Slaying is Such Sweet Sorrow

by Patricia Harwin

  I followed a cobbled path to a building that formed one side of the square, then up a flight of dark, rather damp-smelling stairs toward voices and light coming out an open door. I stopped on the top step, took a deep breath, and smoothed my red silk shirtwaist dress, hopelessly out of fashion but the only dressy garment I had brought from the States. I’d almost left it behind, thinking I’d have no use for it out in the country, but tonight was the second time I had needed it. I’d been nervous on the first occasion, entering a stately home to be presented to the upper crust, but that was nothing compared to the dread I felt tonight.

  I stepped through the door into a beautifully proportioned room with one tall, arched window and three walls of packed bookshelves. A fireplace crackled with flames, portrtaits of nineteenth-century academics looked down at me from ornate frames, a small television set crouched shamefacedly in a corner. It was not a large room, the eleven people standing around on the softly faded Oriental rug pretty well filled it. I flashed an uncertain smile, my eyes sweeping over the group, getting a vague image of middle-aged men in dark suits, one heavyset woman, and two or three slim ones. Among the latter I recognized Mrs. Stone, Emily’s patient. I nodded at her and at Tom Ivey, before my eyes came to a screeching halt and hung a sharp left as they collided with Quin and his Barbie doll.

  “I can’t tell you how happy I am that you decided to come,” I heard my son-in-law say, at my shoulder. I turned to him gratefully and met his sympathetic gaze. “I appreciate how difficult it is, but you’ll see, everything will go smoothly.”

  Now I noticed that Emily was with her father, engaging him in determined conversation, and I realized she and Peter had divided the job of supervising her parents this evening.

  “No reason it shouldn’t,” I said firmly. “How’s our boy getting along?”

  “He was fine all day. We’ve stopped worrying about concussion.”

  “That’s a relief!” My eyes scanned the crowd again, moving so quickly past Quin and his woman that Peter noticed.

  “It turns out she’s no Barbie, is she?” he said quizzically.

  I didn’t understand what he meant for a moment, and when I did I stared at him in surprise. I had called her that for so long, and thought of her, when forced to, as a sexy young babe, that I could hardly believe what he had said. My eyes turned reluctantly toward the fireplace, and I looked at her for the first time.

  No, she was definitely not a Barbie. She had to be in her forties, a couple of decades older than I’d imagined her. She wore a long jacket that matched her gray woolen dress and tried its best to hide her rather too-round hips and stomach. Her face was square-jawed, and middle age had carved some furrows around her wide mouth and her best feature, a pair of large, expressive brown eyes. She knew how to wear makeup to emphasize them and play down the jaw problem, but she seemed to have given up on her hair, it just hung down straight in a Dutch bob with bangs.

  So he had left me for a middle-aged, overweight woman with a bad haircut! It had hurt enough when I thought I’d lost out to youth and beauty, but this was worse. I must have been cast aside for something she had that I not only didn’t have, but couldn’t even perceive. A tornado of anger and confusion went whirling through me, and somewhere in the middle of it a little voice whispered, What is this? He can’t hurt you anymore, remember?

  They must have felt my gaze, because simultaneously they turned their heads and met it. She remained expressionless, but he threw me a nervous, tentative smile. I was so far from smiling at that moment, my facial muscles felt paralyzed. Incredibly, he nudged her, nodding toward me, and she took a step forward. I spun around and started across the room toward the window, thinking with bitter satisfaction of a phrase from some Victorian novel: “She cut them dead!”

  I should have been thinking instead of where I was going, because I walked right into one of the middle-aged men. His glass flew out of his hand, splashing both of us. I looked down at my one good dress, its skirt now decorated with a purple Rorschach puzzle of wine.

  “I do beg your pardon,” said the poor man earnestly, pulling out a wrinkled handkerchief and dabbing ineffectually at the skirt. “Entirely my fault! Always been renowned for my clumsiness. Out, damned spot!” he muttered abstractedly.

  “Not at all,” I said, “it’s not your fault. If that woman over there hadn’t—”

  “My dear Catherine,” said Peter, back at my side, “what an unfortunate accident, but it mustn’t cause any change in your plans.” He murmured so only I could hear, “Don’t give her the satisfaction.”

