Anger

by May Sarton

  “She doesn’t even know who I am,” he said miserably. “We’re not even antagonists, Ernesta. I don’t exist.”

  But Anna, amused and a little touched by the persistence of this unknown admirer, did discover through a chance remark at a dinner party in Louisburg Square who Ned Fraser was.

  “Good heavens,” she murmured, twisting a wine glass in her hand, “he seems so diffident, and,” with a gentle laugh, “quite ordinary.”

  The gentleman on her left, who had not interested her until then, chuckled, and gave her an appraising glance. “You know him?”

  “Oh, he sends flowers and comes to the Green Room … I don’t know him. I just see him out of the corner of my eye on these occasions,” she said, so offhandedly that her companion was silenced. But Anna came back to the subject when the dessert was being passed.

  “Scrumptious,” she said, serving herself to a large portion of a fluffy whipped cream and strawberry and chocolate creation. And then she asked Mr. Thornton to tell her what Ned Fraser was really like.

  “He’s reserved … people in his position can’t afford not to be. A good fellow, though. We belong to the same club. He’s affable enough, but he knows damn well who he is even though you, dear lady, do not. Anyone in the banking community would give a lot to know what goes on in that head.”

  “Is there nothing, then, but financial reports in that head?” Anna asked. She had in the last few moments withdrawn. She realized that she had been a little intrigued by Ned Fraser after all. But now she admonished herself to keep him at a distance. We live in different worlds, too different. We could never really be friends. For Anna, for all her temperament, for all her narcissism, was a realist, and had few illusions. She admired honesty in others and tried to be honest with herself.

  “There must be something else if Ned sends you flowers,” Mr. Thornton teased. “Perhaps you had better cultivate him and discover for yourself.”

  “No,” Anna said, “I don’t like the rich,” and swallowed the last of her wine.

  Mr. Thornton was clearly startled, for people usually don’t say such things in the company they were in. He laughed, “Why not?”

  “They take so much for granted, for one thing. And somehow or other they cannot escape arrogance … at least in my humble opinion.”

  “Aren’t we all arrogant about one thing or another? You appear to be quite arrogant in taking Ned Fraser’s flowers for granted.”

  “Touché!” And for the first time Anna gave Mr. Thornton her full attention. “But … but, you see, I have earned the applause, and the consideration, earned it a rather hard way. The flowers are thanks for something given.”

  “You don’t see them then as asking for your attention … as hoping for a response?” Anna shook her head. She felt herself blushing. As usual she had gone too far, been too blunt, and aroused antagonism.

  Mr. Thornton took in this embarassment. “As for Ned, I can tell you he works frightfully hard.”

  “I don’t doubt that.” Anna frowned, wondering whether to go on explaining herself or to let it drop. But Mr. Thornton was clearly interested and she was about to speak when her neighbor on the right, whom she realized suddenly she had neglected, interrupted.

  “What’s all this about hard work?”

  Dr. Springer, Anna remembered, was a brain surgeon at Massachusetts General. He was very alert, compact, with thin nervous hands which she had admired when they were introduced. “As far as I can see we are all work-aholics these days, and it’s a very bad thing.”

  “Why?” Anna asked. “I can’t imagine not working … work is my joy. It’s what I’m all about. When I can’t sing I’ll commit suicide.” She felt harassed and close to tears.

  “Come now, if you lost your voice you’d still go on living, beautiful and alive as you are.”

  “I don’t know that I would,” Anna said. “What would you do if you lost your hands, beautiful and alive as they are?”

  “I’d—I was going to say I’d devote myself to gardening, but without hands, you’ve got me.”

  “You see.”

  “Retirement does not necessarily mean becoming a cripple,” he said a little testily.

  “I just can’t imagine life without singing—but you’d be amazed how long singers manage to go on. Lotte Lehmann had a whole new career teaching master classes until she was seventy or more! Of course she was the greatest …” Anna turned now to include Thornton, “All this began about money, strangely enough.”

