The Minotaur

by Barbara Vine

  ‘You will have to carry on giving it to him,’ she said to me, ‘or Ida will. I see we've only a week's supply in the bottle. Remind me to ask Selwyn for a prescription when he comes.’

  He was expected at ten when his morning surgery was at an end and he was punctual. I happened to open the door to him and he greeted me typically.

  ‘How are you this morning, young lady?’

  In expansive and jovial mood, he must have been looking forward to seeing his old love again and she managed one of her rare smiles when he came into the drawing room. She lifted her face to him and he kissed her on the lips. If I had been the only other person present, I would have gone and left them alone together, but naturally John stayed and neither Ida nor Winifred showed any signs of going.

  ‘I shall never walk properly again,’ Mrs Cosway said. ‘It's only to be expected at my age. My left leg will be shorter than my right, I heard them muttering about that in the hospital, they thought I couldn't hear. I shall be left with a limp and heaven knows whether I shall ever be able to use my right hand again, I doubt it. There was a nerve twisted inside there, I'm sure of it.’

  Like Eric, Dr Lombard was one of those men who twinkle when in a good mood. He would purse up his mouth, open his eyes wide and turn them this way and that to rather ferocious effect above his eagle's nose. ‘Let your words be sweet and tasty, Julia,’ he said, ‘for tomorrow you may have to eat them.’

  She smiled slightly at this. I think Dr Lombard expected some sort of congratulation from one of the others on his wit but none was forthcoming. He went on to reassure Mrs Cosway about her arm and her ankle, citing all sorts of cases he had known of people a decade older than she was who had recovered full function from worse injuries than hers and, in one instance, gained enhanced flexibility. These days she would have been expected to attend physiotherapy sessions but if that was so then, it hadn't reached the cottage hospital.

  Ida, always apparently greedy for more domestic tasks, went off to make coffee. I noticed she had failed to remind her mother about the prescription and I decided I wouldn't. We all listened to a recital of anecdotes from Mrs Cosway of hospital dramas, capped by others even more improbable from Dr Lombard and then the coffee came. I understood soon afterwards that there was to be no reminder from Ida as she got up and excused herself on the grounds of needing to make a meat pie for lunch.

  Dr Lombard told an irrelevant vignette, the one about spaghetti owing its origin to the noodles Marco Polo brought back from China, kissed Mrs Cosway and said he would look in again on Wednesday – why do doctors, and no one else, say they will look in again? I went to the door with him, out of politeness.

  ‘She's very frail,’ he said when out of earshot.

  I nodded. There seemed nothing to say.

  Halfway towards his car, he turned and said, ‘Those leaves will be falling soon. They should have cut that stuff back but if they had I dare say the house would have fallen down. You look sceptical, young lady, but I tell you it's all those millions of tendrils that are holding the place up.’

  He got into his car and drove off. I never saw him again.

  17

  I walked into the drawing room at about ten on the Wednesday morning to find John wearing his glasses and with the newspaper held close up against his face.

  ‘Would you find the big magnifying glass for me, Shashtin?’ he said.

  His diction was perfect, as was his pronunciation of my name. Excited because he wanted to read, because at last he wanted to do something, I rummaged through drawers full of rubbish other people would have discarded. There was no one about to ask and Ida wasn't interested. Eventually, I found the glass, a large heavy one, washed it under the kitchen tap and brought it back to him. He experimented with holding it close against the print, then further away, with his glasses on and without them, but no result seemed satisfactory and he flung glass and paper down in disappointment. Mrs Cosway was brought in soon afterwards by Winifred and settled in an armchair.

  ‘Where's Dr Lombard?’ were her first words.

  ‘He didn't say a time,’ I said, ‘only that he would come.’

  ‘He knows I'd expect him early. Do you all realize Zorah came last night? Not that she has been to see me. That would be too much to expect.’

  ‘She's awfully upset, Mother,’ Ida said. ‘She came down here on purpose to see you.’

