The Long Prospect (15 page)

‘Max?' she said.

As they walked along the back lane Lilian could be heard from the kitchen calling to someone in another part of the house. She made it possible for him to say, ‘We'll talk about it later.'

But when he said that, Emily remembered what she had genuinely forgotten—that she had cried—and knew that a single tear had taught him what he had not known. But what? She had thought there was nothing he did not know about her.

A vague sensation of dread hung over her and would not disperse, she sensed, until she found a way of assuring him that whatever he had learned tonight was wrong.

‘Here's the whole damn family!' cried Lilian.

Wearing a new black dress, her hands shining with diamond rings, supported by the drinks she had had with Billie during the afternoon, Lilian was feeling at her best. A certain quantity of alcohol brought out in her a kind of mellow fruitiness that was the nearest she ever came to any kind of charm. It had misled more persons than one.

‘Come on,' she said with an arbitrary wave of her hand. ‘I heard you coming so I got out more cups and saucers. Come in and keep me and Billie company till our old men arrive. We're off out to dinner tonight.
Yours
,' she said to Max, ‘is in the oven.' Her tone was peculiarly familiar, implying an intimacy between them that had never existed.

Catching a tentacle stretched in the direction of Max, Emily looked at her from under level brows and silently warned her off, but Max, feeling it advisable to stop Lilian's humour from declining, said, ‘Some tea would be just the shot!'

When he followed Emily into the shadowy sitting-room five minutes later the two women braced themselves in their chairs as if, in their black dresses and thin suede shoes, they had been challenged. Lilian widened her eyes and shot a significant glance at Billie as she introduced them.

Balancing one knee carefully on the other, Billie raised a hand to be shaken, and under the windows, in a corner of the sofa, seeming to survey the tea-leaves in her cup, Emily watched the swaying leg, the languid hand.

Billie, imposing her preconceptions on what she saw, saw a tall youthful man with a pleasant smile and a clever head. She saw a lonely man, lonely for Billie, and she said, ‘Isn't Ballowra quiet after Melbourne? You should've been coming with us tonight. It's just a small party. We'd have found someone for him, Lilian, wouldn't we?' She laughed and was about to threaten that she would take him on, herself, and send Fred packing, when she looked in his eyes, and saw with an alarming diminution of confidence that she was being looked at. He seemed friendly enough, she could not have said why she wanted to wriggle.

With a resurgence of confidence Billie decided to take what she had seen as no more, and no less, than a considerable interest in herself. She began to talk more freely.

Lilian's smile grew stiff; she fussed over Max's tea, and planted herself in a chair between her friend and her boarder.

Obliged to answer Billie, Max responded with a conventionality that pleased Emily. It antagonized Lilian—for why was he so patient with her if not attracted?—and satisfied Billie.

Silent, as she was expected to be, Emily studied Billie Duncan. She was forty-five, an old friend of Lilian's, short, with a pale thick-skinned face, dark moist eyes and a prominent nose. The piercing soprano she raised at parties was understood to be her most prized asset, and had won her much applause. Emily did not like her.

Billie was saying, ‘Yes, but aren't we dull for you after Melbourne? Don't you miss the night-clubs and the races and everything? All the shops and picture shows?' She hesitated coyly. ‘And your friends?'

‘I'm fairly used to moving about, the company sees to that. When the job came up here I hadn't much choice. Actually I wanted to come: Greenhills is near enough to being country to be a pleasant change.'

‘Well, I don't know,' Billie said vaguely. ‘My Fred shouted me a trip to Melbourne—by coach—two years ago. What a place it is! If he knew the half of it he'd want his money back this minute!' She gave a scream of laughter.

Emily's eyes skidded from Lilian to Max. That he was depressed, more than anything, she guessed, without understanding why. But having solved his reaction, she knew how to adjust her own.

‘You think we're all country bumpkins,' Billie mused into her tea, interrupting a short innings of Lilian's. ‘But I get all my clothes in Sydney, don't I, Lil?'

‘That stuff,' Lilian looked at the bottles on the table, ‘is stronger than you'd think.'

