—He should be teaching, she thought, standing for a moment in the dark, cold bedroom without turning on the light. We shouldn’t be here. Not this way. For a sabbatical, yes, with out lives stretching out in an orderly pattern behind us and ahead of us. But not this way with all of it behind and nothing ahead.
She turned on the light, shivering, and changed to her only warm evening dress, a very old one, but one which she felt would never lose its style, a sea-green brocade, cut very simply with a full skirt, a tight bodice, and long sleeves (which were what, she supposed, made her feel that it was warm), and a décolletage that would have pleased even Mimi. She sat at her dressing table, shivering a little because the upstairs was always cold, and began to make up very carefully, rubbing a little rouge gently into her cheeks, blending it up towards her eyes and into her hair line. Then she fished around in the drawer of her dressing table until she found a small pot of eye shadow. She looked at her face in the mirror as though seeing it for the first time in months, and this was in a sense true, she thought; she had not wanted to look at herself. Not that it was an extraordinary face in any way, neither particularly beautiful nor ugly, the only unusual thing about it being that her eyebrows were dark and definite and her eyelashes long, an unexpected brunette accent against her fair complexion and light hair. As she finished her make-up she thought—Oh, lord, I haven’t phoned Thérèse, and flew downstairs to the phone on the wall in the small, dark back hall that led to the cubbyhole Courtney used as his office. As she explained to Madame Berigot that Monsieur Bowen had a sore throat and they would not be needing Thérèse that evening, she heard the girls come downstairs, and their laughter was in her ears as she called Abe, but he had already left the hotel. She went into the living room where Virginia and Mimi sat, each in one of the hideous plush chairs, looking utterly different in their identical black velvet dresses with the small lace collars.
“You both look charming,” Emily said.
They stared at her. Mimi cried, “Mrs. Bowen, you look absolutely beautiful!”
“Why, thank you, Mimi.”
“It’s like Clare in her lab coat and when she dresses for evening. A complete transformation. What a gorgeous dress, Mrs. Bowen! And I never noticed your eyes were green like Vee’s before.”
“They aren’t, really,” Emily said. “They’re gray. They just pick up the color of the dress.”
“And your hair,” Mimi said. “The dress goes so beautifully with your hair. Now what color would you call your hair?”
“Mouse,” Emily said.
Mimi shook her head impatiently. “No. Beige. And not a scrap of gray in it. You don’t have it touched up or anything, do you?”
Emily laughed. “No, Mimi.”
“Clare does. But she started to go gray awfully early and Jake didn’t like it. He pretended to, but she could see that he hated it. You can’t tell, of course. She has an awfully good job done on it. My hair being blond like Jake’s I don’t suppose I’ll go gray as early as she did.”
“Where’s daddy?” Virginia asked suddenly. “Isn’t he ready?”
“He’s not going, Vee. He has a scratchy throat so he’s going to stay home and take care of it.”
“You’re going alone?”
“Yes, Vee.”
“Oh, too bad, mother.”
“Yes, it would be more fun with daddy. But I expect I shall enjoy myself anyhow. It’s quite a treat, dinner at the casino. Now. I have to leave in a few minutes. Virginia, daddy’s in the kitchen if you should want anything before Sam comes. But I think he’s working so don’t disturb him if it isn’t necessary.”
From upstairs Connie’s voice came loud and clear and demanding. “Vee! Vee—ee! You didn’t say good night to me!”
“For heaven’s sake run up and say good night to her, Virginia,” Emily begged. “I’ll feel a lot happier if she’s asleep before we leave, so daddy won’t have to be disturbed.”
“I want Vee to tell me a story!” Connie called.
“A short one,” Virginia called back, and started up.
“Virginia’d rather make up stories than eat,” Mimi said. “Mrs. Bowen, I didn’t want to ask this around Virginia, in case you—is Madame de Croisenois going to get well?”
One couldn’t fob Mimi off with pretty answers and Emily didn’t try. “I don’t know, Mimi. At least there’s a good deal of hope now, and Kaarlo said that a couple of years ago there wasn’t any.”
