My breath came short. 'Odd?' I said. 'No, not that I know of. Where were you, anyway?' I had not even wondered till now. I had not had a thought to spare for her. 'I went to see mother,' said Antonia. 'She hasn't been well. I'm sure I told you. I wanted Anderson to come too, but he had to go to Cambridge to fetch away his things.' 'Why did you ask if anything odd had happened?' 'Well, something must have happened,» said Antonia, 'or else I'm going mad.' 'You're not the only one,' I said. 'But I still don't understand.' 'Did you see Anderson at the week-end?' 'No.' 'Well, something's happened to him.' 'What?' 'I don't know,' said Antonia. 'It's like in stories when someone is possessed by the devil, or in science fiction. He looks the same and yet he seems to be a different person. It's as if a different personality inhabited him.' 'This must be nonsense,' I said. 'Sit down, for heaven's sake, Antonia, and stop looking as if you were going to scream.' 'But he is changed,' said Antonia, her voice rising. 'He's turned against me.' She was staring at me as if she positively wanted to infect me with her own craziness. ' «Turned against you»?' I said. 'Come, come, Antonia. And please don't be so intense. I'm not feeling at all well myself. Now just tell me quietly and in detail what the hell you mean. And do sit down, for Christ's sake.' 'It isn't anything very definite,' she said, 'and yet it's overwhelming. Something must have happened. He behaves quite differently to me, he's cold and he looks at me in such a terrifying way as if he were thinking about killing me. Of course I got quite tearful, and that seemed to annoy him more. Then he went away for ages in the middle of the night. And Honor Klein has come back to the house and she seems to be everywhere at once like a sort of black cloud. And honestly, Martin, I'm frightened.' She ended with a little whine and sat down on the camp bed, getting out her handkerchief. 'Pull yourself together,' I said. 'You must be imagining all this.' I was exceedingly shaken to see my own fear mirrored in her unconsciousness, in her innocence. 'It was such a shock,' said Antonia. The big tears now coursed down her face. 'I could hardly believe it at first, I thought I must be imagining it too. But he kept watching me, and so cold. As if I'd committed a crime. I wonder if anyone has told him some story about me?' 'What story could anybody tell?' 'Oh, I don't know,' said Antonia. 'Something about me and Alexander for instance. You know the way people love to invent things. Somebody must have done something to put him against me. There must have been some misunderstanding. You haven't done anything, have you, Martin?' 'No, of course not,' I said. 'I haven't seen Palmer. Anyway you know perfectly well I wouldn't do anything like that.' Palmer must be on the rack, wondering if I had told Antonia. The thought did not displease me. I became aware of a faint hissing sound behind me. It increased, and I turned to the window. It had started to rain. Looking at the greyish yellowish sky I saw it now as daylight. I turned back to the lighted room and the lifted frightened face of Antonia. The place was as bleak and lurid as a prison cell. 'Perhaps he's going mad,' she said. 'Martin, did you know that his mother was insane?' 'No, I didn't,' I said. 'Was she? That's interesting.' 'He only told me quite recently,' said Antonia. 'Last week, before –' She sobbed, wiped her face slowly all over with the handkerchief and sobbed again. I stood, hands in the pockets of my dressing-gown, watching her cry. I pitied her, but only as an unconscious extension of my own dilemma. 'So Honor Klein is there,' I said. 'I hate the woman,' said Antonia. 'She was supposed to be going back to Cambridge, but there she still was and now she's actually living in the house. She gives me the creeps.' 'Me too,' I said. The door bell rang and we both jumped. I looked at Antonia, and her wide eyes followed me to the door. I crossed the hall and flung the front door open. It was the removal men. I told them to dump the stuff anywhere and returned to Antonia. She was standing up now, examining her face in her pocket mirror. She dabbed a little powder on to her nose and was now rubbing her cheeks which were still shiny with tears. She pushed the scarf back off her hair and gave an exhausted sigh. She looked haggard. 'Darling, do use your common sense,' she said. 'You may as well have the stuff put in the right rooms.' She seemed a little recovered and went out to organize the removal men. A few minutes later two giants came shuffling in carrying the Carl-ton House writing-table with the Audubon prints stacked on top of it. I told them where to put it. When they had gone I cut the string which held the prints together and began to lay them out against the wall in a row: the puffins, the nightjars, the gold-winged woodpeckers, the Carolina parrots, the scarlet tanagers, the great crested owls. The uprooted familiar things affected me with a sad sick feeling as if I were dimly remembering that someone had died. I could hear Antonia's voice in the hall instructing the men. What was my sickness? I stared through the prints, unable to focus my eyes upon them, into another world. Behold her bosom and half her side, a sight to dream of not to tell. Antonia came back into the room and shut the door. She was carrying the Meissen cockatoos one in each hand. She put them on the two ends of the mantelpiece. She said, 'That's all for this room, I've told them. Oh, the bird prints, yes, you've taken them. I'd forgotten that they were yours.' She looked at them sadly and began to take off her coat. 'We rather forgot about mine and yours, didn't we?' I said. 'I'll give them back to you.' 'No. no,' said Antonia. 'I don't want them. You must have your own things.' 'Well, you must come and help me arrange them,' I said. 'You will, won't you?' Antonia looked at me. Her face contracted, and she shook her head, trying to speak. Then she said, 'Oh, Martin, I'm so miserable, I'm so miserable!' She began to wail with a low keening sound, and sat down heavily on the bed rocking herself to and fro. For a while I watched her. The door bell rang again. Antonia's weeping stopped as if at the turn of a switch, and as I passed her she clutched my hand for a moment. I gave her a reassuring squeeze and went on out into the hall. Someone was silhouetted in the open doorway. It was, of course, Palmer. Ever since Antonia had arrived I had been expecting him, and it was with an extraordinary exhilaration that I now saw his tall figure confronting me. I could not see his face properly, but I could feel my own becoming expressionless and bland. I was glad he had come. Palmer said, 'Is Antonia here?' His voice was low and harsh and t here was emotion in him. I said, 'Yes, do you want to see her?' 'I've come to take her away,' said Palmer. 'Really?' I said. 'But suppose she doesn't want to go?' Antonia had opened the sitting-room door and the light now showed me Palmer's face, the straight tense line of his mouth and his eyes practically closed. It was the face of a man in danger and I exulted at the sight of it. Antonia said in a clear voice, 'Come in here, please.' The removal men were coming up the stairs again carrying the Chinese Chippendale chairs. I could hear them bumping on the banisters. I went back into the sitting-room and Palmer followed. I closed the door and we all looked at each other. Palmer said to Antonia, 'Please come with me, Antonia.' He spoke in a cold dead manner and I could see what she meant about his having changed into another person. He must by now be certain that I had told her. She hesitated, looked at me, looked at Palmer, and said in an almost inaudible voice, 'All right.' 'You're not going,' I said to her. Palmer said, 'Just keep out of this, will you, Martin? You've meddled enough in things you don't understand.' He was looking at Antonia. 'You meddled in things you didn't understand,' I said, 'when you destroyed my happy and successful marriage.' 'It wasn't happy and successful,' said Palmer, still staring at Antonia. 'Happy husbands don't keep little girls as mistresses. Put your coat on, Antonia.'
Вы читаете A Severed Head
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