The Precipice

by Hugh Maclennan

  Finally he pressed on the starter and looked at the clock. “We'd better not let Jane worry any more. It might be tough for you.”

  He drove back at a steady speed, and they were quiet with each other in this newly found intimacy. Before they were half way back to Grenville, Lucy felt drowsy with relief from the strain she had been carrying the past few days. For now it had lifted from her, leaving her resigned to the position in which she had placed herself. Whether that position was serious or would last only for the evening she did not know, and for the moment could not care. She felt her shoulder meeting his, utterly relaxed, and he made no attempt to caress her or to put his arm about her.

  Once he said, “I've always wanted women, but most of them have only made me more lonely. You don't.”

  They reached Grenville just before midnight and he drove down the little street to her house.

  “May I see your garden tomorrow?”

  “Call me about noon and I'll tell you then.”

  He opened the door on his side of the car and she said, “Please don't get out.”

  So he leaned across and opened the door on her side of the car. She returned the pressure of his hand, he saw in the semi-darkness the trace of a smile about her eyes, and then she was gone. He sat watching the door of the house open, her dress cross it like a rustling shadow, and then, with a slow swing and in complete silence, the door closed. He waited in the car. The hall light went off. The light that had been shining in one of the upstairs bedrooms went off just as the one in the room beside it flashed on. He waited to see if she would come to the window, but she did not come and when that light also went off he let in the clutch and backed silently up to the King's Highway.

  THE next morning when Lucy came down to breakfast she found Jane's place vacant. Her used plate and the empty coffee cup beside it showed that she had made her own breakfast and finished it early. Lucy and Nina ate alone and few words passed between them, though each was well aware of the tension within the house.

  “Jane must have gone out for a walk,” Nina said. She added: “It was terrible last night. She didn't go to bed till after midnight.”

  Lucy said nothing. She cleared the table and washed the dishes. While she was bending over the sink she heard the tinkle of the first piano lesson. Apparently Jane had returned, for Bobby Harmon was again fumbling his way through “Sunday Morning at Gilion.” Jane would never let her pupils advance beyond a piece until they could play it at least once without making a mistake. The music lessons continued all morning while Lucy did her housework. She went out to the garden but found little to occupy her there. She returned to the house and listened while Jane's prize pupil, a sixteen-year-old girl, played the whole of the “Sonata Pathetique” without making a single error. When the girl had finished, she heard Jane's voice speaking to her in the impersonal accent she always used with her pupils.

  “The tone in your slow movement isn't quite full enough. Listen.”

  Then Lucy heard Jane begin to play it herself and once again she marvelled at her elder sister. One would expect her to be at her best with a Bach fugue, but it was only in these slow movements of Beethoven, where religion mingled with a deeply sublimated sexuality, that Jane really found herself in music.

  “There!” Jane's voice said. “A little more weight in the bass. But you made no mistakes, and after all, that's the main thing.”

  Then the living-room door opened and the girl left. As soon as the outer door of the house had closed, Lucy went into the living room. Jane was arranging sheet music on the top of the piano.

  “I'm sorry I didn't tell you I was going out last night,” Lucy said. “I know I should have done so. I was afraid we'd both be embarrassed.”

  In the ensuing silence the whole room seemed to Lucy to be pulled tight around her. The trace of a flush appeared on her sister's cheekbones and it was obvious that Jane was taken by surprise.

  “It has become quite clear,” Jane said without looking at her, “that you don't care either for my opinions or my feelings. In that case, I suppose what you do is your own affair. You're certainly not a child any more.”

  “Oh, Jane – please don't say things like that to me!”

  “Can you suggest anything else for me to say?”

  Lucy said quietly: “You look as if I'd done something abnormal and dreadful.”

  Jane continued to arrange her music.

  “Why can't we talk naturally to each other?” Lucy said. “Naturally – the way other people do! We're both grown up. We're sisters.”

  Jane's face was completely calm. “I don't know what you mean.”

