Madness Read online

  ‘What time is it, Walker?’ she said to the butler as she passed him.

  ‘It’s ten minutes past nine, Madam.’

  ‘And has the car come?’

  ‘Yes, Madam, it’s waiting. I’m just going to put the luggage in now.’

  ‘It takes an hour to get to Idlewild,’ she said. ‘My plane leaves at eleven. I have to be there half an hour beforehand for the formalities. I shall be late. I just know I’m going to be late.’

  ‘I think you have plenty of time, Madam,’ the butler said kindly. ‘I warned Mr Foster that you must leave at nine fifteen. There’s still another five minutes.’

  ‘Yes, Walker, I know, I know. But get the luggage in quickly, will you please?’

  She began walking up and down the hall, and whenever the butler came by, she asked him the time. This, she kept telling herself, was the one plane she must not miss. It had taken her months to persuade her husband to allow her to go. If she missed it, he might easily decide that she should cancel the whole thing. And the trouble was that he insisted on coming to the airport to see her off.

  ‘Dear God,’ she said aloud, ‘I’m going to miss it. I know, I know, I know I’m going to miss it.’ The little muscle beside the left eye was twitching madly now. The eyes themselves were very close to tears.

  ‘What time is it, Walker?’

  ‘It’s eighteen minutes past, Madam.’

  ‘Now I really will miss it!’ she cried. ‘Oh, I wish he would come!’

  This was an important journey for Mrs Foster. She was going all alone to Paris to visit her daughter, her only child, who was married to a Frenchman. Mrs Foster didn’t care much for the Frenchman, but she was fond of her daughter, and, more than that, she had developed a great yearning to set eyes on her three grandchildren. She knew them only from the many photographs that she had received and that she kept putting up all over the house. They were beautiful, these children. She doted on them, and each time a new picture arrived, she would carry it away and sit with it for a long time, staring at it lovingly and searching the small faces for signs of that old satisfying blood likeness that meant so much. And now, lately, she had come more and more to feel that she did not really wish to live out her days in a place where she could not be near these children, and have them visit her, and take them for walks, and buy them presents, and watch them grow. She knew, of course, that it was wrong and in a way disloyal to have thoughts like these while her husband was still alive. She knew also that although he was no longer active in his many enterprises, he would never consent to leave New York and live in Paris. It was a miracle that he had ever agreed to let her fly over there alone for six weeks to visit them. But, oh, how she wished she could live there always, and be close to them!

  ‘Walker, what time is it?’

  ‘Twenty-two minutes past, Madam.’

  As he spoke, a door opened and Mr Foster came into the hall. He stood for a moment, looking intently at his wife, and she looked back at him – at this diminutive but still quite dapper old man with the huge bearded face that bore such an astonishing resemblance to those old photographs of Andrew Carnegie.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I suppose perhaps we’d better get going fairly soon if you want to catch that plane.’

  ‘Yes, dear – yes! Everything’s ready. The car’s waiting.’

  ‘That’s good,’ he said. With his head over to one side, he was watching her closely. He had a peculiar way of cocking the head and then moving it in a series of small, rapid jerks. Because of this and because he was clasping his hands up high in front of him, near the chest, he was somehow like a squirrel standing there – a quick clever old squirrel from the Park.

  ‘Here’s Walker with your coat, dear. Put it on.’

  ‘I’ll be with you in a moment,’ he said. ‘I’m just going to wash my hands.’

  She waited for him, and the tall butler stood beside her, holding the coat and the hat.

  ‘Walker, will I miss it?’

  ‘No, Madam,’ the butler said. ‘I think you’ll make it all right.’

  Then Mr Foster appeared again, and the butler helped him on with his coat. Mrs Foster hurried outside and got into the hired Cadillac. Her husband came after her, but he walked down the steps of the house slowly, pausing halfway to observe the sky and to sniff the cold morning air.

  ‘It looks a bit foggy,’ he said as he sat down beside her in the car. ‘And it’s always worse out there at the airport. I shouldn’t be surprised if the flight’s cancelled already.’

  ‘Don’t say that, dear – please.’

  They didn’t speak again until the car had crossed over the river to Long Island.

  ‘I arranged everything with the servants,’ Mr Foster said. ‘They’re all going off today. I gave them half pay for six weeks and told Walker I’d send him a telegram when we wanted them back.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He told me.’

  ‘I’ll move into the club tonight. It’ll be a nice change staying at the club.’

  ‘Yes, dear. I’ll write to you.’

  ‘I’ll call in at the house occasionally to see that everything’s all right and to pick up the mail.’

  ‘But don’t you really think Walker should stay there all the time to look after things?’ she asked meekly.

  ‘Nonsense. It’s quite unnecessary. And anyway, I’d have to pay him full wages.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Of course.’

  ‘What’s more, you never know what people get up to when they’re left alone in a house,’ Mr Foster announced, and with that he took out a cigar and, after snipping off the end with a silver cutter, lit it with a gold lighter.

  She sat still in the car with her hands clasped together tight under the rug.

  ‘Will you write to me?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll see,’ he said. ‘But I doubt it. You know I don’t hold with letter-writing unless there’s something specific to say.’

  ‘Yes, dear, I know. So don’t you bother.’

  They drove on, along Queens Boulevard, and as they approached the flat marshland on which Idlewild is built, the fog began to thicken and the car had to slow down.

  ‘Oh dear!’ cried Mrs Foster. ‘I’m sure I’m going to miss it now! What time is it?’

  ‘Stop fussing,’ the old man said. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway. It’s bound to be cancelled now. They never fly in this sort of weather. I don’t know why you bothered to come out.’

  She couldn’t be sure, but it seemed to her that there was suddenly a new note in his voice, and she turned to look at him. It was difficult to observe any change in his expression under all that hair. The mouth was what counted. She wished, as she had so often before, that she could see the mouth clearly. The eyes never showed anything except when he was in a rage.

  ‘Of course,’ he went on, ‘if by any chance it does go, then I agree with you – you’ll be certain to miss it now. Why don’t you resign yourself to that?’

  She turned away and peered through the window at the fog. It seemed to be getting thicker as they went along, and now she could only just make out the edge of the road and the margin of grassland beyond it. She knew that her husband was still looking at her. She glanced back at him again, and this time she noticed with a kind of horror that he was staring intently at the little place in the corner of her left eye where she could feel the muscle twitching.

  ‘Won’t you?’ he said.

  ‘Won’t I what?’

  ‘Be sure to miss it now if it goes. We can’t drive fast in this muck.’

  He didn’t speak to her any more after that. The car crawled on and on. The driver had a yellow lamp directed on to the edge of the road and this helped him to keep going. Other lights, some white and some yellow, kept coming out of the fog towards them, and there was an especially bright one that followed close behind them all the time.

  Suddenly, the driver stopped the car.

  ‘There!’ Mr Foster cried. ‘We’re stuck. I knew it.’