Barbara Vine - The Minotaur

‘Dr Lombard coming round, is he, Mother?’ This was Ella, her tone pert.

‘That is no concern of yours,’ said Mrs Cosway.

I had no idea what this was about and hoped to learn more but Ida, to distract attention perhaps, thanked me for setting the lunch things out and this prompted me to say that in future I would give her a hand whenever she liked. I considered myself a sufficient judge of character – I turned out to be a fool in most of my judgements but not that one – to be pretty certain she was not a woman to exploit anyone making such an offer.

About halfway through the meal, the wasp reappeared from the passage where I had driven it. Clutching her napkin and waving it about, Winifred jumped up from the table and began to shriek.

‘Why doesn't someone get rid of it?’ she shouted. ‘Why is it still in the house? Someone kill it. Kill it before it stings me. You know they always sting me.’

‘One did once,’ said her mother.

Winifred shrieked that this wasn't true. She had been stung dozens of times. Still on a high note that was almost a scream she began to enumerate all the occasions wasps had stung her. ‘In Colchester that time and when we were shopping in Ipswich and on the beach at Frinton and at…’

‘Oh, be quiet!’ said Mrs Cosway.

Ida had got up and was quietly pursuing the wasp round the table as, its flight describing decreasing circles, it began circumnavigating John's head while he sat quite still, staring out of the window. Diverting from its chosen flight path, it soared quite swiftly towards Winifred, who let out a scream of pure terror and dived under the table. Ida plunged after it, flapping a newspaper which she had picked up from somewhere, and Mrs Cosway, her patience at last gone, began demanding of everyone if they had all gone mad.

Into this mayhem, through the open door from the hallway, walked a tall, slender woman, dressed as I was sure no one in Windrose had ever been before.

‘What fresh hell is this?’ she said in the words of Virginia Woolf.

Calm was restored with almost lightning speed. Only John took no notice of the newcomer, returning passively to his tinned peaches and cream. Mrs Cosway came round the table and, after a moment's hesitation, kissed the woman on the cheek. Winifred, the wasp forgotten – it had in any case disappeared – crawled out from under the table, managed a nervous smile and said, ‘Hallo, Zorah. How are you?’

This inquiry was ignored, as in my opinion it always should be since it means nothing, and equally rejected was Ida's suggestion that she might like something to eat. Mrs Cosway said to me, ‘This is my youngest daughter, Zorah.’

I held out my hand and said, ‘Kerstin Kvist,’ giving my name its correct pronunciation. It would have been difficult for me, if not impossible, to do otherwise.

‘Hallo.’ Very cool, slightly amused.

Though not what today is called a fashionista, could assess her pale pink linen dress as by Cardin and her hair, jet black and geometrically styled, as cut by Vidal Sassoon. She was taller than her sisters but less good-looking. Let me qualify that and say that Zorah Todd's features lacked the classical proportions of Winifred's or Ida's but few would have noticed or have held to this judgement for long. Her stylishness, her charm and something less definable, a graceful poise, the reverse of diffidence, overcame any deficiencies of appearance. The turn of her head was that of a great actress, a Garbo perhaps, and if her graceful movements had a fault it was that they looked studied. For that reason, in a deportment contest, she would have been awarded ninety-seven marks out of a possible hundred.

She went up to her two sisters and kissed them, pausing to lift Winifred's left hand in hers. The ring made her smile but in a kindly way and she congratulated her sister on her engagement as if she were genuinely pleased for her.

‘I'm so happy for you, darling. Eric is a very nice man.’

‘Darling’ was not a word I had previously heard from any Cosway. Finally, Zorah went up to her brother and, knowing better than to touch him, said, ‘Hallo, you,’ in a warmer, more intimate tone than I had heard any of them use. He looked at her in his bemused way, managed a half-smile. I noticed that his hands were shaking.

‘Is there anyone around who can take my bags up?’ she said. ‘I've got rather a lot of luggage.’

If I had been asked I would have refused but no one asked me. Ida said that Mrs Lilly, the twice-weekly cleaner, would be arriving at two. She would do it. Zorah nodded. Here, and in Zorah's entrance and manner, was food for thought and something to tell Mark. Where, for instance, did this vision sleep while she was here? In one of those stark and grimly furnished bedrooms, I supposed, sharing a bathroom with four other women and her brother. It seemed impossible. To produce that exquisitely toned and polished appearance, that skin, those nails, that hair, would surely take hours of attention. Or did she go daily to Chelmsford or Colchester for professional services? That would in theory have been possible since she must have arrived by car. As I walked into my own room, preparing to take John out, I saw her car outside on the drive, parked where Ella's had been that morning. Unless, like the pumpkin in Cinderella becoming a golden coach, the battered old Volvo had been transformed into this white Lotus with red leather seats.

Zorah did not reappear that afternoon and the Lotus remained where it was. I was sorry, because my curiosity about her built up to such a height that only my unwillingness to disturb Mrs Cosway and ask the whereabouts of her room stopped me tapping on her door. The kiss she had given Winifred and her kind remark about Eric Dawson led me to believe this sister must be closer to Zorah than the others. I found Winifred in the kitchen, occupied in rotating dishes of party food from fridge to table and others from table to fridge. The refrigerator was far too small to accommodate many plates at a time and Winifred compromised by giving one set of salads and cold meats half an hour's chill, then the second set, and so on, alternating I suppose throughout the afternoon. It seemed rather unhygienic but I said nothing. Winifred had her own comment to make.

‘This is very unsatisfactory but what else can I do? It gets warmer all the time, it must be up in the seventies. It makes my job very difficult.’

‘Will you have a bigger refrigerator at the Rectory?’

She gave the Cosway laugh. ‘Eric's is about the size of our bread bin. I don't know how I'm going to manage. But then I don't suppose I shall have time. I shall be too busy in the parish.’

It sounded a grim prospect to me. ‘Will your youngest sister be going to the Midsummer Supper tonight?

‘Zorah? I shouldn't think so. She never does take part in village life. Besides, when she gets home she's too cosy in her little bower to go out anywhere for a few days. No doubt she'll have a male visitor.’

By no stretch of optimism could my room or her mother's (nor, I supposed, the other bedrooms) be called a little bower. Not caring to ask directly, still less comment on the possible visitor, I said, feeling my way, ‘She has made it very comfortable then?’

‘You can say that again.’ Winifred spoke bitterly again and in a very heartfelt way. I saw that I had been wrong in assessing these two sisters as close. With one of her mother's shrugs, she shook off resentment or whatever it was and said, ‘I do hope you'll come.’

‘All right,’ I said, ‘I will.’

That had not been my plan but now I told myself it would be a chance to learn more about Windrose and its inhabitants. I promised Winifred I would help her load the food into the Volvo and we set off, with Ella driving, at six-thirty, well in advance of the other guests. It was my first sight of an English church hall. It may differ from a village hall but if so I have no idea how. This one was not much more than a large but with a roof of corrugated iron. Inside it had a bare wood floor with a dais at one end which could be used as a stage and several long trestle tables. The windows were small and uncurtained but still it was rather dark until Ella turned on the strip lighting. In the cold uncompromising light it looked a grim place.