by David Plante
Hilary and James came into the sitting room from upstairs, and Nancy introduced Gabriella to them. James shook her hand, but Hilary, smiling, stood back and, as she had learned to do, fingered her pearl necklace. Gabriella exclaimed to Hilary, “What a very beautiful pearl necklace.”
Hilary asked, “Oh, do you like it?” and Gabriella, laughing, said, “Be careful—as a lawyer, I would use all my knowledge to justify my stealing it with impunity.” James laughed, and Gabriella turned to him and said, “I think we have common friends.” He made her laugh now, asking, “How common?” Nancy and Hilary turned to each other as Gabriella and James talked about their friends in common. An elderly woman came in with a tray of champagne and orange juice.
Tim was not yet down, and Nancy felt awkward introducing herself to other guests who began to arrive. Just as she was about to go upstairs to get Tim, he appeared. She was speaking to three men, trying to keep the conversation about opera at Covent Garden going, and she expected Tim to come to her, but he went immediately to Gabriella and James, who were still talking, she presumed, about their common friends. Hilary, twisting her pearl necklace in her fingers, was standing aside, alone.
Two tall women came in, younger, Nancy thought, than she, and they came to introduce themselves to her with accents Nancy couldn’t place. She didn’t get their names. In America she would have asked them to repeat their names, but here no one did that, and she continued to try to behave as the English did. Neither could she remember the names of the men, so she stood back a little to make room and, gesturing from one to the other with her arm, let the men introduce themselves. She looked again at Tim talking to Gabriella and James, all of them intent. Tim’s neck, she thought, was bulging over his shirt collar.
One of the tall young newcomers was blonde and wore a black cocktail dress with a large rhinestone necklace and long rhinestone earrings. Nancy saw the smooth cleavage between her small breasts. Her shoes had very high heels. The other tall woman was brunette, in a tan silk dress with long sleeves and a high, round neck tied with a bow of the same material.
When Nancy went to Tim to tell him they had come in, he looked over her head and, smiling, said, “They’re Brigitte and Erica.”
“Who are Brigitte and Erica? Were they on the guest list?” she asked.
He said, “Girls who work in the Temple. I thought I’d ask them. They’re German.”
“Oh,” Nancy said.
Tim said, “I’d better go and talk to them.”
After Tim moved away, James left, and Gabriella Almansi was standing alone. By the smile Gabriella gave her, a smile that tried to be open in a face closed with reservations, Nancy knew suddenly that she and Tim were having an affair. She felt a sense of displacement and wondered for an instant who she was and what she was doing at this party in this house, standing in front of this adulterous woman.
She heard herself say, “It was a dreary day, wasn’t it?”
Gabriella, who knew exactly who she was and thought she had every reason to be in this house at this party, said, laughing lightly, “You have become very English, talking about the weather.” She had, Nancy thought, every right to be having an affair with Tim.
Nancy didn’t know what to say to her. As if from a distance, she saw herself introduce Gabriella to a couple standing nearby, and as soon as Gabriella took command of the conversation with them, Nancy, without excusing herself but feeling she had become invisible, turned away from them. She felt that no one at the party, now crowded, saw her.
Involuntarily, she looked again for Gabriella, and saw her talking with another woman.
She didn’t go to look for Tim. She went through the guests in the sitting room and the dining room and into the kitchen. The girl who had answered the door was arranging little sausages on a dish. Nancy went past her, through the open back door, and down the cast-iron stairs to the garden. The air in the dark garden was moist and humid, and the thick ivy growing on the back wall looked black. She walked slowly to the end, where there was an old apple tree. Ivy grew up the trunk of the apple tree and about its lower branches. Small creatures moving in it made the ivy rustle abruptly here and there, and then it went still.
Why, she asked herself, hadn’t it occurred to her that of course Tim would have an affair? If he had been able to, he would, like his father, have had a mistress, but married men whose fathers had lived in a world in which they had mistresses didn’t themselves have mistresses, they had affairs.
She turned round to the back of the house, which was attached to similar houses by shared brick walls, and she saw lighted windows all along. She saw the lighted windows of her kitchen, no one inside, and, above, the lighted windows of the rooms. Hilary stood at one of them, alone, looking out. Nancy drew back, though she was sure Hilary could not see her. Hilary was twisting her necklace in her fingers. Nancy looked up to the lighted windows of what would have been the nursery and saw in one Tim, and in the other the girl with the rhinestone earrings.
She had always thought men were excused for being helpless in what they wanted, but, in her naive egocentricity, she had thought that what men most wanted in their helplessness was support.
Upstairs, Tim gestured to the girl that they must go and opened the door for her to go out first, then shut the door behind him onto the empty room, the light still lit.
