“More or less. I do like to smoke occasionally. But I don’t think I’ve had a cigarette this winter. As a matter of fact, I think the last cigarette I smoked was with you.”
“Have one with me now, then.”
She smiled as she took one. “Thanks. Court smokes Gauloises, too.”
“Court and I have good taste.”
A waiter put cups in front of them, a pot of coffee, a bowl of cream, and a plate of cakes.
“I shall eat enormously,” Emily said, “and not feel in the least like fixing lunch for the family.”
“Emily,” Abe said as she poured the coffee, “are you doing all the work yourself, cooking and cleaning and everything?”
She laughed. “Yes, I’m doing all the cooking and cleaning and everything. There isn’t very much, Abe.”
“Oughtn’t you to have someone to help you?”
“I don’t see why. I didn’t have anything more than a cleaning woman once a week in New York.”
“It’s not quite the same thing.” He pushed the plate of cakes across to her. “You’ve lost weight.”
“I’ll gain it all back during the holidays, and more. I certainly will if I go on eating like this.”
“I shall stuff you tonight at the casino.”
“That sounds like an entrancing way of spending an evening.” They both laughed, and Emily suddenly realized that this was one of those rare, inexplicable moments when she was perfectly happy; there, for no reason, sitting opposite Abe with the winter sun falling across their table, laughing at banalities, she was suddenly awake and alive. These moments had been rare that winter and she opened herself to this one as sometimes in the summer she spread herself out to the sun.
“Emily,” Abe said suddenly, “we’ve never seen a great deal of each other but we’ve always somehow been very frank when we have, haven’t we?”
“Yes, Abe.”
“May I ask you a question?”
“Shoot.”
“This business of having no maid while Court’s on his sabbatical—”
“It isn’t a sabbatical, Abe,” Emily said quietly. “He’s lost his job.”
“Damn it,” Abe said. “I’m sorry, Emily.”
“I know. It’s not nice for him.”
“But wasn’t he due a sabbatical?”
“Yes. We’d been planning to spend the year here anyhow. So we came ahead.”
“But why on earth, Emily? Court’s a damn fine teacher.”
Emily shook her head angrily. “Nothing exciting or dramatic. That’s the worst of it. No loyalty oaths or Fifth Amendments or enormous blowups. Just one of those insidious, stupid, brutal things.” She paused. “Part of it’s Court being Court—” she continued, “what makes him what he is as a person, what makes him the fine classical scholar he is. The individual, stubborn personality that the kids worshipped. They did, Abe.” She realized that she was defending him too vehemently, and stopped abruptly.
“Yes,” Abe said. “That’s easy to understand.”
“They got a new head to the department,” Emily said, her eyes darkening with grief and anger. “Tommy O’Hara. You know. He wrote a best seller on Herodotus. It wasn’t a best seller because of Herodotus but because it was all Freudian and full of descriptions of sex. It wasn’t as bad a book as I think it is. Let’s be fair. But I don’t feel fair about Tommy O’Hara.”
“Court should have been head of the department, shouldn’t he?” Abe asked.
“Yes. He should. I cared. I was angry. Court wasn’t. It honestly didn’t matter to him. He was happy the way things were and he didn’t want to be bothered with departmental administrative problems and all he wanted was to have things go on the way they’d been going. But not with Tommy O’Hara. Tommy’d been brought in because he was modern and he’d written a best seller and because of publicity. Oh, and sort of as a trouble-shooter, too, I suppose. He was determined he was going to change everything, and that included Court. He has red hair and a boyish grin. Well, Court has red hair, too. Tommy was too smart to try to get rid of Court overtly, but he did it subtly. A sort of careful edging Court out. And sometimes it wasn’t so subtle. Like taking away a couple of Court’s special courses and giving them to green instructors. And there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop it, Abe. Just sit and watch. There was a bit of jealousy in it, too. Court was a Rhodes Scholar and I gathered from a friend of mine in the sociology department that Tommy had wanted to be one and hadn’t quite made it. And the students gave Court a reverence Tommy and his ultramodernity could never get. So when it became evident that the two of them couldn’t work together Court finally eased things for them by handing in his resignation.”
