The Secret History - Donna Tartt [199]
Charles snored on his cot, his mouth open; Francis grumbled in his sleep. Occasionally a car swooshed by in the rain and its headlights would swing round momentarily and illuminate the room—the pool table, the snowshoes on the wall and the rowing machine, the armchair in which Henry sat, motionless, a glass in his hand and the cigarette burning low between his fingers. For a moment his face, pale and watchful as a ghost’s, would be caught in the headlights and then, very gradually, it would slide back into the dark.
In the morning I woke up sore and disoriented to the sound of a loose shutter banging somewhere. The rain was falling harder than ever. It lashed in rhythmic waves against the windows of the white, brightly lit kitchen as we guests sat around the table and ate a silent, cheerless breakfast of coffee and Pop Tarts.
The Corcorans were upstairs, dressing. Cloke and Bram and Rooney drank coffee with their elbows on the table and talked in low voices. They were freshly showered and shaven, cocky in their Sunday suits but uneasy, too, as if they were about to go to court. Francis—puff-eyed, his stiff red hair full of absurd cowlicks—was still in his bathrobe. He had got up late and was in a state of barely contained outrage because all the hot water in the downstairs tank was gone.
He and Charles were across the table from each other, and took great pains to avoid looking in the other’s direction. Marion—red-eyed, her hair in hot curlers—was sullen and silent, too. She was dressed very smartly, in a navy suit, but with fuzzy pink slippers over her fleshtone nylons. Every now and then she would reach up and put her hands on the rollers to see if they were cooling off.
Henry, among us, was the only pallbearer—the other five being family friends or business associates of Mr. Corcoran’s. I wondered if the coffin was very heavy and, if so, how Henry would manage. Though he emitted a faint, ammoniac odor of sweat and Scotch he did not look at all drunk. The pills had sunk him into a glassy, fathomless calm. Threads of smoke floated up from a filterless cigarette whose coal burned dangerously near his fingertips. It was a state which might have seemed a suspiciously narcotic one except that it differed so little from his customary manner.
It was a little after nine-thirty by the kitchen clock. The funeral was set for eleven. Francis went off to dress and Marion to take her rollers out. The rest of us were still sitting around the kitchen table, awkward and inert, pretending to enjoy our second and third cups of coffee when Teddy’s wife marched in. She was a hard-faced, pretty litigation lawyer who smoked constantly and wore her blond hair in a China chop. With her was Hugh’s wife: a small, mild-mannered woman who looked far too young and frail to have borne as many children as she had. By an unfortunate coincidence, both of them were named Lisa, which made for a lot of confusion around the house.
“Henry,” said the first Lisa, leaning forward and jamming out her half-smoked Vantage so it crooked at a right angle in the ashtray. She was wearing Giorgio perfume and far too much of it. “We’re driving to the church now to arrange the flowers in the chancel and collect the cards before the service starts. Ted’s mother”—both Lisas disliked Mrs. Corcoran, a feeling which was heartily reciprocated—“said you should drive over with us so that you can meet with the pallbearers. Okay?”
Henry, the light winking off the steel rims of his glasses, gave no indication of having heard her. I was about to kick him under the table when, very slowly, he looked up.
“Why?” he said.
“The pallbearers are supposed to meet in the vestibule at ten-fifteen.”
“Why?” repeated Henry, with Vedic calm.
“I don’t know why. I’m just telling you what she said. This stuff is planned out like synchronized swimming or some damn thing. Are you ready to go, or do you need a minute?”
“Now, Brandon,” said Hugh’s wife weakly to her little son, who had run