In Certain Circles (25 page)

Seeming not to hear, Lily looked down and balanced her empty glass lightly between her fingers. Zoe went to what used to be her father's study and from there, leaving the telephone in the hall for incoming messages, rang to put off the evening's guests. Lily had eaten out at some new place the night before, she said, and was laid low with food poisoning. Yes, what a pity on her birthday! Apologising for the postponement of the dinner, accepting sympathy for Lily with the skill of a consummate liar, she carved some lines in the soft wood of the desk with a long thumbnail. She pressed her fingers so hard against her forehead that small blotches appeared on the white skin when she took her hand away. That left Tom, who had written to ask Anna to marry him.

In the hall, the telephone rang. Skidding out to answer it, she bumped into the doorframe clumsily. Lily appeared at the top of the stairs when she had her hand on the receiver and prompted her with a series of tiny nods.

It was Russell. ‘The flat's empty, but there's fresh food in the fridge—milk, chicken, cheese. There's fruit in a bowl, and flowers.'

‘Then—what does that mean?' Zoe asked vacantly.

‘I wish to God I knew. I suppose someone might have opened the place up to welcome her back. They might have got this stuff in and spread the flowers about.'

‘We should have done that,' Zoe cried.

‘No messages?'

‘Nothing. Dead silence.' She amended, ‘Nothing. The phone hasn't rung. What are you going to do? Was there a letter for you?'

‘Yes. I'll leave a note for anyone who comes in, asking them to call us. We'll have to notify the police.'

‘Oh. Is that necessary?' Zoe asked in a small voice. If you agreed to think it might be all over, it might be all over. ‘Is that wise?' she murmured, afraid of being overheard.

‘I don't know what's wise,' he said with simple helplessness. ‘Is Lily all right? When will Stephen be in?'

‘Lily's okay.' She glanced at her watch, but was unable to understand it. At length she said, ‘Soon. He'll be in soon. Anna was supposed to collect him.'

Lily had come quietly downstairs and was almost beside her when she replaced the receiver on the stand. ‘I looked through a pile of photographs and found a few of Anna. For the police,' she added, as she passed the thin wad to Zoe.

Unnerved by Lily's calm and appalling forethought, by the cold squares of paper, Zoe trembled unobtrusively, and closed her teeth together. She said conversationally, ‘I haven't put Tom off yet.'

The two women stood waiting and listening. ‘I'm going to make some coffee and sandwiches,' said the one whose house this now was.

‘Are you?' Zoe was surprised, but people had to occupy themselves. ‘I'll help.' Yet she remained suspended attentively on the spot, swaying on her feet.

‘Did you know?' Lily stood quite turned away from her, like someone miming suffering and reticence and shock.

‘No. I knew nothing. I knew nothing.' With sudden intensity she disclaimed any part in a conspiracy.

Lily listened with head bent, breathing through her mouth, nervously touching her parted lips, then having heard, went straight to the kitchen, where she and Zoe made themselves resourceful in the matter of sandwich fillings.

Half an hour later the front door crashed open and they ran to meet Russell. ‘Any news?'

‘I rang the police from her flat,' he said.

Zoe told him, ‘I haven't put Tom off yet. I suppose he ought to know.'

Haggardly, Russell's eyes turned from his wife, from his sister, to the telephone.

‘You wished him luck,' Zoe said in a hard voice, and instantly went to his side, putting an arm round his waist and leaning her face against him.

‘No,' he said, gently releasing her.

‘You only told me that?' she asked, almost joyfully, tears coming to her eyes, and Russell slid a hand across her shoulders.

Moving away, he said, ‘They wanted the number of her car. They asked me to describe her. Someone's coming round to collect the letters and some photographs.'

‘Lily thought of that. She found some.'

They walked about from room to room, passing and re-passing each other. Once, when Russell approached her, Lily said, ‘It's the end, isn't it? Whatever happens.'

‘It's the end.'

For no reason, she gave him her hand, and they stood like two strangers taking a formal farewell.

Zoe rang Tom and urged him to go home to look for a note from Anna. After that, he was to come immediately to Russell's house. She told him nothing else.

