“I see. I’d like to ask you another personal question if you don’t mind.”
“Go ahead, if it gives me the right to ask you a few.”
“What does J.D. stand for?”
“For the gloriously happy young hopeful I was in college. That was what I was called, ‘J.D.’ And the sound of it last night certainly warmed my heart!”
“I suppose J is for John. John D. Am I right?”
“No! Haven’t even that claim to fame. J.D. is for Jeremiah Duveaux, after a professor my father admired. Old chap I never even saw, and nobody distinguished. I was called Jerry up to college days. But there was another Jerry in the clubhouse when I arrived, so I was J.D. after that. My wife thinks Jeremiah is impossible. Had her calling cards engraved ‘J. Duveaux’ from the start. And calls me Duveaux. When she was a child her father had a horse named Jerry. She’d as soon call her husband ‘Black Beauty.’ By the way, what shoes are you wearing?”
“Fabia’s.”
“Who is Fabia?”
“My niece. Lisa’s oldest daughter. We all three, it appears—Lisa, Fabia, and I—have the same generous-sized feet.”
“Let’s have a look at them.”
She stuck out her foot. The shoes were tan brogans, with perforated trimmings and flapping tongues.
“They’ll do! Let’s get out and walk into Söller when we get nearer, and send Rodrigo ahead to meet us at the hotel. Are you feeling up to it?”
“For the last two months I’ve been walking four to five miles daily. Certainly I’m feeling up to it.”
Rodrigo dropped them about two miles out of Söller. Soon after he disappeared, a narrow road branching off the main thoroughfare tempted them. The road wound upward and had high walls on both sides. It was like following the dried-up bed of a river which had worn a deep gorge. When rounding one of the curves they were met by an unexpected torrent rushing down the river bed, and, to escape annihilation, hastily climbed the wall nearest at hand, as a herd of sheep undulated down the narrow passageway amidst a din of pattering hoofs, crowding bodies, bleats, and bells.
The wall they climbed had broken bits of glass and sharp stones stuck in its top. It was an uncomfortable perch. When glancing down on its other side they saw a plump little old lady in black, with a white kerchief across her bosom, smiling up at them, she was like a good fairy who had come to their rescue. She not only smiled, but beckoned too, and invited them in Majorcan to come right down into her garden.
They accepted with pleasure. It was a charming garden, no bigger than a tennis court and of the same proportions. There was a round bed of white-spotted calla lily leaves in the center, and in the center of the calla lilies a little fountain splashed. At one end and along the back there were walls. At the other end a tiny porch fringed with flowering window boxes. At the front, blue space, and far away a dim mountainy horizon line.
With more gesticulations the plump lady urged her guests to come and sit down on her porch. Durrance assured her that they would be delighted, but were expected to mangé, déjeuneé, lunchée, à l’ hôtel à Söller, and must hurrée. The plump little lady (who seemed not only to understand him, but to take a great fancy to him too) led him to the edge of her wall and pointed to Söller. Its buildings looked like few crumbs in the bottom of a large gray-green mixing-bowl.
It was decided between the two of them that it was too late to get to the hotel in time for lunch. When Durrance inquired, in his most elegant manner, if she could possibly spare them a few curds and whey to stay the pangs of mangé, the little old lady’s face broke into countless smile wrinkles and her body performed a series of short, jerky affirmative bobs.
They ate their eggs, bread, cheese, milk, jam and homemade wine leaning against the sinewy branches of a grapevine that climbed the wall. Countless lizards peered at them with bright birdlike eyes from the cracks and crevices. After they had scraped their plates clean, and emptied the cruet of its rosered liquid, Durrance hitched his body away from the wall and stretched out flat on the ground, perching one foot upon a raised knee.
He started to shove his hand under his head for a pillow when Charlotte remarked practically, “Here, this will be more comfortable,” and slipped her leather shopping-bag under his head.
“Perfect!” he murmured, closed his eyes, and laid his wrist palm upturned over them as a shield from the sun.
