At Death's Door (2 page)

“No problem. Pat's a teacher. We both love children.”

“Becky is actually nearly twenty. Though—”

“I understand.”

“When do you plan on coming?”

“Tomorrow, if that's all right by you. With the school holidays just begun, I want to make the best possible use of the time.”

“Yes . . . That will be fine. Shall we just expect you when we see you?”

“That's right. With our car it isn't wise to be too specific. Maybe early evening. But tell your wife:
no preparations.
The last thing I want to be is any trouble, and
Pat's idea of a perfect holiday is to be well away from any and everybody.”

“Well, till then, then.”

“Looking forward to meeting you—brother!”

Cordelia laughed gaily and rang off.

Becky was quiet now, sitting with a favorite book of pictures that she flicked endlessly over, occasionally giving little whimpers of pleasure. Roderick sat beside Caroline on the sofa, and they talked quietly.

“She asked whether they could camp on the lawn. I didn't see why not.”

“No reason at all. They?”

“There's a boyfriend.”

“Inevitably, I suppose, seeing she's Myra's daughter. She probably has a whole string of young men in train.”

“Her voice is certainly attractive. Clear, girlish. Not at all like Myra's, though, now I come to think about it. Myra's was very intense, with cello overtones.”

“Yes, that's how I remember her stage voice. With more than a touch of the viper, too—though of course she
was
playing Goneril.”

“The stage voice and the offstage voice are pretty much the same, I think. She isn't one of those actresses with two distinct personalities. When I met her, she was a very intense young lady, with very little sense of humor.”

“The girl didn't sound like that?”

“No, not at all. She called me ‘brother' in a way that showed she relished the humor of the situation.”

“Well, I'm glad she could see it. If my mother had been abandoned with me as a tiny baby, I don't know that I would see much humor in the situation.”

“He didn't abandon her, he simply broke off the affair. That was his right, just as much as it would have been hers had it been she who wanted out. It was Myra who
refused all support for the child. And it was Myra who took the story to the newspapers.”

“And it was your father who wrote that book. . . . Oh, dear, let's not quarrel about old wrongs. I'm quite willing to admit that Myra was no Tess of the D'Urbervilles. When did Cordelia say she would be coming?”

“Tomorrow, actually. But she said to make absolutely no preparations for her.”

“But we
must
give them dinner . . . Damn, the commodore's coming for sherry.”

“Darling, she said no preparations. Anyway, the commodore has an eye for a pretty girl.”

“The commodore's lady wife will be with him. The only eye she has for a pretty girl is the evil eye. Oh, well, it will all work out all right if we don't fuss. I just hope Isobel doesn't descend on us in the near future for one of her periodic visits. It would be just like her to choose the most inconvenient time. And she's due for a tour of inspection—to see we're not neglecting her precious property. Not to worry; we'll cope. But how would Isobel react to the idea of a new sister?”

Later that night, in bed, Caroline said: “You're thoughtful. What are you thinking about? The prospect of acquiring a sister?”

“No. Though I hope she's more congenial than Isobel. It's been nagging away in my mind that there was something—I don't know—something wrong about that telephone conversation. I just can't pin down what it was.”

“I expect it's the sense of—what does Ibsen call it?—the younger generation banging on the door,” said Caroline. “Since we don't have any . . . normal children, we're a bit cut off from young people.”

“Myra once played Hilde Wangel,” said Roderick. “I should think she was absolutely fearsome, driving poor old Solness up that bloody tower. . . . But no, it wasn't that. I expect when I meet the girl I'll remember what it was.”

W
HY, CAROLINE WONDERED,
do naval officers so often carry about with them a faint whiff of the bogus?

She was sipping sherry and making polite conversation about the roses with Commodore Critchley and his wife, Daisy, and all the time her mind was far away, as it tended to be on social occasions that had more to do with politeness than with pleasure.

