Kitty crossed the lounge with her tray and gathered up the cups and saucers. The Malseeds, naturally still anxious, hovered. No one was surprised when Cynthia began all over again, by crazily asking Kitty what she thought of us.
‘I think, dear,’ Mrs Malseed began, ‘Kitty’s quite busy really.’
‘Stop this at once,’ Strafe quietly ordered.
‘For fourteen years, Kitty, you’ve served us with food and cleared away the teacups we’ve drunk from. For fourteen years we’ve played our bridge and walked about the garden. We’ve gone for drives, we’ve bought our tweed, we’ve bathed as those children did.’
‘Stop it,’ Strafe said again, a little louder. Bewildered and getting red in the face, Kitty hastily bundled china on to her. tray. I made a sign at Strafe because for some reason I felt that the end was really in sight. I wanted him to retain his patience, but what Cynthia said next was almost unbelievable.
‘In Surrey we while away the time, we clip our hedges. On a bridge night there’s coffee at nine o’clock, with macaroons or
‘Will you for God’s sake shut up?’ Strafe suddenly shouted. I could see him struggling with himself, but it didn’t do any good., He called Cynthia a bloody spectacle, sitting there talking rubbish. I don’t believe she even heard him.
‘Through honey-tinted glasses we love you and we love your island, Kitty. We love the lilt of your racy history, we love your earls and heroes. Yet we made a sensible pale here once, as civilized people create a garden, pretty as a picture.’
Strafe’s outburst had been quite noisy and I could sense him being ashamed of it. He muttered that he was sorry, but Cynthia simply took advantage of his generosity, continuing about a pale.
‘Beyond it lie the bleak untouchables, best kept as dots on the horizon, too terrible to contemplate. How can we be blamed if we make neither head nor tail of anything, Kitty, your past and your present, those battles and Acts of Parliament? We people of Surrey: how can we know? Yet I stupidly thought, you see, that the tragedy of two children could at least be understood. He didn’t discover where her cruelty had come from because perhaps you never can: evil breeds evil in a mysterious way. That’s the story the red-haired stranger passed on to me, the story you huddle away from.’
Poor Strafe was pulling at Cynthia, pleading with her, still saying he was sorry.
‘Mrs Strafe,’ Mr Malseed tried to say, but got no further. To my horror Cynthia abruptly pointed at me.
‘That woman,’ she said, ‘is my husband’s mistress, a fact I am supposed to be unaware of, Kitty.’
‘My God!’ strafe said.
‘My husband is perverted in his sexual desires. His friend, who shared his schooldays, has never quite recovered from that time. I myself am a pathetic creature who has closed her eyes to a husband’s infidelity and his mistress’s viciousness. I am dragged into the days of Thrive Major and A.D, Cowley-Stubbs: mechanically I smile. I hardly exist, Kitty.’
There was a most unpleasant silence, and then Strafe said:
‘None of that’s true. For God’s sake, Cynthia,’ he suddenly shouted, ‘go and lie down.’
Cynthia shook her head and continued to address the waitress. She’d had a rest, she told her. ‘But it didn’t do any good, Kitty, because hell has invaded the paradise of Glencorn, as so often it has invaded your island. And we, who have so often brought it, pretend it isn’t there. Who cares about children made into murderers?’
Strafe shouted again. ‘You fleshless ugly bitch!’ he cried. ‘You bloody old fool!’ He was on his feet, trying to get her on to hers. The blood was thumping in his bronzed face, his eyes had a fury in them I’d never seen before. ‘Fleshless!’ he shouted at her, not caring that so many people were listening. He closed his eyes in misery and in shame again, and I wanted to reach out and take his hand but of course I could not. You could see the Malseeds didn’t blame him, you could see them thinking that everything was ruined for us. I wanted to shout at Cynthia too, to batter the silliness out of her, but of course I could not do that. I could feel the tears behind my eyes, and I couldn’t help noticing that Dekko’s hands were shaking. He’s quite sensitive behind his joky manner, and had quite obviously taken to heart her statement that he had never recovered from his schooldays. Nor had it been pleasant, hearing myself described as vicious.
‘No one cares,’ Cynthia said in the same unbalanced way, as if she hadn’t just been called ugly and a bitch. ‘No one cares, and on our journey home we shall all four be silent. Yet is the truth about ourselves at least a beginning? Will we wonder in the end about the hell that frightens us?’
Strafe still looked wretched, his face deliberately turned away from us. Mrs Malseed gave a little sigh and raised the fingers of her left hand to her cheek, as if something tickled it. Her husband breathed heavily. Dekko seemed on the point of tears.
Cynthia stumbled off, leaving a silence behind her. Before it was broken I knew she was right when she said we would just go home, away from this country we had come to love. And I knew as well that neither here nor at home would she be led to a blue van that was not quite an ambulance. Strafe would stay with her because Strafe is made like that, honourable in his own particular way. I felt a pain where perhaps my heart is, and again I wanted to cry. Why couldn’t it have been she who had gone down to the rocks and slipped on the seaweed or just walked into the sea, it didn’t matter which? Her awful rigmarole hung about us as the last of the tea things were gathered up – the earls who’d fled, the famine and the people planted. The children were there too, grown up into murdering riff-raff.
My cinder-grey room has a window, but I have never in all my time here looked out of it. It’s easier to remember, to conjure up this scene or that, to eavesdrop. Americans give arms away, Russians promise tanks. In Brussels an English politician breakfasts with his mistress; a pornographer pretends he’s selling Christmas cards. Carefully I listen, as in childhood I listened to the hushed conversation of my parents.
I stand in the cathedral at Vezelay, whose bishops once claimed it possessed the mortal remains of Mary Magdalene, a falseness which was exposed by Pope Boniface VIII. I wonder about that Pope, and then the scene is different.
