Asylum by Patrick McGrath Read Free Book Online Page B

deputy superintendent. She and I often spoke on the telephone. We understood each other. She relied on me for reports about her son.
    She handed the driver his fare and tip with all the graciousness of royalty. “Peter,” she then said, “how nice to see you. Stella, my dear. You seem well.” They kissed, and Brenda advanced along the hall. She was, as always, fashionably dressed, and I knew this caused Stella a pang of envy not to be living in London still, not to be generating this same aura of chic.
    “Would you like to go upstairs,” said Stella, “or shall we have a drink and take it into the garden?”
    “That would be lovely,” said Brenda. “Now, Peter, don’t run away just because I’ve come. Where is Charlie?”
    “I expect he’s out in the marsh,” said Stella, “or down by the conservatory.”
    Brenda lifted a thin, plucked eyebrow. “He might have been here to say hello to his grandmother, but that’s a boy for you. I don’t think Max was very different. How is Max?”
    As she said this she sank into one of the armchairs, crossing her elegant legs, and took her cigarettes out of her handbag.
    “Busy,” said Stella. “Happy, I think. He likes it here.”
    “I was rather afraid he would. Max is a cautious man, I’m sure I don’t need to tell either of you that. He’d be drawn to the security of a job here.”
    “I think he wants to be medical superintendent. Don’t you agree, Peter?”
    I was pouring the drinks, with my back to the women. Istiffened slightly at this unpleasant suggestion and murmured some demurral.
    “You don’t want to stay here, of course,” said Brenda, and as I handed them their drinks I saw again how things were with them: Brenda was not a woman’s woman, but she and Stella had worked out certain unspoken compromises over the years. Now, it seemed, at least on this issue, they were allies. Neither of them wanted to see Max bury himself in this provincial institution.
    “Oh, I could tolerate it for a couple of years,” said Stella, giving me a private smile as I handed her a gin and tonic, “but I’m afraid it’s more than a couple of years Max wants. Shall we go into the garden?
    “It’s the attention he gives the garden that worries me,” she went on, when we were settled in wicker chairs in the shade, and again I was struck by how distracted she was. We gazed out over the back lawn. The goldfish pond sparkled in the sunlight.
    “A garden takes years to do properly and Max is working on this one as though he’ll be at it for the rest of his life.”
    “How worrying.” Brenda glanced at me, but I was sustaining a studious neutrality here.
    “He’s having the old conservatory fixed up now.”
    It was the second time she’d mentioned the conservatory.
    “I do hope you’re wrong about this,” said Brenda. “But tell me, my dear, how are you? You certainly look well. In the pink, I’d say.”
    I glanced at her. In the pink. I rather whimsically reflected that it sounded like a euphemism, something to do with sex; and it was then that it occurred to me that something was happening to Stella, sexually. I regarded her with care.
    “I’m having a lazy summer,” she said in an offhand manner. “I don’t really have a great deal to do, even though it’s such a big house. Mrs. Bain comes in in the mornings and I can usually leave it all to her.” She brushed at a wasp that was buzzing around her glass.
    Brenda then began to talk about her social life in London,and this litany of lunches and cocktail parties and formal dinners was accompanied by the usual weary complaints at how much in demand one was, and how tired one got, and how few people appreciated how precious one’s time was. As Stella listened to this, murmuring that a smart, busy London social life was about the closest thing to heaven she could imagine, I wondered idly with whom she might be having sex, but could think of no likely candidates on the estate.
    “You must come up to town