Before they had all been there five minutes Elizabeth realized startledly that Lucy and Steven were at each other’s throats, that Steven was gently and forlornly drunk and Lucy silkily furious. It was in the living-room like vapor. The Stockbridges were alert and fascinated, only taking themselves off reluctantly to meet a train; the Seavers, who knew the Brents less well, looked uncomfortable. Even Constance sat warily watching.
It wasn’t anything they said to each other, it was more like a quarrel that had been dropped at the gate and would be resumed on the doorstep . . . or was it only that? Wasn’t there a new sharpness in Lucy, a triumphant interchange of glances as though a point were being settled?
It was, thought Elizabeth, tired and faintly angry, the worst possible thing that could happen to a party—and it was also very odd between Lucy and Steven. Out of habit she sought Oliver’s eye and caught a quick, accomplished grimace. Even then, nothing happened until nearly seven-thirty, when the Seavers had left, and then it was like a spark introduced into a gas-filled room.
Upstairs, a door opened. Elizabeth started uneasily to feet, listening to the soft little sounds of pajamaed feet, and Oliver said from the couch, “It’s Christmas Eve, we’ll be getting this all night.” She sank back again uncertainly, because from her chair she could see the stairs.
It was Maire who rounded the turn of the hall so cautiously, Maire in her pink pajamas, her pale-gold head tousled and her eyes huge. She was so intent on her own tiptoeing progress that she didn’t seem to notice Elizabeth’s silent, instinctive rise. She reached the foot of the stairs and peered into the living-room, and she let out a wail of pure terror.
It wasn’t the inarticulate howl of babyhood, it had a sound, a baying and stricken sound that was like the very definition of danger. “Oun . . . Oun . . .”
Elizabeth ran to her and caught the small trembling body close. She didn’t know whether the panic had communicated itself or whether her own dreadful shaking had leaped to meet the cry that went plunging and echoing through her, like a stranger identifying himself at last.
Ten
Oun.
It was evil, unearthly, seeming to contain its own frightened echo. To Elizabeth it was peculiarly terrifying, as though Maire, with the simplicity of childhood, had managed to put a name to the lurking visitant in the house.
She found, when she came downstairs again, that the living-room was still charged with it. Lucy said curiously, “Does she do that often?” and Oliver: “All quiet?” Constance murmured mildly about the effect of Santa Claus on infant minds. Steven Brent looked up from an intent study of his shoe-tops and said, “The odd and unflattering part of it is that it seemed to be something she saw down here.”
Elizabeth, still shaken, was startled at that—she had thought no one but herself had noticed Maire’s swift wide stare down the room before she began to scream. Was it here, then, here in the room with her, hiding and triumphant . . . ? This was ghastly.
“Clown,” Constance was saying thoughtfully, as though Steven hadn’t spoken. “Some confusion, perhaps, with the stereotyped Santa Claus face?”
“Owl,” Lucy offered hopefully. “You know, night creatures . . .” Night creatures. Fumbling at the door in darkness, waking a child to terror, working tirelessly toward the tumbling-down of her own existence . . . Elizabeth had begun to tremble again. She crossed to the fire and picked up the tongs and made an effort at casualness, saying over her shoulder, “It’s so hard to tell when they’re Maire’s age. . . .”
It seemed a lifetime, although it was only another drink, before the Brents left and an exchange of Merry Christmases hung on the damp icy air. After dinner Constance retired to make mince pies by her mother’s unparalleled recipe, and Elizabeth and Oliver began to trim the tree. Oliver had apparently been waiting for seclusion; he said, dumping ropes of tinsel unceremoniously out of a box, “That was a hell of a thing, wasn’t it, Maire’s bursting out like that? Bad dream, I suppose, or getting all wound up over tomorrow.”
He made it a statement, but he was watching her. Elizabeth hung a red bulb with care. “I don’t know. But it’s what she said before.”
“When?”
“The other night, when she woke up crying. I thought then that it was just the beginning or the end of something she’d been dreaming about. But,” said Elizabeth, scrupulously matter-of-fact, “she wasn’t dreaming tonight.”
