THE GARDEN WAS COMPLETELY deserted. She turned on him sharply to see if he had arranged it.
'Where are they?' she asked.
'I should know,' he said, sensing her anger. The table was in ruin and the record of the last castrated man groaned away. The homosexuals had put it on and it had obviously been played again by them or by someone else. He crossed over to the player and touched a switch. In the silent room her eye rested on the huge fish-bone that someone had dexterously extracted without breaking. It looked angry on the silver platter, the long fishbone with its sturdy white teeth.
'I bet Bobby did that' she said, wanting to utter his name so that in a second she could decently ask where he was likely to be.
'We have it done in the kitchen before they carry the fish through,' he said quietly but with a sting.
'Where is he, where are they all?' she said, looking round at the traces of them: georgette scarves, hardly-worn high-heeled shoes with a costly designer's name engraved in gold on their insides, Denise's charm bracelet with all its little attachments spread out flat on the tablecloth as if put there to tell a story. Someone had drawn pussy cats on the cloth with a red Biro pen and the ashtray near by was stuffed with barely smoked cigarettes.
'Desecration,' she said, and remembered how the garden had first seemed the moment she entered it.
'He's retired, I expect,' Sidney said, and then with a bitterish grin, 'and probably busy now.' He moved around, clicking the various lights off so that the place was beginning to get ghostly with an emptiness that reminded her of a deserted ballroom where she'd once waited because the band leader had promised to come back for her, once he'd put his instruments in the car. She thought he'd hidden in the Gents and she waited behind one of the curtains that concealed a fire-escape, but later when she knew he was not coming back she moved tentatively over the slippery dance floor and tried to reconcile herself to disappointment. Then, as now, a wafer of moon lit the place but whereas then it had endowed her with loneliness, this night's moon was for this yellow, parched man who had killed his wife and hoped to sleep with her.
A figure came in from the hallway and she thought before she looked that it would be Bobby. It was Gwyn, come to say good night.
'Got to get some sleep so I can look pretty tomorrow,' she said, her voice slurred from alcohol.
'Sorry we had that little whatyacallit,' she said to Ellen and came across and kissed her pathetically.
'It's all right,' Ellen said, 'we were all a bit shaken.' She did not know what to say. She thought of the dead man again. Would the moon pick up the course of blood?
'Your stole?' she said then, suddenly remembering it.
'Forget it,' Gwyn said, and then for no reason and in a broken voice she said, 'Do you know, when we were first married we even had the same type of fountain pen, we were that much in love with each other.' She cried openly and like a baby and Ellen kept patting her and saying it was all right.
'Listen sweetie pie,' Sidney said, 'you've got to get some sleep so you can look pretty tomorrow for Jason.'
'Got to look pretty tomorrow,' she said, sinking into his arms as he led her away to one of the bedrooms.
'So,' he said returning and touching Ellen's elbow, 'Daddy puts them all to bye-byes.'
'Where do they sleep?' she said, meaning what trick of fate or manipulation has left me alone with you?
'Oh we got beds, we can sleep...' he paused, although he knew the number well, 'eighty.'
'Together or separate?' she asked, but he ignored the question and bent down and picked up an ear-ring from the marble floor. Looking into the jewelled leaf of its face he said, 'That must be little Suzie's, she had those for Christmas,' and he put it on a safe place under the mantelshelf clock.
