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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 1
UPSTAIRS IN THE LARGE front bedroom that looked out to the sea the old man’s voice droned feebly on, coming and going like waves against the shore.
“To Lydia Thursto, a good and trusted friend, I bequeath . . . I bequeath the silver George the Second teapot on the mantelpiece in the library. To my cousin Nicholas Quantick I leave my Sheraton dining table and chairs. I bequeath my yacht . . . I bequeath my yacht . . .”
The voice faded away into silence. The dim eyes in the wrinkled, sunken face stared ahead. Minutes passed. A quarter of an hour. A dribble of saliva came from the corner of the old man’s mouth and coursed down his chin. Eventually, the forehead wrinkled, as if pale shadows of thought were going around in his mind. At last there was some movement under the bedclothes, and slowly a hand emerged from under the sheets—a hand so little fleshed as to resemble a talon. Wavering, it felt its way to the little bedside table and pressed down the switch on the portable tape recorder that always sat there. The voice resumed, with a slight access of strength and determination.
“I bequeath my yacht and all its contents to my good friend Willy Harrison in the firm belief that he will have more fun with it than either of my children. . . . I leave my Sheraton dining table and chairs to . . . to . . . to my dear sister . . .”
Eventually, the voice faded into silence again. On the bedside table the machine whirred on.
• • •
“He’s making his will again,” said Caroline as she brought in the soup and hot rolls on a tray.
“Good,” said Roderick. “At least it shows there’s some activity there. I suppose he’s disinheriting us again?”
“He doesn’t disinherit us. It’s just that he barely remembers we exist. It’s all those friends from way back, long-lost cousins. . . . I agree; it’s the days when he’s entirely passive that are difficult to bear.”
Roderick, his own face creased by tiredness, looked at her with love.
“The burden falls hardest on you,” he said.
“Oh, nonsense. I have Mrs. Spriggs four mornings a week. She does most of the heavy work—and a lot of the nasty work. The royalties from the books at least give us that boon.” She thought for a moment. “Which is not to say I won’t be glad when he finally goes. For his sake. This half-life that he lives, this twilight existence, is pretty horrible to contemplate after the sort of life he led.”
“Absolutely,” Roderick agreed. “I shan’t even be sorry to leave this house and find something smaller . . . though I know Becky will be upset to leave.”
“If we find a pleasant cottage with a manageable garden she can roam about in, she’ll soon adapt,” said Caroline briskly. She often adopted this tone when talking of her daughter. It served to keep the pain at bay. “Did you write that letter to the Guardian about teaching the mentally handicapped?”
“Yes. At great length. I don’t know where I get this verbosity from. Father’s books were always brilliantly concise. Anyway, I painfully cut it down. I’ll give it to Tom if he comes with any afternoon post. Otherwise, I’ll take it down to the village myself.”
Caroline piled up the soup plates and went to fetch the cheese. They ate lightly at lunchtime. When Roderick was at school, he sometimes didn’t find time for anything at all. A school for handicapped children, however generously staffed, presented a constant stream of problems, and situations demanding decisions. It had aged him, Caroline knew, as he would not have aged if he had stayed at Stowe. On the other hand, he was happy.
“Tom’s on his way,” Caroline called from the kitchen. “He’ll be here in a couple of minutes.”
Roderick handed over his letter—Tom was a favorite of Becky’s and always very obliging. When he came back into the dining room, he was holding another.
“Who do we know lives in Pelstock, in Essex? Writes an enthusiastic but unformed hand, probably female?”
“One of your father’s fans,” said Caroline promptly. “Wanting his autograph, or conceivably advice on her love life. Send her the form reply.”
“No, it’s to me,” said Roderick, cutting himself some Camembert. “The ones that don’t know always write to him, usually care of the publishers.” He slit open the letter. “Good Lord!” From the first line it had his attention, and he read on avidly, his cheese disregarded. “Good Lord!”
“Roderick, you don’t know how aggravating it is to have someone reading a letter and saying ‘Good Lord!’ over and over. At least tell me who it’s from.”
“What? Oh, yes—it’s from Cordelia Mason. My—what is it?—half sister. Dad’s by-blow.”
“That’s an awful expression to use of an illegitimate child,” Caroline said reprovingly. “Think how het up you get if someone uses words like ‘idiot’ for retarded children.”
“Dad’s final fling,” amended Roderick, hardly pausing in his reading.
“Well, come on. What does she want? Why is she getting in contact now?”
“She’s writing a book on her mother. She wants to come here.”
He handed the letter over. Caroline took it, frowning.
“Can’t we just explain the situation? Tell her there’s no question of her getting anything out of him?”
“She knows that. She wants to talk to us. To read any of her mother’s letters we may have.”
“We have letters. I never met Myra, so I wouldn’t have anything to tell her.”
“I did,” said Roderick reflectively. “Oh, yes, I met Myra.” As Caroline began reading the letter he said, still musingly: “You can say what you like about Dad’s sexual appetites, but Myra was no ingenue, seduced and then heartlessly abandoned.”