  “I shall of course pay any cleaning bills,” the other man went on, bleeding with contrition. He was tall and heavily built, a great bear of a man except for his open, be-spectacled face and graying hair in dire need of a barber’s attention.

  “This is Geoffrey Pidgeon,” Peter said. “He was my tutor in undergraduate days and the main force in my getting a lectureship. Geoffrey, Emily’s mother, Catherine Penny.”

  Geoffrey squeezed my hand so hard I wanted to yelp.

  “Absolute gubbins,” he went on relentlessly apologizing while I tried to free my aching hand. “Ever since a boy, I’ve been causing these situations, don’t know why unless it’s that there’s just too much of me.” He finally let go and ran his hand through his hair, making it stand up on top like a cockscomb.

  “For heaven’s sake, Geoffrey, give over,” someone said. “I’m sure the lady has other, no doubt equally modish raiment in her closets.”

  That snide remark had come from a man who contrasted with Geoffrey Pidgeon in every particular. He stood near the window with a pretty, dark-haired young woman, and when I looked at him he made a slight bow.

  He was tall, slim, and startlingly handsome, with a shining head of blond hair untouched by gray although I had a feeling he was the same general age as the rest of these people. His eyes were a piercing blue, almost hypnotic. His dark suit was beautifully cut, obviously tailor-made for him, and he wore a red rosebud in his lapel that picked up the small red figure in his silver tie. There was something charismatic about the man, and something unsettling too.

  “Edgar Stone,” Peter said shortly, “Catherine Penny.”

  He would have led me away, but Stone jumped in. “I once removed a wine stain like that from the leather cover of a fourteenth-century book. I wonder if I should tell you how I did it?” He cocked his head, waiting for me to bite.

  “Since this dress has done duty for at least twelve years,” I responded, “I think I can retire it without bothering you for help. High time I got a new one.”

  A few people laughed discreetly at that, but Edgar Stone said, “No trouble, I assure you. I have some expertise in restoring the old and outworn.” He eyed my dress. “I collect rare and antique documents, you see.”

  What a puzzling man. He couldn’t be flirting with an old biddy like me, but for some reason he seemed determined to get a rise out of me.

  “Have you found anything exciting recently?” asked the girl, gazing up at him with a sort of awe. I had a feeling she had spoken just to get back his attention.

  “As a matter of fact, I had a great piece of luck the other day,” Stone answered, granting her a brief smile before turning his gaze back to Peter and me. “You might be interested in it, Tyler—a very good copy of Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair, late seventeenth century.”

  “Congratulations,” Peter said gruffly.

  His hostility seemed to amuse Stone. “Of course, I had to take some less interesting pieces to get the price down sufficiently, a Dickens, an original volume one of Blackstone’s Commentaries, a boring little chapbook from Westminster School.”

  I heard Quin’s voice, from across the room. “Really, an original Blackstone? That’s something I’ve always wanted to own. I’m a lawyer—barrister—you see.”

  “Ah, yes, William Blackstone—a Pembroke man.”

  That comment came from the heavyset woman I had noticed before, sitting in an easy chair a littl
e away from the others. She was dressed very plainly, in a gray suit with woolen stockings and sensible, lace-up leather shoes. The thick lenses of her glasses distorted her eyes, making them appear startlingly large and wavering, as if she looked up from under water. Peter led me over to her, obviously anxious to escape from Edgar Stone.

  “This is Dorothy Shipton, our resident Webster expert. Emily’s mother, Catherine Penny.”

  “Webster, as in—?” I said as we shook hands. They both looked at me with amazement.

  “John Webster,” she amended. The full name meant nothing to me either. “Elizabethan playwright—The White Devil? The Duchess of Malfi?”

  “You’ll have to make allowances for my being a Yank,” I said. “I’m sure every schoolchild in England knows all about John Webster, but he’s not exactly a household name in the States.”

  “Rather strong medicine for schoolchildren,” said another man, who stood nearby with an attractive woman. “I don’t think he’s particularly well known to the general public here, either, but you should take a look at one or the other of those plays. For beauty of language, I’d say he comes pretty close to the Other Fellow.”

