Against the Season

by Jane Rule

  So what did it matter whether Rosemary Hopwood came back or not? If she needed to, she would. If not, there was no point. But, surely, if a woman needed that once, she needed it more than once.

  “You take her, Dina,” Sal had said only an hour after Dina had taken her, “and you’ll get more than you bargained for. A woman like that.”

  Less, Dina would have said now if she did say anything about it. Rosemary had not even telephoned. But Dina did not really talk with anyone. It was not her way. Less.

  She got down off the truck and went back into the shop.

  “I’m closing up,” she said. “I have to make a delivery.”

  Three of the kids got up at once, and, seeing that the fourth was not going to move without encouragement, they pulled him to his feet and led him away, floating vaguely after them like an uncertain kite. Dina shook her head after them. A little grass never hurt anyone, but that kid was on other things. Too bad. Pain around here—what grew and broke in a kid—could be deadly dull.

  Harriet Jameson lived in one of the old houses that had been converted into apartments. Her partitioned-off drawing room was as close as she could get to the serene security the Larson house had always represented for her. And gradually she was furnishing it with pieces Dina found for her. Now for the first time she would have something that had actually come from the Larson house. Dina knew how much that meant to Harriet, and she had taken pains with her mending and refinishing.

  “It’s nice of you to have done it so quickly,” Harriet said as she let Dina in.

  The wall she had chosen for it made no comfortable sense, forcing a line-up of couch and chairs, but it was the only honoring wall where the chest could be displayed.

  “Do you think that’s right, Dina? Do you think that’s where it should go?”

  “Looks fine,” Dina said, stepping back.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  “A nice piece,” Dina agreed.

  “Will you have a drink with me?” Harriet asked. “I feel as if I should celebrate in some way.”

  “Thanks,” Dina said.

  “Maybe I should phone Miss A first, just to tell her it’s here.”

  “She’s not home,” Dina said. “She and Cole have taken Kathy to the hospital.”

  “So soon? Is Kathy all right?”

  “I don’t know. I just saw them driving past as I was loading the truck.”

  “I wonder if I should phone the hospital.”

  Dina made no suggestion.

  “Well, let’s have a drink first.”

  There was always something a little nervous about Harriet in her own apartment, as if, though she had actually lived there for some five years, it was all new to her: the space, the furniture, the hospitable rituals. It was remarkable to Dina that Peter Fallidon would come here, sit in this old maid’s parlor as she sat, and not only endure but apparently enjoy Harriet’s slightly ungainly fluttering. Dina liked Harriet, approved of her genuine and ordinary kindness, the pleasures she took in what other people might hardly notice, her earnest cheerfulness. But there was also a sexless prissiness about her which made it hard for Dina to enjoy her company for long or to imagine any man in it at all, particularly a man like Peter Fallidon, who, though carefully formal, gave the impression of being firmly in check rather than cold. He couldn’t relax here surely. But Dina often did not understand the pairing of people, as she did not understand her own singleness going on so long, while she waited for a mythical Greek to come and claim her and her dowry. Out of a land of widows and children, she expected still that at least one had not been slain in those fields, would come down out of the mountains, perhaps, to cross the sea, and he would not be unlike Peter Fallidon in arrogance and formality, in dark good looks. But he would be Greek. No Greek would choose a bony butterfly like Harriet Jameson.

  “I’m sorry, there’s only gin,” Harriet said.

  “That’s fine,” Dina said, though for her it was like drinking perfume. It would not do to refuse. “Thank you.”

  “I wonder if that is the right wall for it,” Harriet said, standing away and then going over to the chest. “You’ve done beautiful work on it, Dina. Whatever made you decide to get into your kind of business?”

  “I took shop in school,” Dina said.

  “Shop?”

  “I already knew how to cook, as much as I wanted to. I didn’t want to sew. So I asked to take shop.”

  “How good that they let you,” Harriet said. “You must have to know a lot about accounting as well, don’t you?”

  “Numbers come easy to me,” Dina said.

  “So many people—women—never do find anything they like to do. Or anyway they don’t make a career of it. Miss Setworth should have been an English teacher. But it’s easier for us, in our generation, I guess.”

  “A woman should marry,” Dina said.

  “Really? All women?” Harriet asked, surprised.

  “Any woman.”

  “Easier said than done,” Harriet answered, immediately embarrassed by what she had said.

  “Anything is,” Dina said. She had finished her drink. She stood up.

  “Thank you again, Dina.”

  “Thank Miss A.”

  “Oh, I will. I’ll call the hospital now.”

