The Group

by Mary McCarthy

  “You might say, Elizabeth,” Mrs. Davison continued gravely, “that Kay was the first American war casualty.” “Oh, Mother!” protested Helena. “That’s a ridiculous way of putting it.” But in a ridiculous way it was true. Kay had been airplane-spotting, it seemed, from her window at the Vassar Club when somehow she lost her balance and fell. She had had two cocktails before dinner, which might have slightly affected her motor reactions. To those who had been seeing her regularly since she had come back this spring, the manner of her death was a shock but not a complete surprise. She had become very war conscious, like many single women. As her friends could testify, she talked a great deal about air raids and preparedness. Ever since the invasion of the Lowlands, she had been saying that it was just a matter of days before America would be in the war. She was convinced it would begin with a surprise enemy air attack; Hitler would not wait for Roosevelt to arm and declare war on him. He would send the Luftwaffe over one night to wipe out New York or Washington. If she were in Hitler’s place, that was exactly what she would do. It was the whole principle of the blitzkrieg. She knew an air force officer who said that the Nazis had long-range bombers—Hitler’s secret weapon—that were capable of making the flight. They would probably concert it with a submarine attack on the coast.

  The fact that America was neutral did not mean anything. Norway and Denmark and the Lowlands had been neutral too. She was keen on the idea that Mayor La Guardia should start air-raid drills in New York and impose a blackout. She wanted to be an air-raid warden, like the ones they had in England, and she was urging the Vassar Club to get pails of sand and shovels and start a civilian defense unit. She bought a radio for her room, and someone had given her a deck of Air Force silhouette cards, which she was studying to familiarize herself with the various plane shapes. When she was not listening to the radio or arguing with isolationists, she was scanning the skies.

  This new craze of Kay’s had amused her friends when it had not saddened them. Even Priss, who was active in several committees to get America into the war on the Allied side, did not believe Hitler would attack America. She almost wished he would, to goad the American people into action. Her fear was that the war would end this summer—how much longer could the English people hold out alone?—with Europe enslaved, while America sat and did nothing. Or sent too little and too late, as it had done with France. Priss had nearly lost her mind while France was falling; she too had been glued to the radio. She had made Sloan get a portable to take to the beach at Oyster Bay. And now every hour on the hour in the city she turned on the news, expecting to hear that Churchill had capitulated or fled with the government to Canada. This dread, in fact, was in everyone’s mind. All the while they were getting ready for the funeral, Helena had the radio turned on low, for fear they would miss a bulletin. For the rest of their lives, they thought, whenever they remembered Kay, they would remember the voice of the announcer recounting the night’s casualties. Only Mrs. Davison had hope. “Mark my words, the English people will never surrender. As I say to Davy Davison, it will be another Spanish Armada.” But Kay, with her positive character, had already left England behind and was planning the defense of America. What had saddened her friends was that her interest in what she called Hitler’s timetable was so obviously a rounding on Harald, who had become a fanatical America Firster and was getting quite a name for himself speaking at their rallies. If only Kay could have forgotten him, instead of enlisting in a rival campaign. Still, her zeal of preparedness had given her something to live for. What a cruel irony that it should have caused her death!

  The maid who did her room at the Vassar Club told the police that she had often see Kay craning out the window and warned her against doing it. “Yes, Elizabeth,” said Mrs. Davison. “I questioned the maid myself. And I measured the window. A girl of Kay’s height could easily have lost her balance and gone out. As I pointed out to the police, her radio was on, and she had left a cigarette burning in the ashtray by her bedside. A very dangerous habit. But no young woman who was going to kill herself would do it in the middle of a cigarette. Evidently, while she was smoking, she heard a plane’s motor or several motors and got up to lean out the window. I believe I heard the motors myself as I was glancing through a magazine in the lounge. But everything was driven from my mind by the sound of that crash. I can hear it now.” She took out a handkerchief and wiped her eyes.

  As the group took their seats in the church, they looked around in surprise at the number of people who were already there. It was almost a crowd and more were still arriving. There was Kay’s former supervisor at Macy’s and a whole delegation of her fellow-workers. Mrs. Renfrew had come from Gloucester, to represent Dottie. Mr. Andrews was there, with his sister, the famous Aunt Julia, and Ross. Libby and her husband. Lakey and the titled friend who had come back with her from Europe—the Baroness d’Estienne. Pokey and her husband were there, and in the pew just ahead, Polly and Helena were astonished to see Hatton, the Prothero butler. “Hello, Hatton,” whispered Polly. “Good afternoon, madam. Good afternoon, miss. I’m here to represent the family. The Madam sends her condolences. And Forbes begs to be remembered.” It was quite a society funeral, which would have delighted Kay.

