“Heaven help him then!” said Cyrus.
“Oh, hey,” Philip protested. “They have a perfectly good staff of doctors there.”
“You have to say so. The butcher’s union. Philip is studying medicine.”
“You understand Cyrus’ field is medieval history, sir,” said the pink-cheeked Philip. “That’s where he gets his wide knowledge of medicine.”
“There’s a rumor he was poisoned somehow,” said the third student, a beady-eyed young man with a crew cut. “Is that true, sir?”
“Some strange poison unknown to science,” jeered Cyrus.
“Oh, no. It was just carbon tetrachloride,” Nigel said.
“Good God, how did he get exposed to that?” Philip asked.
Nigel gave him an edited version of the cleaning-fluid episode.
“Gosh! I know a bit about that. I was given an assignment on that sort of stuff during the spring semester.”
“Imagine the Faculty holding drunken parties! T’ck, t’ck. I have always suspected it,” grinned Cyrus.
“Oh, lay off. The poor overworked guys, they have to unwind sometimes.” The third student was smiling too.
“I’m glad you admit we’re overworked,” said Mark, putting his tray down on the table. “Mind if I join you?”
“Oh. Sorry. I’m sorry to hear about your brother,” said Philip, blushing. He blushed readily, even at other people’s faux pas.
Cyrus turned to the tutor. “Philip was just going to explain about carbon tetrachloride. He’d had a whole course on it or something.”
“We experimented with rats, actually. There was a controlled experiment in the path lab.”
“I don’t want to hear much more about it,” said Mark. “I’m still feeling a bit queasy myself.”
“Not a hangover, I trust, Mr. Ahlberg?” inquired Cyrus solicitously.
“Thanks for the sympathy. But tutors do not get hangovers. I guess I inhaled a goodly amount of those fumes,” said Mark.
“So what would your treatment be, my good doctor,” asked Cyrus, “for carbon tetrachloride? He charges only a hundred dollars for an opinion, Mr. Ahlberg.”
Philip blushed. “Well, I’d say a course of promethazine would protect against damage to the liver.”
“What was that? I’d better lay in some, for next time I have to clean a suit. The stuff is dangerous,” said Mark. “Can I buy it from any druggist, whatever it is, Philip?”
“Yes. In the form of Phenergan tablets.”
“The blessings of science. Everything available,” remarked Cyrus. “But what, we must ask ourselves, are the side effects of this lovely promethazine? Medical science is always chasing its own tail. It discovers a new disease: then it discovers a cure for it: then the cure sets up another disease. And so on ad infinitum. I suppose that’s why doctors will never be out of work.”
“Oh, sure! And if you’d had your way, I expect we’d still be squatting ’round alembics waiting for base metal to turn into gold, or counting the angels on the head of a pin.”
Presently the students departed, still arguing vigorously.
When they’d gone Mark, who’d been staring into his coffee cup, looked up. “Why won’t they let me visit Chester?”
“Won’t they?”
“I rang up to inquire after him last night, and they said he was going along all right but no visitors were allowed. They have no right to forbid his own family to see him.”
“They have to keep him under observation, I dare say.”
A forlorn, rather childish expression came over Mark’s face. “You’re not holding out on me? Is Brady behind this?”
“Is that what’s worrying you?”
“I’m worrying about Chester.” Mark’s glance was opaque. “But I’d not put it past Brady to think I’d done it deliberately.”
“What—the cleaning fluid? You couldn’t know it might have a toxic effect. Could you?”
“That’s the hell of it. I could have.” Mark’s voice became confidential. “There was some talk about it once at one of Zeke’s parties. I didn’t take it all that seriously then. Wish I had. But, after all, millions of people use the stuff every day.”
“Well, Chester seems to have been reading up on it.” Nigel told him about the journal found in the cupboard.
“Oh, Chester. He’s always fussing about health. Always taking precautions.”
“How did it all happen, in fact? The stuff getting spilled and what followed.”
Mark’s face darkened. “Always on the job, aren’t you?”
“Well, not always. But just show me. Exactly.”
