The Iron Cobweb

by Ursula Curtiss

  This was where experience let you down. To wake from a pleasant dream to ugly reality wasn’t fair; it wasn’t in the book. Elizabeth said carefully, feeling her way: “Footnote to the doctor’s orders—Benedictine when wakeful. Any left?”

  “Quarts.” Had Lucy’s breath come out in a sigh first? Examine it later, because this was quite important. Oliver said, pouring, “Here you are,” and then, “You didn’t take your pill.”

  “No . . .” How much better if she had. And how bewildering of Oliver to put it that way, half-accusingly. Or . . . how clever.

  “Steven’s off, he had one of those long manuscripts to finish before morning. A tome,” said Lucy critically. “One of those wartime marathons. He deserted me for it last night too, but that’s no reason why I should keep you people up until all hours.”

  “Nonsense,” Elizabeth said. She felt breathless; did she sound it? Did Oliver, four feet away, sense the slow pounding of her heart? “I’m off myself. See you soon, Lucy.”

  It was abrupt, but it was all she could manage, setting her half-emptied glass on a table, smiling at them both, closing the door quietly behind her. She carried the same audience, invisible, up the dark stairway and into the bedroom.

  What ore we going to do about Elizabeth?

  Oliver’s car drove away and returned. Elizabeth, still in every nerve and muscle, listened to his footsteps as he locked doors and turned off lights and mounted the stairs. He tiptoed cautiously through the bedroom; the light went on in the bathroom and there was a violent sound of toothbrushing. When the light was finally flipped out and Oliver padded barefootedly past the end of her bed to his own, Elizabeth held herself braced under her blankets. Now wasn’t the time to talk about it or even think about it; not now when she was still echoing all over with shock. She breathed shallowly over a sudden tickle in her throat, but the cough escaped.

  Oliver said instantly out of the darkness, “Elizabeth?”

  “Yes?” Draggingly, as though she had just surfaced from sleep.

  “You’re awake, I can see the whites of your eyes.”

  “I’m awake then. Temporarily.”

  There was the sound of Oliver propping himself on his elbow. “You stayed up too long. Better watch it, just at first.”

  Was it possible, wondered Elizabeth amazedly, that he was, as he thought, waking her in order to tell her to get more sleep? Was it even possible that he was chiding her for not having stayed where she had been tenderly put earlier that evening? She said calmly, “It was nice to have Steven and Lucy again.”

  “Nice couple,” Oliver’s voice answered idly. He withdrew the propping elbow and there was a comfortable settling sound of sheets and blankets. “Easy to take.”

  Easy to take.

  What are we going to do about Elizabeth?

  The first snow of the year began a little before dawn. Elizabeth woke to the whisper of it on the changing wind, and didn’t go back to sleep. Her mind had become a sounding board; it echoed senselessly with what she had heard Oliver say to Lucy Brent the night before. “You know how much it means to me—” like a man viewing freedom from behind bars. And then the stunning, the brutally brisk query about the disposal of Elizabeth. To Lucy, which was, as if it mattered, a double betrayal.

  Oliver showered and shaved and dressed at seven-thirty, making a good deal more noise than he generally did. Elizabeth lay curled on her side, her eyelashes carefully down; she would have liked to pull up the blankets against the blast of snowy air from the window, but you couldn’t do that with a convincingly sound-asleep air. A tie whistled through the rack, there was a moment of concentrated silence, and Oliver crossed the room to her bedside. He hesitated. Elizabeth went on breathing neutrally and was rewarded by the sound of the door closing gently. She sat up against her pillow and lighted one of the cigarettes Hathaway had forbidden before breakfast.

  In the first place, there might be another explanation. (But why, then, had she had that feeling of unease, the feeling that was almost fear?) And if there was, wouldn’t perceptive Oliver have made it last night?

  In the second place, the explanation might be exactly what it seemed. Lucy Brent was a thoroughly charming woman, with an odd elusive attraction of her own. A little dissatisfied with her own marriage, although that was only a guess on Elizabeth’s part, because Steven’s salary as an editor in a publishing house would never be, in all probability, as elegant as her own tastes and inclinations. Possibly, because it was true of the most unexpected women, restless and bored with her own childless state.

