Edith’s Diary (23 page)

The telephone rang.

‘There may be. We’ll see,’ Brett said. ‘Thank you for looking in this morning, doctor.’

It was probably Gert phoning, Edith thought as she picked up the telephone. It was a long distance call, and a voice identified itself as that of Sarah Belleter – another grand-niece of Aunt Melanie and one of Edith’s remote cousins. She said she was at Melanie’s house and asked if Edith could come this week, maybe Wednesday, since the lawyers were making progress with the will, and there were a couple of things to discuss, and also Sarah would love to see her again. Sarah’s voice was pleasant and friendly.

To Edith, just then, it was a lovely invitation, a welcoming to her side of the family. She had seen Sarah a few times and liked her: she was surprisingly dark of hair, with lovely brows and a voice that charmed and soothed. Sarah had been educated in England and Switzerland, and was married to a Swiss architect. ‘I’d be delighted to!’ Edith replied, then remembered her Thatchery afternoon which she ought not to renege on. ‘Is around nine p.m. Wednesday all right? I’ve got an afternoon job now.’

‘Oh, of course, Edith! You sound in fine form. I’m looking forward. Stay the night of course. Stay a couple of nights, if you can!’

Edith went back into the living room, happier. Cliffie was standing against the breakfront, as before, but now his face was white. Cliffie was scared.

‘Yes. I know my son,’ Brett said to Edith.

Edith’s heart beat faster. ‘And what’re you talking about now?’ she asked in a tone Aunt Melanie might have used.

‘I asked him if he possibly administered George’s medicines that afternoon, Sunday,’ Brett said.

‘I
didn’t
!’
Cliffie said stoutly, but with a tremor.

‘Look at him,’ Brett said, shaking his head. ‘Sounds the same as when he was ten years old –
five
! Denying something – like decorating the bedroom walls with your lipstick! Remember that one, Edith?’

Edith did. ‘Until you can prove something, Brett – why don’t you let things alone?’

‘
I
wasn’t
here
!’
Brett said. ‘Where were you – that evening, Sunday?’

‘I told you – in my workroom. Nobody had a real supper that evening.’

‘I don’t give a damn about supper. I’ve got to take off.’ Brett walked awkwardly bent forward, as Edith had seen him a thousand times when he was hurrying, though now he looked more bent, sillier. He went into the hall where his topcoat or raincoat hung on a hook.

Edith smiled broadly, felt like laughing even. The audacity, the absurdity, the
cruelty
,
even, of accusing someone – or the same as – of something that couldn’t be proven at all! Making someone miserable, just to get the petty satisfaction of —

‘What’s so funny?’ Brett barked, coming in, straightening his coat.

‘The idea of making Cliffie miserable like this! Why should you? What’ve
you
ever done? Done about —’

‘Done? What do you mean?’

‘You couldn’t even get George to that – what’s it called – Sunset Pines!’ The name sent Edith off into genuine laughter.

Cliffie joined her with a manly guffaw. The color had returned to his face.

‘I know, I know. But I think that’s hardly relevant,’ said Brett. ‘Stop it, Edith, you’re hysterical! Cool it.’

‘Hah!’ That was Cliffie’s mocking laugh.

‘The service,’ Brett began, and hesitated. ‘The service – I’m sure short – is tomorrow at eleven. Starting at the home. Will you be there?’

Edith hated it, as she had hated many an engagement in her life, but without pausing, she said, ‘Yes.’

‘Good. I’ll see you there.’ Brett touched her arm, then withdrew his hand almost at once. ‘I know, Edie, you’ve had a lot to put up with and I know years ago I should’ve forced him to go into that rest home.’

Edith looked at him, not thinking about anything, simply wishing that he would leave.

‘Bye-bye, Edith, and thank you. Bye, Cliffie.’ Brett went out.

‘
Good-bye
,’
Cliffie said in a deep voice when the door had closed, and swung his body, arm extended, toward the scotch bottle.

‘Pour me one too,’ Edith said.

Cliffie did, and shot some soda into it. ‘
I’m
not going tomorrow,’ he said as he handed the drink to his mother.

