The Old Silent

Great Friend off, anyway?'

Vivian. It had been great friend this, and great friend that until the phrase had grown capitals. He told her again. 'Tomorrow morning at eleven o'clock. She's taking the Orient Express to Venice.'

'I guess she's got money.'

'So do you, if that means anything.'

But she wasn't listening; she was holding the gift from the Princess up before her, trying to mold it to the leather jacket, the cord jeans. 'What do you think?'

Said Melrose, 'I'm not sure. Do you wear dresses?' He was still irritated with her for bringing up the Great Friend once again. Then he looked at her downturned head and felt ashamed. As to the gown, its purpose and shape seemed fathomless, its color grungy-some fog-washed shade of green, dark and faded. 'Well, perhaps you have to put it on. She said it takes on the shape of the person who wears it.' The Princess had sounded a bit like Ramona Braine, as if there were auras hanging about certain gowns that the wrong person daren't meddle with.

Melrose was so engrossed in his conflict that he scarcely heard the other car, Jury's car, until it came to a standstill at the side of the Hall.

Jury got out and walked over to them, and in so doing set up a bit of a flurry amongst the few ducks that waddled over to the fence.

'We were just talking,' said Ellen, 'about leaving Abby here and the rest of you hightailing it to London.'

Naturally, she would make it sound as if Melrose had agreed with her.

Instead of reassuring her, Jury asked, 'What about you, Ellen? Aren't you going, too?'

'Me? I'm not leaving her alone.'

Jury looked off toward the barn and back to Ellen.

'Thought you had things to do in London before you went home. Don't you have a booking on the QE Two?'

She thrust her hands in her jacket pockets and toed through some gravel. 'I can always Concorde it.'

'There's a concert tonight. Sirocco. You don't want to miss that, do you?'

Melrose disliked the form this was taking; it sounded less like an inquiry than an interrogation. 'Come on, Ellen; we can have dinner with my Great Friend and my Great Aunt and the local antiques dealer. He alone is worth the trip.' Melrose smiled brightly.

'No.'

Jury paused. 'I don't think Abby is in any present danger here.'

'You could've fooled me.' Ellen turned away, stuck her fingers in the mesh wire of the fence, and ignored both of them.

Ethel emerged from the barn carrying a basket, followed by Abby with her feed bucket.

Ethel had changed her funeral finery for a more workaday gingham dress, the skirt flaring with starch like a brightly checkered tent where her jacket ended. The skirt standing out and the pink jacket ballooned with goose down and her wispy reddish curls the substance of angel hair made her appear as if she'd lift off and float away, strewing rose petals from her basket.

By contrast, Abby might as well have worn Wellingtons filled with lead. Her yellow slicker was inside out, the lining the color of her eyes, a deep inky blue.

Ethel skipped; Abby trudged. They were followed by Stranger and Tim. Coming upon this little cluster of people in the courtyard, they stopped. Stranger tried a creep toward Malcolm, who recoiled slightly, but the click of Abby's tongue brought him back. He sat and stared round.

There was the noise and confusion that often augments departures, that seeming desire to get off in a cloud of dust and irrelevant chatter to avoid the fact of separation, the you must come to us next week, next month, next year; or the promises that one usually can't eventually keep, see you next winter, next Michaelmas holiday; the hubbub of arranging cases, of ordering trunks and bags placed just there; the handshakes, the stiff smiles. And yet no one actually leaving.

Ramona Braine stood awkwardly by the taxi with a perplexed look as if this weren't in the cards; the Major, about to light a cigar, stopped in the act; the Princess, having said her adieux, stood, one hand on hip looking about the little circle with an uncertain smile; Ellen refusing to meet any of their eyes, leaning against her BMW, a study in black-on-black; Ruby in her cap behind Mrs. Braithwaite's shoulder, the two of them in the doorway looking like figures in a Breughel painting.

They made, this small gathering drawn together in outrageous circumstances, a sort of closed circle.

The dog Stranger sat close to the center, eyeing each of them as if he'd managed to catch and hold them, by transfixing them with his hypnotic eye.

It was Abby who broke the ring; she walked over to a spot not quite within Jury's reach, and put out her hand. Abby, with her black hair unevenly cut around a face pale as a moonbeam, and those navy blue eyes, reached out a hand that lay for a moment in Jury's like a white moth.

Then she walked over to Melrose, again extended her hand and looked up at him gravely.

It was the Deep Blue Good-bye.

Part Four. LIKE ALASKA 40

Jury was glad he'd seen the theater empty before he saw it packed. The crowd that had flowed from the Underground tunnel and jumped the iron railings in the slanting rain, diamond-splinters in the reflection of the bright marquee, were jammed in the lobby and packed upstairs where the bar was open.

Jostled by the line in front of the poster and T-shirt concession, Jury looked up at the huge oval, peopleless yesterday, tonight thronged with faces peering over the railing and above them the flashy chandelier that tossed tiny squares of light across some of the faces and hands. He wished he were here just for the show. It was wonderful, this climate of expectancy; the ring of faces looked down as if from a height where they breathed headier air. And from the boozy appearance of some of them, the air up there was decidedly winey. They talked, laughed, giggled, yelled down at their mates below, for it seemed in that magical way that certain occasions afforded, they were all mates.

Mary Lee was in her element down here and secured behind her window, where she could, given the line of hopefuls waiting for no-shows, dispense with infinite largesse what tickets there were to be had. For the begging, Jury imagined. Mary Lee was dressed in purple silky stuff, blue shadow with gold glitter on her eyelids.

Wiggins had asked Jury why her shoe was sitting behind the window on the ticket counter.

It had always been a wonder to Jury and Carole-anne-no matter how packed the crowd, how large the room- that Carole-anne could always be seen across or through it, as if people instinctively moved back a little to allow a clearer view of Miss Palutski, this evening wearing her Chinese stop-light-red dress over which she'd tossed a short little silver-sequined coat that gave off fire and glitter like the domed chandelier. To give off fire and glitter though, Carole-anne only needed that flaming red-gold hair, those blue eyes.

'Super!' She threw up her hand, jumped up a bit, and seemed oblivious to the synchronized turn of male heads. Carole-anne, oddly enough, was not really vain. If you look like that (thought Jury, pushing his way through the crowd), vanity is redundant.

He searched the people crushed against her for Andrew Starr or one of the dozen or so males Jury would sometimes pass on the steps of his digs.

A couple of feet away he heard his name. It was a breathless Mrs. Wassermann, who had just, apparently, beat her way from the concession line. Mrs. Wassermann held up a T-shirt. Sirocco was scrawled across the front in silver, and a picture of the members of the band was outlined in a square on the back. 'I do not know if it will fit, Mr. Jury. It seems small.' She held it up to him.

Mrs. Wassermann also looked once again almost like Mrs. Wassermann. It had been impossible to get the scrunch completely out, but the hair had been combed back, frizz only round the face; she was dressed in one of