The Sugar Mother (10 page)

“
Murder on the Nile
takes ages,” Daphne said.

“What about some music,” he suggested. “Mozart, a piano concerto.”

“Lovely,” she said. “It would be a pity to waste the evening with the feeling that it was going to drag.”

“Number twenty-four in C minor,” he said.

Daphne, knowing that she was not, felt that she was beautiful, Edwin thought, as he saw her close her eyes and listen to the piano stride across the octave before merging and rippling with the instruments in the orchestra. Music, he thought, did make people feel that they were fine-featured and noble. Their hands and feet became more sensitive too and their bodies, however ordinary, became graceful with powers beyond all expectation. Last night, glancing slyly at Leila during the Brahms, he had seen a suggestion of preening, rather like the hardly perceptible movements of a shy bird. Only something slight. It was barely noticeable but Leila had, he knew, felt special because of something in the music. He had chosen Brahms on purpose. She had looked up at him once, catching his sly glance. She had smiled in that slow quiet way of hers. During the music now Edwin thought about Leila and realized he had never heard her laugh. This made her so different from Cecilia, apart from all the other differences. Now, for no reason, he remembered the time when Cecilia, living up to her eagle wig, was called away from the Honeywells' (or was it the Wellatons') party to go to the Mary and Joseph. She had gone off to the delivery just as she was, expensively naked.

“Don't worry.” Her shrieking voice filled the wide front garden (it was the Honeywells'). “I'll get given something to wear, all clean and respectable. I'll be sterilized, my dears, from head to foot.” The party people were all on the steps of the porch, offering their furs and their hand-woven shawls.

“The little bugger”—Cecilia's voice must have reached the unwilling ears of neighbors—“would be far better off without my intervention.” She had, Edwin remembered, simply slipped through them in a high-pitched peal of laughter into the waiting taxi. No one at the party, Edwin included, and certainly not Cecilia herself, was fit to drive anyone anywhere.

Thinking of the Brahms again, he recalled that Leila looked sweet and fresh, like something he wanted to bite for pleasure, playfully, greedily, with violence and with tenderness.

“That's a nice tune,” Leila's mother often said at intervals during his records. She sat bent over her knitting, humming something that was entirely her own.

“Top up, Daph?”

“Yes, please. Oh, rather! Yes, please.” Daphne sank back again, listening to the music. It was more than possible, he thought, noticing, not for the first time, her large Florentine hands, that she had never been stroked and kissed in the secret places of her body. Though, he reprimanded himself, it was never possible to be sure. She was very well made, he decided, very tall, with fine, well-shaped, strong legs. He narrowed his eyes, guessing at the quality of the architecture of her pelvis and its muscles. Guiltily he reflected that he was looking at her as he might look a horse over. He began to wonder about her in a more intimate way. Maybe, he thought, she prefers the sympathetic attention of another woman. Something slow and thoughtful, like the gentling of a horse. Daphne, herself, knew how to gentle a horse. Edwin admired this skill of hers. He knew that she approached the nervous and unbroken animal with soft little words and pattings, with perhaps only a rubdown on the first day, and then, every day, offering the horse some small new experience until an affectionate confidence was reached between horse and rider. Speculating on this, he knew his own way was both gentle and sympathetic. Perhaps some of his pride was in this study of himself. He was always discreet and unhurried. He never fell into the familiar, which he considered a danger to the art. Part of the being discreet was the way in which clothes were removed. Only some clothes should be taken off. When he had taken off some of his clothes he always put on a pleasant dressing gown of a seductive cloth with a matching quality in the choice of color.

Choosing his dressing gown, he looked across at Daphne. Her eyes were closed. It was strange, he thought, that it was possible to know someone, a friend, for many years and not really know them.

 

Once years ago when Cecilia wrote to Edwin she put ears of corn and scarlet poppy petals in her letter. She was sitting, she told him in the letter, on the edge of a cornfield, knowing
that she was going to see him the next day; knowing that they were going to spend the day and the night and the next day together. Knowing this changed and colored everything. Everything they were going to do that day, she wrote, would be seen differently because of their night in the hotel. The hotel furniture, she wrote, even before we see it dominates everything we do. He smiled now remembering how hungry she always was. They always had to find a restaurant first of all. Cecilia couldn't make love or be loved if she was hungry. In the restaurant she would talk and laugh and eat while he watched. This was the Cecilia of long ago.

