Barbara Vine - The Minotaur

It appeared that it was. The dress was to be made by a woman in the village who did such things and the cake ordered from a shop in Sudbury which specialized in weddings. I wondered if it was to be a cake like the one in Dr Lombard's anecdote, tier upon tier supported by white pillars. Winifred, though busily involved, showed as far as I could see no enthusiasm for these preparations. To look at her and listen to her, one would have thought she was preparing for the marriage of someone else and someone to whom she owed a duty but didn't much like. That may have been how she felt about herself. There were changes in her too, in her appearance for one thing. Thinner and paler, she looked better for the slight hollowing of her cheeks and the fining down of waist and hips. I wondered if it was my imagination that her hair looked cleaner – her nails certainly were – as if washing it took place every other day instead of once a week. The make-up too had been modified. She both looked more like Ella and much prettier. Often, catching sight of her when she was unaware of it, I saw how near she had come to being a beautiful woman.

Eric too had noticed it. From being surely the dullest wooer in all Essex, he was becoming gallant, he was paying compliments, and the lifeless kiss planted on Winifred's cheek had livened and moved to her mouth. No doubt it was pleasanter when the lipstick was pale and less sticky. Another change was in her attitude to what she had called her ‘profession’. She appeared to have retired, perhaps at Eric's request or perhaps it was by her own decision. By the middle of September we heard no more of her needing to earn her living.

About this time the invitations arrived from the Colchester printing firm and Ida was delegated to fill them in, she having in everyone's opinion the most legible handwriting. Winifred had drawn up the list without, as far as I know, consulting anyone else.

‘I'd awfully appreciate it if you'd ask Felix,’ Ella said in a far humbler tone than she usually used to Winifred. ‘Thanks to the painter's guarded behaviour and wish for secrecy, their affair, or ‘relationship’ as she called it, was still largely unknown. ‘I'd really love him to be there.’

To my surprise Winifred said, ‘I've already asked him.’

‘You have?’

Winifred responded by showing her the list. One of those fine Cosway blushes spread across Ella's face – from pleasure or resentment? While she was reading the list Zorah came in, took it from her and scrutinized it as if it were a legal document, a contract perhaps or a deed. She had been back from the Aegean cruise for about a week and during that time the promised car, a yellow Hillman, had been bought and the geode restored to her own rooms. This happened on the evening of her return. She must have guessed who had entered her domain for she said to Ella within an hour of her arrival, ‘I congratulate you on your skill as a burglar.’

Thinking of the car, no doubt, which had already been spoken of though had not yet materialized, Ella said she was sorry but it was unfair on Mother taking her things.

‘Unfair!’ Her word made Zorah laugh. ‘Oh, really, what an absurd word to use of anything I could do to this family after what has been done to me.’

She said no more but next day a man arrived from some company which fitted locks opened by keys with registered numbers that could never be copied except on the owner's application. He was upstairs a long time, operating on Zorah's front door, and it was dark by the time he left.

The guest list in her hand, Zorah said, ‘One of you has been a fast worker in getting to know Dunsford. I see his name up among all the relatives and someone I take to be Eric's sister.’

“‘Fast worker” is a very vulgar expression, Zorah,’ said Winifred. ‘Mr Dunsford has become quite a friend of Eric's.’

‘Oh, Eric's . I see. That explains it.’

‘Felix is a very good friend of mine too.’ Ella said it bravely, giving Zorah a defiant look. By this time she would have very much liked the affair to be known and the two of them regarded as a couple.

It is perhaps strange that I should talk about bravery in connection with a woman of thirty-seven talking to her sister of thirty-five. But courage was needed by those sisters in standing up to Zorah and I could see why. Money and power and what I understood was her burning desire for revenge had created her personality and made her frightening. Besides, though the car had come, other benefits derived from Zorah that everyone (except John) would be afraid to lose: money itself, food and drink and generous gifts, as I was soon to realize.

You may as well tell me,’ she said, ‘what you want for a wedding present.’

At that time gift lists were already being deposited with department stores but unfashionable people living in the country hadn't noticed this new development. Winifred hesitated, and said at last, ‘I was saying to Kerstin the other day that Eric's fridge is about the size of a biscuit tin.’

‘So you want a fridge, do you? I've always thought it peculiar that the British call a refrigerator a fridge and the Americans, who love abbreviations and acronyms and all that, call it a refrigerator.’

‘That's the sort of thing I'd expect Selwyn Lombard to say.’

Ella laughed. I could tell she hadn't thought about what she was saying. The words had just rattled out of her.

The change in Zorah was frightening. She became very still and pale, as if she had suddenly been struck by a chill, and yet there was something snake-like about her. She had grown fangs and would strike. I understood then that she knew Dr Lombard was her father and hated the knowledge, that she had possibly changed the shape of her nose not only for enhancement of her looks but to make the resemblance less marked. She said to Ella in a voice as clear and hard as glass, ‘I hope you'll take care of that car and not batter it about like you did the last one. It's simply a matter of learning to drive properly, you know.’ Her manner was that of an unkind aunt to a small niece. Without comment, she watched Ella get up and leave the room. ‘So I am to buy you a fridge, am I, Winifred?’

‘That would be very generous,’ Winifred said.

‘It would. Still, I don't have a sister married every day. In fact, I hardly ever have one married at all. You had better go and choose a fridge tomorrow but not more than three hundred pounds, mind.’

As it happened, I went with Winifred into Colchester to choose it. I was amused by her choice, not so much because it was the largest and best-equipped refrigerator in the store but on account of her rejection of the one she preferred. The big one was more expensive, costing at £299 19s. 11d. just a penny less than the top price specified by Zorah.

‘Actually, that's the one I really like best,’ she said, pointing to the refrigerator she had decided not to have. ‘I think it might fit into the Rectory kitchen better and I prefer the door fittings. But Zorah said up to three hundred so I may as well have the big one.’

That made me wonder if Zorah had also set a ceiling on the car price and Ella had been careful to come only just within it. The youngest of Mrs Cosway's daughters might have her power and take her pleasure in the family's obsequiousness but they had learnt how to take the maximum advantage of her.

On the way back we stopped outside the Rectory gates and Winifred asked me if I would like to see inside it. What interested me was finding out if she had a key to the house, but whether she did I never discovered for Eric saw us from the window and opened the front door. We walked into a large, square and shabby hallway and on into a larger, oblong and shabbier living room. Rectories and vicarages all over England were like that then, though I didn't know it at the time. I didn't know that incumbents of parishes were expected to live in vast ‘gentlemen's' houses, once occupied by clergymen with private incomes or with horribly disproportionate stipends, some of them as little as fifty pounds a year, some of a thousand. And this in the days when you paid your servants a few shillings a year to keep these mansions clean. I thought all that had died away with the passing of the nineteenth century.