  Lucy breathed deeply and looked away. She moved across the room past Jane and sat in a chair near the window.

  “You have your work,” she said softly. “You have the responsibility of the house. I have nothing. Nothing but my garden. Have you no idea how much I've longed to live naturally – the way the rest of the world does? We're no different from other people, Jane. We're human.”

  Jane turned toward her. Her neat figure stood there easily, her hands hanging down in front of her, the small fingers lightly interlaced. The force of her silent will was terrible for Lucy.

  “Stephen Lassiter would like to meet you,” Lucy said, but the words lost themselves in Jane's icy silence. “He's already met Nina. I think it would be nice if we could ask him to the house.”

  “Do you? Do you really?”

  Jane turned and picked up another sheaf of music which she tamped into a neat pile. Then she crossed the room and sat down facing Lucy, but in such a way that the light from the window was in Lucy's eyes while her own were in the shadow.

  “I stayed awake most of last night,” she said calmly, “and I'm not quite myself this morning. Perhaps if my head were a little clearer I'd be able to understand why a girl like you – Lucy, my own sister –” for a second an almost primitive passion quivered under Jane's soft voice “– could allow a man like this Mr. Lassiter to make use of her as if she were a common waitress.”

  “You're absurd!” Lucy whispered. “You don't know what you're saying.”

  Jane's voice remained soft and gentle. “I believe I do. You think because we live quietly and decently here, I'm ignorant of the world. I know very well what goes on. I've seen this Mr. Lassiter. He didn't look to me like a man who would respect a nice girl. He didn't look a man who would even like a nice girl. Do you expect me to believe that an American of his type would go driving at night with a plain, inexperienced girl like you just for the pleasure of her conversation? Haven't you ever heard of the clever, rich man from the city who comes to a little town and is bored? Hasn't it occurred to you that every decent person in Grenville has been watching this Mr. Lassiter and wondering just which girl would be fool enough to provide him with the amusement he wants?”

  Pressing her palms together, Lucy asked herself why she was sitting here listening to such things when she could walk out of the room any moment she chose. Was it only because she was economically dependent? She knew it was more than this. The quivering of her nerves told her it was much more. Jane's words, like fingers, were twisting around her roots. Jane could do this to her because they had always been so near, because they had always loved each other. Lucy could walk out of the room, but she could not walk out of the situation.

  “Jane,” she said, “he's not like that. He's – he's very nice.”

  The older woman looked at her with steady eyes. “I'm not a fool and I'm not unobservant. A man like that is quite obvious to anyone who knows anything. If you don't know already, you'll soon find out that the only thing he could possibly want from you is something unpleasant. In any case, he'll leave Grenville in another week or two, and then where will you be?”

  Jane got up and crossed to the piano. She swung the cover down over the keys and pushed the stool in close.

  “I meant to tell you that from now on Bobby Harmon will be coming at nine every day. His mother says if he doesn't come first thing in th
e morning he won't come at all. He's such a dull pupil. His hands are always dirty and I get tired of sending him upstairs to wash. A long time from now these children will be grateful for what they're taught, but that isn't now.”

  Jane seemed so calm and matter-of-fact that it was almost impossible for Lucy to believe her change of subject was merely a technique to consolidate her victory. If it was a technique, it was certainly not a conscious one.

  “Jane,” she said, “we can't leave things like this.”

  “Why not? There's nothing more to say.”

  Lucy watched her sister intently. “Haven't you ever wanted a man to like you?”

  A slow colour began to rise in her sister's cheeks. In all her life, Lucy had never seen an embarrassment more terrible. For several minutes Jane's lips did not move. Her self-control kept her from making a single betraying motion. Lucy's mind, leaping frantically to save itself from the pressure of her sister's will, suddenly recorded the fact that Jane was neither distorted nor queer. Everyone else in Grenville made terms with the code by which they lived without even guessing how illogical they were. Privately, they were kindly people who led sensible lives. But Jane, privately, was like their collective conscience. She was the only one of them who followed, in thought and in life, all the principles of the religion and morality which the entire Protestant part of the country professed to honour. The great crimes had no reality for her whatever. She had never in her life seen an act of deliberate wickedness. It was quite natural for her to believe that sex was the dirtiest thing in the world, and near to the root of all evil.