  Using a very old-fashioned expression I had read in books but never before heard, Mrs Cosway said, ‘You can tell that to the Marines.’

  John, who had been staring into his lap, lifted his head and turned his eyes on his mother. He said in a slow, deliberate voice, ‘I want to see a proper specialist. About the way my hands shake and I stumble when I walk. A specialist in London, a Harley Street man will be best.’

  Mrs Cosway was astounded, as well she might have been. She was silenced but only for a moment. ‘No, you don't, John. Dr Lombard sees to all that.’

  John, naturally, ignored her. ‘My sight is worse. I need new glasses.’

  ‘Yes, well, we'll take you to the optician in Sudbury and you can have your eyes tested.’

  He held up his shaking hands. ‘I need an expert. I want you to tell the trust.’

  ‘All this is nonsense,’ Mrs Cosway cried. ‘Who has put you up to this?’ She looked at me but I had done nothing, unless thought has power. ‘They won't let you have it on the Health Service, you know. You'd have to pay.’

  ‘That's what I said. You must ask the trust to pay.’

  ‘No, John, it's not necessary.’

  I expected Ida or Winifred to intervene but I should have known better. They said nothing.

  ‘I'm going to get the money out of the trust.’

  ‘I've said no. The answer is no and that's all there is to it. One of the girls will drive you to see the optician.’

  John stood up. He turned his back, dropped to the floor and lay flat on the carpet, making no sound at first, then starting to thrash about and shout. As he paused to draw breath the doorbell rang. Everyone thought, of course, that it must be Dr Lombard.

  ‘Thank God,’ said Mrs Cosway, ‘that must be Selwyn at last.’

  I went to the door. It was Eric. He came in, looking grave, but his expression changed to incredulity when he heard John's yells.

  ‘What on earth is that?’

  ‘John. He's lying on the floor making that noise.’

  ‘Good heavens.’ Eric cleared his throat and put on an expression of immense seriousness. ‘I am the bearer of bad news. Oh, not to you, Kerstin.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Dr Lombard passed away this morning. He had a heart attack during his surgery. An ambulance came and they took him to hospital but it was too late. His housekeeper came over to the Rectory and told me. I'd better go in there and tell them.’

  ‘Break it gently to Mrs Cosway,’ I said.

  He had called her frail but she was alive and he was dead. The front door was still open. As I went to close it I noticed Zorah's Lotus on the driveway, half-hidden by Eric's modest Ford.

  *

  They all moved out of the drawing room, Mrs Cosway hanging on to the arms of her two daughters, leaving John to thrash and scream. But the noise he was making lessened and when I went back in there about twenty minutes later he was in the foetal position, his fingers covering his eyes. That was the most distressing sight of him I had ever had, though not would ever have.

  Mrs Cosway had taken the news with the calm of utter shock. Winifred and Ida, it was easy to see, had no idea how to cope with her. It would have been different if this had been some close relative who had died. The death of an old lover, even the great love of her life, as I suppose she saw him, could hardly be treated as a legitimate and honourable cause of grief. Embarrassment must be associated with it. The pretence must be kept up that this was just a family friend who would be missed but whose passing would certainly not cause any profound sorrow.

  ‘In the midst of life we are in death
,’ said Winifred, who, as befitted a clergyman's betrothed, had begun introducing biblical snippets into conversation. ‘He'd had his allotted span, his threescore years and ten. Four or five years more, actually.’

  ‘And man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards,’ said Zorah, coming into the room. ‘Has anyone else a wise saw to contribute? May I know who is dead?’

  The recollection of what Selwyn Lombard had been to Zorah, and that owing to this peculiar circumstance she ought to be told at once, must have come into everyone's mind simultaneously, with the exception, that is, of Eric's. Innocently he looked round at our embarrassed faces and said, ‘Unfortunately, Dr Lombard passed away this morning.’

  Zorah approached him, staring into his face. ‘You mean he's dropped off his perch at last?’

  An awful silence answered her.

  ‘Well, good riddance,’ she said. ‘Let me know where they're burying him and I'll come and dance on his grave.’