  Connie Storey ambled down the aisle and took a seat next to Putnam Blake and his third wife. “Quite a turnout, Mother,” said Mr. Davison approvingly. “Kind of a vote of confidence.” Polly picked out Dick Brown, that old friend of Harald’s, whom time had not been kind to. Jim Ridgeley slipped into the pew beside Polly. “Do you know all these people?” he asked Polly. “No,” she whispered back. “I’ll be damned!” he said and pointed out the psychiatrist who had treated Kay at Payne Whitney. “Those look to me like some of the old patients,” he said, indicating three women together. Mrs. Davison nodded to the secretary of the Vassar Club. Priss recognized Mrs. Sisson, whom she had sat next to at Kay’s wedding. Other classmates appeared. An army officer with wings over his pocket took his seat. “I believe Kay was quite thick with him,” Mrs. Davison confided to her husband. Helena nudged Polly. There came Norine, dressed in complete black with a veil; she appeared to be pregnant, and in a sort of sling that was suspended from her shoulder to her hip and joggled as she walked, there hung a small child; his bare legs and feet protruded from this species of pouch or pocket as if from a pair of rompers. “My smelling salts!” exclaimed Pokey in audible tones. “What is that, a kangaroo?” said Mr. Davison coarsely. “Hush, Father,” reproved Mrs. Davison. “It’s Ic-chabod,” said Priss. “But what in the world—?” whispered Polly. “It’s the latest thing,” muttered Priss. “I read about them in a government pamphlet. They’re meant for busy mothers who’ve nobody to leave their babies with. And the child’s supposed to get reassurance from the warmth of the mother’s b-body.” Norine took a seat next to Dick Brown. She placed Ichabod on her lap by shifting the sling. “What’s the idea of the papoose?” he said. “You squaw woman?” Norine nodded. “I want to give him the experience of death.” “I see,” he said gravely. “Early. Like mumps.”

  The ripple of astonishment that had gone through the church at the apparition of Ichabod subsided as new arrivals came in. Polly recognized Kay’s former maid, old Clara, who ran a funeral parlor in Harlem. Mrs. Flanagan, Kay’s pet teacher, who had been head of the Federal Theatre, came in with her former assistant. “I never thought she’d come!” exclaimed Helena. The altar was completely banked with flowers.

  The organ stopped. The rector came in and took his place behind the casket. The congregation stood up. “I am the Resurrection and the Life, said the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” Lakey felt a tear fall. She was surprised by her grief. The sole emotion she had willed herself to feel was the cold fierce passion that this funeral should be perfect, a flawless mirror of what Kay would find admirable. For herself, she hoped that when she died some stranger would tie a stone around her neck and throw her in the s
ea. She loathed insincere mourning and, rather than mourn insincerely, she would have preferred to have her eyes put out. Another weak tear dropped. Then she noticed that heads were turning. Furious with the others, she quickly looked too. Harald, wearing a dark suit, had entered and taken a seat at the back of the church. How like him, she said to herself icily, to make us turn around to see him. Polly and Helena peeked too. They had feared he would come. And of course he had a right to be here, though they had not invited him, just as he had a right to kneel down, while the rest of the congregation was standing, and bury his skull-like head in his hand, seeming to pray. Yet they too were incensed.

  In the slight pause that preceded the reading of the first psalm, everyone in the church, even those who did not know him, became aware of the presence of Harald. It was as if a biased shadow had fallen on the assembly. If you could have an evil sprite at a funeral, reflected Helena, like a bad fairy at a christening, that was Mr. Harald Handfast. She set her small jaw. She did not understand why his sour mana made her milk of human kindness curdle. There was no further harm he could do Kay. A strange phrase crossed her drawling mind. Harald was “taking the joy out of Kay’s funeral.”

