She said: “Until recently Jack and I were always with people who took it for granted that getting pregnant was a disaster, and now suddenly all the people we know have young children and baby-sitters and… perhaps… if…”
Jack said: “You’ll feel better when it’s born.”
Once Stella had heard him say, after one of Dorothy’s long troubled dialogues with herself: “Now that’s enough, that’s enough, Dorothy.” He had silenced her, taking the responsibility.
They reached the car, got in. It was a secondhand job recently bought. “They” (being the Press, the enemy generally) “wait for us” (being artists or writers who have made money) “to buy flashy cars.” They had discussed it, decided that not to buy an expensive car if they felt like it would be allowing themselves to be bullied; but bought a secondhand one after all. Jack wasn’t going to give them so much satisfaction, apparently.
“Actually we could have walked,” he said, as they shot down a narrow lane, “but with these groceries, it’s just as well.”
‘If the baby’s giving you a tough time, there can’t be much time for cooking.” Dorothy was a wonderful cook. But now again there was something in the air as he said: “Food’s definitely not too good just now. You can cook supper, Stell, we could do with a good feed.”
Now Dorothy hated anyone in her kitchen, except, for certain specified jobs, her husband; and this was surprising.
“The truth is, Dorothy’s worn out,” he went on, and now Stella understood he was warning her.
“Well, it is tiring,” said Stella soothingly.
“You were like that?”
“Like that” was saying a good deal more than just worn out, or tired, and Stella understood that Jack was really uneasy. She said, plaintively humorous: “You two always expect me to remember things that happened a hundred years ago. Let me think.…”
She had been married when she was eighteen, got pregnant at once. Her husband had left her. Soon she had married Philip, who also had a small child from a former marriage. These two children, her daughter, seventeen, his son, twenty, had grown up together.
She remembered herself at nineteen, alone, with a small baby. “Well, I was alone,” she said. “That makes a difference. I remember I was exhausted. Yes, I was definitely irritable and unreasonable.”
“Yes,” said Jack, with a brief reluctant look at her.
“All right, don’t worry,” she said, replying aloud as she often did to things that Jack had not said aloud.
“Good,” he said.
Stella thought of how she had seen Dorothy, in the hospital room, with the new baby. She had sat up in bed, in a pretty bed-jacket, the baby beside her in a basket. He was restless. Jack stood between basket and bed, one large hand on his son’s stomach. “Now, you just shut up, little bleeder,” he had said, as he grumbled. Then he had picked him up, as if he’d been doing it always, held him against his shoulder, and, as Dorothy held her arms out, had put the baby into them. “Want your mother, then? Don’t blame you.”
That scene, the ease of it, the way the two parents were together, had, for Stella, made nonsense of all the months of Dorothy’s self-questioning. As for Dorothy, she had said, parodying the expected words but meaning them: “He’s the most beautiful baby ever born. I can’t imagine why I didn’t have him before.”
“There’s the cottage,” said Jack. Ahead of them was a small labourer’s cottage, among full green trees, surrounded by green grass. It was painted white, had four sparkling windows. Next to it a long shed or structure that turned out to be a greenhouse.
“The man grew tomatoes,” said Jack. “Fine studio now.”
The car came to rest under another tree.
“Can I just drop in to the studio?”
“Help yourself.” Stella walked into the long, glass-roofed shed. In London Jack and Dorothy shared a studio. They had shared huts, sheds, any suitable building, all around the Mediterranean. They always worked side by side. Dorothy’s end was tidy, exquisite, Jack’s lumbered with great canvases, and he worked in a clutter. Now Stella looked to see if this friendly arrangement continued, but as Jack came in behind her he said: “Dorothy’s not set herself up yet. I miss her, I can tell you.”
The greenhouse was still partly one: trestles with plants stood along the ends. It was lush and warm.
“As hot as hell when the sun’s really going, it makes up. And Dorothy brings Paul in sometimes, so he can get used to a decent climate young.”
