Better to Eat You Read online

  Now she thought, Malvina can have him. I will give him up altogether. Only let him be safe.

  She heard Edgar slam the door of his little room below and run up the steps. In a moment she heard the iron gate clang. A car started up beneath her. She turned her head enough to see the road and it was Edgar, of course, rushing away so violently. Edgar had been able to hear Malvina’s coquettish invitation and he was upset. Edgar worshipped Malvina although she encouraged him so little.

  Sarah rolled her head from side to side. No use to pretend she could stand aside and give up David to Malvina. No use to pretend she herself didn’t want to grow closer and closer in companionship and affection. Or dream she could. It was impossible. Could not work with David here. Or anywhere. If he came back safe again she would have to tell him so, and tell Grandfather, somehow.

  Grandfather’s own voice surprised her. “Ah, my poor Sarah. They have left you to do all the work and your poor head aches, too.”

  “Grandfather …”

  The little man was there, looking at her with his head to one side, chirruping kindness. “Now, don’t fuss about me, dearie. I’ve only come for a trowel. Gust and I are making a little change along the sea walk.” He came nearer. “Poor Sarah. You find this work too difficult?”

  Sarah said, “I … I don’t think I can do it, Grandfather. I’m sorry.”

  “Poor Sarah. So much trouble,” he said, stroking her hair. “Ah, and your head aches, does it?”

  “A little.” She tried to smile for the dear old man.

  “Then I’ve the thing for that,” said he, rummaging in his pockets. “Here we are.” He drew out his gold pill box. “My poor Sarah, there is no need for pain. Now, you will take a nice little pill. Perhaps two, eh? And then you will lie quite still so that they can work, you understand? And soon you will feel quite well again.” She felt it pleased him to try to help her.

  So, to please him, Sarah moved to the couch against the partition while he went to fetch water from a carafe.

  “Lie back, dearie.”

  “I’m sorry, Grandfather. I’m sorry, after all your kind thoughtful plans …”

  “Now, then, pop them down.”

  “You are so good to me, Grandfather. When I ought to be taking care of you.”

  “Come, Sarah, I’ll tell you a secret. I am not so helpless as people think, eh?”

  Sarah felt he was happy to be fussing over her. She thought to herself suddenly, Yes, I will collapse. I will break down. It went against her grain to make such a resolution, but she made it. Because then David would go away and get another girl to help him. And he would be out of reach of the incomprehensible doom that haunted her.

  “You should have a coverlet,” the old man fussed. “I’ll send Mrs. Monteeth. Now rest, sleep. And the headache will go away, I promise you.” He stroked her hair.

  “So good …” murmured Sarah and tears came into her eyes.

  She thought bitterly it would be better to escape in sleep than be waiting superstitiously for the cry, the news, the rising up of shock out of this golden day. It was difficult to focus on her panic or her resolutions either, lying there. She did began to fall away from consciousness, very swiftly indeed. For while she yet heard him moving about in the toolroom, looking for that trowel, Grandfather’s pills were already putting her to sleep. Sarah let herself fall.

  Fox, in the toolroom, was not looking for a trowel. He arranged the cotton waste as he wished, down between the cans of paint and varnish. He took care to slop a little varnish out of one opened can. Then he took Sarah’s own cigarette lighter, held carefully so as to leave no fingerprints but her own on its metal surfaces. He lit it and, with some difficulty, for it was a breeze-proof type, he got the flame to go out. Open, then, but unlit and harmless, he dropped it among the debris.

  He sighed and tipped and peered and saw Sarah’s eyes closed and heard the quality of her breathing. Then he set the very small candle down among the inflammables, just so. Then he lit the candle with a match.

  He went, swiftly for an old man, up the short walk to the kitchen. Moon was not there but Mrs. Monteeth was, as he knew. “Dear ma’am,” said Fox, “Sarah has fallen asleep in the studio. Take her a coverlet, please do. Quickly, quickly, because Gust and I need you at once out on the sea side.”

