At Death's Door

by Robert Barnard

  “I’m sure,” said Cordelia.

  “Remember his novel-writing career was over, or so everyone thought. He hadn’t published any fiction since 1952. He’d said all he had to say, that was his public line, and in fact his last one had been rather thin. It had been a splendid career, stretching back to 1927, when D. H. Lawrence was still alive—”

  “I know,” said Cordelia with a touch of impatience. “I did my M.A. thesis on him.”

  “Really? You’ve never told us that. I can’t imagine your mother approved.”

  “I told her it was on Elizabeth Bowen. She never knew till the degree had been awarded. You say she was badgering him for a play.”

  “Right. Well, Father had announced to all and sundry for years that his novel-writing days were over, and I think Myra hoped that the idea of a play would stimulate him creatively. He’d written one play, years before. It had been put on by Binkie Beaumont, but it had been a critical success rather than one with the public.”

  “Was anything done about a second play?”

  “Ideas were tossed back and forth. We’d sit eating our half-heated steak and kidney pudding out of tins, and Father would say: ‘What about this?’ And Myra would sit, considering the idea in her intense, egotistical way: What part was there for her? How effective would her scenes be? And he would watch her, his eyes sparkling. . . . I have to say it: Your mother has no sense of humor.”

  “None at all. But what do you mean? Was he just playing with her?”

  “I think there was a strong element of that. But there was something else—and I’m not sure that I should mention it, because it reflects no credit on our father: I think he was mostly interested in observing her.”

  Cordelia laughed joyously.

  “For The Vixen? Planning it even then?”

  “That’s what I decided later, when the book came out. Then I realized that that was the basis for the relationship as far as he was concerned. Material for one more book. I found it quite deplorable. Completely cold-blooded.”

  “Not nice,” agreed Cordelia, but unwillingly. She fiddled with some twigs on the bush. “But you don’t know how my mother . . . invites it.”

  “I suppose she may do. It’s odd how egotistical people always seem to expect great consideration from others, isn’t it? But my father was a beast of prey, a scavenger, just as much as your mother is—at least during this particular episode he was. I’m going in now. I can probably find that photograph I mentioned, if you’d like to see it.”

  He found it quite easily, stuck in the album that also had the first pictures of him and Caroline together. It was a threesome at the cottage door, taken by the next-door neighbor. Roderick was boyish and sporty, with open-necked white shirt and gray flannels. Myra was heavy and drawn—her face almost bleary, her dress suggesting that she had given up caring for the duration. Benedict Cotterel stood beside her, looking down on her with a glance that suggested some degree of lecherous pride in her pregnancy and perhaps some sardonic pleasure in her depressed and bedraggled state.

  “It’s wonderful!” said Cordelia. “You must let me borrow it. She looks dreadful!”

  As she carried it off to the study, Roderick felt returning his twinges of compunction. It was not pleasant to think of Cordelia gloating over ugly pictures of her mother. What had Myra done to her in the years of her childhood that she should need at the age of twenty-seven to do this? He thought that after a day or two he would ask for the album back.

  The matter went out of his head, though, because on Saturday evening there was a phone call from his sister Isobel. Caroline happened to take it, which he was grateful for. He was always glad when it was Caroline who took the calls from Isobel.

  Isobel—now Isobel Allick—was a little over a year his junior. His father’s brief period of uxoriousness had coincided with a Jamesian phase. Isobel had been named for Isabel Archer, just as he had been named for Roderick Hudson. Neither child, of course, had grown up bearing the slightest resemblance to its fictional namesake.

  Isobel had married money and had immediately regretted not having married a man. Her husband was by now a caricature capitalist—gross, blubber lipped, smoking fat cigars at the end of heavy expense-account lunches. He was the sort of figure who might be photographed for a Labour party election poster. Isobel, not unnaturally, was discontented. Her gentle mother, somewhat deterministic as far as her children were concerned and always looking to discern traces of either parent in their characters, had been quite bewildered by her. In Roderick she could see much of herself, but in Isobel she could see nothing of either Benedict Cotterel or herself. Isobel was materialistic, neurotic, and perennially dissatisfied.

