At Death's Door (3 page)

The commodore was beginning to get uneasy with the literary talk.

“Well, you've certainly got an interesting task on your hands, my dear,” he said. “It's to be a biography, is it?”

“Sort of portrait,” said Cordelia.

“And you'll be here for some time, will you?” Almost automatically he ogled her. Daisy Critchley, almost as automatically, stiffened.

“I'm not sure.” Cordelia, still nervously working at her handkerchief, turned with a smile to Roderick and Caroline. “I don't want to be a nuisance. It will depend on how much material there is.”

“You must stay as long as you want to or need to,” said Roderick.

“I fear you won't get much out of—” The commodore, unusually brutal, jerked his head at the ceiling.

“My father? No, I quite understand the situation.”

“Well,” said the commodore, patting his wife on the thigh, “time we were making a move. We'll hope to see more of you, young lady, if you're going to be here for a bit.”

“Yes, you must both come over,” said Daisy without conviction.

Cordelia reacted to the frosty invitation by smiling non-committally and turning to say something to Becky, who was making noises. To cover any awkwardness, Pat got up, shook hands with the commodore, and made inquiries about swimming in the area. As they moved to the door, Cordelia, perhaps thinking she'd been rude, smiled again, one of her brilliant ones, and Caroline saw Daisy Critchley realize for the first time what a good-looking girl this could be. Caroline and Roderick saw them off and into their car at the front door with the usual courtesies, and when she came back into the sitting room, Caroline said:

“And now they'll be off to the Red Lion to spread the news around the village.”

“I thought they said my father was not much of a local personality,” said Cordelia, sitting down again. “Why should anyone be interested?”

“Not so much because you're your father's daughter as because you're your mother's,” said Caroline. “Actresses are always good for village gossip. And the fact that she's a dame will add snob appeal.”

“Oh, yes, the damehood,” said Cordelia.

“And the slight whiff of dated scandal will wing the story on its way,” put in Roderick. “But you must know what it's like. You live in a village, don't you?”

Cordelia frowned and turned to Pat.

“I don't know. It's different. I grew up there. . . . Mother's lived there so long people sort of take her for granted. . . . Don't they?”

“Pretty much,” said Pat after a pause for thought that was habitual to him. “If there's a stranger in the pub, they might boast about her. Mostly they take her in their stride.”

“When I moved in with Pat, there was talk,” said Cordelia. “But that was basically because he teaches in the village school. ‘Can we let our innocent babes—?' You know the kind of thing. They didn't ask, ‘What will her mother say?' because really my mother is hardly in a position to say anything.”

“Now,” said Caroline, “you're eating with us.”

“Oh, no, please. I made it clear to your husband—”

“Just for tonight. I've got a big casserole in the oven. We really must have a chance to get to know each other.”

“Oh, dear—we didn't want to be any trouble. We've got the Primus, of course, and we were going to have sausages and beans.”

“You can have campers' food for the rest of your stay. Tonight you're going to eat properly.”

Cordelia giggled.

“We'd probably have had sausages and beans if we'd been at home. I'm a terrible cook, and we're as poor as church mice.”

“I noticed the second-class stamp.” Roderick, turning to Pat, laughed. “Of course, teachers' starting pay is pretty terrible, isn't it?”

“Abysmal. And I have an overdraft after teachers' college. Everyone does. It's the only way you can afford books.”

“And you don't have a job?” Caroline asked Cordelia.

“A bit of journalism. I do any Pelstock story that's going for the local rag, and sometimes I do special features for them. I had a chance of getting into Fleet Street. Being mother's daughter does mean I have some contacts. But by the time the chance came up, I'd moved in with Pat.”

“Never mind. Perhaps you'll get an advance on the book.”

“I've had one.” Cordelia grinned. “We spent it on second-hand furniture for the council house we're in. It's a bit worrying . . . in case the book isn't what they'd hoped for. Still, they tell me publishers never ask for an advance back.”