Oliver’s hands stopped briefly among the glistening ropes of tinsel. “You mean you think she’s afraid of something—definite?”
Definite. What would a child of three and a half consider definite, and why was she herself so sure that Maire had seen something badly, frighteningly wrong? Because she was; so sure that when she thought about it like this, the little cluster of silver and sea-green bulbs she was holding wasn’t safe in her fingers. She put it down and looked at Oliver. She said, “Yes, in her own mind.”
It wasn’t quite honest, but being honest with Oliver lately had only increased the distance between them. Oliver looked relieved. “It’ll probably turn out to be something in one of her books.”
And maybe it would; maybe the wariness, the feeling of dread weren’t justified at all this time. Elizabeth began to concentrate on her side of the tree, and stepped back at last to look at it. For an instant, with night at the windows and all the lights on, it was really Christmas Eve. The tree stood dripping and flashing in the corner, its bulbs glimmering through a mesh of silver. Even with the discarded boxes and cartons piled on the rug, it had a magical look, as though it actually had been dressed by a midnight visitor.
“Not bad,” said Oliver. “In fact, one of our better trees. I’d better see if the lights work.”
They did. Elizabeth gazed at the shining fragrant tree and thought of Maire and Jeep sleeping soundly upstairs and felt her heart tighten. She said, “I’ll do the stockings if you’ll put the presents out,” and turned away.
Constance made coffee and admired the tree and insisted on using the carpet sweeper. At ten minutes after twelve, when they were all sitting in a bemused and exhausted silence, she rose, said practically, “Well—it’s Christmas. I think I’ll say good-night,” and started for the stairs. Surprisingly, because she was not demonstrative, she answered Elizabeth’s “Merry Christmas, Constance,” with a sudden awkward kiss on the cheek.
“The same to you, Elizabeth. Try to get a good sleep, you’ll need all your energy tomorrow.”
Was she saying more than the words themselves? Elizabeth was too tired to wonder. When Constance had gone she took a last slow look around the living-room, at the two fat red socks dangling from the mantel, the piled presents, gay with ribbon and seals and mystery. Maire’s sled, leaning against the wall beside the tree, threw a long shadow; a bell on Jeep’s fire truck caught the light winkingly. She said, “I suppose we’d better get to bed, the children will think it’s morning any minute now,” and stretched out a hand to her lamp.
“Right,” said Oliver. “Thank God we don’t have to leave by way of the chimney.” He turned out lights and locked the doors and folded a stubborn red ember under ashes in the fireplace. Elizabeth realized belatedly that he had finished and was waiting beside her chair. She said, “Oh—ready?” and stood up.
They were very close together. Oliver put his hands on her shoulders and gazed at her gently and examiningly. “Still thinking about this ‘oun’ business, aren’t you? That was a damned fool thing for Steven to say, about Maire seeing something down here to frighten her. You didn’t—” were his fingers tightening, or did she imagine it? “—take him seriously, by any chance?”
It might have been the dimness, or Oliver’s hands, or her own complete weariness that made her answer seem all at once important. Elizabeth stepped back, and was shocked at the sharpness of her own involuntary movement. She said, “It’s much too late to take anything seriously, except sleep. Coming?”
“Because,” said Oliver as though he hadn’t heard her and as though it had just
occurred to him, “Noreen will be back tomorrow night, and chances are she knows all about this thing, whatever it is.”
Yes, thought Elizabeth; almost certainly she knows—but can she be made to tell?
. . . There was a crowd gathered, and a great deal of clamor . . . was it fire? When she started forward to see, something soft and cloaking was flung over her eyes. She was not meant to see, then, she was to be kept from ever finding out—but she must find out. Elizabeth fought grimly with the softness against her face, and opened her eyes and looked into Jeep’s, two inches away.
The clamor became Maire, crying, “Daddy, Mama and Daddy, come and look! Santa Claus came!” Jeep retrieved the slip she had flung off and put it on the pillow beside her face again and said, nodding his head earnestly, “You put this on, Mama.” He sounded cajoling and patient, as though he had been saying it for some time, and Elizabeth sat up sleepily against her pillow.
It was Christmas morning.
