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The long driveway of The Sycamores appeared before him. The car made its way over the gravel at little more than walking pace. I must take some decisive step, he thought, summoning to his aid his ancient ally of resolution. Two courses lay before him. He could either plough on along his chosen path, crushing down the minutest sign of internal conflict–or he could stand back and let the defences crumble, look calmly and courageously at what was left when the torrents subsided, begin to build all over again from scratch an edifice he could not at this moment even begin to imagine.

  He was astonished to find, now that he actually dared to examine the notion of violent upheaval, that it was exhilaration and not terror that ran through him. He got out of the car and stood looking up at the house. Then he shook away his train of thought. Some other time, he told himself, when there is peace and leisure, I’ll work it all out another day. He gave his determined attention to the matter of the rest of the evening.

  The car–no need to put it away in the garage, he’d be running up to the Independents’ again later on. He’d called in at the club once already after leaving the office, looking for a member with whom he had business dealings. But the man wasn’t there, wouldn’t be in for an hour or two.

  He became aware that it was bitingly cold out here in the driveway but he still lingered under the arching trees. The house was well named; the sycamores had multiplied themselves in the hundred years since the grounds had first been laid out, great spreading branches reaching in places to a height of sixty or eighty feet.

  He took a step or two backwards and stared up at the grey walls built of stone from a local quarry, the long windows with light escaping from between heavy curtains. Zena was never one to go round economically switching off lamps. He pictured her up there in the best bedroom, lying back against the embroidered pillows, looking up at the ceiling, waiting for him.

  What a brooding, gloomy-looking place it was–and how imposing it had seemed to him when he had been despatched here on some errand from the shop in his apprentice days. He and Zena had begun their married life in a modern bungalow; they had moved to The Sycamores a year or two after Ralph Underwood’s death, when the war was over and it became possible once more to think of heating and running a place of this size.

  Something more cheerful, he thought suddenly. A new house perhaps–or if an old one, then something from a more elegant time, Georgian or Queen Anne. And a more open kind of garden without all these overpowering trees. He didn’t allow his mind to circle round the question of who was going to share the Georgian mansion with him or if indeed he was going to share it with anyone at all.

  A sharp gust of wind blew chilly air against his cheeks. I’d better get a move on if I don’t want to stand out here all night, he told himself. The notion brought with it a nasty reminder of the post-office bench under the whirling snow, sending him rapidly up the steps and in through the front door, closing it behind him with a momentary sense of relief, a return to normality.

  He hung up his coat, stamped his feet to restore the circulation. He could do with a holiday, that was all it was; a few days away somewhere pleasant and he’d be as right as rain. Something about the New Year, for all its frantic jollity, that inspired a feeling of depression and futility; he’d seen its effects in other men. Almost cheerful again, he mounted the stairs, already fixing a smile across his face. Zena was probably feeling much better now after her rest. They had spent last evening–and a considerable stretch of the early morning–at a dinner-dance in the largest hotel in Milbourne. Zena had overdone things a trifle, eating and drinking rather more than was strictly good for her. But it was only natural, really; she was after all entitled to deal with the midwinter glooms in her own way.

  He flung open the bedroom door and levelled his smile at the bed; his face had by now assumed a certain masklike quality which might have appeared quite startling if there had been anyone to see it.

  The bed was empty, the covers flung back in a disorderly heap. Through the open door of the dressing room he heard Zena’s voice, high-pitched, argumentative. His smile abandoned him but he kept on, round the foot of the bed, through the door, pausing on the threshold.

  Zena was sitting hunched in a chair, talking fiercely into the phone; she was wrapped in a fleecy dressing gown of pale blue wool. Her eyes flicked over him without a sign of recognition.

  ‘I’m back,’ he said. She made no reply. He felt disembodied, unreal, a figment of his own imagination–the real man perhaps even now looking up from a stone seat into the questioning face of a policeman.

  He turned and caught sight of his face, pale and ghostly, dark hollows where there should have been eyes, in the mirror on the opposite wall. He dropped his gaze, appalled at the sight of such blank futility, bafflingly at odds with his habitual image of himself as a jovial, successful man.

