Susan moved her own thin shoulders uneasily. She had never in her life worn such a beautiful dress as this. She knew that Nan Garton must have paid hundreds of dollars. She knew, too, that it had never before been worn, which made Sue a little uncomfortable. But when she moved and felt the cloudy silk folding effortlessly around her and looked down at herself shimmering there in all that delicate gold, she knew, too, that she somehow had a right to this dress.
Laughing softly, she drew her toes up away from the cold floor. Would anyone guess she was barefoot? Would Sara Porter disapprove if she knew?
Susan made herself as tall as she could and let a faintly scornful look come over her face as a shadow. When Sara turned from the window where she’d been looking out at Honor, she wouldn’t be able to tell that Sue was still a little frightened of her. I’ll be Mosca the Gadfly again, Sue decided. It had worked at lunch and at least I’m not sniffing. Sara Porter will like me and be glad when, later tonight or in the morning, I ask her advice about what I’m going to do. Of course, I do know already, but it will be best to talk all this over with an older woman. Then Joe will believe me when I tell him I must go home. He won’t try to kiss me and make me change what I’ve decided.
Sue pulled herself tall and leveled her face with her chin tucked in, walking silently across the cool polished floor and over the softness of the rugs, lifting herself on each step so the great golden skirt swayed about her lavishly.
“Good evening,” she said, as Sara turned quickly. She had been watching Honor. Her small mouth now drooped so it looked like she’d lost something and Sue saw that she looked wistful.
Now she stared for a minute at the girl who peered up at her, then Sara became warm and alive again, laughing excitedly. “Why, Susan, how lovely you are! Oh, that dress is beautiful!”
She put her arm lightly over Susan’s shoulders and called, “Come look, Nor! Susan is the Golden Fairy! Oh, it’s lovely. She’s like in that book we used to have, do you remember?”
They all then laughed together and felt gay, suddenly, and when Sara poured the sherry they each touched the others’ glasses as if the three of them had a great secret they were keeping from everyone else.
Nan Garton felt it as she stood in the window of the living room watching the three of them. It was their youth, she knew, and she cried out fiercely to herself, Their youth binds them together in possibility. But now I don’t care, she thought. I can see clearly now and I know how very little such things as beautiful and firm rosy cheeks actually matter. I am now free from all that, she thought. I am free of Timothy and am no longer timid or afraid.
And now as she walked toward them she felt her entire body swimming easily in its own flesh. She had never before felt as quiet physically as she felt herself feeling tonight. She smiled at them and when their faces glowed as they looked toward her in the light coming from the living room, the pleasure and the love she saw filled her with calmness. Never again, she knew, would she care whether people looked at her with more admiration than they did others. Never again would she care whether they looked at her at all. This was a wonderful feeling. It felt like she was shedding an old and ugly skin.
Sara and Honor stood very straight in their long slender dresses and the golden sherry in their glasses glimmered with the same color as the threads in little Susan’s dress. Nan was pleased—deeply, warmly—to see the lovely creatures. She felt benevolent, and the sight of a stranger in the dress she’d designed and had made then kept secret as something for her brother’s pleasure was like honey to her soul. Susan Harper was a beautiful child. She glowed tonight like a golden moth in Nan’s long guarded dress, and the older woman felt her skin prickly with sheer delight at watching. How her brother would love the sight of it, she knew, and she then flushed proudly at her own wishing this other woman well.
She walked out upon the crisp gravel listening to her own steps. She knew she looked well. Just before she’d come downstairs she’d stood for a moment longer before her glass and had seen the lovely person who looked back at her and knew she’d never looked better. It is because I am free now, she thought. I am no longer enchained to my own brother’s dominance. I am, instead, now me.
Now, as she walked lightly toward the three girls she heard Sara calling to her with her breathless voice and saw the shining eyes of Susan and the dark smiling eyes of Honor and she thought, Why, they love me! They love me and I don’t care. Soon I shall tell Timothy that I am free and everything will be just as it’s meant to be.
