The Towers of Love by Stephen; Birmingham Page A

saying, “Baby, I’m going to turn in early. Do you mind? I’d love to play gin or backgammon with you, but I’ve got such a busy day tomorrow. Your father’s coming home in the morning, and then the party to-morrow night and Austin Callender coming. Will you excuse me?”
    â€œSure, Sandy,” he said, smiling. “You get a good night’s sleep.”
    â€œBut don’t feel you need to go to bed. Have a brandy or something. Have fun. Do something. Take the car and go somewhere. Do something gay. Don’t let your poor old grey-haired mother dampen your fun. After all, this is your holiday.”
    â€œI think I may go for a walk,” he said.
    â€œOh, good. Kiss me good night.”
    He kissed her cheek and she squeezed his arm. “So proud,” she whispered, and he went with her out into the hall and watched her as she mounted the stairs, chiffon fluttering all around her. At the landing, in front of Venus, she turned and blew him a kiss.
    â€œGood night, Sandy.”
    He went out on to the terrace. The night was very dark; there was no moon and only a few remote stars. He stood for a while in the cold darkness, admiring it, his hands in his pockets, and the champagne raced warmly in his blood. He extracted a cigarette from his jacket pocket and lighted it. Then he started slowly across the invisible terrace, feeling his way with his feet as he went. It had been so long since he had walked on this terrace at night that he had forgotten its contours, forgotten where the levels sharply changed, where steps ran down. Over the sound of the waterfall he could hear the splashing of the fountain that stood in the centre of the terrace and he walked towards it, guided by the sound. Then, in the blackness near his feet, he saw four pale discs. He knelt to see what they were and, with his hand groping towards these spots of whiteness in the dark, he found that they were four white narcissus blossoms that had opened in the circle of planting around the fountain; only four. He lowered his face to the blooms and sniffed the sharp, swift, sweet odour, and it dizzied him so that he almost fell forward on his hands in the flower-bed, and he thought: Of course I wanted to come home. He had been willing to come home because this was where it all began; the sudden springs that blossomed into summers, the hesitant at first, then hurrying, falls, the plunging winters; friends, school, family, all the speeding seasons of his life began here. And he stood up and walked slowly around the fountain.
    There were lights now that he could see on the opposite hill from the Everetts’ house, which was spread out, low and rambling, against the trees and the night. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven lighted windows. And then, as if he had commanded it to do so, the Everetts’ front door was opened, creating a new rectangle of light, and he saw Edrita’s slim figure outlined in front of it. Then the door was closed and, for a second, he couldn’t tell whether she had gone in or out. Then he could see another light—an orange dot that came and went, came and went—her cigarette. It moved quickly, nervously, back and forth as though she were pacing the same short strip of lawn over and over. He watched her, wondering what she was thinking, wondering if she could see the light of his cigarette too, and as he watched, something that he was not willing to define, and yet in a way could define, stepped up its beat in his body. He walked to the edge of the terrace and, raising his two index fingers to his lips, he had been about to give the long, low whistle that had always been their signal, when something that had begun to happen behind him made him stop and turn. It was a dark, flickering light that bobbed about against the closed curtains of his mother’s window. He felt suddenly sick. Oh, God, he thought. Is she doing that again? Hasn’t she ever stopped doing that?
    He