  He saw the bright flash of a pair of scissors lying on the shelf below the mirror; he was seized suddenly with a wild and powerful impulse to stride forward and pick them up, raise them aloft and drive them down with force into that flaccid flesh under the pale blue wool.

  He closed his eyes in terror that he might actually take a step forward; he felt the barriers begin to slip and crumble in his mind; he exerted all his strength and beat back at the invading tide. It began to recede, it slipped away, a little more and it was gone. He drew a long sighing breath and opened his eyes. Quite himself again now. Stupid to stay up so late. Not enough sleep, that was his trouble. But he kept his eyes well away from the steely brilliance of the scissors.

  ‘I’ll just have a quick wash,’ he said lightly. Zena gave no indication that she had heard. He went back into the bedroom and through the bathroom door. As he ran the taps he became aware of a weight in his jacket pocket. Ah–the tonic. Zena would be wanting that. He turned off the taps and stood looking down at the bottle in its neat white wrapping.

  ‘If you could just say exactly what it is that’s the matter with you, Mrs Yorke,’ the receptionist said yet again, striving for the right tone of professional firmness. New to the job, acting as a temporary relief, the regular girl being away with flu. ‘Then I’ll slip in and have a word with Dr Gethin.’

  ‘You’re not by any chance a qualified doctor?’ Zena threw in acidly. ‘No? Then I can’t see how describing my symptoms to you can be of the slightest use.’ Quite enjoying herself now; nothing she found more enlivening than a good brisk exchange. She felt energetic, free from the effects of the brandy.

  ‘You go along and tell Dr Gethin I want to speak to him. I’m very ill, I suffer from diabetes. Dr Gethin knows all about my case, he knows how serious it is, he’s been my doctor ever since I was born. He’ll want to come out and see me.’

  She doesn’t sound very ill, the girl thought uncertainly, she sounds full of life. But one never knew—

  ‘Oh, very well, then,’ she said abruptly as Mrs Yorke embarked on a fresh onslaught. ‘Hold the line, please.’ She left her desk and went across the passage to Dr Gethin’s door.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry to disturb you.’ She put her face a few apologetic inches into the room. ‘But it’s a Mrs Yorke. She insists on speaking to you. I can’t make her see reason.’

  Gethin looked up from the paperwork he was trying to deal with before the first wave of patients engulfed him.

  ‘Mrs Yorke?’ He took off his reading-glasses and rubbed his eyes. He looked unutterably weary–and the rest of the evening still to be got through. ‘If you can make Zena Yorke see reason, you’ll be the first person who’s ever succeeded.’ He let out an irritable breath. ‘New Year’s Day. I have a very good notion what’s wrong with her. Overindulgence. Simply won’t make any attempt to diet.’

  He sighed again, loudly. Disease and natural disasters, he thought–with the accumulated anger of a lifetime spent in combating the follies of mankind–the only things we ought to have to battle with; all the rest is wished upon us by ourselves or our fellows.

  ‘What shall I tell her?’ the girl asked timidly
. ‘She’s blocking the phone for other calls.’

  ‘Tell her to go to hell.’ He saw the girl’s anxious look. ‘No, wait a minute.’ He’d have to do something about the woman. She was after all the wife of Owen Yorke, shortly to be made president of Gethin’s club. And Gethin had served in the first war with Owen’s father, they’d lied about their ages, both of them, been through two years of fire and mud before the Armistice. One didn’t forget those things, old and soured though one had become. He stood up.

  ‘I’ll speak to her.’ He went out of the room, tall and spare, a little stooped now, his hair silvery white.

  ‘Ah! Dr Gethin!’ Zena said in triumph as soon as he spoke. ‘I told that silly girl—’

  ‘I employ no silly girls,’ he said. ‘Though I have some remarkably silly patients. Have you had your injections regularly? Yes or no? Don’t bother to play games.’