She took a glass of sherry from Sara. It was brown and heavy under its even dryness, not at all the kind recommended to her by her wine man in Philadelphia. Was it correct? she wondered, then laughed into the glass as she’d almost choked. She touched glasses with each of the girls in turn.
She now heard herself as she talked to them, watching their faces in the soft light from the house, without knowing what she was saying, nor caring, as it all seemed interesting and merry.
When Dan and Football Joe stepped onto the terrace from their room, she watched as their faces lit with pleasure and didn’t care that they either were or were not excited to see her as she stood with the younger women. Timothy was all that mattered.
But even if his coming was unimportant to Nan, to Daniel Tennant she was the most beautiful sight in the world as he stepped from the sill of his room. All that mattered to him was seeing Nan there in the faint light with the lake almost black behind her and her hair blowing softly around her small square face. Her eyes were wide and pale and they looked haunted. Her full skirts lifted, blue and a damask green, like weeds in a river tide. She held a round glass of sherry in one tiny delicious claw.
Dan looked at the others standing with her. Honor was tall and looked scornful but he knew that any man who was not her brother would find her beautiful. Little Susan tickled him almost physically, nearly made him laugh aloud, so much did he want to lift her up into the air and to whirl her around as they laughed and laughed. And Sara was beautiful even in her brother’s eyes. He frowned, knowing it was from her he and Honor would have to make their escape.
But it was Nan whose image really penetrated past his superficial sight, his outer vision, until he felt the lines of her inside his brain, and within his heart. She was delicate and mysterious, like a celestial monkey. He smiled then looked quickly at Joe.
Joe was staring at him. They each quickly dropped their eyes, with mutual irritation. Joe could hear Daniel clear his throat, pompously, as they walk toward the women and then was furious to hear himself do the same thing. What was he, a damned rubber stamp? Joe demanded of himself savagely. What would that girl standing there in her long green dress think of him?
He looked on her as he walked toward her. She was a clear one. She hated him. And he hated her with the fastidious little mouth so like Sara’s, and her supercilious ways. He’d like to rip that dress off her and make her see herself as a woman, a real woman ready to love him. He could make her follow him around the world. He knew it. And he knew suddenly that he would follow her around the world. Hell, to either heaven or to hell. Joe almost groaned aloud.
Susan ran toward him. She looked smaller. Was it because his eyes were so full of the slim height of Honor Tennant? His girl looked prettier than he’d ever seen her before. Was that, perhaps, because his heart rocked with the beauty of the dark-haired snob? He felt his love’s hand like a squirrel’s upon his arm.
“Sue, darling,” he said softly. “You look so beautiful!”
He looked down into her great black-rimmed eyes and realized that he did not know her at all. The woman who this morning had almost been his life was gone now, turned into mist. Would her heart break? When he told her that she must go? That she had to leave, that he had to be alone? He needed to think about Honor and about time and space.
“Where is Mr. Garton?” Susan winked faintly at Joe as she asked it, then turned to Daniel. The gravel hurt her feet. She stood cautiously on tiptoe as she looked at him. Then,
as he stared down at her, she winked one eye outrageously at him. She felt very silly. She loved him, with his big nose and solemn eyebrows, yes, she loved dear Joe and her golden dress and the sherry and Sara Porter. She felt very silly, most definitely!
“Yes, where is Timothy?” Nan, watching the others saw her with new eyes, saw that Susan did not love Joe. She saw that Joe loved only her and that Honor loved only herself. She saw . . . yes, she saw that young Dan loved her but it did not matter. “Where is Timothy?” She asked, holding her glass steady as a stone. She wanted to see him and to know that he was near, so then when the time came she could tell him that he was no longer necessary to her.
Honor tried not to look in the mirror, because doing that every time she heard Timothy’s name seemed weak and superstitious. She turned toward the lake. Far down toward Geneva the red and white lines of Évian hung on the water’s edge. She thought deliberately of last night, of going into the casino there and nodding to the headwaiter and pretending not to notice the stares of the Chinese statesmen and their white-gowned German mistresses, and eating crayfish with her fingers. She was sure that if she concentrated on such things she would not think about seeing Timothy.
