Honor stared at Tim. “Oh no!” she said. “I never could, he’d be too uncomfortable. I don’t want you to think he’s a boor; he’s cultured, his father was a doctor in Vienna and he does know how to use a fish fork. But months now of this work, his hiding and brooding in ghastly places and his not knowing where his family is, which is probably in the concentration camps—all this has made him queer. I don’t wonder now that he hates me, resents me for my safe life. And he’s gone now anyway. He’s probably in a camp now too.”
Honor stopped. She stared at Tim but wasn’t seeing him. “And what would my sister have to say about it?”
“How do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Every damned thing I do or say—or even bloody think—I am always wondering, What will Sara say?”
Tim seemed troubled. “Hey!” he said. “Hey, that’s not right—I want to hear all about this, but first . . . I’ll be right back.”
He rose as easily as a cat, then bent down again and kissed Honor on the cheek. “I’ll be back,” he said again.
Honor knew, though, that he would not be back. She watched him hurry out onto the terrace and listened to the footsteps as they hastened off toward the vineyard, and she didn’t care that he’d run away. She imagined he’d be back later, that later he might help her.
How good to have talked to Tim about Jacob! And about Sara’s influence on her, which seemed more important almost than the details of her own sad love.
Honor took that whitened milk glass off into the kitchen then came back and lay back upon the blue chaise in the corner of the living room, her eyes open but not seeing.
iv
As Daniel hurried across the living room, he ran one hand nervously over his hastily shaved and powdered face. He hoped Sara—if she was in the kitchen—would be standing with her back to him so she wouldn’t notice that he’d cut himself shaving under his chin. She hated that sort of thing.
He smiled at the remembrance of why his razor had slipped only a few moments before, feeling again the same uproarious astonishment that he’d felt then to think that any woman as that kid in the hall could possibly exist. How did she manage, really, to breathe? Did she sweat and get tired and have measles and all the other human things? Had he really actually seen her or had it been a dream that he’d opened his door and she’d been standing there in the dim hall with her arms full of bundles and her eyes as big as apples?
“What are you grinning about?”
Sara was looking at her brother coldly, then she turned from the sink piled high with fresh salad greens. “Hand me the big wooden bowl from that shelf, will you?”
Daniel reached for the bowl and handed it to her with a flourish that kept his cut chin hidden from her.
“Good morning, Madame,” he said. “Or should I say good afternoon?”
“You’re a lazy dog, Dan. But I suppose children do need their rest.”
“You cannot shame me, woman, by taunting me with the fact of my youth. I’m proud to be one of America’s hopes.”
Sara, unsmiling, bent her head. Why do I keep up this kind of silly babbling? Daniel wondered irritably. Her face is thin and she looks tired.
He leaned against the cupboard and raised one eyebrow wearily. “Is there anything I can do to help? Do you want me to set the table?”
Sara’s face broke into a warm smile. She shook her head, glanced out of the open window, her hands idle, her expression vague and dreamy. Daniel ate the heart of a little head of chicory as he watched her, wondering why he never in his life had asked, A penny for your thoughts, as he’d often wanted to. He tried to chew the crisp green nugget noiselessly but Sara heard him and looked at him, then moved resolutely to the spice shelf, her face grown resolute and alive again.
“Oh, Dan, hurry! Don’t stand there. Honor and Joe Kelly are in the wine cellar. Go rescue them, please! Nor gave me her dying look when she went down, and you know how damned lazy she is unless she likes a person. Poor Joe’s probably standing there freezing. Tim will be down in a minute. But you be barman until he comes.”
“Very well, Madame!” Dan plucked another lettuce heart deftly from the pile as he went toward the steps. Then he turned.
“Sara,” he asked softly, his face bright with sudden amusement, “did I really see that wee lass, sleekit whatchamadoodle?”
She looked blankly at him and then grinned. “You mean Susan Harper? I didn’t know you were awake enough, there in the hall, to see anything at all. Yes. Why? Have you fallen for her?”
