The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant

by Mavis Gallant

  “Like some help?” he said. She knew no English, of course; did not even turn. He leaned against the drainboard, where she had to see him. He folded his arms and looked at Carmela. Then he began to whistle through his teeth as people do when they are bored, and then he must have reached up and tapped the lightbulb that hung on a cord. It was only the gesture of someone bored again, but the rocking shadows and the tall ugly boy whistling were like Carmela’s sea dream. She dropped her little string dishmop and ran out. She thought she heard herself screaming. “Oh, don’t pretend!” he called after her, as mysterious as his mother had once seemed.

  He was bored; he said so the next day. There was not a thing to do here except stare out at mountains. He went downstairs to where the owner of the house lived, and together they listened to bad news over the radio. He could not understand much of the Italian, but sometimes they caught the BBC broadcasts, and when Douglas did understand something it made the situation seem worse.

  “Oh, let’s leave, then, for God’s sake,” Miss Hermione said, folding her canvas neatly twice.

  Douglas pressed his hands to his head, for all the world like his mother. He said, “I don’t want to be caught up in it.”

  “Military life won’t hurt you,” Miss Hermione answered. Without embroidery to keep her hands busy, she kept shifting and changing position; now she had her hands clasped round a knee, and she swung a long foot and played at pointing her toes.

  The day they went off, there was a loud windstorm. They paid the landlord to drive them as far as a bus station; Carmela never saw them again. Miss Hermione left a green hair ribbon behind. Carmela kept it for years.

  As soon as these two had vanished, the wind dropped. Carmela and the twins climbed a little way out of the village and sat in deep grass. The sky held one small creamy cloud. At eye level were lacy grasses and, behind them, blue-black mountains. She tried to teach the twins the alphabet, but she was not certain where to put the W, and the girls were silly and would not listen; she did teach them songs.

  III

  In September she slipped back to a life she was sure of. She had taken its color. The sea was greener than anything except Mrs. Unwin’s emerald, bluer than her sapphire, more transparent than blue, white, transparent glass. Wading with a twin at each hand, she saw their six feet underwater like sea creatures. The sun became as white as a stone; something stung in its heat, like fine, hard, invisible rain. War was somewhere, but not in Italy. Besides, something much more important than a war had taken place. It was this: A new English clergyman had arrived. Now that England was at war he did not know if he should stay. He told someone, who told the Unwins, that he would remain as long as he had a flock to protect. The Unwins, who were agnostics, wondered how to address him. His name was Dunn, but that was not the point. He was not the vicar, only a substitute. They had called his predecessor “Ted,” straight out, but they did not propose to call Mr. Dunn “Horace.” They decided to make it “Padre.” “Padre” was not solemn, and marked an ironic distance they meant to keep with the Church; and it was not rude, either.

  Carmela understood that the Unwins’ relations with the rest of the foreign colony were endlessly complicated. There were two layers of English, like sea shelves. Near the bottom was a shelf of hotelkeepers, dentists, people who dealt in fruit and in wine—not for amusement but for a living. Nearer the light dwelt the American Marchesa, and people like Miss Barnes and her companion, Miss Lewis. These two lived in mean rooms almost in the attic of a hotel whose owner did not ask them to pay very much, because Miss Barnes was considered someone important—it was her father who had founded village schools and made a present of them to the Italian government. Between the two shelves the Unwins floated, bumping against the one or the other as social currents flung them upward or let them sink. Still lower than any of the English were Russians, Austrians, or Hungarians, rich and poor alike, whose preoccupation was said to be gaining British passports for their children. As passports could be had by marriage—or so the belief ran—the British colony kept a grip on its sons. Mrs. Unwin was heard by Carmela to remark that Hermione had this to be said for her—she was English to the core.

  Mrs. Unwin still smiled sometimes, but not as she had in August. She showed a death grin now. When she was excited her skin became a mottled brick-and-white. Carmela had never seen Mrs. Unwin as smiling and as dappled as the afternoon Miss Barnes and Miss Lewis came to tea. Actually, Miss Barnes had called to see about having still more of her late father’s poems printed.

  “Carmela! Tea!” cried Mrs. Unwin.

  Having been often told not to touch the good china, Carmela brought their tea in pottery mugs, already poured in the kitchen.