The police car pulled up and two huge men disappeared into the study with Russell. They asked questions, read and confiscated the letters, looked at Anna's living face, made non-committal remarks and went away.

Carrying in a tray from the kitchen, Zoe heard Russell reporting on their visit. Lily poured and distributed the coffee. ‘I'd forgotten about it.'

‘She might have stopped the car at any point on the way,' Russell said. ‘There are bush tracks and old roads leading off the highway everywhere. If she left the car out of sight and then walked away…' The telephone rang and he ran to answer it. ‘It's Stephen, Zo. You talk to him.'

‘So early!' she said in amazement, then glanced at her watch and saw it was quite late.

In the cosy dark angle of the stairs the black telephone on its table and the comfortable upholstered chair waited. Zoe drew near it with a sort of horror, superstitiously convinced that the spreading of the news about Anna made its reversal less and less possible.

‘Stephen…Darling…'

‘I can scarcely hear you,' Stephen shouted. ‘I'm still at the station. It's like an echo chamber. There's a fearful racket going on. This is the
fifth
phone I've tried. All the others have had their guts ripped out by teenage morons.'

‘Stephen,
listen
. Come home straight away. To Russell's, I mean. Something's happened to Anna.'

‘What?' he shouted. ‘This is a bloody awful connection. You'll have to listen to me, if you can hear. We're late because Anna read the departures indicator instead of the arrivals and went to the wrong platform. Not like her. Then I waited and eventually she turned up. Then, being helpful, as we were getting into the car, she lifted my briefcase and some ring she wears snapped and broke. We found the metal part, but the stone's missing and Anna's out there now in the traffic, getting run over, searching around in the gravel for the chip of ruby or whatever it is. Are you listening?…Can you hear me?'

Circle on circle of surprise rose and expanded in Zoe till she was only astonishment and relief listening to sounds through a black machine.

She shouted, ‘Is Anna
there
?'

‘I can hear when you raise your voice. We're late. That's why I'm ringing. She's a couple of hundred yards away, scrabbling round in the gravel at the risk of her life. I wish I'd got a taxi instead of arranging all this.'

Zoe wiped her eyes and cheeks with her bare hand and tried to stop crying. ‘I know what ring it is.'

‘I can't hear you.'

‘It's the line. Get Anna and come home. Make her drive slowly.'

‘Is anything wrong?'

‘Everything's fine.' She continued to smear tears over her cheeks.

Aware that the others had come to listen, she spun round and jumped from the chair as the call ended. ‘She's alive! She's alive, Russell! The letters must have been a mistake. She's with Stephen. They're on their way home.'

Russell leaned back against the wall with his eyes closed. Lily watched him. And while extraordinary changes were taking place in the souls of the two she left behind, Zoe searched down the side of the sofa for her handkerchief, still crying. And when she found it, she sat in a chair and cried for people, and the things that happen, and the way there seems to be no help for it.

‘Stop, Zo!' It was Lily. ‘I've made more coffee, and we'd better all have some and eat those sandwiches. But go and wash your face first, then come down. Use my powder, or anything you want.'

When she returned minutes later, Lily was alone, eating and drinking. ‘I didn't wait. I was suddenly ravenous. The condemned man…'

Zoe confessed, ‘So am I,' and helping herself, plumped down in a chair, carefully balancing cup and plate in either hand. She felt bruised all over. ‘Well then, what next, Lily?' she asked without diplomacy, when she had demolished a bacon and cream cheese sandwich.

‘That's a question! One of the announcements tonight was about going off to London for a year. I want to finish my thesis. I was going to pick up my work, and be within reach of the girls. I wouldn't smother them now. So it seems I can live without Russell. Anna thought she couldn't.'

‘Was Russell going, too?'

‘There are people he'd like to see. He sets great store by his friends, as you know.'

Avoiding her eyes, Zoe reached across to the table for another sandwich, then offered the plate to Lily.

‘He's involved in too many things to go suddenly. He knows no one's indispensable, but the idea was that I should have the time to myself to work, and see my sisters, and the girls.'

‘I see. Then—but what about Russell? Were you—in effect—leaving him?'