“Did he have to?”
“Yes, I rather think he did, Abe.”
“How long had this been going on?”
“Let me see. About three years.”
“Why didn’t I know anything about it?”
“It wasn’t—it wasn’t anything we talked about, or anything talking about could have helped.”
“It’s a rotten shame, Emily.”
“Yes. It is. I sometimes get quite white with anger when I think of that turned-up-from-under-a-stone bastard Tommy O’Hara still sitting there, while Court—excuse my language, Abe, but I feel rather hot about it still.”
“Of course you do.”
“Here we were living a reasonably valuable and contented life in New York and all of a sudden for no valid reason it’s shot to hell.” She stabbed out the butt of her cigarette. “Court won’t let on that it hurts him, he’s stubborn and noble and we don’t talk about it any more, but I know it does hurt.”
“So what’s going to happen with you, Emily?”
“I don’t know. Court’s trying to write. Essays and papers. He’s sold a couple of them to obscure periodicals that don’t pay much except prestige, and he has an idea of gathering a group of them into a book. They’re terribly brilliant, Abe, too brilliant, and though they have a lot of charm, too, I can see that they demand too much of the average reader to be readily marketable. I don’t think he’ll be able to make a reasonable living out of writing, but he’s taking this year to try.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know. Tom Russell, an old friend of Court’s, is president of Richwood College in Indiana. He wants Court to go there.”
“What do you think?”
“I think we probably will.”
“How do you feel about it?”
“Not too happy. But that’s stupid and insular of me.”
“There’s more choice than that one college, certainly, isn’t there?”
She shook her head. “Not really. Court’s forty-nine, you know, and it’s a lot easier to get a job teaching physics than classics. And he’s made rather a reputation for himself of being pig-headed. And Richwood’s a very good college, as colleges go. I just wish Tom Russell’s first name weren’t Tom. After Mr. O’Hara I have rather a Thing about the name Thomas. At least he doesn’t call himself Tommy.”
“It’s a horrible thought,” Abe said, “you and Court in Indiana. It’s much too far away.”
“Yes. I’m sorry, Abe, I didn’t mean to burden you with all our problems.”
“You haven’t burdened me, girl,” Abe said. “I had to drag it out of you.”
“If you don’t mind—don’t tell Court I told you. If he wants to, all right, but I think maybe he wouldn’t like my doing it. I shouldn’t have. But there hasn’t been—there hasn’t been anybody all winter I could talk to.” Her voice broke and she reached quickly for her cup of coffee and drank slowly, pressing the rim of the cup against her lip to stop its trembling. In a moment she was under control again, saying, “It’s stupid of me to spoil our nice time like this. I’d better get on home now.”
“Let’s have another cup of coffee first.”
She smiled, then laughed. “I’ll probably float away. I’ve been drinking it all morning.” Neither of them wanted the coffee, she knew. I
t was simply an excuse to stay there a little longer. “And let’s talk about you,” she added. “We’ve done more than enough talking about me for one day.”
“I talked about myself last night all through your wonderful rabbit ragout.”
“Business. Not really about yourself.”
“You’re a wonderful cook, Emily.”
“I like cooking. I even like eating what I’ve cooked. But tell me about you, Abe, please.”
“What the devil is there to tell?” he said, almost violently. “Abe, the hail-fellow-well-met, Abe, the happy, the successful, the carefree. That’s the face I put up. That’s the Abe people see. Nobody wants to see Abe abysmally lonely and depressed right down to hell.”
Emily reached across the table and touched his fingers briefly. “I know. I wish you’d find someone. I’m sure you will someday, Abe. There must be the right person somewhere for someone like you.”