Perhaps it was the champagne. Edwin wondered why he thought of these things at a quarter to midnight with Daphne sprawled ungracefully in the chair opposite. She was asleep. He heard the faint sounds of Leila and her mother when they entered the house and crept, on tiptoe, into the spare room. There was no further sound. It was as if the spare room had swallowed them both. He wondered if they needed hot drinks or if they were wanting to talk about the film but were afraid to raise their voices beyond a strained whisper. He began to worry that they might want the bathroom….

Prince was still howling. Every few minutes he repeated his short sharp bark, which he followed with the dying fall of his howl. It was easy to imagine the dog's head tilted up, his ears laid back, his whole body somehow extended as part of the long-drawn-out finale of despair.

To feel depressed as he did was a sign of not having enough champagne. He knew too that champagne for him was like a massive dose of salts. There were several closely written accounts (in the notebook of the internal) of previous results. It was merely a matter of time.

He knew he must do something. They could not sit up all night. He allowed himself a charming little fantasy of Leila falling asleep, innocent and soft and warm. For the purpose of the fantasy she was not in the spare bed next to her mother but was curled up in the middle of his bed waiting for him to slide in under the sheet and the neat blankets….

“Daphne, old girl.” He bent down and touched her gently on her substantial shoulder. “What d'you say to hopping into Cecilia's bed for a nice sleep?” He paused and gave her a friendly little shake. She stirred, complaining that she was in no way fit to hop anywhere. “Oh, Teddy,” she said, “did I tell you that Fiorella—you know, the amorous Fiorella—did I tell you that in her adoration she has copied out, by hand, the whole of Oscar Wilde's ‘Charmides' in order to make a single comment on the poem?”

“Good heavens!” Edwin simulated enthusiasm. “I say,” he said, “that's wonderful, Daph, but now what about you going to bed for a nice sleep.” He felt his voice sounded stupid; he recognized one of the effects champagne had on him: his voice developed a tremor. It made him feel self-conscious.

“Too much champers,” Daphne managed. “Too quickly.”

“Go on, there's a good girl. You have first pop in the bathroom,” he urged her.

“Oh, Teddy, you are a dear! I feel terrible.” Daphne, trying to stand, swayed horribly. He had never realized before how tall she was. “I'm dizzy; it's terrible,” she said. “I'll have to lie down. Thank you so much.”

“Come along,” he said, “there's a good girl; just across the passage and then into bed. You'll be asleep in no time. While you're in the bathroom I'll turn Cecilia's bed down for you.” Edwin helped Daphne towards the door. She began to laugh.

“You know, Teddy,” she said, “it must be the…what I mean is, I've always wanted to be the patron saint of a literary journal, you know, to pour blessings on learned writings….”

“Yes, yes,” Edwin said, assisting her through the door, which did not seem big enough for them both to go through together. He was surprised at his show of brutality. “Sorry, Daph,” he said, steadying himself for the next move. Champagne, he thought, certainly had strange effects on people.

While Daphne was in the bathroom Edwin changed his mind about his dressing gown. He selected a silky one, fumbling to remove it from its hanger. He put some perfumed
lotion on his hands and smoothed his face and the sides of his hair with both palms. There was something deliberate, he felt, about the action, something deliberate about short dressing gowns and the act of choosing one and putting it on. It was more an act than anything else. He was able to recognize and acknowledge in an honest way that it was only an act and had been so for a long time. He knew, perhaps because of the champagne, that the act had severe limitations.

Suddenly there was a tremendous noise from the bathroom. He listened with horror to a resonant braying sound from behind the closed door. He stood quite still in the passage but no one peered stealthily from the spare room. It was as if there were no one in there. The braying opposite continued. Even Prince, outside the kitchen door, held his howl in midair.