Everyone was talking. Joe Kelly had the softest voice you ever heard in a man. Dan’s was ridiculously deep. He was saying things to Susan Harper. Honor smiled. Nan knew the sorts of things men like Daniel would say to girls like Susan.
“. . . like a fish out of water, as I’ve always put it.”
That was Tim Garton. How had he got here? Honor wondered, turning slowly on her silver heel, and looked at him as he stood talking to his sister. He wore a soft blue blazer and his hair was blue white in the light. He stood easily in his own skin. Yes, that was what Honor so loved about him, that he was so accustomed to living as if he had done it all several times before and was no longer ill at ease. She sighed, feeling without touching them the pins in her hair and the cloth binding her small waist and the line of silver leather around her ankles. She was irked by her body and longed to be impervious to it as Tim seemed to be to his.
“Salud,” he said and touched his almost-empty glass to hers.
“Salud,” she answered.
His green eyes were small and sat incredibly far back in his small head. She smiled automatically at him and then wondered why.
“Let’s drink to tomorrow,” he murmured.
She shivered and touched his glass again. What good was it to tell him that they were escaping and that they would be hurting Sara and wasting their own energy and money on something that would not help? She knew because she had done it before. She was sure Dan had as well. Then why bother again? Honor started to tell him.
“Dan,” she said quickly. Then she stopped. His eyes were deep and excited and his lips curved and she saw that he looked very young. She was a woman and resignation surged in her. “To tomorrow.”
Timothy laughed at her. “You sound like a woman both triumphant and full of resignation,” he said.
Honor laughed. “Damn you, Tim Garton,” she said and felt much better.
Sara had disappeared. François’s back, respectful, with old trousers shining in a V between the sharp edges of his fresh white apron, stood in the kitchen door, where he listen to Sara’s last instructions. A cigarette butt fumed on the step just outside the kitchen, where he had thrown it.
“But where is Lucy?” Nan knew, but she had to say it aloud, dutifully. It was a way of proving that she still thought of her old friend, still felt connected with her. She knew that Lucy was in her room, perhaps hiding just behind the heavy blue curtains listening to them all, torturing herself with their gaiety and their forgetfulness of her.
“Where is dear Lucy?” She asked again, mockingly fervent. They all stopped talking and Honor said, “Yes, where is she?” in a manner that sounded as tactless as if she’d just blurted out, “Oh God, I’d almost forgotten all about that fat old bore.” Nan felt her lips tighten. Other people might be thoughtless, but she could never permit herself to be influenced by them. She felt filled with loyalty and affection now. She put her glass down and started toward the end of the terrace.
“I’ll go find her,” she said.
Lucy stood with dramatic suddenness in the main doorway. She wore a long black chiffon dress and her hair was piled up elaborately on the top of her head. It made her look handsome.
They all stood looking at her, thinking for the most part that night and a little makeup and perhaps some excitement were becoming to her. Timothy stepped to the table and started to pour her sherry. Honor said to herself, If she says, “Hell-oh-ooh!” in that horrible way of hers I’ll scream. I will hit her. I cannot stand it.
“Hell-oh-ooh,” Lucy called gaily. She tried not to pant as she stood looking at them. She had run down the stairs too fast. She’d held her head high and kept resolutely from her ears and from her heart the sound of Nan’s voice as it had floated up to her where she’d stood behind the curtains in her little room.
“I’ll go find her,” Nan had said and Lucy knew that never would she be able to forget the complacent resignation that had echoed in her dear friend’s voice. She’d clutched at the curtains feeling her world sway around her as she heard it and now knew that to Nan Garton—whose life was as dear to her as her own—she was a troublesome hysterical old nuisance. Then she had drawn herself up, feeling the comfort of a becoming dress and her best girdle. She’d hurried down the stairs as silently as her high party heels would allow her. She had stood for a minute looking out into the darkness, seeing the little group in the light at the end of the terrace, knowing that she’d been forgotten by all but her one dutiful friend.