At half past 7 the evening of Wednesday, Edith set out in the car with an overnight bag, bound for Hollyhocks, Melanie’s house. It was glorious, driving, glorious to feel free, to be moving. She was tempted to put on speed, but prudently kept within the limit, a discipline she found easy. She looked forward to Hollyhocks – a bit stripped though it might be by now – to Sarah and her husband Peter, to a civilized meal with them, to a night of sleep in her old room, maybe. Cliffie hadn’t wanted to come, though Edith had said, ‘Come on, why not? We’ll ask Frances to feed Nelson,’ and Cliffie had wavered, had almost said yes, but finally said no. Even that was progress of a sort, Edith thought. Cliffie had showed a noticeable confidence in himself since George’s – removal. He had, for instance, offered to give Nelson his two meals a day, and this time Edith felt she could trust him to do it.

Edith passed familiar landmarks, looked at them with kinder, happier eyes now, she felt. God, it was amazing! Just to have George out of the house, just to feel the house somehow hers again, that room hers again to do what she wished with. Terrible to feel that way about an old man just dead, perhaps, but after all, he’d been finally a most ungrateful character, hadn’t released a little extra of his money to buy her or the house, for instance, a present for the last many Christmases. And Edith would have bet her life that nothing special would come to her via George’s will – not that she gave a damn. Edith assumed that Brett would be chief if not sole heir. What would a nurse’s salary have been for all the meals, the time, the bedpan emptying?

She had to burst out laughing, bent over the steering wheel for two seconds, then wiped her eyes clear of tears. God, it was funny! She opened the window and let the wind blow her hair.

There was a moon that night, nearly full, and it had taken its place like something in a stage-set, it seemed to Edith, above and to the left of Melanie’s milky-white house as Edith went up the driveway. Lights were on inside, not on the porch, but as she stopped her car, the front door opened and Sarah came out.

‘Welcome,
Edith
!’
Sarah cried. ‘Cliffie with you?’

‘Hello, Sarah! No, Cliffie’s home – feeding the cat!’

There was Bertha in the hall, hovering to take her overnight case. A minute or so later, Edith was seated in the most comfortable chair of the sitting room, nearest the fire, with a heavy tumbler of scotch on the rocks. Peter Belleter, rosy-cheeked, with straight black hair, sat on a hassock, smiling, shy, but with a friendly manner. Edith asked about their two children, now in Zurich. The Belleters wanted to hear about the
Bugle
,
about Cliffie, and since Brett was not mentioned, Edith assumed Melanie had told them about the divorce.

Sarah’s dark brows drew together. She was sitting on the arm of the leather sofa, poised and graceful. ‘And wasn’t there – a relative of Brett’s, wasn’t he?’

‘You mean George,’ Edith said, glad Sarah had brought George up. ‘I’m sorry to say he died – just last Sunday.’

‘Oh!’ said Peter, who was gripping a smallish beer bottle just then between his knees. ‘Sunday!’

‘He was awfully old – ninety or more,’ Edith went on. ‘He died in his sleep. The service was only today, matter of fact – this morning. Brett was there – in Doylestown.’

‘Goodness!’ said Sarah.

Yet in the next minutes, George faded away like a wisp of cigarette smoke – or something, and Edith was delighted that they began to talk about other things, happy things. Sarah had been ‘given the task’ as Sarah put it, by her mother, of seeing to Melanie’s bequeathals, silver, furniture, books. Sarah told Edith that Melanie had given Edith a choice of rugs and of books, and of two settees with accompanying chairs. That was nice. Edith knew the settees, and knew her preference. But it was the atmosphere of this moment that Edith enjoyed, the ease of it, the frankness of Sarah as well as her tone of respect for Melanie.

‘Of course we brought a copy, didn’t we, Peter?’ Sarah asked her husband, then said something else in a tongue Edith couldn’t understand – Swiss dialect.

‘
Of
course,
of
course!’ Peter said, smiling.

‘Peter thinks I forget the most important things and remember the least important,’ Sarah said. ‘We had photostats of the will made. You may see it, if you like.’

On her last words, there were quick steps down the staircase, not the steps of Bertha.

‘Ah, Geoff!’ Sarah said. ‘Geoff, this is my cousin Edith – Edith Howland.’

‘How do you do?’ A tall man in light gray trousers and gray sweater advanced toward Edith and bowed a little. ‘You’ve just arrived?’