  “I think you've said enough!” The contemptuous anger in Jane's voice made Lucy flinch.

  No one had ever asked Jane a question such as Lucy's. No man had ever indicated so much as a passing interest in her. Jane's face showed that she had taken Lucy's question as a deliberate suggestion that she harboured unclean thoughts. In the silence the clock ticking in the hall was loud.

  “Very well, Jane. But I've asked Stephen Lassiter here for tea this afternoon.”

  Jane left the room.

  It was minutes after she had gone before Lucy's tears came. Then they streamed down her cheeks. She wiped her eyes and got up to look for something to do. She went out to the kitchen and found a duster, returned, and began cleaning the window sill. When she stopped moving her hand back and forth and raised her head, she saw clouds like a solid roof between the earth and sky. Then a few glaucous patches appeared, paling and darkening and paling as the sun tried to fight its way down. She stood looking out with the duster clenched in a ball in her hand and her hand against the glass. She stiffened but did not stir when she felt an arm slip about her waist.

  “Don't cry, Lucy. I can't stand to see you crying.”

  Nina's childish face looked on the verge of tears itself.

  “I heard it! Jane was terrible to you. Why is she like that? When I want to get married will she be like that to me, too?”

  Lucy put her arms about Nina and each sister felt the other's cheek wet against her own. They were crying now because they were surprised at each other, and because they knew that the house would never be quite the same again after this, and perhaps because each was sorry for the years when they had kept so many feelings frozen and concealed which might have served to make both of them warm.

  “Don't think badly of Jane,” Lucy said. “She can't help the way she is. She won't be the same to you. It isn't that she disapproves of marriage. It – it's something else.”

  Nina drew away and regarded her sister as though she had never seen her before. “You've looked so nice the last few days.”

  Lucy passed her hands over her face and began to smooth her hair. She found herself weak and on the verge of shrill laughter. “Aren't we three fools!” She looked at Nina, smiling. “It's getting late. Would you like to help me pick some lettuce and carrots for the salad?”

  Nina brushed her hands across her forehead and went ahead of her down the hall to the back of the house. She turned at the door with her face alive and smiling, her eyes still a little red from her tears but her whole body seeming to ripple with the joy of being alive.

  “I'm going to ask Mr. Lassiter to have tea in the garden this afternoon,” Lucy said. “For some reason he wants to see it, though I'm sure he won't be able to tell one flower from another. Will you and Bruce come along, too?”

  Nina shook her head vigorously. “No, that would spoil it.”

  “But I wish you would!”

  “No – I'm not really that mean.” Nina laughed and opened the door. “To think you were on my side all along!”

  FOR two hours Lucy and Stephen were alone in the garden, for Nina was somewhere on the beach and Jane had gone out. Stephen had nearly finished his report to Cleveland and felt very good about it.

  “You know, it's a wonderful thing what words on paper do to you. I hadn't thought I'd done very much up here, but when I got down on paper all the stuff I've accomplished, it looked like a hell of a lot. Maybe that's why Carl Bratian thinks he's one of the biggest shots in the U.S.A. Every time he turns out an ad for a refrigerator all in colour with the baloney printed like poetry underneath – he probably thinks he's invented the goddam thing. Today I feel as if I'd rebuilt the whole Ceramic Company.”

  Lassiter knew nothing about flowers, as Lucy had guessed, but it made no difference in his pleasure at being in the garden. He walked around the beds while she named the flowers for him. Then he sprawled in a deck chair and ate cucumber sandwiches and drank two cups of tea. He asked her no questions about herself and seemed unconscious of the strain she had been under. He told her about the place in Dutchess County where he had lived as a small boy, but when she asked him questions about the gardens on the place, he could recall nothing about them.