  “Money and talent. Do they ever go together?” Dr. Springer asked with a teasing smile.

  “Of course—why not?”

  “You’re changing your tune, Anna Lindstrom,” Mr. Thornton said.

  “No I’m not. A talent is no shelter. You can’t take refuge in it. There is no safety in a talent because the more recognized and applauded you are, the greater the risk. It doesn’t matter whether you inherited millions or didn’t. Don’t you see?”

  “There is, however, less urgency for the rich and perhaps a greater fear of failure,” Dr. Springer said. “Without the necessity to earn, there is no immediate spur. It is easy, and perhaps far more pleasant, to settle for being an amateur, for not facing the competition. But do you still feel insecure, Miss Lindstrom? Your position, I should think, is unassailable. You seem so perfectly in control when one has the pleasure of hearing you in concert Do you still feel unsafe as you suggest?”

  “Unsafe? I’m terrified!”

  “Come now, I don’t believe you for a minute,” Mr. Thornton said.

  Anna turned back to the surgeon, “What nobody understands is that an artist, a performer has to prove herself over and over again. No one stands over you when you are operating and writes a review the next day pointing out that you fumbled, do they? In professional life outside the arts there are no critics in on every move you make. But we are targets. We are judged every time we open our mouths, sometimes by ignoramuses at that, and the public takes any critic’s word as gospel truth. Of course I’m anxious. Of course I feel insecure. What performer doesn’t?”

  But just as things were getting interesting their hostess summoned them into the drawing room, its French windows opening to a balcony and the intimacy of Louisburg Square, and Anna, taking advantage of the spring evening, pushed one open and slipped through. At that moment she had a sudden desire to sing, to open her throat and launch into an aria. As always when she went out into society, she felt like a fish out of water. Either the conversation was trivial or if not, she plunged in too passionately, was too committed, too intense. Once more Anna’s one wish was to escape.

  Sensing someone at her back, she turned and greeted her host. “It’s so lovely,” she said, “the little square, the street lamps. I had to taste the air … What a marvelous place to live!”

  “It used to be,” Ambrose Upton said. “But the Hill is a disaster these days, dangerous at night. I used to walk everywhere, and often late at night, to smoke a cigar. Alice hates cigars. Now I can’t do that.” He led her gently back into the drawing room then, and Alice summoned her over to the sofa to sit beside her and poured her a demitasse.

  “We are thrilled that you could come,” she said. “Have you enjoyed yourself? You certainly charmed the gentlemen with whom you talked at the dinner table. Didn’t she?” she added as Dr. Springer came to get his cup refilled.

  “Didn’t she what?” he smiled across at Anna.

  “Charm you, of course.”

  Everyone was kind, but as usual Anna felt somehow like a household pet, something one patted and cajoled but who would never belong. Every society becomes a secret society to the outsider, she was thinking. But the truth was she was uncomfortable in any society, just as her father had been.

  After Anna had left, early, with the excuse that she could not afford late nights—she was singing in Rochester three days later—Dr. Springer talked with Alice Upton about her.

  “She’s an interesting woman,” he said. “There is something inn
ocent about her, innocent and violent. She seems quite unspoiled so far. I expect she is on the brink of real fame and God knows what will happen to her then!”

  Here Mr. Thornton joined them. “Where did you meet her, Alice? She’s quite a lion, isn’t she?”

  “I suppose she is and I was thrilled when she accepted my invitation. We met at a luncheon an old friend of her mother’s gave for her and I’ve known Mrs. Eliot for ages. We’ve been on various committees—to raise money for the Museum, for instance. Anna’s mother is a very vital woman, Italian, as outspoken as her daughter. I expect that’s where Anna gets it from. She married Dr. Lindstrom, you know, the neurologist who died some years ago. She has the most wonderful laugh—I’d walk a mile to hear Teresa laugh! After luncheon Anna very gracefully sang for us … I liked her a lot, quite apart from her marvelous voice. And so,” Alice said, “it all seemed quite simple.”