‘No, of course not.' Lily covered her face with her hands.

Just then Tom came in with Russell. ‘What was the panic, Zo? Russell says they're on the way from the station. Greetings, anyway. I'm early for dinner, but just in time for a drink.'

‘Oh, the panic?' To keep him at a distance from Lily, Zoe went over to him, smiling. ‘That was in case Anna forgot to go to the station. But would you be a great help now that you're lured over early? Lily and I are busy in the kitchen, and Russell has to see Stephen the minute he arrives.
Could
you go along to the shops at the junction—the second junction—to get a few things?'

Tom displayed fortitude and agreed to go. Zoe extracted Lily from the spotlight, saying that they would have to make out the list in the kitchen. There, they quickly composed Tom's task. Promised lavish drinks and rewards on his return, Tom was ushered to the door and directed to travel on a small back road to avoid the city traffic.

‘Rotten way to treat him, but we had to get rid of him before they arrive.' Zoe looked round. ‘It's my fault that he's here at all. But I thought he might have had a message.'

They drifted inside again. Russell wound up the clock. Zoe drank some coffee and finished her sandwich. Lily went upstairs to comb her hair. The doorbell rang as she came down again, and she answered it.

‘Happy birthday! Many happy returns of the day!' Anna presented her with a parcel, which she accepted unsmiling, saying nothing.

Surprised, Anna returned her unreadable look. Inside, there were restrained but strange embraces, and the welcoming party seemed disinclined to speak. As the incomprehensibly intense expressions on the waiting faces struck the two newcomers, they glanced at each other.

Stephen said, ‘She found the ring. The stone that was lost. Without even damaging her stockings.'

To the watchers, Anna appeared almost to glitter, her expression to flicker under the pressure of some about-to-be-revealed declaration. She was wearing a bare, simple, expensive black dress, a heavy silver bracelet. ‘It clicked on to the floor of the car as we climbed in. We'd given up. I was so relieved. We'd crawled all over Central Station and the parking lot on our hands and knees. Stephen was patient.'

Everyone still watched her with peculiar vigilance. No one else could be looked at.

Lily asked, ‘What ring is it, Anna?'

‘Oh,' her frankness seemed at an end. ‘It's nothing. Just a toy. Very fragile. That's why it broke so easily. I very seldom wear it.' She added, ‘I've put it away.'

‘Years ago,' Zoe said in a level voice, ‘the first Christmas we all met, Anna and Russell pulled a cracker and the ring fell out. Russell gave it to her.' She received a great look of astonishment with compassion, saying, ‘Oh, Anna!'

‘Yes, it is that ring.' Anna looked down with an appearance of unconcern. ‘It was a happy Christmas, and I'm sentimental about it. So there!' Her face bright and unclouded, she gazed at the company with a certain gaiety.

Stephen said, ‘The air-conditioning broke down in the train. Are we going home to change, Zo, or did you bring everything with you? Why did we have to come straight here? All I want is a shower.'

‘I don't know.' Zoe took his hand pleadingly while he looked at her in mystification.

Anna glanced about. ‘Is something wrong? I have a feeling we should go out and make another entrance. You're all standing there like—a jury. Executioners.'

‘We do seem to have caused a funereal silence.'

Russell went to her side. ‘Anna, I want you to come out with me. We'll go somewhere in the car. I'll explain when we're on the way.'

Her eyes read his face. She cast a wide, half-comprehending glance over the other assembled faces. ‘Why? What's happened?'

‘You'd better go with him,' Lily came in harshly. ‘He and Zoe had letters from you this afternoon. What sort of a hoax was it? Till Stephen rang from Central, we thought you were dead.'

In the following uproar, only Anna was silent, only she remained still. Her mouth opened slightly with shock. Her colour faded and she had the appearance of someone alone thinking intricately and deeply. When at last she attended again to the company, she saw there were too many people. Then she left the room and the house and went up the path to her car.

Everyone, even Lily, exclaimed. She could not be allowed to hurl herself away from them. But Russell had followed without waiting for advice, and had overtaken her. Within seconds, the car moved off.