Death of a Unicorn

This was something we’d decided without discussion not to talk about. It was too tricky. In spite of our endless rows, Jane was the only person I’d ever properly loved until I met B, but I knew I couldn’t count on her feeling the same. It was so much easier for me. Almost everything that had happened to us, all our lives, had been unfair on Jane, and the only excuse had been that I was the sacrifice. In the end she might be free, but I never would. Even that makes it sound a better bargain for her than it really was—nobody could call inheriting Cheadle a specially painful sort of sacrifice. And now, well, part of the unwritten contract was that the central ritual of the sacrifice would take place on the day I married, and thus brought a man home to look after Cheadle and sire another generation on me, so that the sacrifice could be repeated in thirty years’ time; and a vital part of the magic was that I must go spotless to that altar. It may seem a bit loopy to talk like this, in this day and age, but though Mummy would have been completely incapable of expressing herself in those terms, it was how she thought, and so, in spite of ourselves, the way Jane and I thought too.[1] By having an affair with B I had broken the contract and spoilt, or at least risked spoiling, the magic, but I was still going to inherit Cheadle. And on top of all that I was having a glorious time. Jane wouldn’t have been human if she hadn’t minded.

‘She wants him to let you go and have me instead,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘She hasn’t actually said so, but that’s what she wants.’

I didn’t understand at once. It was such an obviously impossible suggestion, she must mean something else. Then I remembered B saying ‘There is a hint of other elements in the transaction.’ I remembered him looking me over, like a slave merchant, after I’d made the suggestion about Jane moving in upstairs. He’d been wondering whether I knew, somehow, about Mummy’s idea, was part of the scheme, and was making a first move towards bringing it off. And then he’d decided that I wasn’t, and he’d said what he had about being trusted. The extraordinary thing was that when I did understand I didn’t blaze into one of my rages with Jane. I was appalled. Sick. Chilly with shock. Jane was watching me.

‘I don’t want him,’ she said. ‘I don’t want that. She can’t make me.’

Her voice was creaky with tension.

‘You can have Cheadle,’ I said.

‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘You can be Mabs from now on,’ I gabbled, ‘and I’ll be Jane. Like we’ve done before, only we’ll keep it up for the rest of our lives.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Yes, absolutely. Don’t you see . . .’

And I was. It was a totally absurd suggestion. Mummy would have known at once, for a start, and there were all sorts of other things which made it impossible, but all the same I did mean it. If I had the choice, I would give up my rights to Cheadle for ever rather than give up B, even though he might choose to turf me out next week.

‘Don’t be bloody stupid!’ she snapped. ‘I don’t want anything you’ve got. I don’t want him. I don’t want Cheadle. I want myself. Me!’

The pig-mask had started to form, but then her glance shifted. She looked over my shoulder for an instant, twitched herself round, swirling her skirt out, and leaned panting with her hands on the edge of the desk, her pony-tail hanging down to hide her face. I turned and saw Brian Naylor standing in the doorway.

‘I trust I don’t intrude,’ he said in his flat, oafish voice.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t realise . . . Nellie said . . .’

‘Having a wee bit of a tiff, are we?’

‘Mr Todd’s not coming in today.’

‘A great loss. A great, great loss to us all.’

‘This is my sister Jane. We had an urgent family problem we had to talk about. I’ll find somewhere else.’

‘Hello, Jane. Don’t go. The feminine touch is called for. Tell me what you think of the furniture and fittings in this salubrious accommodation.’

‘Dreary,’ said Jane, barely looking up.

‘Dreary. That is your considered opinion.’

‘Yes. Can I go now?’

‘Not quite appropriate for the editor of Britain’s foremost humorous weekly?’

(He was quoting from the slogan of an advertisement we were running as part of a circulation battle with Punch, but his leaden intonation—as with almost everything he said—implied the opposite of what the words seemed to mean.)

‘You’d better get Heal’s in,’ Jane muttered. ‘Tell them Swedish.’

‘Heal’s. Swedish.’

‘Elephant-grey carpet and dead white walls and stainless steel floor-lamps and natural linen curtains and Bernard Buffet prints and Orrifors glass. Can I go now? I’m trying to talk to Mabs.’

‘In office hours.’

‘Her office hours.’

He strutted over and put his arm round her. It seemed as long as an orang-utan’s. His right hand, hairy-backed, clamped on to her breast. Bruce Fischer was a model of finesse by comparison. Jane went Millett scarlet and tried to hoick herself free but he gripped her wrist and winked at me.