Unclouded Summer

by Alec Waugh

  The talk moved easily and cosily. Van Ruyt was the one man to whom he could talk freely about his work: not only because their interests were identical, but because Van Ruyt knew what he was getting at, understood his kind of work, liked it and wanted him to develop along those lines, wanted to help him develop along those lines. There was no better tonic for him than a half-hour in the Granby Gallery.

  “Do you mind if I put a call through?” he said, as he rose to leave.

  It was to his sister Julia that he put through the call. He scarcely expected to find her in. It was a warm and windless mid-week day. Almost certainly she would be in the country. She was there, however, and at the sound of his voice, her own rose to a note of excited welcome.

  “Darling, how wonderful. I knew you were coming back quite soon. But nobody seemed to know the day, at least they didn’t the last time I asked. Perhaps I should have been more persistent. When do I see you? Are you free for lunch? You are! That’s heaven. I’m all alone. Come round about noon; we’ll have a drink, then go out somewhere. There’s nothing in the house. I’ve only come up for the day.”

  It was very obvious that she had only come up for the day. There were no flowers in the sitting room and none of the litter of books and magazines and sewing bags that give a room a lived-in feeling, but all the same it looked bright and fresh with the sun streaming onto its gay chintz chair covers with its windows opening on the Park, and with Julia in flowered crêpe de chine and a neat straw hat. She had a Martini waiting for him.

  “It’ll taste terrible after what you’re used to. But I’ve had the gin tested. It won’t poison you.”

  “You’ve had it tested?”

  “It’s the safest way. I buy raw alcohol. Take it to a chemist; if he O.K.’s it, then I flavour it.”

  He winced as he sipped the cold strong liquid. It might not be poisonous, but it was most unpalatable.

  She laughed at his expression.

  “You’ll soon get used to it. I suppose you’ve had a marvelous time.” “Marvelous.”

  “Tell me all about it. I’m told everyone went to the South of France this summer. I was crazy to go. I kept nagging at Max to take me.”

  “How is Max?”

  “He’s fine.”

  “Making packets?”

  “Everyone is on Wall Street. I can’t think why you don’t go in with him. Work there for five years, then you’d be able to paint exactly the kind of pictures that you want, without worrying about what dealers thought.”

  “I don’t know that I worry much about dealers as it is.”

  “Don’t you? No, I suppose you don’t.”

  “And painting isn’t the kind of thing that you can put away in cold storage for five years.”

  “Isn’t it? No, I suppose it isn’t. Did you do some good pictures over there?”

  But she did not want to hear about his pictures, he knew that. She wanted to hear about the South of France, about who was there, what was being worn, which were the fashionable places. She plied him with questions. As she sat on the edge of an armchair, swinging her long, slim leg, sipping at her cocktail, she reminded him of Nina Ambrose. They were of an age, both married happily: both carrying the aura of success and confidence. They were both from a well-based present looking onto a widening future. Each was in her own way typical of her nationality and background. He would like to paint the two of them together, indicating what they shared and what they did not share; Julia was as typically American as Nina was typically English. He could not explain in words where the the difference lay. He was not certain that words were the medium in which you could express that kind of difference. He had read in novels and in articles innumerable descriptions of girls Who were typically American or French or German. But he had never been able to see from those descriptions where the essential differences lay. With his eyes and with his brush though he could see it. He could put Nina and Julia side by side on canvas so that anyone looking at them would exclaim “There, you can see it now.”

  “And you yourself, didn’t anything happen to you during all those months?” she asked.

  He flushed.

  “I’ve an idea it did.”

  “Oh darling, how exciting. Was it serious?”

  “I think it is.”

  “Is. And I shan’t be able to be a bridesmaid, what a shame.”

  He laughed, a little ruefully.

  “There aren’t going to be any bridesmaids, I’m afraid. She’s married.”

  “Oh darling.”

  There was genuine concern, affectionate concern in Julia’s

  expression.

  “Hadn’t you better tell me all about it?” she said quietly.

  He gave her the essential details. She listened carefully, her eyes on his, interjecting a question every now and then; a question that showed how completely she understood each implication of the problem. There was no one else in the world to whom he could have asked about Judy in this way, no one else in the world for that matter to whom he could have talked about Judy in any way. Julia understood him; knew him for the kind of person that he was; recognized his failings and seeing beyond them, sincerely for his own sake wished him happiness. He could not have talked openly to her about his painting, not as he had talked an hour earlier to Van Ruyt, any more than he could have talked to Van Ruyt about himself. The one was the complement of the other. They were the two people with whom he could be himself, with whom he could relax. With neither of them though could he be more than half himself. With neither of them could he be as he was with Judy, free to talk of whatever came into his mind, knowing that he would be understood. From the very start he had been that with Judy; then during that night at Villefranche, there had been that further, that ultimate revelation, that all encompassing, all cementing harmony; there was no part of him that was not fulfilled by Judy. Judy had completed him.