  This last word was cut off by Mrs Cosway's scream. She made the same sounds as her son, shouting wordlessly, her head thrown back, her feet drumming on the floor, the plaster making muffled bangs as it struck the carpet. Zorah left the room, looking pleased with herself. A point had been reached when I felt I had had enough. This was the first occasion on which I thought I could no longer stand it. I must find Ida and tell her to forget about my undertaking to stay a year. I had had enough and must go. I could no longer stand this family – dysfunctional before the word was invented.

  The thought that if I left I would have to separate myself from Mark and go back to Sweden stopped me. I went back into the drawing room. John had got up off the floor and gone, or so it appeared until I looked round, shifted the sofa and found him hunched up behind it like a fugitive or a frightened child.

  *

  A lover has no status. Mrs Cosway was regarded by Dr Lombard's middle-aged children and teenage grandchildren as no more than a friend and erstwhile patient. Still, I am sure she would have gone to the funeral if she had been able-bodied. Alone of the Cosway family, Winifred attended. But there was nothing unusual in this. Since becoming engaged to Eric, who of course conducted the services, she had taken it upon herself to attend every funeral, though there had only been four since the ring was on her finger. Mrs Cosway waited at home, anxious to hear all about it the moment Winifred returned – who was there? Did she speak to his son and daughter? What about the flowers, the address and the tributes? The funeral was timed for two in the afternoon and Winifred might reasonably be expected back by three-thirty, but when John and I returned from our walk she was still not home. Mrs Cosway may have rested but not slept.

  There was nothing unusual in her wearing mourning. She had always dressed in black but now it seemed deeper and more like widow's weeds, due perhaps to the addition of a long black scarf or stole she had rooted out from somewhere. By contrast Zorah, who occasionally appeared downstairs to make some cheerful or optimistic remark, dressed herself up in fashion-model clothes, quite unsuitable for the country. She had had a party up in her ‘apartment’ to which about a dozen smart-looking people turned up in cars. One was a Rolls whose driver sat out there at the wheel, smoking and reading magazines until his employer came out at midnight. I was invited, but only Ella of family members. She went, though I didn't, and had a bad hangover next day, which luckily for her was a Saturday. She told me the party was to celebrate Dr Lombard's death. I doubt if most of the guests knew this or cared.

  What Mrs Cosway thought about it I have no idea. She spoke to me very little at that time. We sat in silence together with John, waiting for Winifred to come back. Four o'clock went by and five. Ida got tea and Ella came home.

  ‘I couldn't eat a thing,’ Mrs Cosway said.

  ‘I suppose Eric will bring her back.’

  Ella had been fidgety and nervous ever since she was told what her mother was waiting for. This remark of hers was obviously expecting the answer yes but that was not what she got from Ida, the only one of us who appeared to know.

  ‘No, he can't. She told me he was going straight to his appointment with the Archdeacon after the funeral.’

  As we all moved into the dining room for tea, Mrs Cosway limping along with the aid of her crutch and Ida's arm, Ella pulled me aside into a doorway.

  ‘She's with Felix.’

  I must have stared at her.

  ‘I tell you, she's with Felix. She'll have gone to him as soon as the funeral was over. Eric would be out of the way, you see. She says they're just friends but is it likely? I don't think Felix could be just friends with any woman under seventy.’

  She spoke with such extreme bitterness that it had brought the colour fiercely into her face.

  ‘We'd better go and have tea,’ I said.

  Winifred came in at twenty to six.

  ‘You've been so long,’ said Mrs Cosway, ‘it has nearly killed me. You've been hours and hours.’

  ‘Serena Lombard invited me back to the house, so of course I couldn't say no. I can't imagine why you were so worried.’

  ‘Mother wasn't worried about you,’ said Ella. ‘It's just so thoughtless partying with these people when Mother was waiting for you to tell her about the service.’

  ‘Partying, indeed! I had a cup of tea and a piece of fruit cake.’

