“Just hold on,” Sylvia said into the receiver. To him, “What?”
“When she said ‘If it’s convenient?’ I mean, does convenience enter into it?”
“Hold on, Mrs. Ryan.” Sylvia put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Are you going to speak to her or not?”
“I mean, it’s a pretty hollow concept, convenience,” he said. “After ten years. She’s known where I was, this past decade.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’ve been here, haven’t I, at Buckingham Avenue? Where’s she been? God only knows.”
“You could have found out,” Sylvia said. “I daresay it wouldn’t have been beyond you. You could have made enquiries.”
“Oh, I could.” He upended the head and peered inside it. “But they might have led somewhere. Then I’d have had to take action. Then where would I be?”
“Mrs. Ryan,” Sylvia said, “I don’t think he wants to talk to you.” There was a pause. “She says she must know from you.” She held the receiver towards him. “I’ll go out of the room if you like.”
He shook his head.
“He shakes his head,” Sylvia said.
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Colin banged the head down on the table. “There’s nothing to say. There’s nothing left. It was a delusion.”
Sylvia bowed her head over the receiver, and like a confidential secretary repeated the message. She listened. “I’ll tell him.” She put the phone down gently, and watched it for a moment, as if she thought it might ring again. “She says to tell you, that’s exactly as she supposed.”
He knew, by the careful repetition of the phrase, that the words were Isabel’s, exact; he knew, too, that they’d be the last she’d speak to him, directly or indirectly, the last ever. “Drink your drink,” Sylvia said. “I don’t mind if you have a cigarette. I know you’ve got some in your jacket pocket.”
“I’m overwhelmed,” he said.
He straightened up from the awkward posture he had assumed, crouching over the low table, and sat down at one end of the long sofa. Sylvia sat down at the other. She crossed her legs carefully, as if she expected to sit for some time. Both looked straight before them, like people in an airport lounge who fear that the journey ahead will be time enough for them to become acquainted.
Presently Sylvia shivered. “The central heating’s gone off again,” she said.
“There’s something wrong with the time clock. I expect Alistair’s been moving the tappets.”
“He must be doing it by remote control then, he hasn’t been in for days.”
“No, I’ve not seen him either.”
Their voices were carefully neutral and flat; polite people, feeling their way into conversation, thrown together in cramped accommodation by mere chance and the necessity of having to travel at all.
“Sometimes I think I’d like to run away,” Sylvia said. “If kids can do it, why not parents? I can’t cope with this place.”
“Everything seems to be falling apart, doesn’t it?”
“Did you know the washer’s packed up altogether? The only thing to do is to go and leave it all behind. It’s like, what do you call it? The House of Usher.”
“It’s like the house of Atreus,” Colin said. “Now there’s a coincidence for you. You eat this pie, and it just happens to contain your children.”
Sylvia turned on him. “You’re doing it again.”
“You started it, with the House of Usher, I’m only putting a word in.”
Sylvia jumped to her feet. Her face contorted with anger. She ran out of the room. Alarmed, he sped after her. He caught up with her at the foot of the stairs and threw his arms around her waist, swinging her round. The small effort put him out of breath; he would be no good these days on the squash court. Sylvia struggled; he lifted her almost off her feet and dumped her down on the third stair. “Don’t move,” he said. “Let’s have this out. If we don’t straighten it out now then we never will.” He took her left wrist in a secure grip and sat down beside her. It was a tight fit. Sylvia had been expanding lately. They were red in the face; emotion and the moment’s struggle had knocked the breath out of them both.
“You know the House of Usher?” Sylvia said, when she recovered herself. “I saw it on TV. It’s better than TV, living here.”
“No licence fee, only the mortgage. No adverts to interrupt you.”
“I’d be glad of interruption at times.”
“Did you throw out my photograph?” Colin said.
“Yes.”
“I suppose you think you did it for my own good.”
“No. I did it for my own.”
“Thanks a million.”
“That was her, wasn’t it? It’s all the same woman.”
“Yes, I’ve often thought that.”
