Roger said nothing. He wanted to deny flatly everything Mrs. Harrison said, but he found he could not. It was true, now that he thought of it, that attitudes had changed here. He saw few smiles now from the island people, and he remembered many when he was young. But Mrs. Harrison was wrong to blame this change on club members. Roger remembered only courtesy toward the island people—meticulous courtesy—from his parents, from their friends, from everyone he knew. This animosity, the change, was not their fault. He was on the point of saying so when he remembered something that had happened that morning.
In the club store he had seen a couple in their early seventies. They were white-haired and pink-faced, the man in bright green pants, the wife in a yellow golf skirt. Both wore round white canvas hats with wrinkly brims, pulled low. They were newcomers—someone’s guests—and they moved through the crowded aisles with an air of gentle confusion. The woman bumped slightly into Roger and turned, giving him an abashed smile.
“I beg your pardon,” she said charmingly.
At the counter, the man paid the black cashier in American money. He was given his change in something else—small darkish bills, rumpled, faintly greasy.
“What’s this?” he asked, moving the strange bills between his fingers. He looked up at the cashier, the bafflement in his blue eyes magnified by his horn-rimmed glasses.
“That’s island money,” said the cashier, impassive. He was a man in his forties, with ashy-black skin, a broad nose. A white short-sleeved shirt.
“But what am I suppose to do with it?” asked the pink-faced man, still holding out the grimy bills, faintly outraged.
“That’s their money, dear,” said his wife. “That’s their money. They use it to buy things.” She gave the cashier a nice smile and plucked at her husband’s sleeve, urging him along, kind, confident.
Roger had paid no attention then to the exchange, but now it came back, vivid and troubling. Now he remembered the cashier’s cold stare when Roger had set his newspaper on the counter and smiled. It made him wonder about those other memories: perhaps what he’d seen as courtesy had been something else, something covering a blithe and insufferable assumption. Roger felt unhappy, less and less certain. Everything seemed so complicated, so opaque.
Mrs. Harrison returned to Roger’s father. She shook her head, smiling. “No, he was wonderful to have around. He was such fun.”
But here Roger was on firm ground. “My father,” he said reprovingly, “was a very serious person.”
“Oh, of course he was,” Mrs. Harrison said, shaking her head. “I don’t mean anything against your fohthah. He was a marvelous man. So funny!”
Roger straightened, magisterial. “Mrs. Harrison, I think I know my own father,” he said. “He was not a funny man.”
Mrs. Harrison raised her eyebrows kindly. “Well, maybe we saw different sides of him. But he used to tell those wonderful stories on himself. You must have heard them. Of course he was a terribly bad boy when he was younger. You’ve heard about all that. He must have told you.”
“No,” said Roger.
“Well, you’ve heard how he was fired from his first job?”
“Fired?” repeated Roger, smiling now. He shook his head. “My father was never fired, from anywhere.”
“He was fired from his very first job, at a bank. For throwing paper bags of water out the window. He hit one of the tellers on her lunch hour.” Mrs. Harrison leaned back, rubbing her papery white throat, and laughed expansively. “You wouldn’t think they’d fire him just for that, would you?”
“It sounds quite reasonable, actually,” Roger said stiffly. He could not imagine his father leaning out into the air, supple, hilarious, looking for targets.
“Not to me,” said Cynthia Harrison. “But it turned out that he’d already done something worse. It was the two things together, you see. You haven’t heard this story?”
Roger shook his head, skeptical.
Mrs. Harrison leaned farther back against the sofa. “Oh, it was years ago. I think he and your mothah were just married. One night they’d gone out somewhere, out to dinner with some friends. It got late: he wanted to go on; she wanted to go home. So she went home and he went on. When he finally went home to the apartment your mothah was pretty cross.” Cynthia Harrison looked sympathetically at Roger. “It was quite late by then. Well, your mothah refused to let him into the apartment. He stood out in the hall, trying to persuade her, but she refused. I think he must have gotten a little loud, you know. The neighbors got involved. Everyone came out into the hall and had a point of view. It got quite lively. But your mothah was determined, and she stood firm. Finally your fohthah realized she wasn’t going to let him in. By then it was around six o’clock in the morning, maybe later. He’d had, really, quite a lot to drink. And so it seemed to him that the best thing to do was to go straight to the office. He didn’t have any other place to go, and he had to be there in an hour or so anyway. It seemed to solve all his problems at once: not being able to get in, finding a place to sleep, and being at work on time.” Mrs. Harrison’s face lit up, as though she herself had just solved all her problems.
Listening to her, Roger could feel his heart pounding more and more urgently. There was a turbulence inside him he did not understand. He felt angrier and angrier at Mrs. Harrison.
“So he took a taxicab downtown. He let himself into the office, which was empty. He sat at his own desk and put his head down and tried to take a little catnap, but you see it felt cramped. So he got up and set off to find a bigger space, somewhere he could be more comfortable. When he found one he settled down and went straight to sleep. And that was where the president of the bank found him at nine o’clock, when he went into the boardroom for a meeting with a client. Your fohthah was fast asleep on that big mahogany table, stretched out full length, flat out. He was still in black tie. Hadn’t even taken off his pumps.” Mrs. Harrison laughed again, closing her eyes with delight. She opened them finally and looked at Roger. “Oh, you must have heard that story.”