“I didn’t say she was,” said Caroline, who was glancing at the last page of the letter. “Why ‘Cordelia,’ I wonder? The only time we saw Myra she was playing Goneril. Much more her line, I would have thought.”
“Still, perhaps she cast Father as Lear, and in some obscure way you can see her point. The patriarchal figure, quixotic and demanding.” When Caroline had finished, Roderick asked: “What shall we say?”
Caroline shrugged.
“Well, she says she won’t ‘trespass on our hospitality,’ so there won’t be any burden on us. We can take her upstairs and introduce her. He won’t know who she is, of course. She can read the letters, we can find a room for her to work in. Becky likes new faces, so she won’t be any problem. . . . Unless of course she’s one of those intense young people with a grievance about her birth, or something. Illegitimacy was regarded rather differently in . . . when was it?”
“About 1960. I was down from Oxford, I remember, and was about to start teaching at Stowe. It was a year or two before I met you. I remember hoping when the publicity broke that you wouldn’t be put off me.”
“Fat chance,” said Caroline, grinning.
“Actually, the sixties weren’t that bad a time to grow up
illegitimate. It was just becoming rather the thing. And I should think in theatrical circles it’s never been a very dreadful stigma.”
“Anyway, that would make her now about twenty-seven,” said Caroline, looking back to the letter. “She writes a very childish hand for twenty-seven. Isn’t there something odd about writing a biography of your mother while she’s still alive?”
Roderick pursed his lips.
“I don’t think so, these days. There would be a market for it. Myra is immensely popular, and a dame, and always in work. Does she actually say it is to be a biography? Maybe it will be one of those gushing jobs, strictly for the fans.”
“The letter itself sounds sensible enough. I can’t see she wants to do a hatchet job on your father. I wouldn’t want her to do that. She says she’s going to ring. We can explain the situation to her then.”
“Can’t be urgent,” said Roderick, taking up the letter. “She sent this second-class mail.”
In the event, though, she rang shortly after six that evening. Becky was just back from a visit to a friend and was making some noise in the living room. Roderick, hearing who it was, shut the door from the hall and returned to the phone.
“I wondered if you got my letter, Mr. Cotterel? . . .”
Roderick was immediately struck by the charm of the voice. Probably that was only to be expected in the child of his father by an actress. His father, in his early days, had had a beautiful voice and had sometimes read his own short stories on the wireless. Myra’s voice was, quite simply, thrilling.
“Yes, I did. We should be delighted to see you. Of course, you understand the position with Father—”
“Yes, I do. I’ve heard about it enough from my mother. So please believe me when I say I wouldn’t want to upset him in any way.”
“Frankly, he’s beyond being upset by anything. We can take you into his room, tell him your name, and he’ll smile—but he won’t know who you are, and there’s no way we could make him understand. It’s you who are more likely to be upset.”
“Oh, no. He’s played no part in my life, except as a writer, of course. That wouldn’t be at all distressing to me. What really interests me is whether you have letters and things.”
“Yes, we do. Put away in a rather higgledy-piggledy fashion, and certainly not filed or archived in any way, but, yes, we do have quite a few. Eventually I suppose, when he dies, we’ll hand them over to a biographer. There have been various academics sniffing around already.”
“You do have letters from my mother?”
“Yes. And I think there are quite a few about her. During the affair, and of course after.”
“The aftermath. Don’t be embarrassed. Naturally I know all about that.”
“So you won’t be shocked by anything he says—?”
The girl laughed. “No, I won’t be shocked. There may even be some photographs, I suppose?”
“Certainly. I think I took some the only time I met them together. Your mother, I remember, was pregnant.”
“Great! The three of us together! Mr. Cotterel, I said I wouldn’t be a burden to you, and I won’t. I believe you have a handicapped child—”
“Yes. A daughter. Becky.”
“Well, I’m sure you and your wife have more than enough to do. But I wondered if the Old Rectory has a lawn. It sounds as though it ought to.”
“Yes, it does. The church commissioners sold off a lot of land when they put it on the market. There are hideous custom-built houses on it now. But that still left us a goodly stretch of garden, a lot of it lawn. It’s very good for Becky to have a bit of open space.”
“You see, my boyfriend and I have this tent, and we wondered if we could pitch it on your lawn. It would be very convenient for me, working on the letters and things. And Pat could go off swimming or hiking. It’s the way we usually travel, and it would only be for a few days.”
“I’m sure that would be all right,” said Roderick. “We’re rather high up, and there are sometimes strong winds, but if you are experienced campers, that shouldn’t faze you. Becky may come and disturb you; new faces always intrigue her.”
“No problem. Pat’s a teacher. We both love children.”
“Becky is actually nearly twenty. Though—”
“I understand.”
“When do you plan on coming?”