  “The thing I remember best was the gym I fixed up for myself in the garage. It was an old coach barn, and upstairs I had a punching bag and rings and a rowing machine.” He grinned at her affectionately. “What muscles I've got I didn't get for free.” He flexed his arm, and she saw the coat sleeve pack tight with the swell of biceps and deltoids. “A woman's got more than one advantage over a man. If she's born with a figure, all she's got to do is lay off chocolates to keep it. But if I got soft, this arm would be nothing but a lot of fat.”

  While they were eating, a chipmunk appeared on the lawn and circled around them with quick darts. Lassiter looked at the animal and remarked that all chipmunks seemed to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She took a few shelled nuts from the pocket of her dress and laid them on the palm of her hand, then held the hand some twenty inches from the ground and waited. The chipmunk jumped up in a quick, sure leap and crouched on her palm, stuffed the nuts into his craw with both paws, jumped down and up again to see if there were more, then darted off across the lawn and disappeared among the flowers of the perennial border. Lassiter was as pleased as a child with the chipmunk's performance, and then he wanted to know how such an animal stayed alive near a house with a cat.

  “Taffy's too old to do anything but sleep,” she said. “Anyway, the chipmunk doesn't live in the garden. He lives in the field behind it. He hasn't much sense of self-preservation. I suppose that's why he's easy to tame.”

  Lassiter laid down his cup. “You know, this is the first tea I've drunk in five years?” He gave her a meditative glance. “I feel good today. I feel relaxed. The only times I've been able to relax since I left college have been when I wasn't quite drunk and wasn't quite sober. It takes a lot of experience to be able to get that way, and to stay that way so the cylinder doesn't begin to roll. I said that to the hotel manager's wife the other day – about the drinking, I mean. She shook her head and gave me one of those looks the women around here specialize in. Then she said, ‘You Americans must be very unhappy people.’ I thought it would be a shame to spoil her idea of us, so I said, ‘Madam, you've missed the point. Americans aren't interested in being happy. They're interested in having a good time.”’
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br />   To Lucy it was a delicious feeling to know that he liked sitting quietly with her in her garden. His eyes showed that he was enjoying the concealed excitement and sense of life he had aroused in her, and Lucy's happiness was not spoiled by the realization that he had always found it easy to make women like him. She was not even disturbed when she realized that he was fundamentally a sensual man, for he was not calculating, like the Europeans she had read about in books. He seemed to assume that he shared this quality in himself with every normal man in the world, and she wondered if his assumption that his desires would be taken for granted was partly the basis of his attractiveness to women.

  By six o'clock the shadows were long in the garden, the sun was half-hidden by trees, in the pale Ontario sky above them a gull slowly circled, and as coolness grew, the nicotianas began to open. Lucy found herself talking about her flowers again, trying to explain why something which was quite unprofitable and such hard work meant so much to her.

  “You know, a garden measures out all the good times of the year. I've arranged it as nearly as I can so that the colour-masses balance and complement each other. Spring is the best time, naturally. First the cool colours – the crocuses and hyacinths and lilies-of-the-valley. Then the daffodils and tulips, and just before the tulips fade, the whole garden bursts out like a full orchestra.” She looked at him smiling, and without shyness she added, “You've missed a lot in your life, haven't you?”

  “I've missed at least half a dozen years out of it on account of the Depression. I'd like flowers if I had time or a place for them, but flowers in themselves – well, they don't lead to much, do they?”

  “What would you want them to lead to?”

  “Money, for one thing.”

  “And if you got money, where would that lead to?”

  “There'd be time to figure that out when I had it. To all sorts of things. I guess it's been bred into me to think that way. I don't give a damn about money for its own sake, with me it would be something to work with. I know I'm not a creative engineer, but I've got ideas. With money, I could hire technicians to try them out. My father made quite a few millions and making them was a game to him, but he always figured that when he had made a big enough pile he'd found a trust of some sort. He'd be ashamed of me if he could know how little I've done so far.”