by Belva Plain
Marjorie lay back. “That makes two of us. Why should I gave a damn? Why should I?” She put her hand over her eyes, shielding them from the light, murmuring to herself. It sounded like “in the last analysis one is always alone,” but he wasn’t sure.
“What did you say?”
“What difference does it make what I said?”
“What the hell is the matter with you, Marjorie? Would you mind telling me what you’re angry about now?”
“Not a thing. Not a thing. Should I be angry about anything?”
“I hate that answer you give me! With that hint that I ought to be feeling guilty! No, I don’t think you should be So why are you?”
She took time to reply. Their eyes fastened upon each other’s in a long, hard stare.
“Let’s just say I’m tired, shall we?” she said at last.
“From what? With a house full of maids?” Normally one who avoided argument to a point where he sometimes accused himself of cowardice, Francis could also be prodded into rage. “I’m sick of this verbal fencing! If you’ve got a grievance, come out with it, or else shut up. I’m not going to waste a day trying to probe into your head, Marjorie.” He looked at his watch. “Come on, we should get to town before the crowds block the streets if we want to see the parade.”
“I don’t want to see it.”
“You had a good time at Mardi Gras last year!”
“That was last year. Besides, you don’t care whether I go or not, so don’t pretend you do.”
He could have slapped her—an aberrant thought, of course. Exasperation tightened in his solar plexus, a maddening knot. There had been too much of this kind of thing lately!
“Then I’ll go alone. I want to see it.”
“Go. Enjoy yourself.”
He went downstairs and out to the car. The tires squealed as he wrenched the wheel, speeding around the curve, easing his tensions, taking a small revenge on injustice. Juvenile, he thought then; slow down. Be reasonable. It’s not all that bad, having a blowup every month or so. Maybe it was her monthly cycle, after all? Maybe I want too much, some sort of impossible perfection. How do I know what it’s like in other marriages, other houses? Except that in other houses there are children….
Yet, during his own childhood in a house filled with children, there had been long strained silences as well as jovial warmth. So perhaps this was just the way things went between two people living a lifetime together, with or without children….
The drive eased him. With the top down the wind whirred about his head. Once he had climbed the shoulder of Morne Bleue and begun the long descent toward Covetown, his anger sloughed away. Maturity is acceptance, he told himself. By evening things would have fallen into place again, he told himself, assuring himself. A faint sadness settled now in his chest where the anger had been.
Funny, he thought then, funny about Lionel and Kate. A queer couple, mismatched from the start. Did people see just such a mismatch between himself and Marjorie? He puzzled over that for a moment and thought not. Surely they were not like Lionel and Kate! Lionel said only, “It didn’t work out.” How much that hurt, or whether it hurt at all, one couldn’t tell, for being a gentleman, Francis thought ironically, he would surely never show it. A gentleman didn’t reveal his emotions. Oh, well! Oh, hell!
Covetown blazed with color and brass. There were bands in the squares and other bands marching with the long parade that wound and twisted through the streets. Indians in feathers, skeletons, Chinese dragons, crowned kings and queens rode on floats or walked and danced and pranced. Everyone was drunk with music and some with stronger stuff. Wearing one’s mask, it did not matter how one screeched or capered, or what stranger one seized and kissed. It was all pure, reckless joy. Perched on a railing, Francis sat for a long time, watching the color and dazzle. He felt like a child before a Christmas tree and a pile of presents, and was suddenly aware that he had been needing this reckless joy.
After a while he got up and bought a rum drink, content to drink it alone, just sitting in the shade with his thoughts. He wondered whether he could be classified as a loner. He didn’t think so, for there were always people whose company gave him warmth and light. They were selected people, though, not the “social” crowd among whom one was expected to take one’s pleasure. He did not want to feel superior to them or anyone; nevertheless, they bored him with the monotony of their interests and opinions; they repelled him with their inbred selfishness. Or most of them did, at any rate. There were a few whose minds were open enough so you could say what you thought without raising eyebrows, but only a few. Lionel was patient with him out of a firm sense of family loyalty and also because he was a good sort in his way. Francis always thought of him like that: Good-Sort Lionel. Yet even he found Francis odd and off-beat. Concern for the whole community was a thing you just did not talk about; as long as the dogs were quiet, you let them lie. The idea was to live your own life as peacefully as possible.