“Tomorrow, if that’s all right by you. With the school holidays just begun, I want to make the best possible use of the time.”
“Yes . . . That will be fine. Shall we just expect you when we see you?”
“That’s right. With our car it isn’t wise to be too specific. Maybe early evening. But tell your wife: no preparations. The last thing I want to be is any trouble, and Pat’s idea of a perfect holiday is to be well away from any and everybody.”
“Well, till then, then.”
“Looking forward to meeting you—brother!”
Cordelia laughed gaily and rang off.
Becky was quiet now, sitting with a favorite book of pictures that she flicked endlessly over, occasionally giving little whimpers of pleasure. Roderick sat beside Caroline on the sofa, and they talked quietly.
“She asked whether they could camp on the lawn. I didn’t see why not.”
“No reason at all. They?”
“There’s a boyfriend.”
“Inevitably, I suppose, seeing she’s Myra’s daughter. She probably has a whole string of young men in train.”
“Her voice is certainly attractive. Clear, girlish. Not at all like Myra’s, though, now I come to think about it. Myra’s was very intense, with cello overtones.”
“Yes, that’s how I remember her stage voice. With more than a touch of the viper, too—though of course she was playing Goneril.”
“The stage voice and the offstage voice are pretty much the same, I think. She isn’t one of those actresses with two distinct personalities. When I met her, she was a very intense young lady, with very little sense of humor.”
“The girl didn’t sound like that?”
“No, not at all. She called me ‘brother’ in a way that showed she relished the humor of the situation.”
“Well, I’m glad she could see it. If my mother had been abandoned with me as a tiny baby, I don’t know that I would see much humor in the situation.”
“He didn’t abandon her, he simply broke off the affair. That was his right, just as much as it would have been hers had it been she who wanted out. It was Myra who refused all support for the child. And it was Myra who took the story to the newspapers.”
“And it was your father who wrote that book. . . . Oh, dear, let’s not quarrel about old wrongs. I’m quite willing to admit that Myra was no Tess of the D’Urbervilles. When did Cordelia say she would be coming?”
“Tomorrow, actually. But she said to make absolutely no preparations for her.”
“But we must give them dinner . . . Damn, the commodore’s coming for sherry.”
“Darling, she said no preparations. Anyway, the commodore has an eye for a pretty girl.”
“The commodore’s lady wife will be with him. The only eye she has for a pretty girl is the evil eye. Oh, well, it will all work out all right if we don’t fuss. I just hope Isobel doesn’t descend on us in the near future for one of her periodic visits. It would be just like her to choose the most inconvenient time. And she’s due for a tour of inspection—to see we’re not neglecting her precious property. Not to worry; we’ll cope. But how would Isobel react to the idea of a new sister?”
Later that night, in bed, Caroline said: “You’re thoughtful. What are you thinking about? The prospect of acquiring a sister?”
“No. Though I hope she’s more congenial than Isobel. It’s been nagging away in my mind that there was something—I don’t know—something wrong about that telephone conversation. I just can’t pin down what it was.”
“I expect it’s the sense of—what does Ibsen call it?—the younger generation banging on the door,” said Caroline.
“Since we don’t have any . . . normal children, we’re a bit cut off from young people.”
“Myra once played Hilde Wangel,” said Roderick. “I should think she was absolutely fearsome, driving poor old Solness up that bloody tower. . . . But no, it wasn’t that. I expect when I meet the girl I’ll remember what it was.”
Chapter 2
WHY, CAROLINE WONDERED, do naval officers so often carry about with them a faint whiff of the bogus?
She was sipping sherry and making polite conversation about the roses with Commodore Critchley and his wife, Daisy, and all the time her mind was far away, as it tended to be on social occasions that had more to do with politeness than with pleasure.
It was true. Almost all the naval men she had known (she’d met quite a few through her father) had had it: a phony heartiness, a cultivated lecherousness, or a suspect suggestion of dreamy remoteness that probably came from reading too much Conrad. She rather thought there had been something bogus about Lord Mountbatten, and probably Nelson, too.
“Yes, we have had a vintage year, too,” she said, “so I suppose I must have got the hang of pruning at last. The only thing I regret about having so many roses is the thorns. I never can teach Becky to be careful. She finds them so pretty, and it always ends in tears.”
The commodore smiled a smile of studied understanding. He was chairman of the board of governors at Roderick’s school. There was no particular reason for this: the Critchleys had no handicapped child, nor did the commodore show any particular interest in the children at the school or in ways of helping them and their parents cope with their disabilities. It was just that that sort of job tended to gravitate toward retired middle-class people who had time on their hands and who needed to feel socially useful. Unfortunately, the situation demanded that courtesies be shown and returned. The Cotterels and the Critchleys really didn’t have much in common. Caroline particularly disliked being treated as a sexually desirable object—which she felt sure she no longer was, and certainly not to him. The commodore liked bust, and in his lady wife he had gotten it.
At Death's Door Page 1
