John Banville: The Newton Letter

I didn’t like the way this was going, old boys together, the booze and the blarney, the pissing into the wind. In a minute we’d be swapping dirty stories. He took back his drink, and stood and watched me, beetling o’er his base. He had violence in him, he would never let it out, but it was all the more unsettling that way, clenched inside him like a fist.

“They’re here to stay, I suppose,” I said, and produced a laugh that sounded like a stiff door opening. He wasn’t listening.

“It’s not their fault,” he said, talking to himself. “They have to live too, get what they can, fight, claw their way. It’s not their fault if. . ” He focused on me. “Succubus! Know that word? It’s a grand word, I like it.” To my horror he put an arm around my shoulder and walked me off across the gravel into the field beyond the chestnut tree. The hurley he still held dangled down by my side. There were little tufts of vulpine fur on his cheekbones and on the side of his neck behind his earlobe. His breath was bad. “Did you see in the paper,” he said, “that old woman who went to the Guards to complain that the man next door was boring holes in the wall and putting in gas to poison her? They gave her a cup of tea and sent her home, and a week later she was found dead, holes in the bloody wall and the fellow next door mad out of his mind, rubber tubes stuck in the wall, a total lunatic.” He batted me gently with his stick. “It goes to show, you should listen to people, eh? What do you think?” He laughed. There was no humour in it. Instead, a waft of woe came off him that made me miss a step. What was he asking of me? — for he was asking something. And then I noticed an odd fact. He was hollow. I mean physically, he was, well, hollow. Oh, he was built robustly enough, there was real flesh under his tweeds, and bones, and balls, blood, the lot, but inside I imagined just a greyish space with nothing in it save that bit of anger, not a fist really, but just a tensed configuration, like a three-dimensional diagram of stress. Even on the surface too something was lacking, an essential lustre. He seemed covered in a fine fall of dust, like a stuffed bird in a bell jar. He had not been like this when I came here. The discovery was peculiarly gratifying. I had been a little afraid of him before. We turned back to the house. The bottle, half-empty, stood on the windowsill. I disengaged his arm and filled us another shot. “There,” I said. “Cheers. Ah.”

A station wagon, the back bristling with flushed children, headed down the drive. At the gate it pulled up with a shriek of brakes as a long sleek car swept in from the road and without slowing advanced upon the house. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Edward said: “The Mittlers.” He retreated into the kitchen. The visitors were already at the front door, we heard their imperious knock and then voices in the hall.

“I’ll be going,” I said.

“No you don’t.” He reached out a hand to grab me, draining his glass at the same time. “Family, interesting, come on, meet,” and with a hanged man’s grimace thrust me before him down the hall.

They were in the drawing-room, a youngish woman in grey and a fat man of fifty, and two pale little girls, twins, with long blonde candle-curls and white socks.

“This is Bunny,” Edward said, “my sister, and Tom, Tom Mittler; Dolores, here, and Alice.”

One twin pointed a thumb at the other. “ She’s Alice.”

Tom Mittler, fingering his cravat, nodded to me and mumbled something, with a fat little laugh, and then performed the curious trick of fading instantly on the spot. His wife looked me up and down with cool attention. Her skirt was severely cut, and the padded shoulders of her jacket sloped upward, like a pair of trim little wings. An impossible pillbox hat was pinned at an angle to her tight yellow curls. It was hard to tell if her outfit were the latest thing, but it gave her an antiquated look that was oddly sinister. Her mouth was carefully outlined with vermilion glaze, and looked as if a small tropical insect had settled on her face. Her eyes were blue, like Edward’s, but harder. “My name is Diana,” she said. Edward laughed. She ignored him. “So you’re the lodger?”

“I’m staying in the lodge, yes,” I said.

“Comfy there?” and that little red insect lifted its wing-tips a fraction. She turned away. “Is there any chance of a cup of tea, Charlotte? Or is it too much trouble?”

Charlotte, poised outside our little circle, suddenly stirred herself. “Yes, yes, I’m sorry—”

“I’ll get it,” Ottilie said, and slouched out, making a face at me as she went past.

Bunny looked around, bestowing her painted smile on each of us in turn. “Well!” she said, “this is nice,” and extracted from her hat its long steel pin. “But where’s the birthday boy?”

“Hiding,” Edward murmured, and winked at me.

“Full of fun today,” his sister said. She looked at the hurley stick still in his hand. “Are you coming from a game, or going to one?”

He waggled the weapon at her playfully. “Game’s just starting, old girl.”

“Haw!” Tom Mittler said, and vanished again instantly.

There was a small commotion as Ottilie brought in the tea on a rickety trolley. Michael came after her, solemnly bearing the teapot like a ciborium. At the sight of him Bunny gave a little cry and the twins narrowed their eyes and advanced; their father made a brief appearance to hand him his present, a five-pound note in a brown envelope. Bunny shrugged apologetically: “We didn’t have time to shop. Ottilie, this is lovely. Cake and all! Shall I be mother?” The visitors disposed themselves around the empty fireplace and ate with gusto, while the tenants of the house hovered uncertainly, temporarily dispossessed. Edward muttered something and went out. Bunny watched the door closing behind him and then turned eagerly to Charlotte. “How is he?” eyes alight, dying to know, tell me tell me.

There was a moment’s silence.

“Oh,” Charlotte said, “not. . I mean. . all right, you know.”

Bunny put down her cup and sat, a study in sorrow and sympathy, shaking her head. “You poor thing; you poor thing.” She looked up at me. “I suppose you know about. .?”

“ No ,” Charlotte said swiftly.

Bunny put a hand to her mouth. “Oops, sorry.”

Edward came back bearing the whiskey bottle. “Here we are: now, who’s for a snort?” He paused, catching something in the silence. Then he shrugged. “Well I am,” he said, “for one. Tom: you? And I know you will.” He poured Mittler and me a measure each. Tom Mittler said: “Thanky voo.” Edward lifted his glass. “What will we drink to?”

“August the twenty-seventh,” Bunny said, quick as a flash.

They turned blank looks on her. I remembered.

“Mountbatten?” I said. One of their dwindling band of heroes, cruelly murdered. I was charmed: only they would dare to make a memorial of a drawing-room tea party. “Terrible thing, terrible.”

I was soon disabused. She smiled her little smile at me. “And don’t forget Warrenpoint: eighteen paras, and an earl, all on the one day.”

“Jesus, Bunny,” Edward said.

She was still looking at me, amused and glittering. “Don’t mind him,” she said playfully, “he’s a West Brit, self-made. I think we should name a street after it, like the French do. The glorious twenty-seventh!”

I glanced at her husband, guzzling his tea. Someone had said he was a solicitor. He had a good twenty years on her. Feeling my eye on him he looked up, and smoothed a freckled hand on his scant sandy hair and said cheerfully: “She’s off?”

Bunny poured herself another cup of tea, smirking.