In the other bed, Oliver stirred. Maire said triumphantly. “He’s awake. Are you awake, Daddy? Santa Claus came!”
Jeep was making small trotting side trips; a stocking and one black pump joined the heap on Elizabeth’s pillow. With each delivery he said hopefully, “You put this on, Mama,” and nodded and went off for more.
Oliver lifted his head, glanced at the clock and looked wryly across at Elizabeth. “Ten of six. Good God.”
“Not bad for Christmas morning.”
“Don’t you think so?” Oliver struggled up on his elbows and took a wider survey of the situation. After a moment he said kindly, “Why don’t you children go back to bed for a while?”
Elizabeth couldn’t help laughing at the gaping faces. “Daddy’s joking. With tears in his eyes.”
“Worth a try,” said Oliver. “Oh well. Maire, hand me my bathrobe like a good girl. Look at Jeep, he’s got your mother practically dressed.”
The children finished opening their presents at last. Rubber animals and books and a Raggedy Ann, jack-in-the-boxes, Maire’s set of tiny dishes lay mingled and for the moment unfought-over in a sea of ribbon and paper. Elizabeth and Oliver, fortified by coffee, looked at each other and smiled briefly. The children’s Christmas had been a success, so much so that they were lost and far-away in delight, and unaware of being watched at all.
Constance came briskly in with a wastebasket, and Elizabeth said quickly, “Oh, let’s leave it for a while, Constance, it looks so lavish.” Constance sat down again with a faintly pained smile, but the wastebasket stayed there in a comer, waiting soberly to dispose of Christmas, to swallow up the festive litter.
“Shall we open ours?” Elizabeth always felt ridiculously shy and embarrassed at this point. When Oliver nodded she said, “You and Constance start. I’ll get more coffee for all of us.”
The morning was full of pale sunshine, the kitchen smelled pleasantly of coffee. Elizabeth groped for cigarettes in the pocket of her housecoat and waited for the percolator to heat. She was pouring the first cup when there was a bubbling shout from the living-room, Maire’s usual spilling-over of amusement, “Daddy, you look funny in that!”
“Well, I don’t know,” Oliver was saying solemnly. “Think it’s a little low-cut for me?”
Elizabeth put the percolator down and went inside to find Oliver eyeing a tumble of ice-green silk. She said, “That’s for Constance. How on earth did I—” and behind her Constance said mildly, “I think I’ve got something of Oliver’s here, haven’t I?”
She held up a pair of ivory-backed military brushes, and looked at the card in her lap. Elizabeth looked too, and saw her own slanting dark-blue hand: “Constance from E.” Just as the card with the nightgown had said, “Oliver from E.”
She had made a mistake, even though the boxes and the wrappings were so different. But she watched, wondering, vaguely disturbed, while Constance undid a long narrow package. The card, slipped under green satin ribbon, said in Elizabeth’s writing, “Constance from Oliver.”
Constance pulled back tissue. There was a full pause, and then she said with forced animation, “Aren’t they pretty. And very warm too, I imagine.”
It was a pair of black crocheted wool slippers, frankly giddy, with tiny sequinned tassels. You might, thought Elizabeth remotely, as easily imagine Constance in a G-string. She put her hands to cheeks gone suddenly hot and said, “Oh, God. Then what did I give Noreen?”
They were both staring at her, Constance politely puzzled, Oliver incredulous. Even the children had noticed the sudden flat silence and were sitting back on their heels, faces turned up. Oliver looked down at the presents at his feet, and then at Constance, and lastly, cautiously, at Elizabeth. “Had we better just—change?”
“I suppose so.” Her voice sounded harsh and a little desperate. “Go ahead, why don’t you?”
She reached the sanctuary of the kitchen; aimlessly, because she was there, she began to heat the coffee again. What a fool she had been to think that Christmas would go unmarked. And what a twisted, what an utterly malicious thing for someone to do—to scramble the cards on the presents she had wrapped and put away with such care. No damage, no violence. Just one more thing to bring that baffled look to Oliver’s eyes, one more small irrelevance to make her seem—irresponsible. To let her know that she was hated.