  He watched her scurry into her room off the kitchen, snatch up an afghan from her bed. Mrs. Monteeth did, always, just as she was told. She vanished into the toolroom and he stooped and rubbed his varnish-tainted hands into the soil deeply several times. Then he scooped up with those hands a small plant, roots and all. Mrs. Monteeth came out of the toolroom. Grandfather sighed deeply. He was a master of timing, this little man—given a cast of people who would obey him.

  “Sound asleep,” said Mrs. Monteeth, smiling her rather vacant smile. “Snorin’.”

  Grandfather nodded. “Poor little Sarah,” he said. They walked together through his house and came out again upon the sea side of it. Gust was there, digging a narrow strip of soil along the house wall. Mrs. Monteeth took up and held obediently a string stretched tight to make a guide for Gust’s spade.

  “Now, this,” the old man said, offering the plant. “I thought the color …”

  “That?” said Gust. “Won’t stand the wind, sir.” He was used to the old man. There wasn’t much sense telling him this. The old man would have the plant he wanted. No matter what anyone said. The old man always thought he was smarter and his way was right. And you didn’t want to argue with him if you’d keep the job. Nobody really argued with him. Unless it was Moon. But then, nobody knew for sure what Moon was saying. Gust looked over his shoulder at the brilliance behind him, where the cliff fell away as the ledge stopped. This sea walk was no more than eight feet wide.

  “There is,” said Fox with satisfaction, “quite a brisk breeze today.”

  Sarah turned and her breath moaned. The candle burned rapidly. Flame ate upon the waste. Smouldering, spurting, it crept toward the varnish.

  Deep down on the little beach, on the far side of the headland, David sunned himself on the sand beside Malvina.

  Chapter 6

  They had gone into the water to swim strongly for only a very few minutes. The water was bitterly cold.

  Now Malvina sat passively, with an air of utter innocence, beside him. There was no coquetry, no purpose in her at all. Restless, David thought that by now Sarah would have found and read the note he had slipped on her desk. He thought it would have braced her and brought her out of that panic. He looked sideways at Malvina. There was nothing to be discovered from that innocent silence. He felt restless, and uselessly here. He did not want to stay.

  “My conscience hurts me,” he said flatly. “I should be back with Sarah and the eighteenth century.”

  She stirred. Almost with an effort, she paid attention. “Why do you care about the eighteenth century,” purred Malvina, too carelessly, “or Sarah, either?”

  There was such ignorant contempt in the roll of her brown eyes, such a complacent assumption that by the flick of a lash she could keep him where he was, that David was angered. He didn’t let the anger show. Instead he got up in one swift motion and snatched up his towel. “Recess has been fun,” he said cheerfully.

  “Wait. David …”

  But he was starting up the path.

  “David!”

  “Yes?”

  “I wanted to talk to you,” she said, “alone.” Her face was tilted up, he had an odd foreshortened view of it. “Please come back.”

  He thought perhaps she had a purpose, after all, and he had better see what could be gleaned from it. Reluctantly, he turned to come down. As he turned, he could see a fishing boat far out on the water and he noticed some excitement, something abnormal about the way the people were behaving. He shaded his eyes. They were waving their arms, obviously they were shouting, although he couldn’t hear them. And they were pointing.

  Moon was driving Malvina’s car through the cove when he sa
w the fire. He stopped the car, jumped out and ran to the nearest house. His jabber was not understood but his gestures were. The woman stepped out of her house and saw the fire and ran to the phone.

  David, unable to see any cause for excitement from where he stood, began to hurry up the path. But he took it warily, wondering if this, in some way, was what he was supposed to do. He was looking for danger to himself. Was he supposed to run up this unfamiliar path too fast and trip on something? Not me, he thought.

  He got to the top safely and saw Fox and Gust and Mrs. Monteeth, busy as they could be, heeding nothing. He started to walk along the sea walk, which led toward Fox’s study and the three of them, when he saw the streaks of smoke against the serenity of the bright blue sky. So he turned to his left and ran through the gap in the garden wall.

