The Madness Of Love | The Secret History

XXV

It was one of the worst nights of my life. The house was filling with people and the hours passed in a dreadful streaky blur of relatives and neighbors.

Dinner was set out at seven, an unappetizing combination of gourmet carry-out - orzo salad, duck, miniature foie gras tarts - and the food the neighbors had made. People roamed with plates, it was dark outside and raining.

Laughter, vertigo. Strangers kept wandering up and talking at me. I disengaged myself from one of Bunny's cousins and found Henry and Lilith. They were standing in front of some glass doors, their backs to the room, both smoking a cigarette.

I stood beside them. They didn't look at me or speak. The doors faced out on a barren terrace. Rain slanted in the lights, there was a statue artfully broken on the ground. The effect was post-nuclear, like some pumice-strewn courtyard from Pompeii.

"That is the ugliest garden I've seen." I said.
"Yes, Richard." said Lilith, finally acknowledging me, though not in the way I wanted. She was extremely pale.
"Rubble and ash.' continued Henry.

"Maybe you'd better lie down," I said after a while. Henry but his lip. The ash on his cigarette was about an inch long. "We ran out of medicine." he said. I looked at the side of his face. "Can you get along?"
"I guess we'll have to, won't we?" he said without moving. 

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I had not entirely believed Cloke about drugs to be found upstairs, but when I went up with him again I saw he had told the truth. There was a tiny dressing room and a black lacquer vanity with lots of little compartments, and inside one of them was a neat collection of candy-collored pills.

I was nervous. There was no way out and no possible excuse for being there. I kept an eye on the door while Cloke, with admirable efficiency, went swiftly through the bottles.

Dalmane. Yellow and orange. Darvon. Red and gray. Fiorinal. Nembutal. Miltown. I took two from each bottle he gave me.
"What," he said, "don't you want more than that?"
"I don't want Mrs Corcoran to miss anything."
"Take what you want." he said, opening another bottle. "She'll think it was one of her daughters-in-law or something."

I went downstairs, the right-hand pocket of my jacket full of ups and the left full of downs. I looked all over the house for Henry and found him sitting on an army cot, in the basement with Lilith laying on his lap.

Henry looked at me out of the corner of his eye, without moving his head. "What is that?" he said, when I offered him a couple of capsules.
"Nembutal. Here."
After hearing these words Lilith slowly sat up, holding onto Henry's shoulder. "Give me some, Richard, please."

I gave her a couple and she swallowed them without water.
"Do you have any more?" Henry said after doing the same.
"Yes."
"Give them."
"You can't take more than two."
"Give them."

I gave half to Lilith and half to Henry. "I'm not kidding." I said. "You'd better be careful."
He looked at them, then reached in his pocket for the blue enamel pillbox and put his half carefully inside it. Lilith swallowed a couple more pills and then gave the rest to Henry to put in the pillbox.

"I don't suppose," Lilith said laying her head carefully back onto Henry's lap. "you would go upstairs and get me a drink."
"Me too." said Henry.
"You really shouldn't be drinking on top of those pills."
"We've been drinking already."
"I know that."

There was a brief silence. "Look." Henry said. "I want a Scotch and soda. In a tall glass. Heavy on the Scotch, light on the soda."
"I want whiskey." said Lilith with her hands on her face. "No ice. No soda."
"I'm not going to get it for you."
Henry sighed and put his arm around Lilith. "If you don't go up and get it for me, I'll just have to get up and get it myself."

I went up to the kitchen and got it for them. Francis came in arguing with Charles, but I was too tired to listen. I took Henry's Scotch and Lilith's whiskey and walked past Francis and Charles down to the basement.  

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It rained hard all night. Charles snored on his cot, his mouth open; Francis grumbled in his sleep. Occasionally a car swooshed by and it's headlights would eliminate the room - the pool table, the armchairs in which Henry and Lilith sat. Henry sat motionless, a glass in his hand and the cigarette burning low in his fingers. His face was pale and watchful as a ghost's.

Lilith was reading something she took from the bookcase and I wasn't sure she understood a word from whatever she was reading. Suddenly she put the book down, leaned back and looked up to the ceiling. For a moment, as the car headlights lit up her face, she looked like the most dead living person ever. Or, perhaps, as the most alive corpse.

Not proofread.
Love you x