to go to and I didn’t want anybody - I just wanted to die.” She stopped and stood waiting for him to speak.
“Do you still want to die?” he asked gently, and she looked up startled and shook her shining hair.
“I don’t want you to die either.” And suddenly they were both laughing. After that it was good between them and they talked with all the strangeness gone until it was almost dark.
“I must go,“Johnny said.
“Your wife?” she asked, the laughter fading.
“Yes. My wife.” It was dark when Johnny went in through the front door of the new split-level ranch type in Bishopscourt which was his house but not his home; the telephone was ringing. He picked up the receiver.
“Johnny?”
“Hello Michael.” He recognized the voice.
“Johnny, get up here to the old house right away.” Michael
Shapiro’s voice was strained.
“Is it the Old Man?“Johnny asked anxiously.
“No talk - just come, quickly!” The curtains were drawn, and a log fire roared on the stone hearth. But the Old Man was cold. The coldness was deep inside him where the flames could not warm it. His hands shook as he picked sheets of paper from the open document box, glanced at them and then dropped them into the fire. They exploded into orange flame, then curled and blackened to ash. At last the box was empty but for a thick wad of multi-coloured envelopes bound together with a ribbon. He loosened the knot, picked out the first envelope, and slipped from it a single sheet of writing-paper.
“Dear Sir, I hope you will be pleased to hear that I am now at school. The food is good but the beds are very hard-” He dropped both envelope and letter on the fire and selected another. One at a time he read and then burned them.
“-that I have been selected to play for the first fifteen-“
Sometimes he smiled, once he chuckled.
“-I was top in all subjects except history and religious teaching.
I hope to do better next-” When there was one envelope left he held it a long time in his blue-veined bony hands. Then with an impatient flick of his wrist he threw it on to the fire and reached up to the mantelpiece to pull himself to his feet. As he stood he looked into the gilt-framed mirror above the fireplace.
He stared at his reflection, mildly surprised by the change that the last few weeks had wrought in his appearance. His eyes had lost the sparkle of life, fading to a pale dirty brownish blue the colour of putrefaction. They bulged from the sockets, in the glassy startled stare which is peculiar to the later stages of terminal cancer.
The watery feeling of limb, and the coldness were not the result of the pain-killing drugs, he knew. Nor was the shuffling feet-dragging gait with which he crossed the thick Bokhara carpet to the stinkwood desk.
He looked down at the oblong leather case with its brassbound corners, and he coughed, a single flesh- teating bark.
He caught at the desk to steady himself, waiting for the pain to pass before he sprang the catch on the case and laid the lid back.
His hands were quite steady as he took the barrel and butt section of the Purdy Royal twelve-bore shotgun from the case and fitted them together.
He died the way he had lived - alone.
“Oh, how I hate black.” Ruby Lance stood in the centre of the bedroom floor, staring at the clothing laid out on the double bed. “It makes me look so washed out.” She swung her head from side to side, setting the champagne-coloured cascade of her hair swinging. She turned and moved lazily across the room to the tall mirrors.
She smiled at herself, a languid slanting of the eyes, and then she spoke over the shoulder of her own image.
“You say that Benedict van der Byl has arrived from England?”
“Yes,“Johnny nodded. He sat slumped in the chair beside his dressing-room door, pressing his fingers into his eyes.
Ruby came up on her toes, pulling in her stomach and pushing forward her small hard breasts.
“Who else will be there?” she asked, cupping her hands under her breasts and squeezing out the nipples between thumb and forefinger, inspecting them critically. Johnny took his hand from his eyes.
“Did you hear me?” Ruby’s voice took on a sharp admonishing note. “I’m not talking to myself, you know.” She turned away from the mirror to face him. Standing long and slim and golden as a leopard, even her eyes had the yellow intentness of a leopard’s stare. She gave the impression that at any moment she would draw her lips back in a snarl.
“It’s a funeral,“he said quietly. “Not a cocktail party.”
“Well, you can’t expect me to die of sorrow. I couldn’t stand him.” She crossed to the bed and picked up the pair of peach-coloured panties and rubbed the glossy material against her cheek. Then she stepped into them with two long-legged strides.
“At least I can wear something pretty under the weeds.” She snapped the elastic against her sun-gilt belly, and the almost colourless blonde curls were flattened beneath the sheer silk.
Johnny stood up slowly, and went into his dressing-room.
Scornfully she called after him. “Oh for God’s sake, Johnny Lance, stop dragging that long face around as though it’s the end of the world. Nobody owes that old devil a thing he collected all his debts long before they fell due.” They were a few minutes early, and they stood together beneath the pine-trees outside the entrance to the chapel.
When the pearl-grey Rolls drew up at the gate and brother and sister stepped down and came up the paved path, Ruby could not contain her interest.
“Is that Benedict van der Byl?” Johnny nodded.
“He’s very good-looking.” But Johnny was looking at Tracey. The change in her appearance since he had last seen her was startling. She walked like a desert girl again, straight and proud. She came directly to Johnny and stopped in front of him. She removed her dark glasses, and he could see she had been weeping, for her eyes were slightly puffy. She wore no make-up, and with the dark scarf framing her face she looked like a nun. The marks that sorrow had left gave her face maturity.
“I did not think this day would ever come,” she said softly.
“No,” Johnny agreed. “It was as though he would live for ever.”
Tracey moved a step closer to him, she reached out as if to touch Johnny’s arm but her fingers stopped within inches of his sleeve.
Johnny understood the gesture, it was a sharing of sorrow, an understanding of mutual loss, and an unstated offer of comfort.
“I don’t think we have met.” Ruby used her sugar and arsenic tone. “It is Miss. van der Byl, isn’t it?” Tracey turned her head and her expression went flat and neutral. She replaced the dark glasses, masking her eyes.
“Mrs. Hartford,” she said. “How do you do.” ike Shapiro stood beside Johnny in the pew. He spoke without moving his lips, just loud enough for Johnny to catch the words.
“Benedict knows the conditions of the Will. You can expect his first move immediately.”
“Thanks, Mike.” Johnny kept his eyes on the massive black coffin. The candlelight granted and sparkled on the elaborate silver handles.
As yet he could find no interest for the conflict that lay ahead.
That would come. Now he was too deeply involved in the passing of an era, his life had reached another point of major departure. He knew it would change, had already changed.
He looked across the aisle suddenly, his gaze drawn intuitively.
Benedict van der Byl was watching him, and at that moment the priest asked for the pallbearers.
They went to stand beside the coffin, Benedict and Johnny on opposite sides of the polished black casket among the massed display of arum lilies. They watched each other warily. It seemed to Johnny that the whole scene was significant. The two of them standing over the Old Man’s corpse, facing each other, with Tracey looking on anxiously.
Johnny glanced back into the body of the church, looking for Tracey. Instead he found Ruby. She was