Mark sighed, took up one of the breakfast trays, and moved to Nigel’s side. “You’re Chester, on the sofa. I stand in front of you. Just as I’m about to take hold of the coffee pot, you half rise and bump into the tray. The movement knocks the pot forward toward you, and upsets the milk saucepan too. The lid of the pot falls, and you get coffee and milk over you, before the pot rolls off onto the carpet. Happy? Or shall we try a physical reconstruction?”
“No. That’s enough,” replied Nigel abstractedly.
“It was just one of those damned unfortunate little accidents. Neither of us was overly sober. Chester was certainly loaded enough to—not to realize he’d bumped his hand against the tray, and to think I’d done the damage. It’s all so trivial. Surely somebody must have seen what happened?”
“Those two friends of his were nearest, but they had their backs to the sofa.”
“I gather the idea is that I organized the accident so as to have a good excuse for rubbing down poor old Chester with that damned fluid and—? For Chrissake! Do you really think, if I wanted to kill anyone, I’d use such a haphazard method?” Mark was becoming highly indignant, though he kept his voice down to avoid being noticed by students at nearby tables.
“Sorry to nag about this, but you said Chester bumped his hand against the tray. Did you actually see this happen?”
Mark paused for thought. “No. It was all too fast, and I wasn’t paying attention. I have a sort of impression of his hand near the tray and the coffee pot falling over.”
There was a silence, in which the voice of an undergraduate two tables away could be heard clearly enunciating, “What is your opinion on the Milton controversy, Mr. Reilly?”
“Not at breakfast, me boy. Anyway, Milton’s unreadable. What’s the use of God in the head if you’ve only sawdust in the belly?”
Mark, distracted for a moment, rolled up his eyes at Nigel. “Oh, that Charles. I suppose that’s the British method—stimulating the pupil to think, by shoveling emetic views down his throat.” Then coming back to his own problem, he lowered his voice. “You know this place is a hotbed of rumor: it’s only a matter of time before my father hears some gossip about me poisoning Chester; and then—”
“Then you’ve had it? Well, now, Mark, I don’t know. But would you mind so much, being cut out of his will?”
“To tell you the truth, Nigel, I couldn’t care less. So long as it didn’t mean my being drummed out of university teaching.” . . .
Sukie Tate opened the door for Nigel. The day was overcast, and in her shabby apartment she looked frail and pale, peeping out of the fog. There was an unwontedly subdued expression on her face, with its dark smudges under her eyes.
“How are you, Sukie?”
“I’m so glad you came. Somehow I never thought you would,” she said shyly, lowering her long lashes.
“Why ever not?”
“Well, last time seems so long ago. And there was prison in between.” She bit her lip. “A few days in prison are like years. You got further and further away. A stranger.”
“I would have come to see you there. Why wouldn’t you let me?”
Her beautiful eyes swept slowly up to his. “Because, because. Sit down and I’ll pour you a drink. No, not that end of the sofa—there’s a spring broken. Would you like some bourbon?—water?—soda?”
“Soda would be nice. Did the
y treat you all right?”
“They didn’t beat me up or anything. It’s the loneliness. Here you are. I won’t have to go back, will I?” she asked in a childish tone of appeal.
“I hope not.”
“It was kind of Master Edwardes to spring me. He’s a good man, isn’t he?”
“Yes. Has your father been here?”
“I don’t want to talk about him, Nigel. I guess I haven’t been fair to him. But he’s finished, down and out: just a shadow of—of what he used to be.”
“And John?”
“Oh, Nigel, I’m terribly, terribly anxious about him. They let me see him before I left. It was a dreadful shock. He seems to have given up. Like Dad. I was afraid it would happen.”
“Which was why you made that absurd confession.”
“I—yes, I thought it would take the heat off him for a little. Oh, I don’t know what I thought. It’s such a waste. He’s so brilliant. And now I don’t know if—if he can ever—sort of rehabilitate himself.”
“Zeke will take him back. I’m sure of that.”
Her gray eyes opened wide. “Oh, do you really mean that? He will? Wouldn’t it be wonderful!”
