The Theoretical Foot

by M. F. K. Fisher

  Nan shook her head. She didn’t know what he was talking about and didn’t really care but she acted as if she were listening.

  “My collar,” François said as he leaned down precariously from the step and clutched his napkin-wrapped throat. “Did not Madame see that from the first course at the beginning of the banquet I was completely nude about the neck?”

  Nan shook her head at him again and smiled as he cackled delightedly.

  “So much the better,” he said. “So much the better! If I may be permitted, it seems to me that all went very well. Even the aspic . . .”

  Nan started. She must say something about the aspic, of course, but what a bother it was to try to make people happy. She murmured graciously and more or less grammatically in French and left him bowing and teetering in the doorway.

  Outside, the terrace seemed empty at first. Then she saw that Honor and Football Joe and his little love stood by the table at the far end, talking with Sara. They were all smoking and the lights from their cigarettes were level with the lights from far down the lake as if the people, their warm bodies, were part of the night, all but invisible but for that little fire.

  Dan stepped from the shadows near the house.

  “May I get you a chair or scarf or a cigarette or something?” he spoke with nonchalance as if he were world-weary. Nan smiled secretly, then at him. She was pleased not to be forced to walk out alone in the company of the others. In spite of her new freedom she still liked the reassurance of attention.

  She took his arm lightly.

  “It’s warm now,” she said in a low voice. “Will you sit with me there in the deck chairs?” She heard her voice making this sound provocative. I really am a bitch, she thought for the second time that day with an undoubted feeling of complacency. Yes, a bitch. What a pity that I’ve discovered this so late in life!

  Daniel resisted the impulse to take her in his arms, to kiss the politely charming smile from her lips, to carry her far away down toward the brook and into the night. He held her chair for her carefully then sat on the gravel by her side.

  “May I get you some brandy?”

  “Brandy is too strong. I tried to like it but I just can’t. My husband used to give me one sip from his glass. I felt like a taster for the Borgia, rather. I was never poisoned but I simply hated it.”

  They were whispering to each other. From the group at the end of the terrace came the sound of easy laughter. A soft breeze brought the sound of the bell clangor from the village to them.

  “Curfew,” Nan murmured. “Dan, where is Timothy?”

  Daniel held the match cupped for her with his hands. When did he suddenly become enslaved to the will of any beautiful creature, not dominated by Timothy but his dominator? It was a queer thought, leaving him to wonder which was she? Could I rule her? he asked himself before he could stop the question that shouldn’t have been put into words. Well, could you dominate Sue Harper, Tennant? Of course. She may be Kelly’s girl but I could have her. He felt self-confident and warm and when the match burned at his palm he dropped it with a comforting oath.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “Tim’s walking up the path with Lucy up there toward the gate.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “What? Why, Nan? Are you afraid Lucy is making a scene? Or should I have said that?”

  “Oh yes, Dan. You know that this summer has been rather difficult. Poor Lucy . . . there’s no use talking about it. But really she’s not well. She’s so different here. At home she’s the most thoughtful loving person. A little overwhelming at times perhaps, but so loving. But here . . . I’m afraid she’s really made it hard for Sara.”

  Nan did not want to talk about Lucy with this boy. She felt disloyal. Dan Tennant was too perspicacious.

  He picked up some gravel in one long hand and jiggled it with a tiny rattling noise. Nan could smell smoke from his cigarette and the faint clean odor of pine soap on his skin. Why had she opened such a conversation? How could she discuss one of her dear friends with this child? Was Lucy right? Did Nan really make herself cheap? Was she throwing herself at Dan’s head?

  He leaned very close to her. She could see his strange eyes twinkling far back between their short thick lashes. And in each pupil a red crown from the casino at Évian was reflected like a tiny flame.

  “Fortunate they,” he quoted solemnly, “who though once only and then but far away have heard her massive sandal set on stone . . .”

  Nan clapped her hands over her mouth and tried not to laugh that she heard Lucy’s ponderous footsteps. Daniel was impudent. She felt cross to think that she had believed him sensitive, sentient. He was an impertinent schoolboy. She laughed in spite of herself, then half-rose from her seat, repentantly, crying as she did so, “Lucy, darling! Come sit here with us, please!”

