Thomas straightened with a face filled with passionate hatred, the worm turning at last, and by the neck he held the top part of the green bottle, the broken edges jagged as teeth.
He came up fast with his hand rising. Berenice, cushioned in complacency, wasn't even looking at him and seemed not to begin to understand her danger.
Malcolm said I had fast reactions… I dropped my own drink, grasped Berenice by both arms and swung her violently round and out of the slicing track of the razor-sharp weapon.
She was furiously indignant, protesting incredulously, sprawling across the floor where I'd almost thrown her, still unaware of what had been happening.
Thomas looked at the damage he'd done to me for a long blank second, then he dropped the fearsome bottle and turned to stumble off blindly towards his front door. I took two strides and caught him by the arm.
'Let me go…' He struggled, and I held on. 'Let me go… I can't do anything right… she's right.'
'She's bloody wrong.'
I was stronger than he. I practically dragged him across the room and flung him into one of the armchairs.
'I've cut you,' he said.
'Yes, well, never mind. You listen to me. You both listen to me. You're over the edge. You're going to have to face some straight facts.'
Berenice had finally realised how close she'd come to needing stitches. She looked with anger at the point of my left shoulder where jersey and shirt had been ripped away, where a couple of cuts were bleeding. She turned to Thomas with a bitterly accusing face and opened her mouth.
'Shut up,' I said roughly. 'If you're going to tell him he's incompetent, don't do it. If you're going to complain that he could have cut you instead, yes he could, he was trying to. Sit down and shut up.'
'Trying to?' She couldn't believe it. She sat down weakly, her hair awry, her body slack, eyes shocked.
'You goaded him too far. Don't you understand what you've been doing to him? Putting him down, picking him to pieces every time you open your mouth? You have now completely succeeded. He can't function any more.'
'Dear Thomas -' she began.
'Don't say that. You don't mean it.'
She stared.
'If he were your dear Thomas,' I said, 'you would help him and encourage him, not sneer.'
'I'm not listening to this.'
'You just think what you stirred up in Thomas today, and if I were you, I'd be careful.' I turned to Thomas. 'And it's not all her fault. You've let her do it, let her carp all this time. You should have stopped her years ago. You should have walked out. You've been loyal to her beyond reason and she's driven you to want to kill her, because that's what I saw in your face.' Thomas put a hand over his eyes.
'You were dead lucky you didn't connect with her mouth or her throat or whatever you were going for. There would have been no going back. You just think what would have happened, both of you. The consequences to yourselves, and to your girls. Think!' I paused. 'Well, it's beyond facing.'
'I didn't mean it,' Thomas mumbled.
'I'm afraid you did,' I said.
'He couldn't have done,' Berenice said.
'He did mean it,' I said to her. 'it takes quite a force to tear away so much woollen jersey. Your only hope is to believe to the depths of your soul that he put all his goaded infuriated strength behind that blow. I'll tell you, I was lucky too. I was moving away fast trying to avoid being cut, and it can have been only the points of the glass that reached my skin, but I'll remember the speed of them…' I broke off, not knowing how else to convince her. I didn't want to say, 'it bloody hurts,' but it did.
Thomas put his head in his hands.
'Come on,' I said to him, 'I'm taking you out of here. On your feet, brother.'
'Don't be ridiculous,' Berenice said.
'if I leave him here, will you cuddle him?'
The negative answer filled her whole face. She wouldn't have thought of it. She was aggrieved. It would have taken little time for her to stoke up the recriminations.
'When the firemen have gone,' I said, 'fires often start again from the heat in the embers.' I went over to Thomas. 'Come on. There's still life ahead.'
Without looking up, he said in a dull sort of agony, 'You don't know… It's too late.'
I said 'No' without great conviction, and then the front door opened with a bang to let in the two girls.
'Hello,' they said noisily, bringing in swirls of outside air. 'Granny turned us out early. What's going on? What's all this glass on the floor? What's all the blood on your arm?'
'A bottle got broken,' I said, 'and I fell on it.'
The young one looked at the bowed head of her father and in a voice that was a devastating mimic of her mother's, vibrating with venom and contempt, she said, 'I'll bet it was Dear Thomas who broke it.'
Berenice heard for herself what she'd been doing to her husband. Heard what she was implanting in her own children. The revelation seemed to overwhelm he rand she sought for excuses. 'If we had more money… If only Malcolm… It's not fair…'
But they had two cars, thanks to their trust fund, and a newly- built townhouse, and Thomas's unemployment had brought no immediate financial disaster: money wasn't their trouble, nor would it cure it.
'Why didn't you get a job?' I said. 'What did you ever expect of Thomas? That he'd set the world alight? He did the best he could.' Quantum in me fuit…
'I wanted a son,' she said flatly. 'Thomas got a vasectomy. He said two children were enough, we couldn't afford any more. It wasn't fair. Malcolm should have given us more money. I always wanted a son.'
Dear God, I thought: flat simple words at the absolute heart of things, the suppurating disappointment that she had allowed to poison their lives. Just like Gervase, I thought. So much unhappiness from wanting the unobtainable, so much self-damage. I could think of nothing to say. Nothing of help. It was too late.
I went across to Thomas and touched him on the shoulder. He stood up. He didn't look at his family, or at me. I put my hand lightly under his elbow and steered him to the front door, and in unbroken silence we left the wasteland of his marriage.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I took Thomas to Lucy's house.
It seemed to me, as I drove away from the pretentious Haciendas, that Lucy's particular brand of peace might be just what Thomas needed. I couldn't take him to Vivien, who would demolish him further and Joyce, who was fond of him, would be insufferably bracing. I frankly didn't want him with me in Cookham; and Donald, influenced by Berenice, tended to despise him.
Lucy was in, to my relief, and opened the front door of the farm cottage where she and Edwin led the simple life near Marlow. She stared at us. At my red arm. At Thomas's hanging head.
'Sister, dear,' I said cheerfully. 'Two brothers needing succour come knocking at thy gate. Any chance of hot sweet tea? Loving looks? A sticking plaster?' Edwin appeared behind her, looking peevish. 'What's going on?'
To Lucy, I said, 'We cracked a bottle of gin, and I fell on it.'
'Are you drunk?' she said.
'Not really.'
'You'd better come in.'
'Ferdinand has been on the telephone,' Edwin said without welcome, staring with distaste at my blood as we stepped over his threshold. 'He warned us you'd be turning up some time. You might have had the courtesy to let us know in advance.'
'Sorry,' I said dryly.
Lucy glanced swiftly at my face. 'This is trouble?'