  “Do you think she wants to be divorced?” Julia was asking him.

  “She’s talked about our being alone together.”

  “That isn’t the same thing.”

  “I suppose it’s not.”

  “No, my dear, it most certainly is not.”

  She looked at him, pensively.

  “Have you made up your mind yet as to what you want yourself?”

  “I didn’t think it was my business to. I thought it was her decision.”

  “Oh, darling, it’s so like you to say that, so very like you.”

  It was not said impatiently though, but fondly.

  “It’s she who’d be giving up everything,” he argued. “A position, a home, two homes, a husband she’s fond of and respects. I can’t surely try and persuade her to sacrifice all that? It wouldn’t be fair to her. Surely all I can say, is, that whatever she decides I’ll stand by. If it was the other way round, I mean to say, if it was I who was giving up a home and marriage…”

  She interrupted him.

  “Yes, yes. I know. But someone has to take a line, unless you’re going to be like Russian lovers and only talk and talk. She doesn’t sound that type.”

  “She certainly is not.”

  “Nor need you be. There’s always a point where each one hesitates, where each is indecisive. It’s the one who recovers first, who makes his mind up first, who works it out his way. It would be much better if it were you than she. It always is, you know. A woman likes to have her mind made up for her, even nowadays. She’d much rather argue and intrigue against a man’s plan than have a man arguing and intriguing against hers.”

  “But she’s everything to lose. I’ve everything to gain.”

  “Darling, you’re hopeless. Let’s go eat.”

  As they moved together towards the door, she slipped her arm through his, pressing it against her side.

  It was close on six when his train reached Saybrook; his father was waiting for him on the platform. The sun was down and a chill wind was blowing from the north. His father had his hands driven deep into the pockets of a long black coat of
the kind that parsons had worn at the turn of the century. A tall straight figure with coat collar turned up, and the brim of a gray Homburg hat pulled down against the wind, Mr. Oliver looked at a distance of ten yards a man of forty. It was not till you saw him close and in the light that you realized from the deep-cut lines between mouth and nostril that he was over sixty. It was a stern fine face, lean and lined, with a long nose and strong pointed chin.

  “It’s good to have you back, son, very good.” His handshake was like the signature to a document.

  They rode in silence. Mr. Oliver did not like to talk when he was driving. He had bought his first car in 1910, but after sixteen years he still regarded automobiles as a dangerous innovation. He admitted their advantages over the four-in-hand from the utilitarian point of view, but he considered horses less unaccountable than the internal combustion engine. Driving a car required a hundred per cent of his attention. He rarely spoke when he was driving, and even discouraged conversation between the other occupants.

  At his father’s side, looking from left to right, Francis noted the familiar landmarks along a road that he had known since childhood. He was wearing a light overcoat and he felt cold. It was the first time that he had felt cold for many weeks. It was as good to feel cold again as it was to see the trim avenues, planted with limes and maples, the white-fronted houses and the green-painted window frames and shutters, with the slim tiled spires rising over them. The cold gave him as much a sense of homecoming as the familiar place names on the signposts, as the gasoline stations and the neon lights and the billboards advertising cigarettes. It was good to be home, he thought, as the car slowed down to cross the broad high bridge over the river, passing the old opera house, now a restaurant, swinging past the Nathan monument into the main, but shopless, thoroughfare. Yes, it was very good to be back home.

  The Oliver house was halfway up the road. It was small but it had character. Built seventy years earlier on a late Georgian pattern, it had a handsome but simple portico supported on two main columns at the head of a short flight of steps. It was a wooden two-storied building. On each side of the entrance was a row of windows, tall, rectangular, with shutters fastened back, between which had been trained a tangle of rambler roses. The house stood some ten yards from the road, and the flower beds edging the low wicket fence were bright with gladioli and chrysanthemums. It was some time since the house had been repainted; sun and frost and rain had scorched and stained and blistered it, but the whole effect was one of dignity, of cosiness and a lack of fuss. At the back was a broad verandah, partially roofed over, that looked out on the broad long sweep of the Connecticut River.

  As the car came up the hill the front door opened, and his mother who had been watching from an upper window, stood upon the threshold with her arms wide stretched. Her eyes were glistening as her arms went round him. She was little and white-haired and plump. As a young girl she had been cute and cuddlesome and roguish, and against the background of broadened cheeks and heavy jowl, you could still see preserved like a jewel in a setting, the prettiness of bright eyes, tip-tilted nose, and small cupid’s mouth.

  For a moment she could not control her voice. To give herself time to recover she dropped her arms, moving quickly back into the hall, picking up a piece of paper from beside the telephone. “A cable,” she explained. “It’s just come through on the telephone.”

  He was conscious of her eyes watching him as he read it. “Returned tonight to an England that cannot really be home with you three thousand miles away.”