It was true. Almost all the naval men she had known (she'd met quite a few through her father) had had it: a phony heartiness, a cultivated lecherousness, or a suspect suggestion of dreamy remoteness that probably came from reading too much Conrad. She rather thought there had been something bogus about Lord Mountbatten, and probably Nelson, too.

“Yes, we have had a vintage year, too,” she said, “so I suppose I must have got the hang of pruning at last. The only thing I regret about having so many roses is the thorns. I never can teach Becky to be careful. She finds them so pretty, and it always ends in tears.”

The commodore smiled a smile of studied understanding. He was chairman of the board of governors at Roderick's school. There was no particular reason for this: the Critchleys had no handicapped child, nor did the commodore show any particular interest in the children at the school or in ways of helping them and their parents cope with their disabilities. It was just that that sort of job tended to gravitate toward retired middle-class people who had time on their hands and who needed to feel socially useful. Unfortunately, the situation demanded that courtesies be shown and returned. The Cotterels and the Critchleys really didn't have much in common. Caroline particularly disliked being treated as a sexually desirable object—which she felt sure she no longer was, and certainly not to him. The commodore liked bust, and in his lady wife he had gotten it.

“At least the summer seems to be improving now,” said Caroline, still on her social autopilot. “It makes such a difference if it's a bit warm. Particularly now that we can't go abroad anymore.”

“Ah, yes.” The commodore looked at Roderick. “Your father.”

“That's right. We feel we can't leave him with anyone else—and the cost of hiring someone full-time for two or three weeks would in any case be enormous.”

“Sad. Because the old gentleman lived a lot abroad himself, didn't he?” said Daisy Critchley in her metallic voice.

“Yes, he did. Particularly after the war, when we children were grown up and he had no . . . family ties. He had a flat in Highgate, and he came back there to write. I think he did that because his books were almost always set in England and he needed to be among the physical objects and the places he was describing. But he wrote them very fast, having made masses of notes while he was
apparently idling away his time in Italy or wherever. And as soon as he'd finished the book, he'd hand it over to his agent, and then he'd take off again.”

“I sometimes think he'd be happier now,” said Caroline, “in some Mediterranean village, with some old peasant woman in black to look after him.”

“Why don't you investigate the possibility?” asked the commodore.

“Because as soon as I think about it I realize that happiness just doesn't enter into it. Neither happiness nor misery nor any other big emotion. Best let him have his last years in dignity, with faces around him that he's used to.”

“The feeling does you credit,” said the commodore, heartily and falsely.

They were interrupted by the doorbell. Becky, who had been watching television in the corner with the sound turned down low, jumped up and showed interest. Caroline went over to her.

“This will be our campers,” she said, and she and Becky followed her husband into the hall so that they could all meet their new relations away from the hard, bright eyes of the commodore's lady.

There was time for a brief handshake all around in the rather dismal hallway that no sort of lighting could render welcoming. Caroline got no impression more specific than that of a tall boy and a short girl, both a bit travel stained. Then they had to troop back into the sitting room.

“This is Cordelia, Roderick's half sister,” said Caroline brightly but casually. “And her boyfriend.”

The commodore had sprung up and was doing his very-much-a-lady's-man routine, but Caroline could see the calculation in his eyes. Half sister? They had met Roderick's real sister. They probably knew that his father had been married twice, but Roderick and Isobel were
children of his
second
marriage. And this young thing was his
half
sister. Then . . .

Daisy Critchley gave her husband a barely perceptible nudge, and Roderick busied himself getting the visitors drinks. Pat sat down, quite relaxed in a remote sort of way, and asked for a beer. Cordelia said she'd just have a fruit juice. Becky sat down on the sofa beside Cordelia and seemed to be quite happy, as she often was with new arrivals, just to look at her and take her in. More covertly, Caroline was doing the same. This was her first opportunity to look at the newcomer properly.