  She hated her father. So strong an emotion was odd, since the marriage of her parents had virtually broken up when she was about three. Benedict Cotterel had gone off to do something interesting with codes quite early in the war. Thereafter he might visit his family once or twice a year for a weekend. When Isobel was just into her teens, he stopped coming at all. Soon after she had left school, Isobel had written asking if she might come and live with him in his London flat. She had received a coolly affectionate refusal. She had had nothing to do with him ever since. Roderick thought that her real grievance was that she expected some kind of distinction to accrue to her from being a famous writer’s daughter, and because of his neglect of his family, little had. Isobel felt desperately the need for some kind of kudos.

  “Oh, Isobel, how nice,” he heard Caroline say from the hall. Then the responses followed a course predictable from all Isobel’s previous phone calls.

  “Is he? . . . Don’t you? . . . Well, of course businessmen have to keep busy, I suppose. . . . Won’t you? . . . Don’t you? That’s a shame. We were looking forward to seeing you.”

  Caroline was not struck by lightning for a liar. In the sitting room, Roderick was rubbing his hands. Clearly, Isobel was not intending to pay them a visit. Isobel was quite aware that in the last legal will of their father she stood to inherit the Rectory, while Roderick and Caroline inherited the estate, which included the royalties on the books. She thought this was a most unfair division, but she came down periodically to keep an eye on “her” property and to monitor the meteoric rise of property values in general in the area.

  Eventually they got through Isobel’s complaints about her husband, his absences, his stinginess, how she “never got out,” how their son was proving “a chip off the old block,” how she hadn’t bought a new dress in years, and a few more standard items from Isobel’s list of grievances. Eventually, exhausted, she asked how the Cotterels were.

  “Oh, fine,” said Caroline. “Busy—what with Father and Becky. And we’ve actually got young people camping in the garden at the moment. Roderick’s half sister—oh, and yours too, of course . . . That’s right; Cordelia Mason.”

  There was a long pause while Isobel digested this and expatiated on it. Roderick could guess the broad outline of her remarks: Little hussy! What’s her game? What does she want out of us? Eventually, Caroline was allowed to explain further.

  “Actually we get on very well. They’re both very nice. . . . Yes, there’s a boyfriend. . . . Well, she is twenty-seven, you know, Isobel. . . . She’s been digging around in your father’s papers. . . . I can’t see why not. She’s—she’s writing a book about her mother. . . . Why shouldn’t she have got a damehood? She’s a very fine actress. Are all knights chaste? . . . Actually she’s expected down here tomorrow.”

  Roderick groaned. He knew Isobel so much better than Caroline did. He’d been willing her not to say that very thing. The direction of the conversation immediately changed, and Caroline’s voice took on a tone of strained banter.

  “Do you? . . . So you think you might come, after all? . . . Don’t tell me you’re becoming a tuft hunter, Isobel. . . . Yes, it will be interesting to see her. . . . Oh, I admit we’re interested, too, though we’ve no reason to think she will actually call here. . . . So you will come? . . . You�
�ll stay at the Red Lion as usual? If they’ve got room, of course. . . . No, she’ll be staying there as well, I gather. . . . Then we’ll probably see you on Monday. . . . We’ll be looking forward to it.”

  Coming back into the sitting room, Caroline raised her eyebrows to heaven.

  “Well, I really let us in for that, didn’t I?”

  The next morning, Sunday, Roderick got up and made the tea as usual. He looked in on Becky, who was playing with her beads, and who gave him her smile of delight that her day had begun. The old man was still asleep, but Roderick let in a little light, which would probably mean he would have attained a sort of consciousness by breakfast time. At the front door he picked up the Observer from the mat and opened the door to let the cat in.

  Walking through the kitchen, he was struck by a thought and went back to the front door to check. He had been right. The jalopy, the old Volkswagen, had gone. He walked around the house to the lawn, but the tent was still there. So at least Cordelia and Pat had not taken off for good. But apparently their response to the arrival of Dame Myra had been to disappear for the day.