Dorothy came in, at the far end, without the baby. She had recovered her figure. She was a small dark woman, with neat, delicate limbs. Her face was white, with scarlet rather irregular lips, and black glossy brows, a little crooked. So while she was not pretty, she was lively and dramatic-looking. She and Stella had their moments together, when they got pleasure from contrasting their differences, one woman so big and soft and blond, the other so dark and vivacious,
Dorothy came forward through shafts of sunlight, stopped, and said: “Stella, I’m glad you’ve come.” Then forward again, to a few steps off, where she stood looking at them. “You two look good together,” she said, frowning. There was something heavy and over-emphasised about both statements, and Stella said: “I was wondering what Jack had been up to.”
“Very good, I think,” said Dorothy, coming to look at the new canvas on the easel. It was of sunlit rocks, brown and smooth, with blue sky, blue water, and people swimming in spangles of light. When Jack was in the south, he painted pictures that his wife described as “dirt and grime and misery” – which was how they both described their joint childhood background. When he was in England he painted scenes like these.
“Like it? It’s good, isn’t it?” said Dorothy.
“Very much,” said Stella. She always took pleasure from the contrast between Jack’s outward self – the small, self-contained little man who could have vanished in a moment into a crowd of factory workers in, perhaps Manchester, and the sensuous bright pictures like these.
“And you?” asked Stella.
“Having a baby’s killed everything creative in me – quite different from being pregnant,” said Dorothy, but not complaining of it. She had worked like a demon while she was pregnant.
“Have a heart,” said Jack, “he’s only just got himself born.”
“Well, I don’t care,” said Dorothy. “That’s the funny thing, I don’t care.” She said this flat, indifferent. She seemed to be looking at them both again from a small troubled distance. “You two look good together,” she said, and again there was the small jar.
“Well, how about some tea?” said Jack, and Dorothy said at once: “I made it when I heard the car. I thought better inside, it’s not really hot in the sun.” She led the way out of the greenhouse, her white linen dress dissolving in lozenges of yellow light from the glass panes above, so that Stella was reminded of the white limbs of Jack’s swimmers disintegrating under sunlight in his new picture. The work of these two people was always reminding one of each other, or each other’s work, and in all kinds of ways: they were so much married, so close.
The time it took to cross the space of rough grass to the door of the little house was enough to show Dorothy was right: it was really chilly in the sun. Inside two electric heaters made up for it. There had been two little rooms downstairs, but they had been knocked into one fine lowceilinged room, stone-floored, whitewashed. A tea table, covered with a purple checked cloth, stood waiting near a window where flowering bushes and trees showed through clean panes. Charming. They adjusted the heaters and arranged themselves so they could admire the English countryside through glass. Stella looked for the baby; Dorothy said: “In the pram at the back.” Then she asked: “Did yours cry a lot?”
Stella laughed and said again: “I’ll try to remember.”
“We expect you to guide and direct, with all your experience,” said Jack.
“As far as I can remember, she was a little demon for about three months, for no reason I could see,
then suddenly she became civilised.”
“Roll on the three months,” said Jack.
“Six weeks to go,” said Dorothy, handling teacups in a languid indifferent manner Stella found new in her.
“Finding it tough going?”
“I’ve never felt better in my life,” said Dorothy at once, as if being accused.
“You look fine.”
She looked a bit tired, nothing much; Stella couldn’t see what reason there was for Jack to warn her. Unless he meant the languor, a look of self-absorption? Her vivacity, a friendly, aggressiveness that was the expression of her lively intelligence, was dimmed. She sat leaning back in a deep airchair, letting Jack manage things, smiling vaguely.
“I’ll bring him in in a minute,” she remarked, listening to the silence from the sunlit garden at the back.
“Leave him,” said Jack. “He’s quiet seldom, enough. Relax, woman, and have a cigarette.”
He lit a cigarette for her, and she took it in the same vague way, and sat breathing out smoke, her eyes half-closed.
“Have you heard from Philip?” she asked, not from politeness, but with sudden insistence.
“Of course she has, she got a wire,” said Jack.
“I want to know how she feels,” said Dorothy. “How do you feel, Stell?” She was listening for the baby all the time.
“Feel about what?”