Max got slowly to his feet. ‘Thanks for the tea, Lilian. I hope you have—'

‘You must think it's funny,' Billie said, gazing moistly up at him, ‘that I'm going out with my friend Fred, instead of hubby, but we don't get on, you see. Though we live in the same house we don't get on. He's not kind to me. Country bumpkins,' she said, sounding argumentative, ‘can have their troubles, too.'

She seemed to expect an answer so Max said, ‘They're not easy to avoid anywhere.'

‘My God, that's true!' said Billie heavily. ‘Too true. All alike. Country and town. Troubles, troubles.' She said to Lilian, ‘I like Max. I don't know why you haven't made him come to some of our parties. I do think you're selfish.'

The irrelevance, to what had gone before, of the information about her friend's married life, made Lilian uncross her arms and beat a fist against her thigh in a movement of unbearable impatience. The experimental flirtatiousness she had tried in the kitchen was soured. Now, Billie's presence, her determination to win not only attention but admiration, suddenly freed her from the tangle of deference that hindered her dealings with Max. For being male and resisting her, for Billie's interest, hypothetical success and actual failure, she hated him. That he was not at once aware of it made her hate him more. Her eyes took on a glitter that heralded the provoking licence of which she was mistress.

To Billie she said, ‘Shut up! You don't know what you're talking about. He's been asked often enough. He'd rather stay home with Emily.'

Billie rolled her eyes in amazement and turned in her chair to look at each of the strange creatures she all at once found herself with. ‘Oh! Oh, I see.'

‘They're always at their books or games,' Lilian said with a suddenly vicious smile.

Emily sat between fury and bewilderment. How the conversation had turned out like this was more than she could understand. But Max was not surprised. Domination was natural to Lilian. An attempt by her to overcome him had been inevitable from the first.

‘We're dull company for you, Lilian, I quite agree. And I don't blame you for losing patience with me. On parties, people often do.'

And Billie, entirely discomposed by his composure, giggled and glanced at Lilian nervously.

Hearing the formal breaking-up, Emily left the sofa and walked slowly round the far side of the room to the door, already several minutes ahead to the time when, away from these extraordinary artificialities, real life might go on again.

As Max turned to go, Lilian leaned forward in her chair and held his eyes compellingly. She smiled and said to Billie, ‘There's one thing I didn't tell you about Max. You two have a mutual friend—or had. Max used to be a very good friend of Thea's. You remember Thea who used to live here? She had the room he's in now. Isn't it funny?'

She had determined with an inflexible will that she would strike a hot reaction from him; if not passion—which was unthinkable between them—then anger, hurt, something. She would make him recognize her as a power. If he had behaved himself she might have let him alone, but he had to spoil himself, she thought. He had had to annoy her today. Well, he would see now, he would see. Like some insane despot she nodded her smiling head and watched his face.

At the sound of the name, at the revelation of this unknown connexion Emily stood hypnotized, stared at his back, her grandmother's face.

Powerless to have those words, the implications of tone and eye retracted, Max looked with numb curiosity—even with fascination—at the woman who revealed in herself so strong a desire to wound. He wondered, with part of his mind, what could be the matter with her.

Billie was wide-awake to innuendo. She said, ‘Oh! So you knew Thea!' And her big dark eyes examined him with insolent freedom. ‘I've often wondered what happened to her,' she said untruthfully. ‘You don't know, I suppose?'

‘I'm afraid not.'

Apart from the fact that his voice might have been heavier than usual, Lilian could detect very little reaction. There was certainly a frozen expressionlessness but that hardly amounted to the kind of success she had aimed at.

Baulked, she pressed her lips together in a tight little smile, and thought of saying, but merely thought: you'll know soon enough. I'll get you together, my friend.

Emily pushed against the wooden frame of the door, looked at the three still figures. ‘Come on, Max,' she said in a small voice.

‘Get out of here this minute,' Lilian said. ‘And if you keep on interrupting grown-ups I'll just have to see you're sent where you won't bother us any more. There are reform schools for girls like you, you know.'

