and thought, ‘He keeps trying to detect whatever it is he’s looking for in life.’ She admired his ability to start somewhere repeatedly; his courage; even if it was only in a cigarette case.
Soon, Laurence and Eleanor were dancing, then she saw that they sat down, and that Eleanor was talking in a confiding way; Eleanor was making small circular movements with her glass, stopping only to sigh reflectively into it before she drank, as often happens towards the end of a drinking night, when a woman confides in a man about another man.
Round the walls of the Pylon, so far as the walls could be discerned, were large gilt picture frames. Inside each, where the picture should be, was a square of black velvet, this being the Pylon’s sort of effectiveness. As she smoothed her slight feet with Ernest, so limp, over their portion of dancing-floor, Caroline caught her view of Eleanor’s head, described against one of the black squares of velvet in the background, just like a framed portrait, indistinct, in need of some touching-up.
FIVE
‘I said, “Willi, this can’t go on, it simply can not go on.”‘ Eleanor was getting maudlin. She was not a neurotic particularly, but that was not why Laurence didn’t much care for her. It was only that he rather liked the Baron, and Eleanor, though her infidelities were her own affair, had never kept very quiet about them, except to the Baron himself who never suspected them.
Laurence, gazing intently at her small gold cigarette case as if it were the book of life itself, nodded his acknowledgement of her confidences.
‘If he had been unfaithful,’ she went on, ‘I could have understood, I could have forgiven. But this obscenity — and apparently it’s been going on for years — I never suspected. Of course I always knew he was interested in diabolism and that sort of thing, but I thought it was only theory. He had all the books, and I thought like a collector you know. But apparently it’s been going on for years, the Black Masses, and they do frightful things, ask Caroline, she’ll know all about the Black Mass. I feel it’s a sort of personal insult to me personally, as if I’d found him out dabbling with a whore. And I said, “Willi, you’ve got to choose, it’s either me or these foul practices — you can’t have both.” Because I tell you, Laurence, it was an insult to my intelligence apart from everything else. He said he was amused by my attitude. Amused. I’m not melodramatic, and furthermore, I’m not religious, but I do know that the Black Mass has a profoundly evil influence truly, Laurence. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he hasn’t done something to Caroline.’
‘How d’you mean, dear?’
‘Well, I don’t know if it’s true, but I heard that she spent a night with Willi recently —’
‘Yes, he was sweet to her really. She was ill at the time. But I think that was the climax, somehow. I think she’s getting better now.’
‘But I heard that she started hearing things after that night. I heard that and you can’t help hearing things when people tell you, however unlikely.’
Laurence did not quite get the hang of this sentence, and while he was working it out Eleanor persisted, ‘Hasn’t Caroline been hearing things?’
‘About you, dear?’
‘No, voices. Spirits. Hearing —’
‘Come and dance,’ said Laurence.
This was their second attempt. She was even less steady than before, and it took him all his time to keep her upright. He said, ‘Too many people, what d’you think?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘let’s sit down and drink.’
Ernest and Caroline were already returned. Eleanor said immediately, ‘Caroline, what do you think of the Black Mass?’
Caroline’s mood had become gay and physical; she was still jiggering about with her hands in time to the music. ‘No idea,’ she answered, ‘but ask the Baron. He’s the expert, so I’m told.’ Then she remembered that Eleanor had left the Baron, so she said, ‘Laurence, stop peering at Eleanor’s cigarette case, like an old Jew looking for the carat mark.’
Laurence said, ‘I’m trying to read the motto.’
On the front of the case was a tiny raised crest. Caroline poked her head in beside Laurence’s with exaggerated curiosity. ‘A wolf’s head,’ said Laurence. ‘What’s the motto? I can’t read it.’
Laurence had given her a weak drink, but now, sipping it, she noticed this, and said to Ernest reproachfully, ‘I’m drinking lemonade, virtually. Don’t be so mean with that gin, Ernest.’
Caroline was fascinated by Eleanor’s performance. Indeed, it was only an act; the fascination of Eleanor was her entire submersion in whatever role she had to play. There did not seem to be any question of Eleanor’s choosing her part, it was forced on her, she was enslaved by it. Just now, she appeared to be under the control of liquor; but she was also and more completely under the control of her stagey act: that of a scatty female who’d been drinking: wholeheartedly, her personality was involved, so that it was impossible to distinguish between Eleanor and the personality which possessed her during those hours; as well try to distinguish between the sea and the water in it.
Caroline was fascinated and appalled. In former days, Eleanor’s mimicry was recognizable. She would change her personality like dresses according to occasion, and it had been fun to watch, and an acknowledged joke of Eleanor’s. But she had lost her small portion of detachment; now, to watch her was like watching doom. As a child Caroline, pulling a face, had been warned, ‘If you keep doing that it will stick one day.’ She felt, looking at Eleanor, that this was actually happening to the woman. Her assumed personalities were beginning to cling; soon one of them would stick, grotesque and ineradicable.
‘She’s got the Black Mass on the brain,’ Ernest was sighing.
‘So would you if you’d been living with a diabolist,’ said Eleanor, contorting her face according to her role of the moment. And she drawled, placing a hand on Caroline’s hand, looking intensely into her eyes, ‘Caroline, my poor