  “Stupid!” said Mrs. Unwin.

  “That is something of an insult,” Miss Lewis remarked.

  “Carmela knows I am more bark than bite,” said Mrs. Unwin, with another of her smiles—a twitchy grimace.

  But Miss Lewis went on, “You have been down here long enough to know the things one can and can’t say to them.”

  Mrs. Unwin’s face, no longer mottled, had gone the solid shade the English called Egyptian red. Carmela saw the room through Mrs. Unwin’s eyes: It seemed to move and crawl, with its copper bowl, and novels from England, and faded cretonne-covered chairs, and stained wallpaper. All these dead things seemed to be on the move, because of the way Miss Lewis had spoken to Mrs. Unwin. Mrs. Unwin smiled unceasingly, with her upper lip drawn back.

  Miss Barnes, in a wheelchair because she had sprained a knee, reached across and patted her companion’s hand. “Charlotte is ever so bolshie,” she remarked, taking on a voice and an accent that were obviously meant to make a joke of it. Her eyes went smoothly around the room, but all she chose to see or to speak of was the copper bowl, with dahlias in it this time.

  “From the Marchesa. Such a pet. Always popping in with flowers!” Mrs. Unwin cried.

  “Frances is a dear,” said Miss Barnes.

  “Ask Mr. Unwin to join us, Carmela,” said Mrs. Unwin, trembling a little. After that she referred to the Marchesa as “Frances.”

  The pity was that this visit was spoiled by the arrival of the new clergyman. It was his first official parish call. He could not have been less welcome. He was a young man with a complexion as changeable as Mrs. Unwin’s. He settled unshyly into one of the faded armchairs and said he had been busy clearing empty bottles out of the rectory. Not gin bottles, as they would have been in England, but green bottles with a sediment of red wine, like red dust. The whole place was a shambles, he added, though without complaining; no, it was as if this were a joke they were all young enough to share.

  In the general shock Miss Barnes took over: Ted—Dr. Edward Stonehouse, rather—had been repatriated at the expense of his flock, with nothing left for doing up the rectory. He had already cost them a sum—the flock had twice sent him on a cure up to the mountains for his asthma. Everyone had loved Ted; no one was likely to care about the asthma or the anything else of those who came after. Miss Barnes made that plain.

  “He left a fair library,” said the young man, after a silence. “Though rather dirty.”

  “I should never have thought that of Hymns Ancient and Modern,” said bolshie Miss Lewis.

  “Dusty, I meant,” said the clergyman vaguely. At a signal from Mrs. Unwin, Carmela, whose hands were steady, poured the clergyman’s tea. “The changes I shall make won’t cost any money,” he said, pursuing some thought of his own. He came to and scanned their stunned faces. “Why, I was thinking of the notice outside, ‘Evensong Every Day at Noon.’ ”

  “Why change it?” said Miss Barnes in her wheelchair. “I admit it was an innovation of poor old Dr. Stonehouse’s, but we are so used to it now.”

  “And was Evensong every day at noon?”

  “No,” said Miss Barnes, “because that is an hour when most people are beginning to think about lunch.”

  “More bread and butter, Carmela,” said Mrs. Unwin.

 
Returning, Carmela walked into “The other thing I thought I might … do something about”—as if he were avoiding the word “change”—“is the church clock.”

  “The clock was a gift,” said Miss Barnes, losing her firmness, looking to the others for support. “The money was collected. It was inaugurated by the Duke of Connaught.”

  “Surely not Connaught,” murmured the clergyman, sounding to Carmela not quarrelsome but pleasantly determined. He might have been teasing them; or else he thought the entire conversation was a tease. Carmela peeped sideways at the strange man who did not realize how very serious they all were.

  “My father was present,” said Miss Barnes. “There is a plaque.”

  “Yes, I have seen it,” he said. “No mention of Connaught. It may have been an oversight”—finally responding to the blinks and frowns of Miss Barnes’s companion, Miss Lewis. “All I had hoped to alter was … I had thought I might have the time put right.”

  “What is wrong with the time?” said Mrs. Unwin, letting Miss Barnes have a rest.

  “It is slow.”