Mimi nodded. “I’ve noticed when we’re there that she gets very tired if we stay more than a few minutes. Are she and Kaarlo in love?”
Emily leaned back on the piano bench where she always sat, as though the mere physical contact with the piano gave her some kind of assurance, and pressed her elbows gently against the keys so that they made a soft discord. “They’re very good friends,” she said carefully.
“Why don’t they get married?”
“It’s hardly any of my business, is it, Mimi? But I imagine that Gertrude feels it wouldn’t be fair to Kaarlo to marry him while she’s ill.”
“But don’t people talk, I mean about their living together and not being married?”
“You’re old enough to know that people always talk, whether or not there’s anything to talk about,” Emily said rather sharply. “In any case people would do well to remember that Gertrude is far too ill either to be alone or to provide them with much material for gossip. And, please, my dear Mimi, just because you admire Gertrude so much, don’t try to glamorize her situation. Illicit love affairs aren’t glamorous. Usually they’re sordid. But certainly I’m no one to judge or criticize.”
“But why not, Mrs. Bowen, when you’re happily married?”
“That’s exactly why. Now let us change the subject.”
“Okay,” Mimi said agreeably, unrebuffed. “Anyhow, she’s still alive. That’s something. I don’t often feel this way about an adult, like a schoolgirl—which technically I suppose I am—with a crush. So I’m very glad she’s managed to stay alive.”
“Yes.”
“And that’s been a fight, too.”
“Yes, Mimi.”
Virginia came in, then, saying. “Well, she’s asleep. She fell asleep in the middle of my story. Imagine that!”
Mimi, with a quick change of mood, twirled around. “Do you suppose I could make anything out of this dress if I took the scissors and cut the neck out?”
“I think you’d make a mess of it,” Virginia said, “and you’d get into terrible trouble at school.”
“Who cares about that? I’m thinking about Sam. I have a feeling he’s quite a boy, that Sam.”
—Oh, no, Mimi, Emily protested silently. Let Virginia have Sam. I know it would be so easy for you to take him, but please don’t.
“I’d probably make it look worse,” Mimi said, “if I started cutting at it. I’ll just have to reconcile myself to looking like you. I could do worse, of course. You’re really not unpleasant to look at. I like red hair. And you’ll probably outgrow the freckles. And you have very good eyes. I’d give anything to have green eyes. And a sensuous mouth. Did you know you have a sensuous mouth, Vee?”
Virginia peered at herself in the faulty mirror over the fake mantelpiece, embarrassed and pleased.
On the piano Emily played a quick and determined G major chord. “You’re both of you quite fascinating, but it’s time for me to go. Bless you for putting Connie to sleep, Vee. Have a wonderful evening, both of you.”
“Same to you, Mrs. Bowen.”
“Will you be home before we are, mother?”
“I imagine so.”
“We’re going to be out terribly late!” Virginia cried. “What fun! Good-bye, mother. You have fun, too. Too bad daddy has a sore throat.”
Emily put on her old fur coat and ski boots, put her evening slippers in a bag. She stopped in the kitchen to say good-bye to Courtney. He was sitting tipped back in the chair, his feet up on the table, reading the newspaper. “I’m off, darling,” she said.
>
He looked up. “Oh. Have fun.”
“I will. How’s the throat?”
“Not bad. It’ll be all right in the morning.”
“I don’t think Connie’ll wake up,” Emily said. “She never does.…”
“And if she does I know where her room is, and I’ve tucked her in and given her drinks of water and picked up fallen pink teddy bears before. Stop worrying and go on and have a good time. I’ll undoubtedly be sound asleep when you come in. You can tell me about it at breakfast.”
She kissed the top of his head. “Good night, darling. I do feel funny going without you. Terribly mean.”
“Nonsense. I shall be snoring happily when you get home.”
“Let’s go say good-bye to daddy,” Virginia said after Emily had left.
“If he’s working, won’t we disturb him? Jake’d murder me if I disturbed him while he was practising.”
“Oh, daddy’ll expect me at least to say good night,” Virginia said.
They went into the kitchen. Courtney had dropped the newspaper to the floor, poured himself a fresh drink, and had a book and some papers on the table in front of him. He looked up with an inquiring smile as the girls came in.