Charlotte tossed off her hat and leaned her head back against the wall. She didn’t close her eyes. Instead, she surveyed her companion lying there on the ground—like some great dog, she thought, and as much at ease in her presence.
She, too, was at ease. This sense of quiet enjoyment in the presence of a man had never happened before! While she gazed, his breathing became so measured that she wondered if he had fallen asleep. She had never been in the presence of anyone asleep except her mother. Or at least not since she was very young. There was something about it that gave one a feeling of superiority. Or was it protection?
“Are you asleep?” finally she asked in almost a whisper.
“Good Heavens, no! Just thinking. About you chiefly. Putting two and two together. Having difficulty to make four. But since this morning—since discovering that you and I are sort of cousins, because of our disagreeable relative—you’re not quite such a mystery to me. I thought, perhaps, out there on deck this morning that Sara was sort of back in her old garret again.”
“She was! Seeing all its terrible details.” She paused. “There is a difference between Sara and me. Sara didn’t have to go back to her garrett. But I’ve got to. As soon as this cruise is over.”
“Perhaps we’ve both got garretts we’ve got to go back to. Some sort of situation or other we’ve got to stick to—and live with—which no rich old gentleman can do anything about. I think my wrestling about with nerves taught me how to make my garrett more comfortable to live in.”
“I can’t imagine your ever having anything the matter with your nerves.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t seem to be the type.”
“What seems to be my type may just be my technique. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if you have me labeled wrong. Why don’t I seem to be the type?”
“You get such a lot of pleasure out of every little thing.”
“I see! A sort of Simple Simon?”
“No, I don’t mean that. You’re so—so gay, and—and unrepressed.” She groped.
“Well, take the steadiest old plug of a horse, and the first time you let him run loose in a pasture, he’s apt to kick up his heels. At home, with my wife and daughters, I’m very dignified.”
“How old are your daughters?”
“Beatie’s twenty-one, and Moonie’s two years younger. Both of them too old to be called those baby nicknames, so Isobel says. But I’ve still got a few years more that I can go on calling Christine, Tina.”
“How old is Tina?”
“Only eleven. Isobel calls her the child of her old age.”
“The child of her old age! What is she like?”
“Well, Tina is sort of in the awkward age now. Seems as if Tina has been in the awkward age ever since she cut her first tooth. Even before. She wasn’t well as a little baby. And now—well, Tina is a nervous, highstrung little kid. The two older girls can pull their weight anywhere. They are both in college now, and doing very well. Wait a minute. I think I have a picture of them here.” Without sitting up, he produced a worn leather case, searched its recesses, and pulled out a frayed-edged kodak picture. He passed it back to Charlotte over his head. “There’s my harem. All four.”
There were two tall, well-developed young women, near enough alike in appearance to be twins. Both looked as if they had just come from under the drier at the hairdresser’s, their coiffures molded into the correct fashion of the day. One was standing up against a high privet hedge, the other was seated in front of her on a folding wooden settee beside an older woman who was knitting. Surely not Isobel! Not this man’s wife! His mother po
ssibly. She was a small woman, flat chested, narrow shouldered, narrow faced. She wore her hair drawn straight back into a tiny roll in the nape of her neck. Her head was bent, her eyes were upon her knitting, her lips tightly compressed.
“Who is that knitting?”
“That’s Isobel. She’s always knitting. I asked her to stop just long enough to look into my camera, but she is the kind who knits the way cigarette fiends smoke. That picture isn’t very good of Isobel. If she’d only looked up and smiled!”
“Is that Tina sitting on the grass with her legs crossed?”
“Yes. That’s Tina. We hope she won’t have to wear glasses always. Tina wouldn’t smile for me either. She never will when I take her picture. Tina says if you’re as homely as she is you look better cross.”
Charlotte gazed closely at the square-jawed, square-figured child on the grass, scowling straight into the camera. Scowling, now, straight into her eyes.
