A Fox Inside

by David Stacton

  She could look down at the hall as she crossed the landing. The house had that special party feeling, not for a lot of stiff old codgers, but for people that might be full of suspense and hope and laughter. Older people didn’t have a social laugh. They only laughed with each other in a conspiracy, as something socially proper to do, timing it right. She went into Jerome’s room and closed the door.

  “You look lovely”, he said, “as usual. You’re thirty-nine, aren’t you?”

  She could feel her happy smile beginning to fade. She did not see why deliberately he had to be difficult.

  “Oh, well,” he said, “Ford will tell me all about it.” He played fretfully with the coverlet. She wondered suddenly if he had to stay in bed.

  “I’m not old,” she said. “I don’t have some filthy disease.”

  “Oh, well, you didn’t inherit much, did you?” he said. She did not like the way he was so gentle with her. Or the way he always watched her, sceptically, as though looking beyond her.

  “I was just wondering who would be first and when,” he told her unexpectedly. “I don’t suppose I’ll ever know. You won’t find them very interesting, I’m afraid. Young men never are.”

  He was right. He was always right. She didn’t. It was so tricky to tell how far gone he was. He had his sharp moments even now. She asked about his disease, cautiously, here and there, and she read up in various books which she bought and hid in the library behind the Biographia Americana, but she found out very little. Sometimes fast and sometimes slow, she repeated to herself. Paresis was locomotor ataxia. Locomotor ataxia was paresis.

  When she said she needed the power of attorney he gave it to her without hesitation. Yet there was something in those yellowing hands that was not weak, but only resigned. After she had it, she sometimes let people stay on and come upstairs, for after a party the emptiness of the rooms downstairs depressed her.

  “You’d better take care of yourself,” he said one night. It was one of his better weeks and there were flowers in his room.

  “What do you mean by that?” she asked sharply.

  “Nothing,” he said, “just your hair.” She was wearing it shorter, because that made her look younger, and though she hadn’t had it dyed she had had it rinsed. Nowadays she washed it three times a week.

  Ethel came in with a tray. Lily slipped out of the room while she had a chance and went down to the garage. She had an appointment at eight. She went to them now, drawing up before their houses, or entering a restaurant alone, while the waiter smiled, or sitting well back in a corner, waiting for them and trying to be both self-possessed and cheerful.

  But then she had met Charles and she saw things differently for once. She didn’t want Jerome in the house any more. He got to bother her. No matter what she did she was always aware of him in his bedroom, waiting for her to go in and talk to him before she went downstairs. And once, in the library, when one morning she was going through the monthly accounts and had her glasses on, she looked up and saw him standing in the doorway in an old green paisley wrapper. She took her glasses off at once. He had caught her in a moment of complete self-absorption. It wasn’t often that anybody ever did that.

  “It’s a fine day,” he said. “You should be outside.” She watched him and saw that he was not really very weak. He was only bed-weak and sometimes confused. But he had the sickroom smell to him, despite cologne and everything that Ethel could do.

  The first time Charles stayed the night they were halfway up the stairs when Ethel came out of Jerome’s room and without looking at them, though she must have heard them, went down the corridor towards the servants’ stairs.

  Charles gave Lily a swift glance.

  “It’s my husband,” she said. “He isn’t well.” They had gone on up the stairs, but she had not felt quite so happy.

  Charles sometimes seemed bothered about Jerome.

  “Is he really dotty?” he would ask, with the special well-dressed contempt with which he wore the clothes, and the opinions, that she had bought him.

  Even so, maybe Lily would not have gone through with it if she had ever believed she had a firm grip over Charles. She had to have Charles. She did not need Jerome. And then she discovered that Maggie wrote to her father. She never got to see the letters. She believed he burned them. But he wrote answers to them and there was no telling how much he knew or might say to Maggie.