“Are we bothering you, daddy?” Virginia asked. “We just came to say good-bye.”
Courtney pushed his papers to one side and put his glass down in front of him. “Connie asleep?”
“Yes.”
“What are you writing, Mr. Bowen?” Mimi asked, lounging in the doorway.
He looked over at her. “Tonight? A paper on a Greek warrior who had a reputation for being a coward. Matter of fact, I don’t think he was. To be a warrior and a coward—the abysm of failure, isn’t it?” He stared down into his glass. “The taste of failure is bitter in the mouth. It is not a sour taste, like lemon, but dull, like ashes. It has the sick finality of poor funerals in second-rate funeral parlors. It is a depressant like the sulfas or penicillin but it has no healing qualities. It is as difficult to realize as the loss of a limb and it often comes with as little justification as the maiming accident. And when failure is finally accepted it is as difficult to continue life with the knowledge of it as it is with no right arm.” He put his drink down and stood up. “But was Philopoemen a failure? Was he a coward? Things are not always what they seem, and certainly not in history.” He looked at Virginia, looked at Mimi, as though seeing them for the first, time, and sat down again.
“I’m going up to check on Connie,” Virginia said, in a voice as strained and as different from her own as Courtney’s.
“Why?” Mimi asked. “She was asleep, wasn’t she?”
“She might have kicked the covers off. It’s fearfully cold upstairs.” Virginia wheeled and went out of the kitchen and marched upstairs to Connie’s room. Connie stirred slightly in her sleep and the eiderdown slithered off the side of her bed onto the floor. “There,” Virginia said out loud in justification, and put it back on, tucking it clumsily around Connie’s shoulders. Then she stood very still as she heard footsteps mounting the stairs, Courtney’s tread, not Mimi’s. She turned slowly and he stood there in the doorway, supporting himself by holding on to the frame, and swaying slightly.
“I’m so tired, Virginia,” he said, his voice suddenly thick. “Daddy’s so tired. So terribly tired.”
She said nothing, but stood by Connie’s bed, staring at him silhouetted against the hall light, his features not visible, his whole body sagging.
“Connie’s eiderdown was off. It was on the floor,” she said. She could not move until he moved, and he did not move.
“I should have gone,” he said. “Or I should have made her stay home. And all I can do is … Oh, hell, Virginia, oh hell and damn. It’s too unbalanced, it doesn’t make sense—Does it make sense to you, Virginia?”
“I’d better not go with Sam and Mimi tonight,” she said.
“Oh, Christ! Not you, too!” he cried as though in sudden pain. “Go on. Go downstairs.”
“But, daddy, suppose—”
“Suppose what?”
“I don’t want to leave Connie,” she said bleakly.
Suddenly his voice was cold, authoritative. “Go downstairs and wait for your date. I am perfectly capable of coping with Connie and I do not care in the least for your attitude. Go on. Get out.”
She wilted, dwindled, all in a moment younger than Connie, her voice a childish bleat. “Oh, daddy, please—”
And then at last he came into the room, leaving the support of the doorframe, and put his arm around her. “Run along, dear. Have a wonderful time. And tell me all about it in the morning.”
With her evening shoes swinging in their bag by her side Emily left the house and walked down through the village to the casino to meet Abe. The feeling of heaviness (as though a greater gravity were pulling at her limbs) that had come upon her when Courtney came into the house announcing that he was not going to the casino, left her, and she felt almost lightheaded walking down the icy path in the sharp, stinging air. When she reached the village, though there could be no change there in temperature, the holiday colors and sounds and laughter seemed to dissipate the cold. A group of guides pushed out of the Splendide, letting out a rush of warmth and noise, roaring at some private joke, the clouds of their breath white against the black air. Three young men came marching arm in arm down the middle of the street, just drunk enough to be uninhibited and happy, and one of them whistled at Emily and she felt absurdly gratified.—As long as I’m whistled at I’m not in that bottle of formaldehyde yet, she thought.
