Barbara Vine - The Minotaur

Mrs Cosway, determined from the start to dislike him, inquired what kind of things he painted and asked rather rudely if he could make a living at it. He was the kind of man it is impossible to offend and he gave the impression of being impervious to hurt, but this too may have been assumed. Eric might have told us, quoting as he liked to do, that he was one of those who when ‘moving others are themselves as stone’ and that they ‘rightly do inherit heaven's graces’, if he had ever seen Felix in any light but as a pleasant newcomer to the village. There were a lot of heaven's graces about Felix, I could see that, though I never felt the attraction he had for the Cosway women, and I think this was because, apart from his dullness, he was old. Not old as Dr Lombard was but, if considered as a possible lover, well over the hill for me. Would he have been impervious to that if he had known it?

Mrs Cosway began to come round at the point when he answered her question, telling her that painters hardly ever did make enough to live on.

‘There are other jobs around,’ he said, favouring her with his lazy smile, ‘if you're not proud. I'm not proud, am I, Eric?’ He appealed to the Rector of Windrose as if they were bosom friends, as if he had known him since their schooldays, instead of only having met him a week before. ‘I can work a bar.’ I don't think Mrs Cosway knew what he meant. ‘I can clean flats. I'm thinking of doing a spot of sign-painting. You know the sort of thing: “Beware of the dog, no hawkers or circulars.” Americans say “no solicitors” but they don't mean what we do.’

Ella, who had come back to announce dinner, giggled hysterically. ‘Please do come and eat,’ she said.

She was a better cook than Ida, possibly better than Winifred, who of course was away somewhere, preparing dinner for other people. I don't remember much of what we ate and for some reason I didn't put it in the diary. Perhaps, unlike the sundial, I counted not the sunny hours but only the dark or boring ones. An excellent bread-and-butter pudding with sherry and cream in it I do remember. If the way to Felix Dunsford's heart was through his stomach, Ella was more than halfway there.

After we had finished and Ida was clearing away – Ella's culinary efforts didn't include washing up afterwards – Winifred came in. She seemed breathless, as if she had been running instead of driving the old Volvo, and she began apologizing to Felix for being out. Considering he was only there because she had to be out, he looked puzzled.

Dr Lombard suddenly said, apropos of nothing that had gone before, ‘The galleries in the Hermitage in St Petersburg’ – it was the sixties, so he said Leningrad – ‘if laid to end to end, would be six miles long, the same length as the Nevsky Prospekt.’

I was later to learn that he often came up with non sequiturs of this kind, though I had no idea of it then. But this one rather interested me and I would have liked to know more. Apart from Mrs Cosway, who said, ‘That's fascinating, Selwyn,’ the others ignored it with the indifference of those who have heard it all before. Dr Lombard got up and said it was time he went home, he was too old for late nights. No one seemed surprised and I supposed – rightly as it happened – that the Hermitage remark was a cue, as were others of a similar kind, for his departure.

Standing in the doorway, making some future engagement with Mrs Cosway, he reminded me in profile of someone I knew, though I couldn't think who it was. Was there anyone I knew with a nose like his? Or was it some other aspect of his face that suggested another face to me, the line of his jaw, jowly now with age, or the set of his dark eyes?

Soon after he went Ida settled down to knitting and Zorah appeared. We heard the roar of the Lotus, a door slamming, and then she walked in.

‘What have you all been up to?’ We might have been children caught raiding the fridge.

‘Eric brought Mr Dunsford to dinner, Zorah,’ said her mother. ‘I don't think you've met him.’

Felix was sitting next to Ella. This was because she had positioned herself beside him, not he beside her. He got up when Zorah approached him but his movements seemed to suggest that anything which interrupted his desultory conversation with Ella and Ida he found irksome. Such indifference, I thought, must be unusual for Zorah in her white dress and high white sandals, bringing scents of patchouli and sandalwood with her into the room.

‘Would you like a drink?’ The tone in Mrs Cosway's voice when speaking to her youngest daughter, placatory, anxious, almost wheedling, I had never heard her use to anyone else. ‘Eric is going to have a whisky.’

It seemed to be with an effort that Zorah managed not to shudder. She shook her head. But when the whisky was produced by Ida, she beckoned her over. Beckoning was a favourite gesture of hers, though this was the first time I had seen it. She looked closely at the bottle.

‘A single malt, I see,’ she said. ‘Very expensive.’

This breathtakingly rude remark didn't deter Eric, as I suppose was intended. He let Ida pour him the usual measure and said to Felix, ‘Won't you change your mind?’

It took very little to change Felix's mind when it came to accepting a drink he had just refused. ‘Why not?’ He gave Zorah a snide sideways glance which seemed to say, ‘So much for you.’

She lit a cigarette which she put into a long red holder, turned to her mother and said, ‘Where is my amethyst thing, darling?’

Only Eric and Felix were unaware of what she meant. The Cosway women were not only aware but somehow galvanized by what she had asked. It seemed to me that they were sitting on the edge of their chairs, holding their breath, with the exception, that is, of Ida who, still on her feet, was turned to stone, the whisky bottle raised up in her hand.

Mrs Cosway was the first to speak. ‘I put it in the library.’

That alerted me. With the drink and the warmth I had been feeling sleepy but suddenly I was wide awake.

‘But, darling,’ Zorah said, ‘no one goes in there from one year's end to the next. What's the point of putting it there?’

‘It isn't your amethyst thing. It's a geode and it belongs to Mother.’ Winifred's voice was shrill with nerves. ‘She can put it where she likes.’

Zorah nodded. ‘I'll take it back when I go upstairs.’

I expected protest. None came. Ida gave a deep and heavy sigh. ‘Would anyone like more coffee? Mr Dunsford? Eric?’

No one wanted more. I wondered how bitter Ida felt and whether Eric had given her reason to think he cared for her or if he was quite innocent and had merely been friendly towards a woman he liked. Their faces gave nothing away. Felix Dunsford reclined in his chair, his right leg crossed at the knee over his left, the whisky glass so loosely held in his long thin hand that it looked as if it must at any minute fall to the ground. He might have been settled there for the night, might drop asleep before much more time had passed. I began thinking of what Zorah had said about taking the geode with her when she went upstairs, the geode which was in the library. She would know where the key was.

Utterly defeated in the matter of this chunk of Atlas mountain rock, Winifred lapsed into sulks. No doubt to change the subject utterly, Eric asked Felix if what he had said about sign-painting to earn his living was seriously meant. Felix looked up languidly.

‘Sure. Why? Do you want a sign painted?’

He made it sound like a faintly absurd thing to wish for. It was Winifred who answered him, still sullen.

‘I expect Eric meant that there's nothing to tell people that the Rectory is the Rectory.’

Whatever he had meant, Eric said, ‘Everyone knows it is. They don't need to be told.’