by Peter Straub
“Do you gamble?” Magnus asked her.
She shook her head.
“You won’t mind if I do?”
“No,” she said. “I suddenly feel very awake.”
Julia followed him through a door at the end of the lounge and continued, following his broad back, to a grilled-in counter where Magnus took money from his wallet and bought chips. She watched as he placed five fifty-pound notes on the counter, and, after hesitating a second, a sixth. He seemed to get a surprisingly small amount of chips for all this money.
Together, they skirted various gaming tables and went up to a roulette wheel. Magnus placed four of his chips on the red. Breathless, Julia watched the ball spinning across the ratchets. It landed, clattering, on red. Magnus left his chips where they were, and the ball landed again on red. Then he moved everything he had won to black; again he won. How much money did those chips represent? Five hundred pounds? More? As she watched Magnus glowering down at the stack of chips, she felt exhilarated, slightly disoriented: he must have loathed the party, she realized. The next time the wheel spun, he lost some of his chips, but his face remained immobile.
“Your turn, Charmaine,” he ordered. He shoved a stack of chips toward her. With desperation, Julia realized that they were worth at least two hundred pounds.
“I can’t,” she said. “I’d lose your money.”
“Don’t be cowardly,” he said. “Bet any way you please.”
She pushed the chips onto the red, since that was what Magnus had first won with. This time the ball clattered down onto the black. She looked up at him, stricken.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Put more on it.” He slid chips toward her.
She did as he said, and lost again. She stepped away from the table.
Magnus continued to gamble, seemingly indifferent to her. She stood beside him, watching chips pile up before him. Winning seemed not to affect him in any way; he simply stolidly stood there, scowling at the table, moving piles of red and white chips back and forth. Several times men approached and spoke to him, but Magnus replied with short, curt sentences and turned away from them.
After half an hour, a thin black-haired woman Julia remembered seeing in the lounge came up and kissed Magnus. “Darling,” she said, “you haven’t been here in ages. You might lose all your old friends.” Saying the last two words, she looked tauntingly at Julia. Julia felt at once undressed.
Magnus whispered a few words to the black-haired woman, and then turned back to the table. When he cashed in his chips, Julia saw that he had won nearly a thousand pounds. -
In the car she said, “Was that woman your mistress?”
It was the first time she had heard him laugh.
When he left her at her door he asked for her telephone number and, after she had given it, brought two fifty-pound notes from his jacket pocket and put them in her hand. “I’ll ring you Wednesday,” he said, and moved out the door before she could protest. Julia put the money in a drawer, intending to give it back when she next saw him; two months later, when she found the two notes again, it was too late to return it. Eventually, she gave one note to Oxfam and the other to Amnesty International.
At work the next Monday, she learned two things about Magnus: he had been Sonia Mitchell-Mitchie’s first lover, and Julia had been expected to sleep with him. “Magnus always does that, picking up some girl at a party and then taking her home and ravishing her,” Sonia said to Julia. “Weren’t you ravished?”
“He barely touched me,” Julia protested.
“He must have been off his feed,” Sonia said.
In the following weeks, Magnus came to occupy more and more of her time; but he made love to her only when she had begun to wonder if he ever would. He was certainly the biggest man she had ever gone to bed with. By that time, two months after the Mitchell-Mitchie party, he had become a reference point in her life. She tended to judge other men by Magnus’ standard, or by trying to guess if Magnus would like them. Certainly no other man was as exciting as Magnus Lofting: he had an absolute assurance a younger man could not possess, still trying to consolidate both his manhood and his career:
Yet it was only after he had described his childhood to her that Julia, already in love, knew that she must marry him. He and his sister—”poor Lily,” a year older than he—had been raised by monumentally distant parents. Entirely absorbed into themselves, entirely indifferent to the opinions or sensibilities of others, the Loftings had traveled much, leaving the children at home with a succession of tutors: before she drew Magnus out on the subject of his childhood—he was seemingly callous about it now—Julia had not known how far off, therefore cruel, it was possible for parents to be. Except for the tutors and “poor Lily” Magnus had grown up in near silence, abandoned in the glassy marble tomb of a house in Hampshire. His childhood was heartbreaking for Julia, whose own father, unlike Sir Greville Lofting, had been intrusive, verbal, and commanding. Magnus’ childhood, that early isolation, she thought, went a long way toward explaining Magnus’ compulsions; as a young man, he had apparently been ruthless about his professional life, and even now he invested it with enough psychic energy to power a steam engine. Magnus’ childhood not only helped to explain Magnus to Julia, and thereby make him more accessible, but it also helped to humanize him. At first, that Magnus had once had parents seemed impossible, slightly shocking; that he had “poor Lily” and a much younger adopted brother, Mark, seemed a revelation.
