They had cocktails, and Constance came downstairs wearing a soft green suit Elizabeth hadn’t seen before. The lines of it took the heaviness away from her body; the color made her skin and hair years younger. Constance, fidgeting, examining the seams of her gloves minutely, seemed vaguely embarrassed over her own changed appearance.
Presently headlights glimmered through the gap in the hedge. Elizabeth and Oliver, realizing simultaneously that the driver was not going to emerge, broke politely into small talk while Constance put on her coat and went to the door. There she said breathlessly, “I’ve got my key. . . . Good-night,” and let herself out into the windy dark.
“Don’t wait up, Ma,” murmured Oliver, catching Elizabeth’s eyes. “Isn’t this something new?”
Elizabeth answered that with a shrug. She set the table and lighted candles; in the kitchen she tasted Constance’s salad dressing and added salt and a few drops of vinegar. She moved about automatically, and went on listening to the memory of Oliver’s voice.
‘I told you—don’t call me here again.’ She had been discussed, warned against; she was, intolerably, the female in the oldest, shabbiest tag-line of all: If a woman answers, hang up. And at the other end of the wire, whose voice? Friday noon, same place. It sounded like the essence of all clandestine meetings; it sounded as alien to Oliver as the heavy exotic perfume had seemed in Noreen’s bedroom. And it sounded like a warning bell that this was a part of what she feared.
In the living-room again, she remembered all at once what had been driven out of her mind by the telephone call. Friday was the date of her morning appointment with Hathaway. It was a long-established hour that she always took when possible, because it meant she could meet Oliver for lunch before driving home. She said casually, “Oh, by the way, can we lunch Friday? Hathaway’s seeing me at eleven, and I’ll be through in plenty of time.”
“Good,” said Oliver promptly. “Dinty Moore’s?” She met his gaze squarely, and it looked pleased and inquiring. “Yes, let’s,” she said, turning away. Friday would tell her a great deal, Friday was the fork in the road. . . .
They had dinner in comparative silence until Oliver reached for a cigarette and said mildly, “Constance made any New Year’s resolutions that you know of?”
Elizabeth took fire instantly. “Such as what?”
“Such as plans,” Oliver said, still mild. “Don’t think I don’t appreciate what she’s done, because I do. But if we’re to be a permanent unit of five instead of four I think we ought to know about it and arrange things accordingly.”
Five instead of four; it wasn’t a felicitous phrase. Oliver, knowing it, said almost without pausing, “What I mean is that if she’s staying we’d better make it known that where we’re asked, she is, and so forth. What we’ve got here is, if you’ll pardon my saying so, a very half-assed arrangement, indeed.”
“And what would you suggest?” inquired Elizabeth, unreasonably angry. “That I tell her we don’t need her any more, and to go and buy a one-way ticket to someplace?”
“Damn it, no,” said Oliver. “You know perfectly well what I mean.” But I don’t, thought Elizabeth; that’s just the trouble. I don’t know whether you want us to be alone again or whether you’re afraid of Constance, because she’s my cousin, watching and recording with those eyes of hers. She said stiffly, “I’ll get coffee, shall I?” and escaped.
It was after coffee, it was nearly nine o’clock when Maire’s scream rang through the quiet house.
To Elizabeth it was the sudden black eruption of everything hidden and malign in the house. She felt one burning wave of panic from head to foot and then she was on the stairs and running before Oliver had had time to do more than start to his feet and say, “Take it easy—!”
Maire screamed again as Elizabeth reached the upper hall and brushed blindly past Noreen, bathrobed and blinking. She flung open the door of the children’s room, her breath shaking, and saw them both there and safe. Jeep humped like a camel in his crib, Maire sitting up in a tumble of bedclothes.
She was only half awake. Elizabeth went to her and put a reassuring arm around the small pajamaed shoulders. She couldn’t have controlled her voice a moment ago; now it came out softly, just above a whisper. “It’s all right, honey—back under the blankets. . . .”
Maire murmured something and crawled under the covers, and Elizabeth, smoothing them, looked around the room. Closet door closed, curtains stirring in the faint draught of cold air from the window—the child had waked and seen that, probably, like a dream brought to frightening life. . . .
Branches scraped against the porch roof. Elizabeth, looking up from the watchfully open eye above the level of the blankets, saw the huge soft shadow on the far wall and turned her head sharply. It was Noreen, who had kept a silent vigil in the doorway, who must have seen Elizabeth’s nervous, roving inspection of the room.
Maire’s visible eye had closed, lashes firmly down on the round cheek. Elizabeth stood up and moved away from the bed, and Noreen whispered practically, “Perhaps that draught—?”
There was no direct draught on either of the children, they were both aware of that, and equally aware that the window that was open led onto the low porch roof, against which the apple tree, jostling in the night wind, made a perfect natural ladder. Elizabeth knew that in the odd little silence during which they stood facing each other in the cool stirring half-dark, had it borne in on her even more