  ‘Yes. Well, most of the time. But I’m sure they don’t do me any good. I feel so dreadful—’

  ‘You’ll feel even more dreadful if you keep on as you’re doing. Where’s Owen? Is he in? Let me speak to him. Go on,’ he added as she broke in. ‘Get him. I’ve got patients waiting to see me.’ He drummed his fingers on the table, glanced at his watch, did his best to control the irritation which had become habitual with him. ‘Oh, there you are, Owen. Anything really wrong with Zena? Or just looking for notice as usual?’

  ‘I’m sorry she bothered you,’ Owen said. ‘It isn’t really anything. She overdid things last night, New Year’s Eve, you know how it is.’

  ‘Make sure she keeps on with the insulin. I’ll try to look in on her tomorrow, talk some sense into her. You’ll be burying her one of these fine days if she doesn’t mend her ways.’ He rang off abruptly, nodded to the girl and went back to his room.

  Happily married himself until his wife had died twenty years ago, he hated to see a decent fellow like Yorke caught up in the destructive toils of a wretched union like that.

  Balance and discipline, he repeated in his mind, the twin essentials for the control of diabetes. Zena was conspicuously lacking in both qualities. It wasn’t medical assistance she required, it was miracles.

  Self-pity, self-dramatization, boredom–what drugs could be prescribed for those? A woman at a kind of malicious loose end in life, he found it impossible to feel a shred of sympathy for her. He stretched out a hand and pressed a bell on his desk. When the door opened to admit his first patient he saw with a feeling of relief and pleasure that it was one of his elderly arthritics, someone suffering from an identifiable complaint that could be eased and made tolerable.

  ‘Good evening,’ he said gently. ‘And how are we today?’

  ‘There’s plenty of cold stuff in the fridge.’ Zena settled herself back in bed. ‘You can open a tin of soup if you want something hot. I think I’ll go down later and watch television.’ She picked up the glass Owen had set down on the table. ‘Do you know what’s on?’

  ‘I haven’t the remotest idea.’ He stood watching her take a long drink. ‘I’m going down to the club. I’ll get a bite to eat there.’

  She pulled a face. ‘Oh–this is bitter. They must have changed the formula. I’m sure it didn’t taste like this last time.’ But she drained the glass, feeling the tonic doing her good, much better than old Gethin’s mixtures. Her mind registered what Owen had said. ‘You mean you’re going out again, leaving me here all by myself?’

  She gave him a searching glance, actually seeing him for the first time that evening. Something decidedly odd about his expression, a fixed, strained look. She had a sense of a good deal going on in his mind, things she couldn’t get at and drag out into the open. I do believe he’s up to something, she thought, experiencing in successive flashes anger, resentment, curiosity and finally a sharp pleasure at having a whole new area of interest to poke about and pry into. She almost smiled at him.

  ‘You won’t be by yourself,’ Owen said. He was pleased to find he could look at her now without emotion of any sort. A couple of seconds more and he succeeded into shifting his mind into the correct gear, achieving the mood of detached pity that allowed him to live with her at all. ‘You said this morning that your brother would be coming in.’

  ‘That won’t be till later on. In the meantime—’

  ‘There’s plenty to occupy you.’ He jerked his head at the radio, the pile of magazines and novels. ‘Or you could get some sleep before Neil comes. Will Ruth be coming too?’ No point in asking if Jane would also be tagging along; a pretty girl of seventeen would have better things to do on New Year’s Day than trot dutifully beside her father to visit an egotistic aunt.

  Zena pouted. ‘I don’t suppose so. Ruth’s never liked me.’ Her brother’s second wife, many years younger than Zena, slender, well-dressed, strikingly beautiful, conducting a successful career in addition to running a comfortable home.

  Ruth Underwood had been prepared on her marriage, almost a year ago, to make a genuine effort to get on with her difficult sister-in-law. But it was scarcely to be expected that Zena could welcome into the family a newcomer whose entire mode of life threw her own shortcomings into even greater prominence. And Owen whole-heartedly liked and admired Ruth, which was enough in itself to make Zena detest her.