She was further surprised by the depth of his attachment to “poor Lily.” But again, their childhood made it accessible. Magnus and Lily had grown up a society of two, intensely devoted to one another, each other’s only company. They had invented a language (“Durm”) in which at playful moments they could still converse. They were “Magnim” and “Lilim.” They had constructed elaborate games using every portion of the house and grounds, games in which Magnus apparently from the age of five or six had taken the commanding role—king, general, prime minister, Coriolanus, Odysseus, Priam. This had endured up to the time Magnus entered Cambridge. Lily had never married, and Julia learned that Magnus spent at least one afternoon or evening a week with his sister. In fact, she thought that the inevitable usage of “poor Lily” had been adopted less from any intrinsic absurdity of Lily’s than from a wish to counter any jealousy Julia might be expected to feel. Despite her oddities, her spiritualism, her general appearance of genteel dissipation, Lily did not deserve the epithet. She proved, when Julia finally met her, gray haired, undoubtedly lovely, and so finely made that separate facial muscles were visible beneath her skin. Lily made Julia feel awkward and hot, probably smudged in some conspicuous place. And it was only two years later, after the birth of Kate, that Lily became friendly.
Mark, the son of a young friend of Sir Greville’s, a consular official in Africa who had killed himself, was another matter. The Loftings had adopted the child, then two years old, out of an uncharacteristic generosity, having promised his mother, dying in a tropical hospital, that they would care for him. Their notion of care was to send the child and nurse to England, with only a telegram and a breezy following letter to warn fifteen-year-old Magnus and sixteen-year-old Lily that a new brother was to be dumped in among them. They hated him. Their world had been a sacred alliance of two for too long to admit a third. Magnus invariably referred to Mark as a “waster” and a “troublemaker”; Lily too remained suspicious of Mark. Sometimes he was “bad, very bad,” which Julia supposed was a reference to his having impregnated a girl in the Hampshire village when he was fifteen. It might also have referred to the first action of his adult life, having his name altered by deed poll from Lofting back to Berkeley—a mute comment on the Lofting methods of childrearing. Mark was a disappointment: he had never learned their secret language, never having been given much chance to learn it; he had obtained a third-class degree at Cambridge; he was now lecturing at a polytechnic in sociology, a field Magnus claimed did. not exist. Mark had flirted with fringe political
groups all his life, he had marched and passed out leaflets, and he was now supposed to be a Maoist—Magnus had once scornfully seen him carrying a copy of Red Star Over China.
—Well, I don’t see what’s wrong with reading any book. And neither do you.
—I didn’t say he was reading it. He was carrying it. For effect. In his circle, it’s the equivalent of a Rolling Stones record.
—Now, honestly, I’m not defending Mark, but you are being malicious and unfair. You condemn him whether he’s reading the book or not.
—Does it matter what I say about some Notting Hill Maoist?
Mark generally dressed in blue jeans and a chambray work shirt; he lived in the same rooms in Notting Hill Gate he had taken after leaving Cambridge, sleeping there, in a fabulous mess, on a mattress on the floor. Julia had heard most of this from Lily, with Magnus grunting disapproving asides, over a period of three or four months. She herself did not meet Mark until the day he appeared at Magnus’ house on Gayton Road, three weeks before Julia’s wedding, saying that he wanted to meet the victim. She heard his light, wry voice—a very un-Lofting voice—from the front steps, and then heard Magnus say, “The what? I take it you mean my fianc6e.”
“Your victim, Magnus.”
She heard Magnus sigh. “Well, you might as well come in then, since you’re here.”
“You are typically generous, Magnus.”
