afternoon, because she was now in the uncommonly rewarding position of being able to stand me up without incurring the odium of having actually broken an arrangement. On the other hand, she was very much capable of following this line of argument and so going along to the agreed corner to find me not there, which would shove me back to the wrong side of square one, not to speak of the questions about why I was so changeable and so selfish, and did I think it was because I was so insecure, that I would have to sweat through as part of the shoving. And, being Diana, to have got that far would mean she would know, without having to think about it, that I would have got as far as it, too. So I would have to turn up anyway. But I had been going to do that all along.
By this time I had poured the drinks and taken my place in my walnut Queen Anne carver, which, though I had one or two older things in the house, is much my favourite piece. I had Diana on my right with my father on her other side facing the door, then Jack, and Joyce on my left. As we ate the
‘All sorts of people seem to be wandering about the house these days. I mean up on this floor, where they’ve no business to be when there’s no banquet affair going on. Not half an hour ago there was some rooster clumping up and down that passage outside as if he owned the place. I was on the point of getting up and going to see what he thought he was doing when he buggered off. It’s not the first time in the last few days, either. Can’t you put up a notice or something, Maurice?’
‘Outside the main door here there’s a—’
‘No, no, I mean something at the foot of the stairs, to keep them off this floor altogether. The place is turning into a mad-house. Haven’t you come across this sort of thing yourself, Maurice? You must have, surely.’
‘Once or twice.’ I spoke listlessly, my mind and the edge of my vision on Diana. ‘Now you mention it, there was a woman hanging about at the top of the stairs earlier on.’ I realized for the first time that I had not subsequently seen that woman in the bar or the dining-room or anywhere round the house. No doubt she had found the ladies’ lavatory on the ground floor, and left while I was busy standing in for Fred. No doubt. But I half-saw Diana put her spoon down and begin taking stock of my face. I could not stand the prospect of being asked, in those separated syllables, why I was so this, or what had made me so that, or whether I realized that I was so the other. I got up, said I was going to say good night to Amy and went off to do so, ringing for Magdalena on my way out.
Amy’s appearance and posture had changed to the minimum degree consistent with her having been Amy sitting on bed before and being Amy sitting in bed now. On the television screen, a young woman was denouncing an older one who was keeping her back turned throughout, not so much out of inattention or deliberate rudeness as with the mere object of letting the audience see her face at the same time as her accuser’s. For a moment I watched, in the hope of seeing them do a smart about-turn at the end of the speech, and wondering to what extent real life would he affected if there were to grow up a new convention that people always had to be facing the same way before they could speak to each other. Then I went over to Amy.
‘What time does this finish?’
‘Nearly over now.’
‘Mind you put it off the moment it is. Have you cleaned your teeth?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good girlie. Don’t forget we’re going into Baldock in the morning.’
‘No.’
‘Good night, then.’
I bent over to kiss her cheek. At the same time, there came a succession of sounds from the dining-room: a shout or loud cry in my father’s voice, some hurried words from Jack, a sort of bumping crash made by a collision with furniture, a confusion of voices. I told Amy to stay where she was, and ran back to the dining-room.
When I opened the door, Victor rushed past me, his tail swollen with erected hair. Across the room, Jack, with some assistance from Joyce, was dragging my father, who was completely limp, to a near-by armchair. At my father’s place at table there was an overturned dining-chair and some crockery and cutlery on the floor. Some drink had been spilt. Diana, who had been watching the others, turned and looked at me in fear.
‘He started staring and then he stood up and called out and then he just sort of collapsed and hit the table and Jack caught him,’ she said in a jumbled voice: no elocution now.
I went past her. ‘What’s happened?’
Jack was lowering my father into the armchair. When he had done this, he said, ‘Cerebral haemorrhage, I should imagine.’
‘Is he going to die?’
‘Yes, it’s quite possible.’
‘Soon?’
‘Quite possibly.’
‘What can you do about it?’
‘Nothing that’ll prevent him dying if he’s going to.’
I looked at Jack, and he at me. I could not tell what he was thinking. He had his finger against my father’s pulse. My body, I myself, seemed to consist of my face and the front of my torso, down as far as the base of the belly. I knelt by the armchair and heard slow, deep breathing. My father’s eyes were open, with the pupils apparently fixed in the left-hand corners. Apart from this he looked quite normal, even relaxed.
‘Father,’ I said, and thought he stirred slightly. But there was nothing to say next. I wondered what was going on in that brain, what it saw, or fancied it saw: something irrelevant, perhaps, something pleasant, sunshine and fields. Or something not pleasant, something ugly, something bewildering. I imagined a desperate, prolonged effort to understand what was happening, and a discomfort so enormous as to be worse than pain, because lacking the merciful power of pain to extinguish thought, feeling, identity, the sense of time, everything but itself. This idea terrified me, but it also pointed out to me, with irresistible clarity and firmness, what I was to say next.
I leant closer. ‘Father. This is Maurice. Are you awake? Do you know where you are? This is Maurice, Father. Tell me what’s going on where you are. Is there anything to see? Describe how you feel. What are you thinking?’
Behind me, Jack said coldly, ‘He can’t hear you.’
‘Father. Can you hear me? Nod your head if you can.’
In slow, mechanical tones, like a gramophone record played at too low a speed, my father said, ‘Maur—rice,’ then, less distinctly, a few more words that might have been ‘who’ and ‘over by the …‘ Then he died.
I stood up and turned away. Diana looked at me with the fear gone from her face and stance. Before she could say anything I went past her and over to Joyce, who was looking down at the serving table. Here a tray had been placed with five covered plates and some vegetable dishes on it.
‘I couldn’t think what to do,’ said Joyce, ‘so I told Magdalena to leave it all here. Is he dead?’
‘Yes.’
At once she started to cry. We put our arms round each other.
‘He was awfully old and it was very quick and he didn’t suffer.’
‘We don’t know what he suffered,’ I said.
‘He was such a nice old man. I can’t believe he’s just gone for ever.’
‘I’d better go and tell Amy.’
‘Do you want me to come with you?’
‘Not now.’
Amy had turned off the TV set and was sitting on her bed, but not in her previous posture.
‘Gramps has been taken ill,’ I said.
‘Is he dead?’
‘Yes, but it was all over in a second and it didn’t hurt him. He can’t have known anything about it. He was very old, you know, and it might have happened any day. That’s how it is with very old people.’
‘But there was so much I meant to say to him.’
‘What about?’
‘All sorts of things.’ Amy got up and came and put her hands on my shoulders. ‘I’m sorry your father’s dead.’
This made me cry. I sat down on the bed for a few minutes while she held my hand and stroked the back of my neck. When I had finished crying, she sent me off, saying that I was not to worry about her, that she would be
