yesterday.’
‘What mutual friend? What has Eric been up to? What friend?’
‘I cannot recollect at the moment,’ said Godfrey. ‘I have long given up interest in Eric’s affairs.’
‘You should keep your memory in training,’ she said. ‘Try going over in your mind each night before retiring everything you have done during the day. I must say I am astonished that Eric did not call upon me.
‘He didn’t come near us,’ said Godfrey, ‘so why should he come to see you?’
‘At least,’ she said, ‘I should have thought he knew what side his bread’s buttered.’
‘Ha, you don’t know Eric. Fifty-six years of age and an utter failure. You ought to know, Lettie, that men of that age and type can’t bear the sight of old people. It reminds them that they are getting on. Ha, and he’s feeling his age, I hear. You, Lettie, may yet see him under. We may both see him under.’
Lying in bed later that night, it seemed clear to Dame Lettie that Eric must really after all be the man behind the telephone calls. He would not ring himself lest she should recognize his voice. He must have an accomplice. She rose and switched on the light.
Dame Lettie sat in her dressing-gown at dead of night and re-filled her fountain-pen. While she did so she glanced at the page she had just written. She thought, How shaky my writing looks! Immediately, as if slamming a door on it, she put the thought out of sight. She wiped the nib of her pen, turned over the sheet and continued, on the back, her letter to Eric:
… and so, having heard of your having been in London these past six weeks, & your not having informed me, far less called, does, I admit, strike me as being, to say the least, discourteous. I had wished to consult you on certain matters relating to your Mother. There is every indication that we shall have to arrange for her to be sent to the nursing home in Surrey of which I told you when last I saw you.
She laid down her pen, withdrew one of the fine hair-pins from her thin hair, and replaced it. Perhaps, she thought, I should take an even more subtle line with Eric. Her face puckered in folds under the desk-lamp. Two thoughts intruded simultaneously. One was: I am really very tired; and the other: I am not a bit tired, I am charging ahead with great energy. She lifted the pen again and continued to put the wavering marks across the page.
I have recently been making some slight adjustments in my own affairs, about which I could have wished to consult you had you seen fit to inform me of your recent visit to London.
Was that subtle enough? No, it was too subtle, perhaps, for Eric.
These
That is good, she thought, that is subtle. Eric had got out of the war somehow. She continued,
I could have wished for discussions with you, but I am an old woman and quite realize that you, who are nearing the end of your prime, must be full of affairs. Mr Merrilees is now drawing up the amended Will and I would not wish to further interfere with existing arrangements. Nevertheless, I could have wished to discuss them with you had you seen fit to present yourself during the six weeks of your recent stay in London, of which I did not hear until after your return.
That ought to do it, she thought. He will come wheezing down from Cornwall as fast as the first train will carry him. If he is the guilty man he will know that I know. No one, she thought, is going to kill me through fear. And she fell to wondering again who her enemy could be. She fell to doubting whether Eric had it in him … whether he had the financial means to employ an accomplice. Easier, she thought, for Mortimer. Anyway, she thought, it must be someone who is in my Will. And so she sealed and stamped her letter to Eric, placed it on the tray in the hall, took a tot of whisky and went to bed. Her head moved slowly from side to side on the pillow, for she could not sleep. She had caught a chill down there in the study. A cramp seized her leg. She had a longing for a strong friend, some major Strength from which to draw. Who can help me? she thought. Godfrey is selfish, Charmian feeble, Jean Taylor is bedridden. I can talk to Taylor, but she has not got the strength I need. Alec Warner … shall I go to see Alec Warner? I never got strength from him. Neither did Taylor. He has not got the strength one needs.
Suddenly she sprang up. Something had lightly touched her cheek. She switched on the light. A spider on her pillow, large as a penny, quite still, with its brown legs outspread! She looked at it feverishly then pulled herself together to try to pick it off the pillow. As she put forth her hand another, paler, spider-legged and fluffy creature on the pillow where the bed-lamp cast a shade caught her sight. ‘Gwen!’ she screams. ‘Gwen!’
But Gwen is sleeping soundly. In a panic Dame Lettie plucks at the large spider. It proves to be a feather. So does the other object.
She dropped her head on her pillow once more. She thought: My old pillows, I shall get some new pillows.
She put out the light and the troubled movements of the head began again. Whom, she thought, can I draw Strength from? She considered her acquaintances one by one — who among them was tougher, stronger than she?
Tempest, she thought at last. I shall get Tempest Sidebottome to help me. Tempest, her opponent in forty years’ committee-sitting, had frequently been a painful idea to Dame Lettie. Particularly had she resented Tempest’s bossy activeness and physical agility at Lisa’s funeral. Strangely, now, she drew strength from the thought of the woman. Tempest Sidebottome would settle the matter if anyone could. Tempest would hunt down the persecutor. Dame Lettie’s head settled still on the pillow. She would go over to Richmond tomorrow and talk to Tempest. After all, Tempest was only seventy-odd. She hoped her idiotic husband Ronald would be out. But in any case, he was deaf. Dame Lettie turned at last to her sleep, deriving a half-dreamt success from the strength of Tempest Sidebottome as from some tremendous mother.
‘Good morning, Eric,’ said Charmian as she worked her way round the breakfast table to her place.
‘Are you, my dear? What has happened to confuse you?’ said Charmian.
Godfrey sensed the start of bickering, so he looked up from his paper and said to his wife, ‘Lettie was telling me last night that it is a great aid to memory to go through in one’s mind each night the things which have happened in the course of the day.’
‘Why,’ said Charmian, ‘that is a Catholic practice. We are always recommended to consider each night our actions of the past day. It is an admirable —’
‘Not the same thing,’ said Godfrey, ‘at all. You are speaking exclusively of one’s moral actions. What I’m talking about are things which have happened. It is a great aid to memory, as Lettie was saying last night, to memorize everything which has occurred in one’s experience during the day. Your practice, which you call Catholic, is, moreover, common to most religions. To my mind, that type of examination of conscience is designed to enslave the individual and inhibit his freedom of action. Take yourself for example. You only have to appeal to psychology —’
‘To whom?’ said Charmian cattily, as she took the cup which Mrs Pettigrew passed to her.
