“Look at this,” she said. “Here, be quick, put it on!” But Susan just stared at her without comprehension.
“Drop the towel,” Honor commanded. “And here, slip this over your head, you can pull your panties on later on when we do your hair.”
She was almost frantic as she hurried Sue into the exquisitely full and floating gown that fell to the floor all about her, curving softly over her small breasts and showing off her sharp little shoulders. The gold threads woven through the cloth shone in a thousand twisted lines as Sue’s tanned skin glowed in contrast.
Honor felt her heart twist as she looked at the other girl and longed for one sad moment to be as small and as sweet as this, knowing, if she were a man, she’d want to love just such a tiny, perfectly made person.
“I am dreaming,” Susan told her. “Dreaming, but definitely! Shall I wear it, Honor? Will this be all right? And what about my feet?” She lifted the skirt to show her brown toes and was now looking down at them ruefully.
Honor laughed, feeling silly and happy. “Don’t wear shoes, why should you? Your feet look nice just like that. You can pull on your white ones to dance,” she said as she left the room. She was pushing at her own hair carelessly, saying, “Come down when you’re ready. There’s no hurry.”
Suddenly she turned around and asked, “Are you scared of Sara now?”
“No! No!” Susan cried excitedly. “I’m suddenly afraid of nobody!” Then she picked up the volume of the great yellow skirt and whirled around on her slender feet.
Honor now hurried down the first curve of the stairs. The house felt tight and strangely expectant as a house always will when people are in their own rooms shaving, dressing, deciding on colors and scents to wear as they come together again at the supper table. Honor liked this time as the shadows were not quite frozen into their night shapes and there was a quiet feeling of delight and hurry everywhere throughout the house.
She went cautiously on down the stairs, which were almost dark now, and out onto the terrace. She stood by the fountain, head bent, listening to its unwavering trickle in the still air. Its basin would be just long enough for her, were she to lie down in it, she saw, its shape exactly like a coffin’s. She could so easily imagine herself lying there, looking beautiful and fresh under the cool mountain water.
Just then Daniel came running up the path from the meadow. “Oh, there you are,” he said. “I want to talk to you,” he added, and Honor heard that his tone was harsh.
ix
Honor looked at her brother for several seconds before asking, with exaggerated calm, “What’s the matter with you? You look like you’ve seen a ghoulie.”
He laughed and stopped trying to hide his shortness of breath, now gulping noisily at the air like a fish. “I ran,” he was trying to say.
“Obviously,” she said. “But from what?”
“From nothing, my dear girl. There are no spirits in a high Swiss meadow that could faze this courageous young American, but I had an idea and I wanted to talk to you.”
Honor turned and began to walk slowly toward the edge of the terrace. “Come,” she said. “Let’s walk a little.”
“I’ve been walking. In fact I just ran down to the lake and back in about six minutes flat. Honor, wait for me!”
As he caught up she stepped close to him and murmured, “Remember, it’s summer. Windows open. People upstairs quietly dressing, if you’re about to make your true confessions.”
He frowned impatiently. “True confessions?” he asked. “Stop being weighty, Nor. This is it, I’ve decided. You and I are leaving here tomorrow morning.”
They walked on slowly to the terrace’s edge, their long legs falling easily into step.
“What makes you think so?” Honor asked.
“Because I think it’s a good idea, that’s all. And it would be fun for you and me to take a little jaunt together. We haven’t seen much of one another this summer.”
Honor laughed. “But why this sudden need to be with me? I haven’t noticed that it’s kept you home for the last five or six years. What’s this really about? Do you have a rendezvous with some little chippie on the Riviera and need me along for protection?’
“The hell with all that,” Daniel told her fiercely. “Stop trying to be so tough, Nor, as you’re a pathetic flop at it. No, I have not got a rendezvous, as you so archaically put it. I simply think it would be fun to have a little jaunt together, maybe go to Milano or someplace. Anyway, Sara’s fed up with all these people being here and our leaving would help her.”