Abe was waiting just inside the lobby of the casino. He held out both hands to Emily and for a moment they did not speak. Then she pulled her hands hastily out of his, saying, “Abe, I did try to call you, but you’d left the hotel.”
“Why? There isn’t anything wrong, is there? Where’s Courtney?” His face furrowed into an absurdly worried look.
“He’s home with a sore throat. It isn’t bad, but his colds are miserable when he gets them so he thought it would be foolish to come out tonight. I hope it hasn’t upset your plans.”
“I’m sorry Court’s not well,” he said, and then: “No, girl, it hasn’t upset my plans.” He stood looking at her for a moment as though he were going to say something else. Finally he said, “You look quite beautiful.”
She was pleased and oddly embarrassed; she spoke quickly to cover her embarrassment, looking down at her feet in the heavy ski boots and laughing. “How do you like my delicate evening slippers? I’ll just change my shoes, Abe. I have them with me, see? In this little bag. Satin slippers aren’t much good for walking around here in winter.”
When she had changed her shoes he looked at her again, his eyes travelling appreciatively over her hair, her face, down to the satin slippers. “I haven’t felt as festive as this in a long time,” he said; he also, it seemed, talking a little too rapidly. “I’d forgotten just how nice you are to look at. That’s a lovely dress. Come, girl. Let’s wine and dine and dance.”
They sat side by side in the enormous, well-filled dining salon at one of the small white-covered tables, each with a single rose in a small vase.
“Listen,” Emily said.
The orchestra was playing a Strauss waltz and light was reflected a thousand times over from the prisms of the chandelier. She heard the sound of a champagne cork being drawn carefully from the bottle and she turned to Abe, laughing with pleased excitement. “We’ve gone back a hundred years,” she said softly. “Neither of the wars has happened. We’re not living in a world of fear and consternation.” And then in a different voice, happy and excited, “Oh, look, Abe, holly, and mistletoe, oh, and over there, the Christmas tree! Oh, how beautiful!”
“And we will have champagne, too,” Abe said, smiling down at her, and Emily was suddenly terribly conscious of the physical person of Abe sitting there beside her, of the casual touch of his leg against hers as he held out the familiar blue package of Gauloises.
She laughed. “W
hy not? I feel like everything tonight! It is Christmassy, isn’t it? I hope the children are having a good time.” But she thought only fleetingly of the children. She allowed the music and the gentle lights and the luxury to take her completely away from the villa, and the coal furnace, and the washbasins that had to be draped in bedclothes each night to keep them from freezing.
“Shall I order for you?” Abe asked.
“Yes, please.”
She sat beside him, relaxed, at the same time that her heart was beating quite rapidly. She held Abe’s cigarette and sipped her drink and she was terribly, inordinately happy as Abe conferred with the maître d’hôtel and she watched the funny, absorbed look on his face as he ordered the wine to go with their dinner. Then suddenly it seemed desperately important to her that they talk, that they talk about nothing, that they put a barricade of words between them.
Abe, perhaps, felt this also, because he lit another cigarette and handed it to her, asking abruptly, “Tell me, how did Gertrude get TB?”
Relieved, Emily plunged in. “I suppose the foundations for it were laid during the war. She didn’t have much chance to look out for her health while she was working in the maquis. And then, Henri, her husband, died just at the end of the war, too. After having gone all that time he died of pneumonia just a month before VE Day.”
“And I complain,” Abe said. “So what happened after the war? How did she get ill?”
“After the war she sort of went to pieces,” Emily said. “Henri was gone, and danger was gone, too. That had a lot to do with it, of course, the sudden lack of danger.” She continued to talk, to talk safely about Gertrude, the words in her relief tumbling over each other like water over stones (and what was she afraid of? Why was she relieved?). “Everybody here,” she said, “the whole countryside itself—you never knew when a tree or what seemed like a tree might turn out to be a human being, or who might betray you, having seemed to be on your side, or who, playing along with the Gestapo, might have been working with the resistance all along. And then it was all over, everything she’d worked for, and Henri was dead, and trees were only trees, and for a while you could spit at people like Madame Pedroti, but it didn’t help much.…” She paused.
A Winter's Love Page 5
