At Death's Door Read Free

conversation. I just can’t pin down what it was.”
    â€œI expect it’s the sense of—what does Ibsen call it?—the younger generation banging on the door,” said Caroline. “Since we don’t have any . . . normal children, we’re a bit cut off from young people.”
    â€œMyra once played Hilde Wangel,” said Roderick. “I should think she was absolutely fearsome, driving poor old Solness up that bloody tower. . . . But no, it wasn’t that. I expect when I meet the girl I’ll remember what it was.”

Chapter 2
    W HY, CAROLINE WONDERED, do naval officers so often carry about with them a faint whiff of the bogus?
    She was sipping sherry and making polite conversation about the roses with Commodore Critchley and his wife, Daisy, and all the time her mind was far away, as it tended to be on social occasions that had more to do with politeness than with pleasure.
    It was true. Almost all the naval men she had known (she’d met quite a few through her father) had had it: a phony heartiness, a cultivated lecherousness, or a suspect suggestion of dreamy remoteness that probably came from reading too much Conrad. She rather thought there had been something bogus about Lord Mountbatten, and probably Nelson, too.
    â€œYes, we have had a vintage year, too,” she said, “so I suppose I must have got the hang of pruning at last. The only thing I regret about having so many roses is the thorns. I never can teach Becky to be careful. She finds them so pretty, and it always ends in tears.”
    The commodore smiled a smile of studied understanding. He was chairman of the board of governors at Roderick’s school. There was no particular reason for this: the Critchleys had no handicapped child, nor did the commodore show any particular interest in the children at the school or in ways of helping them and their parents cope with their disabilities. It was just that that sort of job tended to gravitate toward retired middle-class people who had time on their hands and who needed to feel socially useful. Unfortunately, the situation demanded that courtesies be shown and returned. The Cotterels and the Critchleys really didn’t have much in common. Caroline particularly disliked being treated as a sexually desirable object—which she felt sure she no longer was, and certainly not to him. The commodore liked bust, and in his lady wife he had gotten it.
    â€œAt least the summer seems to be improving now,” said Caroline, still on her social autopilot. “It makes such a difference if it’s a bit warm. Particularly now that we can’t go abroad anymore.”
    â€œAh, yes.” The commodore looked at Roderick. “Your father.”
    â€œThat’s right. We feel we can’t leave him with anyone else—and the cost of hiring someone full-time for two or three weeks would in any case be enormous.”
    â€œSad. Because the old gentleman lived a lot abroad himself, didn’t he?” said Daisy Critchley in her metallic voice.
    â€œYes, he did. Particularly after the war, when we children were grown up and he had no . . . family ties. He had a flat in Highgate, and he came back there to write. I think he did that because his books were almost always set in England and he needed to be among the physical objects and the places he was describing. But he wrote them very fast, having made masses of notes while he wasapparently idling away his time in Italy or wherever. And as soon as he’d finished the book, he’d hand it over to his agent, and then he’d take off again.”
    â€œI sometimes think he’d be happier now,” said Caroline, “in some Mediterranean village, with some old peasant woman in black to look after him.”
    â€œWhy don’t you investigate the possibility?” asked the commodore.
    â€œBecause as soon as I think about it I realize that happiness just