  “I gather she doesn’t like going out into society,” Mr. Thornton said.

  “We’re not that exciting, are we?” Ambrose Upton said.

  “But she has all the excitement she can use in her career … she doesn’t want excitement,” Dr. Springer said. “What does she want?”

  “Recognition—the real thing. Fame.” Ambrose Upton said instantly.

  “And she doesn’t have that? I seem to see her name rather often on concert programs these days,” Dr. Springer said.

  “Not quite,” Thornton answered. “She’s a tantalizing step from fame, but she’s not a household word, not yet.”

  “She’s never married?” Dr. Springer asked.

  “Oh, she’s absolutely single-minded about her art. I don’t believe she’ll ever marry.” Alice said.

  “I think she has to marry!” Dr. Springer said with such conviction it brought a smile.

  “You?” Alice Upton teased.

  “God forbid! I’m not out to marry a lion, I’m much too selfish.” He laughed and then added more soberly, “Love, a passionate encounter, might provide the missing link, lift her right out of the almost-successful into the first rank.”

  “It’s a physiological matter, you think?” Alice asked with a twinkle in her eye.

  “In a way, yes.”

  And there the subject was dropped.

  Chapter III

  Five months had passed since Ned Fraser had lunched at the Ritz with Ernesta Aldrich. Anna had been away on concerts, had sung in San Francisco and at Wolf Trap, and Ned had gone to Europe for a month, to the music festival in Aix-en-Provence. Autumn was in the air and he felt exhilarated by the gold in the leaves, observing that the tulips of May had now changed to chrysanthemums in the borders, thinking that soon the swan boats would be put to bed for the winter. On an impulse he turned down toward the pond to see what was what.

  And there under the bridge on the other side he saw the flash of a red coat, and a woman with black hair taking bread out of a paper bag to give to a flotilla of ducks.

  “Anna!” he called, surprised by the sheer joy of seeing her into using her first name.

  She did not smile as she lifted her head and looked across, wondering who had called, or whether she had dreamed that her name had been spoken by a man standing on the other side, but by then Ned had run up the stairs, across the bridge, and down to her, the pent up longing of months giving him wings.

  “Did you fly?” she asked. “You were over there a second ago.”

  “Ned Fraser,” he introduced himself as she seemed not to recognize who he was.

  “Of course!”

  “Imagine finding Anna Lindstrom here feeding the ducks!”

  “I’m here quite often. My hairdresser is just around the corner.” She gave him a curious glance and felt rather caught. Such an unexpected circumstance. Such a strange way to be confronted by Ned Fraser, too rich and too powerful, whom she had determined not to know.

  “Well,” Ned, fumbling for something to say, uttered, “it’s autumn, a fine autumn day, isn’t it?”

  Anna burst into laughter. She couldn’t help it. It was a crazy day, so brilliant.

  “What’s funny?”

  “You are,” she said, still laughing.

  “Let’s talk,” he said, “come and sit down on a bench and observe the ducks and the swan boats … there must be a ride any minute.”

  “Take me on a ride!”

  So they climbed the stairs and crossed the bridge, talking as they went, and down the other side to where the flat swan-boat barge waited, only a third full. They chose the back row and settled there.

  “My mother used to take me on a swan-boat ride as a reward for going to the dentist,” she said, “and then for an ice cream soda at Schrafft’s, but I haven’t been on one for twenty years! What fun!”

  “It’s the slowest form of locomotion ever invented and therefore the best, isn’t it?” Ned asked. Inside the enormous artificial swan behind their bench a man sat and cycled them out in slow motion. It was amazingly comfortable, Anna thought, sitting there beside Ned Fraser and talking about little things, memories and pleasures. Here and there a gold leaf zigzagged down from a tree to the water. A flock of pigeons flew over and settled on the bank, waddling about on their pink feet.

  “They are such ridiculous birds,” Ned said, following her glance and the way she looked at them, wholly absorbed.