  Chapter 6

  RODERICK AND CAROLINE spent a very ordinary Sunday. They did not see any reason to alter their habits because Myra Mason was arriving in the village. Roderick read the papers and then went out and jobbed around in the garden with Caroline and Becky. Sometimes on fine Sundays they drove to the village while the roast was cooking and had a drink at the Red Lion, sitting outside in the sun with Becky. Today, by mutual but silent agreement, the possibility was not even raised. If Myra had arrived, there would be enough gawpers from the village without their adding to the number. Roderick had a can of beer, sitting on the stone pillar of the wall that enclosed the rose garden.

  It was while he was drinking it that the telephone rang.

  “Too much telephone these days,” he grumbled. “I never did like the instrument.”

  “You mean you’re afraid it’s Myra,” said Caroline.

  “Oh, I’ve no doubt it’s Myra.”

  It was Myra.

  “Oh, Mr. Cotterel—may I call you Roderick, as I once did?—I wonder if you’d be so kind as to trot down the garden to those two children and ask them if they’d have lunch with us at the Red Lion?”

  Us, Roderick noted.

  “I’m awfully sorry, but they’re not here at the moment. The car was gone when I got up this morning.”

  There was a pregnant silence.

  “Oh. How odd. The landlord here tells me that they knew we were coming.”

  “Yes, I think they knew. But maybe they didn’t know when you were coming.”

  “Still . . . Well, if you would tell them when they return that I’d like to see them?”

  “Of course. We may be going for a drive this afternoon, but I’ll tell them just as soon as I see them.”

  Myra conceded the drive.

  “Naturally I wouldn’t want you to put yourselves out. Tell them as soon as you can.”

  They did go for a little drive that afternoon, perhaps just to demonstrate their independence of Myra Mason. It was nearly four when they got back, but there was still no sign of Cordelia and Pat. Becky moped a little; she had gotten used to having them around.

  “Are they just keeping away to show they’re not at her beck and call?” wondered Roderick to Caroline. “Or do you think they’ve got something up their sleeves?”

  When the telephone rang around seven o’clock, Roderick knew it was Dame Myra. Perhaps, like Lady Bracknell, she had a Wagnerian ring.

  “Oh, Roderick—” her use of his Christian name reminded him of a headmaster addressing a trusted prefect—“I know you’d have rung me if that silly pair had returned. Obviously they’ve gone for the day. We wondered if you and your wife would be so compassionate as to come down and have a drink with us. To alleviate the monotony.”

  “Oh, dear, I’m sorry you’re bored,” said Roderick, temporizing and trying to decide whether he wanted to meet her or not. “I should have remembered that you’re not a countryish sort of person.”

  “But, darling, I love the country if I’ve something to do: learning lines, and so on. But Borkman looks like running and running—the first time it’s been any sort of success in this country, did you know that?—so I won’t be able to get down to anything new for months. All I’m doing is reading possible scripts in the most desultory way. We’d just love to meet you both and have a chat . . .”

  Roderick hummed and ha-ed into the mouthpiece, really uncertain whether he wanted to meet her.

  “It’s difficult, you see, with Becky.”

  “Oh, yes. Your daughter. I did know, but I haven’t said anything. You and your wife have had more than your fair share of problems, haven’t you? Anyway, I’m sure the landlord wouldn’t mind—”

  “We usually sit outside—”

  “No, no. Much too breezy,” said Myra, dismissing the great outdoors. “I’ll speak to the landlord.” A minute later she was back. “No problem at all. In any case, he tells me she’s over age. Do say you’ll come and cheer us up.”

  Roderick could have said no. He could have said that they did not like taking Becky into pubs because, in the enclosed space, her condition seemed to become the focus for concentrated discussion and sympathy of the wrong sort. He could have said that they had other things to do.

  But he had to admit to himself a twinge of curiosity about Myra. Not so much the village’s curiosity about a great actress and a grande dame as an interest in seeing how the young woman had developed over the last quarter century. And he rather thought that Caroline—whether she admitted it to herself or not—would like to meet her, too.

