Eva Trout (14 page)

“Nice for her, also,” commented Eva—sole sign of having given ear to the recital. During it, she had gone away to the table which constituted her little marine museum; she now was pushing shells about, with a finger, into a pattern surrounding the gull’s skull. “And it is
today
she was anxious?
Today
she telephones? Oho.”

“Why ‘Oho’?”

“Because, ‘Oho.’”

The shells and Eva were some way off to the right of Constantine, and not only that but slightly behind him: to keep her within direct range, as he required to, he had now to shift not only his own position but, he found, that of his chair. Some magisterial status seemed lost in consequence. The exertion, too, added petulance to his manner. “Why,” he complained, “have you turned against Mrs. Arble? That, I asked you last time, in London: you would not answer. What have you got against her? What has she done?”

“I change,” said Eva, considering that enough.

“All at once, though, this insensate hostility!”

“Not all at once.”

“You are not—now—jealous of her, for any reason?”

“I change,” she repeated woodenly. “May I not?” She swept the shell-pattern to pieces, forsook the table and walked back towards him, echoing: “May I not?”

“But you, you see, change convulsively. Chaotically, without rhyme or reason—as no one else does, Eva; as no one else does. It’s dismaying to watch. That in itself suggests some kind of… disorder. Constant in nothing?”

“In one thing I am,” she declared, looking straight at Constantine.

He gave an odd, gratified pout, then at once abolished it. “But you must take care,” he put to her, extra softly, “or how might this end? And we must take care of you. ‘Instability’ is a kind word, as words go; one prays one may not be driven to any other. But people are harsh, Eva; other people are harsh. You know you will be conspicuous, with this money. The world will be only waiting for you to blunder, to crash, to be cast on its tender mercy. Watch yourself, I implore you. You cannot forever stay as you are, locked up with your demented fantasies and invented memories, and not show it. And you do indeed show it. At every minute, you’re giving yourself away … why so frightened, for instance, just now, when you came to the door?”

“I was not—was I?”

“Terror was written over you.”

“How was I to know it was just a murderer?”

“There you go,” he said—not wholly displeased, though.

“Also I was annoyed; that was
my
bell. That was all it was.”

“Unless it was guilty conscience?”

“
You let me
ALONE!” shouted Eva. “I’m not my father!”

“Thank God!’ he mused, “Willy’s out of this. It would have killed him.”

“And let God alone!”—she added: “I would advise you.”

“Perhaps you are right,” said Constantine. He cast about for some more biddable subject. “Your delightful fire,” he mentioned, “has gone out.”

An airstream still came from the hearth, the sea salt had left behind it a sweet acridity; but that was all, but for livid quivering ash across which had fallen a charred spar. The ecstatic blaze had fled back into the nothing that gave it being: it might never have been. Eva betrayed no feeling; she shrugged her shoulders—going across, she aimed one kick into the ashes’ heart. Sparks answered, momentary crimson glints like suspicions, and those she studied. “How,” she demanded, turning from them to Constantine, “do you know this was a delightful fire?”

“Surely a fire is, at this time of year?”

“You’re cold, I suppose?”

“One is stoical. Late-comers can’t be choosers.”

“On the contrary, you came the hour you chose—the hour you like! The later the better, to torment in!
I
know your voice in the nights, keeping on, on, on. I have heard through walls.”

“You had curious dreams,” said Constantine.

“I did not,” said Eva.

An inevitable pause.

His hand by habit rose to his face—one more imaginary ablution? Not this time. His countenance needed nothing; it was at its best. It presented Eva with one of its masterpieces of non-expression—lightly sketched-in eyebrows at rest above lids at a heavy level, eyes unreflective as a waxwork’s but less demarcated, hueless segments of glaze holding pinpoint pupils. And the lips, contrasting in their slight moistness with the matt finish of the surrounding flesh, were at rest also, lightly lying together as they might in a smile, though smile they did not. The now neutral shape of that deadly mouth was what held Eva’s regard for longest. She had seen Constantine “vanish” before now, but not “at” her; the performance always had been for the benefit of Willy—who could act back in no way.

Not so his daughter. Conjuring from a pocket a voluminous Hong Kong handkerchief, printed with dragons, she flagged it at Constantine, whipping the air between them, vociferating: “Stop
that
! I won’t have it!”