“About his not coming back.”
“But he is coming back, it’s only a month,” said Stella, and heard, with surprise, that her voice sounded edgy.
“You see?” said Dorothy to Jack, meaning the words, not the edge on them.
At this evidence that she and Philip had been discussed, Stella felt, first, pleasure: because it was pleasurable to be understood by two such good friends; then she felt discomfort, remembering Jack’s warning.
“See what?” she asked Dorothy, smiling.
“That’s enough now,” said Jack to his wife in a flash of stubborn anger, which continued the conversation that had taken place.
Dorothy took direction from her husband, and kept quiet a moment, then seemed impelled to continue: “I’ve been thinking it must be nice, having your husband go off, then come back. Do you realise Jack and I haven’t been separated since we married? That’s over ten years. Don’t you think there’s, something awful in two grown people stuck together all the time like Siamese twins?” This ended in a wail of genuine appeal to Stella.
“No, I think it’s marvellous.”
“But you don’t mind being alone so much?”
“It’s not so much; it’s two or three months in a year. Well of course I mind. But I enjoy being alone, really. But I’d enjoy it too if we were together all the time. I envy you two.” Stella was surprised to find her eyes wet with self-pity because she had to be without her husband another month.
“And what does he think?” demanded Dorothy. “What does Philip think?”
Stella said: “Well, I think he likes getting away from time to time – yes. He likes intimacy, he enjoys it, but it doesn’t come as easily to him as it does to me.” She had never said this before because she had never thought about it. She was annoyed with herself that she had had to wait for Dorothy to prompt her. Yet she knew that getting annoyed was what she must not do, with the state Dorothy was in, whatever it was. She glanced at Jack for guidance, but he was determinedly busy on his pipe.
“Well, I’m like Philip,” announced Dorothy. “Yes, I’d love it if Jack went off sometimes. I think I’m being stifled being shut up with Jack day and night, year in year out.”
“Thanks,” said Jack, short but good-humoured.
“No, but I mean it. There’s something humiliating about two adult people never for one second out of each other’s sight.”
“Well,” said Jack, “when Paul’s a bit bigger, you buzz off for a month or so and you’ll appreciate me when you get back.”
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate you, it’s not that at all,” said Dorothy, insistent, almost strident, apparently fevered with restlessness. Her languor had quite gone, and her limbs jerked and moved. And now the baby, as if he had been prompted by his father’s mentioning him, let out a cry. Jack got up, forestalling his wife, saying: “I’ll get him.”
Dorothy sat, listening for her husband’s movements with the baby, until he came back, which he did, supporting the infant sprawled against his shoulder with a competent hand. He sat down, let his son slide on to his chest, and said: “There now, you shut up and leave us in peace a bit longer.” The baby was looking up into his face with the astonished expression of the newly born, and Dorothy sat smiling at both of them. Stella understood that her restlessness, her repeated curtailed movements, meant that she longed – more, needed – to have the child in her arms, have its body against hers. And Jack seemed to feel this, because Stella could have sworn it was not a concious decision that made him rise and slide the infant into his wife’s arms. Her flesh, her needs, had spoken direct to him without words, and he had risen at once to give her what she wanted. This silent instinctive conversation between husband and wife made Stella miss her own husband violently, and with resentment against fate that kept them apart so often. She ached for Philip.
Meanwhile Dorothy, now the baby was sprawled softly against her chest, the small feet in her hand, seemed to have lapsed into good humour. And Stella, watching, remembered something she really had forgotten: the close, fierce physical tie between herself and her daughter when she had been a tiny baby. She saw this bond in the way Dorothy stroked the small head that tremhled on its neck as the baby looked up into his mother’s face. Why, she remembered it was like being in love, having a new baby. All kinds of forgotten or unused instincts woke in Stella. She lit a cigarette, took herself in hand; set herself to enjoy the other woman’s love affair with her baby instead of envying her.