  “Very well, we’ll come,” he said.

  • • •

  The Red Lion was an oldish pub, early nineteenth century, much altered and built on to but not yet ruined. Like the Rectory, it rambled, with extra kitchens built on at the back and new lavatories when outside ones became no longer acceptable. There was an element of the bogus about its country-pub interior, but probably no one would really like to go back to the era of sawdust on the floor and spittoons.

  Myra had made a free corner for herself in the Saloon Bar. Or rather the locals had made it for her—keeping their distance but taking covert looks, or in some cases unabashed stares, at this handsome migrant bird from the metropolis. Commodore Critchley and Daisy were closest to her, three tables away, but they were much too well bred to stare and were engaged in determinedly genteel conversation.

  Myra recognized them at once. But of course, since they had Becky with them, she would be bound to. She rose and stretched out her hands in greeting, and as they approached slowly, threading their way through the tables, they could take her in.

  She was not in fact tall: five feet seven at most. But she held her shoulders firmly square, and they were good shoulders. A strong woman, dangerous to cross, that was Caroline’s immediate impression—but was it an impression of Myra or of the part Myra had decided to play? She was dressed in a deep scarlet woolen dress, powerfully simple, with a scarf tied nonchalantly around her auburn hair. Stylish, yet simple, she made sure that she was the woman in the room whom the room took its tone from.

  As they led Becky over, Myra drew out a chair for her (“Will she be all right there?”) and then saw her settled into it with a powerful burst of maternalism that Becky had no need of. Then she turned back to them, the confident woman of the world, and smiled her welcome.

  “This is Granville,” she said.

  The man beside her was tall and fair, and handsome in an actorish way. There was also an air of weakness about him, perhaps in comparison with the concentrated force that was Myra. He gave the impression of being about thirty-five, but that is the sort of age actors and actresses tend to stick at. There was an indefinable sense of his being an appendage—of having the part in the play that would always be cast last, there being so many actors around who could fill it adequately.

  “Granville Ashe,”
he said, shaking hands. “What can I get you to drink?”

  “So good of you to come and brighten our evening,” said Myra, settling back in her seat as Granville busied himself to and from the bar. “I can’t think where those two silly children have gone.”

  “They always said they’d be exploring the countryside while they were here,” said Caroline. “And their little Volksie is very old. It could well have broken down.”

  “Oh, yes: that’s the boy’s—what’s his name?—Pat’s car,” said Myra dismissively. The topic of the boy Pat was boring her already. Her eyes shifted effortlessly away toward Roderick, and she directed the full force of her considerable personality on him. Caroline, relaxing without rancor, had the feeling that, in Myra’s company, any other woman had to be secondary.

  “You know, Roderick, you’ve grown up exactly as I would have expected you to.”

  “Have I?” said Roderick coolly. It was a long time since he had been subjected to so frank and unashamed a stare of appraisal. “Grown old might be a more accurate description. I rather think I was grown-up when we met.”

  “You were being grown-up, which is rather different.” Myra smiled covertly at him, as if they were in some tiny conspiracy from which Caroline was excluded. “Oh, I think the same was true of me, though I had been on the stage since I was seventeen. What could be more absurdly childish than to insist on having a child just because the father was Benedict Cotterel whom I’d admired since I began to read grown-ups’ books?”

  “Was that why you decided to have it?” asked Roderick. “I did rather wonder at the time. I thought it likely that anyone in the acting profession would know plenty of medical men who would get rid of it if necessary.”

  “Well, of course we did.” Myra was now the woman of the world, old in its way and wrinkles. As indeed most certainly she was. “Abortion wasn’t much of a problem, even then, and of course, though it cost a fortune, your father would have paid. No, I wanted to have Benedict Cotterel’s child. It was as simple as that. I’d adored his novels for years: The Great Conspiracy; A Far View of Beaconsleigh; all of them. . . . They’d all been published years before, decades before, but they were totally real and contemporary to me. I wanted to have his child.” She shrugged her shoulders abruptly, as if to shake off her folly or chase off a mood. “How is he?”