  With a slight uneasy appraisal of the congregation, as though his practiced eye had taken cognizance of Ichabod and Harald as possible centers of disturbance, the rector started the first psalm. “Lord, let me know mine end, and the number of my days. …” There was a rustle and creaking. Some of the mourners remained standing; others sat down; others knelt; still others compromised between sitting and kneeling, crouching forward on the pews. Polly decided to follow Hatton, who had seated himself. He was one of the few persons in the church, she mused, who would know how to comport himself at a funeral. She thought of Kay’s wedding and how young and superstitious they had all been that day and how little they had changed. She herself again had the crazy fear that some hitch might develop in the proceedings, which now would cause the rector to decide that he could not bury Kay after all. But there had been some peculiar features about the wedding, and there was nothing peculiar about the funeral, or was there? The peculiarity was only Harald’s presence. He ought not to have come. But by coming he had made everything they had arranged—Kay’s dress, the old Roman coins, the music and flowers, the liturgy itself—seem silly and girlish. “He is Death at her funeral,” she said to herself.

  The second psalm began. Polly bent her head and concentrated on Kay. The fondness and pity that had flooded her while dressing her inert body came welling back. She considered Kay’s life, which had not been a life but only a sort of greeting, a Hello There. The girl who lay in the casket was finally the heroine of the hour. The rest had been nothing, a vain presumptuous shadow. “In the morning it is green and groweth up; but in the evening it is cut down, dried up, and withered,” intoned the rector. That was appropriate and not just to her poor, shattered end. Polly was certain that Kay had not killed herself, though she had been very unhappy in the hospital when the psychiatrists had made her face the advisability of a separation from Harald. She had all but had a real nervous breakdown at the thought of having to be “nobody” instead of the wife of a genius. But if, like a suicide, she had imagined everybody grieving over her, she would be satisfied now. “I love you, Kay,” Polly whispered contritely.

  When the rector launched into the De Profundis, Priss felt Helena and Mrs. Davison had overdone it; three psalms were too many. And they had chosen the longest epistle for the lesson: St. Paul to the Corinthians, 1:15, The words were beautiful, but she was worried for Ichabod. Knowing what she did about Norine’s views of toilet training, she feared he would have an accident. With all the flowers the church was very close; it was surely her imagination, but she would have sworn that either he had or else Kay—. It was useless to look at Pokey; she had no sense of smell. The congregation was getting restless, nodding and whispering to each other as they recognized familiar quotations in the lesson. “Thou foolish one, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die.” “Si le grain ne meurt,” Priss heard Lakey murmur to her companion. “…For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” “Handel,” Mrs. Davison reminded her husband. “The Messiah.” Priss noticed that Polly was crying hard, and Jim was squeezing her hand. Lakey was crying too—tears, Priss thought, like crystal drops, ran down her rigid face; her teeth were set. Priss wished the lesson would stop talking about “corruptible.” “O Death, where is thy sting?” Pokey gave her husband a big nudge. “I never knew that was where that came from!” Suddenly Priss found herself thinking of the worms in the graveyard; a sob shook her.

  It was an embarrassment to Helena when the hymn came, one of her mother’s favorites, Number 245: “He leadeth me.” She herself had wanted to have Bach’s hymn, from the Passion Chorale: “O Sacred Head surrounded by crown of piercing thorn.” But her mother said the other was more inspiring, which meant that it sounded like a revival meeting under canvas. She knew all the words by heart and did not even feign, as Helena did, to make use of the hymnal. Her big breathy voice, off key, competed with the organ. With the last lines, Mrs. Davison let all the stops out. “E’en death’s cold wave I will not flee/Since God through Jordan leadeth me.” Helena dryly pictured God assisting her mother by the hand to cross the River Jordan, and she feared that everyone in the church had been furnished with the same tableau. Yet her mother was a complete agnostic, like the majority of the mourners. She did not believe in a future life for Kay, so what was there to be inspired about? Nothing. Helena’s realism forbade her to cry. Who was there to cry for? Kay? But there was no Kay any more. That left no one to be sorry for that Helena could see.

  They knelt down to pray. Suddenly it was over. The congregation found itself on the sidewalk, disbanded, and the undertaker’s men went in to get the coffin. Libby wondered why they had not had pallbearers; it would have been much more impressive. And she thought the casket should have been left open. Spying Connie Storey, she rushed off to greet her. She was not going to the cemetery, and Connie, who was a working woman too, might like to share a taxi with her. Tonight, before she and her husband went out, she meant to write down her impressions of the ceremony. It had been almost unbearably moving.

