Barbara Vine - The Minotaur

‘What good would that do?’

‘It would bring it out into the open. He'd break off the engagement and maybe think he'd had a lucky escape.’

‘Surely it would make him very unhappy,’ I said. ‘She's his fiancée, but don't forget Felix is his friend, or Eric thinks he is. Wouldn't it be better for them to marry and then for Winifred to forget Felix?’

‘Like I have?’

‘I suppose that means you haven't.’

‘I still phone him. If he wants me I go to him. You think that's humiliating?’

I shook my head and from pity did something unusual with me. I put my arms round her and hugged her. She began to cry, sobbing against my shoulder. As for Felix, he treated Winifred much as he had Ella, apparently expecting her to keep their affair secret, phoning her at Lydstep but if anyone else answered either putting down the receiver or asking for her without giving his name. On those occasions I think he disguised his voice, for several times when I answered, it was a man who asked for Winifred in an unfamiliar voice, but it was not till long afterwards that I realized the light tenor tone and slight Scots accent must have been Felix. He was a good actor. No doubt he had had plenty of rehearsals. He and she were never seen about together and his excuse this time would have been to save Eric from discovering their association. They were often seen in public together, Felix dropping in for tea at the Rectory or having drinks bought for him by Eric in the White Rose.

Winifred was not welcome in the pub and was never taken out for a meal. Again the explanation would have been that Eric must never know. Did she mind? I don't think so. While Ella had wanted the whole world to know she and Felix were lovers, it was in Winifred's interest even more than his to keep things secret. She was plainly enjoying herself, discovering the joys of sex rather late in the day. I believe her mother and June Prothero and the church people attributed her improved looks to her impending wedding and perhaps to her love for Eric, soon to have its consummation. For there was no doubt that at that time she meant to get married and on the appointed day. She had had a final fitting for her wedding dress, the flowers were ordered and a ‘going away’ suit and coat had been bought from Colchester's top dress shop.

Mrs Cosway thought, and loudly said, that for people in her and Eric's ‘position’ to have a wedding rehearsal was ridiculous. Like royalty or film stars, she said. In accordance with her current mood, Ida had no comment to make. She broke her near-silence only to say to me while we were preparing dinner one evening, ‘I should like to see Eric Dawson happy,’ her use of both his Christian name and surname adding solemnity to her remark. ‘He's a good man.’

For a moment I thought she was indicating that she knew about Winifred and Felix but I soon realized I was wrong. ‘I used to go to church,’ she said, ‘but I stopped. I never really believed.’

What did this mean? She said no more, relapsing into her sad silence.

Winifred was a very different woman from Ella. Not for her confiding in someone years younger than herself or indeed in anyone, for I don't suppose she whispered secrets to June or Mrs Cusp. She had an elevated idea of her own importance and also of her virtuous and upright character. This must of course have been severely put to the test by the Felix affair, carried on while she was engaged to another man, but I have no doubt she made solid excuses to herself for her behaviour. Eric was a husband, not a lover. She would be unflinchingly faithful to him once they were married. He would never know. She would make it up to him in appropriate ways. This was her Indian summer, soon to end.

Once or twice more, as Christmas approached, Felix came up to Lydstep Old Hall for drinks or coffee or dinner. As far as I know, he never made an offer of reciprocation. He always came with Eric, never on his own. With his reputation for making friends with any newcomer to the village – the men, that is, for he was too proper ever to have been seen about with any woman but Winifred – Eric organized ‘chaps' days out’ when he and two or three others would go off for lunch in a hotel somewhere and spend the afternoon in Brightlingsea or Frinton. Felix may already have been on such a group outing. The fairly heavy drinking which went on would have suited him, though not the absence of female company.

As with Ella, he behaved as if there was nothing between him and Winifred, glancing at her neither too much nor too little. He even talked about the coming wedding, which he meant to attend, although, as he said in a rueful tone with a lazy grin at Mrs Cosway, ‘The bride's mother hasn't invited me but my pal here says I can come.’

His ‘pal here’ said in rather a flustered way that he was sure this was an oversight as Felix would be very welcome. Compressing her lips, Mrs Cosway still managed to stretch them into a tight smile. The first invitations which went out had included him but it seemed that she had changed her mind when Ida was sending out the second lot. She loathed Felix, as she never missed a chance to say as soon as he had left.

‘Of course if your husband-to-be brings him here, what is there to say? It isn't my house. It belongs to John.’

What John thought of him no one knew. The probability is that he never thought of him at all. John was unaffected by people who took no steps to cross him or ignored him as he ignored them. Encountered by me in the passage on his way back from the lavatory, Felix asked me what was wrong ‘with the silent guy’.

‘I don't know.’ What I half-guessed hadn't yet been confirmed. ‘Ask Winifred,’ I said.

He was an excellent actor. His face betrayed nothing. ‘D‘you know, I never knew he existed until the last time I was here. Is that peculiar or just the way they behave in this creepy house?’

‘How's the portrait coming on?’

He grinned. ‘Ask Winifred,’ he said. That was the only hint of their affair he ever gave.

I found myself hoping Eric would never know, that Felix would maintain his discretion, whatever its purpose, whatever the main chance he kept his eye on, until they were married and across the years to come. I liked Eric. He wasn't my kind of man but he was kind and unselfish, cheerful and pleasant. I felt sure he would rarely tell a lie and then only a white one, and never break a promise. Full of good intentions, Mrs Cosway had said of him, adding that we knew what those led to. Eric himself once preached a sermon about the intention amounting to the same thing as the deed, quoting something about a man who lusts after a woman having already committed adultery with her in his heart. If that is so, meaning well ought to be the same as doing well. But I don't know. I only know that he deserved better than the treatment his fiancée and his friend had meted out to him.

Within minutes of their driving away, Zorah arrived. They must have passed on the Windrose road. It was after ten-thirty and usually when she came at that time she went straight upstairs, but that evening she walked into the drawing room, where Mrs Cosway was still sitting with John and two of her daughters while Ida and I cleared away glasses and emptied ashtrays. She seldom sat down when she entered a family gathering but wandered the room, ‘as a roaring lion, seeking what she may devour, like it says in the Bible', Winifred once said.

John was the first one Zorah spoke to. It was always so. ‘Hallo, you.’ He didn't shift his gaze from the Roman vase. Ella's eyes had turned guiltily towards the geode, a glance Zorah didn't miss. ‘You can keep that thing if you want,’ she said. ‘It's no use to me.’

‘That's a new departure,’ said Ella.

‘As you say. But I intend to depart, you see. Leave, go, shake the dust of this place off my feet. It's no good looking like that, Mother. I know what you're thinking. The answer to your next question is, no, I shall be leaving the vase behind too. Mind you look after it. You can have the spinet and the harp too – I see you've already helped yourself to it. Incidentally, those geodes are in all the crystal shops in London now, they're two a penny.’