  She sat down next to Mrs Cosway and began telling her about flowers and hymns and tributes to Dr Lombard. Could it be true, this story about her and Felix Dunsford? I thought about the postponed wedding and the Rectory sign but still disbelieved what Ella had told me. Her affair with him was still going on and more passionately, if what she said was true. Yet he hadn't gone with her to Zorah's party, though invited at her special request. I could see that he was willing to do nothing which might show him to the world as Ella's accredited lover, a man she could with reason have called her boyfriend, but that was not to say he was making love to Winifred as well.

  She was older than Ella and, though basically better-looking, had something churchy in her appearance, some suggestion that her proper sphere was behind a stall at a bring-and-buy sale. The dowdiness of her clothes contributed to this as did, oddly enough, the thick make-up she wore, all of which gave her the air of a Sunday school teacher sprucing herself up to visit a rich London relative. But was it possible Felix saw the fine features under the powder and lipstick and, come to that, the voluptuous shape under the floral dresses and jersey suits? Perhaps he found something titillating in the idea of breaking down her goody-two-shoes manner. And what of Eric? Winifred wanted to be married as much as Ella did and was far nearer to her goal. Would she give it up for an adventure with Felix? On the whole, I thought not.

  It was my weekend in London and I was looking forward to it as I always did. I was looking forward to being with Mark again and meant to catch a train to London on the Friday evening. That morning I went into the village to shop for the weekend. This was usually one of Ida's many jobs but currently she had so much more to do than usual, her mother still needing to be helped everywhere she went after the wearisome business of getting her up, washed and dressed. Bags would be heavy to carry so she made me take Mrs Cosway's old shopping trolley, a kind of basket on wheels made of a tartan waterproof material.

  It was this contraption which prompted Felix's remarks when he met me pushing it across the Memorial Green.

  ‘A beautiful girl like you shouldn't be seen with an old lady's pushcart.’

  ‘Don't look then,’ I said.

  ‘But seriously, Kerstin, what's the idea?’

  ‘Seriously, Mr Dunsford, I don't want to carry two heavy bags of groceries up the hill.’

  ‘Felix. Now, if you'll come into The Studio and have a glass of something with me I will carry your bags up the hill and we can chuck that monstrosity on the village dump.’

  There was no village dump, as far as I knew. I said no, thank you, I hadn't time, and he said to make time, and we argued amicably enough along these lines, walking along together by then, inevitab
ly in the direction of The Studio because it was also in the direction of the butcher and the greengrocer.

  ‘Are you scared of what might happen?’ he asked me.

  ‘Why? What might happen?’

  Instead of answering he said, ‘So you don't mind wasting your youth doing household chores? Come on, we're at the door. You know you want to. You're too young to resist, aren't you, Miss Kvist?’

  His effrontery, his vanity, made me rude. ‘You're too old to persuade me, Mr Dunsford,’ I said.

  I was rewarded by a look of fury, which pleased me, but something miserable too which didn't. I knew I had just made an enemy but cared not at all for that and walked away from him into the greengrocer's. I might reasonably have given him that joke response, ‘You say that to all the girls,’ if I even knew it at that time, for it seemed clear to me that he tried to make love to any woman of a fair standard of attractiveness. Why not Winifred? But would she?

  Back at Lydstep, an argument had begun again about John's physical condition, Mrs Cosway continuing to refuse his request to ask the trust for money for a specialist and Ida and Winifred backing her up.

  ‘I shall ask Zorah,’ he said. ‘Zorah will help me.’

  Mrs Cosway seemed more shattered by his using so long and so reasonable a sentence than by its content. She turned on Ida, speaking as if he was somewhere else.

  ‘What's happened to him that he's talking like this? He wasn't like this when I went to hospital.’ A thought struck her, though not apparently the one Ida dreaded. ‘We must be running out of his tranquillizer. Have we run out?’

  ‘Almost,’ Ida said.

  Could there be a greater irony than this woman lamenting the fact that her psychotic son's condition was improving? ‘You'll have to get another prescription from – yes, Selwyn's partner.’