“Does Tina know she wasn’t wanted?”
“I didn’t say she wasn’t wanted. But as a matter of fact—” He stopped and decided he’d better start off again. “Tina is our problem child. That’s another reason I’m glad I’ve had the experience of a nervous breakdown. It helps me to understand a girl like Tina better. Tell me about your family. Haven’t you got any pictures of them here?”
“I think I have one of my mother in my billfold inside your head rest.” He passed her bag, then got up and sat down beside her, with his back against the wall.
“Here it is. It’s a reduced photograph of one of her portraits.”
The portrait was by Sargent. He had made her mother look very imperious and regal. She wore her pearl-and-diamond dog collar and her hair was dressed in a high marcelled pompadour. Durrance looked at the picture in silence for a moment. “She looks like a very strong character,” he said.
“She is.”
“I bet it isn’t easy to put anything over on that grande dame.”
“It isn’t.”
“Where are the rest of your household?”
“There are no ‘rest.’ My father died the year I went away to boarding school, and I went home to stay with my mother, so she wouldn’t be alone. I had three older brothers, but I was the only girl.”
“The adored little sister, I see!”
“Scarcely!” She scoffed. “My brothers were so much older they were extremely embarrassed by the arrival of an infant. The oldest, Rupert, had graduated from college when I was born. I was always a source of deep humiliation to Rupert. Once, when I was about five, my mother asked him to call for me at the dentist’s. The dentist thought he was my father and called him, ‘your daddy.’” She gave a short, dry laugh. “When we got home I overheard Rupert tell my mother never to ask him to call for ‘that child’ again, and expose him to such humiliation. I was a terribly plain little rat.” Funny to be talking so intimately to this man. It was, of course, because he was a stranger. After tomorrow they would never see each other again.
When she was replacing her mother’s picture in its pocket in the billfold, several calling cards, addresses, clippings, and a kodak picture fell out into her lap.
Durrance gathered them together. “May I look at this?” he asked, holding up the picture.
“Certainly. I haven’t looked at it myself since the day Lisa gave it to me out at her house. It’s one of those awful flashlight family groups taken after a large Thanksgiving dinner.”
“Who’s that? And that? And that?” Durrance asked, as, heads together, they examined the picture.
“That’s my brother Lloyd. That’s Rosa, his wife. That’s my brother Hilary with the staring eyes, and his wife Justine beside him with her eyes closed. That’s Windy. That’s Murray. That’s Lisa. That’s June. That’s Nichols down in front. And that’s Fabia.”
“And who’s the fat lady with the heavy brows and all the hair?”
“That’s a poor, pathetic spinster aunt.”
“Where are you?”
She could easily have said, “I was taking the picture,” but she didn’t. “The name of the spinster aunt is Charlotte.”
“You don’t mean that’s Camille!”
“The same! I told you I was just dressed up, playing a part. Come, give me back the picture. You’ve looked long enough into my garrett.”
He did so. “How long since you’ve been home?”
“Not since my exit last October, which was anything but covered with glory.”
“What happened? Tell me about it. Or would you rather not?”
“I’d rather not.”
“All right. Perhaps you’d like to hear what the guidebook has to say about Söller.” He drew a red volume out of a side pocket. “Lean back and make yourself comfortable. Let’s see—here it is: ‘Söller. Some three miles inland, ten-thousand inhabitants, lying in a beautiful valley, with orange and other groves on every side. The road—’”
8
BLOSSOMING OUT
Charlotte closed her eyes. Her companion’s voice became a blurred drone. As if she were sitting in a moving-picture theater the scene before her suddenly shifted to Marlborough Street, Boston, and the time to one Sunday last October just before dinner was announced.
The family were all gathered in the big upstairs living room, overfurnished and overdraped, its dark walls covered with oil paintings in huge gilt frames. The paintings were chiefly landscapes—spectacular mountains, picturesque lakes, and pastoral scenes with grazing cattle and herds of sheep.
