She waited for him, and the tall butler stood beside her, holding the coat and the hat.
‘Walker, will I miss it?’
‘No, Madam,’ the butler said. ‘I think you’ll make it all right.’
Then Mr Foster appeared again, and the butler helped him on with his coat. Mrs Foster hurried outside and got into the hired Cadillac. Her husband came after her, but he walked down the steps of the house slowly, pausing halfway to observe the sky and to sniff the cold morning air.
‘It looks a bit foggy,’ he said as he sat down beside her in the car. ‘And it’s always worse out there at the airport. I shouldn’t be surprised if the flight’s cancelled already.’
‘Don’t say that, dear – please.’
They didn’t speak again until the car had crossed over the river to Long Island.
‘I arranged everything with the servants,’ Mr Foster said. ‘They’re all going off today. I gave them half pay for six weeks and told Walker I’d send him a telegram when we wanted them back.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He told me.’
‘I’ll move into the club tonight. It’ll be a nice change staying at the club.’
‘Yes, dear. I’ll write to you.’
‘I’ll call in at the house occasionally to see that everything’s all right and to pick up the mail.’
‘But don’t you really think Walker should stay there all the time to look after things?’ she asked meekly.
‘Nonsense. It’s quite unnecessary. And anyway, I’d have to pay him full wages.’
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Of course.’
‘What’s more, you never know what people get up to when they’re left alone in a house,’ Mr Foster announced, and with that he took out a cigar and, after snipping off the end with a silver cutter, lit it with a gold lighter.
She sat still in the car with her hands clasped together tight under the rug.
‘Will you write to me?’ she asked.
‘I’ll see,’ he said. ‘But I doubt it. You know I don’t hold with letter-writing unless there’s something specific to say.’
‘Yes, dear, I know. So don’t you bother.’
They drove on, along Queens Boulevard, and as they approached the flat marshland on which Idlewild is built, the fog began to thicken and the car had to slow down.
‘Oh dear!’ cried Mrs Foster. ‘I’m sure I’m going to miss it now! What time is it?’
‘Stop fussing,’ the old man said. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway. It’s bound to be cancelled now. They never fly in this sort of weather. I don’t know why you bothered to come out.’
She couldn’t be sure, but it seemed to her that there was suddenly a new note in his voice, and she turned to look at him. It was difficult to observe any change in his expression under all that hair. The mouth was what counted. She wished, as she had so often before, that she could see the mouth clearly. The eyes never showed anything except when he was in a rage.
‘Of course,’ he went on, ‘if by any chance it does go, then I agree with you – you’ll be certain to miss it now. Why don’t you resign yourself to that?’
She turned away and peered through the window at the fog. It seemed to be getting thicker as they went along, and now she could only just make out the edge of the road and the margin of grassland beyond it. She knew that her husband was still looking at her. She glanced back at him again, and this time she noticed with a kind of horror that he was staring intently at the little place in the corner of her left eye where she could feel the muscle twitching.
‘Won’t you?’ he said.
‘Won’t I what?’
‘Be sure to miss it now if it goes. We can’t drive fast in this muck.’
He didn’t speak to her any more after that. The car crawled on and on. The driver had a yellow lamp directed on to the edge of the road and this helped him to keep going. Other lights, some white and some yellow, kept coming out of the fog towards them, and there was an especially bright one that followed close behind them all the time.