The Secret History - Donna Tartt [30]
“Well, see you later,” Charles said, at the front door of Monmouth, his face pale in the glow of the porch lamp.
Off in the distance, I saw the lights in the dining hall, across Commons; could see dark silhouettes moving past the windows.
“It was fun,” I said, digging my hands in my pockets. “Want to come have dinner with me?”
“Afraid not. We ought to be getting home.”
“Oh, well,” I said, disappointed but relieved. “Some other time.”
“Well, you know …?” said Camilla, turning to Charles.
He furrowed his eyebrows. “Hmnn,” he said. “You’re right.”
“Come have dinner at our house,” said Camilla, turning impulsively back to me.
“Oh, no,” I said quickly.
“Please.”
“No, but thanks. It’s all right, really.”
“Oh, come on,” said Charles graciously. “We’re not having anything very good but we’d like you to come.”
I felt a rush of gratitude towards him. I did want to go, rather a lot. “If you’re sure it’s no trouble,” I said.
“No trouble at all,” said Camilla. “Let’s go.”
Charles and Camilla rented a furnished apartment on the third floor of a house in North Hampden. Stepping inside, one found oneself in a small living room with slanted walls and dormer windows. The armchairs and the lumpy sofa were upholstered in dusty brocades, threadbare at the arms: rose patterns on tan, acorns and oak leaves on mossy green. Everywhere were tattered doilies, dark with age. On the mantel of the fireplace (which I later discovered was inoperable) glittered a pair of lead-glass candelabra and a few pieces of tarnished silver plate.
Though not untidy, exactly, it verged on being so. Books were stacked on every available surface; the tables were cluttered with papers, ashtrays, bottles of whiskey, boxes of chocolates; umbrellas and galoshes made passage difficult in the narrow hall. In Charles’s room clothes were scattered on the rug and a rich confusion of ties hung from the door of the wardrobe; Camilla’s night table was littered with empty teacups, leaky pens, dead marigolds in a water glass, and on the foot of her bed was laid a half-played game of solitaire. The layout of the place was peculiar, with unexpected windows and halls that led nowhere and low doors I had to duck to get through, and everywhere I looked was some fresh oddity: an old stereopticon (the palmy avenues of a ghostly Nice, receding in the sepia distance); arrowheads in a dusty case; a staghorn fern; a bird’s skeleton.
Charles went into the kitchen and began to open and shut cabinets. Camilla made me a drink from a bottle of Irish whiskey which stood on top of a pile of National Geographics.
“Have you been to the La Brea tar pits?” she said, matter of fact.
“No.” Helplessly perplexed, I gazed at my drink.
“Imagine that. Charles,” she said, into the kitchen, “he lives in California and he’s never been to the La Brea tar pits.”
Charles emerged in the doorway, wiping his hands on a dish-towel. “Really?” he said, with childlike astonishment. “Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“But they’re so interesting. Really, just think of it.”
“Do you know many people here from California?” said Camilla.
“No.”
“You know Judy Poovey.”
I was startled: how did she know that? “She’s not my friend,” I said.
“Nor mine,” she said. “Last year she threw a drink in my face.”
“I heard about that,” I said, laughing, but she didn’t smile. “Don’t believe everything you hear,” she said, and took another sip of her drink. “Do you know who Cloke Rayburn is?”
I knew of him. There was a tight, fashionable clique of Californians at Hampden, mostly from San Francisco and L.A.; Cloke Rayburn was at its center, all bored smiles and sleepy eyes and cigarettes. The girls from Los Angeles, Judy Poovey included, were fanatically devoted to him. He was the sort you saw in the men’s room at parties, doing coke on the edge of the sink.
“He’s a friend of Bunny’s.”
“How’s that?” I said, surprised.
“They were at prep school together. At Saint Jerome’s in Pennsylvania.”
“You know Hampden,” said Charles, taking a large gulp of his drink.