“Naturally,” Dan agreed blandly, but as he went down into the coldness of the cellars he frowned. Women were silly. Even Sara bored him, often. Why should they all talk so glibly of such things as the biological attraction between people? And anyway, how could he ever even dream of seeing anything really desirable in any female in the world, after this summer and Nan Temple?
He sighed and touched his cut chin gently. Damn Sara! He was positive that she had seen it and masked the disugst that he knew such things made in her. Why was she so fussy? What the hell difference did it make whether a man cut his chin a little? Why be so damned finicky all the time?
He felt depressed and went glumly through the first rooms of the cellar without noticing the rows of richly colored fruit jars and the shelves of cool vegetables that usually pleased him.
As he came slouching through the low doorway to the wine cellar, Honor looked him over critically. She felt annoyed at Daniel, hated it when his face was still puffy with sleep, hated being stuck down in the cold with such a wooden young man as Joe Kelly.
If I were a normal woman, she suddenly thought, I’d be thrilled to the teeth to be standing in the same room as this All-American and a Rhodes scholar, who may be a scholar, all right, but is he a gentleman? He’s too thick and too heavy and he looks like a lug. He’s supposed to be brilliant, at least Tim and Sara said so the night before, but I don’t see any signs of it.
The man bores me, Honor thought.
She watched coldly as her brother, resembling a giraffe, stood blinking under the thin light from the globe in the ceiling. Joe Kelly was nearly as tall as Daniel but he looked almost elephantine beside the stringy body of Daniel.
Why are people afraid of silence, she wondered, but I suppose I should say something? I suppose they’re all lonely, and talking reassures everyone about being in communication with their fellow human beings, or something. She noticed that each of the young men looked increasingly uncomfortable as she stood there but that as soon as she’d formalized the meeting, telling everyone everyone’s already-known name, things felt easier.
Daniel’s voice was very deep, which meant he was feeling shy. Poor boy, and he had a nasty knick on his chin, as well. Thank goodness she was finally over being so terribly young and self-conscious!
“Pour yourself a drink,” she advised him gently.
Daniel looked at her half-empty glass disapprovingly, then at Kelly’s.
“Did she do that?” Daniel asked him. “I hate women bartenders.”
“It’s cold down here,” Honor said. “You have to drink to keep limber. You pour him one, Mr. Kelly, will you? I can see he’s in a terrible state.”
“I am, thank you,” Daniel said. “Why, thank you, suh, but if you all will be that kind and obliging, a dash more bitters, suh. That’s right. Perfect. To your very good health and to yours, Madame.”
Daniel clinked glasses punctiliously, then gulped back his drink and visibly shuddered.
“It’s very bad to drink on an empty stomach,” Honor said. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Kelly?”
“Would you mind not calling me that?”
She liked the soft murmur of the stranger’s voice. It was too bad he was so thick, she thought. She smiled at him apathetically and watched his small warm brown eyes, which were both sad and as deep as a monkey’s. It seemed queer to her suddenly that this great hulk was that little Susan’s lover, and she astonished herself with this thought.
“What’s w
rong?” Joe Kelly asked. “Have I put my foot in it?” He looked at her confusedly, with his face flushing.
Honor started, then laughed. “About your name, you mean? All right, no more Mr. Kelly, but I don’t know you well enough to call you anything else just yet.”
“She gets that from Sara,” Daniel explained. “Sara’s funny about names and being familiar and all that.”
Honor frowned. How stupid of Dan to believe this was their sister’s instruction.
“But of course,” she said enthusiastically. “You must call me Honor and I will call you Joe.”
To herself she added, Maybe, wondering why she should call this dull young man anything at all. She sipped her gin, shivered, listening inattentively to the hit-or-miss of the conversation between the two men standing with her, feeling herself to be a sullen child.
But where was Tim, would he ever finish what he’d begun saying to her that morning? Or would the coming of these two new visitors cause him to forget? And where was Susan?
