for Nature is the privilege of cultivated minds not entirely absorbed in the material necessities of life.
Was Hugh Payne’s visit ‘merely routine’, though? Those were his words, as Tancred reported them to me, but he is frightfully brainy – that handsome Major with his faux buffo manner! Why were they whispering? I couldn’t hear a word of what they said. No, Tancred would never lie to me. I mustn’t be suspicious.
I must control my emotions or, like a firework, I may explode and be pulverized into a thousand sparks!
But what of the superficial, nay, pointless princely life on which Tancred has been expending so much time and energy? The so-called ‘biography’, with the writing of which I have been ‘assisting’ him?
An image floats into my head. The Communists making Prince Cyril dig his own grave, shooting him in the back of the head, then pushing him in. Something similarly drastic needs to be done about the book. That so-called biography. I couldn’t possibly allow poor Tancred to be discredited and become the laughing stock of the literary elite!
I was desperate for his attention, for his love, that’s the reason I did it. I acted irresponsibly, but what I have done, I shall undo.
I am sure Tancred will understand. I don’t suppose he will get cross with me. One doesn’t get cross with those one cares for.
Tancred cares for me as much as I care for him. He said so himself with his own lips. Tancred loves me. Tancred would never lie to me. Never. Never.
Tancred. Tancred. Tancred.
‘Why are you out of breath?’ Winifred said. ‘Where have you been?’
She stood looking at Melisande. Her sister’s face was pale and her hair was uncharacteristically dishevelled, wild, almost. Winifred had seen her sister with hair like that only once before, at the final curtain of a play that had been booed by the audience – some feeble forgotten French farce. Melisande had ripped off her wig even before she had reached her dressing room and burst into tears.
‘In paradise. Isn’t that what Irene tells Soames on her return from her tryst with Bosinney?’
They were standing outside their house, under a pale sky bruised with garish clouds.
‘You look – different,’ Winifred said.
Melisande explained that she had felt a little odd, so she had gone for a therapeutic ramble. She had wanted to get some fresh air. ‘I did some light shopping.’
‘Shall we go inside?’
‘I am afraid of going inside. It’s an unlucky house. That’s where I met Stella. The face of the grandfather clock reminds me of Papa Willard at his most censorious. My bed with that scarlet canopy might have been a catafalque, it is so creepily portentous. The window curtains keep moving even when all is still. And there is a smell.’
‘What kind of smell?’
‘Can’t say exactly. Not of rare and subtle flowers, to be sure. I believe it’s a metaphysical kind of smell. Horror and corruption stalk in the shadows. Where’s that from?’
‘The Duchess of Malfi?’
‘Arthur phoned to say he might get me a part in a new play that focuses on the dynamics between four women who reside in a brothel in the jungle, but I said no… I should never have become an actress. I could have been an air hostess – an MP’s secretary – or a magician’s assistant. I’d have been so much happier. Perhaps tonight I will sleep outside – in the garden! In one of those sinister sleeping bags we got for Christmas? They look like body bags. High time someone used them.’
Winifred pointed to her sister’s shopping bag and said brightly, ‘What did you buy?’
‘Oh, the usual organic rubbish. Watercress. Tofu. A vegetarian steak. Eggs that couldn’t have cost more if they’d been made of gold. Preposterous. What’s the point of a healthy diet? I do not intend to live to be a hundred. Life after thirty-eight is one long compromise.’
‘One of your buttons is missing.’
‘I wish I could be as balanced and splendid about my sorrows and disappointments as you have been about yours. I should have learnt to worship at the shrine of established routine. Plumping cushions and so on. I was wrong to think of myself as transcending mundane human laws.’
‘Let’s go inside and I will make you a cup of tea.’
‘What am I going to do with the rest of my life? I loathe looking at pictures. Books bore me, really. I can’t cook. Going to the theatre is out of the question. I only pretend to like gardening. What am I going to do?’ Melisande suddenly clutched at her sister’s hand. ‘Please, help me, Win.’
‘This is all to do with James, isn’t it?’
Melisande’s eyes started filling with tears. ‘He turned off his mobile. I was in the middle of telling him something extremely important. I heard the roar of animals in the background and somebody laughing like a hyena. Then he turned off his mobile, just like that. I think he was at the zoo – with that girl, Stella’s daughter – who I suspect – I very strongly suspect – is his daughter. The whole thing is incredibly sordid. That girl chopped off her mother’s head.’
‘You can’t be sure-’
‘I can be. I have every intention of calling the police and telling them what I know. The things she said at my party. They should arrest the little bitch and put her in jail at once. No one but the daughter could have killed Stella. Who else is there?’
Winifred noticed that Melisande was wearing the jacket from her Chanel Boutique suit with domed buttons and gold studs, but the skirt came from some other suit, Winifred couldn’t tell which one. This sort of thing had never happened before. Her sister had always been so particular about what she wore.
‘Perhaps it was James who did it?’ Melisande said in a thoughtful voice. ‘Perhaps he and Stella were playing some game and it all went horribly wrong?’
‘What game?’
This is awful, Winifred thought. My sister has gone mad. What am I going to do? Who did one phone? Should I perhaps contact Antonia and Hugh? But how could they help?
‘Couples play games when they start experiencing difficulties. Neither of them could be described as being in their prime. Swords are notorious phallic symbols.’
‘Let’s go inside, shall we?’ Winifred held her sister gently by the arm. ‘I will make you a cup of tea and then you can have a lie-down.’
‘James is a pig. They should keep him in a pigsty, put a piggy ring through his piggy nose and feed him pigswill!’ Melisande broke into paroxysms of sobbing laughter. ‘Grunt-grunt. People will go to the zoo to look at him. Grunt-grunt. What a fat, pink and stupid pig, they will say. Hello, James. Isn’t it time you were converted into sausages?’
‘Come on, Meli-’
‘He turned off his mobile phone. He is the most pig-headed and pig-like of pigs. So degrading, expecting a pig to love you. He is actually a lousy lover. I now count my married days with Chevret as the happiest in my life. I should never have divorced Chevret. Never.’
‘Chevret was cruel to you.’
‘Chevret possessed the perfect diffidence and unobtrusive reserve which mark a person of high birth and breeding.’
‘He had awful habits. And he made futile little jokes that drove you mad. That’s what you always said.’
‘I do believe you were secretly in love with Chevret, that’s why you talk like that. We should sit in the garden and dine alfresco. Incidentally, the pince-nez has disappeared.’
‘What pince-nez?’
‘The Miss Prism pince-nez. The pince-nez was my lucky charm. It was on my dressing table and now it isn’t. In fact I haven’t seen the pince-nez for some time. It was my lucky charm. Someone’s taken my lucky charm-’
Covering her face with her hands, Melisande burst into tears. Winifred put her arm round her sister’s shoulders and led her into the house. She was aware of tense currents vibrating through Melisande’s body. It felt as though her sister were full of wires that vibrated with electricity.
This is the kind of complication I could have done without, Winifred thought.
Later she noticed that Melisande’s bag contained no shopping.