  But . . . Lucy?

  Suppose Oliver had meant exactly what he had seemed to mean. It wasn’t simple even then, because quite apart from the problem of Lucy and Steven, there were two whole lifetimes, essenced into five years of marriage: you gave the sum total of yourself. There were two children who accepted love and belonging as casually as sun and stars and breakfast. Could you, having taught them trust, let them in for a battle far more real and personally dangerous than guns on the other side of the world?

  Careful, thought Elizabeth. Careful.

  Maire was delighted with the snow; Jeep eyed it with sophisticated calm. Elizabeth took a window-by-window tour of the house, showing astonishment because it was snowing outside the children’s room as well as outside the kitchen, while Jeep sat lethargically on the floor in the living-room, mumbling over his trucks.

  The firm grip of Maire’s small hand in hers took on an utterly new meaning for Elizabeth. Is this, thought Elizabeth in wonder, looking down, is this in the balance?

  She would have to see Lucy, of course. Casually, and in the course of friendship, but with the special perspective that knowledge gave. When she had done that, and when she had seen Oliver and Lucy together again, she would know better what to do.

  Constance was having breakfast in the dining-room, consuming toast and damson jam with the detached and delicate greed that had always fascinated Elizabeth. She made a point of breakfasting after Oliver, as though to spare him the inflaming sight of food, his food, being put to use. Oliver had once said annoyedly, “Does she think I’m going to whip it out from under her nose, or what?” And Elizabeth had answered soberly, “Some people, you know, keep an eagle eye on the pantry. Aunt Kate was quite capable of it. Leave her alone, she likes it better that way.”

  She said now, “More coffee, Constance, when I get mine?” and Constance tucked in a last buttery crumb with precision and put down her napkin and started to rise. “I’ll get it, Elizabeth, you sit down.” As though, thought Elizabeth with a new edge of irritation, the modest salary she had forced upon her cousin turned her into a servant, caught relaxing. She said, “Stay where you are, I’ll get it,” and went into the kitchen.

  Noreen Delaney, assembling boots and mittens while the children waited expectantly, glanced up. “Good morning, Mrs. March. Isn’t it lovely? I thought I’d teach them fox-and-geese while the snow’s still fresh, if they don’t get too wet at it.”

  “They will; that’s a game by itself,” Elizabeth said, smiling. “Don’t let them wear you out.”

  The coffee was still hot; she gave it an extra minute over the gas and poured two cups. Maire, absorbed in the legs of her snowsuit, said in a sweet absent voice, “Don’t wear me out. Jeep, you know you mustn’t wear me out.”

  “Parrot,” said Elizabeth, and to Noreen, “I’ll be out very shortly to take over myself.”

  Why had she said that? Because of a natural impulse to share the first snow with her children? Or because, with danger hanging over all their heads, she wanted to scoop up all the love she could?

  The kitchen door closed behind them, their voices began to flute excitedly on the air. In the dining-room Constance said, “You look rather pale, Elizabeth. I hope last night wasn’t too much for you —how did you sleep?”

  How did I, indeed? But she had. The body would take only so much from the mind. “Very well,” said Elizabeth. “How about you?”

  “Oh, quite well, as
usual. I did think,” Constance wrinkled her brow, “that I heard a car go out after the Brents left. I started to wonder if something was wrong, and then I fell asleep.”

  Her tone dropped the matter there, but the pale eyes under the heavy lids took it up again, speculatively. Elizabeth retreated behind her coffee cup and said over the rim, “Oh, that’s right—Steven had a manuscript to read. Lucy had hopes of winning an argument from Oliver, I gather, so she stayed a while.”

  “And did she?” Constance was bland, folding her napkin. “Win, I mean?”

  She knew.

  She doesn’t, thought Elizabeth, angry at herself; she can’t possibly. She’s shrewd, but she isn’t radar. She put down her coffee cup and shook her head. “You’d have to ask Oliver—I was too drugged to bother. Is there anywhere you’d like to go this morning . . . ?”

  At three o’clock the house was empty of everyone but herself, and too still.