“And, Sukie, the first stage of rehabilitation will be for you to snip the apron strings. I mean it. Now, don’t glare at me, dear child! John must learn to stand on his own feet, emotionally and morally. So cut out the little-mother act. You’re too bossy by half.”
“Well, I must say!”
“‘Love is proved in the letting go’—that’s what an English poet wrote.” Nigel got up and moved to the desk by the window. “I see you’ve got yourself working again.” He pointed at the books and papers lying on it.
“Oh, yes. That Emily. Yes, I’ve been trying to get back to her. It isn’t easy, and I’m afraid I’ll have to change my supervisor.”
“Mark? Why on earth—?”
“You see I’m writing to tell him I can’t marry him. It wouldn’t work. It just wouldn’t,” she said bleakly. “No, we’ll talk about it over lunch. I must go and dish it up. You make yourself comfortable.”
Nigel prowled about the room. It was a student’s room, untidy, rather impersonal, giving the impression that Sukie bivouacked here only, and tomorrow would be on the march again. Her few belongings moved him strangely: a row of graduated elephants among the invitations on the mantel, a box crusted with sea-shells, a pair of green suede shoes.
“Now tell me why you’re not going to marry Mark,” he said as they sat down to a risotto and salad.
“I don’t want to get him into any more trouble. His lousy father would—”
“Being quixotic again? Now the real reason.”
Sukie looked straight into his eyes. “I don’t love him. Not enough.”
“Well, you know best. But I wouldn’t mail your letter yet. Mark is in bad enough trouble without that. But maybe you didn’t know?”
“No. I don’t know. What’s happened?”
Nigel told her.
“Oh, damn! That alters everything. I must—”
“No, you mustn’t. Stick to him because he’s in a jam, I mean. Pity is no substitute for love, and you should know it,” he said.
“Now you’re being bossy.”
“I’d like some more of this delicious risotto.”
“Okay.” She smiled demurely, taking his plate. “You do eat fast.” Her breast brushed his shoulder as she returned.
He ate for a few minutes, then said, “By the way, Charles told me you broke it off with Chester because he frightened you. Is that so?”
“Oh, Charles! It wasn’t that serious. It was just—Chester dated me some—”
“How did he frighten you?” Nigel persisted.
The girl pondered. “Nothing he did, or said. He’s always polite. You see he intrigued me. I felt he was different from other tutors—from most men I met. I thought he had great potential drive, if only—”
“If only a good woman brought it out.” Nigel smiled at her.
“Now you’re laughing at me. There was something—oh, hell—self-contained about him that attracted me.”
“The well-known box had the same effect on Pandora.”
“And something remote too. He had no real friends either.” Sukie knitted her brows. “You know, latterly I got to feel he was—well, like an ordinary automobile with a souped-up engine, and if I tried to drive it, it would get out of my control and there’d be an accident. I mean, there were times I was with him when I felt I just wasn’t there, for him. And I”—she averted her face—“didn’t like the way he tried to make love: as if I was some kind of mechanical doll and he was reading from a book of instructions. He was difficult to be alone with.”
“Did he never introduce you to his friends, colleagues?”
“Well, not often, I guess. There were two on the Business Faculty. We saw them once or twice. A man called Andreyevsky and—”
“Yes, I met him at the party. And Chester wasn’t too upset, didn’t make a scene when you broke it off?”
“‘Break off’ is too dramatic. I just sort of discontinued with him. Anyhow he’d be too proud, in his funny little way, to make scenes.”
“And then Mark came along?” he asked.
“Oh, the three of us had been going around together quite a time before that. After Chester and I drifted apart, Mark didn’t steal me from him: Mark’s much too honorable for that. But when he became my supervisor, naturally we had to see a lot of each other. And I was at a loose end. And he’s fun to be with.”
“But no drive?”
Sukie glanced at Nigel suspiciously. “Well, I dunno. He does such crazy things. Breaks out—you know? Times, it made me uncomfortable. Like a sort of act. As if it all came off the top of his head.”
“And what goes on underneath?”