  “Violent, however,” the woman beside him put in, “simply full of murder and mutilation! George Bernard Shaw, for one, found his plays quite disgusting.”

  “Yes, well, Shaw’s the fellow who dismissed Elizabethan dramatists generally as ‘a rabble of dehumanized specialists in elementary blank verse’!” Dorothy Shipton exclaimed, firing up with indignation. “It’s quite true, Ms. Penny, that Webster’s plays are full of cruelty, but then so is life, isn’t it? And if you appreciate strong female characters who know their own minds, you can’t do better than his two great duchesses.”

  “We’ll have to provide you with a copy of Malfi,” Peter said to me. “I’d be most interested to hear your reaction.” He indicated the man and woman who had just been speaking. “Let me introduce you to the famous head of our Elizabethan playwrights faculty, Cyril Aubrey, and Ann, his wife.”

  As I shook hands with them, Peter went on, “You’ve heard of Aubrey, I assume?”

  Not very tactful, because it must have been obvious from my face that I hadn’t.

  “No, no, why would she?” said Cyril Aubrey. “It’s not as if the Ur-Hamlet were even as well known as John Webster to people outside our field, Peter.”

  “Well, I do know Hamlet,” I said. “That’s one Americans actually read in school.”

  They laughed, and Peter explained, “The Ur-Hamlet is something no one has read, because like a great many Elizabethan works, it was never published. It’s only known from references in letters and diaries. You see, while Shakespeare’s Hamlet was first produced in 1601, another play by that name is mentioned by people who’d seen it before 1589.”

  “Earlier than any play by the Other Fellow,” Dorothy put in.

  “Quite. People used to speculate this lost Hamlet—the Ur, by the way, is a Germanic prefix meaning ‘primitive’—was an early effort he later refined into the play we know, and others suggested various contemporaries as the author. But all speculation ceased eight years ago when Cyril’s definitive book on Thomas Kyd came out.”

  “I was fortunate, that’s all,” said Aubrey, looking uncomfortable, as Brits so often do when they hear themselves praised. Dorothy and Ann exchanged indulgent smiles at his modesty. Edgar Stone was smiling too, in his smug way, watching us but not deigning to join the conversation.

  “Aubrey found a bundle of old letters in a London antiques shop,” Peter went on, “among them one by John Puckering, a government official who interrogated Kyd in prison. He mentions in passing that Kyd is the author of ‘the revel called Hamlet.’ When the book came out with this letter reproduced in it, you wouldn’t credit the sensation it made. He’s been a celebrity ever since—at any rate, in literary circles.”

  “Oh, come along, Peter,” said Aubrey, in an agony of embarrassment. He was a brown sort of man—brown tweed jacket, friendly brown eyes, an unruly mop of graying brown hair. Why were academics so averse to good haircuts? I wondered. There was a generally rumpled look about Cyril Aubrey, and I figured he was just too immersed in Thomas Kyd and his cronies to notice when his hair needed combing or his shirt ironing. His wife was smiling at him fondly, so I presumed she had given up long ago on making him presentable.

  She was beautifully groomed herself, her straight brown hair parted in the middle and falling smoothly to frame a serene, oval face, her long blue dress perfectly fitted to her tall, slender figure.

  “You know quite well it was that book got you your professorship, Aubrey,” said Dorothy bluntly. “When old Morehouse retired in the year it came out, you were the only possibility.”

  “Dorothy is working on her own interesting theory,” Peter said, “with regard to Webster.”

  “We all of us have our interesting theories,” Tom put in.

  “Quite,” said Cyril Aubrey. “ ‘Lighting our candles from their torches,’ to paraphrase the Anatomy of Melancholy.”

  “Yes,” said Dorothy, “I’m seeking to prove Webster actually practiced law—his plays are notable for their trial scenes, and someone of his name was admitted to the Middle Temple in 1598. I’m on the trail of some trial records that may mention him, hoping my luck will prove equal to Aubrey’s.”