Roger had nearly finished his second rum. “I have never heard that story,” he said severely. “And frankly, Mrs. Harrison, I have a hard time believing it.” He stood up to leave. He was dismissing her, her ridiculous story, her ridiculous getup.
“Oh, it’s true, all right,” said Mrs. Harrison, smiling. She leaned back, pulling her legs up sideways underneath her and stretching her arms out along the cushions like a very old starlet. The flesh along her arms was loose and quivery. She took a long sip of the rum and looked up suddenly at the ceiling. “Ticky Cobb was there too, at the bank. Everyone knew about it.” She drank again. “Well, but he was famous, your fohthah.”
Doubtful, Roger said nothing. Ticky Cobb was a very old friend of his father’s. And there had been some business connection, he knew. For some reason this enraged him, it enraged him not to be able to deny this monstrous story flatly, totally.
Mrs. Harrison leaned forward. “Let me freshen your drink. It would be rude not to, since I’m keeping you here.”
“Thank you,” said Roger, “but no. I’m afraid it’s really time for me to leave.” He set down his glass. “I’ll run over to the club and ask them to see about your car. Thank you so much for the drink.” His voice was cold, loaded with contempt: he loathed this woman. He loathed this terrible cacophony she had loosed into the air, the turbulence in his chest, the clamor in his mind. His father had not been like that: this woman was a liar.
Mrs. Harrison stood up too. “You look like him, you know,” she said, and smiled.
But now he had her, Roger thought, triumphant. This was false. Roger did not in the least look like his father. He smiled.
“I’m afraid you’re wrong,” he said with satisfaction. “I don’t at all. Everyone knows that.”
But Mrs. Harrison only smiled back. She was not flattened by his denial, she was not even dismayed. She shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe no one else does, but when I look at you I see him,” she said gently.
Mrs. Harrison seemed to have done it again. She had said something that Roger knew was false, but that he couldn’t deny. He couldn’t disprove this, any more than he could disprove the terrible, unwelcome story about his father. For there it was, the thing he had so dreaded hearing down here: the unwelcome revelation, the ghastly disclosure. Only the anguish was his, not his mother’s.
Roger stood looking at her, without speaking. It was rude, but he hardly knew what to say, he felt such confusion inside him. There was something rising up in him, a great surge of rage at Mrs. Harrison, contempt for her, but there was something jubilant that had been loosed as well. Roger felt as though he were again racing up those narrow chapel stairs, alone, running upward toward the wild, dangerous song that only he could make. He felt in a state of chaos, rage and jubilation shifting and glittering together in his head. What held him, what he could not bear, was the thought of his father. His father, stretched out on that mahogany table, in his dinner jacket, his black grosgrain tie limp against his stiff white shirt, his patent leather pumps still on. The terrible, contented smile on his father’s face.
All Roger knew now for certain, the only thing, was the fact that he hated Mrs. Harrison. How could he not? How could he ever forgive her? How could he thank her enough?
Do Not Stand Here
“You did talk to William last,” Emily said to Richard.
She was looking not at her husband but out the side window of the car. They were driving west somewhere, away from London. The motorway here ran along the edge of a vast green plain that stretched to the horizon. They had been driving into the countryside for over an hour; by now the landscape should have been quiet and pastoral, but the green plain was disturbed by three red-brick cooling towers. Their size, their shape—their curved and tapered waists—suggested to Emily sinister depths, poisoned blue water, glowing and deadly.
“That’s not the point,” said Richard. “Who talked to him last.” He did not turn when he spoke, but stared straight ahead at the broad gray motorway hurtling toward them. The rented car was small, and the roar of their own speed filled its interior. Emily did not answer.
“The point is, you made the arrangements, not me,” Richard went on. “You’re the one he invited. And in any case, he’s your friend, not mine.”
“He’s not my friend,” said Emily. “He’s my publisher.”
“Oh, I see. And you don’t like him.” Richard laughed unpleasantly. “I thought you loved William.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Emily. “Of course I like William. You like William. But you’re always the one who gets directions when we go on trips. Anyway, you’re the one who knows England.”
Richard had lived in England, years ago, with his first wife. When they quarreled, Emily held this against him.
“I don’t even know what county we’re in,” Emily went on, scanning the countryside. “Where are we? I doubt very much that William lives in a nuclear park,” she added crossly.
Richard had turned off the motorway, and the road now led toward the three brick towers. Wisps of white smoke drifted from their huge open tops.
Richard did not answer.
They had been quarreling since they arrived in England, four days earlier. That morning, leaving the hotel in London, they had entered the tiny mahogany elevator in stubborn silence. When the door shut they stood stiffly in the cramped space, close together, not touching, their chins high with aggrievement.
“The trouble with you,” Richard had said, facing the closed door, “is that you cannot say you’re sorry. You’re incapable of it.”
