A Wreath for Rivera

They were on their feet. Carlisle, feeling very sick, wondered what would happen if she got to hers. She looked at the others through her fingers and thought that there was something a little wrong, a little misshapen, about all of them. Her aunt, for instance. Why had she not seen before that Lady Pastern’s body was too long and her head too big? It was so. And surely Félicité was fantastically narrow. Her skeleton must be all wrong: a tiny pelvis with the hip-bones jutting out from it like rocks. Carlisle’s eyes, behind their sheltering fingers, turned to Lord Pastern and she thought how monstrous it was that his forehead should overhang the rest of his face — a blind over a shop window; that his monkey’s cheeks should bunch themselves up when he was angry. Even Hendy: Hendy’s throat was like some bird’s and now that her hair was braided one saw that it was thin on top. Her scalp showed. They were caricatures, really, all of them. Subtly off-pitch: instruments very slightly out of tune. And Ned? He was behind her, but if she turned to look at him, what, in the perceptiveness born of nervous exhaustion, would she see? Were not his eyes black and small? Didn’t his mouth, when it smiled, twist and show canine teeth a little too long? But she would not look at Ned.

And now, thought the bemused Carlisle, here was Uncle George at it again. “I’ve no intention of goin’ to bed. People sleep too much. No need for it: look at the mystics. Workin’ from this time-table I can show you…”

“That’s extremely kind of you, sir.” Alleyn’s voice was clear and pleasant. “But I think not. We have to get through our routine jobs. They’re dreary beyond words and we’re best left to ourselves while we do them.”

“Routine,” shouted Lord Pastern. “Official synonym for inefficiency. Things are straightened out for you by someone who takes the trouble to use his head and what do you do? Tell him to go to bed while you gallop about his house makin’ lists like a bumbailiff. Be damned if I’ll go to bed. Now!”

“Oh, God!” Carlisle thought desperately. “How’s he going to cope with this?” She felt the pressure of a hand on her shoulder and heard Ned’s voice.

“May I suggest that whatever Cousin George decides to do there’s no reason why the rest of us should keep a watch of supererogation.”

“None at all,” Alleyn said.

“Carlisle, my dear,” Lady Pastern murmured as if she were giving the signal to rise from a dinner party. “Shall we?”

Carlisle stood up. Edward was close by and it seemed to her that he still looked angry. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“Perfectly,” she said. “I don’t know what possessed me. I got a bit run-down in Greece and I suppose — ” Her voice died. She was thinking of the long flight of stairs up to her room.

“My dearest child,” her aunt said, “I shall never forgive myself that you have been subjected to this ordeal.”

“But she’s wondering,” Carlisle thought, “what I’ve been up to. They’re all wondering.”

“Perhaps some wine,” her aunt continued, “or whiskey. It is useless to suggest, George, that you…”

“I’ll get it,” Edward said quickly.

But Miss Henderson had already gone and now returned with a glass in her hand. As she took it from her, Carlisle smelt Hendy’s particular smell of soap and talcum powder. “Like a baby,” she thought and drank. The almost neat whiskey made her shudder convulsively. “Hendy!” she gasped. “You do pack a punch. I’m all right. Really. It’s you, Aunt Cécile, who should be given corpse revivers.”

Lady Pastern closed her eyes momentarily upon this vulgarism. Félicité, who had been perfectly silent ever since Alleyn and Carlisle came in, said: “I’d like a drink, Ned. Let’s have a pub crawl in the dining-room, shall we?”

“The decanter’s here if you want it, dear.” Miss Henderson also spoke for the first time.

“In that case,” Edward said, “if it’s all right by you, Alleyn, I’ll take myself off.”

“We’ve got your address, haven’t we? Right.”

“Good-bye, Cousin Cile. If there’s anything I can do…” Ned stood in the doorway. Carlisle did not look at him. “Good-bye, Lisle,” he said. “Good-bye, Fée.”

Félicité moved swiftly to him and with an abrupt compulsive movement put her arm round his neck and kissed him. He stood for a moment with his head stooped and his hand on her arm. Then he was gone.

Beneath the heavy mask of exhaustion that her aunt wore, Carlisle saw a faint glimmer of gratification. “Come, my children,” Lady Pastern said, almost briskly. “Bed.” She swept them past Alleyn, who opened the door for them. As Carlisle turned, with the others, to mount the stairs, she heard Lord Pastern.

“Here I am,” he shouted, “and here I stick. You don’t turf me off to bed or anywhere else, short of arresting me.”

“I’m not, at the moment, proposing to do that,” Alleyn said distinctly, “though I think, sir, I should warn you…”

The door shut off the remainder of his sentence.