  Lucy came slowly across to them. Her black dress fluttered majestically about her. She felt handsome and dignified. When Daniel stood beside her as she settled herself into the chair next to Nan, she smiled understandingly at him. She seemed to hear Sara’s deceitful breathy voice once more saying at the supper table, “How lovely you look tonight, Lucy!” And then she was looking once again into the young man’s eyes, knowing that it was really he who saw not with Sara’s sly superficiality but deeply, as only a young man could. She thrilled again, to the core of her body, knowing that, even if it was hopeless, this lad loved her under his charming speechlessness.

  “Thank you, Dan,” she said softly.

  “Not at all, Lucy. May I get you some brandy, your cigarettes, a shawl, or something?”

  Lucy laughed gaily. “Nan! Did you hear this young rascal? A shawl! Not yet, my dear boy! In a few more years perhaps, but not tonight, certainly!”

  Daniel stuttered uncomfortably and hurried to the kitchen.

  François was putting dirty plates in neat piles on the drain board. Sara stood beside him with a bottle of cognac in one hand and a little glass in the other.

  “Here now,” she was saying. “This is ordered, François. Monsieur would wish it. Leave the dishes. Drink this . . . you must be tired. Drink it and then you go on up the hill.”

  “Oh, Madam,” he protested, giggling self-consciously. “François is never tired but if Madame insists . . . if Monsieur Garton would wish it . . .”

  He turned, his hand outstretched toward the little glass, then whipped to attention as he saw Daniel.

  “Is there something I can do for Monsieur?” His eyes were shining.

  Sara sighed. “Get out,” she said softly to Dan in English. “Do not lead him on, for God’s sake. He’s longing to stay here until midnight, thinking valiantly over these dishes. I want him to go home.”

  “Trust me.” Dan said to François in his most insouciant French, “To your health, old fellow. No, nothing tonight. But in the morning I probably will need your help.”

  François nodded, bowed. Daniel bowed. Sara said good night and walked down the steps into the living room.

  “Whatever for?” Her voice sounded puzzled as she handed the bottle of cognac absently to her brother.

  “Oh, nothing much. I thought I might get him to help pack for me, you know? As a rehearsal, as we will be leaving one of these days soon.” Dan felt he sounded foolish.

  “You’re a nut,” Sara said. “After all these years of going back to school, you don’t really need a valet to pack your two suitcases, do you? And anyway,” she went on in a quiet voice, “don’t let’s talk about your leaving. I hate it. Don’t talk about it until just the night before you have to go. That’s soon enough.”

  Daniel cleared his throat. “All right.”

  The table stood pushed toward the end of the room. The green rugs were rolled up. Candles flickered along the top of the bookcases and cast strange shadows into the room and into the other room in the mirror. Timothy stepped soundlessly from the hall and started the gramophone.

  As the music of the German tango swooped firmly into the air, Daniel stood miserably waiting for somet
hing to happen. He knew he should ask Sara to dance with him, but perhaps Tim would first. He hated to dance with Sara more than anything he knew. She danced well in a strangely languorous way that excited him so he trembled. She was cold, impersonal, and in some fashion almost lascivious when she danced with him and he hated it.

  “Dance with me, Dan,” Sara told him.

  “What’ll I do with this bottle?” Dan looked quickly at Timothy who stood with his head down listening intently to the music.

  Sara laughed at him then lifted her arms swaying in her filmy gray dress looking like smoke before him. He put the bottle on the table and folded his left arm against her back. He could feel sweat clammy on his palms.

  vii

  It was late. Lucy, watching from the big chair in the corner, wished she were upstairs quietly reading in bed. But Nan had said, so long ago in the morning, that she felt Lucy should stay with the others and feel herself a part of things. Very well! Lucy wriggled, hid a yawn. She would show Nan how undeserved a criticism she had made.