“Time’s running out, Emily.” His voice was withdrawn and bitter. “And having made one mistake I don’t want to make another. But after Kris died I thought I had to have a mother for Sam. I thought I had to have a wife. Any wife. I was so wrong. Damn it, Emily. No more about me. This is a holiday and I’m not going to spoil it. Tonight we’ll be madly merry and forget all our troubles. I hate to let you go now.” He smiled across the table at her, across the coffee and the plate of cakes and the napkin she had laid beside her plate. “But I suppose you do have other things to do besides sitting here with me. So I’ll see you tonight. You and Court.”
“Yes. Seven-thirty, you said?”
“If that’s a good time for you.”
“Perfect. I’ll have Connie in bed and asleep by then. We’ll be there.”
“Good. I’ll be waiting.”
She left the hotel and stood on the front steps shading her eyes against the light. After a moment she was able to look up at the mountains without squinting, at the shadows from the billowing white clouds racing across, deep purple and startlingly concise in outline. It seemed strange that anything so white as those clouds could cast such darkness.
Carrying her skis she started walking, humming to herself, on past the villa and into the village to pick up Courtney’s copies of L’Aurore and Figaro at the tobacconist’s. In front of the window, their noses pressed in classic position against the pane, were two small children, admiring the gifts displayed within. “Dis, dis, le beau chemin de fer!” exclaimed one, while the other, smaller, thinner, not listening, lost in her own world of longing, whispered, “Ah, ah, la belle petite poupée, qu’elle est mignonne!” Smiling at them, Emily opened the door and went into the stuffy, cluttered little shop, where the patronne in a heavy gray man’s sweater sat behind the counter, knitting as usual, her hands red and chapped from the cold; she reached for the papers as she saw Emily come in. They smiled and greeted each other, and Emily’s hand as she took the papers bore the same winter marks of work and cold as did the older woman’s.
“Madame looks so well and happy,” Madame Berigot said. “Your big girl is with you now, is she not?”
“Yes,” Emily said, looking around at the familiar shelves of the little shop, wondering if there were some small, inexpensive things she might pick up for Mimi’s stocking presents. “For the holidays. She came with a friend from school.”
“Madame has only the two children?”
“Yes,” Emily said after a moment. “Only the two.”
Noting the shadow that crossed Emily’s face, darker in its essence than the black fuzz of her own not-inconsiderable moustache, Madame Berigot changed the subject. “Madame has a look of happiness behind the eyes this morning. It is good to see. Sometimes madam’s eyes are sad. It is the loneliness here. But now with the holidays—and madame wishes Thérèse to come stay with the little one tonight?”
“Yes, if you please, Madame Berigot. I hope it doesn’t snow again tonight.”
Madame Berigot laughed. “Ah, snow doesn’t bother us. Madame is from the city and is not used to the rigors of our mountain winters.”
Emily laughed, too, and when she left she had the feeling of warmth that Madame Berigot always gave her. She enjoyed going to the small shop to get the papers; their conversations were always similar, always banal, but they had become, in a strange way, friends.
She prepared lunch and the day started suddenly to drag, stretching on and on like a tunnel and yet with a tingle of excitement to it because always at the end of a tunnel there is light. It was only after they had eaten and she had done the dishes that she realized that the light at the end of this particular tunnel was the gaiety of an evening at the casino, that the length of the day and the shiver of anticipation were because she was waiting for this party with all the eagerness with which she had waited for Christmas when she was a child.
She hung the dripping dish towel on the rack by the stove to dry, and turned around slowly in the kitchen. Everything was tidied and cleaned up and ready for the mess of the next meal when the whole thing would have to be done all over again. She turned her back on the cracked sink and walked out. She wanted to go to the piano and work, but she knew that her practising, the exercises, the repetition of phrases, disturbed Courtney when he was trying to work in this small house where every sound was intimately shared; and today he would be working especially hard redoing those lost notes. She had a shuddering feeling of claustrophobia, and when the antique phone on the wall in the dark hall outside Courtney’s office began to ring and she ran pelting towards it, it was only partly so that the ringing should not disturb him.
