The Secret History - Donna Tartt [130]
“Maybe I could dissuade him.”
“That’s frankly not a chance I’m willing to take.”
“In my opinion, you’re talking about taking a much greater one.”
“Look,” said Henry evenly, raising his head and fixing me with a bleary gaze. “Forgive me for being blunt, but if you think you have any influence over Bunny you’re sadly mistaken. He’s not particularly fond of you, and, if I may speak plainly, as far as I know he never has been. It would be disastrous if you of all people tried to intercede.”
“I was the one he came to.”
“For obvious reasons, none of them very sentimental.” He shrugged. “As long as I was sure he hadn’t told anyone, we might have waited indefinitely. But you were the alarm bell, Richard. Having told you—nothing happened, he’ll think, it wasn’t so bad—he’ll find it twice as easy to tell a second person. And a third. He’s taken the first step on a downward slope. Now that he has, I feel that we’re in for an extremely rapid progression of events.”
My palms were sweating. In spite of the open window, the room seemed close and stuffy. I could hear everybody breathing; quiet, measured breaths that came and went with awful regularity, four sets of lungs, eating at the thin oxygen
Henry folded his fingers and flexed them, at arm’s length, until they cracked. “You can go now, if you like,” he said to me.
“Do you want me to?” I said rather sharply.
“You can stay or not,” he said. “But there’s no reason why you must. I wanted to give you a rough idea, but in a certain sense the fewer details you know, the better.” He yawned. “There were some things you had to know, I suppose, but I feel I’ve done you a disservice by involving you this far.”
I stood up and looked around the table.
“Well,” I said. “Well well well.”
Francis raised an eyebrow at me.
“Wish us luck,” said Henry.
I clapped him awkwardly on the shoulder. “Good luck,” I said.
Charles—out of Henry’s line of vision—caught my eye. He smiled and mouthed the words: I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?
Suddenly, and without warning, I was overcome by a rush of emotion. Afraid I would say or do something childish, something I’d regret, I got into my coat and drank the rest of my coffee in a long gulp and left, without even the most perfunctory of goodbyes.
On my way home through the dark woods, my head down and my hands in my pockets, I ran virtually headlong into Camilla. She was very drunk and in an exhilarated mood.
“Hello,” she said, linking her arm though mine and leading me back in the direction from which I’d just come. “Guess what. I had a date.”
“So I heard.”
She laughed, a low, sweet chortle that warmed me to my heart. “Isn’t that funny?” she said. “I feel like such a spy. Bunny just went home. Now the problem is, I think Cloke kind of likes me.”
It was so dark I could hardly see her. The weight of her arm was wonderfully comfortable, and her gin-sweet breath was warm on my cheek.
“Did Cloke behave himself?” I said.
“Yes, he was very nice. He bought me dinner and some red drinks that tasted like Popsicles.”
We emerged from the woods into the deserted, blue-lit streets of North Hampden. Everything was silent and strange in the moonlight. A faint breeze tinkled in the wind chimes on someone’s porch.
When I stopped walking, she tugged at my arm. “Aren’t you coming?” she said.
“No.”
“Why not?”
Her hair was tousled, and her lovely mouth was stained dark by the Popsicle drink, and just by looking at her I could tell she didn’t have the faintest idea what was going on at Henry’s.
She would go with them tomorrow. Somebody would probably tell her that she didn’t have to go, but she would end up going with them anyway.
I coughed. “Look,” I said.
“What?”
“Come home with me.”
She lowered her eyebrows. “Now?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The wind chimes tinkled again; silvery, insidious.
“Because I want you to.”
She gazed at me with vacant, drunken composure, standing colt-like on the outer edge of her black-stockinged foot so the ankle was twisted inward in a startling, effortless L.
Her hand was in mine. I squeezed it hard.