  “It has always been slow,” said Miss Barnes. “If you will look more carefully than you looked at the plaque, you will see a rectangle of cardboard upon which your predecessor printed in large capital letters the word ‘slow’; he placed it beneath the clock. In this way the clock, which has historical associations for some of us—my father was at its inauguration—in this way the works of the clock need not be tampered with.”

  “Perhaps I might be permitted to alter the sign and add the word ‘slow’ in Italian.” He still thought this was a game, Carmela could see. She stood nearby, keeping an eye on the plate of bread and butter and listening for the twins, who would be waking at any moment from their afternoon sleep.

  “No Italian would be bothered looking at an English church clock,” said Miss Barnes. “And none of us has ever missed a train. Mr. Dunn—let me give you some advice: Do not become involved with anything. We are a flock in need of a shepherd; nothing more.”

  “Right!” screamed Mrs. Unwin, white-and-brick-mottled again. “For God’s sake, Padre … no involvement!”

  The clergyman looked as though he had been blindfolded and turned about in a game and suddenly had the blindfold whipped off. Mr. Unwin had not spoken until now. He said deliberately, “I hope you are not a scholar, Padre. Your predecessor was, and his sermons were a great bore.”

  “Stonehouse a scholar?” said Mr. Dunn.

  “Yes, I’m sorry to say. I might have brought my wife back to the fold, so to speak, but his sermons were tiresome—all about the Hebrews and the Greeks.”

  The clergyman caught Carmela staring at him, and noticed her. He smiled. The smile fixed his face in her memory for all time. It was not to her an attractive face—it was too fair-skinned for a man’s; it had color that came and ebbed too easily. “Perhaps there won’t be time for the Greeks and the Hebrews now,” he said gently. “We are at war, aren’t we?”

  “We?” said Miss Barnes.

  “Nonsense, Padre,” said Mrs. Unwin briskly. “Read the newspapers.”

  “England,” said the clergyman, and stopped.

  Mr. Unwin was the calmest man in the world, but he could be as wild-looking as his wife sometimes. At the word “England” he got up out of his chair and went to fetch the Union Jack on a metal standard that stood out in the hall, leaning into a corner. The staff was too long to go through the door upright; Mr. Unwin advanced as if he were attacking someone with a long spear. “Well, Padre, what about this?” he said. The clergyman stared as if he had never seen any flag before, ever; as if it were a new kind of leaf, or pudding, or perhaps a skeleton. “Will the flag have to be dipped at the church door on Armistice Day?” said Mr. Unwin. “It can’t be got through the door without being dipped. I have had the honor of carrying this flag for the British Legion at memorial services. But I shall no longer carry a flag that needs to be lowered now that England is at war. For I do agree with you, Padre, on that one matter. I agree that England is at war, rightly or wrongly. The lintel of the church door must be raised. You do see that? Your predecessor refused to have the door changed. I can’t think why. It is worthless as architecture.”

  “You don’t mean that,” said Miss Barnes. “The door is as important to us as the time of Evensong.”

  “Then I shall say no more,” said Mr. Unwin. He stood the flag in a corner and became his old self in a moment. He said to Carmela, “The Padre has had enough tea. Bring us some glasses, will you?” On which the three women chorused together, “Not for me!”

  “Well, I expect you’ll not forget your first visit,” said Mr. Unwin.

  “I am not likely to,” said the young man.

  By October the beach was windy and alien, with brown seaweed-laden waves breaking far inshore. A few stragglers sat out of reach of the icy spray. They were foreigners; most of the English visitors had vanished. Mrs. Unwin invented a rule that the little girls must bathe until October the fifteenth. Carmela felt pity for their blue, chattering lips; she wrapped towels around their bodies and held them in her arms. Then October the fifteenth came and the beach torment was over. She scarcely remembered that she had lived any life but this. She could now read in English and was adept at flickering her eyes over a letter left loose without picking it up. As for the Unwins, they were as used to Carmela as to the carpet, whose tears must have seemed part of the original pattern by now. In November Miss Barnes sent Mrs. Unwin into a paroxysm of red-and-white coloration by accepting an invitation to lunch. Carmela rehearsed serving and clearing for two days. The meal went off without any major upset, though Carmela did stand staring when Miss Barnes suddenly began to scream, “Chicken! Chicken! How wonderful! Chicken!” Miss Barnes did not seem to know why she was saying this; she finally became conscious that her hands were in the air and brought them down. After that, Carmela thought of her as “Miss Chicken.” That day Carmela heard, from Miss Chicken, “Hitler will never make the Italians race-minded. They haven’t it in them.” Then, “Of course, Italian men are not to be taken seriously,” from Miss Lewis, fanning herself absently with her little beaded handbag, and smiling at some past secret experience. Still later, Carmela heard Miss Barnes saying firmly, “Charlotte is mistaken. Latins talk, but they would never hurt a fly.”