  But when Dina had gone, Harriet decided instead to go to the hospital, where she knew Amelia would be until the baby had been delivered. Perhaps Harriet could spell her while she got some supper, or go out and bring something back to her if Cole wasn’t there. Enough for the boy to drive them down. The maternity waiting room was no place for him. But on her way to the hospital, Harriet did not think of Cole or Amelia or even Kathy. Her mind was on Dina Pyros. If she really wanted to marry, why on earth did she go around dressed the way she did? For the work she did it was all right, of course, but Dina went everywhere in those boots and trousers and sweat shirts, even drinking at Nick’s. Harriet had seen her when she and Peter occasionally stopped in after a movie or concert. And she was never with any men; She always sat with those two peculiar women who ran the corset shop. Once Harriet had seen Dina dance, but she danced by herself the way Greek sailors did. She danced well but with a nearly masculine grace, controlled, sharp, strong. Under that bulk of clothes and manner, it was hard to believe that there might be a quite ordinary woman, dreaming of a husband and children. Harriet could no more understand why Dina wouldn’t let the world know than Dina could understand why Harriet dressed to look as much like a librarian as she did and kept her own yearnings as far from sight as Dina did—farther, because Harriet Jameson no longer really admitted them even to herself. She was, at thirty-six, beyond all that.

  Harriet found Amelia comfortably settled with a book in the chair by the waiting room door. She was alone in the room.

  “Harriet!”

  “Dina told me you’d brought Kathy down. I thought I’d phone, and then I thought I’d just come down to see if there was anything I could do.”

  “That’s dear of you,” Amelia said. “But you needn’t have.”

  “How’s Kathy?

  “We don’t know yet. The doctor’s just come in. The sac broke.”

  “It’s early,” Harriet said.

  “Yes. I suppose they’ll induce labor.”

  “Poor girl. Is she frightened?”

  “Yes,” Amelia said simply.

  “I don’t know how you go through this with them time after time,” Harriet said.

  “‘Time after time’ is the way,” Amelia said. “I’m used to it. And they know so much more now than they used to. There isn’t the danger there used to be.”

  “Even so, it’s not a happy thing,” Harriet said.

  “For someone it will be. And I think Kathy’s going to have a fine, placid, healthy baby.”

  “Dina brought the chest over,” Harriet said. “It’s just beautiful.”

  “Did she mend it well?”

  “Beautifully. She does, of course.”

  “I’m
glad you like it. High time it came out of the attic,” Amelia said.

  The doctor came in.

  “This may be a fairly long wait, Miss Larson. Would you like someone to take you home? I can have you called nearer the time.”

  “Thank you, no, Gerry,” Amelia answered, smiling at him. “Once I’m here, it’s really easier for me to stay, and it’s good for Kathy to know I’m around.”

  “But we may not be delivering until morning,” the doctor said.

  “Well, I sleep nearly as well in a chair as I do in a bed. Sometimes I think even better.”

  Knowing Miss Larson, the doctor didn’t try to change her mind, but Harriet was distressed.

  “Surely you’re not going to stay all night!”

  “I often have before,” Amelia said. “And it’s true, I’m perfectly comfortable. People come in and out. It’s quite interesting, and sometimes the young fathers need an old lady like me to talk to.”

  “Well, at least let me take you out for some supper, or, if you’d like me to stay while you go or bring you something…”

  “You know, the thought of not having supper is a real pleasure to me,” Amelia said. “The only thing I’m not going to miss about Kathy is the pounds of biscuits I’ve eaten in the last four months.”

  Down the corridor there was a sudden yelp of pain.

  “Is that… Kathy?”

  “No,” Amelia said.

  “It must be a bit hard on the fathers to be able to hear…”

  “Yes,” Amelia said, “but over the years one of the things that’s impressed me is the change in men’s attitudes about birth. This generation is better informed, I suppose. Lots of these young men stay right with their wives until they’re taken in for delivery. If they’ve come out of the labor room for a cigarette, they want to be within earshot. Last time I was here, one woman let out a real scream, and one of the young men said to the other, ‘Relax, that’s mine. She never does let me finish a cigarette.’ And back he went. I think it must be more the way it was when children were born at home and women had nothing to pull on but their husbands’ belts. It’s not a bad thing, not for most.”

  Perhaps not, Harriet thought, if you were involved and hopeful. Or as amazingly accepting of what happened as Amelia. But what about Kathy, obviously in for a long labor? What difference did it make to her whether the baby was placid or colicky? She’d never know.

  “Should I go down to see her?” Harriet asked.

  “Probably better to come see her in a day or two,” Amelia said. “She’s a little embarrassed just now.”

  There was another cry.

  “Is that girl’s husband already with her?” Harriet asked.

  “It’s another of the girls from the home,” Amelia said. “You know, if I am going to spend the night, it would be a good idea for me to have a bit of fruit and a package of cookies. And then, maybe, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, I could give you my key and you could go in and feed the cat. I somehow think Cole won’t remember.”

  Harriet knew Miss A was giving her something to do to get her out of there, and she could only be grateful. As the door of the elevator closed, there was a genuine scream, followed by “I want my mother. I want my mother. I want my mother.” And Harriet knew that in the waiting room Amelia Larson was hoisting herself out of her chair, not because it was Kathy’s voice but because it was a child who needed her, the lame, old spinster who knew more about motherhood than anyone else in town.

