‘You were with her all day.’
‘So I was with her. So what? I was sick of the tour, and I wanted to be on my own-I told you that this noon- and she had some shopping to do, and I wanted companionship, and we went walking. That’s all. Is that wrong?’
Leah had listened, and her outrage was spent and her jealousy relieved and she saw a new hope. ‘If it’s true, it’s not wrong, and I’m sorry.’
‘It’s true, and I swear it. And everything I told you in the bedroom is true, also.’
‘You said we wouldn’t discuss that.’
‘All right.’
There was nothing more to argue about, but Leah was not ready to go. ‘I-I suppose you have to know other women besides me. Especially now that you’re famous. But what you see in a German foreigner-’
‘She’s an American, Lee.’
‘Whatever she is, I don’t care. What you can find in common with a perfect stranger-’
‘Harriet was a stranger before I met her. And so were you. And so is everyone to everyone, until they communicate. Miss Stratman and I simply walked and talked about nothing important-I showed her some of the places in Stockholm where Harriet and I had been-’
‘You did that?’ It was as if he had been an infidel who had violated Mecca. Again, Leah’s displeasure was evident. ‘You mentioned Harriet to her?’
‘Of course. Why not? I told her about Harriet and our life, certainly.’
‘How could you? It’s improper. You never talk to me about Harriet and you. How can you do that with someone you’ve only known for two days?’
‘Maybe because I only knew her two days. You’re Harriet’s sister. That makes it difficult.’
Leah pursed her lips tightly. ‘I don’t know what’s going to become of you, I really don’t. You’re simply acting without restraint in every way. You’re getting worse all the time. I can see what’s ahead for us. Drinking and more drinking, and now, added to that, strange women, with all your pitiful confessions, embarrassing both of us by pouring all your troubles into everyone’s ears. You can’t do that, Andrew, not now-now that the entire world knows you-now that you’re a Nobel winner. What would people think if they knew you killed your wife? What if it got out? I suppose you got drunk and told that to the Stratman girl? Did you?’
It was almost as if Craig had known from the beginning, from the moment of his rejection of Leah, that the blow would fall again, as it always had when he displeased her. It was the one blow that could bring him to his knees. Against it he had no shield. And now, inevitable as death, it had fallen, and he was once more defeated. He hated the past, that had provided her with the ultimate weapon and had left him disarmed.
‘You don’t have to worry,’ he said, suddenly tired. ‘I didn’t tell her about the accident.’
‘Thank God for that much restraint,’ she said. ‘The accident-as you call it-is in the family. That’s what worries me about your drinking. And seeing strange women. If you need the company of women, and you-you have too much respect for me-I wouldn’t care if you went to a prostitute once in a while. At least, you wouldn’t talk too much to them. It’s the ordinary girls that I worry about, the ambitious ones who worm their way into your confidence. Keep that in mind the next time you see the Stratman girl. In the end, I trust your commonsense, Andrew. You have a new position to maintain now, and a new future, and if you think of Harriet once in a while, and remember that I’m your best friend in the world, you won’t ruin it or yourself. I think we understand each other, don’t we?’
‘Yes, Lee.’
‘I was upset by your behaviour in the bedroom,’ she said briskly, again self-assured and in full control. ‘I was going to move out of this suite, even go home, and just leave you. Now I see that would be wrong of me. You need me for a rudder. So you needn’t worry. I’ll stay. You can depend on me. Good night, Andrew.’
‘Good night, Lee.’
She went into her bedroom, and he shuffled slowly into his. With distaste, he viewed the mauled bed, the heavy impressions on both pillows. He knelt beside the overnight case, unlocked it, and removed a bottle of Scotch. In the bathroom, he took one of the two empty glasses, then came back into the bedroom, filling the glass as he walked.
He settled into the easy chair, and he drank deeply, and when the glass was empty, he immediately filled it a second time, and drank again.
