The drinks were duly distributed, and the cards were given out, and the lights went off on schedule. There was a good deal of scuffling and giggling and muffled squeaks as people trod on other people’s feet, and anxious questionings about what on earth one was supposed to do for goodness’ sake, and shrill-voiced girls saying, Oh, Henry, wherever are you? and, Do hold my hand.
The darkness seemed to rush at Edmund, and it was a thick smothering darkness, full of hateful whisperings, ‘He has such a bleak time of it, poor Edmund…’ ‘That frightful father…’ ‘Give him a bit of fun for once…’
Edmund shivered, despite the well-heated house, and wondered if he would ever get Mariana’s words out of his mind. He could feel them trickling through his brain like acid.
And he had forgotten how alive the darkness inside a house could be, and how it could fill up with sly whisperings and scalding emotions. His father, retreating more and more into a terrible inner darkness of his own, sometimes talked about it, and although nowadays the old man was as near mad as made no difference, lately Edmund had found himself understanding. Once or twice during these holidays, his father had taken to mumbling about his own past, dredging up memories.
Memories. As Edmund crossed the hall, the photographs and the faces that Mariana Trent had thought interesting enough and fun enough for her display swam out of the shadows. Memories. Lucretia von Wolff and those long-ago glittering glamorous years. Mariana loved them; she adored her mother’s legend, and she was always trying to revive it, exactly as Deborah said.
It would teach Mariana a lesson if all those memories were destroyed tonight. If every snippet and every tag-end – all the cuttings and photographs and scrap-books about Lucretia – were to be irretrievably lost, and it would serve the smug bitch right for pitying Edmund, ‘Prime some of the girls to flirt with him a bit…I said to Bruce, it’s only kind…’
His heart beating furiously, the uncertain light casting his shadow before him, Edmund began to climb the stairs to the attic floor.
Lucy had gone obediently to bed just after eight o’clock and had lain awake listening to the party sounds, which were all mixed up with the sounds of the rain outside.
She liked lying in bed hearing rain pattering down on the windows and the roofs; it made her feel warm and cosy and safe. Mother usually complained if it rained when she was giving a party because she liked people to wander into the garden with their drinks, but tonight she had been pleased about the rain; she said it would add atmosphere to a game they would be playing later on.
The party was being pretty noisy. There was a lot of shrieking and laughing going on. Lucy hoped her father would not sing the extremely rude song he sometimes sang at parties after he had drunk too much and which made everyone helpless with laughter, but which always made Mum say, Oh, Bruce, half embarrassed, half laughing with the rest.
But whether Dad sang the song or not, it did not seem as if Lucy was going to be able to sleep through the noise. It did not much matter, because tomorrow was Saturday and not a school day, but she was starting to be very bored with just lying here doing nothing. She might read a bit of her book and hope to fall asleep over it, or she might get out her drawing-book which she could prop up on her knees, and the coloured pencils, or…
Or she might take this really good chance to explore the attics, which was something she absolutely loved, but that Mum and Dad did not really like on account of there not being any electricity in the attics. Lucy might trip over something in the dark, Mum said, and what about those twisty stairs which she might easily fall down.