He crossed to the bathroom. “Daphne,” he said in a low voice, as close to the door as possible. “Daphne! Whatever are you doing! Be quiet at once. They'll hear you. You'll wake them, you'll wake the others.”

Daphne opened the door a crack. “It's a love call,” she said, “it's the Indian Love Call to accompany ‘Hiawatha.'” He heard the music. It came from an ancient record, scratching from a blunt needle, cutting across the sheer silence of the house like the rasping cry of a predatory bird along a steep and deserted cliff. It was dreadful music. He was a snob about many things and music was one of them.

“Daphne,” he hissed, “turn off that noise and come out of there and go to bed.”

“You should have said, ‘come to bed,'” Daphne, flinging open the bathroom door, bawled in the voice she used for Prince. Behind her the music swelled.

 

The phone was ringing. Edwin rolled over in his neat bed. It was Cecilia. She'd been to Niagara, she told him. Vorwickl, he did remember Vorwickl didn't he, that summer when Mumsie rented the cottage in the Cotswolds and he had come for the weekend and Vorwickl missing her train had to stay on
over the weekend and he had to sleep on the living room floor. He said he remembered. Well, she told him, Vorwickl thought it would be a nice idea to invite the Frau Doktor von Eppell (they call her Strudell) to come to Niagara. Their German isn't the same, she said, communication a bit difficult at times. English rather quaint. Strudell, she said, had screamed when the
Maid of the Mist
headed right into the massive waterfall. Yes, the little boat goes right behind it. You are behind a wall of water. You all wear big black waterproofs and boots. The conference had a day off for trips, she said. Niagara is polluted too. You mustn't drink it. A woman, she said, is reputed to have thrown her baby into the falls. Postnatal depression. Vorwickl's thesis. What time is it over there? she wanted to know. He said he'd tell her in a moment. I'm missing you, he said with care, missing you, Cecilia, missing missing you so much and—He pulled the phone connection out from the wall plug. It was kinder, he thought, if she was cut off cruelly during his words and not during hers. A telephone fault in the middle of his words.

 

His household, Daphne in Cecilia's room, Leila and her mother in the spare room, “Hiawatha” silent in the bathroom, and Prince, reduced to short sharp daytime barkings, at the back door, surrounded him as soon as he woke from an unrestful half-sleeping state. He had been quite unable to chat with Cecilia or to listen to her. The expected stomach cramps had started almost as soon as Daphne, tucked firmly into Cecilia's bed, was safely asleep. There had been several journeys of sheer suffering during the night. It was very early. He put on his slippers. He smoothed his hair in front of his mirror and scowled at the face reflected there. He examined his tongue. He had not noticed his tongue for some time. Forgetting everything for a moment, he ran an anxious forefinger along the sides of his tongue. He almost felt like himself, his old self, ready to report that there were no lumps. NAD Tongue NAD. He would look at the dry patch of skin on his leg later and he
must remember, he told his reflection, to record the drastic champagne purge.

Though it was early, Leila's mother and Leila were already in the kitchen. The kettle was boiling and there was a fragrance of toast.

“I've fixed a nice little tray for you,” Leila's mother said, slipping a plate of buttered toast from the top of the stove to the edge of the tray. Edwin, noticing the lace cloth and the two cups and saucers, glanced at Leila, who was sitting at the far side of the table. She did not look up. Her face, round the eyes, seemed puffed as if from a heavy sleep or—he had misgivings—from crying. The pain he suddenly felt was not a champagne cramp. Her eyes, he saw quite plainly in that quick glance, were like slits in her swollen face. She looked as if she had spent the night weeping, trying to suppress the sounds in her pillow or against her mother's solid back.

Leila's mother made a remark about the weather which Edwin answered with one of his smiles and some conventional words. He took the tray, continuing his smile and a self-conscious murmur of thanks. “A gentleman's got to have his little fling, Leila.” He distinctly heard, he thought, Leila's mother comforting Leila as he pulled the door closed. His little fling, reposing in Cecilia's bed, had enormous long strong legs. She was taller than average and the legs, he remembered, stuck out awkwardly from underneath their owner's garment, which, she said, was a slip.