  VI

  PETER FALLIDON ARRIVED FOR the concert in a mood he hoped Haydn and Harriet Jameson would change. It had been a week of irritations and disappointments which he had grown accustomed but not resigned to. In this town people lived on coupons and deteriorating real estate and could not or would not see that repairing a roof or investing in new business was finally to their own advantage. In the year and a half he had been here, he had found only a few allies in his campaign against the decay. Miss Larson was important, both because she had the money to spend and the influence to encourage others, And Feller Hill was increasingly interested in Peter’s proposals for the reconstruction of the downtown area. If he could be made enthusiastic, a number of other businessmen might be persuaded to move beyond complaining into some kinds of positive action. Peter had been particularly depressed, therefore, by the interview he had had with Mrs. Hill just before he left the bank this afternoon.

  “I’d like to help you in any way I can, Mrs. Hill,” he had said in a tone of cooperative reluctance, “but I can’t give you a loan without your husband’s signature unless you have securities in your own name.”

  “A married woman doesn’t have her own name, Mr. Fallidon.”

  “I mean any security you don’t hold jointly with your husband,” he explained, ignoring her sarcasm.

  “But I don’t want him to know. It’s none of his damned business.”

  “I’m sorry. There’s no way to arrange a loan for ten thousand dollars without securities. You don’t have an income of your own, a salary.”

  “No, Feller sees to that. It’s incredible, isn’t it, in this day and age that a woman is still simply a domestic animal? You men don’t need to farm anymore. You can still make a cow and a horse and a dog out of a woman: milk her, ride her, train her to bring in the paper and fawn at your feet…”

  “Plenty of women own their own houses, investments, businesses…”

  “Not with bank managers like you, they don’t. I’ve told you: that’s what I want the money for, to invest in a business, to have some income of my own.”

  “I’m sorry,” Peter said, standing up, “but your husband is the man to talk to first.”

  “This interview will be over when I decide it’s over,” Grace Hill said. “Sit down.”

  Peter stayed on his feet and waited.

  “You know, I could make things fairly unpleasant for you around here.”

  Peter did not reply.

  “Feller does listen to me about some things. He trusts my woman’s intuition, and, if I tell him I think it’s pretty odd for a man like you to have left the city to come out here to this cancerous carcass of a town, if I suggest that there must be something peculiar… He’s a bright man, Mr. Fallidon, but he’s very suggestible. He’s trusted some people in the past and been disappointed,”

  “I can imagine he has,” Peter said.

  “Meaning?”

  “Mrs. Hill, the bank has been closed for over an hour, and I have another appointment.”

  “With your little librarian? Or is she only a front?”

  “Let me see you out.”

  “You’ll regret this,” Grace Hill said.

  “I regret it now,” Peter answered, in a tone so deeply ironic that it was almost neutral.

  He had not had much appetite for dinner, but he fixed it for himself with the discipline of someone who has lived alone a long time and learned not to indulge his own negativity. There was nothing he could do to protect himself from Grace Hill. Neurotic malice could not be stopped. If she really did want money to go into business as a silent partner with Dina Pyros, why didn’t she want to discuss it with her husband? Surely, something of that sort to occupy her would seem not only reasonable but a relief to Feller Hill. Probably then, she wanted the money for something else. Dina Pyros did not seem to Peter the sort of woman who would want or need a partner. As her bank manager, Peter knew how successful she had been without help from anyone. Might he speak to Feller himself? No. To intrude himself in any way into Feller’s relationship with his wife was to sponsor the disaster Grace Hill promised him. Peter did not really believe Feller was the suggestible fool his wife made him out to be. Victim to her in some ways, yes, but surely not to her random malice.

  He did not want to think about it any longer. He tried to distract himself with the notices pinned up in the lobby of the old movie theater which was used for these concerts. Incredible that a town of this size didn’t have a concert hall or little theater.

  “Ho
w are you this evening, Peter?”

  “Fine,” Peter said, taking Carl Hollinger’s offered hand. “Miss Setworth, how are you?”

  He liked both these old people. He did not know why he was mildly surprised to see them together. Probably they had been together before at one of these concerts, but tonight they had something of the look of a couple about them, not simply two old friends sharing a taste.

  “Waiting for Harriet?” Ida Setworth asked.

  “Yes,” Peter said. “She seems to be a bit late.”

  “We probably ought to go in,” Carl said.

  Peter did not go in with them. He waited a moment longer. It wasn’t like Harriet to be late. He tried to think if she had told him about a meeting or something she had to do for her mother. Anyway, she had her own ticket. There was no real problem. But Peter waited until the ushers were closing the doors before he hurried in to take his own seat.

  He tried to listen, which was usually no more of an effort for him than seeing. But it was as if the volume had been turned down or he was too far away from the players, aware instead of the sharp, hateful voice of Grace Hill and the empty seat beside him, discordant anxieties which played against a music that seemed dull, thin, correct. Where was Harriet? If something had happened to her, no one would think to notify him, not at once anyway. It troubled him to realize that, if she had been in an accident, he would be more apt to hear it reported on the late news or to read about it in the morning paper than he would be to receive word from a friend or official. One of the virtues of Harriet was that he could be totally unaware of her while she sat beside him at a concert. He could absorb himself in the warm perversity of a dominant second violin, the deep extending support of a cello. Yet without her, he could not listen at all. Finally he gave up any attempt and simply waited for the performance to be over.