John Banville - The Infinities

He nods, relieved. She comes forward and stands by the table, leaning her hip against it and running the fingers of one hand back and forth on the wood as if the raised seams in its worn surface were the strings of a harp. “What’s keeping Ivy?” she murmurs. “I really am soaked.” She seems unaware that the buttons of her dress at the back are still undone, affording Duffy a glimpse of a taut white elastic strap. The rain is ceasing and out in the garden the blackbird is piping again its heedless, piercing song. “Damn,” she says without emphasis, and glances absently about the room. She has never slapped a man’s face before and her insides are jangling still from the thrill of it. She feels as if it were she who had been delivered a tingling smack. Poor Roddy! She is amused, remembering how he reared back on the bench with almost a maidenly quiver, staring wide-eyed at her, a palm pressed to his cheek. She surprised herself by noticing his hands, pale and long and tapered, like her father-in-law’s, their beauty marred only by those bitten nails. She was surprised too at how livid the mark was that she left on his cheek, how quickly it was spreading. She had not meant to hit him quite so hard — in fact, she had not meant to hit him at all, it had just happened, before she knew it. But what had he been thinking of, kissing her like that? She wonders if she should tell Adam. What would he do? Threaten to horsewhip Roddy, challenge him to a duel? She is sorry now she spoke of the play to Roddy, and regrets especially saying that he might review it. Not that it was entirely a joke, for the production would need all the notices it could get. Now, of course, if he does write something he will be certain to take his revenge on her; she is sure he is that sort, small-minded and vindictive. But then, she reminds herself, I did hit him, after all, and is all the more amused.

From the corner of her eye she can see Duffy begin to edge his way cautiously along the dresser in the direction of the back door. She wonders where Roddy is now. He fled the wood ahead of her, striding off furiously and still wiping at his mouth with his handkerchief, as if there was a foul taste that he could not get rid of. She hopes he is as wet as she is; not much hope for his slip-ons if he is.

Ivy comes back at last, bearing a huge white towel folded in her arms. She pauses for a beat, catching something in the atmosphere, and looks from Helen to Duffy and back again and narrows her eyes.

“Oh, you’re an angel,” Helen says. She takes the towel and begins vigorously rubbing at her hair.

“Here, give me that,” Ivy says, not untenderly, and takes the towel back from her and makes her sit by the table.

Duffy, sidling, has almost reached the door, but pauses now to watch the two women, Helen voluptuously slumped with her hands limp in her lap and the back of her dress folded out at the top like a pair of small blue wings, and Ivy leaning over her, all bones and bird’s-nest hair, with the white towel draped over her hands like the priest’s communion stole at Mass, stroking slowly that helmet of damp, dark-gold hair. She says that when they are done she will prepare for Helen a nice hot cup of tea, but Helen, her voice muffled, says she would prefer a nice cold drink of something with gin in it. Ivy does not reply but only wields the towel more vigorously. Helen chuckles to herself in the warm tumult where she leans.

The rain has stopped and a weak sun is shining wetly in the window. Duffy moves to the door. Even when he lifts the latch Ivy does not turn her head to look at him. He steps out, and the door grates on the slate threshold. The scent of drenched grass assails him. Which would fetch the better price at auction, he is wondering, Ivy’s house or his own?

Petra too got wet in the rain but was not drenched as Helen and Roddy Wagstaff were. She is afraid of thunder and ran back from the wood, her heart pounding, and did not stop until she reached the house, and she was crossing the lawn before the rain started up in earnest. How silent the house is, holding its breath, as if it too had got a fright. She stands in the hall to listen and hears beyond the noise of the rain the faint maunderings of her mother up in her room; it is a sound she is used to. Then from far off she hears the yard gate creak, and a moment later the back door rattles, and she knows that Helen or Roddy or both together have returned. She hopes they have suffered a good soaking, and that Helen will catch a cold followed rapidly by pneumonia, primary or atypical, pneumo-coccal, interstitial or lobular, she does not mind which variety it is, just so long as the attack is severe and accompanied by numerous and distressing and, if at all possible, fatal complications. Not to stray beyond the Ps, even pleurisy would do, the effusive form— pain in the breast is common, of a cutting or stabbing nature, usually in the neighbourhood of the nipple —and, for Roddy, at least a chronic pleurodynia of the intercostal nerves. That would teach the two of them.

On the landing she sees Benny Grace crouched and listening outside her mother’s bedroom doorway, and through the partway open door sees her mother inside, lying down, and Adam sitting by her. None of them notices her.

In her room she locks the door and kicks off her wet shoes and sits on the bed, hugging her knees, listening to the sound of the rain on the roof. The light is silver-grey and sad, and she would like to cry but cannot; she was never any good at crying. The rain on the window makes everything beyond the glass shimmer and swim, as if she were indeed seeing it all through tears, all those greys and watery greens and undulant browns. She wonders that she can be so calm. Everything is changed, her life is changed. Or, no, it cannot be changed, since what she thinks should be her life has not properly started yet. Roddy was to do that for her; Roddy was the one who was supposed to take her hand and lead her into the sunlit uplands of the future. It surprises her to realise, to admit at last, how high a hope she had of him. Everyone tried to warn her but she would not listen. Now she feels — she feels — She does not know what she feels.

She leaves the bed and goes to the door and opens it cautiously and peers out. Benny Grace is gone, and the door of her mother’s room is shut and her mother has stopped moaning. She flits across the landing on tiptoe — who does she think will see her, of whom is she afraid? — and opens the door and climbs the seven steps to the Sky Room. Someone has drawn the curtains again and she can hardly see. She gropes her way through the shadows until she finds the bed. She has to listen closely to hear her father breathing. She is getting used to the gloom and can see him now, or his outline, at least. How like a wax figure he seems, a life-sized waxen model of himself. Taking care not to displace any of the tubes or the feeding bottles dangling on their metal stand she crawls on to the bed and lies down by him on her side with her face up close to his. His profile is like a line of mountains, seen from afar, at nightfall. There is an unpleasantly sharp, ammoniac smell; she supposes it is from the jars that she knows are under the bed and that the other, unseen tubes lead down to, but behind that there is his own familiar smell, darkish, warm, a little musty. She puts her arm across his chest. He is so thin, hardly there at all, just a scant arrangement of bones under the blanket.

She is wondering how long Roddy and Helen have been lovers.

How strange the way the shadows all around her when she peers into them seem to move, billowing slowly, like smoke, like distant storm clouds. There is a thing dripping in her head, dripping, or ticking; it is often there, or maybe always there and she only notices it sometimes. She hears the cries of gulls, far off, then suddenly near, then far again.