  The children, bundled and booted like miniature paratroopers, had trudged off for a walk with Noreen, who seemed to find a pleasure almost equal to theirs in the fresh white world. Constance had taken the car into the village to treat with Mr. Willet, the grocery manager, over the matter of a roast. There was no word from Lucy Brent, who had said something about an auction the night before.

  Would a house, or at least your own pleasant familiar house, seem so empty if there weren’t a corresponding hollowness inside? At a quarter to four, because the walls seemed to be closing in, Elizabeth put on her boots and coat, left a brief note on the kitchen table and went out into the frozen stillness.

  Fox-and-geese tracks in the snow, blurry imprints where the children had made angels—don’t get maudlin, she told herself crisply, and went on her way. The March property was large, by current real-estate standards: nearly three acres that in summer turned into lawn and borders, a wooded hillside, a raspberry patch, a grape arbor. And at the top of the hill, built with abandon when Elizabeth sold her first book, the studio.

  She hadn’t been here since her return from the hospital. The key was still under the single wooden step. Elizabeth unlocked the door and didn’t close it behind her because the air was heavy with damp and disuse. Her eyes went at once to the typewriter beside a window; it was somehow weird that the same sheet of yellow copy paper should still be there, waiting timelessly for the end of a sentence.

  Sprigged chintz at the three windows, a day-bed where she’d slept more than once, an overflowing bookcase, an armchair: it was a comradely room, remote enough to be in another world. Her glance stopped on a black glass corkscrew of lamp, topped with a cone of gold straw. Lucy had given her that. She had a sudden childish impulse to fling it out the open door and into the snow.

  “Elizabeth?”

  For an instant, staring at the closed door that led into the lavatory, Elizabeth didn’t breathe. Then someone said her name again, behind her, and Steven Brent’s head appeared in the open doorway. “No editors allowed, I know, but I brought back some books of yours and saw your note. Thought I’d drop by and ask whether we laid you low last night.”

  What inspiredly unhappy phrasing, thought Elizabeth, and made the appropriate denials. “Come on in—or don’t, it’s freezing. Come back to the house and have some sherry.”

  “Thanks, but I can’t stay.”

  Nevertheless, he didn’t go at once. He said he would like to have Elizabeth meet the president of Homham’s, his publishing house, for lunch one day soon; could he go ahead and arrange it? Elizabeth said yes, vaguely. She had an odd notion, probably groundless, that this wasn’t what Steven had come to say at all, that something had changed his mind.

  They talked for the space of a cigarette, and because he was the person with whom Elizabeth felt easiest now her mind could free itself and go off on a path of its own. Books to return—why didn’t Lucy come herself? Because she doesn’t want to face you just now, of course, which means exactly what you think it means. . . .

  Steven was standing and smiling down at her. His face had lost its preoccupation; he looked tired and a little shy again. “Better go on back yourself before you catch pneumonia. I don’t want Oliver on my neck for—”

  “You’ve got him,” said Oliver in the doorway. “Getting the place in shape, Elizabeth?”

  His voice was easy and unsurprised; for an instant his eyes were not. Silently, her head high, Elizabeth led the way down the hill.

  If the house had been empty before it was suddenly overflowing. Maire and Jeep, over-excited by their first long day in the snow, were exchanging tears of fury; Noreen, her face distressed, was wheedling and putting away snowsuits and setting eggs to boil all at once. Constance, unwrapping groceries in the kitchen, began a measured denunciation of the butcher. Steven, who had walked, was persuaded to have a drink while he called Lucy to drive over for him.

  Elizabeth remembered later the tiny oasis of peace when Oliver drew her forcibly into the dining-room and nodded at a silver pitcher on the buffet. “Roses,” he said shortly.

  And roses they were, a warm, just-unfurling dozen of them jammed uncompromisingly into the pitcher. On second thought Oliver had apparently given them a rearranging pull; there was one standing on its head on cherrywood. Roses, and an early arrival home—good omen, or bad? Elizabeth didn’t care just then. The sight of Oliver’s face, so like Jeep’s when he had tried to help and ruined everything—half-defiant, half-sad—made her throat go rigid. She said sedately, “Thank you,” and met Oliver’s eyes. “You should see what happened to the last man who brought me roses.”

