The Bell - Iris Murdoch [91]
When the record ended they fell exhausted to the floor, laughing with triumph after the ritual solemnity of the dance. Then when their laughter ended they regarded each other, sitting entwined upon the floor, still hand in hand. 'Fight!' said Noel. 'Don't forget, fight! And now, dearest creature, I must leave you to go and get the only thing which is missing, which is a bottle of wine. I won't be a moment. You know, the off-licence is just round the corner. Let me fill your glass again. You can amuse yourself meanwhile getting the things out of the fridge.'
He kissed Dora and went away down the stairs singing. When he had gone she sat for a while on the floor, sipping her replenished drink and enjoying the sense of sheer present physical being which the dance had given her. Then she got up and went to the kitchen and opened the fridge. A delicious meal seemed to be pending. She took out several kinds of salami, stuffed olives, pate, tomatoes, pickled cucumber, various cheeses, a hand of bananas, and a large thin piece of red steak. Dora, who liked her meals to tail away in a series of small treats, looked at the scene with satisfaction. She put the things on the table, and assembled round them the garlic, pepper, oil, vinegar, French mustard, sea salt, and all the apparatus she knew Noel liked to cook with. At his simple and appetizing repasts he was always the chef and Dora his admiring assistant. She felt extremely gay.
The telephone began ringing in the living-room. Absently Dora went back and lifted the receiver. Her mouth full of a handful of cocktail biscuits, she was not able to enunciate at once, and the caller at the other end had the first word. Paul's voice said: 'Hello, is that Brompton 8379?'
Dora froze. She swallowed the biscuits and held the phone away from her, staring at it as if it were a small savage animal. A silence followed.
Then Paul said, 'Hello, could I speak to Mr Spens?' Dora could just hear him speaking. Cautiously she brought the phone back to her ear. 'This is Paul Greenfield. Is my wife there?'
Dora knew that voice of Paul's, stiff, trembling with nervous anger. She hardly dared to breathe in case it should be audible. It seemed that Paul must know that she was there at the other end of the line. She couldn't bring herself to put the phone down. If she kept quiet perhaps Paul would think the number was unobtainable. Then Paul said 'Dora.'
As Dora heard her name her eyes closed, and her face wrinkled up in pain. But she kept icily still, scarcely breathing. 'Dora,' said Paul again, 'Dora, is that you?' Suddenly in the silence that followed another sound could be heard along the wire. For a moment Dora could not think what it was. Then she recognized it as a blackbird singing. The bird uttered a few notes and then was quiet. The telephone box at Imber was downstairs in the hallway by the refectory. The blackbird must be just outside on the terrace. It sang again, its song sounding clear and intolerably remote and strange in the silence after Paul's voice. Dora put the phone down noisily on the table. She went into the kitchen. She looked with a sort of amazement at the