“It’s only the bitchiness that floats around in certain quarters that she doesn’t like, if that’s what you mean. In fact, you and I are a relief to her from having to worry about that sort of thing.”
“Well . . .”
“Our going away wouldn’t make it any easier for her to take the digs and hints of that old . . . poor Lucy. But you cannot blame Lucy. This entire business is difficult for a woman who believes in adultery as passionately as Sara does.”
“Why don’t you stand up for her? Go ahead, Nor! Lucy needn’t have come here, quite aside from her being the most unpleasant old bag. She knew how things were and she came anyway.”
“Yes,” Honor said. “No doubt to protect Nan from everyone’s wanton ways. And I knew she never dreamed that Nan would be happy, or anything aside from miserable. Lucy imagined herself as comforter—everyone loves that role. And poor Lucy was tricked by the fact that Sara isn’t the common streetwalker she’d come to expect and that Timothy and Nan so obviously love one another. In fact, I feel terribly sorry for Lucy.”
“Apparently,” Daniel said savagely. “But I honestly hate her.”
The two again walked along the length of the terrace as they spoke and at the end under the apple tree that bent over the far end, beyond the lighted kitchen window, Honor stopped. Daniel stood by her side, watching the red crown of light flaring up from the casino far down the lakeshore at Évian.
“We were just there last night,” she said. “It seems such a long time ago. I do forget all about time here, don’t you? It was fun last night, planning to go up to bed but then sitting in the living room and talking ’til all hours . . .?”
“Tim and Sara are going to be married as soon as they can,” Daniel said. “He told me so.”
“He told me too,” she said, “but I can’t see that it matters to people like them. But it will be simpler when people like Lucy can’t make her nasty insinuations.”
“We’re leaving tomorrow, Nor. I mean it.”
“Ah,” she said. “My masterful little brother. You just don’t seem to be able to give me any reasons.”
He sighed and told her harshly, “All right. The truth is, Nor, I’ve come to the conclusion that Sara brings out our weakest side.”
She laughed, but with uncertainty. “Oh, you have, have you? What gives you that peculiar idea?”
“Look at us,” he told her in a sharp voice. Now he broke off a twig from the apple tree and bit it softly, his lips touching its smooth leaf, before going on:
“Look at us! I know that I’m being lazy in not finishing my course at Grenoble as the family wants me to. I want to, too, but here I am, lotus-eating.”
“Where does that hit me?”
“You’re lotus-eating too.”
“I’d hardly call it that.”
“You’re hiding here, Nor, if you want the plainer word. You know you’ve run away from Dijon. You didn’t want to stay in Dijon because you’ve fallen in love with someone who’s gone—at least you think you’ve fallen in love—so you come running home to Big Sister. Hide me, you’re saying. Wrap me, please, in these nice soft layers of comfort and let me be lazy.”
They were each silent for a few moments then Daniel went on:
“We think we’re grown up, Nor, and free and really the only place where either of us feels happy is when we’re here with Sara. What are you and I, I’d like to know, aside from two fine cases of arrested development. And we no
w have to prove we can stand alone and make our own lives independently.”
“What real good will it do to hurt Sara’s feelings and leave La Prairie now with the summer almost over? Don’t you think it’s a little late? And anyway I like it here.”
Daniel seized her arm and then abruptly dropped it. “That’s just it,” he said. “We simply have to show Sara—Tim too—that we’re strong and that we’re free and that we don’t just lie around all day. We have to act grown-up, Nor. We need to do this for ourselves.”
“I still think you want to go to escape from something. Maybe you’ve got someone in a family way? Is it François?”
Dan turned away. “What’s the use, Honor. You’re getting stupider—do you know this?—as you age.”
“Maybe,” she agreed placidly but now her voice grew softer. “I am sorry, Dan. Wait a minute. I’ve been thinking a lot about Sara, too, wondering if I will ever be able to think and act in a way that feels free of her influence. Is this what you mean?”