‘Yes,’ Edith said, feeling surprised and somehow shocked that a strange man had been upstairs here. But he looked charming, polite – a crease across his forehead, two down his cheeks, like an outdoor man, or a man who worried a little too much. He had sent a whiff of after-shave lotion – or could it be pipe tobacco – toward Edith as he bowed. Edith admired his pale gray cashmere sweater. Was she falling in love – at first sight? She wasn’t listening to what the others were saying, and it seemed that Sarah repeated:

‘… Geoffrey Vrieland. He
is
a lawyer, but not ours! I say this so you – I mean we haven’t any – what do you call it?’ Sarah was smiling.

‘Professional clout, maybe?’ Peter put in. He had a slight accent.

Geoffrey Vrieland laughed and tossed popcorn into his mouth.

Edith was happy. She forced her thoughts away from the attractiveness of Geoffrey Vrieland, who probably had a wife – maybe even upstairs – or in Basel, where Sarah said he lived. Edith daydreamed about her settee-and-two-chairs to come. She would choose the beige satin with the tiny rosebud pattern, and get rid of the worn-out green armchair in the corner that Cliffie was always flinging himself into. Brett had said, ‘The upstairs needs a paint job,’ and Edith had agreed, saying rather sharply, The whole house needs a lot,’ because how did Brett think she could make vast improvements with the small amount of money that was coming in?

Bertha announced supper.

‘Late supper!’ Sarah said to all. ‘I hope everybody’s hungry.’

Melanie’s Georgian silver, old pulled-thread napkins adorned the polished table. Cold fried chicken, Bertha’s hot biscuits tucked into linen napkins, salad. Edith could not quite finish the hot apple pie dessert. It was only a little after 11, Sarah said, and would Edith like to have a look at some of the things upstairs?

‘Or maybe you’re tired,’ Sarah said. ‘There’s tomorrow morning. You said you didn’t have to leave till eleven-thirty. Is that right?’

Edith felt not only tired but sad, and deliberately sat up straighter and said she’d like to look at things upstairs. They went.

‘Aunt Melanie was
very
fond of you,’ Sarah said softly, and folded her hands between her knees, her hands almost lost in her full skirt.

They were both sitting on the floor on either side of a bottom drawer which Sarah had taken quite out, because the bedspreads, the hand towels were easier to look at if the drawer was out in the light.

‘This last week must have been hard for you. I’m so sorry, Edith.’

‘But – quite frankly George – I can’t say he was close to me. An uncle of Brett’s, you know.’

Sarah nodded. ‘Yes, Melanie told me – about that. Edith, this can wait. Anyway the choice is all yours – here. We can talk about it tomorrow. Some of her things come in dozens, some in half dozens. Isn’t it amazing how she kept all this, and in such good condition? It really is like a glimpse into – a hundred years
ago
!’
Sarah smiled merrily.

Sarah was barely forty, Edith realized. And with two children already in college, and doing well, probably. Sarah had the complexion of a girl of twenty.

Edith took a hot bath. Sarah had recommended it, saying that she looked a bit tense. Edith did not feel in the least tense. She lifted the hot water in the palm of her hand and let it run down from her knees. The moonlight came strong into the bedroom, almost like an artificial light of some kind. Edith blinked, enjoying the changed atmosphere, the curved armchair wings, the fuzzy pattern of the rug that she could almost make out. She got out of bed and went to the window.

The gazebo looked enchanting, like a Japanese dream. Or should she consider it simply Victorian English?

Edith put on her slippers, a sweater over her pajama top, and went downstairs. The whole house was dark now, though a little moonlight penetrated through the hall windows. She took a coat – somebody’s raincoat – from the front closet, and went out, closed the door softly, and went round to the back lawn. She had had an impulse to see Melanie’s little brook – and here it was, busy, murmuring over pebbles, sleepless. She could see silvery ripples in the moonlight. Many a time Edith had waded here, when she had been four years old, maybe even smaller. In the hot summertime, after romping on the lawn, it had been bliss to cool her feet in the brook. Edith stepped out of her slippers, and cautiously set a foot in a part of the brook where she remembered there was sand. There was even the old peach tree (which had never produced well) to steady herself by.