“I have no trouble at all saying I’m sorry,” Emily said coldly. “None whatever. If I have something to be sorry for. I fail to see what I have to be sorry for at the moment.”
“Being consistently unpleasant to me all last night and this morning,” said Richard severely. “That suggests nothing to you? No fault on your part?”
“I wasn’t unpleasant, Richard. I was angry. I don’t pretend to be pleasant when I’m angry. You’re unpleasant when you’re angry, everyone is.”
“So you won’t apologize,” said Richard, with satisfaction.
“No,” said Emily. “For what?” Rage blossomed in her and she turned fiercely. “What about the things you said to me last night at dinner? Are you going to apologize for those?”
The elevator, lowering itself ponderously within its narrow shaft, arrived just then at the main floor. As Emily spoke, the door slowly scissored open to reveal the Victorian lobby: paneled walls, polished brass, a densely patterned carpet. An American couple, middle-aged, well-dressed, ill-at-ease, stood among their brand-new suitcases. Clerks bustled quietly behind the high reception desk. Richard, without answering her, stepped out of the open door, his face dark. Emily followed, her chin still high, her face matching his.
They had carried the fight along with them in the car. During the drive they had hardly spoken, and Richard’s face was closed and tight. Emily had sat looking out the window, watching England move past her and brooding over the things Richard had said over these last four days. They had seen almost no one else in London; they had been trapped with each other at every meal, at the hotel, at the theater and museums. Emily now sat silent, picking through the things Richard had said as though they were jewels, spoils of a battle. She held each one up to the light, marveling angrily at its hard, glittering edges.
The road now dropped down into a small hollow among the broad green hills. It curved narrowly in between tiny shops and pubs, past an undistinguished eighteenth-century stone church with a modest spire, a row of half-timbered houses with deep, dense thatched roofs. Two elderly women in long black sweaters made their way along the sidewalk. Richard slowed the car and rolled down his window as they approached.
“Excuse me,” he said, leaning out. “Could you tell me where Welnore Court is?”
The woman nearest to them had pink cheeks and short gray hair. Her eyes, through her colorless glasses, looked astounded, as though Richard had asked the way to Saturn.
“Welnore Court?” She shook her head slowly, with some satisfaction. “Not here.”
Good, thought Emily.
“Do you know where it is, by any chance?” Richard asked politely.
“This is Chipping Letcombe. You want Letcombe Regis,” said the woman. Her words were loud and careful, as though Richard did not speak English. Emily stared straight ahead.
By the time they found the house it was growing dark. The trees had become dim and powerful silhouettes. As they drove up the long driveway, somber arboreal shapes loomed up at each turn, as though to block their way. When they reached the gravel court in front of the house they parked diffidently to one side, still not sure they were at the right place.
What they hoped was Welnore Court was a small manor house with a hill rising behind it. In the fading light the setting seemed cramped and claustrophobic; the trees on the hillside behind pressed heavily down on the building. The house was eighteenth-century, neoclassical, handsome but not grand. It was only two stories high, made of greenish-yellow stone. The windows were leaded; the murky walls were deeply stained with damp.
Emily walked first across the pale gravel. Over the front door was a hand-lettered sign: DO NOT HERE. DANGER. FALLING STONE.
Uncertain, Emily moved away from the house and looked up. Above her, threatening black eaves hung out over the driveway. “Does this mean us?” she asked, with some alarm. “Then where are we supposed to stand?” She was calling a temporary truce; they could fight again later.
Richard ignored her. He set down the suitcases and read the sign. He pushed the bell, saying nothing.
“We still don’t even know if it’s William’s house,” Emily said doubtfully.
Richard still did not answer. They stood in the doorway, not looking at each other. They heard footsteps, and the heavy door swung open.
“Hello,” said the woman inside. She was in her thirties, fair and thin, with l
ong, light, messy hair. She wore a faded rust-colored turtleneck and a long denim skirt with a droopy flounce at the hem.
“Hello,” said Emily, still uncertain. “We’re the Brandons.” They had never met William’s wife.
“Yes, come in,” said the woman, giving them an awkward smile. The hall was large, paneled in dark oak, dull and unpolished. Above the paneling the plaster walls and ceilings were dim and grayish.
“I’ll just get my husband,” said the woman, and left them.
“What’s her name?” whispered Richard, driven to speak at last.
“Rachel,” Emily whispered back. “If that’s her. If we’re at the right house. But then why didn’t she introduce herself? Do you think she’s the housekeeper? Or one of those upper-class girls who cooks?”
The big double doors at the end of the hall opened on charming William. He was tall, fair, narrow, always rumpled.
“Oh, good. Here you are at last!” he said, smiling, full of welcome. He came forward at once, his hands held out. His gestures were loose and boneless, like a marionette’s. He kissed Emily on both cheeks. “How lovely to see you here,” he said. “And Richard. How very kind of you to come.” They shook hands. “And you’ve met Rachel.” Rachel now stood behind him. They all nodded at each other, smiling.
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