Donna Tartt - The Secret History

'Look!' he said, in a tone of hushed awe.

'Since it's only for a night,' Mrs Corcoran said to us, 'I'm sure that no one will mind doubling up.'

As we were leaving with Brady, Mr Corcoran plumped the baby down on the hearth rug and was rolling around, tickling him. I could hear the baby's high screams of terror and delight all the way down the stairs.

We were to stay in the basement. Along the back wall, near the Ping-Pong and pool tables, several army cots had been set up, and in the corner was a pile of sleeping bags.

'Isn't this wretched,' said Francis as soon as we were alone.

'It's just for tonight.'

'I can't sleep in rooms with lots of people. I'll be up all night.'

I sat down on a cot. The room had a damp, unused smell and the light from the lamp over the pool table was greenish and depressing.

'It's dusty, too,' said Francis. 'I think we ought to just go check into a hotel.'

Sniffing noisily, he complained about the dust as he searched for an ashtray but deadly radon could have been seeping into the room, it didn't matter to me. All I wondered was how, in the name of Heaven and a merciful God, was I going to make it through the hours ahead. We had been there only twenty minutes and already I felt like shooting myself.

He was still complaining and I was still sunk in despair when Camilla came down. She was wearing jet earrings, patent-leather shoes, a natty, closely cut black velvet suit.

'Hello,' Francis said, handing her a cigarette. 'Let's go check into the Ramada Inn.'

As she put the cigarette between her parched lips I realized how much I'd missed her for the last few days.

'Oh, you don't have it so bad,' she said. 'Last night,' had to sleep with Marion.'

'Same room?'

'Same bed.'

Francis's eyes widened with admiration and horror. 'Oh, really? Oh, I say. That's awful,' he said in a hushed, respectful voice.

'Charles is upstairs with her now. She's hysterical because somebody asked that poor girl who rode down with you.'

'Where's Henry?'

'Haven't you seen him yet?'

'I saw him. I didn't talk to him.'

She paused to blow out a cloud of smoke. 'How does he seem to you?'

'I've seen him looking better. Why?'

'Because he's sick. Those headaches.'

'One of the bad ones?'

'That's what he says.'

Francis looked at her in disbelief. 'How is he up and walking around, then?'

'I don't know. He's all doped up. He has his pills and he's been taking them for days.'

'Well, where is he now? Why isn't he in bed?'

'I don't know. Mrs Corcoran just sent him down to the Cumberland Farms to get that damn baby a quart of milk.'

'Can he drive?'

'I have no idea,' 'Francis,' I said, 'your cigarette.'

He jumped up, grabbed for it too quickly and burned his fingers. He'd laid it on the edge of the pool table and the coal had burned down to the wood; a charred spot was spreading on the varnish.

'Boys?' Mrs Corcoran called from the head of the stairs. 'Boys?

Do you mind if I come down to check the thermostat?'

'Quick,' Camilla whispered, mashing out her cigarette. 'We're not supposed to smoke down here.'

'Who's there?' said Mrs Corcoran sharply. 'Is something burning?'

'No, ma'am,' Francis said, wiping at the burned spot and scrambling to hide the cigarette butt as she came down the steps.

It was one of the worst nights of my life. The house was filling with people and the hours passed in a dreadful streaky blur of relatives, neighbors, crying children, covered dishes, blocked driveways, ringing telephones, bright lights, strange faces, awkward conversations. Some swinish, hard-faced man trapped me in a corner for hours, boasting of bass tournaments and businesses in Chicago and Nashville and Kansas City until finally I excused myself and locked myself in an upstairs bathroom, ignoring the beating and piteous cries of an unknown toddler who pled, weeping, for admittance.

Dinner was set out at seven, an unappetizing combination of gourmet carry-out – orzo salad, duck in Campari, miniature foie gras tarts – and food the neighbors had made: tuna casseroles, gelatin molds in Tupperware, and a frightful dessert called a 'wacky cake' that I am at a loss to even describe. People roamed with paper plates. It was dark outside and raining. Hugh Corcoran, in shirtsleeves, went around with a bottle freshening drinks, nudging his way through the dark, murmuring crowd.

He brushed by me without a glance. Of all the brothers, he bore the strongest resemblance to Bunny (Bunny's death was starting to seem some horrible kind of generative act, more Bunnys popping up everywhere I looked, Bunnys coming out of the I woodwork), and it was akin to looking into the future and seeing what Bunny would have looked like at thirty-five, just as looking at his father was like seeing him at sixty. I knew him and he didn't know me. I had a strong, nearly irresistible urge to take him by the arm, say something to him, what I didn't know: just to see the brows drop abruptly in the way I knew so well, to see the startled expression in the naive, muddy eyes. ft was I killed the old pawnbroker woman and her sister Lizaveta with an axe and robbed them.

Laughter, vertigo. Strangers kept wandering up and talking at me. I disengaged myself from one of Bunny's teenaged cousins – who, upon hearing I was from California, had begun to ask me a lot of very complicated questions about surfing – and, swimming through the hobbling crowd, found Henry. He was standing by himself in front of some glass doors, his back to the room, smoking a cigarette.

I stood beside him. He didn't look at me or speak. The doors faced out on a barren, floodlit terrace – black cinder, privet in concrete urns, a statue artfully broken in white pieces on the ground. Rain slanted in the lights, which were angled to cast long, dramatic shadows. The effect was fashionable, post-nuclear but ancient, too, like some pumice-strewn courtyard from Pompeii.

That is the ugliest garden I have ever seen,' I said.

'Yes,' said Henry. He was very pale. 'Rubble and ash.'

People laughed and talked behind us. The lights, through the rain-spattered window, cast a pattern of droplets trickling down his face.

'Maybe you'd better lie down,' I said after a while.

He bit his lip. The ash on his cigarette was about an inch long.

'I don't have any more medicine,' he said.

I looked at the side of his face. 'Can you get along?'

'I guess I'll have to, won't I?' he said without moving.

Camilla locked the door of the bathroom behind us and the two of us, on our hands and knees, began to rummage through the mess of prescription bottles under the sink.

' "For high blood pressure,"' she read.

'No.'

'"For asthma.'"

There was a knock on the door.

'Somebody's in here,' I yelled.

Camilla's head was wedged all the way in the cabinet by the water pipes, so that her rear end stuck out. I could hear the medicine bottles clinking. '"Inner ear"?' she said, her voice muffled. ' "One cap twice daily"?'

'Let's see.'

She handed me some antibiotics, at least ten years old.

'This won't do,' I said, edging closer. 'Do you see anything with a no-refill sticker? From a dentist, maybe?'

'No.'

' "May Cause Drowsiness"? "Do Not Drive or Operate Heavy Machinery"?'

Someone knocked on the door again and rattled the knob. I knocked back, then reached up and turned on both taps full-blast.

Our findings were not good. If Henry had been suffering from poison ivy, hay fever, rheumatism, pinkeye, we would have been in luck but the only painkiller they had was Excedrin. Out of sheer desperation I took a handful, also two ambiguous capsules that had a Drowsiness sticker but which I suspected of being antihistamines.

I'd thought our mystery guest had left, but venturing out I was annoyed to find Cloke lurking outside. He gave me a contemptuous look that turned to a stare when Camilla – hair tousled, tugging at her skirt – stepped out behind me.