by Muriel Spark
The telephone rang when, finally, he got back to the château. It was from Stewart. ‘I’ve seen a re-play of the feature, Harvey,’ he said. ‘It looks like Effie but it isn’t.’
‘I know,’ said Harvey.
He said to Auntie Pet, ‘Did you really think it was Effie in that mountain commune? How could you have thought so?’
‘I did think so,’ said Auntie Pet. ‘And I still think so. That’s the sort of person Effie is.’
Anne-Marie said, ‘I’ll be saying good-bye, now.’
TWELVE
Edward drives along the road between Nancy and St Dié. It is the end of April. All along the way the cherry trees are in flower. He comes to the grass track that he took last year. But this time he passes by the cottage, bleak in its little wilderness, and takes the wider path through a better-tended border of foliage, to the château.
Ruth is there, already showing her pregnancy. Clara staggers around her play-pen. Auntie Pet, wrapped in orange and mauve woollens, sits upright on the edge of the sofa, which forms a background of bright yellow and green English fabrics for her. Harvey is there, too.
‘You’ve cut your hair,’ says Harvey.
‘I had to,’ says Edward, ‘for the part.’
It is later, when Clara has gone to bed, that Edward gives Harvey a message he has brought from Ernie Howe.
‘He says if you want to adopt Clara, you can. He doesn’t want the daughter of a terrorist.’
‘How much does he want for the deal?’
‘Nothing. That amazed me.’
‘It doesn’t amaze me. He’s a swine. Better he wanted money than for the reason he gives.’
‘I quite agree,’ says Edward. ‘What will you do now that you’ve finished Job?’
‘Live another hundred and forty years. I’ll have three daughters, Clara, Jemima and Eye-Paint.’
