The Secret History - Donna Tartt [133]
I was speechless, agog. He blinked at me, irritated, and was about to speak when there was a sudden crackle of branches and I turned in amazement just in time to see Camilla, clad in khaki trousers, clambering down the trunk of a tree.
“What’s going on?” I heard Francis say, somewhere very close. “Can I have a cigarette now?”
Henry didn’t answer. “What are you doing here?” he said in a very annoyed tone of voice.
“There’s a party today.”
“What?”
“A party. He’s there now.” I paused. “He’s not going to come.”
“See, I told you,” said Francis, aggrieved, stepping gingerly from the brush and wiping his hands. Characteristically, he was not dressed for the occasion and had on sort of a nice suit. “Nobody listens to me. I said we should have left an hour ago.”
“How do you know he’s at the party?” said Henry.
“He left a note. In the library.”
“Let’s go home,” said Charles, wiping a muddy smudge off his cheek with the heel of his hand.
Henry wasn’t paying any attention to him. “Damn,” he said, and shook his head quickly, like a dog shaking off water. “I’d so hoped we’d be able to get it over with.”
There was a long pause.
“I’m hungry,” said Charles.
“Starving,” Camilla said absently, and then her eyes widened. “Oh, no.”
“What is it?” said everyone at once.
“Dinner. Tonight’s Sunday. He’s coming to our house for dinner tonight.”
There was a gloomy silence.
“I never thought about it,” Charles said. “Not once.”
“I didn’t either,” said Camilla. “And we don’t have a thing to eat at home.”
“We’ll have to stop at the grocery store on the way back.”
“What can we get?”
“I don’t know. Something quick.”
“I can’t believe you two,” Henry said crossly. “I reminded you of this last night.”
“But we forgot,” said the twins, in simultaneous despair.
“How could you?”
“Well, if you wake up intending to murder someone at two o’clock, you hardly think what you’re going to feed the corpse for dinner.”
“Asparagus is in season,” said Francis helpfully.
“Yes, but do they have it at the Food King?”
Henry sighed and started off towards the woods.
“Where are you going?” Charles said in alarm.
“I’m going to dig up a couple of ferns. Then we can leave.”
“Oh, let’s just forget about it,” said Francis, lighting a cigarette and tossing away the match. “Nobody’s going to see us.”
Henry turned around. “Somebody might. If they do, I certainly want to have an excuse for having been here. And pick up that match,” he said sourly to Francis, who blew out a cloud of smoke and glared at him.
It was getting darker by the minute and cold, too. I buttoned my jacket and sat on a damp rock that overlooked the ravine, staring at the muddy, leaf-clogged rill that trickled below and half-listening to the twins argue about what they were going to make for dinner. Francis leaned against a tree, smoking. After a while he put out the cigarette on the sole of his shoe and came over to sit beside me.
Minutes passed. The sky was so overcast it was almost purple. A wind swayed through a luminous clump of birches on the opposite bank, and I shivered. The twins were arguing monotonously. Whenever they were in moods like this—disturbed, upset—they tended to sound like Heckle and Jeckle.
All of a sudden Henry emerged from the woods in a flurry of underbrush, wiping his dirt-caked hands on his trousers. “Somebody’s coming,” he said quietly.
The twins stopped talking and blinked at him.
“What?” said Charles.
“Around the back way. Listen.”
We were quiet, looking at each other. A chilly breeze rustled through the woods and a gust of white dogwood petals blew into the clearing.
“I don’t hear anything,” Francis said.
Henry put a finger to his lips. The five of us stood poised, waiting, for a moment longer. I took a breath, and was about to speak when all of a sudden I did hear something.
Footsteps, the crackle of branches. We looked at one another. Henry bit his lip and glanced quickly around. The ravine was bare, no place to hide, no way for the rest of us to run across the clearing