Nancy knew he was not doing anything to hurt her. Again she told herself she felt that the very helplessness with which men wanted to make love, the helplessness she thought of, no matter how old and how experienced the man, of a boy wanting to make love for the first time, was their excuse, if they needed an excuse. They didn’t. And they shouldn’t be blamed for what they longed for. But—, she thought, and she didn’t know what she meant by this “but.”
In the nursery that Nancy had learned to call the spare room, Hilary turned off the light and disappeared into darkness, then reappeared in the light that shone in from the passage when she opened the door to go back to the party. Nancy wondered about Hilary’s withdrawal.
Slowly Nancy returned, because she knew she must, into the house. Tim and the two girls were drinking champagne together on one side of the dining room table, and, without looking at them, Nancy passed on the other side of the table to go into the sitting room.
Gabriella came to her to tell her she must go, and to thank her.
Nancy said, “You were the first to arrive, and you’re the first to leave.”
Gabriella said, “My husband is waiting at home, and I am sure the baby is howling and he is trying to calm the little darling. You and Tim will come to dinner. I will make you a special Italian Jewish dish.”
Nancy felt guilty that she had suspected the sleek and commanding Italian. Taking Gabriella’s hand in hers, Nancy, surprised, asked, “You’re Jewish?”
“You couldn’t tell?”
“I couldn’t.”
“But Almansi is a Jewish name.”
“I didn’t know,” Nancy said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Gabriella said, and, still holding Nancy’s hand, leaned forward to kiss her on a cheek, and Nancy moved her head so Gabriella kissed her on the lips. Nancy flushed, but Gabriella, stepping back, held Nancy’s hand in both hers and said, coolly, “Or perhaps I shall try to cook alla Americanafor you,” and she said goodbye and left Nancy feeling she was an uncultured American.
Tim was coming toward her with the girls on either side of him. He said to Nancy, “Erika has come to thank you before she leaves,” and Erika held out her long, thin hand. Tim didn’t mention the other girl, who stood behind Erika as Nancy shook Erika’s hand and said she was glad she’d had a good time at the party. Erika’s small, thin nose was a little crooked at the bridge. Nancy said goodbye to the other girl, and Tim accompanied them out.
Softly clapping his hands, as though he were congratulating himself on a successful performance, James Kess entered th
e sitting room with Hilary. It had been arranged: they were to have supper out with a judge and his wife.
In what seemed to her a rush, all the guests approached Nancy to thank her and say goodbye, and she, a little detached, tried her best to make them think she was happier that they had come than that they were leaving. They were all gone within ten minutes.
Tim said to Nancy, “I’m going into the kitchen for grub.”
“I’ll get you something to eat,” she said.
In the kitchen, while the helpers quietly cleaned up, Tim sat at one end of the kitchen table with a plate of cold chicken and salad and a bottle of champagne, and Nancy, who wasn’t eating or drinking, sat at the other end.
Tired, she put her elbows on the edge of the table and held her head up, her hands under her jaw. She watched Tim eat and drink. His taut neck muscles swelled against his stiff, white, shiny collar, which, because his shirt was striped, looked like an old-fashioned detachable collar. His lips were thin, as were his nostrils and the lobes of his ears. His hair, with a rigidly straight parting that showed his white skull, was combed smoothly in place. It was, she thought, a sort of groomed starkness.
The helpers finished their work and stood by the table while Tim, leaning back in his chair, reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket for his wallet, extracted some bills, and held them out to the older woman who, it seemed to Nancy, curtsied just a little as she took them. He said, “You’ll sort out between you who is owed what. And, mind, I don’t want one of you suing the other and coming to me for legal aid.”
The two laughed and left, only turning back at the door to say goodnight to Nancy.
Nancy said to Tim, “During the party, I went out into the back garden.”
He poured himself another glass of champagne. “To get away for a bit? I don’t blame you. I hate parties as well as anyone, but, here we are, they are useful. And, I must say, darling, on the whole it was quite a useful party. Thank you for your pains.”
She said, “From outside, I saw the light on in what was meant to be the nursery.”
Tim thrust out his jaw, apparently thinking. “As evidence of what, do you think?”
“I saw you and the German girl in the room.”
“And what were we doing?”
“Talking.”
“Quite right. We were talking. She is a Cambridge graduate, speaks not only German and English and French and Italian and Spanish, but also Russian. Do you know the Russian word for kiss is something like pazzo-lui, which in Italian means he’s crazy?”
“I did know.”
“I was proposing to Erika that she work for me.”
“I’m sure, with all her languages, she’ll be very useful, in the new, united, multilingual Europe and all that. Is she Jewish?”
“Does she, do you think, have a Jewish name?”
“I’m sort of vague about what is and what isn’t a Jewish name.”
“She doesn’t, but, yes, her mother is Jewish.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Nancy said.
Tim drank down the champagne, then, with the tips of his fingers, he pushed the glass a full arm’s length away on the table. “I shall now do a little reading of certain papers for tomorrow.”