And looking about today at all this gaiety under the sun, one might well shrug and think, Let it be! After all, why should I upset the peace? Except that the peace won’t last, he thought, finishing the drink.
And now a sense of loneliness, as powerful as his earlier joy, swept over him. He had nowhere to go. He didn’t want to go home. He would have liked to see Patrick. Yes, they’d sit and talk about things they’d read, and speculate and argue and get nowhere except for the pleasure of argument…. There wasn’t really anyone else he could think of, when you came down to it, with whom he could so comfortably do just that. He walked on up the hill toward Government House and the library, fine old buildings among fine old trees. At the foot of Library Hill he turned off into a narrow alley formed by a double row of houses. Probably built for civil servants, out from England in the seventeen hundreds, he thought, recognizing the Georgian doorways and the narrow windows with their sixteen lights. He hadn’t been down this alley in a long time.
Kate lived in one of these, he recalled now. Patrick had described a house in an alley, at the very end, the only one with a view of the water. Well, no business of mine, he told himself.
At the end, where the hill, abruptly rising, made a natural wall of green, a little house stood sidewise to the street so that one could see the back door and the yard. He stopped.
She was feeding birds, dumping a pan of crumbs on the flagstones. The birds, who had no doubt been waiting for her in their hidden places, came swooping down, not minding her presence. She had been wearing a hat, the same straw farm hat—or another one just like it—that Francis remembered. Now she took it off. Her bright hair shone red-gold in the light.
Then she saw him. “You’ve been spying on me!”
“Only for a minute. May I come in?”
“Use the front door. There are stickers on those vines, you can’t climb over the fence.”
On the front step he barely missed a bowl of water.
“For stray cats,” she said, opening the door. “The neighborhood’s full of them. It’s a pity.”
He stepped into a cramped little hall. Confusion made him awkward.
“You run an S.P.C.A. of your own,” he said, needing to say something.
“I’m a thwarted mother. I like to nourish.”
This childless woman could say that without bitterness! As though, quite simply, she had accepted the fact and was determined to live with it. “Besides, I’m terribly frugal,” she said. “I can’t bear waste. I suppose it’s from not having had anything when I was young.”
“I’m frugal, too, but with me it’s because when I was young I had too much, which we couldn’t afford. Only I didn’t find that out until much later.”
“You’re in time for lunch if you want any.”
“I’ve only had tea this morning and a rum cola just now, sol think I do.”
“Come into the kitchen, then.”
“It smells good,” he said, following her.
“Tourtière de la famille, or not to be fancy, m
eat pie. You put in everything you’ve got, all the leftovers. There’s ham and chicken, some veal scraps and vegetables. Shall we have it outside?”
A table with two chairs stood near the back door under an oleander bush, where a large homely mongrel and a haughty white poodle dozed together.
“A funny combination, aren’t they? The big one I picked up along the road. He was on his last legs. Lionel gave me the poodle when he was a puppy and of course I love him, although I really don’t care about poodles, they’re too fussy. But I couldn’t have left him behind, it would have broken his heart. Wait, I’ll just bring out the cheese and fruit and then I’ll sit down.”
Well! Rather different from Georgina’s Fancy, Francis thought, remembering Lionel’s great dining hall. Rather different from my own place, too, he thought almost ruefully. But then, this was a doll house. Yes, a doll house.
“I’ve been following your editorials,” he began, “and I think you’re doing a wonderful job. Everybody’s buying the Trumpet. Most of the people I know are annoyed with it and some are pretty angry over it, but at least they’re reading it!”