  “I know, terrible things,” said Oliver in a different voice. “Go comb your hair, it’s full of snow.”

  She didn’t immediately go. She crossed to the roses and touched a satin petal and listened, and was lulled by what she heard. Oliver coming back to the doorway, his eyebrows up, saying, “Old-fashioned? The mice have been at the gin again.” Constance commenting on the vagaries of the oven. Noreen saying pleadingly, “Oh, Maire, darling, don’t—you’re much too nice a girl to—” And a crash, proving that Maire was not. Bellows from Jeep. Steven’s voice, surmounting Jeep’s with an effort: “That sounds like our car.”

  It was all noisy, normal, safe . . . wasn’t it?

  This is nonsense, Elizabeth thought lucidly, I’ll look back at it and wonder how I could ever have been such an idiot . . . damn. Her fingers had moved too suddenly among the roses, and a trio of petals went flaring soundlessly down.

  And later she did look back, and knew that she would never come closer to a lightning glimpse into someone else’s brain.

  Later, too, she clocked herself with lipstick and powderpuff and comb, and knew that not quite seven minutes elapsed between the time she went upstairs and the moment when she reached the lower hall again and that odd awkward hush.

  Into it Lucy Brent said, “Oh, what a shame—” and Constance, “It’s a wonder the whole thing didn’t go.” Oliver, sounding like a stranger, said grimly, “I’ll take it,” and Noreen answered distantly, “Oh, no, Mr. March, I have everything right here.”

  Elizabeth walked through the living-room without glancing at any of them. She stopped short at the entrance to the dining-room—seeing, for a foolish second not believing, the vivid storm of petals that turned the floor red, the headless rose stems, formal and frightening, still arching serenely in the silver pitcher.

  Three

  “LOOK,” said Oliver wearily at six o’clock. “It’s too bad, but it’s not like losing a leg. The kids—”

  “They wouldn’t do that. Jeep couldn’t reach, to begin with, and Maire wouldn’t.”

  “All right—would Lucy or Steven? Or Constance or I? Would you?”

  I didn’t, thought Elizabeth desperately. Three petals, that was all; I counted them. If I’m not sure of that, then I’m not sure of anything. I did go right upstairs after that, I did . . . didn’t I?

  Oliver left his chair and walked restlessly to a window; his voice came muffledly over his shoulder. “Mysteries W
e Never Solved, No. 2000. What does it matter anyway?”

  “I think,” said Elizabeth stonily, “that it matters a great deal when someone pulls the heads off a dozen roses or a dozen anything. If you think about it, it’s quite an odd thing to do.”

  Into the silence after that Constance said vaguely and hopefully, “Accidents . . .” and it was as though she hadn’t spoken at all.

  Oliver swung around and gave Elizabeth a long direct look. “All right,” he said abruptly, “let’s get it straight, then, if it bothers you. Let’s have Maire again, shall we?”

  Elizabeth bitterly resented the scene that followed. Maire, who had already denied anything to do with the roses, denying it more vehemently. Oliver saying patiently, “It’s all right, honey, no one’s going to scold you. We just want to know, and then we’ll all forget it. I bet it was fun—was it?” and Maire, her face already a bewildered scarlet, bursting into frightened sobs because her three-year-old world had turned upside down and she didn’t know how to defend herself.

  Elizabeth cried at last, “Oh, stop it, can’t you see she’s telling the truth?”

  Noreen, silently disapproving, had gone upstairs to put Jeep into his bath. Oliver kissed Maire, perched her on his shoulder and carried her up. Constance said in a low voice, “You know, of course what it must have been. Noreen had some sort of accident with them, and then did that to make it look like the children. She seemed quite upset when she was cleaning up.”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “You didn’t talk to her.”

  In the kitchen, shaking the crimson flutter into the wastebasket, Noreen had glanced up apologetically. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. March, I tried to get it all cleaned up before anyone saw.”

  Elizabeth had a flicker of hope. “Oh, I see. You—”

  The girl colored instantly, her eyes wide and startled. “Oh, I didn’t, Mrs. March. Your lovely flowers—I can’t imagine how it happened. . . .”