The Complete Short Stories (24 page)

He left his house to his
daughter, Dora. All his papers, all his literary estate, everything. Ben,
however, had the royalties from his biography of Henry Castlemaine. They were
fairly substantial.

In those last years of
Castlemaine’s life, their financial position had improved, largely through the
initial efforts of Ben to revive his father-in-law’s fame. They were able to
employ a cook and a maid, leaving Dora free to be a real companion to her
father and take him for drives in their new Volkswagen.

Nobody was surprised
when, after Castlemaine’s death, the marriage broke up. Its only real basis had
been the couple’s devotion to Dora’s father. Ben, now still a young and
sprightly thirty-five and Dora fifty-one, oldish for her age, had nothing in
common except their memories of the old man. He had been authoritative and
tiresome, but Dora hadn’t minded. Ben had felt the personal weight of his
famous father-in-law. He had put up with it, for the sake of the admired works,
and his own efforts to promote them, day by day, in his study, docketing the
archives, on the telephone to television and film producers.

In the early days of his
marriage he had tried to make love to Dora, and succeeded fairly often out of
sheer enthusiasm for her father. Dora herself couldn’t keep it up. She was
obsessed by her father, and Ben was no substitute. Now Ben was left with the
proceeds of his biography. His work was done. Dora was immensely rich.

Henry Castlemaine was
buried. A crowded memorial service, reporters, television; and the next week it
was over. Henry Castlemaine lived on in his posthumous fame, but Dora and Ben
were no longer a couple.

It was at this point
that very little was publicly known. It was understood that Dora refused to
leave the house of her childhood and her father’s life. Ben took a flat in
London and grumbled to his friends that Dora was stingy. She gave him an
allowance. The proceeds from his biography could not last forever. He wrote a
lot of Castlemaine essays, and was said to be thinking of some other subject,
something fresh to write about.

Within a few months Dora
suggested a divorce:

Dear Ben, I intend
to see my lawyer, Bassett. He will no doubt be in touch with you. I know Father
would have wished us to stay together and to love each other as he wished from
the start. It was Father’s wish that I should never want for anything, indeed
he hated to talk about the financial details of life in those old days when his
books had started to fade out, and we met. I know that Father would have wished
me to show my appreciation, and express his acknowledgment of the part you
played in our life, (even although I am of course convinced that the revival of
Father’s great reputation would have been inevitable in any case). That is why
I have instructed Bassett to offer you a monthly allowance which you are free
to accept or reject according to your conscience. The divorce should go through
as quietly and smoothly as possible. Father would have wished that at least.
Above all, Father, I think, would have wished for complete discretion on the
fact that our union was a marriage in name only, even although the situation
could be amply testified to by the domestics (who are of course always aware of
everything, as Father always said.) So I could have obtained a divorce quite
easily on other grounds than mutual consent thus saving the allowance I am
offering you in amicable settlement. I trust you have benefited by your stay
with us under our roof for these years past.

Father
would wish me to enjoy the fruits of his labours, and soon I shall be taking a
trip abroad, especially to those haunts so beloved of Father.

Yours, in good faith,

Dora Castlemaine

It was that ‘in good faith’, more than her
formal signature, that chilled Ben’s bones. He recalled a phrase from one of
Henry Castlemaine’s books: ‘Beware the wickedness of the righteous.’

What is there to see in the austere and
awesome birthplace of Joan of Arc at Domrémy-la-Pucelle in the Vosges? It is
full of grey-walled emptiness, and there is no doubt, someone has been here
and has gone. It stands just off the road, in the shade of a large tree. Near
by is a bridge over the Meuse where a man hovers, looking down at the water. A
small cream-coloured Peugeot is parked dose by, waiting for him, with the
driver’s door open. He has got in once and got out again. He has looked round
at the woman who has been watching him while he tours the simple birthplace,
now open to the public. The woman watches him as he drives away, too fast, away
and away, so that the guardian at the ticket entrance comes out to join her on
the road, staring after him.

Ben and Dora were never divorced. He showed
her letter round their friends. It had been the couple’s boast that they had
few friends, but, as always when ‘a few friends’ come to be counted up, they
amounted to a surprising number. Most of them were indignant.

