Donna Tartt - The Secret History

'I've seen you leave the top down in the rain before.' said Charles curtly. He was at the counter, his back to Francis, pouring himself a drink. His hair was plastered to his head and a small puddle was forming round him on the linoleum.

'What,' said Francis, through his teeth. 'I never.'

'Yes you have,' said Charles, without turning around.

'Name one time.'

'Okay. What about that afternoon you and I were in Manchester, and it was about two weeks before school started, and we decided to go to the Equinox House for '

That was a summer afternoon. It was sprinkling.'

'It was not. It was raining hard. You just don't want to talk about that now because that was the afternoon you tried to get f me to ' it 'You're crazy,' said Francis. That doesn't have anything to do with this. It's dark as hell and pouring rain and you're drunk out of your skull. It's a miracle you didn't kill somebody. Where the hell did you go for those cigarettes, anyway? There's not a store around here for '

'I'm not drunk.'

'Ha, ha. Tell me. Where'd you get those cigarettes? I'd like to know. I bet '

'I said I'm not drunk.'

'Yeah, sure. I bet you didn't even buy any cigarettes. If you did, they must be soaking wet. Where are they, anyway?'

'Leave me alone.'

'No. Really. Show them to me. I'd like to see these famous -'

Charles slammed down his glass and spun around. 'Leave me alone,' he hissed.

It was not the tone of his voice, exactly, as much as the look on his face which was so terrible. Francis stared, his mouth fallen slightly open. For about ten long seconds there was no sound but the rhythmic tick tick tick of the water dripping from Charles's sodden clothes.

I took Henry's Scorch and soda, lots of ice, and his water, no ice, and walked past Francis, out the swinging door and down to the basement.

It rained hard all night. My nose tickled from the dust in the sleeping bag, and the basement floor – which was poured concrete beneath a thin, comfortless layer of indoor-outdoor carpeting – made my bones ache whichever way I turned. The rain drummed on the high windows, and the floodlights, shining through the glass, cast a pattern on the walls as if dark rivulets of water were streaming down them from ceiling to floor.

Charles snored on his cot, his mouth open; Francis grumbled in his sleep. Occasionally a car swooshed by in the rain and its headlights would swing round momentarily and illuminate the room – the pool table, the snowshoes on the wall and the rowing machine, the armchair in which Henry sat, motionless, a glass in his hand and the cigarette burning low between his fingers. For a moment his face, pale and watchful as a ghost's, would be caught in the headlights and then, very gradually, it would slide back into the dark.

In the morning I woke up sore and disoriented to the sound of a loose shutter banging somewhere. The rain was falling harder than ever. It lashed in rhythmic waves against the windows of the white, brightly lit kitchen as we guests sat around the table and ate a silent, cheerless breakfast of coffee and Pop Tarts.

The Corcorans were upstairs, dressing. Cloke and Bram and Rooney drank coffee with their elbows on the table and talked in low voices. They were freshly showered and shaven, cocky in their Sunday suits but uneasy, too, as if they were about to go to court. Francis – puff-eyed, his stiff red hair full of absurd cowlicks – was still in his bathrobe. He had got up late and was in a state of barely contained outrage because all the hot water in the downstairs tank was gone.

He and Charles were across the table from each other, and took great pains to avoid looking in the other's direction. Marion – red-eyed, her hair in hot curlers – was sullen and silent, too.

She was dressed very smartly, in a navy suit, but with fuzzy pink slippers over her fleshtone nylons. Every now and then she would reach up and put her hands on the rollers to see if they were cooling off.

Henry, among us, was the only pallbearer – the other five being family friends or business associates of Mr Corcoran's. I wondered if the coffin was very heavy and, if so, how Henry would manage. Though he emitted a faint, ammoniac odor of sweat and Scotch he did not look at all drunk. The pills had sunk him into a glassy, fathomless calm. Threads of smoke floated up from a filterless cigarette whose coal burned dangerously near his fingertips. It was a state which might have seemed a suspiciously narcotic one except that it differed so little from his customary manner.

It was a little after nine-thirty by the kitchen clock. The funeral was set for eleven. Francis went off to dress and Marion to take her rollers out. The rest of us were still sitting around the kitchen table, awkward and inert, pretending to enjoy our second and third cups of coffee when Teddy's wife marched in. She was a hard-faced, pretty litigation lawyer who smoked constantly and wore her blond hair in a China chop. With her was Hugh's wife: a small, mild-mannered woman who looked far too young and frail to have borne as many children as she had. By an unfortunate coincidence, both of them were named Lisa, which made for a lot of confusion around the house.

'Henry,' said the first Lisa, leaning forward and jamming out her half-smoked Vantage so it crooked at a right angle in the ashtray. She was wearing Giorgio perfume and far too much of it. 'We're driving to the church now to arrange the flowers in the chancel and collect the cards before the service starts. Ted's mother' – both Lisas disliked Mrs Corcoran, a feeling which was heartily reciprocated – 'said you should drive over with us so that you can meet with the pallbearers. Okay?'

Henry, the light winking off the steel rims of his glasses, gave no indication of having heard her. I was about to kick him under the table when, very slowly, he looked up.

'Why?' he said.

'The pallbearers are supposed to meet in the vestibule at ten-fifteen.'

'Why?' repeated Henry, with Vedic calm.

'I don't know why. I'm just telling you what she said. This stuff is planned out like synchronized swimming or some damn thing. Are you ready to go, or do you need a minute?'

'Now, Brandon,' said Hugh's wife weakly to her little son, who had run into the kitchen and was attempting to swing from his mother's arms like an ape. 'Please. You're going to hurt Mother. Brandon.'

'Lisa, you shouldn't let him hang all over you like that,' said the first Lisa, glancing at her watch.

'Please, Brandon. Mother's got to go now.'

'He's too big to act like that. You know he is. If I were you, I would just take him in the bathroom and tear him up.'

Mrs Corcoran came down about twenty minutes later, in black crepe de Chine, riffling through a quilted-leather clutch. 'Where is everybody?' she said when she saw only Camilla, Sophie Dearbold and me loafing by the trophy case.

When no one answered her, she paused on the stair, annoyed.

'Well?' she said. 'Has everybody left? Where's Francis?'

'I think he's dressing,' I said, glad she'd asked something I could answer without having to lie. From where she stood on the stairs she could not see what the rest of us saw, quite clearly, through the glass doors of the living room: Cloke and Bram and Rooney, Charles with them, all of them standing around under the sheltered part of the terrace getting stoned. It was odd to see Charles of all people smoking pot and the only reason I could think why he was doing it was because he thought it would brace him up, the way a stiff drink might. If so, I felt certain he was in for a nasty surprise. When I was twelve and thirteen I used to get high at school every day – not because I liked it, it broke me out in cold sweats and panic – but because in the lower grades it was such a fabulous prestige to be thought a pothead, also because I was so expert at hiding the paranoiac flulike symptoms it gave me.