Dan hesitated then said, his face serious and frowning, “That’s exactly what I mean,” stopping as if unwilling to go on, but now his voice quickened. “Yes, that’s exactly it, that Sara dominates us both. This isn’t her fault. It’s simply the circumstance, the way she’s made, as well. But we must learn to stand alone, apart from her. I’m leaving in the morning. I’ll come back for a day or two, perhaps, before the boat sails.”
His voice cracked, he cleared his throat, then hurried on: “You’d better come, Honor. We can have some fun. We’ll have to travel third all the way unless you have much more money left than I have, but it will be fun. It will!”
“Well, don’t try so hard to convince yourself, like we’re having to have an operation or something. All right. I don’t know that you’re entirely right but maybe you are so, yes, I’ll come. We’ll tell Sara in the morning, then catch the noon train somewhere.”
Honor was asking herself, But will this work? Will it do any good? I’ve escaped before, she thought, have made myself be rude to Sara, cruel to her, and ugly, and I’ve always come back. Will Daniel find that out or will he go on thinking that this time he’ll be able to find his freedom? Women simply know more about subjection than men do.
Lights came on now in the living room, shining softly in the wide squares on the terrace.
“Look at Sara,” Dan said. “She looks swell, doesn’t she? You do, too, Nor. I meant to tell you. That’s a nice-looking dress.”
“Thanks,” she told him dryly.
They stood watching as the tall woman walked dreamily about the long table, straightening silver, pulling at a flower, pushing in a chair. Daniel wondered why he so easily forgot what their sister looked like between the times when he could see her as sharply as he did now, when she was beautiful.
And Honor felt her own old self-depreciation seeping in: Sara looks so smart, she thought, so well groomed, how can I ever hope to even look decent beside her in this old green dress? Her hair’s smooth, while mine’s mussy. She’ll talk wittily as I wonder why I even bother to open my mouth.
No, she thought. Stop that! I am a grown woman. I am strong. I’ve been in love. I know as much as my sister does and I’m as good-looking as she is and my dress is newer and even more lovely.
“My God, it’s late,” Daniel said. “Kelly will be in my room—he needs to borrow my razor. I need to see if Tim can give me new blades.”
He took a few steps toward the lighted house, then turned back. “It’s a bargain, then?” he asked, his voice a whisper, his face both stern and excited.
“Bargain,” she said. “We’ll tell her first thing in the morning. She probably won’t even care. That’s the worst thing about her but you never know. This time we’ll show her.” And Daniel laughed.
5
One night he called to the woman. She stumbled, full of sleep, into the circle of his light and saw his face had been smoothed still by the opiate but that his eyes were now full of a strong surprise.
He took her hand quickly. He knew his leg was gone forever, ashes now or pickled in a laboratory, and he could not even remember what it had looked like. Had it been hairy, freckled, smooth, brown, all those years it was with him? Had the toes been straight or bent with hard nails? Was there ever even a callous on that heel? Had it always been theoretical?
My foot, my foot, gone now! Never shall I know!
He kissed the woman lightly on her sleep-softened cheek and closed his eyes to hide the feeling of his remoteness, complete and irrevocable.
i
Honor stood for several minutes in the open window, watching her sister move deliberately around the table in the center of the room. She saw with a kind of affectionate amusement how completely absorbed the older woman was in such things as the position of a leaf under its flower in the low pewter bowl, the distance between a fork and a plate. Would she herself ever know that dreamy concentration on such unimportant things, she wondered? Perhaps being the mistress of a house changed a woman’s feelings toward knives and sheets and laundry. So far, Honor admitted wryly, it was beyond her understanding how a person as quick and lovely as Sara could let herself become so. Being in love might help . . . but Honor felt quite certain that living with a man like her Jacob would never teach her the pleasant spell of possession of such things as linen and fine cutlery. She smiled.
“Hello,” Sara said softly, as if she had heard. “I’ve seen you standing there. It looks nice, don’t you think?”
