Stranger On Lesbos

by Valerie Taylor

  STRANGER ON LESBOS

  By

  Valerie Taylor

  Stranger On Lesbos

  By Valerie Taylor

  First published in 1960.

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  ISBN: 978-1-936456-28-4

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  CHAPTER 1

  Standing in the doorway of the English classroom, Frances had a crazy feeling that the last twenty years had dissolved and she was fifteen again, hesitating on the threshold of County High under the critical eyes of the town students. She glanced down, half expecting to see cotton stockings and the cheap thick-soled oxfords from the company store, and was reassured by the sight of her polished loafers.

  She stepped into the room, already half-filled with students and buzzing with voices. Kids are all alike, she thought, dropping into the first empty chair and arranging her purse and books on the flaring arm. Even in a great university whose methods were studied by educators from all over the world, somebody had scratched initials into the wood.

  The feeling of unreality swept over her again. The years of her marriage were a dream, compressed into the time between the mine hooter's shriek and the sizzling of fatback in the skillet. In a minute she would wake, facing the newspaper-covered wall, get up and wash in a tin basin, then sit down to biscuits and gravy.

  She looked around nervously, trying to orient herself, beginning to panic. This time her gaze fell on her well-tended hands. The past was over and gone, thank God.

  She tried to concentrate on the other students. For the most part they were young, with a thin sprinkling of middle-aged men and women. Like me, Frances thought, and rejected the idea. No! I'm still young, I haven't really started to live yet.

  The violence of her reaction frightened her. She took off the glasses she had lately begun to wear for reading, and blinked.

  Her look slid over the rows of youngsters in sweaters and came to rest on a dark-haired woman in the tier of seats below her. The woman caught her eye and smiled slightly, then opened a paper-covered book and started to read. Frances studied her, ready to look away if she turned around again. She was in the late twenties, with hair more black than brown, cut short and casual. She was sturdily built, and wore her tailored white shirt as though clothes didn't interest her. The sleeves were rolled up over tanned arms. Frances thought she looked alert and intelligent, perhaps a trifle sulky, but definitely more interesting than any of the kids.

  A thin graying man came in, dropped an armful of books on the lectern and looked around the room. "My name is Kemper," he said. "In this course we are going to explore some trends in literature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, beginning with the works of D. H. Lawrence." He smiled. "Why Lawrence? Not because some of you may have heard that Lady Chatterley's Lover is a shocking book. But because his books, which seem so overrated and perhaps sentimental to today's critics, were the first to state in plain language the effect upon human behavior of certain physical and psychic phenomena not generally conceded to exist at the time when he began to publish. Those were the good old days before Freudor at least before the Freudians."

  Some of the students laughed.

  "My assistant will pass out mimeographed reading lists at the end of the hour, but first if you will note these titles"

  Notebooks flipped open. The buzz of voices dwindled to a light hum. There was a scratching of pens.

  Frances sat looking around the room, trying to adjust to this atmosphere from which she had been absent so long.

  She had been lukewarm when Bill had suggested that she register for classes at the University. "You always used to say you were going back some day to get your degree. Why don't you start now?"

  "Haven't thought about it in years." She had reached up to disconnect the electric toaster, begun to stack the breakfast dishes.

  "I get the feeling you've been bored ever since we moved to Chicago. Women don't have enough to do around the house any more. All these gimmicks." He looked around the sunny kitchen, frowning. "Now that Bob's in high school"

  Oh God, Frances thought, if it were only that simple. She focused on the opposite wall: refrigerator and freezer, built-in washer and dryer, all Bill's purchases and all bought on installments. Her eyes smarted. If things were the way they used to be with us. If we ever had any time together. If we could sit down and talk things over the way we used to.

  "We're doing all right," Bill said. "That last raise is going to put us in a higher tax bracket, I'm afraid." He grinned. "You can get yourself some culture if you want to."

  "All right."

  "Good girl." He glanced at the wall clock, snatched his attaché case from the work counter, and gave her a perfunctory kiss. "Don't forget, I may be late tonight. Big deal, buyer from Pittsburgh. Don't wait up."

  He would have enough to drink before he got homenot enough to make him sodden, but too much for balance. And she would lie awake hour after hour, hearing the chimes from the Catholic church down the street and wondering miserably if, this time, entertaining an important customer would mean women. There was a class of buyer to whom a Chicago trip was an excuse for raw, commercial sex. Others were satisfied with a steak dinner, a few dirty stories, too many drinks. She'd never had any real reason to believe that Bill was unfaithful to her, but she had heard enough innuendo at parties and enough complaining from the morning coffee drinkers in the neighborhood to know what sometimes went on the expense account under "Entertainment." It was a thought she couldn't push out of her mind at one in the morning.

  She would lie there, dozing and waking by turns, until the late night air grew cool and pale. And finally the car would turn into the drive, headlights sweeping across the bedroom wall as they always did, and Bill's key would fumble at the front door. She would lie taut, pretending to be asleep, while he undressed in the dark and crawled into bed beside her. Whether he touched her tentatively or fell at once into a heavy alcoholic sleep would depend on how much he'd had to drink and whether the customer was about ready to sign on the dotted line.

