He would not go so far as to come home early from work, however. They arrived late and the party was in full cry, with the children in nightgowns running about like dogs among people's legs, and three men already on the floor playing with the electric trains.
Vinson found to his surprise that there was another commander and a captain present. His spirits rose as Dick's powerful cocktails went down. Christine stood close to him while they had their first drinks, because he complained that he always lost track of her at parties, although it was he who usually wandered away to a male group and left her among the women.
"That's right, darling," she said, watching the frown slide off Vinson's face. "You'll feel fine when you've had a couple of drinks."
He did. He felt much too fine. He got drunk at the party, and Christine was ashamed, although one or two other people were also drunk, and nobody minded. Lianne did not mind.
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Vinson had always been a little stiff with her before. She was glad to see him loosening up, arid encouraged him to do his imitation of Danny Kaye, to which nobody listened, so it did not matter that it was not very good.
Dick did not mind either. "A little tight myself/' he told Christine when she said goodbye.
Christine did mind. She had seen Vinson drink too much before, but she had never seen him drunk. It was all right to see other people like that. They were funny sometimes, but when you knew your own husband's face so well it was not funny to see it uncoordinated and blurred at the edges.
She managed to get him home, although he wanted to stay at the party, and he was extremely rude to her on the stairs going up to their apartment. She was afraid that someone would come out of a front door and see him stumbling up the stone steps dragging at her arm, but when she tried to hurry him he called her a goddamn fleabag. When she told him the next day that he had said this he did not believe it, and was shocked at her for inventing it.
When they got inside their apartment he stopped being rude to her and became amorous. Christine let him pull her towards him, but when he kissed her she found that being kissed by a drunk husband is like being kissed by a stranger, and she backed away. "I'll make some coffee," she said, "and get you something to eat. Then you'll be all right."
"I'm fine." He lurched towards her. "Let's go to bed."
Christine went into the kitchen. She heard him trip over the edge of a rug as he went into the bedroom, then a crash that must be him kicking her dressing-table stool out of the way. Then silence.
When she went into the bedroom Vinson was asleep, snoring on his back, with his clothes scattered on the floor. She picked them up and put them away. It was the first time she had ever had to do tl|is for/him.
In books, when husbands got drunk, wives sometimes spent the night on the sofa in dignified reproach, but sofas in books were longer than Christine's, and she would feel silly and prudish in the morning when he woke up sober and wanted to know what she was doing there.
She undressed quietly and got into bed, well over on her side and keeping an apprehensive eye on him. He did not wake up.
In the morning Vinson was awake before her and came out of the bathroom clear-eyed and jaunty. She opened her eyes to see him sitting on the bed grinning at her.
"How do you feel?" she asked.
She expected him to say: "Lousy," as he often did in the mornings, but he said: "Fine. Just fine. How do you feel?"
"All right. Why shouldn't I?"
"Well, I thought you had quite a load last night, honey/'
"I/" She sat up affronted. "It was you. You were drunk as an owl. Don't you remember?"
He shook his head. "Can't have been. You're making it up." He laughed at her.
"Oh, Vin-" She took his hand. "Please don't do it again. It was horrible. I hated it."
He laughed again. "Get up and make some coffee," he said and went out of the room.
Christine and Vinson were going to have a party too. Not a noisy, disorganised party like the Morgans', but a small buffet supper with everything just so. They had been to many such parties at the homes of other naval officers, and the evenings had all been much the same.
Drinks first — either Old-Fashioneds or Martinis or highballs. The children, if any, sat in dressing-gowns before the television set, and everyoneli^d how cute they were, and the
children either showed off or stared coldly at the guests.
When the children had been sent to bed, still showing off or staring coldly as they went up the stairs, the hostess brought out the buffet supper, trying not to look too proud of the dishes she had spent all day straining to make better than the dishes of other hostesses. The food was nearly always the same — fried chicken or a pot roast with vegetables. Vinson wanted to play safe and have fried chicken or pot roast, but Christine privately determined to have lobster salad. She did not tell Vinson in case he might worry beforehand about the consequences of so daring a departure from naval etiquette.
He discussed the invitations with her, but he had already made up his mind about the guests. He wanted Art and Nancy Lee, because he and Christine had been to supper (fried chicken) at the Lees' house, and Vinson was meticulous about paying off invitations in kind. If someone asked him to supper he did not think it was enough to pay them back in cocktails, and if they asked him to a cocktail party he did not see why he should ask them to supper.
Christine did not see that it mattered, when someone was a good enough friend to be your best man. With her friends in England it had never mattered who invited whom, or to what, so long as you saw each other, but she liked Art and Nancy, so she let him put them on the list. He always made the lists in their household. Christine could never find any paper, but Vinson always carried a little note-pad in his pocket, so he was the one who wrote things down. He had small, very neat handwriting, and he liked to make lists of things. He even wanted to make her shopping list before the party, but she would not let him, in case he queried the lobster.
A new captain had recently come to Vinson's division.
