The doorbell rang. David flinched, but the three of them continued to stand locked together in a triangle of tension. There was an aroma of destruction rising among them like smoke.
Finally, David said as slowly and quietly as if he were explaining something immensely complicated to a lunatic holding a gun, ‘The deal’s not in Rome, Elizabeth. We work on lots of things together, Madeleine and I. I work with all these kids, all the time.’
There was a pause. He went on in a brighter, dismissive tone, ‘I told you, they are fantastic. Brilliant. Really, really special. So let’s get this party sparkling now, shall we? What about champagne for you two? Shall I get you some?’
Elizabeth didn’t answer. She let go of the pendant on her necklace and reached up with both hands around the back of her neck to the clasp.
David stared at the pendant. At last he, too, saw what it was. A large pewtery disk of fossil in the tightly spiralling shape of a snail, a horn-shaped ammonite, gold-mounted and embellished with an off-round, baroque pearl so luminous and fresh that its dimpled, opalescent layers seemed to be still dripping down it like viscous wet paint. His eyes went to Madeleine’s ear, then back to the necklace.
Elizabeth unhooked the necklace quickly, and as she swung it past the Pre-Raphaelite loop of her hair, she caught it on something, a hairpin maybe, and her hair tumbled down wildly around her shoulders.
She held the necklace out toward Madeleine in her shaky right hand and said ever so quietly, ever so clearly, with a courteoussounding upward lilt, ‘I think this is yours?’
Madeleine didn’t move, so Elizabeth dropped the necklace on the floor between them. It made a concentrated thud on the parquet, a heavy, focused clunk; a few people turned to look. David stepped backwards and bent down to pick it up. Madeleine crossed her arms tightly over her chest, her eyes lowered, watching him.
The ammonite was cracked through.
Then, before David could stand up again, Elizabeth swept out through the double doors, passing two of her guests on the landing without acknowledging them, her long blonde hair flashing crazily, her chiffon layers floating and trembling on the air as she quickly, jerkily mounted the stairs.
For Boband for Ted
Table of Contents
Books Edited By Katherine Bucknell
It was twilight, that long English twilight that goes on forever in June. London clanged and hummed somewhere above the rooftops and beyond the pendulous, dusty green of the garden square as David dropped his carry-on bag in the tiled portico and fitted his skeleton key in the top lock. The massive black door was swollen tight with late-afternoon heat. The bolt scraped uncomfortably, and then the slim Yale key felt as though it might snap off rather than release the latch. He heard his taxi shudder into gear and pull away. The door swung back on an empty house. No one greeted him; they had left this morning.
He slung the bag into the bare hallway, shutting the door. There was no table and no silver tray to drop his keys on, nothing but the wide limestone paving slabs and a few skittering pieces of the movers’ shredded cardboard stirred up by his entrance. He turned around where he stood, holding the keys in the air, searching, as if the table and the tray might magically reappear. But they’d gone to Virginia with Elizabeth and the children. He decided to put the keys back in his pinstriped trouser pocket.
The hallway seemed enormous. Had the staircase always been so far from the door, he wondered? His shoes echoed on the stone floor; he liked the sound, the sharp, official click of his heavy-heeled black brogues. He put his hands in his trouser pockets, feeling the keys there, and began striding through the dim, quiet rooms, casually, just to see. She’d left him a little round table and a chair in the dining-room, wrapped around by the splendor of her green, oriental silk wallpaper—as if he might want to eat at home, all alone, watched over by printed Chinamen and ferns.
He pulled the keys from his pocket, dropped them on the little round table, then strolled back along the hall and climbed the stairs, his shoes sliding precariously on the thick, woven-straw runner, silenced. He gripped the polished wood banister, and, out of habit, glanced up as he mounted and swung slowly around toward the drawing-room door. The stairwell seemed to swirl away backwards above him, narrower and tighter as it rose, floor upon deserted floor, all the way to the so-called nursery below the rafters.
That word will never fly back in Virginia, David thought. Nursery. The Edwardian childhood