There was a large family gathering that Sunday because it was Lloyd’s birthday. Barry Firth had been invited to add a note of festivity. Barry Firth was always delighted to accept any invitation if there was a likelihood that Lisa would be present. Barry had been devoted to Lisa for years; in love with her in fact, if she were any judge of the signs. But the family seemed unaware of the fact. Last summer June and Nichols had begun teasing her about Barry Firth—making insinuating remarks about her “boyfriend,” and exchanging winks and glances.
Her mother took pleasure in giving birthday parties for her adult children. She always dressed up in her best finery, and required Charlotte to follow suit. She had told Charlotte several days before that she was wearing her black chiffon-velvet, and that Charlotte was to wear her black chiffon-velvet too. Charlotte had long since found life was more bearable not to disagree with her mother. It was too early in the fall for velvet. No one else would wear long dresses. She and her mother would look like a pair of dowagers. However, she accepted the edict without protest.
When she took her black velvet dress out of the closet on Saturday afternoon, she found the artificial bunch of white roses on the shoulder was falling to pieces. In a moment of misguided judgment she called up a florist and ordered a shoulder bouquet of gardenias. The gardenias were fresh and crisp, and tied with a silver ribbon. They did much to improve the shabby appearance of her dress, she thought. It never occurred to her that the gardenias would be the grist for June’s mill.
All the guests had arrived when June first spied the gardenias. “What is it I see?” and making opera glasses out of her hands she directed them upon Charlotte. “Come here, Nichols, and tell me if you see what I do. Nobody in this family can get away with a thing like that on her shoulder without some explanation.”
Charlotte was silent. What a fool she’d been!
“Looks sort of suspicious to me, Nichols, doesn’t it to you?” and June winked at Barry Firth’s back across the room.
Barry might turn around at any moment! Barry couldn’t help but be aware that her mother had always had designs on him as a son-in-law. Charlotte could feel a hot surging wave of embarrassment mounting up from her depths, spreading to her arms and shoulders, breaking out, probably, on her neck and face in those horrible red splotches, which had been appearing of late.
“Come, don’t keep us waiting. ’Fess up,” June goaded.
“Do you enjoy being disagreeable?” Charlotte began. “Do you get pleasure out of making oth
ers uncomfortable? Do you—”
She stopped abruptly, her voice, her breath, cut off by a flood of rising sobs, as uncontrollable as the splotches on her face, and as unfamiliar to her, up to several weeks ago. She put both her hands up to her mouth to stifle the awful sound they made. Everybody in the room turned and stared at her. She groped her way through a gauntlet of family faces—white, staring, shocked, increased to a multitude by blurring tears.
From that day until she went to Cascade, Charlotte had remained in her bedroom.
The low monotonous drone of her companion’s voice ceased. She opened her eyes. “That sounds very interesting,” she remarked prosaically. “I guess there’s lots to see and do on these islands.” A few minutes later: “Do you know the cause of your breakdown? And how long did it last?” she inquired, with the license one feels with another victim of a common malady.
“The underlying cause was a long drawn-out period of a sense of failure,” Durrance replied. “It lasted about eight months. Do you know the cause of your illness, and how long did it last?”
“The cause of mine was also a long drawn-out sense of failure. It has lasted nearly a year so far. At least this attack. I guess I’ve had other attacks before, but didn’t know it. What in particular made you feel your sense of failure?”
“What makes most men feel it—not making good at the chief object of his existence—as a provider, I mean. Strikes pretty deep sometimes. What was the cause of your sense of failure?”
“Not very different. A woman has a chief object for existence too, you know. And if she fails to make good at it, why, it, too, can strike pretty deep. Do you remember, when you went to school and studied history, that one of the stock questions was to state the underlying and immediate cause of a war?”
“I remember.”
“Well—you’ve stated the underlying cause of your illness. What was the immediate cause? Or would you rather not speak of it?”
Now, Voyager Page 7