Julia had thought of Mark as a potential ally since she had heard Lily and Magnus first disparage him; he was at least flawed and might be expected to be sympathetic to her. Her heart beating a little quickly, she thrust the Guardian behind her chair and stood to meet him.
Magnus came scowling into the room, leading a tall young man with long, shining black hair. Julia saw Magnus’ grimace at the sight of the wrinkled newspaper, wadded up behind the chair; then she saw that Mark Berkeley was the kind of man women might turn around to stare at in the street. He was beautiful—sexually beautiful. The long dark hair framed a face a few shades lighter than olive, with high Mongol cheekbones and a full, curving mouth. . Beneath black eyebrows, in the dark amused face, his eyes were unbelievably blue. When he held out his hand, she noticed that his fingernails were filthy.
“You’re almost as pretty as Lily said you were,” he said. “I wish I’d seen you first. Be nice to have another beautiful woman in the family, won’t it, Magnus? Now that Lily is getting a bit past it.”
Holding his rather grubby hand, Julia felt, as an undercurrent to Mark’s remarks, that he was looking straight through her; he might be an ally, but not of the sort she had anticipated. Mark too was formidable. Yet he seemed far from unsympathetic. As Julia felt herself warming to her fiancé’s younger brother, a number of impressions went rapidly through her mind. Mark seemed more like Magnus’ son than his brother: he had an air of irresponsibility which seemed nearly cultivated. It was impossible to imagine Mark holding a job—any job but lecturing. And she considered, still holding his hand, that perhaps she was being conned by an expert. It was certainly all too easy to find oneself instantly liking someone so attractive. She disengaged her hand. She was not sure that she approved of men as beautiful as this.
“Really, Magnus,” Mark said, “doesn’t she look like a vision Lily might see in one of her crystal balls? What an extraordinary person she must be to want to marry you.”
“Oh,” she said, trying to save the situation, “sometimes I think half the women in London want to marry Magnus.”
But Magnus had turned impatiently away from her. The rest of the afternoon had staggered painfully along, Mark taunting Magnus, Magnus becoming increasingly blustery. Julia had not known at all how to read Mark.
A year later, when Julia realized, sickened, that Magnus had not ceased Jo see his other women for as much as a month, she had angrily, furiously proposed to him that she could begin taking up with his brother. “Why should you have all the fun?” she had demanded, raging.
Magnus had gripped her hard enough to raise bruises on her arm: she saw, trembling with both fear and anger, that he was barely restraining himself from clubbing her. Then the pressure lessened, his jaw undamped, and he moved a step backward. “I’d happily kill you if you ever slept with Mark,” he said. His tone was so cold that she believed him at once: despite all that talk about “unbalanced” Mark, she had never before seen that he hated his brother. At least, that was what she thought she had seen.
It was not long after this explosion that they began to discuss having a child.
Kate was born the following summer. For the next nine years, the Loftings lived conventionally in Hampstead, traveling abroad—Magnus bought a farmhouse a mile from the Dordogne River, and they spent three summers doing it up—seeing Lily at intervals, seeing Mark two or three times a year when he dropped in unannounced. Clearly, he was kept informed of events in the Lofting house by Lily: he sent a beautiful dollhouse on Kate’s first birthday, he frequently telephoned when Magnus was out of town, and conducted cool, flirtatious conversations with Julia. Magnus undoubtedly carried on his affairs, but they had lost much of their power to wound Julia. They seemed entirely peripheral, taking little away from Julia and Kate. Still unpredictable, still sometimes frightening, Magnus loved Kate absolutely. Julia spent the nine years of Kate’s life in a homebound trance, superficially content. Once, at a party, she had heard herself say, “Can’t live for another person? Of course you can live for another person, I live for my …” She was on the verge of saying “daughter,” but saw Magnus staring at her, and substituted “family.”
Now she thought: I’m going to start being myself, freely myself, and discover what that means. And if I go crazy that’s okay too.
