Shape of Snakes

'Have I ever broken my word? Do I lie?'

Maybe not, I thought, but I might prefer a fev white lies and broken promises to the painful recognition that she would rather I had been a son. 'The only promise I made,' I reminded her, 'was never to mention Annie Butts in front of you or Sam again, and the fact that you're now interpreting my keeping of that promise as deceit is hardly my fault.'

'Then how did your father get caught up in it?'

'In what?'

'Whatever it is you're doing ... the reason you chose to come here despite the trouble I went to to find you a house in Devon.'

'I didn't make the promise to Dad,' I said, 'and he wouldn't have accepted it if I had. He offered to help me before Sam and I left England, and he's been a tower of strength ever since. As a matter of fact, he's the one who spotted the ad for this place in the Sunday Times and phoned me in Cape Town to suggest we rent it for the summer.'

Another silence, rather longer this time. She wanted to ask me why-much as Sam had done last night-but she was embarrassed to admit just how far she'd been excluded from our lives and decisions. Instead she adopted an injured air. 'I hope you haven't turned Sam's sons against him as well,' she said. ''That really would be unforgivable.'

'I haven't turned anyone against him,' I answered, searching the cupboards for a jug.

'Oh, for goodness' sake!' she said sharply. 'Don't be so naive. When you persuaded your father to take your side against your husband's, you effectively set them at each other's throats.'

'It was never a question of taking sides,' I said, finding a glass carafe, 'only a question of research. In any case you took Sam's side against mine, so Dad thought it reasonable for at least one of my parents to redress the balance.'

'I did it for your own good. You were behaving like a spoiled child.'

'How odd,' I said with a laugh. 'That's exactly what Dad said about Sam.'

'That's nonsense. Your father and Sam used to get on like a house on fire until you insisted on jeopardizing your marriage over that wretched Negro.' She paused. 'Dad's worked hard to restore their relationship, which is why it's so unkind of you to persuade him to go behind Sam's back like this.'

I cocked an ear to the rumble of relaxed conversation outside. 'They're certainly not at each other's throats yet, so let's hope you're worrying unnecessarily.'

'For how much longer? You can't have forgotten how upset Sam was in the wake of that woman's death. What on earth induced you to raise the whole sorry business so soon after his coronary? Do you want to cause another one?'

I filled the carafe with water and put it on the tray. 'It doesn't seem to have worried him so far,' I said mildly, 'but feel free to ask him yourself if you don't believe me.' I lifted the tray. 'That's everything, I think. Could you bring the lemon?'

'Is that the only reason they're still together? Because your father has a sense of duty?'

I shook my head.

'What else is there?'

'Love,' I said. 'He's a very affectionate man and he never gives up on anyone.'

'Like father like daughter then?'

I turned to look at him. 'Is that how you see me?'

'Of course. How else would I see you?'

We talked about everything under the sun except Annie Butts, yet her presence was powerfully felt-in my father's refusal to meet my mother's eyes, in Sam's obvious discomfort every time the subject of Dorchester was raised, in my mother's dreadful attempts at flirtatiousness to reestablish a hold on her menfolk. When it became obvious that I was de trap as far as she was concerned, I took the hint and vanished inside to make lunch. Ten minutes later a monumental row erupted on the terrace. I caught it only in snatches but so much heat was generated, particularly between my parents, that their rapidly rising voices carried through to the kitchen.

It does me no credit to say I enjoyed every minute of it. But I did. It was the first of my petty little revenges and I raised a silent cheer when my father told my mother it was a pity her life was so bereft of interest that her only joy came from stirring up trouble within her family.

The silence that followed my reappearance on the terrace with trays of salad was interminable. I remember thinking there was a multitude of wasps that summer. I watched them drone in their black and yellow stripes around the spirit-sugared glasses, and wondered if there was a nest nearby that needed destroying. I also remember thinking that wasps were less harmful than people, and that a sting was a bagatelle compared with the poison of a long-suppressed grievance.

'Why does your father stay with her?' Sam asked me in bed that night.

'Once he signs up to something he always sees it through.'

Letter from Dr. Joseph Elias, psychiatrist

at the Queen Victoria Hospital, Hong Kong-dated 1980

QUEEN VICTORIA HOSPITAL

Hong Kong

Dept. of Psychiatry

Mrs. M. Ranelagh