A BAROQUE AFFAIR
249
posure, she hoped Craven would not be home, but the twisting and
straining of her heart almost choked her. When he answered, for
he was unfortunately there, he sounded so friendly and cold that
Lucy found her voice getting smaller and softer until Craven could
barely hear her. In an elaborate formal way, Lucy asked Craven
whether he was "at home" that afternoon-it was the only thing
she could say, and she was thankful for this classic formula. But
he, with the poise, the presence, the grandeur of Prince Pamphili,
replied that he was afraid not. He didn't say, Don't try again, but
he might just as well, for that was what Lucy heard. He said nothing
about seeing her again. She was sure he had someone there.
Lucy managed to get herself out of the telephone booth, all
steamy and hot with the cold horror of this terrible rejection. The
cosmetics on glass counters, the soda fountain, the fluorescent lights,
the shelves of mysterious medicines, all spoke to her of the real life
that people have. And she was frightened, because what she was
involved in was also life, and she hated it.
As
she drifted out of the
drugstore, she was a prey to all the quick images of her delayed
violent feeling-someone else in that dusty afternoon light, that light
falling over a bottle of Cinzano, cigarettes, Pascal opened on the
table, on the floor Bernini, on the white wall shadows--and then the
cruel image of Craven with someone who was not Lucy and now
could never be. She did not think of taking poison, but a venom
of equal strength coursed through her veins, burning and chilling
at once.
But this was not to be quite the end, there was an epilogue.
Lucy, for no reason at all, wrote Craven a letter some months later,
a long sad letter, telling him of her point of view, with all those
feelings clenched on the innumerable pages in her obscure irregular
handwriting. The path of her emotions was labyrinthine, and the
letter ended in a strange desperate way:
" ... when you said I wasn't as poised as I used to be. Of course
I didn't ask why, and all I could say to
you
was, it was true. I
couldn't say what I really felt, so that's why I think you thought I
was a different kind of person from what I am. You had my mother
and father all figured out, so you thought you knew all about me,
but that was only to control me and make me feel immature. It
didn't really
matter.
Your [illegible] attitude froze up
all
my
f~,