  Carmela also learned, that day, that the first sermon the new clergyman had preached was about chastity, the second on duty, the third on self-discipline. But the fourth sermon was on tolerance—“slippery ground,” in Mrs. Unwin’s opinion. And on the eleventh of November, at a special service sparsely attended, flag and all, by such members of the British Legion as had not fled, he had preached pacifism. Well—Italy was at peace, so it was all right. But there had been two policemen in mufti, posing as Anglican parishioners. Luckily they did not seem to understand any English.

  “The Padre was trying to make a fool of me with that sermon,” said Mrs. Unwin.

  “Why you, Ellen?” said her husband.

  “Because he knows my views,” said Mrs. Unwin. “I’ve had courage enough to voice them.”

  Miss Lewis looked as if she had better say nothing; then she decided to remark, in a distant, squeaky voice, “I don’t see why an agnostic ever goes to church at all.”

  “To see what he is up to,” said Mrs. Unwin.

  “Surely the police were there for that?”

  Mr. Unwin said he had refused to attend the Armistice Day service; the matter of flag dipping had never been settled.

  “I have written the Padre a letter,” said Mrs. Unwin. “What do we care about the Greek this and the Hebrew that? We are all living on dwindled incomes and wondering how to survive. Mussolini has brought order and peace to this country, whether Mr. Dunn likes it or not.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Miss Chicken. Mr. Unwin nodded in slow agreement. Miss Lewis looked into space and pursed her lips, like someone counting the chimes of a clock.

  IV

  In spite of the electricity rat
es, the kitchen light had to go on at four o’clock. Carmela, lifting her hand to the shelf of tea mugs, cast a shadow. At night she slept with her black cardigan round her legs. When she put a foot on the tiled floor she trembled with cold and with fear. She was afraid of the war and of the ghost of the uncle, which, encouraged by early darkness, could be seen in the garden again. Half the villas along the hill were shuttered. She looked at a faraway sea, lighted by a sun twice as far off as it had ever been before. The Marchesa was having a bomb shelter built in her garden. To make way for it, her rose garden had been torn out by the roots. So far only a muddy oblong shape, like the start of a large grave, could be seen from the Unwins’ kitchen. Progress on it was by inches only; the men could not work in the rain, and this was a wet winter. Mrs. Unwin, who had now instigated a lawsuit over the datura tree, as the unique cause of her uneven health, stood on her terrace and shouted remarks—threats, perhaps—to the workmen on the far side of the Marchesa’s hedge. She wore boots and a brown fur coat like a kimono. Among the men were Carmela’s little brother and his employer. The employer, whose name was Lucio, walked slowly as far as the hedge.

  “How would you like to do some really important work for us?” cried Mrs. Unwin.

  Mr. Unwin would come out and look at his wife and go in the house again. He spoke gently to Carmela and the twins, but not often. There were now only two or three things he would eat—Carmela’s vegetable soup, Carmela’s rice and cheese, and French bread. Mrs. Unwin no longer spoke of the Marchesa as “Frances,” and the chauffeur had given up coming round to the kitchen door. There was bad feeling over the lawsuit, which, as a civil case, could easily drag on for the next ten years. Then one day the digging ceased. The villa was boarded over. The Marchesa had taken her dogs to America, leaving everything, even the chauffeur, behind. Soon after Christmas, the garden began to bloom in waves of narcissi, anemones, irises, daffodils; then came the great white daisies and the mimosa; and then all the geraniums that had not been uprooted with the rosebushes flowered at once—white, salmon-pink, scarlet, peppermint-striped. The tide of color continued to run as long as the rains lasted. After that the flowers died off and the garden became a desert.