The Watch Tower by Elizabeth Harrower Page A

Poor Felix valued beautiful presents, too, like the ones he gave. And she hadonly herself, and out of herself she had somehow to manufacture repayments he would find acceptable.
    ‘Come in. He’s gone to bed.’
    Clare hesitated.
    ‘The rain’s blowing in, Clare. Come in and close the door.’
    With a jerk, Clare obeyed her sister and walked past her into the small sunroom while Laura shut out the noisy night. Then they both stood.
    The small steel catch of the cupboard door against which she leaned dug into Clare’s spine meanly. Its sharpness penetrated and she levered herself upright on her feet. Rain dripped from her hair.
    ‘What was it?’ she burst out. ‘What happened?’
    Laura shook her head, eyelids lowered. She had thought Felix had lost his mind. Even now, for all she knew, he might be mad. ‘He broke everything,’ she said.
    ‘That huge—decanter.’
    ‘Your face is cut. There’s blood on it.’
    ‘Is there?’ Clare stirred and in the instant of stirring lost interest. ‘Didn’t hit me. Whatever it was he threw.’
    They were silent again.
    ‘We can’t stand here for ever,’ Clare said, as if they easily could, and Laura met her eyes with a sort of consumed look, an extraordinary look, and boldly opened the glass doors leading to the shut-off houseand started to inspect it like a tourist at Pompeii. She noted the deep scratch across the surface of the dining-room table that Felix had deliberately carved into it with a piece of glass. Every piece of china and crystal he lifted had smashed with marvellous simplicity against the walls. Steak and beans and a mush of vegetables had somehow submitted to being arrayed peculiarly over the larger part of the carpeted floor.
    ‘What did we do? What were we saying? Oh, Laura. What’s the matter with him?’
    Laura shook her head. Her excitement was mounting dreadfully and with it came a blind, obsessive look, tight fists, sudden automatic activity.
    ‘What were we saying ?Was he drunk?’ On her knees beside Laura, Clare collected splintered glass.
    Feverish, glittering, Laura rose and sped to and fro with dust-pan and broom, hot water and washing-cloths. The house contained a connoisseur’s selection of liquor, but Felix had never so much as opened one bottle. In the past he had evidently frequented hotels, but now he never drank. ‘No, it wasn’t that.’
    ‘Well, what?’ Mechanically, Clare helped her restore the devastated rooms, her mind surging and brilliantly alert and lighted, running the scene again and then again in search of clues.
    For neither she nor Laura had said anything remotely provocative, had only sat eating dinner,artlessly good-humoured and ready to smile, listening to Felix, the wireless softly playing. Then he had suddenly vomited words at them, his manner extraordinarily agreeable, so that for seconds he might have been speaking Chinese for all the sense he seemed to make. Then with small smiles that were all at once painful but immovable, with unswallowed food turning poisonous in their mouths, they understood him.
    He lurched to his feet. Oiled strands of his brushed-back hair fell over the jagged scars on his forehead. His face was contused, his gestures terrifying, his expression ogrish.
    Staring-eyed and with a deep fearful incredulity they felt his voice beat against their heads. He lifted and threw and crashed and overturned.
    ‘Go outside at once and don’t come in till I call you!’ Laura cried over the noise to her sister.
    ‘What about you? Come, too! Come, too!’
    ‘Go outside, Clare!’
    ‘Don’t stay! Please don’t stay!’
    Working for an hour they removed as many signs of Felix’s outburst as could be washed away and disposed of in garbage tins. Now they stood in the kitchen.
    ‘What made him go to bed in the end?’ Clare asked listlessly.
    Laura shook her head. ‘He had no choice. He’d been—raving—for hours. It’s after one. I’m going tolie down in the spare room. Go to bed. In the