“The credit goes to Patrick Courzon. And I’m not being modest, it really does. I’d like,” Kate said earnestly, “to see this place, the whole of Central America, for that matter, governed by people like him and Nicholas. They could set things straight—or at least they’d try—and ward off a lot of trouble.”
“I wish I could see Patrick more often than I do. I’m always glad when he comes over for an evening.”
“He’s awfully busy now. Ever since they got the boy, Patrick’s felt obliged to do things with him. Désirée’s not too good with him. She’s a sweet person, maybe not smart enough for Patrick, not like Nicholas’s wife! She’s a little childish, and in any case, a better mother for girls. Besides, the boy’s difficult.”
“He didn’t have much of a start, Patrick tells me.”
“That’s why he wants to father him. He’s a strange, serious child. It’s hard to make him laugh.”
“You don’t laugh very much, either,” Francis said, surprising himself. He hadn’t intended to say it.
“It’s true, I haven’t in years. But I do now. In the office. Ask Patrick. It’s really quite gay there, and I love it. We’ve great young reporters, one bright black girl, two young cousins of mine, and then there’s Robby Welch, the bank manager’s son, home from England on vacation. His family had a fit at first about his working in an office with blacks, but they’ve come around. It’s a good staff and I love it,” she repeated. “It’s really the best thing I’ve ever done for myself.”
“I’m glad for you, Kate.”
He wanted to ask about Lionel and her, but of course would not. One waited until one was told about private matters.
Grown of a sudden self-conscious, he avoided her eyes. His gaze fell upon her hands, from which the emerald ring was missing. His gaze fell upon a lizard, a quick green creature that, having slid up an unoccupied armchair, stood now a few feet away, staring with its jeweled eyes, while the pouch of its whitish neck throbbed in the heat.
“Gecko,” Kate mused. “The name suits, doesn’t it? Does one grow to suit one’s name, or is it the other way around?”
“Well, let’s think about that. Kate, for instance.” And he forced himself to look at her. “Yes, Kate is the only possible name for you. Kate means freckles and bright hair. Someone small and lively and curious and earnest.”
“Who talks too much and has too many opinions. While Francis—let’s see—Francis has to be tall and rather quiet. His conscience commands him. He is also very, very kind.”
“You’re thinking of the saint, not me,” he said with a lightness he didn’t feel. “Here, let me help carry these inside.”
Standing next to her, stacking dishes in the sink, once again words came from him that he had not intended to speak, perhaps not even thought. But they came, demanding and rushing.
“Do you realize that ever since that day we had lunch in town, the day you made me decide to stay at Eleuthera—yes, it was you who made up my mind—ever since that day we haven’t spoken two words directly to each other? The few times we’ve been together, we’ve avoided each other. What are we hiding?”
“What?” she cried. “What are you saying?”
They stared at one another. She had the look of someone who is about to fall.
“You said I’m hiding something?” she whispered.
“I said you—” He faltered, murmuring something that blurred on his lips and in his ears; and then she did fall—fell toward him—and he caught her; he was drowned in an exploding surge of longing and immediate fulfillment, so that the longing and the fulfillment became one.
How long they stood in the kitchen, pressed and entwined, neither could have said, but when they drew apart the moment of astonishment had already passed and the blending, the merging, had been established. So it was, and neither spoke. She took his hand, guiding him lightly through the hall and up the narrow stairs. He felt himself floating, as if some great tide were bearing him forward.
After the sun glare her room was cool, a purity of gray and white. She pulled the shades, and in the shadow their bodies blanched. He was aware of a beautiful old bed, too large for the little room. He saw, as they fell back upon the quilt, red zinnias in a bowl on the dresser and, in the mirror above the dresser, the curving of her hips and thighs and the reach of his own rounding arms; then, closing his eyes, saw nothing.
They lit two cigarettes and lay against the pillows. Two smoke spirals drifted in a newly risen breeze. Now words came, thousands of words, questions and thoughts so long held back and denied, now to be admitted and released.
When had he first distinguished her at all from other women? And was it true that she’d felt something from the very beginning, on that first day at Eleuthera? And had he really not known the truth until now, this afternoon?