  “Give them to me,” she said to Ethel one day, catching her with the outgoing mail. His handwriting was shady and ran uphill, a series of pale blue spiders, uneven as the handwriting of an epileptic, with the same pulsating systole and diastole of the size of the letters, even though all his letters were shaped the same way. Ethel gave them to her, but she did not open them. She was still too in awe of Jerome to do that. Instead she looked at them and dropped them down the mail shoot on the corner. It gave her something to do, to take a little walk to the box.

  During the summer Jerome became disturbed. There didn’t seem to be any particular cause. He had long clear periods, but they always seemed to upset him. And Maggie had not written for some time. Lily wished she would write to him, if it would shut him up. Nor could Lily make her do so. She saw as little of Maggie as she could manage.

  One evening Lily and Charles had been up to the opera and had then driven down to Atherton, stopping off on the way for a few drinks. They got back to the house at about one-thirty. The lights were on downstairs as well as upstairs. Lily ran up the steps of the house and into the hall. Ethel was leaning over the banisters, looking crazy. Her hair was all awry.

  “Oh, madam,” she called. “Something’s all wrong.” She had been crying and behind her they could hear the racket of things being thrown about. It sounded as though it came from Lily’s room.

  Jerome appeared. He was carrying the top of one of her side tables, with the legs off. It was poorly glued at any time and always came off in damp weather. She looked up at him. He was tall, slim, and grey, but he did not seem hysterical. He was calm, though his speech was thick.

  “What have you done with Maggie’s letters?” he shouted. It surprised her that even though he mumbled she knew clearly what he was talking about.

  “Nothing,” she said. It had never occurred to her to touch them. Jerome’s eyes strayed to Charles who was standing behind her, watching.

  “Get your lover out of here,” Jerome said. “It isn’t his house. It’s my house.”

  “Jerome,” she called. She wished there was someone to back her up. She was really scared of him now. Perhaps she had gone too far. He had grown much thinner and under his gown his thin legs stuck out pale white and trembling.

  “Get him out,” shouted Jerome. “I’ve had enough of this.” He gripped the rail and then, taking the table top, dashed it down to the hall. It was light and sailed at a curve through the air, smashed into the mirror over the commode and brought down a vase in the clatter of glass.

  “It’s too late,” screamed Jerome. “It’s too late. I’m too old.”

  “Okay,” said Charles behind her. He swept past her and bounded up the stairs, two at a time, grabbed Jerome, pushed him into his room, pulled the door to, and locked it. Jerome did not pound on the door, but just before Charles got to him Lily had seen his face. It was the only time in her life that she had ever seen him scared.

  Charles came downstairs, took her arm, and led her into the library. They had to brush past Ethel, who stared at them stupidly. Charles poured Lily a drink and then himself one, swallowed his neat, and taking out the bedroom door key, which was rusty and elementary, played with it in his hand. Then he threw it down on the coffee table, where it clinked and slid sideways over the glass top of the table towards a cigarette box, where it stopped. He shoved his hands into his pockets.

  “Why don’t you commit him?” he asked coldly.

  “I couldn’t do that.”

  “Why not? You’ve got complete power of attorney (she realized she should never have told him that); and he�
�s not good for anything. He only clutters the place up.”

  “But Maggie….”

  “She’s under age. She couldn’t do anything,” he said curtly. He frowned and kicked a log in the fireplace. She could still remember, now, the way he had kicked that log, with a special, slow, accurately aimed shoe, pushing it firmly down until the log broke in a shower of sparks. It only took him a second. She thought he might singe his trouser cuff but he didn’t. “We could be alone,” he said. “You run the whole thing anyhow.”

  “No,” she said. For some reason the idea frightened her. “Not yet.”

  He looked at her scornfully. “Why wait?” She had got to know and dread that look. “You’ve got what you want. Why not keep it?”

  “Is it as simple as that, Charles?” she asked wonderingly.

  “That’s up to you,” he said. He made it as clear as that. Charles or Jerome. He set his not quite empty glass down on the table and handed her his key. “I’d better not stay,” he said. “I’ll go round to the hotel in Palo Alto. Phone me first thing to-morrow.” There was no warmth in his voice or expression.