“I’m lonely. Come see me. Come right now,” said Gertrude de Croisenois’ voice without preamble.
“Connie’s having a nap.”
“Well, aren’t Virginia and her pal there?”
“Yes, but—”
“Tell them to listen for her, then. They’ve been to see me. Twice. Where’ve you been?”
Emily chuckled. “They think you’re a heroine.”
“And so I am—to them. You have a different opinion, eh?”
“Not at all. I’ve just grown used to it.”
Now on the other end of the line Gertrude laughed. “Oh, damn you, Emily, do come on up, just for a few minutes.” Without giving Emily a chance to answer she hung up.
It was a place to go; it was an excuse to leave the confining walls of the house, and, asking Virginia and Mimi to listen for Connie, she set off.
She leaned her skis against the shed that jutted against the chalet where Gertrude lived with one of the guides, Kaarlo Balbec, and knocked at the side door, loudly, because indoors the phonograph was going full volume, the summer music of the Pastoral Symphony superimposed on the snowy landscape.
The music was not lowered but Gertrude called out, “Come in, come in if you feel you must,” and Emily opened the door and went into the kitchen and through into the big living room where Gertrude, in red velvet slacks, lay on the couch, a steamer rug over her feet.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said, as though she had not just so summarily summoned Emily.
Emily took off her outdoor things. “At your bidding, Madame de Croisenois. How are you this afternoon?”
Gertrude sat up on the couch, crossing her legs under her like a Turk. “How am I ever? I get so damned impatient, Emily, but our pal Dr. Clément rules me with a rod of iron.”
“If he ruled you with a rod of iron you’d be in the sanatorium, not here.”
“I’d die there,” Gertrude said. “Water’s on the stove for the tea. Do you want to fix it?”
“Sure.”
“And turn off the phonograph, would you please, so we can hear ourselves think.” Gertrude reached up with an impatient hand and pushed her heavy, dark hair back from her face.
In the kitchen getting cups, sugar, a lemon, Emily could continue to talk through the passway to Gertrude lying on the couch that had been pushed close to the windows. Beyond this chalet was another, and then a great stretch of snow fields leading upwards into the winter
-dark of evergreens. When Emily brought in the tea tray and put it by the fireplace Gertrude had turned away and was looking out the window towards the higher chalet.
Emily followed her glance. “Homesick?” she asked.
Gertrude shrugged. “Nothing as active as that. Just thinking for some reason or other that when Henri and I bought the chalet we never expected to spend so many years in it. A week-end place in the Haute Savoie that’s what we thought we were getting. Nor did I ever expect Kaarlo to find me lying there in a pool of blood. Good guy, my Kaarlo, isn’t he?”
Emily poured the tea. “A prince. It is lemon you like, not milk, isn’t it?”
“If I must drink the filthy stuff at all. Clément seems to think it’s better for me than coffee. Don’t know why. Another good guy in his own uniquely nasty way, that Clément. Hey, Em, I met a friend of yours yesterday.”
Emily put another log on the fire, stirred her tea, sitting in the one comfortable chair in the chalet. It had been brought down from Gertrude’s chalet and was of nubbly, zebra-striped material, and did not look anywhere nearly so comfortable as it was; and it always seemed out of place to Emily in this room that was otherwise completely Kaarlo’s. “Who?” she asked.
“Abe Fielding.”
“Oh, did Kaarlo bring him around?”
“Yes. I kind of liked him. Full of sweetness and light today, aren’t I? Three passable people in a row. Old Gert de C. must be slipping. I much prefer being sour and vindictive. Fielding’ll never win a beauty contest, anyhow. Ugly as a mud fence, isn’t he?”
“I’ve never thought of him as being particularly ugly,” Emily said.
“Nobody with a bobbing Adam’s apple is handsome. And a big beak of a nose. Virile ugly in a funny sort of way. Good body. Good eyes. Tall and rangy. You and Courtney known him long?”
A Winter's Love Page 3