“What made you finally leave Lionel?” he wanted to know.
“You had better ask why I married him in the first place.”
“Why did you?”
She put her head on his shoulder. “It’s not a pretty story. It hurts. I told you once, I think, that we were very poor in my family. An old name, and so much damned dignity! Oh, you must have seen some of these fine, land-poor families, with the paint peeling off the walls and the refrigerator kept in the drawing room because the kitchen roof leaks. No money to spend, just sitting on the veranda drinking the evenings away. We have them still, but there were more of them even a few years ago, before the corporations started buying them out.” Kate sighed. “When your last pair of stockings has a run you wear them anyway, and you pretend, oh so gaily, that it just happened this minute and you simply can’t be bothered to run upstairs and change them. I was so sick of it! Lionel was slender then and good-looking. Anyhow, it happened so fast I had no time to think. He took me to Da Cunha’s and bought me a ring worth more than my father’s house, this house we’re in now, that I love so much and despised then. Well, I was very young, if that’s any excuse.”
The breeze had turned into a wind and the sun had gone around the corner of the house. Kate shivered. Francis drew her nearer, pulling the quilt around them, making a warmth into which she crept, closer and closer.
“His parents were wonderful, even my mother-in-law, your grandmother, was. She can be a terror, but she welcomed me. I didn’t know why until much later, when I learned about the girl Lionel was in love with. Remember? Of course he wouldn’t have married her, she has colored blood, but they were afraid he might. She’s very beautiful. She lives in Barbados now, in Bridgetown, and he goes there to be with her.
“He did wrong to marry me, but I don’t blame him. I wronged him, too. Neither of us loved the other.”
“So it’s finished? For good?” Knowing that it was, he yet wanted to be told that it was.
“Oh, yes. And my doing, not Lionel’s. He would have gone on as we were. He was quite comfortable, but I�
�ve grown up. I know who I am. I don’t need his money anymore and I don’t want his kind of life.” She laughed. “The only thing I miss—well, I do miss the horses! Can’t very well keep them here. I support myself, though. Lionel wants to give me things. He’s very kind; kindness seems to run in your family, doesn’t it? But Nicholas pays me well enough and I have this house and I don’t need anything. By this time next year we shall be divorced.”
“You’re brave. You’re lovely. You’re very lovely, Kate.”
“Is it all right if I ask about Marjorie? Or would you rather not?”
“I’d rather not,” he said softly. “Not now.”
And he thought again, as he had too often lately, of how everything had changed. Yet Marjorie had not really changed. Comely, reliable, intelligent and graceful, she was, in essence, what she had always been. And he, wasn’t he also what he had always been? Only the allure between them was gone, the passion and allure. So it was the marriage itself which time had altered, time working away, as the sea builds dunes and shapes the cliffs.
“Oh, God,” he said.
“Francis, dear, dear, what is it?”
“I love you. I love you, and I don’t know what to do about it.”
She put her hand over his mouth. “Listen to me. Things solve themselves. Sometimes, after the first few months with Lionel, I’d lie awake looking up at the gray ceiling and I’d think, I’ve wrecked my life. I had no one, no place to go. But see how it’s all unfolded! We’ll grow old together, Francis. I don’t know how, but I know we will.”
Against his chest he felt the thudding of her heart. She had closed her eyes; the dark lashes on her cheeks were gilt-tipped. Lovely, lovely! This little woman, so pert and brisk, and still so soft, so soft! Innocent in her conviction that the world could be, and must become, a better place where no man turned a cold cheek to another and no one hungered and no one kicked a dog! Innocent.
And I, too, feel her indignations; I think of myself as one who wants to give; yes, there is all that in me. But also there is the very private man who cherishes his own domain. A cut above the men at the bar in the club, Francis, with your poetry and history? Yes, yes, you know you feel you’re superior to them, and yet you’re terribly ashamed of yourself for that glimmer of superiority. You chose a wife, you were drawn to her, because she, too, has that very private pride….