The almost perfect day had become one more day of disaster, and Leah, in her misguided, stupid desire to help him, had been the instigator of the calamity. Yet he was uncertain of one point. He asked himself a question: had Leah, with her rigid naked body, sincerely set out to help him? He asked another question: or had Leah, consciously or unconsciously set out to help herself, herself alone? Now, Hamlet, Horatio, whoever, that was the question-or, rather, the questions.
Craig gulped down the liquid, which no longer stung, and relaxed in the chair as the saviour fluid coursed through his veins and numbered his tormented brain.
The questions and now the answers. His writer’s mind wrote the story, the deductive story, on paperless air. The words floated…
Under the influence of whisky, an author accidentally kills his wife. Unofficial manslaughter. The wife’s sister comes into the house to care for the widower. The sister has a fiance, but her obligation to her adored relative’s memory makes her sacrifice her own life plan. Then, overnight, the author is catapulted into renown and invited to make a trip, and the sister accompanies him. To her dismay, her ward, the author, is exposed to the outer world and the charms of a beautiful, chaste girl of German descent. The sister sees her selfless good works threatened by another. She must protect her ailing author for the one he had sent to the grave. It is her sacred duty. She must accomplish this at any cost, in a single stroke, a stroke that will bind his guilts to her forgiveness forever. She offers her body-so naively, so rooted in the old belief that sexual intercourse must lead to marriage (for Harriet, for Harriet)-and she is sure this will carry the day, and she will possess him and hold him in thraldom (for Harriet, for Harriet). But he has come alive, and is alert, and retreats from the tendrils and palpi of the Madagascar man- eating plant and is saved from the past. The end.
Was it the end? Or was it To Be Continued?
Craig finished the drink, and as he poured one more, his writer’s mind knew that his story was incomplete. Too many loose ends and no denouement. There would have to be another instalment, and perhaps even a rewrite of the first instalment. After all, was his story accurate? Had that been Leah’s hope and her plan? Suppose his perception was correct, and it was her plan. What then? The loose ends: the author was not yet saved, for if he had repulsed the sister once, he was still the slave of their secret and the ugly guilt. The loose ends, add: the sister was still an unpredictable threat, for she was a woman scorned. Didn’t women scorned always do something? They surely did, for if they didn’t, half the libraries of the earth would be devoid of novels. And the denouement? Craig could not imagine it. His writer’s mind had fogged. The future was impenetrable.
A sense of uneasiness pervaded Craig, overcoming even the settling effects of the alcohol.
Perhaps he had Leah all wrong, and he was at fault. Maybe he did owe Harriet’s memory, and his debt to her, a final payment through her younger sister. She had wanted that payment in bed, in bed without end, and if he made it, he might be free inside. His thick logic dissolved into fantasy. What would the payment be like? He had felt the contact of those ample breasts, and observed the mound under the blanket, and he wondered. And then he knew, he was positive that he knew, and that he could write it as D. H. Lawrence might write it or Henry Miller or John Cleland. His writer’s mind tried and tried but couldn’t rise above the layer of intoxication. But Craig knew, nevertheless. If he came out of his chair now, and crossed the sitting-room, and rapped on her door, and went inside her bedroom, she would be waiting and as ready as before. He would kiss her lips, and she would respond, and she would yield to him fully. It would be onerous, and she would be lifeless as a marble statue, with no resilience, with no rhythm, with no giving, and yet it would be physically pleasurable for him and mentally pleasurable for her. And that would create the mould into which they would both be locked for life. Later, she would be more mechanically giving, and with security, more doughy in her flesh offering, and she would perform as dutifully on the mattress as over the stove, in return for his name on their mail and her name in the dedications of his books. They could live forever, thus, the three of them-he, and Leah, and Harriet. His body would be fettered, but his conscience would be clear. That was the dismal payment.
Should he make it?
He finished his drink, and this was the moment. He had but to rise and go to her, and the battles were done.