The water was cold, numbing. She released the peach tree branch and stood up straight, would have closed her eyes completely, except that she was not sure she could have kept her balance. Her feet lost even their sensation of numbness, she looked toward her great-aunt’s slumbering house – what had Goethe said, ‘
Kennst du das Haus? Auf Säulen ruht sein Dach
.’ – and
she enjoyed a sense of order, of sanity. Gert Johnson, she supposed, would call Melanie’s house ‘snob,’ out-of-date, even immoral. Edith giggled a little – maybe from chill. She climbed out of the water onto dew-damp grass, found her slippers. No use catching her death. She had almost solved the mystery of existence. Almost. How often had she been on the brink of it? Maybe twenty times in her life. It had always the same elements (even on land now, she grasped them clearly, as she had in the water), and they had to do with consciousness and truth. Had it anything to do with what people
should
do, from moral… Her thoughts were lost again, as she struggled to tighten the raincoat belt. How many individuals, or countries, did what they
should
do? No, what she meant was individual, depended on an individual honesty, on admitting facts.

Numb to the calves now, Edith trudged toward the house, looked up again at the dark windows faintly bordered by lighter curtains. In an upstairs narrow window, third from right, where the hall was, Edith saw a ghostly figure. Sarah, watching her? Edith impulsively lifted an arm and waved, and when she looked again, the pale vertical shape had gone. Had she seen it?
Yes
,
Edith thought.

So Edith expected to find Sarah waiting, maybe, at the top of the stairs, when she came in. Edith was silent, hanging the raincoat back where she had found it. She climbed the stairs softly, looking for Sarah. There was no one, not even in the hall upstairs, and Edith went back to bed. She wrapped her sweater around her feet, and tired now, fell asleep quickly.

Breakfast was a staggered affair, Peter having had his very early, because he had to write letters, Sarah said. Geoffrey Vrieland looked more handsome even than last evening, captured in a patch of sunlight at the table. Could it have been Geoff watching her last night? Hardly, unless he wore a night-shirt! Edith said to Sarah:

‘I went out to see the brook last night. I thought I saw you at an upstairs window – watching me and probably thinking I was a bit dotty.’

‘Me?’ Sarah seemed baffled by both statements, that Edith had gone out, and that she might have been at a window. ‘No, Edith.’

‘Oh. A trick of the moonlight then. I wanted to see the old brook. And the moon was so bright and lovely!’

Sarah was pleasant, didn’t say much of anything, but a few minutes later (when Sarah and Geoff were talking about something quite different) Edith had the feeling Sarah had looked at her suspiciously, as if Sarah might think she was off her rocker for walking out in the moonlight.

‘We’ve got two good hours!’ Sarah said cheerfully.

She meant hours in which to look at the furniture and the other things.

Edith drove home with a bundle wrapped in a mohair steamer rug and gently tied. It contained napkins, hand towels, linen sheets, and a silver stamp box Edith had always been fond of. Sarah had said, ‘Take the stamp box! I can see you like it.’ It was nice to have relatives like that. The settee and armchair and two smaller chairs would come later, but within a week, Sarah said, when she could arrange a delivery.

She also had Geoffrey Vrieland’s card with Zurich and Basel addresses. He had said she must come to dinner at his house, if she ever came to Zurich to visit the Belleters. He liked to cook.

Edith was home by 1:10 p.m., just time to unpack a bit and have a bite before going to the Thatchery. Cliffie’s transistor was on. Edith went up the hall to say hello to him, and was surprised to see blankets and a couple of cartons outside his room door. Cliffie lay on the floor, apparently rearranging the books in his bookcase. The vacuum cleaner was also on the floor.

‘What’re you
doing
?’

‘Oh – straightening up a little. Nothing much.’ Cliffie looked embarrassed.

Edith was speechless, turned away stunned. She had seen at a glance that the two cartons in the hall contained cruddy old magazines, newspapers, even old tennis shoes. What had happened? Well,
George
was gone. Yes, that was what had happened.

Nelson came into the kitchen, tail high, and gave out a happy, prolonged cry.

‘Hello,
Nelson
!’
Edith picked him up, and the cat relaxed completely, nearly slipping through her hands, purring as if she had been away for days.

Edith put the kettle on. She wanted tea now. ‘Help you with anything, Cliffie?’ she called.

‘I’m doing all right, thanks.’

‘Hungry?’

‘Yep!’

Edith made tea, toast, opened a can of tuna and made sandwiches. Cliffie’s transistor played ‘Old Buttermilk Sky.’ Edith was aware that she enjoyed it, and remembered the many times she had cursed to herself, nearly screamed at Cliffie to turn his radio off, turn
anything
off. ‘Ready!’ Edith called.