The Iron Gates

by Margaret Millar

She hurried back into the living room to stir up the fire. . . . Andrew would be tired when he came home, he would like a fire and a hot toddy.

  But no matter how hard she worked, the wood refused to burn. She rose to her feet, dusty and defeated. Slowly she moved her head and her eyes met Mildred’s, Mildred, whole and happy and done in oils, and changeless, Mildred, still a nuisance after sixteen years, having to be dusted once a day and sent away to be cleaned when her plump white shoulders showed scurf.

  Lucille looked at her bitterly but Mildred’s soft sweet mouth did not alter, and her blue eyes undimmed by time or tears or hate stared forever at a piece of wall. “It’s all coming back to me,” Edith said.

  “What?” Lucille said. “What?”

  “The wreck I was trying to remember. It was when Andrew and I were practically children. I don’t remember how it happened exactly but the train was derailed in some way not a mile from the house. And of course we had to go over as soon as we heard about it.”

  She went on and on, and Lucille heard only snatches. “Hundreds of bodies, yes, hundreds . . . very unpleasant for children . . . soldiers to help because the other war was on then . . .”

  In the excitement Edith’s indigestion disappeared, and Lucille acquired a headache.

  “You’re becoming more moderate with the years,” she said sharply. “The last time you told me, it was thousands of bodies.”

  “Oh, it was not,” Edith said, offended. “I’m very accurate at numbers. You’re not yourself today, at all, Lucille. You’re quite critical.”

  “I have a headache.”

  “Go up and lie down then. You’re not yourself today,” she repeated.

  “I don’t want to lie down,” Lucille said and was surprised to hear how childish she sounded.

  Edith and I are not friends, she thought. We get along and laugh together and understand each other but with only a little less control we might rail at each other like fishwives.

  “Very well, I’ll lie down,” she said. She walked abruptly to the door hoping that if she hurried she might defeat Edith by having the last word.

  But she was not quick enough.

  “Well, I should think so,” Edith said.

  Breathing hard, Lucille went to the staircase and began to ascend. She wanted Edith to hear how briskly and youthfully she went upstairs, but the deep carpet and her own weariness betrayed her and the sounds she made were the soft treacherous sounds of a panther moving across the uncertain floor of a jungle.

  She had intended to pass the hall mirror without looking at herself but now that she had reached it she couldn’t bear to turn her head away and slight an old friend.

  “Hello,” she said, quirking an eyebrow to show herself how whimsical she was being saying hello to herself. “Hello, stranger.”

  She passed down the hall into her own room.

  As far as anything in the house could be free of Mildred, this room was. In Mildred’s day it had been the guest room because the windows looked out over the park. Mildred had draped the windows herself with yards of suffocating ruffles and net and visitors saw the park only through a pink fog.

  Lucille’s first act had been to strip off the ruffles and replace them with crisp tailored drapes. There was a chair beside the windows and here Lucille often sat watching the people in the park, in the winter the skiers and the children with sleds and toboggans, in the summer the parade of prams and picnickers and cyclists.

  There was one very steep hill that hardly any cyclist ever managed to get up, and Lucille found pleasure in estimating at just what point the bicycles would falter and the riders dismount and trudge up the rest of the hill.

  She enjoyed the people who used the park. They were so tiny and harmless and always making things difficult for themselves by going up and down hills. But she especially loved the cyclists, the ones who never reached the top. Cruelly she enjoyed their endless and futile activity while the clock on her bureau ticked away the minutes and the years.

  Outside it had stopped snowing. The park lay like a silent lolling woman softly draped in white with hints of darkness in its hollows.

  Lucille turned from the window. She did not like the park at dusk. For a long time after Mildred died nobody had gone into the park after nightfall. There were rumors of a man who roamed the hills with an axe in his hand, there were tales of ghosts and half-human animals. But Mildred and the man were soon forgotten, and intrepid children and impatient lovers had driven away the ghosts.

