‘I wish I could find her, myself.’
TEN
‘I brought you some English mustard,’ said Auntie Pet. ‘They say English mustard in France is a prohibitive price even compared to Canadian prices.’
Harvey had slept badly after his late return from the session with the security police at Epinal. He hadn’t shaved.
‘You got home late,’ said Auntie Pet. Already, the chateau was her domain.
‘I was with the police,’ said Harvey.
‘What were you doing with them?’ she said.
‘Oh, talking and drinking.’
‘I shouldn’t hob-nob too close with them,’ she said, ‘if I were you. Keep them in their place. I must say those plain-clothes officers who escorted me here were very polite. They were useful with the suitcases, too. But I kept them in their place.’
‘I should imagine you would,’ Harvey said.
They were having breakfast in the living room which the presence of Auntie Pet somehow caused to look very shabby. She was large-built, with a masculine, military face; grey eyes which generally conveyed a warning; heavy, black brows and a head of strong, wavy, grey hair. She was sewing a piece of stuff; some kind of embroidery.
‘When I arrived,’ she said, ‘there was a crowd of reporters and photographers on the road outside the house. But the police soon got rid of them with their cars and motor-cycles. No problem.’ Her eyes rose from her sewing. ‘Harvey, you have let your house go into a state of dilapidation.’
‘I haven’t had time to put it straight yet. Only moved in a few months ago. It takes time.’
‘I think it absurd that your maid brings her baby’s washing to do in your house every day. Hasn’t she got a house of her own? Why are you taking a glass of scotch with your breakfast?’
‘I need it after spending half the night with the police.’
‘They were all right to me. I was glad of the ride. The prohibitive price of fares,’ said his aunt, as one multimillionaire to another.
‘I can well believe they were civil to you. I should hope they would be. Why shouldn’t they be?’ He looked at her solid, irreproachable shape, her admonishing face; she appeared to be quite sane; he wondered if indeed the police had been half-afraid of her. Anne-Marie was already tip-toeing around in a decidedly subdued way. Harvey added, ‘You haven’t committed any offence.’
‘Have you?’ she said.
‘No.’
‘Well, I should have said you have. It’s certainly an offence if you’re going to attack the Bible in a foreign country.’
‘The French police don’t care a damn about the Bible. It’s Effie. One of their policemen has been shot, killed, and they think she’s involved.’
‘Oh, no, not Effie,’ said Auntie Pet. ‘Effie is your wife. She is a Gotham as of now, unfortunately, whatever she was before. No Gotham would stoop to harm a policeman. The police have always respected and looked up to us. And you’re letting yourself go, Harvey. Just because your wife is not at home, there isn’t any reason to neglect to shave.’
Harvey escaped to go and shave, leaving Auntie Pet to quarrel with Anne-Marie, and walk about the grounds giving orders to the plainclothes police, whom she took for gardeners and woodsmen, for the better upkeep of shrubs and flower-beds, for the cultivation of vegetables and the felling of over-shady trees. From his bathroom window Harvey saw her finding cigarette-ends on the gravel path, and chiding the men in full spate of Canadian French. Prompted by Anne-Marie, they took it fairly well; and it did actually seem to Harvey, as he found it did to Anne-Marie, that they were genuinely frightened of her, armed though they were to the full capacity of their leather jackets.
When Harvey came down he found in the living room a batch of press-cuttings which he at first presumed to be about himself and Effie; Stewart Cowper had left them behind. But a glance at the top of the bundle showed him Edward’s face, now beardless. The cuttings were, in reality, all reviews of the play Edward had made such an amazing success in; they were apparently full of lavish praise of the new star, but Harvey put them aside for a more serene moment. Amongst some new mail, a letter from Edward was lying on the table. Edward’s name and address was written on the back of the envelope. Maybe the police hadn’t read it; maybe they had. Harvey left this aside, too, as Auntie Pet came back into the room.
‘I have something to tell you,’ she said. ‘I have come all the way from Toronto to say it. I know it is going to hurt you considerably. After all, you are a Gotham, and must feel things of a personal nature, a question of your honour. But say it I had to. Not on the telephone. Not through the mail. But face to face. Your wife, Effie, is consorting with a young man in a commune, as they call it, in the mountains of California, east of Santa Barbara if I recall rightly. I saw her myself on the television in a documentary news-supplement about communes. They live by Nature and they have a sort of religion. They sleep in bags. They —’
‘When did you see this?’
‘Last week.’
‘Was it an old film — was it live?’
‘I guess it was live. As I say, it was a news item, about a drug-investigation by the police, and they had taken this commune by surprise at dawn. The young people were all scrambling out of their bags and into their clothes. And I am truly sorry to tell you this, Harvey, but I hope you’ll take it like a man: Effie was sleeping in a double bag, a double sleeping-bag, do you understand; there was a young man right in there with her, and they got out of that bag sheer, stark naked.’
‘Are you sure it was Effie? Are you sure?’
‘I remember her well from the time she came when you were engaged, and then from the wedding, and I have the wedding-photo of you both on my piano, right there in the sitting room where I go every day. I ought to
