‘Barbara—’
‘What?’
‘Don’t you understand why we must do this?’
‘I’m sorry.’ She turned and walked toward the kitchen door. She hesitated, then turned and pushed open the screened door that led out on to the little terrace. The air was chilly as she stepped out, and she shivered. He rose and followed her.
He stood behind her in the doorway. ‘Barbara,’ he said, ‘do you want to hear my philosophy of life?’
She looked at the night and the trees and the neat little garden. ‘All right,’ she said.
‘I was thinking—on the plane, coming back. It’s funny, but riding on a plane always make me think philosophical thoughts, about life and what life is all about because—well; to me at least, a plane trip is always like courting death. I think each time I take off that I’ll never land alive and I always thank God when I do. That may sound silly and cowardly, but that’s the way I am. And perhaps it’s a good thing if it makes a person stop and think,’ he said. ‘Do you understand what I mean?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, go on …’
‘And I was thinking today, on the plane, about God, and how God made the heavens and the earth and the fishes and the beasts—and He made Man, shaped him and moulded him. But then I thought, God is a crazy potter. Look at the strange shapes He’s turned out on His wheel. But in His own mad way, He managed to make a bit of sense from it all. He was mad, certainly, to create such a thing as love. Because it’s love tht makes the pottery crack the worst—like home-made clay left out in the sun too long. But then I thought: He also gave love the power to patch up the cracks—not perfectly, not good as new perhaps, but patched nevertheless. And then I thought about myself, what I am. Like any madman, God turns out certain masterpieces now and then. But I’m not one of them. I’ll never write a bit of poetry or paint a picture, or leave much of a footprint in the sands of time. I’m a salesman. Does the world need salesmen? You could argue about that, I suppose, but anyway that’s what I am. I’m not one of God’s masterpieces. But I can offer you something, Barbara. I can offer you a place, a plateau, from which to view the world if you are looking for such a place. And I can offer you my love. What you’ve said—what you told me about Barney, about the boy in Hawaii—that doesn’t matter so much to me, Barbara, because, to me, those are only little cracks and perhaps I can help you patch them. With my love, I mean. And if you will come with me to the place I have in mind, all I’ll be doing will be selling paper, selling napkins, selling whatever there is to be sold. That will be your husband—from nine to five, anyway. But the rest of the time I’ll be loving you, Barbara—in this place. There’ll be no more rules,’ he said softly, ‘except this one. And this isn’t a rule at all, but a promise. Does anything I’ve said make any sense to you?’
His words sounded very simple, even innocent. And yet they affected her in a queer way, moved her in one of those rare—increasingly rare as we grow older—floods of longing, happiness and love. She turned and looked at his face. It was a simple, unspectacular face with no surprises in it. But it was his dear face, the face she had loved so dearly back at Princeton, the face she had watched from the darkened seat next to her in dozens of movie theatres, the face on the pillow in the morning, drunk with sleep, the face he turned to her when suddenly a pleasant thought for them both occurred to him (‘Let’s go out to dinner. Let’s take a drive in the new car’). It was the face that she had grown so used to seeing, whose expressions and moods and depths and smiles she knew so well—her husband’s face. She let this feeling hover over her, as it seemed to, with small, silently beating wings. His face now was troubled and anxious, waiting for her answer. In his hand he held a cigarette, rolling it this way and that, nervously, between his long well-knuckled fingers.
‘Barbara,’ he said quietly, ‘it doesn’t make any difference where we live, does it? As long as we love one another?’
She had been about to speak when he added—spoiling, though only slightly, the effect his words had just had upon her—‘Besides, it’s only temporary.’
After all, he would be always Carson.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll go home with you.’
She turned quickly away and stood on the little terrace, her back to the house, looking out at the tiny strip of view, at the broad, dark valley, at the silhouettes of the prim brick houses on the street, and, beyond the houses, to the hollow in the hill where all of the lights of Locustville swam before her eyes. Locustville had always seemed most beautiful at night, like Italy! And she thought: Yes, it’s all right; I never knew where home was.
She suddenly discovered that Dobie was standing just beside her. Their talk had awakened him and he stood in his pyjamas, rubbing his eyes, but, half-asleep, he hadn’t seen his father standing in the shadows. She saw Dobie’s face looking up at her. She knelt, placing her hands beneath his armpits, and lifted him into her arms. He was getting so heavy that she almost lost her balance and stepped back quickly to regain it. She held him tightly.
‘Where are we going, Mummy?’ he asked her.
‘To grandmother’s house, Dobie,’ she said. ‘Over the hill to grandmother’s house.’ She carried him toward the door. ‘Won’t that be fun, Dobie?’ she said. ‘Won’t that be fun?’
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1959 by Stephen Birmingham
Cover design by Amanda Shaffer
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4047-1
Distributed in 2016 by Open Road Distribution
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Barbara Greer Page 38