Honor smiled to herself. She liked to look at people with clear outlines. She liked Susan with her delicate bones and her large teeth and eyes and her beautiful skin. When she’d first seen the tiny woman standing there in the living room with her bundles, she’d instinctively disliked her, because she seemed like an interruption. Now she’d come to like her. Indeed, she felt warm and maternal toward Susan, as she now recognized with amazement.
The only trouble with me, Honor thought as she sipped her gin, is that I need babies.
Then she heard Susan’s hard little heels come tapping down the stairs and the sound of Tim, who was both talking and laughing.
By God, it’s true, Dan cried out exultantly to himself. I did actually see this funny little thing! And he then stood looking down with pure delight at Susan, thinking he’d maybe never seen anything so cute. She wasn’t exciting to him as she didn’t really seem like a woman at all, more a type of delicious joke. He watched her talk and drink and pretend to be a grown-up and could feel his throat shaking with choked-off laughter.
He looked at his sister leaning back against the cold wall with her arms now folded tightly across her waist. Now there, he thought, was a fine big girl who someday, when she’d matured a little and had experienced more of life, would make some man a fine wife. She was, however, completely cold, of course. This supposed affair of hers with the crackpot student in Dijon was merely some fanciful idea. She really knew nothing at all of passion, Daniel insisted to himself. Girls were very different from men. Honor might be older than he was but—in experience—she was still a child when compared to him.
Kelly, given time, might be the kind who could teach Honor what was good for her—it was merely laughable to think he’d been lying in bed with the tiny woman who stood beside him. They were like a Saint Bernard and a Pekingese. Daniel swallowed hastily with a little snort of innocent mirth, taking the rest of his drink, then led the way without speaking up the stairs and into the kitchen.
v
Sunlight flickered through the leaves of the twisted old fruit trees that bent over the tables at the end of the terrace as if benevolently. The sound of voices was soft as the people sitting there talked vaguely, easily, after their lunch. The little fountain murmured and chuckled. Below, upon the white lake a whiter paddleboat churned almost gaily toward Chillon.
Daniel tipped back his head sleepily and let the last warming swallow of beer in his glass pour down his throat. He opened his eyes wider than they had been for several minutes looking about. What was everyone doing? By God, he had almost fallen asleep!
Little Susan lay curled up on the deck chair, one hand reached out automatically toward the dark somnolent bulk of Joe Kelly, and she looked sleepy too. Daniel wished she would stop sniffling. She was cute, though, with the hayfever or whatever it was she had. Her eyes were as big as a puzzled kitten’s. She was terribly polite, in a solemn drunken way.
He wished Lucy would stop talking. She was a boring old bag. What did Nan see in her to bring her over here as her apparently chosen friend. Was it charity? Women were queer. Honor said that Lucy was a good foil for Nan, that this was probably the long and short of it.
Daniel smirked slightly as he looked at the two mismatched women sitting side-by-side across from him. Nan lay easily in the deck chair that made her seem smaller and more exquisite than she was. Her yellow dress curved roundly over her girlish breasts; her hair was a golden cloud. One hand, as relaxed and delicate as a skeleton of some sea bird, lifted a cigarette dreamily to her mouth then fell away again, while beside her Lucy smoked nervously.
Daniel looked at Lucy with impatient dislike, noting with the impervious cruelty of a very young man her fat strong fingers with their bitten nails, the brownish spots across the backs of her hands and wrists. He saw with disgust her shapeless mouth awkwardly smeared with lipstick, the monstrous tangle of her dank wadded-up hair. He speculated coldly on the probable shape of her large body without all the braces of whalebone and cloth. She undoubtedly had a strong smell, he’d already decided.
She and Nan Garton were the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of womanhood. He recognized an apt criticism when he saw it and felt pleased with himself.
Honor would appreciate this if he felt like telling her. Honor hated Lucy Pendleton, he knew, though she had never said anything cruel about the old woman. Instead, the few times they had just spoken of her, Honor had been kindly and had smiled in that remote way that women can, smiling meaningfully. Why the hell couldn’t women just say what they thought? he wondered.
