp beside the chaise. She hesitated and then turned it on and stared at Aunt Elizabeth’s face half-buried in the pillow. She lowered herself to the edge of the chaise and sat with her hands clasped tightly in her lap. And it was terrible, she knew, and brutally unfeeling, but she couldn’t bring herself nearer the figure on the bed, who wasn’t Aunt Elizabeth, who couldn’t possibly be Aunt Elizabeth.

She turned her face to the door. Where was Ben, what was he doing down there?

If Aunt Elizabeth was dying – and God, how could she possibly look like that and survive? – Marian had watched death before; her grandparents, two of them, had died with her right beside them. Why should the possibility of Aunt Elizabeth dying in front of her fill her with such absolute dread?

She tried not to look at the bed.

Think of something comforting. Think of beyond the door and up the hall: the refuge of the sitting room, so close.

Ben came into the room and Marian sprang to her feet.

“Did you get him?”

He said, “No,” without looking at her, and went directly to the bed.

“The line can’t stay busy all night. I’ll go down and try again.”

Ben knelt beside Aunt Elizabeth. “You do that, Marian,” he said quietly.

She had started to walk toward the door. She stopped abruptly. “What do you mean?”

He touched Aunt Elizabeth’s hair. “They’re all busy,” he said, “every number I tried. Even the goddamned operator is busy.” He looked across the room at her and smiled that chilling smile again. “The phone’s out, in a word. Surprise?”

It took her a moment to absorb what he was saying. She shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“There’s no – !” He caught himself and lowered his voice. They had been talking in sick-room whispers. “There’s no way to get through. To anybody.”

Marian tried to think when was the last time that they had used the phone. The doctor, for David. And before that? She couldn’t remember.

“If we can’t get through,” she said, “then we’ll
take
her to someone.”

“Who?”

“The first shingle we find, or a hospital, or somebody!”

“She can’t be moved.”

“How do you know that?”

“I tried.” He sat back on his heels and stared at Aunt Elizabeth’s face. The quick catches of breath were becoming more agonized.

“Then what do we do – watch her die?”

“I don’t
know
what to do, Marian. I’m trying to think of something.”

She had to get out of that room. It had become suffocating, and the sounds coming from Aunt Elizabeth were frighteningly ominous.

If she could calm herself and think reasonably, if she could go into the sitting room for just a few minutes.

“I’ll try to reach him again,” she said in the silence. “If I can’t reach him, I’ll take the car and go out and
find
someone. Or you can take the car. There’s got to be some way.”

Ben continued to stare at Aunt Elizabeth. The car. It hadn’t occurred to him before, but if the phone was out, conveniently, then what help would the car be? It wouldn’t be made that simple for them, would it? Let her try it. Just let her try it.

“Ben?” She was waiting.

Ben looked up at her. “You still don’t get it, do you, Marian? It’s still all in my mind.” He touched the pillow. “This, like everything else.”

Marian remained still, almost defiantly. They were at opposite ends of the room, with the awful fact of Aunt Elizabeth between them. And whatever spring had fed the tenderness she felt for Ben just a while ago, out on the terrace, had dried inside her. There was suddenly nothing. Whether she would feel the same way in another minute or so, or not, right now Ben and Aunt Elizabeth and everything else existed only to keep her away from the comfort of the sitting room.

It was getting darker, and if she waited for Ben to think his tortuous way to a solution, Aunt Elizabeth would die in Mrs. Allardyce’s house.

“Stay with her,” Marian said, and walked out of the room.

“I’ll stay with her,” Ben said. He touched Aunt Elizabeth’s forehead very lightly. “Of course I will.” He brought his hand down to her lips and tried to think of something else, like Aunt Elizabeth finally behind the wheel, doing eighty on a stretch of open road.

Marian went directly downstairs for the number, and on the third try reached the doctor who remembered her with no particular interest. He asked for the symptoms which Marian described vaguely, and interrupted her to ask Aunt Elizabeth’s age. She could almost see his head shaking at the other end of the line. He would, magnanimously, stop by as soon as he could, though at that age . . . She gave him directions (he had never been to the house, knew it only vaguely) and the phone number.

She went back up to the room and announced, “He’s coming. Dr. Ross.” She waited for Ben’s reaction.

He hadn’t moved from Aunt Elizabeth’s side. He gave Marian an incredulous look. “You got him?”

“I got him.” She couldn’t resist adding, “The operator as well.” He still looked incredulous. “Ross’s line was busy for a while. The operator’s might’ve been as well, I suppose.”

“All the lines were busy, Marian,” Ben insisted. “I didn’t make it up.”

“I’m sure you didn’t. The important thing is he’ll be here.”

“When?”

“As soon as he can.” She was standing just inside the room, and however childish it was, there was some satisfaction in Ben’s puzzled expression. “I think it might be a good idea to keep David downstairs tonight. I can set up one of the servants’ rooms. Is there anything you want me to do before the doctor comes?”

Ben shook his head and rose to his feet.

“There must be some way to make her a little comfortable,” Marian said.

Ben carried the Windsor chair to the side of the bed. “I’m afraid to move her.”

She watched him sit, facing Aunt Elizabeth. She had made her point, she supposed, and to mention the phone again would have been needlessly cruel. But it wasn’t conspiring against them after all, she wanted to assure him, no more than the house was. And as for Aunt Elizabeth – well, hopefully the doctor would exorcise that suspicion as well. And leave room for the next wave of phantoms.

All she said, however, was, “I’ll be downstairs if you need me.”