Muriel Spark - The Complete Short Stories

Henry Castlemaine loved his daughter dearly, and himself a little more. He accepted the basis of the marriage as he had in the long past accepted the adulation of his readers and the discipleship of young critics. Ben moved into the Castlemaine house and in the evenings and school holidays set about sorting the Castlemaine papers, and taking voluminous notes on his conversations with the ageing novelist. Castlemaine was now eighty-five.

It was about three years later, after the biography was published, that the Castlemaine revival set in. The Castlemaine novels were reprinted, they were filmed and televised. When Henry Castlemaine died he was once again at the height of his fame.

He left his house to his daughter, Dora. All his papers, all his literary estate, everything. Ben, however, had the royalties from his biography of Henry Castlemaine. They were fairly substantial.

In those last years of Castlemaine’s life, their financial position had improved, largely through the initial efforts of Ben to revive his father-in-law’s fame. They were able to employ a cook and a maid, leaving Dora free to be a real companion to her father and take him for drives in their new Volkswagen.

Nobody was surprised when, after Castlemaine’s death, the marriage broke up. Its only real basis had been the couple’s devotion to Dora’s father. Ben, now still a young and sprightly thirty-five and Dora fifty-one, oldish for her age, had nothing in common except their memories of the old man. He had been authoritative and tiresome, but Dora hadn’t minded. Ben had felt the personal weight of his famous father-in-law. He had put up with it, for the sake of the admired works, and his own efforts to promote them, day by day, in his study, docketing the archives, on the telephone to television and film producers.

In the early days of his marriage he had tried to make love to Dora, and succeeded fairly often out of sheer enthusiasm for her father. Dora herself couldn’t keep it up. She was obsessed by her father, and Ben was no substitute. Now Ben was left with the proceeds of his biography. His work was done. Dora was immensely rich.

Henry Castlemaine was buried. A crowded memorial service, reporters, television; and the next week it was over. Henry Castlemaine lived on in his posthumous fame, but Dora and Ben were no longer a couple.

It was at this point that very little was publicly known. It was understood that Dora refused to leave the house of her childhood and her father’s life. Ben took a flat in London and grumbled to his friends that Dora was stingy. She gave him an allowance. The proceeds from his biography could not last forever. He wrote a lot of Castlemaine essays, and was said to be thinking of some other subject, something fresh to write about.

Within a few months Dora suggested a divorce:

Dear Ben, I intend to see my lawyer, Bassett. He will no doubt be in touch with you. I know Father would have wished us to stay together and to love each other as he wished from the start. It was Father’s wish that I should never want for anything, indeed he hated to talk about the financial details of life in those old days when his books had started to fade out, and we met. I know that Father would have wished me to show my appreciation, and express his acknowledgment of the part you played in our life, (even although I am of course convinced that the revival of Father’s great reputation would have been inevitable in any case). That is why I have instructed Bassett to offer you a monthly allowance which you are free to accept or reject according to your conscience. The divorce should go through as quietly and smoothly as possible. Father would have wished that at least. Above all, Father, I think, would have wished for complete discretion on the fact that our union was a marriage in name only, even although the situation could be amply testified to by the domestics (who are of course always aware of everything, as Father always said.) So I could have obtained a divorce quite easily on other grounds than mutual consent thus saving the allowance I am offering you in amicable settlement. I trust you have benefited by your stay with us under our roof for these years past.

Father would wish me to enjoy the fruits of his labours, and soon I shall be taking a trip abroad, especially to those haunts so beloved of Father.

Yours, in good faith,

Dora Castlemaine

It was that ‘in good faith’, more than her formal signature, that chilled Ben’s bones. He recalled a phrase from one of Henry Castlemaine’s books: ‘Beware the wickedness of the righteous.’

What is there to see in the austere and awesome birthplace of Joan of Arc at Domrémy-la-Pucelle in the Vosges? It is full of grey-walled emptiness, and there is no doubt, someone has been here and has gone. It stands just off the road, in the shade of a large tree. Near by is a bridge over the Meuse where a man hovers, looking down at the water. A small cream-coloured Peugeot is parked dose by, waiting for him, with the driver’s door open. He has got in once and got out again. He has looked round at the woman who has been watching him while he tours the simple birthplace, now open to the public. The woman watches him as he drives away, too fast, away and away, so that the guardian at the ticket entrance comes out to join her on the road, staring after him.

Ben and Dora were never divorced. He showed her letter round their friends. It had been the couple’s boast that they had few friends, but, as always when ‘a few friends’ come to be counted up, they amounted to a surprising number. Most of them were indignant.

‘That’s a shabby way to treat you, Ben. First, you build up a fortune for her, and now she …’

‘Ben, you must see a lawyer. You are entitled to …’

‘What a cold, what a very frigid letter. But between you and me, she was always in love with her father. It was incestuous.’

‘I won’t go to a lawyer,’ Ben said. ‘I’ll go to see Dora.

He went to see her, unannounced. The door was opened by a tall, fat youth who beamed with delight when Ben gave his name and demanded his wife.

‘Dora’s in the kitchen.’

The father’s smell had gone from the house. Ben glanced through the dining-room door on the way to the kitchen. There was new wallpaper, a new carpet. Dora was there in the kitchen, unhappy of face, beating up an omelette. The kitchen table was laid for a meal, which meal no one could guess, whether lunch or breakfast. It was four-fifteen in the afternoon. Anyway, Dora was unhappy. She clung to her unhappiness, Ben saw clearly. It was all she had.

The flaccid youth scraped a chair across the kitchen floor towards Ben. ‘Make yourself at home,’ he said.

Ben turned to leave.

‘Stay, don’t go,’ said Dora. ‘We should sit down and discuss the situation like three civilized people.’

‘I’ve had enough of three civilized people,’ Ben said. ‘There was your father and you, so very civilized; and I was civilized enough to let myself be used and then thrown out when I was no more use.

The flabby youth said, ‘As I understand it you were never a husband to Dora. She let herself be used as a means to your relationship with her father.’

‘Who is he?’ Ben demanded, indicating the young man.

Dora brought an omelette to the table and set it before her friend. ‘Eat it while it’s hot. Don’t wait for me.’ She started breaking eggs into the bowl. The youth commenced to eat.

‘Isn’t there a drink in the house?’ said Ben. ‘This is sordid.’ He got up and went into the living-room where the drinks were set out, as always, on a tray. When he got back with his whisky and soda, the young man’s place was empty, part of his omelette still on his plate. Ben then saw through the kitchen window the ends of the young man’s trousers and his shoes disappearing up the half flight of steps which led to the garden and a door to the lane behind. Dora, with her omelette-turner still in her hand went to shut the kitchen door which had been left open.