That “certain” meant the papers were important, and also meant she should ask him about these important papers. He had always counted on her interest, and he counted on it now, to listen to him talk about his work. She said, “Tell me,” as tears rose into her eyes.
He said, “You’re tired. Go to bed, darling. I’ll stay up to read, but won’t be late coming to bed myself.”
“You’re sure you don’t want to talk?”
“Thank you, but I’ll be able to sort everything out, this one time, without having to talk it through with you. Go to bed.”
He was tender in his consideration for her, and his tenderness made the tears rise more and run down the sides of her nose.
Tim got up and stood over her. “You’re weeping.”
As she looked up at him, blinking, tears ran down her face.
“I know how demanding I can be,” he said, “and I must tell you I am sorry.”
“I don’t mind your being demanding,” she said. “It’s just that—”
“What?”
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to do enough.”
“You find I am demanding more than you can give?”
“Sometimes.”
He looked away from her.
She said, “I thought it’d be enough, helping you as much as I could by supporting you in your world.”
Looking down at her again, he said, “But you’ve already proven yourself in that, which is more than enough for me.”
A small sob broke from her and she pressed her hand to her mouth. Tim leaned forward and kissed the top of her head. Weeping, Nancy asked, “Why did you marry me? I’m not beautiful, I’m not rich, as an American. I’m no help to you here. And now I can’t have your child. Why?”
This made Tim stand back. He asked, “Don’t you know?”
“No, no.”
“I married you because I loved you, though I once did tell you I don’t use the word love.”
Pressing both hands to her mouth, Nancy rose and hurried out.
In bed, when, finally, she heard Tim come into the room, she pretended to be asleep. From what seemed a great remove from him, she heard him undress and carefully hang his clothes up and put on his pajamas and come to the bed, and as he got into bed her sense of removal became greater.
They lay side by side, and Nancy imagined that all about them was a big hollow, and the bed floated in that hollow.
Surprise jolted her body when she heard, just heard before she understood, Tim say, “Have you been having suspicions about me?”
The hollow they were in expanded so much their bed became, in it, tiny, and her voice, which surprised her when she heard it as much as Tim’s had, was also tiny. She said, “Yes.”
“Ah.”
“Do I have reason to feel suspicious?”
The hollow expanded more, and Tim said, “Yes, you do.” He turned toward her and asked, “Shall I tell you about it now?”
“Is it Erika?”
“It’s Erika.”
“Why did you lie?”
“I did not lie. I do want her to work for me. What I didn’t tell you is that I’ve made her pregnant.”
“She didn’t look pregnant. She looked skinny.”
“That is as is.”
“And she’ll have the baby?”
“I want her to have it.”
“And you’ll want to marry her?”
“I won’t want to marry her. I will, however, set her up in a flat with the child and, from time to time, stay with them.”
“And you’ll go on being married and, whenever you’re not there, living with me?”
“If you accept that.”
“And if I don’t?”
“The choice you have is between that and filing for divorce, which I would have no reason to contest. This may make my chances for becoming a judge difficult, but I won’t give up my child. And because I won’t give up my child, and because the child is Erika’s as well, I have to establish a separate household for the child and her.”
“And if I divorce you?”
“I would not marry Erika.”
“And if she wants to marry someone else?”
“The child is mine.”
“You’ve both agreed to that?”
“We have.”
“She sounds practical.”
“She is.”
“And you sound practical, too.”
“Jews tend to be practical.”
“Do they?”
“In my experience of Jews.”
“You wo
uld like me to accept all this?”
“Yes, I would like you to. But please do not think I demand it of you. You must think about it and tell me, in your own time, what you conclude.”
“I wish I had your power of analysis. I really admire the way you can analyze a situation and reach a conclusion about it.”
“Thank you,” he said. “But this is about feeling. We once talked of feelings, feelings too vast to be named. I told you how much I want a child. How much I want children. Can that desire have a name? It’s immense. It’s the closest I shall ever get to an immortal need—no, to a mortal need. A marriage without a child, however close, however loving, is to me like a suicide pact, the closeness, the loving, end in death, no more. There is something deadly in a marriage without children. Yes, deadly.”
She closed her eyes as if to take all this in as feeling, and she did, she did enough to open her eyes and say, “We could adopt.”
“You know me well enough, you’ve suffered me enough, to know the child must be mine. Forgive me, darling, forgive me, as I once told you I would need forgiveness, but our marriage is dead to me. This is not your fault. I assure you, I do not in any way think this is your fault. You can’t help yourself. But neither can I help myself. I can’t die without having a child to keep me alive in this world, this so terribly, terribly, terribly destructive world, a world that has wanted the end of me and my line. I refuse to give in to the destruction. I refuse. I can’t die without having a child to keep me and my line alive in this destructive world. I refuse to die out, to be made to die out. They want us dead, they want us dead, but I won’t die. I will stay alive in a son.”
