Gerard wanted to ask, what did you see, how did you know, he felt, later on I won't be able to, everything must be said now, but he did not ask. He would have time later to think About that dreadful pitiful 'I'm sorry'. He thought, he was looking for me at that moment.
Patricia was dry-eyed and controlled, her emotion evident in her hesitations and in the hard clipped exasperated tone in which she answered Gerard's questions. She now made coffee. She opened a drawer, chose a clean red and green check table cloth and spread it on the table, then set out plate, cup, saucer, knife, spoons, butter, marmalade, sugar, milk in a blue jug, sliced bread aligned in a bowl. She set the coffee pot on a tile.
`Do you want hot milk?'
`No, thanks. Aren't you having cofree?'
'No. '
She gave him a paper napkin. The paper napkins represented her regime, used in preference to Gerard's linen ones. She sat down opposite to him and closed her eyes.
The house felt terrible, disjointed, gutted. Sitting quietly in it at last, Gerard felt his body aching with grief and fear, with grief which was fear, an exhausted denatured sensation, a loss of being. He concentrated on Patricia. It was possible, he knew, to esteem and admire people and enjoy their company Aild dislike them heartily. It was also possible to be irritated, maddened and bored by people whom one loves. He had thus loved his mother and Pat. Through time and custom, simply by enduring, this love had grown stronger. This was no doubt a proof that 'family' meant something to him, or perhaps that he had got used to putting up with them for his father's sake; though for his father's sake too he had resented their separatism, their little league against 'the men', critical, mocking, secretive. He had never liked their laughter, had been enraged as a child by his mother's jesting at his father's expense, had resented his father's humble surrender of his authority and his dignity. Yet they had had a harmonious time on the whole and, apart from that one terrible episode and its reverberations, he could not claim an unhappy childhood. His father had been too old for the second war, Gerard too young. He had continued to love them all, and much later to see, with sympathy, his mother and sister as strong frustrated women. Patricia had wilfully thrown away her education and was now irked with excesses of energy for which she could find no use. She was a loving and business-like mother and wife but yearned for some indefinable larger scene, more status, more power. He looked at her now, her face relaxed in tiredness, perhaps in sleep, her lips parted, her mouth, as in a tragic mask, drooping heavily into long harsh lines. She was a striking woman, inheriting her mother's long smooth face, her stern and noble look and perpetual frown, a brave powerful face whose owner would no doubt be a valuable companion on a desert island. The idea of'putting a brave face on it' suited Patricia, she had 'nerve', and had been a tomboyish child. Her shortish fair hair, a little streaked with grey, well cut at intervals, usually tousled, often patted into shape by its owner, looked youthful, was still shaggy and boyish. In recent years she had put on weight. Even now in repose her shoulders were back, her prominent chin well tucked in, her bust set forward under a flowery apron which Gerard was noticing for the first time. It was only lately that Gerard had realised that his sister had begun to envy her younger cousin's trim figure and enduring good looks. Patricia, once handsome, could never have been called beautiful; but Violet Hernshaw's face had that enduring structure which can command esteem at any tge. Of course Pat was established as 'successful', her hus)and wealthy, her son 'brilliant', whereas Violet, as Pat now often sympathetically observed, had made a complete mess of ter life, and her charms had brought her only bad luck. Ben tad abandoned his mistress and his little daughter, he had)een a crazy fellow who took to drugs and died young. Matthew, had tried to 'save' him, had been deeply grieved by his failure; perhaps he felt guilty as well. Matthew had been sober, conscientious, gentle. Now he was gone too. Gerard was mare of laying his head down on the table. He recalled, then saw with the eyes of dream, how his staid father, who rarely louched alcohol, used sometimes to startle them all by singing slightly
'You'd better go to bed,' said Pat's voice.
Gerard lifted his head. He had been dreaming about Sinclair and Rose. He had been young in the dream. It took lihn a second or two to remember that he was no longer young mid Sinclair was dead. 'How long have I been asleep?'
'Some time.'
'You go to bed. I'll fix things. We must ring up the undertaker -'
'I've done that,' said Patricia, 'and I've rung the doctor ihout the death certificate.'
'I'll ring Violet.'
'I've done that too. Look, Gerard, we were talking the other I.ty about the house in Bristol, why don't you go and live lure? You said you loved that house. You don't have to live in,ondon now.'
Gerard became wide awake. Typical Pat. 'Don't be silly, why should I live in Bristol, I live here!'
'This house is far too big for you, it doesn't suit you, you're Mly here by accident. I've just been talking to Gideon on the c1cphone. We'll buy it off you. You'll like Bristol, you need a Range:'
,Oh shut up, Pat,' said Gerard, 'you're crazy. I'm going to bed.’.
`And another thing, now Dad's gone I want to be on that committee.'
`What committee?'
`The book committee. He was on it, to represent the family. Now I should be.'
'It's nothing to do with you,' said Gerard.
`It's our money you're spending.'
'No, it isn't.'
`That's how Dad saw it.'
Gerard went upstairs into his bedroom. The sun was blazing in. He pulled the curtains and dragged the bedclothes aside and began to undress. As he lay down he began to remember the strange events of the night which were now confused, ugly and sinister, with his sister's words into a cloud of fantasy which seemed to be hanging above the heavy weight of that dead body which lay so still and so close, its face blinded. Oh my poor dead father, he thought, and it was as if his father were in terrible pain, the pain of death itself. He turned on his face and groaned and shed some tears of misery into the pillow.
`Well, what do you propose to do?' said Duncan Cambus.
‘I’m going,' said Jean.
'You're going back to him.'
'Yes. I'm sorry.'
'Did you arrange to meet him?'
'No!’
'So you decided this with him last night?'
'Last night – it is last night, isn't it – or this morning. We it, In't say anything to each other last night.
'You think he'll expect you?'
' I don't think anything – I'm going. I've got to. I'm very sorry. Now.'
'I'm going to bed,' said Duncan, 'and I advise you to do the same. I advise you, I
' I must go now,' said Jean, 'I can't wait. To wait would be -impossible – all wrong.'
'An error of taste, a lapse of style?'
These were the first words exchanged by Duncan and his wife since their departure from Levquist's rooms. The walk to the car, the drive to London, during most of which Duncan had slept, had been accomplished in silence. Now they were hoine, back in the sitting room of their flat in Kensington. On arrival there both of them had felt it imperative to step out of their crumpled evening clothes, and had, in different rooms, hastily, as if arming for battle, put on more sober gear. Duncan, seated, had taken off his damp and muddy evening trousers and put on some old corduroys, with a voluminous blue shirt, not buttoned, not tucked in. Jean, standing before him, had covered her black petticoat and black stockings with a yellow and white kimono, pulled in fiercely at the waist. Duncan was no longer flushed with alcohol, but his tired face looled disintegrated, wrecked, a senseless massive face, pale and flabby, covered in soft pencilled-in lines. He sat very still, staring at his wife, leaning forward a little, his big hands