  She wondered how human beings could dance as hard and as wildly as the people who were whirling there before her. It was not age that made her know when enough was enough and to refuse any more of the men’s urgings. She felt as young as any of them and was surely fresher looking than some she could mention. Honor’s face was frankly gaunt and her magnificent dark eyes flowed feverishly far back in her head. She looked excited and a little crazy as she danced. Little Susan’s freshness had grown bright and brittle over the evening so she now looked more the tart she really was under all her seeming decency and even Dan, the youngest of them, was pale and tired in spite of his obvious gaiety.

  Sara . . . it was hard to tell about her, except that she moved ever more dreamily and looked paler and more remote as she danced on and on.

  Nan Garton was the only one who seemed much less than exhausted. Lucy twisted her mouth bitterly as she watched her friend. Had Nan forgotten all the behavior of a well-bred woman that she could hang this girlishly on the arm of a stranger, such an unprincipled stranger as Joe Kelly? What would Nan’s mother think if she could see her? What was her loving brother Timothy doing to allow his sister to make such a fool of herself?

  It was liquor that was making fools of all of them. That was the truth of it. They were all drunk, drunk! Lucy felt sick with self-righteous horror, as one who has newly renounced alcohol can feel. She shuddered with profound disgust to watch other less abstemious people dance and laugh around her.

  She felt terribly lonely. Suddenly it became plain to her that she was almost certainly dying of some mysterious disease. Memories of whispered conversations between old women when she was a child thronged into her aching head. Cancer. Madness. The bloody flux. Madness. Oh, how the poor dearie suffered before God whisked her off. The agony. Lucy’s eyes dazzled with hot tears. Nan would miss her but then it would be too late.

  Lucy stood up and went into the kitchen, miserably sure that nobody would even notice. She was hungry. Poor Sara’s sad attempt at a feast had been almost laughable, Lucy thought triumphantly, not at all the kind of meal to give to healthy growing youngsters like the Tennants. Things had been well cooked and well served by François in spite of Sara’s shiftlessness in letting him appear practically undressed. But the affectation of it all! Cold pigeons! What they all needed was a good roast of beef with plenty of creamy hot mashed potatoes and gravy. It may not be Continental and sophisticated and precious, she thought savagely, but . . .

  Empty champagne bottles lay in the sink. Dirty dishes were piled there. Lucy’s lip curled.

  Softly she opened the cooling cupboard. There was a bowl of mayonnaise with a glass plate set over it. She tiptoed to the breadbox, took out a handful of rather leathery toast sticks, and carried them to the cupboard where she stood ravenously dipping them into the thick rich yellow sauce and eating them in big untidy bites.

  viii

  Honor ran from the room, then stopped and stood breathing quickly in the darkness outside, her head full of music. She laughed to think that for once she had forgotten to move slowly in a manner better suited to her stateliness.

  “Oh, Joe,” she said, “that was fun.”

  He stood with the lights behind him so, when she turned, she saw only the black outline of his enormous shoulders and the thick wedge-shaped ears against his skull.

  “Why are you staring at me?” he asked. Even without music playing his voice was almost too soft to hear.

  “Am I staring? I was thinking that I had planned not to call you Joe. I don’t believe in calling people by their given names until I get to know them.”

  “But you know me now.”

  Honor laughed again, turning toward the lake beyond. At the edge of the terrace daisies in a long line glowed like faces.

  “Do I?” she asked.

  “Yes, Honor,” Joe said, sounding impatient. “Goddamn it, you know me better than anyone.”

  “Do I?”

  He stood close to her but without touching her at all and Honor was too conscious of him suddenly. She surprised herself by wondering if she could breathe calmly.

  “You should always wear silver,” Joe then went on in a conversational way. She started, felt annoyed with him. She smiled teasingly.

  “Like George Sand? Have you ever read Mare Nostrum? It’s by Blasco Ibáñez or one of those boys. George Sand was in it, I think. She wore a silver dagger in her hair, as I remember.”

  “If you’re Sand, who is your Chopin?”

  Honor suddenly hated this impassive large man with his thuggish face and purring voice. What business is it of yours? she wondered. Who are you? she’d have liked to suddenly scream at him. How dare you ask me such a question?

