Barbara Vine - The Minotaur

I still have a fragment of it which I keep in a little jeweller's box in my bedroom. Its edges are razor-sharp. There is no doubt I shouldn't have it, for when I found it under a corner of the drawing-room carpet I should have sent it at once to join the hundred or so other pieces of green glass, though there was no question of the vase being repaired. It was far beyond that.

The two sisters were barely on speaking terms that weekend. Ella had confronted Winifred with accusations that she was trying to take Felix away from her, to which Winifred responded by telling her she was making a fool of herself. After that they passed in the house without a word and studiously avoided speaking to each other at table, Winifred wearing a smug expression and Ella made ugly with resentment. On the Sunday evening Eric came up to Lydstep Old Hall, bringing Felix with him.

John was there when they arrived. It was seven-thirty but he was there. No longer stupefied with drugs, he was beginning to do as he liked and do it after the fashion of high-functioning autistics, that is without regard for the feelings or wishes of others. I inwardly applauded him. When Eric came into the drawing room with Felix, John was sitting in his usual armchair, and being John, he neither got up nor extended his hand but looked at them and said to Felix, ‘Who are you?’

It was the first time I had seen Felix taken aback. To be fair to him, he had never seen John before, very likely had no knowledge of him – both sisters were good at pretending he didn't exist – and was surprised to see him there. ‘Hallo,’ he said. ‘I'm Felix. Felix Dunsford.’

‘Dunsford,’ said John and repeated it. ‘Sounds like a place in the Midlands.’

Mrs Cosway was still a long way from learning what had happened and what the future might hold. ‘Time for bed, John,’ she said.

He ignored her. It was plain to the rest of us that he meant to stay up for dinner. Ida brought drinks but in this John had no interest. He moved ahead of everyone into the dining room and when the rest of us eventually went in there he was sitting at the table examining cutlery as if he had never seen any of it before.

I could almost admire Felix's skill at being in Ella's company without giving the slightest sign that they were more to each other than acquaintances. And I don't mean he did this, as secret lovers famously do, by a studied indifference and off-handedness. He behaved exactly as he would have done if she was the future sister-in-law of his friend and they had met two or three times. He was pleasant to her, easy, he even gave a hint of perfectly proper flirtatiousness. I couldn't fault him but I could tell his expertise came from long practice. Or he might be rehearsing for the way he intended to behave in front of her husband after he had seduced the architect's wife. As for Ella, she kept up her resentfulness until Eric delivered his news, and after that she was watchful but relieved.

‘Felix has kindly agreed to paint Winifred's portrait.’ What was kind about it I don't know since he was presumably being paid. ‘I've told him there's to be none of his abstracts.’ Eric was in his twinkling mood, a mischievous smile on his lips. ‘He's agreed this will be a conventional portrait. We envisage something in the manner of Sir Joshua Reynolds, don't we, dear?’

I felt almost sorry for Felix, who whatever its merit took his art seriously, being obliged to fit his style into this prescribed mould. Lounging at the table with his elbows on it in the way Mrs Cosway loathed, he nodded idly. I could guess what was going on in Ella's mind. Was this the reason for Winifred's evening visit of the week before? Was there no more to it than that? Or had this been dreamt up to deceive Eric and perhaps everyone else? She looked the picture of nervous wretchedness. No one had told her of Felix's imminent arrival – did anyone but Winifred know? – and she had taken no pains with her appearance. A woman who dressed up and made up for men and occasionally for other valued company, she had seen no reason to change out of her scruffy trousers and tired sweater for her sisters and Eric. Now she plainly felt at a disadvantage and had sneaked out of the drawing room to pass a lipstick over her mouth and rush a comb through her hair without much obvious improvement.

John said not a word throughout dinner and, when it was over, pushed back his chair and left the room. Any manners he might once seem to have had depended on the stupefying effect of the drug which made him too sleepy and dull ever to exert himself. His stillness (albeit with trembling hands) had passed for politeness and his inertia for acquiescence and obedience. These were conditions Mrs Cosway wanted back again, and wanted them to the extent of leaving the house next morning for the first time since she came home from hospital. I drove her down to the small purpose-built medical centre where Dr Barker had his surgery.

The practice nurse had to be fetched to help me get Mrs Cosway out of the car. She winced and groaned and complained but finally made it into the waiting room. Three people were before us, a young woman with a sleeping baby, an old man with a cough and Jane Trintowel. This brought back to me Jane's story of her own mother-in-law meeting the much younger Julia in just this place thirty-five years ago. Of course she knew from me about the fractured ankle, so she showed less shock than she might have done over Mrs Cosway's changed appearance, her wasted face and by then skeletal body. The strong, resonant voice that came from those pinched lips may have surprised her.

To her greeting of, ‘How are you, Julia? I hear you've had an accident,’ Mrs Cosway replied that Jane could presumably see she had had an accident, she didn't hobble about with a crutch for fun.

‘I can see you're still the same old Julia.’

Jane turned to me, asking me when I would be free to come to White Lodge again. James was back in Bristol until the middle of December but her elder son came down every other weekend. While we were discussing dates and possibilities, the young mother went in to see Dr Barker, was in there only a few minutes, and the old man went in.

‘You take my turn, Julia,’ Jane said when we had fixed on a Friday I would take as my day off. ‘It can't be comfortable for you having to sit about on a hard chair.’

‘It's not.’ Mrs Cosway didn't thank her. ‘But my whole life is uncomfortable. I am used to it.’

A girl who had come in and sat down next to Jane giggled, perhaps from embarrassment. The practice nurse came back to tell Mrs Cosway Dr Barker was ready for her and the two of us took her to his surgery door. There I finally decided not to go in with her. She would expect me to support her, even say that John was impossible without the Largactil, and that I couldn't do.

‘I'll be in the waiting room when you're ready,’ I said.

‘You've wasted no time making friends, have you? I suppose you can't wait to get back to gossiping with the Trintowel woman.’

It was the nurse's turn to be embarrassed. She cast up her eyes. I went back to Jane.

‘She looks awful .’

‘I know, but she's very strong. She's not ill.’

‘And John?’

‘Better. He still shuffles a bit and his hands shake but I think he's a lot better without the drug Dr Lombard gave him.’

And he was destined to continue without it, for Dr Barker refused a prescription to Mrs Cosway just as he had to Ida, saying as adamantly that John should be seen by a psychiatrist for his needs to be evaluated. He would gladly find a suitable one at a Colchester hospital, say, write this man a letter and make an appointment for a consultation.

‘I told him it was all unnecessary,’ Mrs Cosway said in the car on the way home. ‘One ought to know one's own son. He's schizophrenic and he needs tranquillizing or he'll be impossible to manage. It was your duty to come in there with me and support me but no, you preferred chatting with your friend.’