explained what happened to the heater but I didn’t care. It was nearly ten o’clock and there were bodies all over the stage. I just wanted to get home, to be safe again.
I felt myself drawn to the big house. I stood at my grandfather’s desk staring at the place where Paula had been sitting the night before. What had she hoped for? I wondered. How had she wanted it to work out? Doubtless she’d wanted to marry my brother Cyril: that must have been the end in view. A husband dead in Laos, a kind rescuer in my brother—a romance, a teen-age dream which had somehow come true. And then Cyril was suddenly snuffed out, meaninglessly, and she had had to absorb the shock. Had she had time to understand his death, to begin to search for an alternative? I had kissed her and held her, knowing she was desperate. I had wanted to comfort her, to give her something stable to hold on to in her shock. I thought about the Peck and Peck kilt, the huge safety pin. I had felt something else for her, too. She’d made me realize I wasn’t burned out inside. And then somebody had strangled her and closed her eyes and left her for me to find. It was insane, and it made my chest ache in frustration and anger and undirected hatred.
I was crying. I couldn’t stop crying.
I was crying for Cyril and for Paula and for myself.
I went to the kitchen and made coffee and heard something banging loose on the back of the house. I went back to the library and sat down in my grandfather’s chair. The wind howled outside. I walked into the parlor, into the vast echoing hallway, into one room after another, turning on lights. A formal dining room, another drawing room, a music room, the gun room. My grandfather had been a trapshooter, firing out across our own lake. In the music room I stopped and considered the photographs arranged on the tops of the cabinets.
My father in tennis dress: white duck trousers, tennis sweater knotted around his neck, white shirt open at the throat, shaking hands with the great German tennis star von Cramm, the perfectly handsome blond, blue-eyed Aryan who had had no time for Hitler. And my mother. …
She was, I suppose, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen and there were dozens of pictures of her in the music room. I was six years old when she was killed in the Blitz: I’m not sure if I actually remember what she looked like or if these photographs of her were what seemed to be my memory. She had a fine long nose, gracefully wavy blond hair, and a slightly angular quality: pictures of her swimming on the beach at Cannes showed long slender legs, a flat belly, small high breasts. She has a frank look in her eyes, unafraid and unimpressed by the camera. On one wall, by itself, was a huge oil portrait of her painted by my father. She is wearing a very simple mauve cocktail dress, low-cut, and she has that characteristic look of unconcern as if she is looking past my father to someone standing in a doorway. My father was a very able painter and his love for her is apparent in the painting.
My father and my mother were dead, too. The delicate little blond girl in the photographs, sometimes laughing, sometimes solemn, sometimes distracted by a small terrier at her feet—my little sister Lee, the image of her mother. I was the unhappy bastard who got left behind.
I went back to the library.
The telephone rang.
It was Arthur Brenner.
“I just took a chance you might be in the house and still awake.” His cold was worse. “I’m at home playing with my porcelain and drinking a toddy as you suggested. I’m working on what is the crowning work of my career in porcelain, a re-creation of Flowerdieu’s Charge. Do you know the story?” He was trying to take my mind off things.
“No.” I slumped back in my grandfather’s chair. “No, what’s the story, Arthur?”
“Flowerdieu’s Charge,” he said. “It was a gratuitous act of courage, utterly quixotic. The last British cavalry charge. Took place during
I felt myself drawn to the big house. I stood at my grandfather’s desk staring at the place where Paula had been sitting the night before. What had she hoped for? I wondered. How had she wanted it to work out? Doubtless she’d wanted to marry my brother Cyril: that must have been the end in view. A husband dead in Laos, a kind rescuer in my brother—a romance, a teen-age dream which had somehow come true. And then Cyril was suddenly snuffed out, meaninglessly, and she had had to absorb the shock. Had she had time to understand his death, to begin to search for an alternative? I had kissed her and held her, knowing she was desperate. I had wanted to comfort her, to give her something stable to hold on to in her shock. I thought about the Peck and Peck kilt, the huge safety pin. I had felt something else for her, too. She’d made me realize I wasn’t burned out inside. And then somebody had strangled her and closed her eyes and left her for me to find. It was insane, and it made my chest ache in frustration and anger and undirected hatred.
I was crying. I couldn’t stop crying.
I was crying for Cyril and for Paula and for myself.
I went to the kitchen and made coffee and heard something banging loose on the back of the house. I went back to the library and sat down in my grandfather’s chair. The wind howled outside. I walked into the parlor, into the vast echoing hallway, into one room after another, turning on lights. A formal dining room, another drawing room, a music room, the gun room. My grandfather had been a trapshooter, firing out across our own lake. In the music room I stopped and considered the photographs arranged on the tops of the cabinets.
My father in tennis dress: white duck trousers, tennis sweater knotted around his neck, white shirt open at the throat, shaking hands with the great German tennis star von Cramm, the perfectly handsome blond, blue-eyed Aryan who had had no time for Hitler. And my mother. …
She was, I suppose, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen and there were dozens of pictures of her in the music room. I was six years old when she was killed in the Blitz: I’m not sure if I actually remember what she looked like or if these photographs of her were what seemed to be my memory. She had a fine long nose, gracefully wavy blond hair, and a slightly angular quality: pictures of her swimming on the beach at Cannes showed long slender legs, a flat belly, small high breasts. She has a frank look in her eyes, unafraid and unimpressed by the camera. On one wall, by itself, was a huge oil portrait of her painted by my father. She is wearing a very simple mauve cocktail dress, low-cut, and she has that characteristic look of unconcern as if she is looking past my father to someone standing in a doorway. My father was a very able painter and his love for her is apparent in the painting.
My father and my mother were dead, too. The delicate little blond girl in the photographs, sometimes laughing, sometimes solemn, sometimes distracted by a small terrier at her feet—my little sister Lee, the image of her mother. I was the unhappy bastard who got left behind.
I went back to the library.
The telephone rang.
It was Arthur Brenner.
“I just took a chance you might be in the house and still awake.” His cold was worse. “I’m at home playing with my porcelain and drinking a toddy as you suggested. I’m working on what is the crowning work of my career in porcelain, a re-creation of Flowerdieu’s Charge. Do you know the story?” He was trying to take my mind off things.
“No.” I slumped back in my grandfather’s chair. “No, what’s the story, Arthur?”
“Flowerdieu’s Charge,” he said. “It was a gratuitous act of courage, utterly quixotic. The last British cavalry charge. Took place during
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