The Secret History

'Why?'

But he only lit another cigarette and wouldn't say anything else, no matter how I grilled him.

When I got back to my room I found Camilla sitting at my desk, reading a book. 'Hi,' she said, glancing up. 'Your door was open.

I hope you don't mind.'

Seeing her was like an electric shock. Unexpectedly I felt a surge of anger. Rain was blowing through the screen and I walked across the room to shut the window.

'What are you doing here?' I said.

'I wanted to talk to you.'

'About what?'

'How's my brother?'

'Why don't you go see him yourself?'

She put down the book – ah, lovely, I thought helplessly, I loved her, I loved the very sight of her: she was wearing a cashmere sweater, soft gray-green, and her gray eyes had a luminous celadon tint. 'You think you have to take sides,' she said. 'But you don't.'

'I'm not taking sides. I just think whatever you're doing, you picked a bad time to do it.'

'And what would be a good time?' she said. 'I want you to see something. Look.'

She held up a piece of the light hair near her temples. Underneath was a scabbed spot about the size of a quarter where someone had, apparently, pulled a handful of hair out by the roots. I was too startled to say a thing.

'And this.' She pushed up the sleeve of her sweater. The wrist was swollen and a bit discolored, but what horrified me was a tiny, evil burn on the underside of the forearm: a cigarette burn, gouged deep and ugly in the flesh.

It was a moment before I found my voice. 'Good God, Camilla!

Charles did this?'

She pulled the sleeve down. 'See what I mean?' she said. Her voice was unemotional; her expression watchful, almost wry.

'How long has this been going on?'

She ignored my question. 'I know Charles,' she said. 'Better than you do. Staying away, just now, is much wiser.'

'Whose idea was it that you stay at the Albemarle?'

'Henry's.'

'How does he fit into this?'

She didn't answer.

A horrible thought flashed across my mind. 'He didn't do this to you, did he?' I said.

She looked at me in surprise. 'No. Why would you think that?'

'How am I supposed to know what to think?'

The sun came suddenly from behind a rain cloud, flooding the room with glorious light that wavered on the walls like water.

Camilla's face burst into glowing bloom. A terrible sweetness boiled up in me. Everything, for a moment – mirror, ceiling, floor – was unstable and radiant as a dream. I felt a fierce, nearly irresistible desire to seize Camilla by her bruised wrist, twist her arm behind her back until she cried out, throw her on my bed: strangle her, rape her, I don't know what. And then the cloud passed over the sun again, and the life went out of everything.

'Why did you come here?' I said.

'Because I wanted to see you.'

'I don't know if you care what I think' – I hated the sound of my voice, was unable to control it, everything I said was coming out in the same haughty, injured tone – 'I don't know if you care what I think, but I think you're making things worse by staying at the Albemarle.'

'And what do you think I should do?'

'Why don't you stay with Francis?'

She laughed. 'Because Charles bullies poor Francis to death,' she said. 'Francis means well. I know that. But he couldn't stand up to Charles for five minutes.'

'If you asked him, he'd give you the money to go somewhere.'

'I know he would. He offered to.' She reached in her pocket for a cigarette; with a pang I saw they were Lucky Strikes, Henry's brand.

'You could take the money and stay wherever you like,' I said.

'You wouldn't have to tell him where.'

'Francis and I have gone over all this.' She paused. 'The thing is, I'm afraid of Charles. And Charles is afraid of Henry. That's really all there is to it.'

I was shocked by the coldness with which she said this.

'So is that it?' I said.

'What do you mean?'

'You're protecting your own interests?'

'He tried to kill me,' she said simply. Her eyes met mine, candid and clear.

'And is Henry not afraid of Charles too?'

'Why should he be?'

'You know.'

Once she realized what I meant, I was startled how quickly she leapt to his defense. 'Charles would never do that,' she said, with childlike swiftness.

'Let's say he did. Went to the police.'

'But he wouldn't.'

'How do you know?'

'And implicate the rest of us? Himself, too?'

'At this point, I think he might not care.'

I said this intending to hurt her, and with pleasure I saw that I had. Her startled eyes met mine. 'Maybe,' she said. 'But you've got to remember, Charles is sick now. He's not himself. And the thing is, I believe he knows it.' She paused. 'I love Charles,' she said. 'I love him, and I know him better than anybody in the world. But he's been under an awful lot of pressure, and when he's drinking like this, I don't know, he just becomes a different person. He won't listen to anybody; I don't know if he even remembers half the things he does. That's why I thank God he's in the hospital. If he has to stop for a day or two, maybe he'll start thinking straight again.'

What would she think, I wondered, if she knew that Henry was sending him whiskey.

'And do you think Henry really has Charles's best interest at heart?' I said.

'Of course,' she said, startled.

'And yours too?'

'Certainly. Why shouldn't he?'

'You do have a lot of faith in Henry, don't you,' I said.

'He's never let me down.'

For some reason, I felt a fresh swell of anger. 'And what about Charles?' I said.

'I don't know.'

'He'll be out of the hospital soon. You'll have to see him.

What are you going to do then?'

'Why are you so angry at me, Richard?'

I glanced at my hand. It was trembling. I hadn't even realized it. I was trembling all over with rage.

'Please leave,' I said. 'I wish you'd go.'

'What's wrong?'

'Just go. Please.'

She got up and took a step towards me. I stepped away. 'All right,' she said, 'all right,' and she turned around and left.

It rained all day and the rest of the night. I took some sleeping pills and went to the movies: Japanese film, I couldn't seem to follow it. The characters loitered in deserted rooms, no one talking, everything silent for whole minutes except the hiss of the projector and rain pounding on the roof. The theater was empty except for a shadowy man in the back. Dust motes floated in the projector beam. It was raining when I came out, no stars, sky black as the ceiling of the movie house. The marquee lights melted on the wet pavement in long white gleams. I went back inside the glass doors to wait for my taxi, in the carpeted, popcorn-smelling lobby. I called Charles on the pay phone, but the hospital switchboard wouldn't put me through: it was past visiting hours, she said, everyone was sleeping. I was still arguing with her when the taxi pulled up at the curb, long slants of rain illumined in the headlights and the tires throwing up low fans of water.

I dreamed about the stairs again that night. It was a dream I'd had often in the winter but seldom since. Once more, I was on the iron stairs at Leo's – rusted thin, no railing – except now they stretched down into a dark infinity and the steps were all different sizes: some tall, some short, some as narrow as the width of my shoe. The drop was bottomless on either side. For some reason, I had to hurry, though I was terrified of falling. Down and down.

The stairs got more and more precarious, until finally they weren't even stairs at all; farther down – and for some reason this was always the most terrifying thing of all – a man was going down them, far'ahead of me, really fast…

I woke around four, couldn't get back to sleep. Too many of Mrs Corcoran's tranquilizers: they'd started to backfire in my system, I was taking them in the daytime now, they wouldn't knock me out anymore. I got out of bed and sat by the window.