At Death's Door (7 page)

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.

R
ODERICK 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?”

“Much as ever,” said Roderick.

“You can leave him?”

“Oh, yes. Not too long, but we can leave him. He's asleep now, and he'll sleep until morning. In the daylight hours he has some sort of fitful mental life.”

“Oh, is he still in possession of several of his faculties?” said Myra, unable to keep the spite out of her voice. “I'd understood he was a complete vegetable.”

Roderick left a second's pause to register disapproval. If
Myra noticed, she did not change her expression. Then he said simply: “No, he's not a complete vegetable.”

Caroline, left out in the conversational cold, was taking the opportunity to assess Myra. A dominant woman, and one of chameleon moods—or was it chameleon
acts
? An actress who would not take direction easily, unless it was very intelligent direction that acknowledged her central position in the play. There was another still stronger sense she had, and that was of a
unwise
woman—if not in her professional, then in her private, life. The sort of woman who might snatch disaster from the jaws of triumph. But perhaps she had this sense not from the woman herself but from what Cordelia had told her.

Myra had switched mood again, back to one of reminiscence.

“He was a wonderful lover, you know.”

“Was he?” Roderick asked cautiously. “My impression was that he was rather inconsiderate.”

“Myra means sex,” said Granville Ashe.

“Yes, I meant sex,” agreed Myra, glancing at him slyly to see if she was embarrassing him. Roderick shrugged.

“That is something his son would know nothing about.”

“Did your mother never talk about it?”

“
No.
My mother certainly didn't talk about it.”

“Funny . . . Aren't people funny? . . . Anyway, that's why I had it. Had her. Cordelia. And I've spent all my time since trying to find out what to do with her.”

“She seems to me,” said Caroline, “a very nice girl.”

It was a banality, dropped into the conversation from the sidelines, but it caught Myra on the raw.

“Does she? Does she? Then why is she doing this to
me
?”

Myra, having ignored her for the last ten minutes, turned on Caroline the smoldering force of her personality. Caroline had the impression that this was the first time in the conversation that she was not acting.

“Keep calm, Myra,” said Granville Ashe. “This will all work itself out if we can just talk it over coolly.”

Myra ignored him. She turned back to Roderick.

“You are clear, aren't you, what she intends to do to me? She is writing that book to crucify me.”

Roderick decided that Ashe was sensible in trying to play it cool. Whether Myra would ever accept any other way but high drama was another matter.

“I don't think that's entirely the case,” he said carefully. “I know Cordelia admires you intensely as an actress. A great part of the book—the intended book—will be taken up with your stage career.”

“And the rest will be mudslinging. Which part of the book do you think the tabloids will be interested in? My brilliant performance in Strindberg?”

“No, of course not. Is that what you are mainly worried about? The popular press?”

Myra scowled, her first ugly expression of the evening.

“It doesn't make me happy. We have the worst press in the world, and the thing they hate most is anyone with any sort of intellectual pretensions or anyone with any sort of talent at all. They revel in the sort of thing Cordelia is planning to serve up to them. Remember Joan Crawford's daughter, Bette Davis's daughter—the press had a field day.”

“You used—” Roderick began, and then stopped.

“You were going to say,” said Myra unpleasantly, “that I used the popular press against your father. Quite right. I did. I had no other weapon.”

The idea that Cordelia was not too lavishly endowed with weapons, either, was too obvious to need expression. Certainly nobody dared express it.