  Only Lucille remembered the man with the axe. She had never believed in him for an instant, yet some perverse part of her mind had kept him for her in storage. When she was disturbed and restless he came out from hiding, gently at first so that she would think he was an old friend. His face was smiling and familiar and she never saw the axe in his hand or the blood on his clothes until it was too late. Then gradually his face would change and distort into something so grotesque and hideous that she could never describe it in words or even remember it when she was feeling calm again.

  Lucille laughed suddenly, thinking of Edith.

  “Edith would say I have repressions,” she said aloud. “Poor Edith.”

  She went to the mirror and began to make up her face for Andrew.

  “If you’re tired,” Martin said, “why not let me drive?”

  Andrew did not take his eyes off the road.

  “Gravel and snow,” he said. “I think I’d better keep the wheel.”

  Polly’s voice came from the back seat, “You should know by this time, Martin, that Father thinks nobody can drive as well as he can.”

  “Never saw one,” Andrew said.

  “The trouble with you . . Polly said.

  “The trouble with you,” Andrew said, “is you talk too much, my dear. You’re likely to give Giles the right impression.”

  “Giles,” Polly said, “do I talk too much?”

  The young man beside her stiffened in order to show her that he was alert and listening to her. But he hadn’t heard the question at all. A combination of circumstances had made him so ill at ease that he was aware only of his own problems and discomfort.

  In the first place he didn’t feel quite at home yet in his officer’s uniform. He didn’t know what to do with his swagger stick, and though he felt that he should put his arm around Polly he didn’t want to lose the stick, or break it.

  He was, moreover, nervous with Polly’s family. How could they talk like this after seeing the wreck and the bodies?

  The wreck had affected him more than the others because he was not used to death and sickness and because it was a little bit like war and he was going to see a lot of things worse than this. The knowledge clutched his stomach like an iron hand.

  He sat up straighter. In the headlights of an approaching car his face was stern and white, and the small fair moustache he was growing only emphasized his youth and helplessness.

  “Forget about it, Giles,” Polly said, seeing the misery in his eyes.

  “Forget about what?” he said stiffly.

  “Everything.”

  “Oh.”

  She squeezed his hand. “You look awfully nice in your uniform.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m sorry we had to run into this today, darling.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” Giles said. “I mean, it’s all right. I mean, it’s not your fault.”

  “True,” Martin said dryly.

  He rather liked Polly’s young man, but he was in no mood to go easy on him. He himself had been stirred by the wreck to pity and anger which, in Martin, turned at once into sarcasm.

  “Martin doesn’t want anybody to know he’s human,” Polly said, “so he’ll be biting and snarling for a week now.”

  “Like the cur I am,” Martin said.

  “Martin loves snarling.”

  “Don’t you both?” Andrew said, suddenly irritated with the road and his children and their endless wrangling and the young lieutenant who wasn’t good enough for P
olly.

  “I don’t,” Polly said. “I get along with everybody.”

  “Lack of taste,” Martin said, slumping further on the seat. “Your chief fault.”

  More uneasy than ever, Giles cleared his throat and tried to think of something very correct to say. By the time something occurred to him Polly and Martin were talking again. Frustrated, he began to beat his stick rhythmically against his knee.

  The car glided over the treacherous road. On a curve the wheels slipped and lurched ahead and the car sprawled sideways in the middle of the highway.

  “Better reconsider,” Martin said. “I’m a heller on snow and gravel.”

  “Kindly shut up, Martin,” Andrew said, twisting the steering wheel furiously.

  “I’m trying to save trouble,” Martin said. “Lucille will blame me if I don’t deliver you cosy and safe at the door.”

  “See?” Polly said to Giles. “Now he’s biting Father. I think we should feed the poor mutt and walk him past a hydrant.”

  “What?” Giles said, and blushed. “Oh. I see.”

  Martin grinned into the darkness. “You can’t blame Polly for being earthy now and then. She’s had such a wide range of experience. Tell him the case of Mrs. Palienczski, Polly.”

