Now that Edith had decided upon the earliest train as being the most suitable option, Joan had merely to ensure that her other guests were at least partly cognisant of her deft plan and Martin, especially, did not wade in with his usual brutal honesty and place his very large foot in it.
"Looks like supper and an early night for you." Joan said to her brightly. "Marty, would you like to set the table?"
Edith gave a cold smile and watched him carefully, noting without emotion how he was so emphatically ignoring her. Strategically, she pondered, it may be time to beat a tactical retreat. Not permanently of course; she hadn't finished with Ellingham yet, whatever his opinion on their liaison was. However, it was only going to be over when she decided it was over and, if he thought she was going to cede the power and control to him, he was in for a rude shock. Besides, when she'd had a quick poke around in that incorrigible child's room earlier, she'd noticed the gymslip hanging on the wardrobe door handle and it had given her a rather spicy idea. Besides, suggesting it to Ellingham would be entertainment in itself, revelling as she did in his discomfort. No, she thought to herself, there's still some unfinished business between us but, annoyingly, it will have to wait until I've dragged him away from this shabby doss house, and the miserable peasants who inhabit it.
As Martin circled the table, polishing each piece of cutlery with a napkin before placing them carefully on the table, Joan began to set plates of food down in front of her, apparenty enough for a small army. Both of them were so absorbed in their task that no one noticed Louisa slip quietly back into the house and stand, glumly, in the background.
"What can I do?" She said eventually, in a small, rather forlorn voice.
Martin glanced up at her.
"Wash your hands." He said benignly and, as immediately as her mood brightened at his tone, Edith's darkened.
The meal itself was a relatively quiet event; Martin ate his fish in silence while the women dispatched the chicken with various degrees of enthusiasm. Joan observed Edith's strange reluctance to actually put any food in her mouth, seemingly preferring to cut it into tiny pieces and then push it around her plate. At least Louisa seemed to be eating well, although her uncharacteristic silence bothered Joan somewhat. Inevitable that the strange and difficult circumstances were affecting her, she thought sadly. She could only hope that her suggestion of an early night to Edith might be acted upon, or it could end up being a long and uncomfortable evening for all of them. Unfortunately, Joan had a feeling that the wretched woman was probably in as little a need of sleep for survival as she apparently was of food, existing in the world rather like some sort of parasitic trematode.
After a while, when it appeared that everyone was finished, and Louisa was pleased with herself for remembering to place her knife and fork together neatly on her plate to indicate this, an awkward silence descended upon them. Martin clasped his hands together, reflectively, staring dully at his empty glass, while Louisa folded and refolded her napkin absently, casting surreptitious glances at him from under her fringe. Joan cast her mind around desperately to find an innocuous subject for conversation but her weariness was beginning to overcome her desire to remain a cordial hostess to the objectionable woman on her left.
Eventually, it was Edith who spoke, throwing her arm over the back of her chair and leaning into it, sideways.
"You don't have much of an ugly provincial accent, Jill, how long have you lived in this bucolic idyll?" She said, feigning both sweetness and interest.
Joan glanced at her with cold eyes, her mouth a thin-lipped, angry grimace. Standing up slowly, she began to collect the empty plates, taking a moment to compose herself.
Embarrassed and appalled, Martin leapt from his seat. Picking up the empty water jug, he strode over to the tap, and stood, somewhat impatiently, to one side as his aunt manoeuvred her pile of crockery into the deeply crazed porcelain sink.
"Over thirty years now." She replied at last, her tone brisk, as she stepped aside.
Martin took her place, spinning the smooth brass tap. There was a loud splutter, a momentary pause and then the water began to gush and foam into the jug, spraying his tie and the front of his jacket with a fine mist. His shoulders tensed and he muttered in annoyance. Without looking, Joan passed him a tea-towel but he failed to notice her outstretched hand, and turned away.
Edith watched them both from behind. She smiled and leaned back on her chair languorously, willing Ellingham to look at her so she could reward him with her smug, triumphant sneer.
"Christopher said you'd always preferred Cornwall to London." She said, the disdain clear in her tone.
Like a vicious unseen threat, Edith's coldly enunciated words filled the room and hung in the air. Joan spun around and stared at her in horror. From behind her, there was a thunderous crash as the water jug slipped from her nephew's hands; smashing into the floor and shattering into a thousand pieces.
For a split second,Martin felt like he was witnessing a car crash, such was the feeling of time standing still. He took a couple of steps forward, straddling the broken glass, and became aware of a deafening pounding in his ears; identifying it as pulsatile tinnitus with a disturbing sensation of complete detachment. He looked at Edith, his brain processing her words furiously, as the smug expression on her face confirmed the conclusion his brain had arrived at. He felt his hands tremble. Bile rose in his throat and, momentarily, his head felt light.
You are experiencing a heightened emotional reaction, he told himself, sucking in angry gasps of air, before reminding himself: in through the nose, out through the mouth. Desperate to regain his composure, the sight of Edith's cold, self-satisfied expression loomed, mockingly, in front of him.
There was no explanation for the physical pain he was experiencing though. By god it hurt. Excruciating. Worse than all the beatings and the sadistic torment he'd experienced at the hands of his schoolmates; in the constriction of his diaphragm, in his chest and, most painfully, in his wildly thumping heart.
His logical brain screamed at him that it was an imagined agony, but it didn't matter. Real or otherwise, it was a manifestation of how utterly betrayed he felt by the treachery of this calculating, perfidious narcissist.
"Get out." He said, finally, in a voice that was as icy and laden with animosity as anything he believed himself capable of.
Edith looked at him, more startled than anything.
"What are you talking about, Ellingham?" She replied, attempting unsuccessfully to sound scornful.
Finally, Joan found her voice.
"I think you'd better go upstairs, and stay there." She said quietly, before taking a few steps forward in order to stand close to her, staring down at Edith's astonished face.
"Don't be tempted to come back down here until we leave in the morning." Joan added coldly. "A quarter to eight."
Edith was incensed. it was like being sent to her room as if she were some miscreant child.
"Ellingham, I swear to god, I will never speak to you again." She barked at him furiously.
Martin rolled his shoulders back and, puffing his chest out somewhat threateningly, gave her disparaging look.
"I will have to live with that." He replied icily.
Edith glared at him, challenging him to back down Before realising that there was something about his face that scared her; the coldness of his stare, and the unflinching, unforgiving look in his eyes made her realise that there had been a colossal paradigm shift. She had lost, and the idea filled her with an impotent rage.
"Excuse me!" She snarled, turning on her heel and stomping dramatically from the room.
Indeed, it would have been a highly effective way for Edith to make her point, separating herself, emphatically and irrevocably, from her aggravated and estranged lover. That is, had she not misjudged the doorway, and had the door handle not snagged on her trouser pocket as she thundered past, stabbing painfully into her hip before stopping her dead in her tracks. Wrenching herself free angrily, and clutching at her bruised pelvic bone, she stormed from the room, letting loose a string of eye-watering expletives, as Louisa watched in fascination, horror, and even a tiny hint of amusement.