Honor looked at him suddenly, as intently as if she’d heard him thinking. She held a crust of bread in one hand and lay back looking . . . No, she was not looking at him at all but at something in the apple boughs above him. He stretched one foot out in order to gently nudge her chair. Her brown eyes dropped their gaze—how large and somber they were. She stared unsmilingly at him for a strange moment and bit into her bread, looking displeased as if she loathed the taste of it.
Honor was a queer one. What she needed was some fun, he decided. When they got back to America, he’d try to take her out dancing occasionally if he wasn’t too booked up during Christmas vacation and show her a good time. Or did she have a good time without him, with men he had never met? He felt a little ashamed of himself—why should Daniel feel patronizing toward Honor when he knew so little about her?
But then what did he know about anyone? He sighed and picked up his empty glass aimlessly and was suddenly filled with depression. What was the use of thinking about them, when they were all of them so secret? Was he a secret to them as well? He hoped so, and yet at the same time he felt almost unbearably lonesome. Through his head floated a tune that had been lurking there ever since his morning dreams. Now it was clear and strong and he knew it was Sibelius’s “Valse Triste.” It was corny, all right, but it haunted him now as it had done ever since he first heard it weeks before in a little record shop in Paris.
The song crept through his dreams with its sad and haunting rhythm so that nothing could clear it away. Playing it on the gramophone only made it worse and made him long intolerably to say things he could and should never say. It pressed him toward madness and made him feel Nan in his arms very close to his heart.
Daniel looked at her, suddenly sure that she, too, would be looking at him, but she was smiling at Timothy. Daniel shrugged his shoulders and shook his head to free it of the dangling melody that tricked him.
He watched Timothy smile back at his sister and then when the older man turned and looked solemnly at him he felt quite jolly all of a sudden and young again. To hell with feeling sad, Daniel thought. Women complicate things. Men, real men like Tim, are the answer.
Daniel looked back at his friend nonchalantly with his heart full of gratitude and affection. Tim Garton was a real man, that was it. That was why Tim was probably the most important person in the world for Daniel, as important as love and duty and so on, much more important even than romantic love and so
much more important than . . .
Daniel sat up, startled. What was it he almost said? Was Timothy more important than Sara? Sara? Why, he’d known her since being born! She taught him how to walk and talk and speak. He got away from her, had pushed himself away from her, freed himself from being her little brother by a thousand acts of deliberate maturity. Why should it startle him now to find himself thinking of someone more important than she was when he had proved to himself for years now that she was unimportant? He could get along without her. Then why did he compare everything to her? Even after all these years? Why should his mind drag her into relevant things like his liking for Tim Garton? Damn Sara! Why couldn’t she leave him alone?
Daniel looked at her, his face blank over his seething resentment, and was furious to see Sara’s blank face looking back at him, mirrorlike. Then he grew even more furious to recognize the stab of almost womanly concern that surged in him, to notice once again the new thin line of her cheek, and the strange set to her mouth. Was she too tired with all of them living there with her and Tim? Was she pushing herself to work too hard to make things smooth and comfortable for all of them and to keep them peaceful and well fed? Why did she drive herself so? Was she some kind of martyr?
He looked anxiously at her, now full of worry. This summer had grown tighter as time passed with only occasional hours of laziness and gaiety such as last night, after Nan and her strange friend had gone upstairs. Then Sara had been like the girl he remembered from childhood but even more fun, full of laughing foolish talk and sudden exciting flashes of dark wisdom. Daniel had felt happy sitting there beside the cold fire in the night, with his brandy, and Honor a little tight in the big chair and Tim sitting beside Sara on the floor with his white head shining. Daniel felt it was fine to grow up and find that your sister was a real person instead of a conscientious nursemaid. And now she was gone again, turned back into a remote efficient woman who could make him feel uncomfortable and ill at ease with one look, could flatter him with glib subtlety and make him a fool altogether. Why did she hide? Was it his fault? Was it just that she was tired? Why didn’t she stop worrying him?
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