The sun, dropping into the trees, struck the windowpanes, and there was a dazzle and a flashing of yellow and white light into the room, particularly over Dorothy in her white dress and the baby. Again Stella was reminded of Jack’s picture of the white-limbed swimmers in sun-dissolving water. Dorothy shielded the baby’s eyes with her hand and remarked dreamily: “This is better than any man, isn’t it, Stell? Isn’t it better than any man?”
“Well – no,” said Stella laughing. “No, not for long.”
“If you say so, you should know… but I can’t imagine ever… Tell me, Stell, does your Philip have affairs when he’s away?”
“For God’s sake!” said Jack, angry. But he checked himself.
“Yes, I am sure he does.”
“Do you mind?” asked Dorothy, loving the baby’s feet with her enclosing palm.
And now Stella was forced to remember, to think about having minded, minding, coming to terms, and the ways in which she now did not mind.
“I don’t think about it,” she said.
“Well, I don’t think I’d mind,” said Dorothy.
“Thanks for letting me know,” said Jack, short despite himself. Then he made himself laugh.
“And you, do you have affairs while Philip’s away?”
“Sometimes. Not really.”
“Do you know, Jack was unfaithful to me this week,” remarked Dorothy, smiling at the baby.
“That’s enough,” said Jack, really angry.
“No it isn’t enough, it isn’t. Because what’s awful is, I don’t care.”
“Well why should you care, in the circumstances?” Jack turned to Stella. “There’s a silly bitch Lady Edith lives across that field. She got all excited, real live artists living down her lane. Well Dorothy was lucky, she had an excuse in the baby, but I had to go to her silly party. Booze flowing in rivers, and the most incredible people – you know. If you read about them in a novel, you’d never believe… but I can’t remember much after about twelve.”
“Do you know what happened?” said Dorothy. “I was feeding the baby, it was terribly early. Jack sat straight up in bed and
said: ‘Jesus, Dorothy, I’ve just remembered, I screwed, that silly bitch Lady Edith on her brocade sofa.’ ”
Stella laughed. Jack let out a snort of laughter. Dorothy laughed, an unscrupulous chuckle of appreciation. Then she said seriously: “But that’s the point, Stella – the thing is, I don’t care a tuppenny damn.”
“But why should you?” asked Stella.
“But it’s the first time he ever has, and surely I should have minded?”
“Don’t you be too sure of that,” said Jack, energetically puffing his pipe. “Don’t be too sure.” But it was only for form’s sake, and Dorothy knew it, and said: “Surely I should have cared, Stell?”
“No. You’d have cared if you and Jack weren’t so marvellous together. Just as I’d care if Philip and I weren’t.…” Tears came running down her face. She let them. These were her good friends; and besides, instinct told her tears weren’t a bad thing, with Dorothy in this mood. She said, sniffing: “When Philip gets home, we always have a flaming bloody row in the first day or two, about something unimportant, but what it’s really about, and we know it, is that I’m jealous of any affair he’s had and vice versa. Then we go to bed and make up.” She wept, bitterly, thinking of this happiness, postponed for a month, to be succeeded by the delightful battle of their day-to-day living.
“Oh Stella,” said Jack. “Stell…” He got up, fished out a handkerchief, dabbed her eyes for her. “There, love, he’ll be back soon.”
“Yes, I know. It’s just that you two are so good together and whenever I’m with you I miss Philip.”
“Well, I suppose we’re good together?” said Dorothy, sounding surprised. Jack, bending over Stella with his back to his wife, made a warning grimace, then stood up and turned, commanding the situation. “It’s nearly six. You’d better feed Paul. Stella’s going to cook supper.”
“Is she? How nice,” said Dorothy. “There’s everything in the kitchen, Stella. How lovely to be looked after.”
‘I’ll show you our mansion,” said Jack.
Upstairs were two small white rooms. One was the bedroom, with their things and the baby’s in it. The other was an overflow room, jammed with stuff. Jack picked up a large leather folder off the spare bed and said: “Look at these, Stell.” He stood at the window, back to her, his thumb at work in his pipe bowl, looking into the garden. Stella sat on the bed, opened the folder and at once exclaimed: “When did she do these?”
The Story: Love, Loss and the Lives of Women: 100 Great Short Stories Page 5