“They don't usually get it, anyhow,” said Roderick, who over the years had learned a good deal about publishers. “Well, that's settled. You'll eat with us.”

“But we must put the tent up first,” said Pat, getting up. “Easier before it gets dark.”

Becky thought they were going and began making noises of protest. Cordelia bent over with great kindness and took her by the hands.

“But you can come with us, can't you, Becky? And help us put up our tent?”

“That would be kind—she'd love that,” said Caroline. “There's a garden seat at the far end, near the new houses. If you put her on that, she'll be quite happy just watching.”

Pat took one hand, Cordelia the other, and then all three went out to the ancient Volkswagen in the driveway. Caroline, getting the dinner organized in the kitchen, saw Cordelia take her very tenderly down to the seat. Becky gazed entranced as Pat humped the tent down the lawn, then sleeping bags, stove, and supplies. Soon Cordelia and Pat were erecting the tent with a smooth efficiency obviously born of experience.

“She's a very nice girl,” said Caroline when Roderick came into the kitchen.

“Woman. Yes, she seems charming.”

“I can't see anything of your father in her.”

“Nor much of Myra, come to that. Though she is very pretty when she smiles.”

“You noticed. She could be very attractive altogether if she slimmed and took a little trouble. Funnily enough, she reminded me of that picture of your grandmother that your father always carried around with him—probably because she was plump, too. They're both awfully good with Becky. The boy seems to have a quiet—I don't know—”

“Strength. It's a cliché, but it seems true. Whereas she—I felt on the phone, and still do—doesn't seem quite to have grown up.”

“No. But remember she's had Myra Mason as a mother. Very famous, and I'd guess frightfully dominating. She probably never gave the girl space to mature, to become her own person. Children of famous people often do grow up rather inadequate.”

“Thank you,” said Roderick. Caroline laughed and kissed him.

“Your father was so seldom around when you were a child he didn't have a chance to restrict you,” she said. “Too busy chasing his women.”

T
HE OLD RECTORY, MAUDSLEY,
was two miles outside Maudsley proper. It had originally served for the pastor to a tiny rustic church and a few agricultural cottages attached to the estate of a landed proprietor, in whose gift the living had been. Then it had been taken over to serve for Maudsley, and then, in the seventies, sold off as being too difficult to heat and maintain. Vicars, these days, were less philoprogenitive than their nineteenth-century counterparts.

The house was rambling, ramshackle, and inconsistent. The good rooms gave out on the lawn, while those on the other side were dark and poky. Only from the upstairs could one get a view of the sea. The new houses at the bottom of the garden were an eyesore, but Caroline had several friends among the women who lived there, for architectural taste has little bearing on character or disposition. On the whole she was happy at the Rectory and did not regret the decision to move in there that had been forced upon them.

The day after the young couple's arrival, while she was washing up, Caroline saw Pat setting off in the direction of the cliff path down to the beach. Ten minutes later Cordelia arrived, bursting with eagerness to get started. She had in her hand a notebook, a little set of colored felt pens, and a packet of sandwiches made with sliced bread.

“I can't wait to get down to work,” she said.

Caroline took the hint and took her straight through the dismal hall to a rather inconveniently shaped room off it.

“I thought I'd put you in here,” she said. “It was the room your father intended as his study, though I don't think he ever in fact worked here. He liked a smallish room, with no sort of view—nothing to distract him. He certainly would have had that here.”

Cordelia looked around. On one wall an enormous book-case contained all the editions—hardback, paperback, foreign—of Benedict Cotterel's works. The desk was massive, with capacious drawers, and was placed up against a blank wall. The desk calendar was for 1977. Against the wall that had a window in it—a window that looked out only on shrubbery—was a series of cupboards, old and squat.

