The Takeover by Muriel Spark Page A

the aunt to meet Maggie in her flat in Paris. Maggie’s son, Michael, was there, and Mary whom he was shortly to marry. ‘Our forebear Diana,’ said Hubert’s aunt, ‘sets us rather apart. That was why I never married, nor my sister. Hubert will always be a bachelor, too.’
    He sat, now, on the terrace of the house at Nemi, secure in this lineage in which he could truly be said to have come to believe, seeing that his capacity for belief was in any case not much. He managed very well without sincerity and as little understood the lack of it as he missed his tonsils and his appendix which had been extracted long since.
    He sat half-facing Letizia.
    ‘Documents.…Yes,’ he said, ‘the documents exist, of course. Pauline is sorting out the documents. I’m writing my memoirs, you know.’
    Letizia turned her head to look uncomfortably inside the house where Kurt’s noise was coming from.
    ‘You know how to handle him?’ she said.
    ‘Of course. Don’t worry,’ said Hubert.
    Pauline helped herself to sherry and sat down.
    Hubert said, ‘I was good to him before. He wasn’t on drugs then.’
    Kurt sounded as if he would break down his door. Pauline did not move. She was watching Letizia who was ready to leave, and was standing, now, a little way off, gazing up at Hubert with her young face. They walked off to the car, talking. The girl obviously was extremely relieved to get rid of Kurt, and was gratefully attributing to Hubert a kind of broad-shouldered glamour which Pauline just for that moment realized he did not possess. That Hubert, walking Letizia to her car, was assiduously playing up to this role made Pauline impotently furious. She could not hear what Hubert was saying as he smiled down at Letizia, held her hand, kissed her hand, laid his hand reassuringly on the girl’s arm, and held open the door of the car for her. Letizia turned to wave to Pauline who, after a slight pause, waved back in the laziest way she could manage. Then Letizia was off, back to her sheltered privilege, her Papa and her holidays by the sea, while Hubert, really looking very handsome, strode back and up the steps to the verandah. Kurt was shouting and banging louder still. Hubert looked for help towards Pauline.
    ‘What’ll we do with him?’ Hubert said.
    ‘Get a doctor, I suppose,’ Pauline said, not moving. ‘It’s your job. You’ve been paid to look after him.’
    ‘Look, Pauline, we can’t get a doctor. You know he’ll be put straight into the loony-bin; my house will be searched; I’ll be questioned by the police, you’ll be questioned—’
    ‘Oh, no I won’t,’ Pauline said. ‘I’m leaving tonight. Going back to Rome tonight and tomorrow I’m going to the sea. If your bouncy admirer can get rid of her responsibilities and flip off to Greece tomorrow morning, why shouldn’t I?’
    ‘Pauline, it would be very dishonourable of you to let me down at this moment. Listen to him, up there!’
    ‘How honest are you?’ Pauline said, the words coming out in an unpremeditated access of insight. She had never questioned his honesty before.
    Possibly suspecting that she already knew more about him than she actually did, he said, ‘Dishonest I may be when pushed to it; it’s a relative thing. But dishonourable, no.’
    Pauline was by now very much upset, and this verbiage confused her. She said, ‘We should go up and get him. Bring him down, and try to do something with him.’
    ‘Come on, then,’ said Hubert, loftily and pained. ‘Let’s see what we can do.’
    The boy’s panic subsided when they opened his door. He was laughing and crying as they brought him downstairs, Pauline holding him by the arm and Hubert following, exhorting him to keep calm, not to worry and to relax.
    There was a canvas chair on the terrace that converted into a full-length couch. Hubert arranged this and they got Kurt stretched out on it crowing through his tears. His voice had the effect of ventriloquism, sounding sometimes