  “Not until after we’re married,” Polly said calmly.

  Married, Andrew thought, and his fingers dug into the steering wheel. Polly getting married, staking her life on the chance that this young man was clean and decent and responsible and healthy . . .

  I don’t like him, Andrew decided.

  Once the words had formed in his head, the feeling which had been vague before became definite and irrevocable. “I don’t think I like him,” had become “I’m determined I’ll never like him.”

  Andrew was not given to introspection or self-analysis—he had been too busy for it all his life—and so he thought his judgment of Giles was perfectly impartial and well-considered, and, of course, correct.

  “It’s nearly midnight,” Martin said.

  “Nearly midnight,” Giles echoed, and was conscious of a feeling of relief that the day was almost over and tomorrow could be no worse.

  For the rest of the journey he was silent. Every now and then when they passed a lighted village he would glance down at Polly’s dark fur coat. He had never seen her wearing it before and it looked very expensive, like the car, and Martin’s hat, and Andrew’s watch. In addition to his other fears he began to be afraid that the Morrows were rich, that they might have servants who would intimidate him, that he wouldn’t know which fork to use. Or he might slip on a waxed floor, or break an antique chair . . .

  Anyway, I’m a soldier, he thought. Anyway, that’s more than Martin is. I’m a lieutenant with a whole platoon of my own.

  He closed his eyes and wished that he could be back where he belonged, with his platoon. . . .

  “Giles,” Polly said. “Darling, wake up. We’re here.”

  He was awake immediately and reaching instinctively for his swagger stick. But his mind was confused and when the car jerked to a stop he had the impression that Andrew had driven right up on to a veranda, a spacious veranda with huge white pillars. He blinked slowly and looked out the window and saw that the car had stopped under a portico. Between the pillars he could see the dim sprawling hills of the park.

  “You take the car in, Martin,” Andrew said wearily and climbed out of the car.

  Martin slid over on the seat. “All right. Remove yourselves back there.”

  “Come on, Giles,” Polly said. “We’ll get out here.”

  He was still staring out the window at the park. A park, he thought, their park, a whole damn park in the middle of a city.

  “Come on,” Polly said. “You can moon over the scenery some other time. I’m cold.”

  Giles got out. There was a brisk clumsiness in his movements as if he hadn’t quite got used to his own size.

  “Is it yours?” he said. “All that?”

  “Of course not,” Andrew said brusquely.

  “Really, Giles,” Polly said, laughing. “That’s High Park. We happen to live next to it. You’ll love it, Giles. Tomorrow we’ll walk through it. . . .”

  “No, you won’t,” Andrew said. He turned his back to them and pressed the doorbell. He spoke over his shoulder and his voice sounded thin and distant. “I don’t want to be tyrannical about this but I must insist that you stay out of the park.”

  “I’m afraid you’ve caught a cold, Father,” Polly said.

  “You must stay out of the park,” Andrew said. “It isn’t a nice place.”

  “Of course, sir,” Giles said stiffly. “Of course, sir. I don’t like parks.”

  “I’m afraid Father is overtired,” Polly said. “Martin and I often go into the park, especially in the winter to ski.”

  “It isn’t a nice place,” Andrew said, and pressed the bell again.

  Martin came running up the driveway. He had his hat off and his dark hair was feathered with snow. He threw his hat up in the air and caught it, and let out a shout that was an exultant challenge to the weather.

  Giles stood, shaken with envy and wistfulness. I’d like to. do that, he thought. I could do that.

  “Martin is always uninhibited,” Polly said, “but especially in the first snow of the year.”

  The portico light went on suddenly, and the door opened.

  Giles had a confused impression that several women were rushing out at him all talking at once. . . . . “We didn’t hear the car . . .” “Andrew, you didn’t tie your scarf. . . .” “You’re not chilled, Andrew?”

  Polly’s voice rose above the babble, clear and cold. “Come on, Giles. I’ll fix you a drink while they’re taking Father’s temperature.”

