Free The Hothouse by the East River by Muriel Spark

at the bottom of his glass, then draining
what liquid remains in it. He looks at his very flat gold wrist watch. ‘I have
to go,’ he says.
    ‘To
your analyst,’ Pierre says.
    ‘What?’
    ‘You
have to see your analyst.’
    ‘Who
told you that?’ says Paul.
    ‘The
name of my informant,’ says the son, ‘is —let me see … what was it? … the
name of my informant … the name of … the name. The name escapes me.’
    ‘Your
informant has made a mistake.’
    ‘Oh
no,’ says Pierre. ‘Oh no, nothing escapes my informant.’
    ‘What
have you heard, what on earth have you heard?’ says Paul. ‘What’s this about me
and an analyst?’
    ‘Well,
of course she’s all right. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t do as you
please. Do as you please.’ Pierre’s right hand turns on his wrist permissively
while his left hand flicks the neatly-bound acting script which lies now on a
table by his chair. His long legs sprawl before him. ‘Rather narrow, ‘he says.
He pats the script. ‘I mean she’s rather narrow to look at, I feel. One of
those narrow-hipped, narrow-faced women who are just born that way and die
that way. The effect is just simply narrow, except from the side where they
protrude in a few places, nose, breasts, backside and feet. But her voice is
just so awful. How can you stand it, Father? It’s so absolutely yak-yak-yak.
It’s a poor way to spend one’s money in my view, but of course, that’s quite
your business. Entirely your business.’
    Paul is
standing now. His eye is on the playscript. His hand goes to the inside pocket
of his coat.
    ‘Tell
me about your production of Peter Pan,’ says Paul.
    ‘I’ve
told you.’
    ‘You
need money for it.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I’ll
need a few days. Maybe I could give you something in advance, though.’
    ‘Right
now?’
    ‘Yes,
now. You did wrong to trail me. You shouldn’t have your father followed.’
    ‘I
didn’t trail you at all. She trailed me. Very badly. She drew herself to my
attention, did your narrow, narrow analyst.’
    ‘God
help me!’ says Paul. ‘Your mother mustn’t hear of it.’
    ‘That
is quite my point,’ Pierre says.
    ‘It’s
blackmail, of course,’ Paul says.
    ‘Everything’s
blackmail. But in fact it’s a good idea, good business, this production of Peter
Pan. We’re not changing a word. It’ll be a riot. Everyone over sixty.
That’s to say, if possible. We might have to settle for an actress around
fifty-four to play Wendy.’
    ‘Is this
what you brought me over here to tell me?’ the father says.
    ‘You
suggested coming yourself. It was your idea.’
    ‘Sooner
or later you would have told me all this.’
    ‘Oh,
quite soon.’
    ‘But
I’m sorry I came.’
    ‘Want
another drink?’
    ‘I need
more ice.’
    Pierre
is chucking two little blocks of ice into his father’s glass while he says,
‘Need you call it blackmail, anyway?’ The father has not produced any cheque
from his pocket. His hand is withdrawn from it, empty.
    ‘I need
not call it anything. I don’t need to say anything. Islanders don’t need to
speak to each other for survival. They act in unison. They do it by telepathy.’
    ‘We are
not islanders here in New York.’
    ‘You
and your sister never became Americanised in the sense that I was Anglicised.’
    ‘You
are not very English,’ says Pierre, ‘although you may think you are.’
    ‘What
it boils down to,’ says Paul, ‘is that you didn’t like that word “blackmail”.’
    ‘No, it
could have been left to telepathy.’
    ‘Nevertheless,’
says Paul, reaching again, really this time, for his cheque book, ‘I said it,
and by God I’m glad I did.’

 
     
     
    V
     
    She stamps her right foot.
    ‘They
fit like a glove,’ the salesman says.
    ‘No,
they’re a bit large,’ she says. ‘When you lose weight as I have, you know, you
lose it everywhere. Everything’s a bit large.’
    ‘You
need a smaller size, a half-size smaller, Elsa,’ says the salesman,