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Vinson had made Christine waste a Sunday afternoon calling on the captain and his wife in a prissy little bungalow that smelled of new chair covers. They were very dull people, and Captain Fleischman seemed to have watered down the whisky, but now they must be asked to supper. Christine protested mildly, but Vinson admitted that he had already mentioned the invitation to Captain Fleischman, which was cheating, so down they had to go on the list.
She protested, too, about Commander and Mrs. Elgin, whom she had only seen half drunk at a big naval cocktail party at the Army and Navy Country Club. Vinson overruled this objection by reminding her that most of the officers had been half drunk by the end of that party, because they had paid for their tickets beforehand and were determined to drink their money's worth. Vinson had done the same, and Christine had spent most of the evening sitting on a sofa talking to some woman who kept trying to make her join a bridge club. It was very hot, and the woman fanned herself all the time with a paper napkin and said: "I feel it so particularly, coming from my air-conditioned place/*
She also said that she despised Washington (Christine was discovering that it was the modish thing to affect dislike of the nation's capital) and she kept saying: "It isn't the heat, you see, so much as the humidity," a remark which Christine had already heard many times in Washington and would hear many times more. Americans talked about the weather even more than English people, and weather bulletins were given every half-hour on the radio to appease this passion for meteorology.
She was very tired of the woman with the paper handkerchief by the time Vinson came back rather unsteadily to find her. She was annoyed at being left for so long, and Vinson did not help by accusing her of being picked up by a man in
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a floral bow tie sitting on her other side, although the bow tie had been brooding over straight whisky and had not spoken a word to her.
So Commander and Mrs. Elgin went on the list
, and Christine hoped they would arrive sober. When people are drunk the first time you meet them, you are inclined to think of them as permanent dipsomaniacs; just as when someone has a cold sore on his lip when you are first introduced, you visualise him always with that blemish.
Now they must think of two other people to make up the party. Christine wanted some civilians, so that there could be a few other subjects discussed than how old Chuck would like his new post at Norfolk, Virginia, and why the Admiral was getting rid of this aide.
"Let's ask Dick and Lianne," she suggested. "They'll liven it up a bit."
"Oh no, honey. That wouldn't be suitable."
"Why not? What's the point of giving a party if it can't be lively?"
"I don't mean that. I mean that young Morgan is too junior a government employee to ask with senior officers like this." He tapped the list.
"How absurd! Why, Dick had a captain and a commander at his party. Don't be — "
Before she could say: "Don't be such a snob," which she did not really want to say any more than he wanted to hear, he said: "What have you done with that book I gave you on naval social customs?"
"I gave it to Lianne. She wanted something funny to read when that poisoned finger was getting her down."
"A pity. It would help you to understand these things/'
"If I did all the things it told you to I might as well be dead. It says you must always wear a hat and gloves when
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you go visiting, and that you must never sit down at a party when the Admiral's wife is standing up. Old Ma Hamer never sits down — I don't think she can bend in the middle — so why have any chairs at all when she's around? That book — do you know what it says? I learned this bit by heart. It says: 'Do not engage in long clinches on the dock when a peck on the check would do. There is a certain dignity attached to the wearing of uniform, and nothing looks sillier than two people trying to show how much in love they are.' "
"I know who we'll ask," said Vinson, changing the subject, because he thought the book was right. "We'll have Captain and Mrs. Decker from downstairs. I'd like to get to know them better."
"I wouldn't. I don't like them. She looks as if her corsets pinched, and he just opens his mouth and words pour out of it whether you want to hear them or not. It would be much more fun to have Lianne and Dick."
"We've been into that." Vinson wrote down the names of the captain and his wife who lived in the apartment below. "There, that makes a nice little party."
Christine thought it sounded like a deadly little party.
It was. Nancy Lee could not come because one of her children was ill, and Art had a cold and might as well not have come either, for his cold depressed him and he hardly spoke all evening.
Captain Fleischman from the chintzy bungalow was even duller than he had been at home. The drunken Commander turned out to be even less attractive sober than he was drunk, Captain Decker from downstairs was as prolix as Christine had feared he would be, and their three wives sat in a row on the sofa and made no effort, as much as to say: "All right. You asked us, and here we are. Now entertain us."
Even the drinks did not get the party going. Vinson was
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an attentive host, but he was too stiff and formal with people he did not know well, especially when they were senior to him. Captain Fleischman, who was the head of his department, almost paralysed him with etiquette, although the Captain was an owl-eyed nervous little man, who you would not have thought could paralyse a rabbit.
Christine made a great effort to talk to the women. Captain Fleischman's wife did not want to talk. She wore a dress that looked as if it had been made up of pieces left over from the loose covers at the bungalow and was quite content to sit and watch the proceedings, like an old lady at a village concert. When pressed into conversation, she would say: "Oh, surely/' or: "I guess that's so/' which was amiable enough, but not inducive to sparkling dialogue.