Oliver found her there, staring fiercely and blindly ahead of her. He closed the door behind him, and said quietly, “Take it easy. We’re all straightened out now, and no harm done. Come and open your things.”
“In a minute.” Elizabeth turned her back and focussed on the percolator with difficulty, humiliated beyond measure that she should have this defeating impulse to cry merely because Oliver was there. The impulse passed, and she said almost conversationally, “That mix-up was deliberate, you know. I did every card along with the present it went on, just so nothing like this would happen.”
Behind her, Oliver was silent. When she turned he said quickly, “You know the old thing about the best-laid plans. But come on—”
“Wait,” said Elizabeth; because it was Christmas, she went on hoping in spite of Oliver’s eyes. “The cards were all in order when I put the presents in the corner cabinet, Oliver. I know that as well as I know I’m standing here. Whatever happened to them happened after I put them away.”
“The cards weren’t attached,” Oliver pointed out. “Maybe they slithered around—”
“—and slithered back onto other packages, like the well-trained cards they are?” said Elizabeth with scorn.
There was a flat, uncompromising silence. “Look here,” said Oliver, calmly, reasonably. “Are you suggesting that someone deliberately changed them around? I know it’s early for me to be up, but—what’s the point?”
“This,” said Elizabeth, facing him suddenly, “just—this. So that you won’t believe me and we can stand here like this, not liking each other very much. It’s foolproof, isn’t it, Oliver? It happens every time.”
“Elizabeth—”
“Jeep’s crying,” she said unsteadily. “Go and see what’s the matter, can’t you?”
Ten minutes later she was back in the living-room with Oliver and Constance, opening her presents, thanking them both. Oliver had a new watchfulness, and she had to endure her cousin’s gray unwinking gaze. She tried on the wide tailored white-gold bracelet from Oliver and rubbed Constance’s frozen cologne on her wrists and pretended pleasure. Underneath, her anger and shock pounded as steadily as her pulse.
How could they both believe—as they obviously did—that she had mixed up their presents through carelessness? You could only do a thing like that if you were hopelessly drunk, or under the influence of—
Oh, thought Elizabeth, cold and aware.
The six missing sleeping pills. Suppose, for instance, that she had come back, tired and nervous, from a shopping trip; suppose she had taken one or even two of the soothing little things and lain down to sleep. Suppose she had not been able to sleep, in spite of the comfortable haze, a
nd had gotten up to wrap presents instead. . . .
Was that it, was that to be the explanation? Elizabeth was suddenly and furiously angry. To be at the mercy of hidden manipulation, to have her husband and her cousin go along with it so blindly—it was the only excuse she could find, later, for what she did next.
Maire was piling her tiny dishes absorbedly on the floor, chanting the ingredients of a pie. “Some mustard and some sugar and some salt and some applesauce and some Dutch Cleanser, that will be a lovely pie.”
“Lovely indeed,” said Elizabeth. “Shall we ask the oun to dinner, maybe?”
It was as though she had released a spring. Maire dropped the dishes with a clatter and went plummeting into her lap; after one wild glance around her and a gasped “Oun in the house?” she buried her face in Elizabeth’s throat.
What should have been triumph turned instead to shame and a deep worry over the child’s violently pounding heart. Elizabeth stroked the pink-gold curls, hating herself, and said, “It’s all right, darling, there’s no oun. There’s nothing here to hurt you, Maire, you know we’d never let anything hurt you. . . .”
Maire had seen something outside the house, then. And was terrified of its getting in.
She lifted her head above Maire’s, and saw Constance’s concerned face and Oliver’s frown. Oliver said slowly, “I see what you mean. Noreen will be back tonight, let’s not forget to ask her.”
But Noreen wasn’t back that night, or the next day. And Elizabeth, who had thought she was taxed to capacity, began to know a new and sharper fear.
Eleven
THE SNOW BEGAN at a little before three o’clock on the day after Christmas. It was gentle and tentative at first, a faint starring against the down-drawn light. By three-thirty the afternoon was white and whirling with it, and Elizabeth, watching at the living-room windows, found that it gave an edge to her growing uneasiness.
The Iron Cobweb Page 8