  Cars had been ordered to take everyone to the cemetery who wished to go and did not have a car of his own. They were lined up outside the church behind the hearse. Helena had the list and was checking it off. No provision had been made for Harald. He could have gone with Norine, except that Norine was not going, thank Heaven; it was a miracle, everyone agreed, that that youngster had not acted up during the service—he had nodded wearily on his mother’s lap. Harald stood on the sidewalk, alone and enigmatically smiling. “Jim and I can take him in our car,” volunteered Polly. “One of us has to speak to him.” Helena was less Christian. “My mother will invite him. She has ‘an open mind.’ Let her do it.” But Harald had approached Lakey. “May I ride with you?” they heard him ask. Lakey had a smart bottle-green European two-seater waiting at the curb. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I have no room for you.” But the Baroness excused herself. “If you do not mind, Elinor, I will not go to the interment.” “Very well,” said Lakey to Harald. “Get in. Can you drive?” Harald took the wheel. As the cortege began to move, the mourners saw the green two-seater dart out ahead of the hearse. “What do you bet he makes advances to her?” said Polly tearfully. She and Jim and Helena and Mr. Andrews were in the Ridgeley Ford. “Let us hope he does,” said Mr. Andrews mildly. “I understand the Baroness packs a pair of brass knuckles.”

  The return of Lakey on the Rex had been a thrilling event for the group. They had gathered at the dock one April morning to meet her, seven strong. Kay had been alive then of course, just back from Utah, and Dottie had fitted it in with a vacation trip to Bermuda. The idea of surprising Lakey by meeting her in a body had been Pokey’s; Pokey was unconscious of the passage of time and scoffed at the thought that Lakey might be different. Some
of the others had misgivings, though, as they watched the gangplank being lowered. They were afraid Lakey might have outgrown them. She was almost bound to find them provincial after the professors, art historians, and collectors she had been living among in Europe. The return addresses on some of her letters and post cards suggested, as Helena said, that Lakey had been “broadened”—she always seemed to be staying with important people in villas, palazzi, and chateaus. The last time she wrote, to say she was coming home because she thought Italy would be in the war soon, was from the house of Bernard Berenson, the famous art critic, in Settignano. Lined up on the dock, straining their eyes for a glimpse of her, preparing their hands to wave, the more sensitive girls were conscious of being a staid settled group with husbands and children at home, for the most part; Pokey now had three, and Polly had a little girl.

  When they saw her come down the gangplank, with her swift, sure step, her chin raised, in a dark violet suit and hat and carrying a green leather toilet case and a slim furled green silk umbrella, they were amazed at how young she looked still. They had all cut their hair and had permanents, but Lakey still wore hers in a black knot at the nape of her neck, which gave her a girlish air, and she had kept her marvelous figure. She saw them; her green eyes widened with pleasure; she waved. After the embraces (she kissed them all on both cheeks and held them off to look at them), she introduced the short, stocky foreign woman who was with her—someone, the girls took it, she had met on the crossing.

  On the pier, there was a long wait for Lakey’s luggage. She had dozens of suitcases, thirty-two wardrobe trunks, beautifully wrapped parcels tied with bright colored ribbon, and innumerable packing cases containing paintings, books, and china. On her customs declaration, she was a “returning foreign resident,” which meant she did not have to pay duty on her personal and household belongings. But she had masses of presents, which, being Lakey, she had declared, and she was an interminable time with the customs man and the lists she had made out in her large, clear, oblong writing. There was nothing the group could do to help, once her luggage was assembled, and they did not like to stare at the contents of the trunks and suitcases the man directed her to open, yet even Pokey’s eyes bugged at the quantities of underwear, handkerchiefs, nightgowns, peignoirs, shoes, gloves, all wrapped in snowy tissue paper—not to mention dresses, hats, scarves, woolen coats, silk coats, beautifully folded and in tissue paper too. This impressive array—yet she did not have a single fur coat, Libby reported—made the girls think awkwardly of schedules, formula, laundry, diapers. They could not spend all morning on the pier. As they waited, restlessly tapping their feet (you could not smoke), they realized that the Baroness, who had finished with customs, was waiting too. She seemed to be with Lakey and was not very friendly to the girls, who tried politely to make conversation with her about conditions in Europe. She was a German, it transpired, who had been married to a French baron; she had had to leave France in September when the war broke out. Like Lakey, she had been staying in Florence, but she did not know Libby’s aunt in Fiesole. Every now and then she would go over and say something to Lakey; they heard her call her “Darling” with a trilled r. It was Kay who caught on first. Lakey had become a Lesbian. This woman was her man.