A slight smile formed.

“
Stop
that!”

“Willingly; but what? I’m altogether mystified.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Negative,” mourned Constantine, “after negative. One arrives nowhere: can you do no better? Some statement, Eva, really you do owe. One came to give you a hearing—you find that ‘torment’? One had hoped to know at least what you think you’re doing—if, indeed, you have thought? For how long, and, if one may venture to ask you, for what reason do you propose to remain in a state of siege here? Is this, er, obsolescent pile to shelter you long? How soon, so far as this is foreseeable, is your next fugue liable to take place? Might one have some assurance, my dear good creature, that you’re less, er,
adrift
than might have been feared? You-may not be able to grasp this, but—one worries. We all worry.”

“You need not. I shall come for my money.”

He rapped out: “And see that you do turn up!”

“Suppose,” she said, eyeing him, “I was dead then?”

“Then, what a kettle of fish! And not a farthing for me in it —that you realise? As must be known to you, Eva, I had my cut.”

“Still, you’d prefer me dead,” decided the heiress. She was stuffing the handkerchief downward into the pocket. “Silent forever, in my tomb.”

“Ah, yes. Marble, ivy, an angel.”

“
I
was not joking.”

He retorted: “Then you should see a doctor.” He’d had enough. She’d become infernal to him by not sitting down, by pacing about, by (to his eye) melodramatically standing. She now metamorphosised into an outsize ninepin more or less demanding to be knocked over. “Or more precisely, be seen by one: a psychiatrist. Mrs. Arble’s right, I’m afraid: in her view, this should have been years ago. I admit, I’ve opposed the idea—”

“—I should talk to this doctor?”

“—I feared the disturbance, feared what it might precipitate. I had reason to—remember, I knew your mother. So I’ve hesitated; ‘treatment’ can be so drastic. Was I mistaken? Now, I begin to wonder.”

“Mad would be probably better,” said Eva promptly. “What the dead said sometimes is later listened to; but to what the mad have to say, who would ever listen? Better—for you.”

Constantine meditated. “If they
could
dislodge that obsession, that one obsession!” He half-glanced over his shoulder, as it were to confer with someone behind him, or at least to share, to mitigate, his distress. “One would wish to help you, Eva,” he said, returning. “One would like to help you.”

Once more, she was not where she had been. “Oh, yes?” she called back, careless and airy—elsewhere. By chance, a step or two off the hearthrug had carried her into sight of her reflection; across the room, in one of the windows. “A handsome girl,” had said Eric. A handsome girl … There, indeed, was Eva! One felt reinforced. The Evas exchanged a nod, then stayed wrapt in mutual contemplation. This could have lasted, how long?—had not Constantine, right out of the picture, come to what at least was a physical decision: with one of the co-ordinated movements he still commanded he extracted himself, in one, from the armchair and stood up. On the rebound, the chair lurched back on its casters over the bumpy parquet. Eva turned to see what was happening to her furniture. “Going to go?” she asked, almost disappointedly.

“Thinking of going, yes.”

Deep in the thought, he did not yet act on it. His route out, through the arch to the hall, through the hall to the porch, waited; but was cold-shouldered. He steered a course, instead, southward, down the length of the room to its terminal—the bay window, now contained in the gloom which contained the Channel. Brought to a stop by the love seat, he there stood fixedly, gazing outward. “Lights at sea,” he remarked. “It’s a pity,” he said, continuing to observe them, “that things are going so badly between us, Eva. They need not have—we are unnecessarily lonely. There was a time when they did not. You won’t remember, but as a child, once, you took me out for a walk with you in the snow. ‘You come,’ you said. In the Dolomites, was it? The edge of a village. The shades of night were, anyway, falling fast. It was evil snow, not deep but more coming down. Our tracks vanished. Any light we saw had as little to do with us as those lights out there. The whole thing was peculiar, all wraiths and spirals. You wore a hood. Suppose I had kidnapped you?—there’ve been odder stories. As it was, no story; simply, we had our walk.” He added: “More has been buried than you know. Try not to malign me entirely, as you’ve come to do; it’s rather a pity to. There might have been something to be said for me. … I see you, then, April 21st?”

“Yes,” she said—inattentively.

He asked: “Listening?”