The Commander's wife was too smartly dressed, as if she had expected a large party. She put a wet glass down on a polished table and some cigarette ash on the carpet, and sent raised eyebrow messages of boredom to her husband. Mrs. Decker from downstairs thought as little of Christine as Christine did of her, and showed it. Her flat crustacean face was all downward curving lines as her shoe-button eyes travelled round the room, taking a disparaging inventory of the curtains and furniture.
It did not help much when Mrs. Preedy skipped across the hall to borrow a jelly mould. Vinson answered the door; but although he tried to block the opening, Mrs. Preedy was larger than he, and everyone could see that she had her hair in curlers and an orange chiffon scarf tied in a flowing bow round her goitrous throat.
"That extraordinary woman/' murmured Mrs. Decker. "What a neighbour to have. But I suppose you have made friends with her."
"Of course/' said Christine defiantly, while Vinson frowned
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at her and Mrs. Decker told the company with an acid laugh: "It's so charming the way British people will make friends with anyone."
When Christine went into the kitchen to add the finishing touches to the supper none of the women came out to help her. Art Lee came out and found her furiously banging plates and knives and forks on to a tray.
"Can I help?" he asked. "What's the matter, Christine? You look all burned up/*
"I am. Those damn women just sit there like the three witches and none of them offers to help/'
'Til bet you hate their guts. Why do you and Vin invite such crummy people to a party?"
"Vin wanted them. He wouldn't let me have Lianne and Dick. I wonder he even invited you. You haven't been a commander long enough to mix with such exalted rank/'
"Vin's an ambitious boy," said Art dryly. "He will go far, without a doubt."
"I hate the navy," Christine said. She did not mind what she said to Art. She could say things to him that she would not say to Vinson.
"So do I," said Art. "Let me help you. Gee, I wish I didn't feel so lousy. I feel the way those goldfish look." He stuck out a pallid tongue at the fish, then leaned against the wall and nursed his drink and his cold and forgot about helping.
Vinson came round the partition into the kitchen to get more ice, and asked Christine why she was not in the living-room entertaining her guests.
'Well, my goodness," she said, exasperated. "I've got to feed them, I suppose, since I presume they only came here to get a free meal. I can't be out there and in here getting things ready at the same time." She straightened up to look at him, passing the back of her hand across her hot forehead. He was
still wearing the polite face he was using in the drawing-room. He made her feel cross.
"You should have gotten things better organised before. You shouldn't have to spend so long in the kitchen."
"Well, for God's sake!" she exploded. "As if it wasn't bad enough having to spend all day preparing food for these morons without you coming in here and criticising me/' Art did not feel strong enough to stand a quarrel. He slipped his long body diplomatically past them and went out of the kitchen.
"I have to criticise you/' Vinson said, "when you neglect your guests and spend hours out here fooling around with Art You might at least consider what your guests will think, even if you don't mind how I feel about that."
"Oh, if you're going to be jealous of Art - " Christine shrugged her shoulders and turned back to the salad bowls.
Vinson grabbed her arm and twisted her round to stand close to him. His face was not polite any more. It was dark and almost frightening, like that evening at Roselawn when she had stood stirring the dogs' meat on the stove and told him that she could not marry him after all. "Of course I'm jealous/' he said roughly. "I'm jealous of every man who speaks to you. Don't you know that, you little fool?"
When he spoke to her like that and kissed her so fiercely, she did not mind him being jealous, even of poor Art. Her passion leaped up to meet his, and for a moment the kitchen was the only place
in the world, and the stupid people in the living-room could starve or go home for all Christine cared, but Vinson controlled himself almost immediately, wiped a hand across his lips, picked up the bowl of ice and went back among the company, with his face already polite again.
The evening came to an end at last. When the last guest had gone Christine fell back on the sofa and wanted to cry. A
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dull party at someone else's house can make you laugh when it is over, but a dull party in your own house can only make you weep.
Vinson came back from seeing the Deckers downstairs to their apartment. "And now/' he said, "perhaps you'll tell me what you said to Captain Decker that made him say to me: Tour wife is certainly outspoken. How does she get on over here?'"
Christine had been afraid he was going to ask that. "I couldn't help it/' she said. "He's such a know-all. I was trying to be polite and talk to him, but he was being so pompous and laying down the law about everything. He's got that disgusting wart on his nose too. It wiggles when he talks. You can't help looking at it."
"Go on," said Vinson, folding his arms.
"Well, he was being so silly. You know what he said? He said that England was undefendable, and in the next war it would only be an advanced target, so the only thing to do would be to evacuate all the people over here and let Russia waste her ammunition blowing England to bits. So I said: That shows you don't know much about England. Most people would rather die there than be made to come over here.'"
"Christine/ That wasn't very polite."
"Well, it's true, anyway. A lot of English people are afraid of America. They think it's going to be like the films. He needn't have been so huffy. I hope his wart turns to cancer," she said bitterly. "It's going a bit blue. It looks as if it might."
She thought afterwards that if she had made her rude remark to a lieutenant instead of a captain, Vinson would not have minded, but she was glad she had not thought of telling him that at the time. It was bad enough even to find yourself
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