Two
. . . WHAT INDEED will we do about Elizabeth?
That crossed her mind like a sword thrust and was gone, because there wasn’t time now. In the immeasurably small interval between the moment she had touched the doorknob and the moment when Oliver’s words had split her consciousness, the knob had turned under her fingers. And creaked.
Elizabeth pulled the door wide and stepped out onto golden rope rug. They must have sprung apart very nimbly. Lucy Brent was leaning against one of the built-in bookcases at the end of the long narrow room; Oliver, a chair away, was deadening a cigarette in an ashtray and looking up with an air of pleased surprise.
This was where experience let you down. To wake from a pleasant dream to ugly reality wasn’t fair; it wasn’t in the book. Elizabeth said carefully, feeling her way: “Footnote to the doctor’s orders—Benedictine when wakeful. Any left?”
“Quarts.” Had Lucy’s breath come out in a sigh first? Examine it later, because this was quite important. Oliver said, pouring, “Here you are,” and then, “You didn’t take your pill.”
“No . . .” How much better if she had. And how bewildering of Oliver to put it that way, half-accusingly. Or . . . how clever.
“Steven’s off, he had one of those long manuscripts to finish before morning. A tome,” said Lucy critically. “One of those wartime marathons. He deserted me for it last night too, but that’s no reason why I should keep you people up until all hours.”
“Nonsense,” Elizabeth said. She felt breathless; did she sound it? Did Oliver, four feet away, sense the slow pounding of her heart? “I’m off myself. See you soon, Lucy.”
It was abrupt, but it was all she could manage, setting her half-emptied glass on a table, smiling at them both, closing the door quietly behind her. She carried the same audience, invisible, up the dark stairway and into the bedroom.
What ore we going to do about Elizabeth?
Oliver’s car drove away and returned. Elizabeth, still in every nerve and muscle, listened to his footsteps as he locked doors and turned off lights and mounted the stairs. He tiptoed cautiously through the bedroom; the light went on in the bathroom and there was a violent sound of toothbrushing. When the light was finally flipped out and Oliver padded barefootedly past the end of her bed to his own, Elizabeth held herself braced under her blankets. Now wasn’t the time to talk about it or even think about it; not now when she was still echoing all over with shock. She breathed shallowly over a sudden tickle in her throat, but the cough escaped.
Oliver said instantly out of the darkness, “Elizabeth?”
“Yes?” Draggingly, as though she had just surfaced from sleep.
“You’re awake, I can see the whites of your eyes.”
“I’m awake then. Temporarily.”
There was the sound of Oliver propping himself on his elbow. “You stayed up too long. Better watch it, just at first.”
Was it possible, wondered Elizabeth amazedly, that he was, as he thought, waking her in order to tell her to get more sleep? Was it even possible that he was chiding her for not having stayed where she had been tenderly put earlier that evening? She said calmly, “It was nice to have Steven and Lucy again.”
“Nice couple,” Oliver’s voice answered idly. He withdrew the propping elbow and there was a comfortable settling sound of sheets and blankets. “Easy to take.”
Easy to take.
What are we going to do about Elizabeth?
The first snow of the year began a little before dawn. Elizabeth woke to the whisper of it on the changing wind, and didn’t go back to sleep. Her mind had become a sounding board; it echoed senselessly with what she had heard Oliver say to Lucy Brent the night before. “You know how much it means to me—” like a man viewing freedom from behind bars. And then the stunning, the brutally brisk query about the disposal of Elizabeth. To Lucy, which was, as if it mattered, a double betrayal.
Oliver showered and shaved and dressed at seven-thirty, making a good deal more noise than he generally did. Elizabeth lay curled on her side, her eyelashes carefully down; she would have liked to pull up the blankets against the blast of snowy air from the window, but you couldn’t do that with a convincingly sound-asleep air. A tie whistled through the rack, there was a moment of concentrated silence, and Oliver crossed the room to her bedside. He hesitated. Elizabeth went on breathing neutrally and was rewarded by the sound of the door closing gently. She sat up against her pillow and lighted one of the cigarettes Hathaway had forbidden before breakfast.
In the first place, there might be another explanation. (But why, then, had she had that feeling of unease, the feeling that was almost fear?) And if there was, wouldn’t perceptive Oliver have made it last night?
In the second place, the explanation might be exactly what it seemed. Lucy Brent was a thoroughly charming woman, with an odd elusive attraction of her own. A little dissatisfied with her own marriage, although that was only a guess on Elizabeth’s part, because Steven’s salary as an editor in a publishing house would never be, in all probability, as elegant as her own tastes and inclinations. Possibly, because it was true of the most unexpected women, restless and bored with her own childless state.
But . . . Lucy?
Suppose Oliver had meant exactly what he had seemed to mean. It wasn’t simple even then, because quite apart from the problem of Lucy and Steven, there were two whole lifetimes, essenced into five years of marriage: you gave the sum total of yourself. There were two children who accepted love and belonging as