  “Must I have a Chopin?” She spoke lightly, scornfully. “No dagger, no lover. I am the cat that walks by itself. Let’s get more champagne. Let’s dance again.”

  “You stay here.”

  He took her hand, pulled her close, then seemed to fling her hand away, as if it hurt him.

  “I saw you there tonight,” he said, his voice so quiet she, in spite of herself, leaned nearer. She rubbed her wrist where he’d held it. The man was a boor and a brute.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she remarked. She wished there were more light so he could see the look of disdain on her face, her lifted eyebrow, her eyes bright with anger.

  “I saw you there. I wasn’t asleep when you stood there at the table with François looking down at the flowers set before the mirror. You carried flowers in you hand, in a bowl, and you were wearing a long white thing like a winding sheet. You were so beautiful. I said then as I watched you from under my half-closed lids that if you saw me you’d think I was sleeping. I said then that as long as you’re alive I will hunt you, that you, Honor Tennant, will be my wife.”

  Honor laughed. How dare this conceited bully talk to her like that?

  “You’re such a romantic, Mr. Kelly.”

  “You’re damn right about that, my girl. I am a romantic. I am common. I’m an orphan. We will marry. I’ll give you a silver dagger and I will be your lover. I don’t need you yet as I’ve already got you here inside me.” He held her by the wrist.

  “I’ve never heard anything so foolish,” she said. She was terribly disturbed.

  “Let go of me, Joe. You’re hurting me. You are completely crazy.”

  She moved away from him, walking slowly toward the dark in which sat the fountain. Joe was there moving along beside her.

  “Don’t think I’m leading out into the darkness for another little thrill,” she said. “I don’t need any kissing.”

  “You won’t get any,” he said. “I don’t want any of your kissing, at least not tonight. But please realize I love you, Honor. I love you more than you have the brains or the guts to yet know. I’ll wait for you.”

  They stood beside the fountain without saying more. Some little lettuces lay there floating in the cool water, which would crisp them fo
r tomorrow. The leaves broke the steady rhythm of the water into spatterings as they drifted under the path of its stream.

  What about Sue? Honor wanted to ask. And I’m going away tomorrow and what, anyway, would my sister have to say about tonight?

  ix

  Susan sat on the terrace atop a cold iron table. She felt very happy. She had not sniffed once since before dinner, years ago. She was a little drunk, which was delightful. She swung her legs back and forth under her skirts, feeling with voluptuous delight the clouds of gauze and gold that scraped delicately against her skin.

  She’d danced in her white walking shoes that no one knew about aside from Honor. She’d danced with Daniel. He was too tall. He danced stiffly. He was definitely the most darling boy in the world.

  Timothy had danced with her, too, and she knew now she would never again dance as well. He moved to the music as naturally as he walked, perfectly. He was charming, exciting. He was everything.

  As Joe was dancing with her, she had not let herself think—in feeling his arms around her and spinning to the music in the candlelight—that she would soon be thousands of miles from him, alone and loveless. Would it break his heart? Dear Joe! She almost moaned at the thought of hurting him, he was so defenseless. But now she was determined, now, that leave she must. She would tell him in the morning.

  Lucy was a nice woman who’d talked to her. She was nice but she seemed not to have much fun. Earlier in the evening Sue had had the feeling that Lucy hated everyone, particularly Sara, also Joe and Sue herself. All this was because Lucy so believed in sins of the flesh. I may believe this, too, she thought, but not like Mrs. Pendleton. This isn’t her fault, really. It’s just how old people are. How terrible it must be to grow old!

  And Nan Garton and she had sat together talking as naturally as if Sue were not almost swooning with shyness and delight, as if Nan were not one of the most famous and certainly the most lovely of people in the entire world. Could that really have happened? When she went back to school and told them, would anyone believe her? Yes, yes! She would have this dress! “Keep it,” Nan Garton had said. “Please keep the dress, Susan. It was so obviously made for you. When you wear it you can think of me.” Susan laughed, knowing she’d never wear it again but that she’d have it for her children and grandchildren and she’d show it to them and tell them about this night and how she’d talked with the exquisite Anne Garton Temple.