  She did not see him to the door. She went right to bed. Of course she did not sleep, at least not until five. When she woke up it was eight and Ethel was knocking on her door. She called “Come in” and Ethel slipped into the room.

  “He can’t talk,” she said.

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “I don’t know. Shall I clean up the hall?”

  “No,” said Lily. “Leave it the way it is.” She waited until Ethel went out and then phoned the hotel. Charles had already left. Somehow she had known he would not be there. She sat in bed, thinking, and then rang through to Jerome’s doctor. She got his wife and she could hear children squalling in the background. Doctors who marry before they graduate have a hard pull of it. This doctor was young, he had only recently set up practice, and she knew he would be able to get right over. Charles had found him for her. The previous doctor had not pleased Charles at all.

  The doctor was at the house by eight-forty-five. He was even shaved and eager. She watched him come up the hall stairs. She told him everything. On the landing, so that he could not help but observe the state of the hall, she paused for a minute, bracing herself to go into Jerome’s room.

  She need not have worried. Jerome did not say a word. He only stared at them. He was still trembling. When he opened his mouth he merely mumbled, which was a relief. Pretty sure that he would not and could not speak, she went out into the hall and waited for the doctor.

  When he came out she asked what had happened, as though she did not know what had happened. She moved down the stairs ahead of him, terribly afraid that Jerome had not really lost his voice after all.

  “He’s had a severe shock.”

  “But his speech?”

  “It’s hard to tell. Has it been getting worse?”

  “Yes,” she said promptly.

  The doctor did not look happy. He refused to catch her eye. “He could be kept here,” he said. “That girl takes pretty good care of him (Ethel was sixty)….” He let his voice trail off anxiously. He seemed embarrassed and eager to leave. She noted that he was both young and handsome. That always surprised her about him. Charles did not usually like to know handsome men.

  When the door had closed behind him she locked herself up in the library, watching the clock. She knew Charles would phone sometime, but she did not know when. Fortunately Maggie was away at school, in Coronado. It was a good school and as far away as possible. It was only the beginning of the term.

  She would have to tell Maggie something of course. She began to phrase tactful letters in her head. She needn’t have bothered. When she was told Maggie just looked at her mother quietly and asked no questions at all.

  Charles did not ring until eight-thirty that night.

  “Well?” he demanded.

  “I had the doctor come.”

  “I know that,” he said. “I rang him up last night. There’s a small private sanatorium near Napa: they understand these things. It would have to be done eventually, anyhow.”

  She held the receiver away from her ear. “I can’t do it, Charles.”

  “Yes, you can.” And under that soft, emotional, confiding vibrato was something else that was dangerous. “You want to, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know. Yes….”

  “I’ll take care of it,” he said. “You’d better come up to town to-morrow, to the office.”

  She went up to town. She had no will left of her own.

  It was easy and swift. He made it swift. His name was on the commitment papers. He was her lawyer now. They had talked Foster into handing over the administration of the estate to him, in return for Charles’s contribution to the firm. Or hers.

  Then they hired a private ambulance and two attendants, who came down from the home. It cost like fury. The earlier in the morning it was done the less fuss there would be, so she was dressed and waiting by eight. Ethel served breakfast, but seemed morose. Then she went up to dress the old man. It had been agreed that it would be better to tell him nothing. There was no point in having any extra trouble.

  Alone in the breakfast-room Lily went over to the windows and stared out at the shrubs towards the trees beyond. She noticed that there was dew on everything. It lingered a long time under these trees.

  Charles arrived in a black chesterfield rather tightly fitted and with, in that morning light, an oddly pale and almost pock-marked face. They found they did not have much to say to each other. His eyes had that special hardness they always had when he was bringing something off.

  They both heard wheels on the drive and went through the living-room towards the hall. Charles let the attendants in and they went right up the stairs, grumbling to each other. Their white tunics smelled of carbolic and starch. Charles and Lily followed. Charles even took her arm.

