Дональд Джеймс - The House of Eros

‘He’s a good man,’ Sunny said after a moment’s silence. They could hear Fin humming to himself as he picked up the bags the houseboy had brought down into the hall.

‘I don’t think you’ve a right to say that until you’ve lived with a man,’ Mary said as the door slammed shut behind Fin. ‘He’s good enough, but only I can say whether he’s really good.’

‘A very raunchy remark from my rather prim elder sister.’

‘I’m not prim,’ Mary said irritably. ‘And it wasn’t intended as a raunchy remark. I wasn’t talking about sex. I was talking about life.’

They listened to Fin’s car start and the gravel of the drive crackle beneath the wheels.

Mary took a long drink of her gin and tonic. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he makes a good gin and tonic. An excellent Martini. He can decant a bottle of vintage port better than any English butler. He can play polo with the best who, as he constantly reminds us, are Argentinians. He is an acquaintance of Prince Charles. But that’s Finlay Butler. That’s all of him.’

Sunny got up and carried her glass towards the drawing room door. ‘My big sis is feeling scratchy today,’ she said.

Mary shrugged. ‘Perhaps. Where’s Cy?’

With one finger Sunny pushed the door closed. For a moment she stood there, looking down, as if admiring the smooth swing of the door and the satisfying click of the lock. ‘Cy?’ she echoed. Her face turned back towards Mary. ‘He’s sleeping it off.’

‘Sleeping what off?’

‘Sleeping off whatever drink and debauchery he treated himself to last night, I suppose.’

‘You don’t know where he was?’ Mary said tentatively. Debauchery. The picture of the naked Vietnamese masseuse bending over her swept through her mind. She drank some more gin. Spilt a drop or two on to the peach silk sofa.

‘No,’ Sunny said. ‘He was too drunk to tell me. He passed out just after he got back. I found him this morning sprawled in an armchair, his suit covered with mud. Mud on his face, his hands… Not a pretty sight.’

‘Did you wake him up?’ Sunny, watching her sister carefully, shook her head. ‘Perhaps he wasn’t feeling well,’ Mary said.

‘I’d lay money on it.’

Mary put her drink on a side table. ‘I don’t understand you, Sunny. The way you describe it, almost anything could have happened. A car crash.’

‘His car was parked outside the house. Parked erratically but undamaged.’

‘Would you like me to come over with you?’

‘Come over with me?’

‘To help you if Cy’s still unwell.’

Sunny took a cigarette from the silver box with the Page crest. ‘Why should I need your help?’ she said. ‘I came over to Page Corner to get away from Cy. I’m certainly not going back on some mission of mercy.’

Mary stood and moved restlessly round the room. Sunny’s tone disturbed her. ‘Of course not, darling.’ she said. ‘If you think Cy’s all right, then I’m sure that’s OK. I just wondered for a moment if you’d come over for my help, that’s all.’

‘No,’ Sunny said. ‘I came over for something else altogether as a matter of fact.’

‘What was that?’

‘It was to give you this.’

She came forward and unclenched her fist over a mahogany table. Mary watched a small glinting object roll slowly from the palm of her sister’s hand. An earring. ‘Yours, I believe,’ Sunny said, straightening up.

Mary looked down at the clasp. Was denial possible? Not with a Biancini piece. ‘It looks like it,’ she said. ‘Where did you find it?’ She was praying.

‘In my bed,’ Sunny said. ‘Lodged beneath the mattress.’

They stood opposite each other in utter silence.

‘So my prim and proper, puritanical, post-menopausal sister turns out to be screwing her much younger and much despised brother-in-law. How does she pull it off? No cheap pun intended, Mary darling.’

Mary’s hands were over her face. ‘Sunny, Sunny…’ Her muffled voice burst through her fingers. ‘Sunny darling… I wouldn’t…’

Sunny grimaced angrily. ‘Wouldn’t hurt me for anything in the world?’ she flung at her sister. ‘Really? Well, you have. You’ve flattened me. I have a good looking, virile husband who I know likes ’em young and slim and pouty. I see where he looks in the street. He doesn’t look at fifty-year-old women, however glossy they’re dressed. He looks at twenty-year-old kids. Younger sometimes. All jeans and jumping T-shirts. So why you , for Christ’s sake,’ she screamed. ‘I could take the occasional twenty-year-old. I could take the occasional thousand dollar hooker. But I can’t take someone I’ve looked on all my life as practically my mother. It’s sick.’

Mary knelt on the sofa. She felt as if all thought processes had stopped functioning.

‘Then I realised.’ Sunny’s voice was almost a whisper. ‘Then I realised why he chose you.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Mary half turned.

Sunny laughed. The edge of hysteria. ‘It was either you or old Mrs Rose! What a choice!’

‘Please, Sunny, I really do not know what you’re talking about.’

‘I’m talking about your vote, you silly bitch. That’s what my husband wanted. And when you give it to him on Christmas Eve, as I’m sure you will, everybody on that committee will laugh themselves sick. Except Fin, of course.’

‘It’s over, Sunny,’ Mary said desperately. ‘I haven’t been to your house since I got back from Europe. I came to my senses. All right, far too late. But it’s over.’

‘You mean you are resigning? You’re not voting for Cy on Christmas Eve?’

She couldn’t tell her. She couldn’t tell her younger sister that she had somehow allowed herself to be touched by another woman. And that there were photographs of every disgusting moment.

‘Yes or no?’ Sunny spat at her. ‘Are you voting for my husband or not?’ Mary stared at her in silence. ‘So he still has your vote.’

Sunny walked slowly to the door. ‘I won’t be running off to tell Fin, Mary. But then by Christmas Eve it won’t be necessary to tell anybody anything.’ She reached the door, opening it slowly. ‘You bitch, Mary,’ she said quietly. ‘You poor old bitch.’

Then she walked out to her Volvo where Fitz sat at the wheel.

‘You want a used car,’ the cop had said who had given her directions. ‘I could show you a hundred better places to buy. Some of them even in the South Bronx.’

The row of decrepit houses came to a stop opposite where she had pulled up. Half a dozen ageing automobiles leaked oil on to the forecourt. Another three or four stood under a tin-roofed awning in front of what had once been a bakehouse.

The two young men, Cubans or Puerto Ricans, looked up from the Ford they were working on as Nan Luc got out of the car. Something about her ease of manner, her clothes, alerted them. ‘What you make of this?’ the younger man said uncertainly.

They both straightened up and watched her cross the forecourt, baffled by the unhurried walk, the way she stopped to throw a critical glance at one of the ancient cars.

‘You wanna buy a car, lady?’ the older boy called incredulously. Nan Luc walked past the two boys and stopped, looking at the battered pick-ups parked under the tin awning. ‘Were either of you two driving that recovery truck last night?’ she asked. She tossed her head towards the truck marked Bronx & Bronx Garage Company, parked on the far side of the awning.

The boys exchanged a wary look. ‘Both of us,’ the elder said. ‘We got a call out an’ nothing there when we showed. Bad for business. Kids call up for kicks.’

‘On the way back you took the ramp up back of the Swallow Motel, is that right?’