Emily's ears were hot. She closed her trembling lips and bitterly went up to the end of the hall to watch the door. She had wanted to help, that was all, to get Max out of the room. She had not meant to attach herself to him. Certainly she meant not to intercept him. He had not even turned when she spoke to him.

Like someone lost she stood and waited and tried to link those two names in her mind. Max and Thea. She could smell furniture polish, see a pale reflection of herself in dark wood. Suspended, she stared at, into, through it in an effort to find the face of Thea, her Thea of long ago, who now appeared to be Max's Thea as well. She stood like an image with the concentration of experiencing again all that she had heard and sensed in the past minutes.

That Max was vulnerable, that Lilian knew it, she had learned with despair. Reasons, reasons, lay complete inside her and she approached reluctantly.

With a swift movement she gave the bracelet on her wrist—Thea's bracelet—a violent tug, but it held firm and would not break. Max appeared in the hall and she jumped guiltily and moved back.

Out of sight of the women in the room he paused in the semi-darkness for a blind, distracted moment and then walked slowly to the back door and out of the house.

He'll never come back! Emily thought. Then, breathing again, she thought: his things, his books,
me.
And reassured that he would not desert she turned her head sharply, let her eyes roam blank and birdlike while she considered the justification for her next act, which was to run silently to the adjoining room and listen at the door.

Lilian was saying, ‘No, what she said to me was that he and his wife were Catholics and couldn't divorce, but that was just because she didn't want me to know the truth. Oh, she was sly. Do you know, I was in her flat once. Once, mind you. She never asked me, and I'm not a great one for visiting, anyway—but there you are.'

Billie made clicking noises with her tongue.

‘Do you know I didn't even know he'd been living there with her till Mr Watts came and asked me to take him in.'

‘How did you find out? Why didn't you tell me? This is a spicy bit of news to keep to yourself. I'm interested.'

That was the answer. Lilian had suspected that it would make Max too interesting, and, somehow, more accessible to Billie. Obscurely, for no reason she could think of, she had not wanted that to happen. Until today she had contrived that they should not meet.

‘Well, you see, Watts tells me the name of this man who's to have the room, and I say, “I know that name,” and he says, “Well, he was here a few years ago.” So I said, “Did you know him?” (not letting on whether I did or not, you see) and he gave me a funny kind of smile and said, no, but he'd heard a bit about him from a few fellows who worked with him before. Then I said, “He used to be a good friend of a friend of mine,” and I told him her name. Well, he
laughed
, he couldn't help himself, and when he saw I'd more or less been having him on, he laughed all the more. So then we had a little cup of tea and he told me all about it.'

‘Men are worse gossips than women,' giggled Billie. ‘But how did he know all this?'

‘How's your tea? Cold? Well, this firm he's in seems to have plants and offices all over the place and these top men are always travelling round. Someone up from Melbourne told them about his wife, and they told him about what he'd been up to here.'

‘Poor soul! His poor wife!' said Billie sanctimoniously. ‘Sometimes I think hubbie'll do that to me, you know. Drive me right off my head.'

‘She
went of her own accord,' said Lilian pointedly.

After a moment Billie said, ‘Imagine him going back to her, though. Why, do you suppose? She can't have been all that mad, can she?'

‘Well, she is now,' Lilian said. ‘Maybe she had money or something.'

‘Ye-es,' Billie conceded that that was a point. ‘Maybe, though, he found out he loved her best.'

‘Ha!' was Lilian's comment, and Billie's chair squeaked as she dragged it closer.

‘Well, what do you think?'

‘I don't know. But he and Thea had this flat for two years—bold as brass. Watts said they just didn't care if people found out. Watts said that none of the people in the flats would speak to them. People won't put up with that kind of thing, you know.'

‘No,' Billie said. ‘Well, this is a decent town.'

‘Great city folks, them!'

‘But fancy you not knowing, Lilian, all that time.'

‘How was I to know?' Lilian sounded huffed. ‘After she left this house I saw her three times in two years. Once the day I went there, once when she came here, and the last time just before she left. She had Emily off for a few picnics or something—when he was away on business, I suppose. But how was I to know? I don't know anyone who lives in town, and I don't suppose they went out much. Anyway I never saw them.'