  When they opened the bedroom door Jerome was sitting in the armchair with a bundle of letters in his lap, in the cold early sunlight. He looked up, saw the men, and made a grab for the left post of the four-poster bed. The letters cascaded to the floor together with some photographs. The attendants glanced briefly at each other.

  “No,” shouted Jerome. “No.” His voice was disused but completely distinct. Lily drew back behind the night table in the corner. Charles stooped and picked up the letters and photos and flung them on the bed. They were faded snapshots of Maggie at various ages. Lily did not even have to look at them to know that. Ethel watched, memorizing everything. Lily watched her and Jerome glanced at her, too. His hands were white at the knuckles and he braced himself against the bed. But he was too weak: the attendants pried him lose as easily as a trained diver can loosen an abalone from a rock without so much as splintering the shell.

  Jerome straightened up. He looked straight at Lily. “I didn’t think you’d dare,” he said clearly. She saw with displeasure that Ethel had not shaved him. The stubble was a faint mixture of nicotine-coloured yellow and wiry white. She closed her eyes.

  Charles took her arm and they went down the stairs after the attendants. Jerome did not speak again. He did turn to look at the house as though it had fallen down around him. Charles and Lily went outside, got into the Cadillac, and followed the ambulance up to the city, across the bridge, and all the way to the hills. Napa was in the wine country to the north. It produced very good wine.

  The sanatorium was pleasant and well secluded, a series of bungalows set in a small wood, with an underbrush of bright orange manzanita trees contorted in half shadow and open sun. The general effect was horrible.

  Lily waited in the car while Charles took care of the details. She hated sitting there alone. But when she saw him come out of the office bungalow, talking to the superintendent, a plump, red-faced man with heavy glasses and a bald head, the two of them blinking matter of factly in the sun, she wished that she would never have to see Charles again. She did not want him to touch her. She knew that in some way he had
tricked her. She was right: he had.

  For it was odd about Jerome. With Jerome in the house she had had something to bargain with. She had not realized that at the time, but Charles had. And now she had nothing to bargain with at all.

  That left her Maggie. Maggie was fifteen then. She was a nervous child, easily scared. Maggie was no problem. Maggie never dared to say a word.

  With power of attorney and full control now, she should have had everything. Yet somehow she had nothing at all. She stopped seeing Charles. She consented to everything he wanted. She never stopped thinking about him night or day.

  *

  And now it was over. She stared through the windshield at a street she didn’t even know the name of, near the City Hall.

  Senator Ford got out of the car and left her. He had heard enough. He went back to the City Hall, phoned Luke at his hotel, and came out again. As he stood on the steps of the building on the square side he saw, on the big expanse of brick paving, a little boy playing a deliberate game. He chose a pigeon and followed it round and round in circles. The pigeon would walk faster, shake its feathers, glance round him, and then fly off in a low despondent circle into the shrubs. At last an old woman with a basket of bread shooed the boy away.

  Ford shifted his gaze. In one of the public flower-beds another old woman was digging up tulip bulbs and putting them in a sack. Her manner was anything but furtive. When Ford looked back the little boy was walking round the pigeons again, but farther away. The old woman was glowering at him: angels of retribution have no sex and very little power, and neither do small boys, public tribunals, or very old men. He went off alone to eat his lunch.

  XIX

  THEY HELD THE FUNERAL THE next day. It was May 2nd, the feast-day of St. Mary the Egyptian, but outside of the church, and of Charles, who had had a taste for hagiography, but was dead, nobody remembered that.

  Lily had set the machinery in motion days before. No doubt she would have preferred something less formal now, but once she had started it up the machinery rolled over her. She let it roll. Luke did not have that attitude. He was not indifferent. They had no enemies left but the real one, who was unknown, and there was nothing he could think to do. He did not see why either he or Maggie should have to pay for other people’s pasts, and yet that was what they were doing. It was what, so far, they had always done. Only Lily had got off scot-free. Lily had done better than either of them. Lily had had to pay only for her own past.