Banquet for the Damned

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

'What is it, dear?' Marcia asks, poised by the filing cabinet in Arthur's office; tall, her glamour subtle but not faded. 'You look worried. More than usual.' The handsome face is turned to him, smiling, full of sympathy, the eyebrows raised in concern. Arthur pushes a set of crisp papers to the side of his desk and sighs. 'Few things on my mind,' he says, sulky in the way that always seizes her attention and softens her voice.

'Can I get you a coffee?'

'No thanks. I have to get off. I have someone to see.'

She turns her body around. Whispers escape from inside her tweed suit. His ears are attuned to them. 'You can talk to me, Arthur.' His name is spoken, so softly.

Looking up, his vision blurs, then clears, and focuses on her face, broad enough to carry the lines, to spread the mouth, painted a dark red. Her perfume wells around his desk. 'Are you going somewhere?' he asks.

'No,' she says quickly; her eyes are smiling, surprise in them now.

'You look good. The theatre, I thought,' he stumbles, not at ease, the flirting awkward when they are alone and not before an audience.

'I thought I'd treat myself —' the cabinet drawer shuts with a whirr and then a click '— a little celebration. I've finished the collection.'

'Oh, you have. Good. Good,' Arthur says, relaxing, and feeling a little foolish. Her painting of course. She's dressed for dinner in celebration of finishing the seascapes. Very good from what he's seen. Her oils. One hung behind his desk. A picture of the pier. The perspective is right, the scene captured well; you know where you are, looking across the East Sands to the west with the cathedral on the hill. But there is something mournful about the picture. Are the colours too flat? Too brown and grey. Perhaps the light was poor at the time she painted it. When she presented it to him on his birthday, just after Christmas, the sombre tone surprised him. He never associated her with those colours.

'Jeff's away again, so I'm afraid it'll be dinner for one,' she says.

'Oh?'

'But I'm used to that now.'

The sense of opportunity glows inside him. The easiness of talking to her, of confessing, of using her patience and quiet smiles to ease the burden of his thoughts and thoughts and thoughts, ever circling in his head. He breathes in, dares himself, but looks down as if engaged in something of interest and says, offhand, 'It's a shame you have to celebrate alone.'

She raises an eyebrow, haughty above a green eye. 'And it's a pity you have plans.'

Silence for a moment. He coughs, looks down again, away from that eye and how it glints with suggestion. Does it? 'I doubt whether I'll be there all evening. But who knows how long these things can go on for.'

She turns away and slides the files she has placed on top of the cabinet into her arms, where she cradles them against the side of her body, pressed to the breast, tight in wine-coloured wool. 'If you finish early, call me. I'll be in all night. Might even have cooked something nice for you.' She smiles, and through the perfume he thinks he can smell her fresh lipstick. Then she is gone, the heels of her court shoes striking a swift rhythm across the dark floorboards, which smell of polish and look dull beneath the shiny black of her heels with the tiny brass tips on the ends.

Never his mistress, as so many speculate, and as they too joke so often when in the safety of numbers, but have they just crossed a line? They have a successful and mutual sharing of woes; exchange gifts for Christmas and birthdays and anniversaries; drive each other home when their cars are in for repairs. But to visit her when Jeff, her sullen husband, is away? That has never been appropriate. But she is exactly what he needs tonight, after seeing Dante and his fierce, desperate face. After being forced to remember every detail from that night in May. He needs to confess, to be blamed and punished by the stranger who has lost his friend in the town as it darkens for winter. And he needs compassion from his secretary, whom he often thinks of when alone with his wife.

It will be a struggle with Harry there. Will he interrupt and ridicule him when he narrates the story to Dante, the one he's tried so hard to forget? 'Such a Cartesian,' Eliot used to say, with his eyes half-closed and his lips working over a cigar whenever Harry contested one of his stories after dinner. Yes, he will go to Marcia after seeing the lad.

She'll untie the knots inside him. Has he not been punished enough?