selves in vain for the least attraction to the face before us? How many of us, having cried bitter, rancid tears over a failed love, are actually disappointed when we discover, seeing the adored one again, that all trace of their power over us is gone? How often one has resisted the freedom-giving knowledge that they have actually begun to irritate us as that seems like the worst kind of disloyalty to our own dreams. No, while most people have been at their unhappiest when in love, it is nevertheless the state the human being yearns for above all. It was not that Edith really saw Simon as any solid part of her future life, entranced as she was. But she had long forgotten her early irritation with his flirtatious verbosity and now she loved to listen to his trials, to his hopes, to his dreams — as much as anything because she loved watching the way his mouth moved — and then, wonderful looking as he was, he made her feel so warm and so wanted. She liked physically to be near him, to let his arm brush her sleeve, his hand graze hers, but she thought no further than that. Or had not up to this moment. Unfortunately for her, he had come into her life at a time of wretched
Slowly but inexorably she had allowed her residual affection for Charles to be driven out by his inability to interest her.
Although, somewhere in her brain, Edith was aware that she need not have. If, like her mother-in-law before her, she had early on faced and dealt with the limitations of her husband then there could have been fondness between them. If she had ceased to look to him for her amusement, then she might have relied on him only for those things he could have given her: loyalty, security, even love in his unimaginative way. But, just as she had never really faced within herself that she had deliberately married a man she did not love for his position, so she could not now accept the responsibility for the fact that she was living with a man who was duller and stupider than she. It seemed to Edith to be Charles's fault that her life was so dreary, it was Charles's fault that they did not have a vivid round in London, it was Charles's fault that she dreaded their times together more than the hours she spent alone. Added to which she had already slid into that dangerous option, open only to those with high-profile, 'public' lives, of playing the part of the happy and gracious wife to an adoring crowd, which must always serve to throw the frigid inertia of her life at home into sharp relief. As popular as she was with the villagers, with her charities, with the estate workers, she had even begun to think that this happy and elegant woman she saw reflected in their eyes (and in the local press) was some kind of real truth and that it must be Charles's fault that he did not respond to her as her adoring, provincial fans did.
Not that she had any substantial taste for danger. She had accepted Simon's offer of a ride home as much to irritate her mother-in-law as anything else. She was, in fact, surprised if anything at the strength of her physical attraction to him when they found themselves, as they now did for the first time, alone and in the dark. But what took her even more unawares was an aerated sense of the raising of her spirits and with it that heady flavour of unexplored potential. This, she suddenly knew in a blinding flash of revelation, was the very thing she had most missed since her marriage. For months now there had seemed to be no open-endedness about her existence. All the decisions had been taken and must now be lived with. And yet here she was, looking at the corduroy of Simon's trousers stretched over the muscles of his thigh, and sensing a delicious awareness that there were still unplanned-for possibilities between her and death.
===OO=OOO=OO===
The Uckfields asked us in for a drink when we arrived at Broughton. I think they might have preferred us just to head for home but we accepted, partly out of politeness but also from that ghoulish sense that we all feel when we suspect an evening is not yet quite over. We were (or rather I was) still curious as to whether Charles really had gone to bed, how long it would take Simon and Edith to get home, how Lady Uckfield would behave — any number, in fact, of the different aspects of the case still to be revealed.
Charles was in the drawing room. He had hardly touched the whisky on the table beside his chair and was, I suspect, staring into mid-air until he heard our step. At any rate he seemed to be very puzzled by the women's magazine he had snatched up as we came in. He fetched Scotches for his father and me and some water for Adela (her customary, somewhat lacklustre late-night refreshment) and we all sat down. We had not been there long before the unmistakable sounds of Eric on the staircase told us that the Range Rover at least was back. The four of them came into the room.
'Where's Edith?' said Eric brightly, happy of course to see that she was not back and that therefore he might score some points off her.
'I hope they haven't broken down,' said Adela firmly.
'Oh dear. Might they have?' said Lady Uckfield.
Under silent instruction from Adela, I nodded. 'Simon's car is the most frightful wreck. I do hope not.'
Lady Uckfield recognised instantly that this was a life raft that she could rope to her decks in case of future need. She was not exactly grateful. For her to register gratitude she would have had first to admit to herself that there was anything wrong.
But she was noticeably warm as she joined Adela on the sofa and started to question her about her aunt.
Eric had another try. 'They took forever before they even started the car,' he said. 'We were loaded up and out of the gates before I heard the engine.' But the initiative had slipped from him. The later the errant couple were, the more the family could hide behind fear of a break-down or an accident. All other possible reasons for lateness had by this means been painlessly obviated.
As the conversation became more general and people flopped down into the various chairs and sofas around the room, Charles came up and asked me if I would join him in his office. I forget his excuse, some book or picture he had been meaning to show me, the usual sort of thing, but we both knew that he simply wanted to talk to me alone. I nodded and followed him out, uncomfortably aware of Chase's slightly quizzical smile, and we started down a corridor to the left. I wasn't looking forward to the interview as I had begun to feel responsible for the mayhem that even then I was only just starting to admit might be looming. I had after all been the one to introduce Simon to them. Had I not been in the film I am quite sure he would never have penetrated the charmed circle of the family.
Charles's office, its door sporting one of those 'private' notices that give one such pleasure to set aside, was a smallish corner room some distance away from the drawing and dining rooms used by the family. It was an extension of the main library, still on the principal floor, and so had handsome cornices and door cases and, by day, a fine view across the park from both of its tall windows. A pair of double doors would have connected it to the larger room if they were opened, which, as the library was one of the rooms on the public tour, they seldom if ever were. The fireplace was a delicate one of some kind of pinkish marble and the walls themselves had been covered with crimson damask that stretched from dado to ceiling.
Against it stood high, glazed bookcases that looked as if they had been made for the room. A portrait of some female forebear, painted in a costume for a fancy-dress ball, hung over the chimneypiece, the gilded frame and the marble shelf below stuffed with a mass of invitations, snapshots, notes, postcards — the usual paper chaos with
