The Secret History - Donna Tartt [234]
Henry, across the table, was absolutely inscrutable. I tried to catch Francis’s glance; he slid me a quick look, bit his lip and glanced away.
“… and flowers,” said Julian, “you’ve never seen so many flowers, she had so many I could only suspect that she was sending at least some of them to herself.” He laughed. “Anyway. I suppose there’s no need to ask where Camilla is this morning.”
I saw Francis’s eyes snap open. For a moment I was startled too, before I realized that he’d assumed—naturally, of course—that she was at the hospital with Charles.
Julian’s eyebrows went down. “What’s wrong?” he said.
The utter blankness which met this question made him smile.
“It doesn’t do to be too Spartan about these things,” he said kindly, after a very long pause; and I was grateful to see that, as usual, he was projecting his own tasteful interpretations upon the confusion. “Edmund was your friend. I too am very sorry that he is dead. But I think you are grieving yourselves sick over this, and not only does that not help him, it hurts you. And besides, is death really so terrible a thing? It seems terrible to you, because you are young, but who is to say he is not better off now than you are? Or—if death is a journey to another place—that you will not see him again?”
He opened his lexicon and began to search for his place. “It does not do to be frightened of things about which you know nothing,” he said. “You are like children. Afraid of the dark.”
Francis didn’t have his car with him, so after class I got Henry to drive me to Charles’s apartment. Francis—who came too—was nervous and on edge, chain-smoking and pacing in the foyer while Henry stood in the bedroom door and watched me get Charles’s things: quiet, expressionless, his eyes following me with an abstract calculation that entirely precluded the possibility of my asking him about Camilla—which I had determined to do as soon as we were alone—or, in fact, of asking practically anything at all.
I got the book, the letter paper, the bathrobe. The Scotch I hesitated over.
“What’s the matter?” said Henry.
I put the bottle back in the drawer and shut it. “Nothing,” I said. Charles, I knew, would be furious. I would have to think of a good excuse.
He nodded at the closed drawer. “Did he ask you to bring that to him?” he said.
I did not feel like discussing Charles’s personal business with Henry. I said: “He asked for cigarettes, too, but I don’t think he ought to have them.”
Francis had been pacing in the hall outside, prowling restlessly back and forth like a cat. During this exchange he paused in the door. Now I saw him dart a quick worried glance at Henry. “Well, you know …?” he said hesitantly.
Henry said to me: “If he wants it—the bottle, that is—I think you’d better go ahead and take it to him.”
His tone annoyed me. “He’s sick,” I said. “You haven’t even seen him. If you think you’re doing him a favor by—”
“Richard, he’s right,” said Francis nervously, tapping a cigarette ash into his cupped palm. “I know about this a little bit. Sometimes, if you drink, it’s dangerous to stop too suddenly. Makes you sick. People can die of it.”
I was shocked by this. Charles’s drinking had never seemed so bad as all that. I did not comment on this, though, only said: “Well, if he’s that bad off, he’ll do a lot better in the hospital, won’t he?”
“What do you mean?” said Francis. “Do you want them to put him in a detox? Do you know what that’s like? When my mother came off drink that first time, she was out of her head. Seeing things. Wrestling with the nurse and yelling nutty stuff at the top of her lungs.”
“Hate to think of Charles having DTs in the Catamount Memorial Hospital,” said Henry. He went to the night table and got the bottle. It was a fifth, a little less than half full. “This will be cumbersome for him to hide,” he said, holding it up by the neck.
“We could pour it