She came over to the window and stood beside Honor, turned toward the lighted room.
“And you look lovely, little one.”
Honor almost caught her breath when she felt Sara’s arm slip lightly over her hips and rest there. She could sense warmth from it through the fabric of her thin dress and knew just where the wrist lifted, where the palm lay almost flat over the sharp ridge of her pelvis. It was queer to have Sara touch her. Sara, who for years had bathed her and knew her body intimately, and then suddenly to be grown up and to have never been touched and never looked at by her again. Sara had kissed her when she first arrived from America, it’s true, and it was an almost violently loving kiss. But since then she seemed to deliberately avoid any physical contact with either Honor or with Daniel, or with anyone else for that matter. Had she ever even touched Tim in public?
Honor breathed quietly so the hand resting with such assuredness on her hip would stay there, unstartled.
“Thank you,” she murmured. “You do, too, look lovely. That dress is like smoke and the table is beautiful.”
Sara stood, still touching her—Honor could hardly believe it. Was this because of the party, that now certain barriers were down? She looked shyly at her, glancing sideways at the face so near her own. Sara was happy tonight. Honor knew this by the easy curves of her sister’s small but voluptuously red mouth and the clear look of her brow, too slender under the wide height of her regal forehead. There was something gay and excited about Sara, in a misty way.
“Why are we having this party?” Honor asked, lips close to Sara’s ear and her voice a near whisper. It was as if she were a little girl again.
Sara stared across the table into the long mirror and laughed. “Just look at us standing there, so tall.”
Then she added, “The party? Oh, I don’t know. I thought it might be fun but just look at the two of us in the mirror!”
Honor could not look, thinking oddly that if she did, she’d see not herself standing with her sister, but with Tim Garton. I’m in love with him, she thought, and it isn’t wrong because I only love and don’t want him to be anywhere but in this woman’s life, that of my beloved sister.
She felt Sara step a quick pace away from her, and where the long warm hand had lain against her hip it was now cold under her dress. Honor shivered, then looked into the veiled eyes of Sara.
“Nor, will you get the sherry glasses and the decanter and the almonds and all the stuff and things and put them on the terrace? It’s time we started. Di
d you notice François’s flowers? He grew them, he says, but of course he’s a liar. Still I love him.”
Sara was speaking amicably, impersonally.
Honor, moving carefully toward the terrace with the heavy tray in her arms was now listening to her sister’s voice through the open windows and felt a flash of exasperation that was almost pain. It was cruel of Sara—yes, cruel—to wrap Honor in such a quick cloak of tenderness, then suddenly begin again treating her as if they were two well-bred strangers meeting at a tea. Who the hell did Sara think she was to lift Honor up then run off leaving her to fall down to ordinariness by herself? The only way to be, Honor told herself savagely, is completely cold to all. But she knew that the next time Sara showed one of her rare flashes of intimacy, no vows of coldness would be able to keep down the passionate gratitude within. Damn her, Honor said, as she put the tray down heavily on the iron table so roughly that all the glasses jingled. But soon she’d tell her that she and Daniel were leaving, that they were escaping from her and all her autocratic demands on their emotions. Then, she thought, she’ll perhaps realize we’re no longer children to be tormented, that we are human beings with feelings and dignity and so on.
Honor sighed knowing Sara would probably be polite and say nothing, do nothing to show she was hurt by their departure.
She ate several salty almonds, feeling hopeless, and tried not to think of that one dream in which she was screaming at and hitting her sister.
On the two steps down into the living room, Susan Harper stood watching Honor, thinking she’d never seen such a tall and beautiful girl as the one out there on the terrace in the afterlight. The mountains across the lake, blue-black, outlined like cut stone the fine boney silhouette of her long body and made the shadows under the girl’s breasts and the sharp curves of her waist and haunches as clear as marble. Her dark hair and her skin seemed hard, too, and the silver leaves around the end of the skirt glinted in the light from the windows. Then the girl moved her shoulders in a human way and lit a cigarette.
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