  Lately he had been staying on his own side of the bed.

  Sometimes it seemed to her that the whole history of her marriage lay in one word: diminishing. Bill cares less for me, she thought, makes love to me less often, puts less meaning into it and gives me less pleasure when he does love me. It's a gradual lessening. And with the slacking off of love (explainable on the ground of Bill's increasing preoccupation with business and his fatigue, but who can be comforted by an explanation?) we're losing everything else. Books, music, the practical details of learning to live together and be parentseven the nagging worry over money. Maybe it's a good thing to be broke, she thought wryly. Keeps you from fretting over more important things.

  She sat looking at the blank face of the back door, dimly hearing the car back out of the garage. I'll do it, she thought suddenly. I'll go over to the U. this morning and get a catalogue, and maybe talk to the registrar or somebody. Why not?

  She felt light and buoya
nt as she ran upstairs to wake Bob. As soon as he gets off to school, she planned, I'll shower and take the I. C. to the Midway. Bill had talked about buying a cheap second-hand car for her use and she had discouraged him, feeling that every spare dollar had to go into Bob's college account. Now she half regretted it, picking her way through the radio tubes and science-fiction books and scattered clothes that littered Bob's bedroom floorgood heavens, was anything in the world messier than a boy of fifteen? If I had a second-hand car, she thought, I could get to my classes without any trouble.

  It felt good, having something to plan for. She caught herself humming as she zipped her skirt.

  The grounds of the University of Chicago had never seemed like a campus to her, as she glimpsed it from the windows of a bus or a train. A college ought to be a green tree-shaded expanse shut away from towns, with ivy-grown buildings and a cloistered atmosphere. Here a series of quadrangles were flanked by the Illinois Central tracks on the east, hemmed in by grimy apartment buildings, surrounded by the moldering slums of a great industrial city. But there was the same feeling of youth and optimism that had overlaid, like sunshine, the small denominational college of her youth.

  A group of faculty children played around the statue at the east end of the grassy plot, shepherded by a young wife joggling a baby buggy. Boys and girls walked slowly, hand in hand, among the stone buildings. She wondered which building housed the library, the old hunger for books stirring within her like a physical appetite. I belong here, she thought.

  So here she was, tuition paid, a student again. It wasn't what she wanted out of life. It wasn't enough. But it was a beginning.

  The instructor's voice dwindled away. She looked up from her empty notebook. The people around her were stirring, turning to speak to friends. Frances looked at her watch, a birthday gift from Bill. The hour was over. It was hard to believe, but she had wasted fifty minutes of classroom time daydreamingabout a past she wanted to forget, and a future full of problems without evident solutions.

  She might as well, she thought, have gone to the movies. I'd have been half-crazy with excitement in the old days, she reproached herself, remembering her arrival at Wallace with her belongings in a borrowed suitcase (and a black eyeyes, but that was a symbol of the evil and ugliness she was leaving behind, and so it had a part in her new freedom, too). In her shabby purse was a neatly typed envelope with the return address of the college in the corner, in it the letter confirming her scholarship. She carried the same purse three years later, when she stood before a strange minister with Bill Ollenfield and promised to love, honor and obey.

  Now she got to her feet, gathering up her belongings. I was young then, she thought sadly, and in love. Love. At twenty, it's thrills in the moonlight. At thirty-five it's remembering to send his shirts to the laundry.

  Going out into the talk-echoing corridor, she fell into step with the dark-haired young woman she had noticed earlier. They looked at each other intently for a moment and Frances felt the color rise in her cheeks. She smiled uncertainly. The other girl gave her a questioning look, then smiled back and walked swiftly away. Frances stood watching her until she was lost in the crowd, wondering who she was and why she was in school.

  CHAPTER 2

  Her only worry when they had moved to Chicago a year earlier, had been about Bob. Not about Bill who was wrapped up in his job. His work for the welfare board had become more and more perfunctory over the preceding four or five years, the people listed on his neat index cards were only case histories to him, and he was tired of trying to stretch a social worker's salary to cover the increasing cost of living. He was a young man still, but the early zest, the bounce, had gone out of him.

  True, he had been first indifferent and then undecided when his Uncle Walter had offered him a job as sales manager for Plastic Playthings, at approximately twice what he had been earning; but he had decided for it, as he surely would not have done five years earlier. And she had to admit, dubious as she had been at first, that he was making good. He got along with the gray-flannel-suit people, the Martini-with-lunch crowd; and his two salary increases had had little to do with his being the owner's nephew. He was in. As for herwell, you can wash dishes anywhere. The child psychology books all emphasized the importance of security for a child, especially during adolescence. She laughed, pulling a soft sweater over her head. Bob, entering high school as a sophomore, had fitted into the new life with no bother at all. Now he looked and acted just like his classmates at South Shore High (flat-top haircut, cord-sole shoes, Friday night basketball) and was hardly ever at home.

