The Hollow - Agatha Christie [45]
He said earnestly:
‘Henrietta, dearest, do believe this–that I do sympathize with you–in–in your grief, your loss.’
‘Is it grief ?’
The question startled him. She seemed to be asking it, not of him, but of herself.
She said in a low voice:
‘So quick–it can happen so quickly. One moment living, breathing, and the next–dead–gone–emptiness. Oh, the emptiness! And here we are, all of us, eating caramel custard and calling ourselves alive–and John, who was more alive than any of us, is dead. I say the word, you know, over and over again to myself. Dead–dead–dead–dead–dead. And soon it hasn’t got any meaning–not any meaning at all. It’s just a funny little word like the breaking off of a rotten branch. Dead–dead–dead–dead. It’s like a tom-tom, isn’t it, beating in the jungle. Dead–dead–dead–dead–dead–’
‘Henrietta, stop! For God’s sake, stop!’
She looked at him curiously.
‘Didn’t you know I’d feel like this? What did you think? That I’d sit gently crying into a nice little pocket handkerchief while you held my hand? That it would all be a great shock but that presently I’d begin to get over it? And that you’d comfort me very nicely? You are nice, Edward. You’re very nice, but you’re so–so inadequate.’
He drew back. His face stiffened. He said in a dry voice:
‘Yes, I’ve always known that.’
She went on fiercely:
‘What do you think it’s been like all the evening, sitting round, with John dead and nobody caring but me and Gerda! With you glad, and David embarrassed and Midge distressed and Lucy delicately enjoying the News of the World come from print into real life! Can’t you see how like a fantastic nightmare it all is?’
Edward said nothing. He stepped back a pace, into shadows.
Looking at him, Henrietta said:
‘Tonight–nothing seems real to me, nobody is real–but John!’
Edward said quietly: ‘I know…I am not very real.’
‘What a brute I am, Edward. But I can’t help it. I can’t help resenting that John, who was so alive, is dead.’
‘And that I who am half-dead, am alive.’
‘I didn’t mean that, Edward.’
‘I think you did, Henrietta. I think, perhaps, you are right.’
But she was saying, thoughtfully, harking back to an earlier thought:
‘But it is not grief. Perhaps I cannot feel grief. Perhaps I never shall. And yet–I would like to grieve for John.’
Her words seemed to him fantastic. Yet he was even more startled when she added suddenly, in an almost businesslike voice:
‘I must go to the swimming pool.’
She glided away through the trees.
Walking stiffly, Edward went through the open window.
Midge looked up as Edward came through the window with unseeing eyes. His face was grey and pinched. It looked bloodless.
He did not hear the little gasp that Midge stifled immediately.
Almost mechanically he walked to a chair and sat down. Aware of something expected of him, he said:
‘It’s cold.’
‘Are you very cold, Edward? Shall we–shall I–light a fire?’
‘What?’
Midge took a box of matches from the mantelpiece. She knelt down and set a match to the fire. She looked cautiously sideways at Edward. He was quite oblivious, she thought, of everything.
She said: ‘A fire is nice. It warms one.’
‘How cold he looks,’ she thought. ‘But it can’t be as cold as that outside? It’s Henrietta! What has she said to him?’
‘Bring your chair nearer, Edward. Come close to the fire.’
‘What?’
‘Oh, it was nothing. Just the fire.’
She was talking to him now loudly and slowly, as though to a deaf person.
And suddenly, so suddenly that her heart turned over with relief, Edward, the real Edward, was there again. Smiling at her gently:
‘Have you been talking to me, Midge? I’m sorry. I’m afraid I was thinking–thinking of something.’
‘Oh, it was nothing. Just the fire.’
The sticks were crackling and some fir-cones were burning with a bright, clean flame. Edward looked at them. He said:
‘It’s a nice fire.’
He stretched out his long, thin hands to the blaze, aware of relief from tension.
Midge said: ‘We always had fir-cones at Ainswick.’
‘I still do. A basket of