  The near end of the garage was a wicked mass of hurtling flames. The sound of a siren broke on his ear but David kept running. He remembered that the iron gate would be locked, so he swerved and went down Edgar’s steps. The laboratory door was locked. No use in that. David climbed on the steep land around the sea side of the building. The garage doors stood open, all three pairs of them. He used the nearest door for a ladder. He broke glass. He tumbled over the sill.

  She was alive in there, floundering drunkenly. With her hands thrust inside his leather brief case she was beating weakly at some flaming thing on his desk. He picked her up. The brief case fell. She snatched at paper. He threw her over his shoulder like a sack. He got half over the sill and slid her body forward feet first and finally, taking her by her reddened wrists, he lowered her until her feet touched ground.

  She could not stand. She fell backward and he tumbled and scrambled out after her, picked her up again, and ran across the turn-around and the parking apron, as far as he could go before the hillside stopped him. The fire truck came screaming up around the hairpin-turning road.

  They drenched that dry wild hillside at once and David sat in the mud, water trickling past him with Sarah’s unconscious body across his knees while Edgar, who had come in his car on the heels of the firemen, worked over the burns on her forearms.

  “How did it happen?” Edgar dithered. “How did it happen?”

  “I don’t know. How could it?” David snapped. “It wasn’t anything in your lab?”

  “No, no. See, my lab wasn’t touched. The fire is all above.” Edgar’s eyes rolled.

  “The fire is where Sarah was,” said David. The doctor’s face seemed to close and give nothing away. David’s eye traced the bone of Sarah’s brow and the curve of the cheek, which was lovely. Edgar had her glasses in his pocket. Without the big glasses she was not David’s owl. She looked defenseless.

  When the fire was under control he picked her up again, the small warm burden, and carried Sarah to her bedroom.

  Malvina wore a yellow robe over that black bathing suit. “Is she all right?” she asked, impatient to know.

  “She’ll be all right.” Edgar was brusque. He did not look at Malvina. “Pain in those wrists when she comes out of it. Mrs. Monteeth is going to have to stay with her. I’ll tell her what to do.”

  “Mrs. Monteeth …?”

  “I want her with Sarah,” snapped Edgar. “I don’t want Sarah alone.” He gave Malvina a quick fierce glance and his mouth made itself grim.

  Then Mrs. Monteeth came into the room where a small limp Sarah lay. David stood with Malvina in the corridor as the door closed them out.

  “Sarah’s an heiress, I suppose,” said David sharply. “Who gets her share if she should die?”

  Malvina gasped. “I never thought … I suppose I would.”

  She spoke so fast that David believed her. He’d thrown her that brutal question and the answer had bounced back. Now she looked at him as if she were reviewing question and answer with belated concern. Well, he thought, of course Malvina would get it. The old man, alive, could make another will.

  “How is your grandfather?” snapped David. “From what I’ve been told about his heart …”

  “Grandfather has borne it very well,” said Malvina, retreating into her mysterious serenity. “I have been with him, of course. The men said the house was safe so we kept in the study where he could not see the fire. We did our best to be very calm. We didn’t speak of it.”

  She was very calm. Her eyes met his candidly, openly. But it was as if she had been standing unself-consciously foursquare, and now suddenly went into an arabesque. David rubbed his palm on his cheek and looked at the grime. “What did you speak of?”

  “Nothing. We played Camelot.”

  David, filthy and grim, said rather angrily, “And who won?”

  “Grandfather always wins,” said Malvina, faintly frowning. “You know he is very clever. Of course, he is getting old.”

  What she was thinking behind those winkless open eyes he couldn’t tell.

  “What did you want to talk to me about?” he asked.

  “I forget,” said Malvina.

  Mrs. Monteeth had no initiative at all. Her conscience was very strict but what it told her to do was do-as-she-was-told. When the night gave over to morning and she became aware of Sarah’s return to herself, Mrs. Monteeth rose at once to call the doctor.

  Sarah couldn’t see very well. Yet by the quality of the light beyond her window she knew it must be morning. She was in her bed. She tried to struggle up, felt a wave of pain, and saw the fat white of the bandages covering both her forearms.

