Desert Barbarian

Marie lapsed into silence. She would not argue with him while her father lay dying a few yards away.

The door swung open again and Clare came out, look­ing less tense. She looked at Marie across the corridor and her eyes shone with tears. 'Thank you, darling,' she said in a choked voice.

Marie went to her, put an arm around her. 'Was it… awful?'

'Awful,' Clare whispered. 'But not as bad as I feared. He wasn't conscious, but they let me hold his hand and his fingers clung… his fingers clung, Marie.'

The doctor came out, a smile on his tired face. He gave Stonor a nod. 'I think something got through. His pulse is improving.'

'When can we come tomorrow?' asked Clare impatiently.

'Ring us in the morning and we'll decide then,' the doctor told her. 'Things take time, you know. We won't be sure about anything for a long while yet.'

Stonor drove them back to the flat. Clare, without dis­cussion, accepted Marie's suggestion that she come there for the night. Marie felt she could not leave her mother alone in a hotel bedroom at such a time.

Mrs Abbot met them at the front door, her eyes pink from weeping. 'Is it true? Is it true?' she asked. 'Is he dead?'

'Of course he isn't dead,' Marie burst out angrily. 'Who told you that?'

'The newspapers have been ringing up for hours. They said he had had a fatal heart attack over dinner at the hotel…'

'A heart attack,' Stonor put in coolly, 'but not a fatal one, thank God.'

'Oh, thank God, sir, yes,' Mrs Abbot murmured. 'Come in, I'll get you all some coffee…'

'My mother would prefer cocoa,' Marie said quickly. 'She must get some sleep. Coffee would keep her awake.'

Mrs Abbot looked at Clare with hostility. 'Oh, Mrs Sebastian, it's you, is it? I didn't expect to see you here.'

Clare seemed unaware of her hostility. The dark circles under her blue eyes, the pallor of her face, lent her a new but fragile beauty. She reminded Marie of a wood an­emone trembling in a cold spring wind.

She encircled Clare protectively with her arm. 'My mother will sleep in my father's room tonight,' she said clearly, her eyes reproving Mrs Abbot.

The old woman flushed angrily. 'I don't think Mr Brinton would like that, indeed I don't.'

'Thank you, Mrs Abbot,' Marie said fiercely. 'I'll take my mother there myself.' She led Clare down the hall, her arm around her waist.

Mrs Abbot watched with undisguised anger as the two of them went into James Brinton's bedroom.

Clare looked around the room, flinching as her eyes fell upon a large studio portrait of herself beside the bed. Marie was surprised to see it there. She had not been into her father's room often, and she had never suspected that he kept a picture of Clare beside his bed.

'Mrs Abbot is right,' Clare said huskily. 'I shouldn't be in here. I'll take the spare room.'

'I know Dad would want you to sleep here,' Marie said with a hard certainty. 'I suppose it's silly, but I have a feeling that it will actually help him.'

Clare stared at her, biting her lower lip. 'How can it? I don't understand you, darling.'

'I'm not sure myself,' said Marie, with a faint smile. 'Perhaps your being in this room will give you a tele­pathic link with him… didn't you say his fingers clung when you touched him, although he was unconscious? How could he know you were there except by tele­pathy?'

'Do you believe in telepathy?' Clare asked her seri­ously.

'I've never thought about it before, but I don't see why not. Anything which would help Dad is worth trying. I just have this instinct… a vague feeling… that he would like you to be here.'

Clare sighed. 'Then I'll stay. You know him better than I do, darling.'

'Oh, no,' Marie stared at her in distress, 'don't say that! I only know one aspect of him—he's my father. I don't know him the way you do. You were married to him for years, after all.'

'We lived together for years, you mean,' Clare said bitterly. 'For the first year we were married. Then you were born and after that James never had time for me. From a wife I became just the woman in his house. You don't know what I went through… I felt stifled, ex­cluded, isolated. When I protested, he suggested that I find a life of my own. Make friends, he said, go to the theatre. He said he wanted me to have fun, but he didn't have time to have fun with me—he was too busy.' She shrugged. 'Any fool could have predicted the end of it.'