Маргарет Миллар - Do Evil In Return

“Where will you go?”

“I’ll go home.”

“Home?”

“Yes. You can tell Easter I’ll be there waiting for him.”

The cypresses that lined the walk fought the wind, bent and convulsed in fury like mad boneless dancers.

The veranda lights were lit, as if Lewis had deliberately turned them on like a good host, to welcome the guest he expected, Easter. Bold shafts of light struck the garden, and Charlotte could see that it was no longer Gwen’s garden, formal and precise. The lawn was a clutter of broken flowers, and palm fronds and dry prickly oak leaves and little mauve dots, like confetti, that had once been part of jacaranda clusters. The wind had beaten the flowers. The stocks and dahlias cringed, half naked, on the ground; the foxgloves had toppled like poles and their pink bells rolled silently across the lawn.

The collies, herded together at the fence gate, made nervous little noises, as if they would have liked to bark but didn’t dare, knowing that Gwen would appear with a folded newspaper in her hand and tap the wire fence with it warningly. They feared the newspaper and Gwen’s displeasure more than they feared the lunatic wind, the unquiet night.

They went up the front steps in silence — Charlotte holding her coat collar over her face to shield it from the grinding dust, and Easter with his hands in his pockets, unaware of wind or dust.

The drapes of the living room had been pulled back all the way. Charlotte wondered whether this, like the veranda lights, was a gesture of welcome, an invitation to stop, to look in. On her first visit tonight the drapes had been closed, the house blacked out, and Gwen upstairs in her room with a bruised throat.

The bruise was hidden now in a froth of blue lace; and the woman who had received it, and the fear and pain it had caused, they were all hidden as rocks are hidden under a high tide.

Through the window Charlotte could see them both clearly, Gwen and Lewis. Gwen sat knitting, her feet resting on the little petit-point footstool, a silver tea service on the table beside her. The three collies huddled together on the davenport, uncomfortable and restless, but refusing to give up this special privilege. Lewis was standing by the fireplace, with an unopened magazine in his hand, as if he had picked it up and meant to read it when Gwen had finished talking.

The fire was lit. Its flames danced in the silver teapot and in the copper bowl filled with scarlet berries. The room looked gay as Christmas, the people natural, the scene commonplace: “More tea, dear?” “No thanks, it’s getting late.” “Why, so it is, nearly midnight, and you have to get up for work in the morning.”

In the morning, if there was a morning.

“Please,” Charlotte said, “let me go in alone first.”

“I can’t. I didn’t want you even to come along. It’s too dangerous.”

“Not for me.”

“Especially for you.” Easter pressed the door chime.

A scurry of dogs in the hall inside, a single sharp bark, then Gwen’s quick footsteps, the click of her heels on the parquet floor.

The door opened and Gwen stood on the threshold, bracing herself against the wind.

“Why, it’s Dr. Keating — Charlotte!” she said with an excited little laugh. “My goodness, how nice to see you. Come out and see who’s here, Lewis.”

Lewis appeared in the doorway of the sitting room. He had changed his clothes and shaved. His face was as blank as a shuttered window. Only his eyes showed pain; they looked across the hall at Charlotte as if across an immense and unbridgeable canyon.

Gwen was flushed and smiling, as delighted as a child at unexpected company. “And you’ve brought a friend with you, Charlotte. How nice. Oh, this is fun, I think. Having company at this hour — it makes me feel so pleasantly wicked. Come in, come in, please do.” She didn’t recognize Easter until he took off his hat. “Why, I know you, of course. You’re the policeman who was here this afternoon. Mr. Easter, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Mrs. Ballard.”

“Well, Lewis, look who’s here, a real policeman. I hope you haven’t done anything, darling!”

The two men didn’t look at each other.

“Well, my goodness,” Gwen cried. “Everyone’s so quiet. I haven’t said anything wrong, have I?” She sighed, and turned back to Easter. “I guess I have. I always do. Please give me your hat and come in and sit down. Lewis and I were just having a chat and a cup of tea before going to bed. I adore tea. Charlotte scolds me, but...” She smiled nervously at Easter as he gave her his hat. One of the collies came over and sniffed at the hat and then at the cuffs of Easter’s trousers. She tapped the dog’s nose with her forefinger. “Go and lie down, Laddie. I... well, this is fun, isn’t it? Come into the parlor. That’s what I used to call it when I was a little girl — my parlor. And I still think it’s a prettier word than sitting room or drawing room, don’t you?”

No one answered. No one had to. Gwen didn’t seem to expect or want an answer.

The parlor was stifling. The heat had withered the berries in the copper bowl, and the dogs sprawled in the doorway in the hope of a draft, their tongues out.

“I feel quite gay,” Gwen said, pouring Charlotte a cup of tea. “Unexpected company, and Lewis home again, it’s wonderful. You both know that Lewis has been very naughty. He stayed away for two whole days all because of a little quarrel we had. But now he’s home for good, aren’t you darling?”

Lewis spoke for the first time. “Yes, Gwen.”

“Where on earth did you stay, darling?”

“On Vern’s boat.”

“Now isn’t that absurd, staying on a wobbly old boat when you had your own nice house to come back to!”

“Absurd. Yes, I guess it was.”

“And Lewis, dear, you must remember your manners. Perhaps Mr. Easter doesn’t want tea but something stronger.”

“Nothing for me, thanks,” Easter said.

“You make me feel like a very poor hostess. You won’t even sit down. I... well, it’s been a lovely summer so far, hasn’t it? I do hope it keeps up.”

The wind pressed against the windows and the walls, until the whole house seemed to shake, ready to tear loose from its foundations and blow across the lawn like the silent bells of the foxgloves. A blast came down the chimney; the flames leaped and a log jumped nervously and fell against the side of the grate.

Gwen jumped too, at the noisy shower of sparks. “Oh. Oh, that scared me. The wind — I know it’s silly, but I hate the wind. Charlotte, I bet you’re sitting there thinking how neurotic I am.”

Charlotte shook her head. “No, I’m not.”

“I bet you are, really. I know Lewis thinks I’m neurotic. Every time I get an ache or a little spell of forgetfulness Lewis thinks it’s my mind, which is — which — which...” She paused, blinking. “This isn’t a very gay party, I must say. Back home in Louisville we used to have the gayest parties. Daddy was very strict, though; everyone had to leave at twelve like Cinderella. Lewis dear, you remember.”

“I only went to one,” he answered.

“Oh, you were awfully handsome in those days; you were handsome and I was pretty. Like a Dresden doll, people used to say. Like a — a Dresden doll. Oh, quite, quite different from you, Charlotte, quite different. I was very small and my bones were so delicate Daddy was always afraid of me falling and breaking one.” Her hands fussed with her hair. Charlotte saw that they had a spastic trembling, and the unpainted nails were bluish at the tips. “I never thought in those days that the world could be so cruel, so ugly and cruel and — it was a great shock to me when I found out, a great shock — a hell, a terrible hell — a...”