  Seized as he had been by the lucky chance, Ned had forgotten his luncheon appointment at the Ritz. Now he took out his watch and frowned.

  “Damn it, I have a luncheon appointment! Oh, how stupid!”

  Anna began to giggle, aware that once on a swan boat there was no way to get off until the long journey up to one end of the pond, past the tiny magic island, and round to the other end, past the Victorian swan house on its wooden legs, had been completed.

  “It’s not funny,” Ned said. “I’m going to be late.”

  “So you are,” and Anna couldn’t stop laughing at him, so prim suddenly and bankerish, caught on a swan boat. “Of course, you could jump off,” she suggested.

  “I could at that. But then I might fall in!”

  “That would never do, would it?” she said solemnly. And then Ned laughed, too. He couldn’t help it.

  “Look,” he said, “have dinner with me tonight … you must.” And as he felt her hesitation, he reached over and took her hand in his and held it tightly. It seemed the most natural thing in the world.

  Anna felt the warmth, the strength of that hand in hers like an injection of life into her veins. It all came over her there in the swan boat with great clarity that here was protection, an end to anxieties about money, a wonderfully warm and loving shelter. How could she refuse its gift?

  “All right,” she said.

  And then they were silent, sitting a little stiffly, hand in hand on the last bench in the swan boat as it slowly, slowly reached the mooring and was made fast.

  But when he had gone and she was hurrying, not to be late herself at the hairdresser, she was startled to realize what she had been thinking. What in the world made her imagine that Ned Fraser wanted to marry her? That he could have had any such thing in mind when he fastened his hand in hers with such strength? Besides, what made her think that she would ever want to marry him? “But I do,” she answered herself. “The strange thing is that I do.”

  Why did she? How could she fall in love with a man she had never even talked to for more than a few minutes? And besides, did she want to marry? Why not a love affair? Why marry? She was stopped in these musings by the odd look an old woman gave her as she passed. Of course she had been talking to herself aloud! You’re in a bad way, Anna, she admonished herself. But this time she did not speak aloud.

  For once she, who told her mother everything, did not tell her about the swan boat ride, though she did mention quite casually that Ned Fraser was taking her out to dinner.

  “I didn’t know how to say no this time,” she explained with a troubled look her mother caught instantly. “How does one say no on the telephone? It’s an insidio
us instrument … and he interrupted me as I was going over the score. I got rattled.”

  Later when Anna came out, she remarked that her daughter was looking lovely.

  Hours later Ned lay in bed wide awake. It had been an evening of precipitous, intimate exchanges. What was it about Anna that made it possible to talk about everything, no holds barred? God knows he was quite accustomed to the usual banter and teasing that takes place when a man and a woman are attracted to each other but have only recently met. But Anna would have none of that. So when he tried it by accusing her of putting him off for months, she answered with a straight look, those amazing blue eyes, suddenly black, “I was frightened.”

  “Of what?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me,” she said, as though she really meant him to do so.

  “Frightened of me? I was the one who had every reason to be frightened … after all, you are Anna Lindstrom, my dear. And you have made that quite clear.”

  “Not because I am a little famous, but not very, but because your world and mine have so little in common, I suppose. Why begin a fugue you cannot sustain? Or play a part that is not in your range? “Yes,” she said again, “I was not about to make a fool of myself.”

  “But you’re not afraid now?”

  Anna laughed, a loud laugh of real amusement, “I’m terrified!”

  “That man at the next table is looking at you,” Ned whispered.

  “I can’t help it if strangers recognize me. Do you mind?”

  And Ned had the wit not to insist, for what he had minded was the indiscretion of her unself-conscious laughter in the solemn candlelit, velvet-curtained room of the Somerset Club. “Besides, everyone in this room, I imagine, recognizes you, and no doubt wonders where on earth you met that handsome woman and who in hell she is!” Then with a complete change of mood, she took a sip of the Chateau Neuf du Pape, swallowed it thoughtfully, and said, “That is a poem of a wine, Ned.”