“Oh, hell-oh-ooh!” she called. They looked glum. She would share them, make them at ease, no matter how her own heart bled. She saw their faces brighten. They were all there, she said resolutely to herself. These are bad people, except for my own darling Nan. It is she I must sacrifice myself to save. She stands there as defenseless as an innocent lamb with those two shameless visitors on either side of her. I shall force myself to be polite to them but no more. Good and evil. This is what I see. Nan . . . and facing her the insolent masterful devil who is her brother, trying to take her from me, and then that tall pathetic Honor, who longs to be natural and girlish with me and has to pretend to be sophisticated. Daniel, sweet young Daniel—it is perhaps not too late to save him at least from the corruption of this place, with all its loose women visiting and their panderers such as that horrible Joe Kelly. Daniel is sensitive. I can deal with him being moved by my real womanliness. And Sara, where is she? Where is her flat smirking face? And her smooth brown hair and her holier-than-thou complacency? Is she hiding? Planning some new way to make them a laugh at me? But I’ll show them what good breeding stands for. I’ll prove to them that a lady is not daunted.
She pulled in her stomach and walked slowly toward the table, her black skirts fluttering.
“Lucy,” Nan called. “You had us all worried. Are you all right?”
Yes, yes . . . I am all right, Lucy thought, though my heart is broken and I am lonely unto death.
She smiled.
François, standing in the kitchen door, cleared his throat dramatically. They all looked at him.
“Sirs and ladies,” he said in a low voice that commanded their attention as if he were on the stage of the Comédie-Française, “Permit me to drink to your very good health.”
He raised a sherry glass somberly, looked at each of them in turn, then bowed to the invisible Sara and sipped once again. “The supper is served,” he said.
ii
Timothy looked down the length of the carved table covered with coarse net and flowers and silver. At the end of the corridor of faces, Susan’s, Daniel’s, Lucy’s to his right, with Honor and his Nan and Kelly facing them, he saw the body and the visage of his own dear love. He looked far down at her, past the flickering light of eight candles to where she sat. Even though she did not look at him, but bent her smoo
th head to the speech of the guests, he could see her and feel her, like a holy ghost, and she made him feel strong, indomitable.
“But are you sure you don’t want your sherry?” He heard Sara ask it, and although he listened politely to Susan telling him about art galleries in Munich, he could hear every word at the other end of the table.
“Quite sure, my dear,” Lucy said and tossed her head imperiously. “Quite. In fact, I have decided to go on the wagon.”
Sara groaned. “But Lucy,” she said, “how brave of you! But not tonight, surely. Leave it for tomorrow. Tonight is a party so you simply can’t!”
Lucy laughed excitedly and turned over her wine glass. “Oh yes,” she cried. “I have decided. No more liquor.”
Joe leaned earnestly across the table. “But is it wise to stop so abruptly?” he asked in a soft away, as if genuinely concerned. He smiled at her.
Lucy felt her heart trip a little. This boy, in spite of his loose morals, was sensitive: he understood that she must protest, not at the drinking but the whole wretched scheme of things. She bent toward him. Then she glanced at Sara and saw in her cold green eyes such a vindictive gleam of mockery that her very blood stood still. What a hateful, hateful creature, she moaned inwardly. Oh, my poor Nan! That you should be subjected to the presence of this woman, just to stay near your brother! Lucy tried to smile into the warm small brown eyes of the boy across from her. “Must needs,” Lucy said, being gaily noncommittal. “Needs must. When a woman reaches my age, you know . . .?”
Joe interrupted her dutifully. Christ, he thought, I am such a clumsy boor. I hope I haven’t been too late. These goddamned old women put me off, always giving me cues. It’s like being examined for epigrams by the Rhodes board. I’ll flatter her. I’ll dish it out. Sara looks fagged, I’ll smooth things over for her. He pulled his warmest, most innocent smile from his well-stocked bag of tricks and spread it tenderly across his endearingly ugly mug. That’s what he thought, his smugly ugly mug, but it was oh so endearing . . .
The Theoretical Foot Page 19