“How should I know? You know, I guess I don’t understand much about men. I never imagined Charles Reilly would be like that, for instance. But Mark—You know that zany smile of his; and the way he suddenly yells with laughter. You feel it’s really some joke he’s sharing with nobody but himself. Sometimes I’ve wondered does he care for anything much except English literature. But he does make some very fine discriminations there—I’ll give him that.”
Nigel suppressed a smile. “And when he made love to you?”
She looked at him strangely. “You do ask a lot of questions. Will you have some dessert?”
“An apple, please.”
Sukie fetched a dish from a side table. “They’re Canadian.”
“Are they? Splendid. They look like wax fruit. Too red to be true.”
She polished one on her sleeve and handed it to him. “Does Clare cook for you?”
He smiled quickly. “Why, yes. Extremely well. But you were going to tell me about Mark.”
Sukie pouted at him. “Was I? Oh, well, if I must. Let’s see. He was tender, and considerate, I guess. But he always makes—made me feel as if he had something else on his mind. As if he ought to prove something to himself, as if I was a sort of test he had to pass and couldn’t quite bring himself to go through with in case he failed. He’ll say anything: but, you know, I think he’s very repressed underneath—he won’t let himself go. Not with women. Not with me, at any rate.”
“So you never went to bed together?”
She blushed, turning her head away. “No.”
“Perhaps you made him shy.”
She looked toward him. “Do I make you feel shy?”
“That’s another matter.”
A constraint had risen between them. She broke it by leaning forward, taking his hand; then she led him to the sofa and curled up on the floor beside him, her arms stretched across his knees.
“When are you going back to Britain?” she asked.
“Next week, I think.”
There was another silence.
“I wouldn’t—I don’t want to take you away from Clare. I know I couldn’t,” she whispered—and then something he was unable to c
atch.
“What did you say, Sukie?”
She lifted her head, gazed with a sort of tremulous resolution into his eyes. “Just once. I thought about you all the time in prison. Don’t you want me?”
“Susannah dear, are you trying to turn me into one of the Elders?”
“No. No. They only looked. I don’t like voyeurs. And I’m tired of men who only want their mothers.”
“Like John?” he asked.
“And Mark. Aren’t I beautiful enough for you?”
“You’re a lovely girl, Sukie.”
She arched her back, and her breasts pushed up at him. “Nigel. Darling. Make me forget everything—everything but you. Just once.”
Then she was in his lap. Oh, well, he sighed to himself. Her kisses were swarming all over him. Wherever they touched, delicious messages fluttered between them.
“Undress me,” she cried blindly. Then, “No, wait, I’ll call you.”
When she called, he went into the bedroom. She was naked on the narrow bed, breathing fast, her hair tumbled over the pillow, her exquisite small body shivering with impatience.
Soon, her nails raked down his back and she was giving sharp cries—louder and louder till it seemed as if the little room would explode. She tossed her arms above her head; the hands clenched into fists, then slowly uncurled as the last cry died away and the arms were stretched out limp on either side. Her body slackened, caved in, seemed to dissolve beneath him.
“Oh glory,” she sighed. “Oh glory oh glory.”
They drowsed for a while. Then she raised her head from his shoulder. “What do you like best about me?”
He considered the question gravely. “That you’ve never used the dreary phrase ‘having sex.’ And I like your not fawning on me after I’d made love to you. Or becoming obviously triumphant, or complacent, or possessive.”
“Like most women?”
“Like some women.”
Another silence. She traced the cage of his ribs with a finger like a feather. “Now, what are you thinking?”
“I was wondering if you really knew about John and Josiah Ahlberg—which of them pinched the other’s ideas?”
“Oh, Nigel, must you? I honestly don’t know. I think it must have been Josiah, because I don’t believe John would dare to make an accusation like that unless he’d got really mad with Josiah—been driven to it—so he could ignore the consequences. I mean for a student to challenge—But I’ve no proof.” She leaned over him, her gray eyes questioning his suspiciously. “You didn’t plan all this to wring a confession out of me, off my guard?”
The Morning After Death Page 17