  There was a question in his mother’s eyes. He knew what she was thinking. He was her youngest child, her favorite son. She wanted to see him married. She was afraid of the company that she believed he kept. “All those studios and models.” He knew what she was praying now, that he had met in England the “nice girl” who would preserve him from those dangers.

  “There’s a letter too,” she said.

  It bore a French stamp; it was a bulky envelope. It was addressed in a round, back-sloping unformed hand. It was another letter that traveling direct and by a faster ship had passed him on the Atlantic. He glanced at the date. The twelfth. It had been written after the one that he had received that morning. He flushed under his mother’s scrutiny.

  “I think I’ll go up and get unpacked,” he said.

  His room after the long drive was warm and welcoming, with its bookshelves, desk, and pictures, its early colonial tallboy, with brass fittings gleaming against dark polished wood.

  It looked so exactly as it always had. It was ridiculous that anything could look so much the same. He walked over to the dressing table, picking up one by one his various possessions, the enamel box that held his studs and links: the silver-backed hairbrushes, the coming of age present that he had not risked taking abroad with him; the Toby jug that Max had given him for being an usher at the wedding. How immeasurably remote from that last bedroom he had slept in, how immeasurably different from that cool bare room looking out over the harbor, on whose gray-green walls the reflection of the sun had rippled. How far away that seemed. And in his pocket there was this second envelope.

  He took it out, turning it over in his hand. He longed to read it, yet he was in no mood to read it. The look in his mother’s eyes had fussed him. She would not ask questions. She was not that kind. She was too proud. But she would expect his confidence. She had always had it, there was nothing he had not told her, up to now. She would be hurt and worried if he made no reference to that cablegram. She would know that there was something up.

  And then there would be other cables. Judy was the cabling kind. He’d have to go down to the post office to tell them to hold his cables. There’d be letters too, a long flow of letters. All in the same handwriting. Even if he went down himself each morning to collect them, his mother would be bound to learn that letters were coming to him from England. There would be embarrassment and pain and awkwardness if he said nothing; yet what was there he could tell his mother? He could not tell her the whole truth. He could not talk to her openly as he had to Julia. His mother was of a different generation. This kind of thing had not happened then. All the joy of homecoming that he had felt as his father had driven past the opera house was dissipated, as the troublesome knowledge fretted him that for the next five months there would be no escape from this atmosphere of restrained suspicion. Wasn’t he going to spend the whole of the fall here, and the winter? Hadn’t he resolved during that long journey back that only in one way would it be possible for him to return to Europe in the spring: by thrift and industry; by letting his studio, by living with his parents, by painting hard? He would be here all the time; and all the time he would be conscious of his mother’s eyes upon him, hurt, puzzled, accusatory.

  He felt restless and impatient. He had said he wanted to unpack. But he was in no mood for unpacking yet. He turned to go downstairs: but at the door he checked. It was a bare two minutes since he had come up. He would not have had the time to read the letter. If he were to come down now and were to sit through the evening with the letter unopened in his pocket, his mother would grow more suspicious. He’d better have a bath. As he turned the faucets he thought; having to pretend to have read a letter; having to tell the post office to hold my cables, having to practice deceit in my own home; where was it going to end?

  Though the house and passages were amply heated, a large log fire was blazing in the sitting room, its high leaping flames alternatively shadowing and lighting the old oak dresser, with its Crown Derby crockery, the grandfather clock, the glass-doored bookcase, the little spinning wheel that were part of his earliest memories. His father and mother were sitting on either side of the open fireplace. His father was reading poetry while his mother sewed.

  Thou who hast made my home life so pleasant

  Leave not its tenant when its walls decay

  It was a poem that Francis had heard his father read many times. His reading of it tonight, should have made him feel really home. It didn’t th
ough. It made him ill at ease. He sat down quietly waiting for his father to finish reading.

  Some humble door among thy many mansions

  Some sheltering shade where sin and striving cease

  And flows forever through Heaven’s green expansions

  The River of thy Peace…

  The voice stopped reading. There was a pause. It was for Francis, and he knew it, to say something that would set the right atmosphere for the evening; something friendly and easy; something affectionate and fond, that would warm his parents’ hearts; but he could not find the words.

  “I saw Julia today,” he said.

  It was so much the opposite of what he should have said, of what he had meant to say, of what he had planned to say on his first night home, that his parents made no reply. As he had walked round the picture galleries of Europe, as he had begun his final journey up the coast, from Genoa to Marseilles, he had pictured himself on his return, talking far into the night about all he had seen and done. I’ll probably bore them blue, he’d thought, but they’ll just have to lump it. Yet here he was talking about Julia. If only he could feel more natural. He would have given a lot for a strong rye highball, but even before Prohibition his father had only served highballs on occasions. He would have no truck with bootleggers

  There was a pause; to cover the embarrassment of the pause Francis hurried on.

  “It was a great piece of luck. I’d gone round to see Van Ruyt. I had an hour or two to spare. I rang her up on the off chance. To my surprise she was in. She’d come up for the afternoon. We lunched together.”