But not to him. Activity had broken out on the floor above. Headlong stridings alternated with frantic pauses. Something —a shoe being put on?—was dropped, something shoved back, something knocked up against. All of this being magnified fied by the hollow desuetude of Cathay, there was nothing to do but hear: one had no alternative. Constantine underlined each thud by impersonating somebody hearing nothing: he continued his scrutiny of the Channel. Eva, demoralised, sucked her cheeks in. A door could be heard being bullied open. Short work was made of a corridor. A resounding sound of descent began on the stairs.—”Ah,” sympathised Constantine, “
here
we come!” A silent countdown began. Eric then, as expected, entered the drawing-room. Still in some disarray, hair bent by the pillow, tie not more than slung on, he made straight for Eva, stating: “You never woke me.”

“What time is it?” she wondered.

“For God’s sake, that’s what I’d like to know! For all I know, this could be Sunday week. You pouched my watch. No, you’ve let me down nicely!—sweetheart,” he added bitterly.

“My fault.” Constantine, turning round in his distant cavern, brought himself and his personality into prominence.

Shock foundered Eric, sent him silly all over—he recoiled exaggeratedly, laughing loudly. “What, company? Then this is Sunday week, then?” His levity angered Eva. “No,” she answered quellingly, “only Constantine.” Her guardian, courteously coming forward, tendered: “You may not remember me?”

“I can’t say I saw you.”

“We met fleetingly. You looked in—I think, on your way out?—in the course of a visit I paid to Larkins. Such an enjoyable day: I hope all’s still well there? Since, I’ve remained in contact with Mrs. Arble; she and I have Eva in common. She’s spoken of me?”

“From time to time,” said Eric, with marked reserve.

“You know, then, my, er, relation to Eva?—or say, my function?”

“You run her money.—What’s happened? You haven’t lost it?”

“My dear
sir
!” expostulated Constantine, entertained.

“Well, I couldn’t think what else could have brought you down here all of a sudden like this, at this time of night, breaking in on Eva. She doesn’t keep late hours.”

“No?” said Constantine. “No,” he repeated pensively. “But stretches a point in favour of you or me. We’re to be envied —but for one mishap: the fire’s gone and gone out. See? I condole with you, as with Eva. Tragic, almost. Nothing but messy ashes.”

“Can you wonder,” said Eric, less as a query than in a generally condemnatory tone.

”‘
Les plus belles choses ont le pire destin
,’ you would mean to say?”

“Sorry, I’m not with you.—
I
must be going!” Eric now flung at Eva, who responded in no way. She was there, in so far as she had not budged; fatalism, made incomplete only by a leaden objection to what was happening, having, throughout the foregoing dialogue, rooted her where she had been at the start. Lack of pleasure in being a
casus belli
was apparent in every line of her hangdog attitude. She from time to time looked torpidly round her violated drawing-room. “
Eh
?” nagged Eric. Eva so far bestirred herself as to say to him, doubtfully: “Really going?”

“Yes; and don’t just stand there, give me that watch back! —or what have you done with it?”

She searched her person, with signs of wakening anxiety. “I hope it’s not stopped, Eric. I can’t hear it.”

“It’s not a grandfather clock!” When she brought it forth, he snatched at it, once more marched to the lamp with it. There his scowl unknotted. “It’s still today.”

“That I could have told you,” said Constantine. “What a pity.”

“All the same, time I was on the road.”

“Quite my last wish,” sighed Constantine, watching Eric intently buckling the watch on, “would be to drive you out.
I
was on the point of going, Eva can tell you. You consider my visit ill-timed? Well, so it’s proved to be; but then, my dear, er, chap, how was one to know? What brought me down here, you ask? What brought you, I fancy: concern for this shocking girl. Need to find out how she is, after all her tricks. Too, too well, one discovers; better than she deserves. Seldom has she looked bonnier, has she, really? Indeed, transformed: when I first came in, just now, she quite took my breath away. Sea air suits her, one can only imagine.—Now don’t hang your head, Eva, you modest violet!”

“Somewhat big for a violet,” was Eric’s caustic remark. “Can I drop you off anywhere?” he asked Constantine.

“That’s extremely kind; but I have a taxi waiting.”

That did galvanise Eva. “
All
this time? That may be most expensive.”