The Hellfire Club

'Fraud,' Clementine said, and the moron sun, having no choice, shone down upon the Poisoned world.

Nora placed the last page atop the others and heard the sound she had most been dreading, the ringing of the telephone.36

'Thanks be to God, I did not hear the most hateful phrase on the face of the earth, 'Wrong number.' Haven't I been good? Haven't I been the most restrained little thing on the face of the earth? I am proud of myself, unto the utmost utmost. I have been circling this phone, picking it up and putting it down, I have several times dialed the first three numerals of your phone number only to put the blasted thing down again, I promised you hours of peace and quiet untroubled by little me, and by my count three hours and what's more twenty-two minutes have passed, and so what did you think? Tell me, speak, discourse, dearest Nora, please say something.'

'Hello, Daisy,' Nora said.

'I know, I'm too nervous to shut up and let you speak, listen to me babble! How far are you? What do you think? You like it, don't you?'

'It's really something,' Nora said.

'Isn't it ever! Go on.'

'I've never read anything like it.'

'You got through the whole thing? You couldn't have, you must have skimmed.'

'No, I didn't,' Nora said. 'It isn't the kind of book you can skim, is it.'

'What do you mean by that?'

'For one thing, it's so intense.' Daisy uttered a satisfied grunt, and Nora went on. 'You have to pay attention when you're reading.'

'I should hope so. Go on, Nora, talk to me.'

'It's a real experience.'

'What kind of experience? Be more specific.'

Confusing? Irritating? 'An intense experience.'

'Ah. I think you already said that, though. What kind of intense experience?'

Nora groped. 'Well, intellectual.'

'Intellectual?

'You have to think when you're reading it.'

'Okay. But you keep saying the same things over and over. A little while ago, when you were talking about how it wasn't the kind of book you could skim, you said, 'for one thing,' so you must have another reason in mind, too. What was it?'

Nora struggled to remember. 'I guess I meant the condition of the manuscript.'

An ominous silence greeted these words.

'You know what I mean, all those changes and deletions.'

'For God's sake, the whole thing has to be retyped, but you asked to see it, remember, so I gave it to you as is, this is so obvious, but anybody can read a book after it's published, that's hardly the point, I want to hear what you have to say, and you're talking about something completely irrelevant.'

'I'm sorry. All I meant was that you have to read it more slowly this way.'

'Yes, you have been abundantly clear on the subject, trivial though it is, and now that we have that out of the way I wish to sit back and soak up your observations.'

Nora could hear Daisy's impatience compounding itself several times over. 'Some of it is very funny,' she said.

'Goody goody. I meant for parts to be ecstatically funny. Not all of it, though.'

'Of course not. There's a lot of anger in it.'

'You bet. Anger upon anger. Grrr.'

'And you took a lot of chances.'

'You wonderful girl, you saw that? Blessings on your head. Tell me more.'

'So it seemed very experimental to me.'

'Experimental? What could possibly seem experimental to you?'

'The way you repeat certain scenes? Or how you end some sections before they're finished?'

'You're talking about the times when the same things happen all over again after they happened the first time, but differently, so the real meaning comes out. And the other thing you're talking about is when anyone with half a brain can see what's going to happen, so there's no point in writing it all down. My God, it's a novel, not journalism.'

'No, you're right. It's a wonderful novel, Daisy.'

'Then tell me why it's wonderful.'

Nora groped for the safest comment that could be made about the book. 'It's bold. It's daring.'

'But why do you think so?' Daisy shouted.

'Well, a lot of books start in one place and tell you a story, and that's that. I guess what I mean is, you're willing not to be linear.'

'It's as linear as a clothesline. If you don't see that, you don't see anything at all.'

'Daisy, please don't be so defensive. I'm telling you what I like about your book.'

'But you're making me be defensive! You're saying these stupid things! I spent most of my life laboring over this book, and you sashay up to me and tell me it doesn't even have a story.'

'Daisy,' Nora said, 'I'm trying to tell you that it's much richer than the books that only tell you a story.'

Slightly mollified, Daisy asked, 'What's your favorite part so far?'

Nora tried to remember something she had liked. 'I have lots of favorite parts. Adelbert killing the women. The way you present Egbert. Your descriptions of Adelbert's clothes.'

Daisy chuckled. 'How far are you? What's happening now?'

Nora tried to remember what had been going on at the point she had skipped ahead. 'I'm at the part where Archibald is carrying on about Nazi uniforms and talking to Hitler while he's making Clementine and his son give him a grandson.'

'The fantasia? You're only as far as the fantasia? Then you can't possibly see the pattern, you're not entitled to speak about it at all. I trusted you with my soul and you're walking all over it with your big, dirty feet, I give you a masterpiece and you spit on it.'

Nora, who had been uttering Daisy's name at intervals during this tirade, made a desperate effort to placate her. 'Daisy, you can't twist everything around this way, I am not lying to you, I understand what you have put into your book, and I know how special it is because I know you wrote those Clyde Morning and Marietta Teatime novels, and this is so much more adventurous and complex.'

During the long silence which followed she thought that she might have reversed the trend of this conversation, but Daisy had been gathering herself to scream. 'Traitor! Judas!'

The line went dead.

Nora dropped the receiver in its cradle and blindly circled the bedroom, hugging herself. When she reached the telephone again, she sat on the bed and dialed the Poplars' number. She heard the phone ring three times, four times, five. At the tenth ring, she hung up, fell back on the bed, and groaned. Then she sat up and dialed the Poplars' number again.

After the second ring, Maria picked up and spoke a cautious 'Hello?'

'Maria, this is Nora,' she said. 'I know Mrs Chancel doesn't want to talk to me, but could you please tell her I have important things to say to her?'

'Mrs Chancel doesn't want,' Maria said.

'Say whatever you have to, but get her to talk to me.'

Nora heard the telephone clunk down, then a few nearly inaudible words from Maria followed by a series of howls.

'Mrs Chancel say you not family, her son family, not you. No good. Not talk.' She hung up.

Nora fell back onto the bed and contemplated the ceiling. After an indeterminate time, one small consolation offered itself. Daisy would never speak to Alden of what had occurred. From this certainty grew a larger consolation. Because Daisy would not trouble Alden, Alden would not trouble Davey. Over time, the issue of Daisy's