The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [80]
The madness of this family (no offence there, Macy) made me feel like an old clucking maid: I thought of his daughter out there in the parlour, her disgrace when Trilipush never came back, when all of Boston society would learn she’d been engaged to a confidence trickster and a murderer, and he had abandoned her. The longer Finneran paid Trilipush, the farther off that day of reckoning, until finally Trilipush would simply vanish without a word, probably having taken enough of Finneran’s cash to refurbish the Trilipush estates back in Kent, Finneran’s new money coupling with Trilipush’s old name nicely. And when that day came, who’d have Margaret after something like that? I would, I saw, clear as a bell. I would.
I was gentle with Finneran. I said I thought Trilipush “might not be a wise investment, the evidence was certainly mixed.” He took that all right. So I tiptoed forward: perhaps, if Finneran was truly concerned about Margaret’s health and happiness, there were other men who could care for her better than this Englishman. There were too many risks attendant to a man already shown to be of dubious character, considering the Oxford news. I said my background investigation would take more time still, but perhaps better for him to find her a proven honest man, even if he weren’t an impoverished English toff. Finneran looked at me close, calmer now, seemed, I thought, to understand me. He nodded, thanked me for my time, said he would consider my words. But would she?
Her use of opium was a bit worrisome, I could see that. I wasn’t as blinded by her as all that, and I’m writing to you, as I said I would, Macy, without apology or softening of the truth. I assume, by the time she wed your uncle, that she’d freed herself of these youthful indulgences. But in October and November ’22, she was indulging. I don’t know how she administered it, but she was procuring it from the shady J. P. O’Toole up there on the catwalk. And when she’d come back down to the couch where we sat side by side, her eyes wide and her pupils tiny, I knew she’d gone far away. “Harry, darling, how queer you look. Why don’t you ever come with me? Would you, darling?” I never did. “I live a million years while you live just this one night,” she told me once as she drifted away, something she read in a book, I think. “A million years, Harry. Don’t you want to be interesting, and join me for a million years? Can you imagine the two of us going into eternity together, man and woman, two bodies entwined for a million years?” I’m proud, Macy, of what I used to do for your aunt in this condition. I protected her, just as her father would’ve wanted. The record should show who the gentleman was, between the poor Aussie working man and the toff Englishman. We’d stay in O’Toole’s establishment as long as necessary, and I’d wait for your aunt to return from her million-year voyages, hold her hand as she fell asleep, or stroke her hair and forehead. When she rejoined us mere mortals, I made sure she reached home safely and secretly. Yes, I repeat, I was worried about the opium, but to me it was only a part of her, and when she told me in her other, daytime, moods that it was just a toy she played with at her whim, certainly not worth mentioning to her overtaxed father, well, I had no strength to doubt her. And, looking back, obviously she was right. How else did she marry your uncle and live a happy life?
Wednesday, 25 October, 1922
Journal: Today the bellboy delivers me a souvenir worthy of some paste in my journal, a little programme note from our depraved era’s bureaucratic farce,