  Edgar came swiftly in. “You’re all right, Sarah,” he said briskly. “Fire’s out long ago. Garage is pretty much a wreck at this end. Your grandfather’s car is ruined. Nothing happened to the house at all.”

  “Grandfather?” she gasped.

  “Grandfather is fine. Malvina was with him. He took it well.” Sarah sank back. “Those arms hurt, do they?”

  “It comes and goes. Edgar, what’s wrong with me? Have I been drugged?”

  “Of course. I doped you up. You must have been beating at the fire with something protecting your hands. Your arms got just a lick. Doesn’t seem too bad. Lucky your clothing didn’t catch.” He helped her up a little higher in the bed. “I want you to take it easy.”

  She said, “The garage … Then the studio?”

  “A mess. Darned lucky it wasn’t a lot worse.” There was some anger in Edgar. “Sarah, why didn’t you get out? When you saw the place on fire. All those windows …” He was watching her intently. “Why didn’t you just get out of there as fast as you could?”

  “I would have,” she said, struggling with mists. “I woke up … you know, Grandfather gave me some headache pills. Something exploded. There was a thing like a firecracker, a piece of flame blew right into the studio through the door. I could see fire on his desk.” Her tongue was thick and her voice seemed to herself to be a croaking. “Edgar, I can’t see you. I need my glasses.”

  In a minute Edgar popped her glasses on her face. “Freak,” he said making an effort to be easy. “They stayed on while Wakeley threw you out the window.”

  “David Wakeley threw me out the window!”

  “If he hadn’t …” said Edgar and clamped his mouth shut. He sat down and peered at her. “What were you doing, staggering around in there? Trying to beat out the fire all by yourself?”

  But Sarah was tightening and shrinking with new pain. “Did he lose all his work?” she asked. “I thought I could bring it with me … some of it with me when I got out. But I didn’t? Did it burn? Is it gone?”

  “Paper?” said Edgar. His small mouth curled. “There was that one scorched scrap we found in your hand. It can’t be much use.”

  A piece of paper, shaped like a piece of pie, browned at the edges, was lying on Sarah’s dresser.

  Edgar said to her stricken face, “Now Sarah, the important thing … nobody was hurt but you and you not badly. You’ve got to be quiet a few days. You are to stay right here and see no one.”

  “I don’t want to see anyone.” A tear slid out of her eye corn
er. “He shouldn’t have had anything to do with me,” she mourned. “No one should.”

  Edgar’s shoulders twitched irritably. “Do you know how the fire happened?”

  “Why, I was asleep,” she said. “Dopey. I still feel dopey.”

  “Mrs. Monteeth is getting your breakfast. She’ll feed you and stay right here. Eat what you can. Then try to sleep.”

  “Edgar, I’ve been dopey a long time.”

  “Not long.”

  “A long time,” Sarah insisted. “Why does it seem so hard to remember? Why was it I could hardly stand? What was it Grandfather gave me?”

  “Oh, that?” Edgar gave out a short scornful laugh. “Just the stuff he takes himself. Perhaps you had a good dose of smoke, Sarah. You’re full of dope right now, of course. You probably won’t ever remember clearly. There’s something retroactive about these shocks.”

  “I went to sleep so fast … I was scared.…”

  “Scared?”

  Edgar’s voice came from a long way off. She wasn’t looking at him but at her memories. “Scared because David went to the beach. He did come back all right?”

  “He’s O.K. He’s feeling fine.”

  “Oh, no. He’s not feeling fine. You don’t understand, do you? But I do. All the work lost …” She wanted to sink through the bed, through the door, even into the sea. “Edgar, he will go away now, won’t he?”

  “Why, I think so,” Edgar said. “I think David will go away now. What could keep him here?”

  “Nothing. He must go. He must go right now. Don’t let him stay or come to see me. Tell him I’m sorry. Just tell him I’m sorry … sorry …”

  The word was like a water-drop, repeating. It could wear away stone.

  Edgar Perrott tapped on the door to the hexagonal study and was told to enter.