  ‘I’ll be off then.’ It did cross Owen’s mind that he ought to tell Zena about his decision to close the High Street shop. She would have to be told sooner or later–she was joint owner with him of the whole business enterprise that still traded under her father’s name of Underwood. And she could be relied on to make a fuss about the closure whether she secretly considered it wise or not, simply in order to demonstrate that she still legally controlled half the purse-strings.

  ‘Leave the front door on the latch for Neil,’ Zena said.

  I could mention the shop now, Owen thought, then I could cut and run for it; give her time to come off the boil before I get back.

  ‘This room is like a pigsty,’ Zena said suddenly, realizing how it would appear to her brother with his liking for more orderly ways. ‘Emily Bond is the limit these days. I told her to clean up in here, but would she? Oh no, she had to go running off to her Mrs Fleming’s.’

  A warm glow of pleasure spread through Owen’s frame. I’ll call in on Linda Fleming after I’ve been to the club, he decided, I can speak to her about jobbing off the leftover stock.

  No wish now to embark on the tedious chore of breaking the news about the shop. He felt again the exhilarating sense that in a very short time everything might be entirely different. He went from the room at a rush, only just remembering in the doorway to turn and raise a hand in a gesture of farewell.

  Zena threw back the bedclothes. There was nothing for it, she’d have to make some show of tidying the room herself. She still cared what Neil thought about her. He had worshipped her all during their carefree childhood, given her admiring affection throughout their youth. She felt that he still loved her, that he was probably the only person alive who could look at her and see the lovely Zena Underwood; his image of her had been too deeply engraved too long ago to be altered by anything as trivial as the passage of time.

  She shuffled her feet into fluffy mules. As she straightened herself to begin her task she frowned, recalling the strangeness of Owen’s manner, his preoccupation, his casual attitude towards her health. She moved slowly about the room, picking up garments, closing drawers and cupboards. It was only in the last few weeks that she’d really noticed the change in him. Had anything happened to spark off that change? Had any new factor appeared in his life? She was by now quite certain that he was up to something.

  Abstractedly she rearranged the heap of magazines and books. I could do a great deal worse than have him followed, she thought. A nice little job for Arnold Pierson. She drew a long breath, savouring the notion. It was so exactly the kind of thing she most keenly relished, killing, as it undoubtedly would, half a dozen birds with one skilfully-aimed stone.

  It would arm her with information ab
out Owen’s carryings-on, allow her to jerk the string that bound Arnold to her, gratify her taste for deviousness and intrigue, keep boredom at bay–and all without the necessity so much as to set foot outside her own bedroom.

  Yes, she would do it, her mind was made up. She glanced at the clock. Seven-fifteen. Arnold would be home from work by now, he would probably be eating his supper. Phone him, say, in twenty or thirty minutes, catch him before he had a chance to go out again, he would be here and gone long before Neil’s arrival. And he would just be in nice time to get down to the Independents’ to keep an unobtrusive eye on Owen’s car.

  What especially delighted her about the scheme was the deep revulsion she knew it would inspire in Arnold–and his total inability to do anything but fall in with her commands.

  Her movements grew quite brisk; she finished tidying the room in another few minutes. Then she spent a little time on improving her own appearance, discarding the woollen dressing gown for an elaborate affair of silk and tulle, a flattering shade of turquoise that did what it could for her and drew a discreet veil or two over the rest.

  She switched on the radio as she made up her face and attended to her hair. Gay, inspiriting music burst into the room; she smiled at her face in the glass, feeling well and lively, better than she’d felt for quite some time.

  A few liberal sprayings of expensive perfume and she was ready for the fray. A little remaking of the bed, a plumping-up of the pillows. And that was about it. She looked at the clock and decided to give it a few more minutes. Just enough time for some slight refreshment.

  She knelt down and plunged a hand under the quilted drapes. Still the whole of the second layer of petit-fours. Before she climbed back into bed she opened the cabinet and took out the brandy bottle. One–or perhaps two–plenty of time before Arnold actually got here.

  She poured out a generous measure, settled herself comfortably into her nest and lifted the lid from the box of confectionery. The radio began to play a tune from the old days, carrying her back twenty or thirty years to the golden time before everything turned sour.