  Adolescence, she thought a little bitterly, stooping to choose a pair of shoes from the closet floor. I don't have to worry about him. He doesn't need me, any more than his father does. Anybody who could cook would do just as well. Good old mom, a standard piece of household equipment.

  The thought sprang into her mind, unwelcome: nobody needs me. Bill's at the office or out with a customer most of the time, mixing business and pleasure. He never opens a book any more, doesn't care about the theater, doesn't even talk about getting a hi-fi, now that we could afford one. And how long has it been since we really talked together? You can't count all those arguments about the grocery bills.

  She picked up her handbag, decided against a jacket, and ran lightly down the stairs. Her work was done. The house was in order. It was an easy house to care for, smaller than the one Bill had wantedhe'd been all for buying a place in the suburbs, where they could have a garden and an outdoor grill, and entertain his business contacts. That meant living a little beyond their means and being always worried about the unpaid bills, like most of the couples she had met since they moved. She was glad that she'd stood firm. The bank account for Bob's education was more important than anything else.

  Bill had gone ahead and bought the new car, the wide-screen TV, and the three new suitsafter all, a sales manager can't wear slacks and an old tweed jacket. But she had won on the question of the house, which stood in a decent but not smart neighborhood, and had only two bedrooms.

  We don't even have enough in common to quarrel, she thought. What Bill really needs is somebody like Betty Flanagan, who really likes backyard barbecues and doesn't mind when someone tells traveling salesmen stories. Who tells them herself, for that matter, and kisses other people's husbands at parties.

  It would be so nice to have someone to talk to. The autumn air was like wine. That's trite, Frances admittedbut it really was. Sunflowers rose proudly in a vacant lot above a tangle of village weeds: plantain, sorrel, dandelions gone to seed, dock and fennel. She passed a brick house set on a triangular scrap of lawn; the walks were edged with late-blooming petunias, and against the wall a rosebush held one yellow rose with scrolled petals. Frances smiled, wondering who tended the flowers. Somebody in this noisy, smoky, dirty city who thought growing things were more important than concrete and glass brick, and liked the feel of moist earth in his hand. A woman, maybe, displaced and finding nobody of her own kind to talk to, had turned to this bit of outdoors that was all she had for comfort.

  She stepped up into the bus and dropped her quarter into the fare box.

  This time the campus seemed to welcome her, as if she had a right to be there. She walked along briskly, pleased and a little excited at the prospect of the hour ahead, and wondering if she would recognize any of her classmates, if she would ever come to know any of them as friends.

  The dark-haired girl she had noticed the first day was already there, reading. She welcomed Frances with a smile and motioned to an empty chair beside her own. Frances sat down and said, "Hi. How are you getting along with the reading list?"

  "It's mostly review," the other said. She closed the book, keeping a finger in her place. Frances noticed that it wasn't a library copy, but a paperback volume that looked as though it had been read not once but many times. "He's good, thoughKemper, not Lawrence. Have you had him before?"

  Frances felt ashamed to admit that this was her first ti
me in a classroom in fifteen years, that she was just a housewife smothered by walls and trying to findwhat? She didn't know. She said hesitantly, "No, we're new here. We've been living in Pennsylvania, my husband and son and I." She blushed. It sounded terribly stuffy.

  "I'm working on my M. A. I may not live to make it, but it's fun trying." Frances liked the girl's quick self-deriding smile. "I'm Mary Baker, by the way. I have a crazy job television promotion."

  "That sounds exciting."

  "It's a living."

  "Anything is better than washing dishes," Frances said. "Miss Bakeror is it Mrs. Baker?"

  "Miss. My friends call me Bake."

  "I'm Frances Ollenfield." And what did names matter, Frankie Kirby or Mrs. William Ollenfield, when you met someone you really liked? "Look," she said, "why does the instructor start with Lawrence?"

  "He said why. Because Lawrence was the first to express what other people knew but were afraid to give words to," Mary Baker said. "Sex, of course, but other things too. He knew how people really feel about things, not how they think they ought to feel. He helped smash the old taboos. That's why he's great, even if he did write badly sometimes."

  "He's dated."

  "Yes." Bake's face hardened. "Not as much as you think, though. We've got a long way to go."

  Frances looked down at her hands. "Did you get to the place where Mrs. Morel sits in the garden, wondering where her life has gone tofeeling as though her whole life had been lived by somebody else?"

  "I remember it. Do you feel like that?"

  The question came so simply that she had no time to be embarrassed. "Sometimes."

  "It's a great pity," Bake said softly. "Life is so short, it's too bad not to get the most out of every single second."

  Easier said than done, Frances thought.

  Through the class hour she kept stealing looks at the girl beside her. A stranger. But not a stranger somehow; like someone known before, and to be better known. She liked Bake's clear firm profile under the short hair, her good nose and solid chin, the way her neck rose out of the white collar. She liked the way Bake sat with her shoulders back and her feet firmly planted. By contrast, Frances felt colorless and insipid.