Her first reaction was one of shock, that Cordelia was not at all good-looking. Second glances made her revise that judgment slightly. She was dumpy, certainly—whereas Myra was tall, or had seemed so onstage. Cordelia's was sort of puppy fat, but retained well beyond the puppy-fat stage. Nevertheless, there was a residual prettiness in the face, plump though it was, and it looked from the faintly bedraggled hair as if Cordelia simply did not care to do much about her looks.

Pat was a beanpole boy, dark haired, with a trim beard and distant hazel eyes. It disturbed Caroline to realize that she was finally disapproving of a relationship in which the woman was the older partner. What an odd survival of popular prejudice! But Pat could hardly be more than twenty-two or -three, whereas Cordelia was certainly twenty-seven. Yet, right from this first moment, Caroline sensed in Pat a sort of stillness that made him the more mature of the two.

The commodore was at his most avuncular. He was adept at small talk, and in situations like this he would use it to learn what he wanted to know.

“I don't think we've seen you here at Maudsley before, have we, young lady?” he asked, bending forward.

“No, this is my first visit.”

“Then you must see plenty of Sussex while you're here, eh, Roderick? There are some wonderful walks in the neighborhood. Got a car, have you?”

“Yes—we've got an old jalopy.”

“Good. Plenty of lovely drives, too. Only problem at this time of year is keeping away from the tourists. Not the best time of year to choose, frankly.”

“Pat is a teacher, in a primary school. So really we don't have much choice.”

“Ah yes, I see. . . . So this year you decided to visit your brother.”

Cordelia flashed him a brilliant smile. It said: I know you are fishing, and I know what you want to find out, and I may decide to tell you, and then again I may not. When she smiled like that, Caroline thought, she was almost a beauty.

“I'm afraid I'm making use of Roderick and Caroline,” said Cordelia, speaking tantalizingly slowly in her musical voice. “They have information, papers, that I need. . . . I'm writing a book about my mother.”

“About your mother?”

Pat put him out of his misery.

“Cordelia's mother is Myra Mason, the actress.”

The commodore's social manner slipped slightly. His mouth fell open. Daisy Critchley, Caroline thought, had guessed already. Now she took over, her hard social manner substituting for his well-lubricated one.

“I think Fergus was away at sea when—when there was all the talk in the papers. You don't mind my mentioning it, do you, my dear?”

“Not at all. Of course not.” Caroline noticed, though, that she was fiddling with her handkerchief. Cordelia, in fact, was never still.

“Of course there is a bit of talk in the village, about the past,” Daisy Critchley went on. “But Roderick's father is
not really a personality to the locals. Not many of them read his kind of books. And almost since he moved here he's been . . . unwell.”

“That's right,” said Roderick, who had finished getting or refreshing everyone's drinks and now sat down. “It was to be his retirement home—back in England and near us. But his mind started going almost at once, and he simply couldn't cope. We moved in here to look after him. He's never been close to my sister—my other sister.”

The commodore, his avuncularity restored, leaned forward and tapped Cordelia on the knee.

“I'll say this, young lady: You're the daughter of a damn fine actress. Saw her”—he looked at Daisy—“when was it? Five, maybe six years ago, at Chichester, in
Private Lives.
Never forgotten it. Or was it
Blithe Spirit
?”

“Oh, that was
Private Lives
,” said Cordelia with enthusiasm. “It must have been eight years ago, actually. She was quite marvelous in that. All sorts of undercurrents, so you realized the play is really a forerunner of
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
I was at Kent University at the time. I went over with a group from the English Department. We were talking about it all the way home. Not often that happens with Noel Coward.”

“We saw her in
Lear
,” said Caroline. “It was rather different there. She was fearsome: it was as if she were determined not to allow this appalling monster any shred of humanity.”

“Yes. I remember she said that was the only way she could play her. She said the women's parts were all black and white in that play and that was how they had to be done. She certainly couldn't play Cordelia, and in fact she's never done
Lear
again.”