“Now,” said Caroline briskly, for she felt a certain embarrassment at exposing a father's secrets to a long-lost daughter, “you'll soon find there's very little method. I can only say that
mostly
you'll find his collection of letters written
to
him in this cupboard here. Some pretty well known names corresponded with him, and I suppose your mother's letters will be among them. His reviews, interviews with him, and so on, you'll find in these two drawers. But I don't imagine they'll be of much interest. The manuscripts and typescripts for all the books up to 1960 were bought by a university in Texas. Those for the later books are in the cupboard over there. People have started sending back either the originals or photocopies of his own
letters, assuming someone, sometime, will do a collected. These we've tended to put in the desk drawers, knowing he'll never use it again. Right? That is only a
rough
guide. In fact, you'll find things in all sorts of places.”

“Right . . .” said Cordelia slowly. “I'll spend the morning finding my way around. You said books after 1960 were all here, so that must mean you have
The Vixen
?”

“Yes.”

“There are probably things in that that didn't get into the published text. I know my mother's lawyers were very active before it came out.”

“Very probably. I remember that Ben had a whale of a time and behaved quite disgracefully. That was soon after we were married, and I was very prim, and probably too easily shocked. . . . But I must say I've always thought that book beneath him. Naked, unworthy revenge. I read it again a few years ago, and I still felt the same. I don't count that as part of his real fictional output.”

“It's certainly unlike the others. Because he hadn't gone in for autobiography before, had he? Or if he had, I didn't recognize it.”

“Not direct autobiography like that. One or two of his other . . . women friends claimed to recognize themselves, but they were put in plots that had nothing to do with Ben's own life.”

“Anyway, that's the book that's of particular interest to me.”

“Of course it is. Well, I'll leave you to it.”

Caroline's day was low-key but busy. Becky had a fit of petulance and unreasonableness before lunch, as she sometimes did if she was at home and Roderick was not. Roderick was at a day-long conference of local headmasters. Caroline had a lunch of scrambled egg and fruit with Becky and Mrs. Sprigg, and when they had finished, she asked if Ben was up to receiving a visitor.

“Well, he's a bit drowsy, but it doesn't make all that much difference, does it? Who is it?”

“His daughter, actually. Illegitimate. He's never seen her before. Of course he won't know who she is.”

“He won't, and that's a fact,” said Mrs. Sprigg. Clearly she was interested and would get a lot more detail out of Caroline before many days were passed.

Caroline let her go upstairs to the old man, then went to the study, knocked, and put her head around.

“I wondered if you'd like to come up and say hello to Ben,” she said.

Cordelia looked apprehensive, then smiled bravely.

“I'd love to,” she said.

“It seemed only right,” said Caroline as they went upstairs. “Isobel, Roderick's sister, never goes to see him when she comes. But she hated him when he was— Well, so in its way that's right, too.”

Caroline opened the door of the shady bedroom. Mrs. Sprigg had made him clean and tidy, but already dribble was forming at the corner of his mouth. Cordelia gazed sadly at the sunken eyes, the bare skin and bone of the cheeks. It was more like looking at a skull than at a face.

“Memento mori
,” she whispered to Caroline.

“This is Cordelia, Father,” said Caroline, bringing her forward to the bed, “come to pay you a visit.”

“Cordelia . . .” said a faint, distant voice.

“She and her boyfriend are camping in the garden. It's lucky the weather's changed for the better, isn't it?”

There was a long pause, broken only by the ticking of the clock, and then the voice said: “. . . for the better . . .”

Cordelia took his hand very tenderly, then said, not really knowing what to say: “How are you feeling today . . . Father?”

There was no flicker of the eyelids. Merely another long pause.

“Father . . .” said the ancient voice.

“He's tired,” said Mrs. Sprigg.

Caroline nodded, smiled at the old man, then led Cordelia from the bedroom.

“I hope that wasn't too upsetting?”

“No. I'm glad to have seen him. Is he always like that?”

“That was a bit below average. He has his good days. Then he usually dictates wills.”

“Is that what the tape recorder was doing there?”