‘That’s a shabby way to
treat you, Ben. First, you build up a fortune for her, and now she …’

‘Ben, you must see a
lawyer. You are entitled to …’

‘What a cold, what a
very frigid letter. But between you and me, she was always in love with her
father. It was incestuous.’

‘I won’t go to a lawyer,’
Ben said. ‘I’ll go to see Dora.

He went to see her,
unannounced. The door was opened by a tall, fat youth who beamed with delight
when Ben gave his name and demanded his wife.

‘Dora’s in the kitchen.’

The father’s smell had
gone from the house. Ben glanced through the dining-room door on the way to the
kitchen. There was new wallpaper, a new carpet. Dora was there in the kitchen,
unhappy of face, beating up an omelette. The kitchen table was laid for a meal,
which meal no one could guess, whether lunch or breakfast. It was four-fifteen
in the afternoon. Anyway, Dora was unhappy. She clung to her unhappiness, Ben
saw clearly. It was all she had.

The flaccid youth
scraped a chair across the kitchen floor towards Ben. ‘Make yourself at home,’
he said.

Ben turned to leave.

‘Stay, don’t go,’ said
Dora. ‘We should sit down and discuss the situation like three civilized
people.’

‘I’ve had enough of
three civilized people,’ Ben said. ‘There was your father and you, so very
civilized; and I was civilized enough to let myself be used and then thrown out
when I was no more use.

The flabby youth said, ‘As
I understand it you were never a husband to Dora. She let herself be used as a
means to your relationship with her father.’

‘Who is he?’ Ben
demanded, indicating the young man.

Dora brought an omelette
to the table and set it before her friend. ‘Eat it while it’s hot. Don’t wait
for me.’ She started breaking eggs into the bowl. The youth commenced to eat.

‘Isn’t there a drink in
the house?’ said Ben. ‘This is sordid.’ He got up and went into the living-room
where the drinks were set out, as always, on a tray. When he got back with his
whisky and soda, the young man’s place was empty, part of his omelette still on
his plate. Ben then saw through the kitchen window the ends of the young man’s
trousers and his shoes disappearing up the half flight of steps which led to
the garden and a door to the lane behind. Dora, with her omelette-turner still
in her hand went to shut the kitchen door which had been left open.

‘You can have this
omelette,’ said Dora. ‘I’ll make another for myself.’

‘I couldn’t eat it,
thanks, at this hour. What happened to your friend?’

‘I suppose he was
embarrassed when he saw you,’ said Dora.

‘About what?’

‘About his coming to
live here and opening the house to the public. I owe it to Father. First I’ll
have a trip abroad and then, believe me, I’ll arrange for a companion, an
assistant, somebody, to help me turn the house into a museum. Father’s rooms,
his manuscripts.’

‘Well, that was my idea,’
Ben said. ‘That’s what we were always planning to do when Henry was dead.’

‘You aren’t the only
Castlemaine enthusiast,’ Dora said. ‘I’m not too old to marry again and I could
open the house to the public, only certain rooms, the important ones. I’ve had
the house repainted and the floors mended. I could do it with a new partner.

‘Why on earth should you
want to marry again?’

‘The usual reasons,’
Dora said. ‘Love, sex, companionship. The Castlemaine idea wasn’t enough, after
all. You can’t go to bed with an idea.’

‘You used to,’ he said, ‘when
Henry was alive.’

‘Well, I don’t now.

‘Do you mind if I look
over the house before I go?’ Ben said.

Dora studied her watch.
She sighed. She put the dishes in the sink.

‘I’ll come with you,’
she said. ‘What exactly do you want?’

‘To see for myself what
it’s like now.

They went from room to
room. The chairs were newly upholstered, the walls and woodwork freshly
painted. In Henry Castlemaine’s study his papers were piled on the floor on a
plastic sheet, his desk had been replaced by a trestle-table on which more
papers and manuscripts were piled. ‘I’m working on the papers,’ said Dora. ‘It’ll
take time. A lot of his books have been re-bound and some are still at the
binders.’

Ben looked at the
shelves. The books that Henry had used most, his shabby poetry, his worn
reference books, were now done up in glittering gold and half-calf bindings.