  The talk died down and Giles was able to see now that there were only two women. One of them was tall and thin and looked like Martin, with her dark curly hair cropped close to her head. She had bright birdlike eyes and a wide mobile mouth and it surprised Giles to hear how high and tight her voice was and how anxious her laugh. This must be Edith, Giles thought.

  The other woman was taller, and seemed at the same time younger and more mature than Edith. She had the controlled subdued beauty that plain women sometimes acquire when they have achieved happiness and success and security. Her red-gold hair was coiled in a braid around her head.

  She came toward Giles, holding out her hand and smiling apologetically.

  “We’ve been terribly rude,” she said. “You’re Giles, of course. I’m Lucille Morrow.”

  He shook her hand, very embarrassed because he still had his gloves on and because Polly had flounced ahead into the house without looking back.

  “How do you do?” Giles said.

  “And this is Edith, Polly’s aunt. Edith dear, come over and meet Giles.”

  Edith darted at him. She was wearing something that fluttered in the wind and it seemed to Giles that she was entirely fluid and never stopped moving, talking, smiling, having ideas.

  “Hello, Giles,” she said. “What a pretty uniform, don’t you think so, Lucille? We are so glad to have you here, Giles. Andrew, please go into the house at once, though you probably have pneumonia already.”

  “Nothing I’d like better,” Andrew said and stamped ahead into the house.

  “What a way to talk!” Edith slipped her hand inside Giles’ arm. “Polly is always rude, don’t mind her. One of the first things you have to do is teach her some manners. We’ve never been able to.”

  Giles found himself being guided expertly and firmly into the house and down a hall. He had no time to look around or even to think. Edith did not once pause for a breath or an answer.

  Her hand on his arm was like a bird’s claw, helpless and appealing, yet somehow grotesque. He thought if he moved his arm the claw would tighten from fear and the harder he tried to shake it off, the tighter it would cling.

  “Here we are,” Edith said, and thrust him neatly into the living room.

  Luc
ille was pouring out the hot toddies. Martin and Polly were sitting on the chesterfield talking, and Andrew stood in front of the fire warming his hands.

  “Attention, everybody,” Edith said. “And Polly, this means you as well as everyone else because I’m going to make a speech.”

  “I knew it,” Polly said tragically. “I knew it.”

  “How could you know it when I just decided myself?” Edith said. “Besides, it’s a very short speech, and I consider this an occasion.”

  “And occasions deserve speeches,” Martin added. “Preferably by Edith. Come on over here, Giles. We may be up all night.”

  “You will if you keep interrupting me,” Edith said. “Anyway, I want to welcome you to the house, Giles. We are glad you could come and we think you will find us a—a happy family.” She blushed and gave Giles an embarrassed and apologetic smile. “I know how sentimental that sounds but I think it’s true, we are a happy family. Of course we have our lapses. Polly is invariably rude and Martin’s high spirits are a trial . . .”

  “And Edith gets maudlin,” Polly said.

  “Oh, I do not,” Edith said. “And Andrew can never find anything and then he gets cross, don’t you, Andrew?”

  “I may become justifiably irritated,” Andrew said, “but never cross.”

  “As for Lucille,” Edith said and smiled across the room at her sister-in-law.

  There was a pause and the room seemed to Giles to become static. It was no longer a real room but a picture, the man standing warming his hands at the fire, the two women smiling and smiling at each other, the three figures on the chesterfield relaxed and yet unnatural. Happy family, Giles thought. An ambitious picture painted by an amateur. The smiles of the women were set and false, and the figures on the chesterfield sprawled ungracefully like stiff-jointed dolls.

  “As for Lucille,” Edith said, “I don’t believe she has any lapses.”

  Lucille laughed softly. “Don’t you believe her, Giles. I’m the worst of the lot.”

  His eyes met hers and he felt suddenly warm and understood and contented. The rest of the family with their constant jokes and squabbles were a puzzle to him, but he felt that he knew and liked this quiet beautiful woman.