Julia stood at her bedroom window, the shades parted, looking out at the play area, filled with desultory children, and the green of the park beyond. She pushed up the window and leaned put, thinking a woman on the verge of a new life leaned from her window…The room was unbearably stuffy. The air drifting across Holland Park seemed cooler, more invigorating despite the warmth of the day. Unpacking her clothing, untying the books, Julia had felt damp, sticky, and oddly ruthless—the clothing could go anywhere, since the bedroom, like the entire house, was solely hers. When she put the box of dolls for the moment in one of the bedroom closets, she sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, feeling heat rise from her in layers like steam. Julia felt the presence of the house about her, for a moment almost oppressive in its size. Yet she had wanted it, and she had it. The McClintocks’ furniture was old-fashioned and a bit worn, but comfortable, tending toward plush and cushions. In time, she would get rid of it and buy new furniture, but for the moment she was as pleased with the old furniture as with the house, since it had the same settled, familial look of prosperous comfort.
It was odd, the way this house had claimed her. At first, she had thought of moving to a service flat, probably somewhere in Knightsbridge; the tempo-rariness of such a home depressed her, however, even in imagination, and she had gone to a real-estate agent’s office, thinking vaguely of buying a lease on a flat. But having seen the house on Ilchester Place—”Quite unsuitable, of course,” the man had said—she had known that she had to have it. It was nearly the first time in her life that Julia had used her money in a high-handed, reckless fashion. With Kate dead, did it matter how much she spent? The image of Kate’s last minutes threatened to rise up again, and to put it off Julia moved quickly away from the window. She had been half-consciously looking for the girl she had seen that morning, the blond girl. How lovely it would be if buying the house brought her into contact, friendship, with another child, a girl like Kate, with whom she could have an easy, relaxed companionship.
But that was impossible: she could not make a stranger’s daughter her own. She really was getting less realistic, less responsible to the world of ordinary truths. Was it possible that instead of beginning a new life, she had merely further confused and muddled the old one?
She could not afford to think that way. If sh
e had been garrulous, disorganized, sloppy, everything that Magnus had accused her of being, perhaps these qualities were wrong only to Magnus: she had a right to her own foibles. And even now, free from him for only two days, Julia could simply feel how oppressive Magnus—Magnus’ values—had been. She said to herself, I think it means my marriage is over, and surprised herself with the thought. Leaving Magnus had everything to do with Kate’s death, of course, that horrific scene on the kitchen floor, Kate’s blood everywhere, boiling out of her panicked body—but leaving him, Julia now thought, might also come from a deep knowledge that marriage to Magnus was no longer possible. Really, Kate had kept them together. Kate had been their focus.
Interesting, she thought, and then realized that she had spoken the word aloud. “I’m going to be the kind of woman who talks to herself,” she said. “Well, why shouldn’t I?” She turned to the McClintocks’ mirror and began to arrange her long hair,, which now glowed a little in the light pouring in the bedroom window.
When she had put everything away, scrubbed the already spotless kitchen and vacuumed the living room carpet, Julia took a shower and afterward left the house. She had been making up her mind that she would see Lily after all—Lily now lived in Plane Tree House, just across Holland Park. Surely she could persuade Lily not to betray her to Magnus. “Poor Lily” had become, during the past nine years, a good friend: one of the attractions of Ilchester Place was that it was so close to Plane Tree House. In fact, Julia had moved near to both of the other members of the Lofting family. Mark’s flat in Notting Hill was so close that she could walk to it.
Julia made sure she had her key in her pocket, and then turned up into the park. Almost immediately, she saw the blond girl again. The child was sitting on the ground at some distance from a group of other children, boys and girls, who were carefully watching her. Julia stopped walking, almost fearing that she would interrupt whatever performance was going on if the child should notice her. The blond girl was working intently at something with her hands, wholly concentrated on it. Her face was sweetly serious. Julia could not see what it was that required such concentration, but the other children were as grave as the little girl, indeed scarcely breathing. This was what gave the scene the aspect of a performance. Thinking of Kate, who could keep a dozen other children still while she loosed some fantastic story from her imagination, Julia, smiling, stepped off the path on the side opposite to the play area, so that she was perhaps twenty yards from the girl and her audience, and sat on the grass. The girl was seated, her legs straight out before her, in the sandy overspill from one of the sandboxes: a sort of pit like a golfer’s sand trap. She was speaking softly now to her audience, ranged on the scrubby grass before her in groups of three and four. The other children playing in the sand took no notice of them. They were certainly unnaturally quiet, completely taken up by the girl’s theatrics.