‘You’ll never get
through those papers yourself,’ Ben said. ‘It’s an enormous job. The letters
alone —’

‘I’ll have them in
showcases,’ Dora said, her voice monotonous and weary. ‘I can get help, lots of
help.’

‘Look,’ said Ben. ‘I
know you can get help. But it’s a professional job. You need scholars, people
with taste.

‘All right, I’ll get
scholars, people with taste.

‘Do you intend to marry
that young man, what was his name?’

‘I could marry him. I
haven’t decided,’ she said.

‘Do you mean he’s a
manuscript expert?’

‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘I
wouldn’t let a fellow like that touch Father’s papers. But he’d be very good at
the entrance-hall, giving out tickets, when I open the house to the public. Can’t
you see him in that role?’

‘Yes, I can,’ said Ben.

‘The divorce should go
through —’

‘Look, Dora, I must tell
you that I’m going to make a claim. I’m entitled to a share of what I’ve built
up for you over the last seven years.

‘I expected you would.
The lawyer expected it. We’ll make a settlement.’

‘Castlemaine was nowhere
when I married you.’

‘I said we’ll make a
settlement.’

‘It’s a sad end to our
ambitions,’ Ben said. ‘We were always going to open the house to the public,
Henry knew that. Now you’ll make a mess of it, are making a mess of it. You’ll never
get through those archives.’

‘Are you proposing to
come back here and work on the papers?’ she said.

‘I might consider it.
For Henry’s sake.’

‘But for my sake?’

‘For Henry’s sake. You
didn’t marry me for my sake. It was always Father, Father.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and
now Father’s dead. We have no more in common. ‘We still have our ambition for
the Castlemaine museum in common, our dreams.’

‘It’s time for you to
go. I want some sleep,’ Dora said, her eyes fixed on her watch.

As she closed the study
door there was the sound behind them in the study of a bundle of papers
slithering to the floor, blown by the draught.

Then, another thump of
paper urged on by the displacement of the first lot. Dora took no notice.

The visitors, it seems to the young
girl-student who is taking her turn at the entrance-desk, appear to be
nervously aware of each other, although they have arrived separately. There is
something old-fashioned about them both. It is not exactly the cut and style of
their clothes that gives them this impression; it is not exactly anything; it
is something inexact. They are both English or perhaps American: the girl’s ear
is not attuned to the difference, especially as they have each said so few
words when buying their ticket. ‘How long has the museum been open?’ and ‘Is
that really Freud’s hat?’ Freud’s hat, a bourgeois light-brown felt hat, is
hanging on the coat-stand with Freud’s walking stick. The girl follows the
visitors. The man is tall, good-looking, around thirty. The woman, prim with
her hair combed back into a bun is older. They look studious, as do most people
who come to visit the house of Sigmund Freud at 19 Berggasse, Vienna. But the
fact that they look at each other from time to time anxiously, then anxiously
look away, makes the young guardian of the shrine feel increasingly nervous.
There are precious objects lying about: a collection of primitive artefacts on
the studio table, manuscripts and letters in the glass-topped show-tables.
Could the visitors be accomplices in a projected robbery?

‘That is the Couch,’
says the girl-student. ‘Yes, the original Couch.’ The couch is large, floppy
and soft. One could go to sleep forever in it, sinking deeper and deeper.

‘And this is the
waiting-room.’

‘Ah, the waiting-room,’
says the young man.

‘Is it haunted?’ says
the woman, touching one of the red plush chairs lined up against the wall,
themselves waiting for something.

‘Hunted?’ says the
puzzled girl.

‘No, haunted. Ghosts.’

‘No,’ says the young
woman, looking behind her in sharp surprise, for the man has left abruptly, and
is already outside the door of the flat. When she turns back to the woman she
is amazed to find nobody there.

At the family home of Louis Pasteur the
bacteriologist at Arbois, in the rainy Jura, she is there and so is he. ‘This
was the dining table. This is the board where he carved. What rain! — will
it
never stop? You would like to see the laboratory, Madame, Monsieur, this
way.’ It is taken for granted they are a couple. The laboratory is scrubbed but
somehow dusty, and a few old books are lying about realistically: ‘… his
researches into organisms and fermentations.