  “I’m sure we’re boring Mrs. Penny most awfully,” he said. “It must seem extremely odd to outsiders, this devotion of ours to authors of whom most people have never heard.”

  “Catherine,” I said. “And no, I don’t think fame is what makes a writer worth reading.”

  “Tyler, don’t you expect Mrs.—er, Catherine would like some refreshment?” Aubrey suggested. He had finally succeeded in changing the subject. Peter apologized and hurried off to a long table set with plates and glasses. I turned to call after him that I had eaten and would do perfectly well with a glass of ginger ale, but my voice died in my throat as I found myself face-to-face with my ex-husband. I’d had no idea he’d been standing right behind me. I stepped back quickly. Emily was watching us apprehensively, over by the fireplace.

  “Listen, Kit,” he said, lowering his voice, “I just want to say, whatever happened last year, we had a lot of good years together and we shouldn’t forget them.”

  I could only stare at him, speechless. Did he actually think I’d agree with that load of bunk?

  “You know it’s not fair for Emily and Peter to have to divide up like this to keep us apart. They deserve a regular family, they need us to get along, to enjoy our grandchild together. Come over and meet Janet. I don’t expect the two of you to be friends, but won’t it be easier for the kids if you get down off your high horse and act civil to us?”

  Peter stood frozen by the refreshment table, and Emily was slowly shaking her head, silently begging me to behave.

  I took a deep breath and almost whispered, struggling to control my voice, “If Emily suffers, it’s your fault and nobody else’s—except that cheap bimbo you’re dragging around. Just don’t you ever dare to speak to me again!”

  Now Emily was beside us, murmuring urgently, “Dad, don’t keep trying. She doesn’t want to talk to you. Please, please, both of you, don’t ruin Peter’s evening.”

  I turned and left them. Sorrow squeezed my heart as memories flashed through my mind of the three of us in our apartment on West Eighty-third, on vacations, at ballet recitals and soccer games—all those shared moments that had made us so close, as we would never be again. How could such a dreary-looking woman have been the cause of such total destruction?

  I went and stood by myself near the door. The dons had noticed that little scene, of course, and cast discreet glances toward me, but they were far too polite to show their curiosity openly. Peter started toward me with a plate and glass, but I waved him away. I didn’t want to try to talk until I could get my breath back. He joined Emily and Quin, standing together in uncomfortable silence. But the other member of the group, Quin’s new wom
an, wasn’t with them.

  I saw her with Edgar Stone, over by the window. He was leaning over her, his eyes fixed on hers as if she were the only person in the room, his smile wide with delight at whatever it was she was saying. And she gazed up at him with similar fascination. I noticed the dark-haired girl who had been in the same favored position before, standing apart, watching them and smoldering. Tom Ivey spoke urgently to her, turning eyes full of hatred on Stone when the girl flounced away without answering him.

  “Edgar the Dreadful, Peter and Tom call him.” I hadn’t realized Emily had come over to me until she spoke. “He’s only after Gemma because hurting Tom is his idea of fun. But the silly little thing takes him seriously, when everyone else knows she’s only the latest in a long line of women he’s tumbled and then dumped.”

  “It’s no wonder his wife needs your services,” I said.

  We both looked over at Mrs. Stone, seated at the far end of the room, accepting a glass of sherry from Cyril Aubrey. She wore a fitted green dress that emphasized her too-thin figure, her chest as flat as a boy’s, her hip bones jutting out. Her dark eyes seemed huge, like pictures I’d seen of starving third world children. They were fixed on her husband, who smiled a little private smile as Quin, frowning, led his girlfriend away.

  Emily sighed. “Obvious sadomasochistic motivation on both sides. But of course she’s the one who’s losing their little game. Let me introduce you to her.”

  We went over and Emily presented us to each other. Mrs. Stone’s given name was Perdita, with the accent on the first syllable. I was going to remark how lovely it was, but she spoke first, fixing those haunted dark eyes on my skirt without smiling.

  “There’s blood on your dress,” she said, and again I was struck by the deep, dramatic timbre of her voice. “You’ve cut somebody, haven’t you?”

  “No, it’s only wine,” I said. “You’re right, though, it does look like blood.”