“There’s no hurry to find that room. Boarding-houses can be dreary.”
Kate said slowly, “I don’t think it would be very good for me to live here too long. Oh, I suppose I’d love it,” she added quickly, seeing the black look appearing on Sylvia’s face, “except I might lose that self-confidence you talked about.”
Sylvia finished applying her lipstick, and picked up an earring. She fitted it carefully on to her ear. “Lose it?” she said at last.
Kate, who had been smiling, suddenly looked embarrassed. She had expected Sylvia to smile, too, instead of looking so startled. “Oh,” she said, trying to make up for her blunder, “I suppose I’d learn a lot, too. I’d learn how to face a dinner party and a crowd of strangers. Sylvia, what will they talk about? Politics? I don’t know anything worth saying on it.”
Sylvia fixed her other ear-ring and then looked critically at the effect in the mirror. “It wasn’t that kind of self-confidence I meant,” she said slowly. “It wasn’t that kind at all.” Strange, she was thinking, but those are two kinds of self-confidence: she looked at Kate and then she looked back at herself in the mirror.
“Perfect!” Kate said with delightful honesty, watching Sylvia’s reflection. She looked down at her own dress. “Am I all right?”
“Very much so.” I ought to have mentioned her dress before, Sylvia thought. And I almost forgot my promise about the perfume. “What about smelling good?” She smiled, as she handed over a crystal bottle. Yes, she thought, a touch of Kate is what I need: she makes me feel young again.
Young again? But am I so old? Thirty isn’t old. She looked once more at her reflection in the mirror. Her skin and hair and figure were young enough, but her eyes—there was no smile hidden in them, no eagerness, no expectancy, only a certain— wariness? And there was Kate, barely eight years younger, yet almost of a different generation. What have I let happen to me in these last six years? she wondered. But she knew the answer: gradually, yet surely, she had slipped into Payton’s routine. “Pattern of living,” Kate had called it. Of living? Or of existence?
“When we are all dressed up like this,” Kate was saying, “we ought to go dancing.”
“Dancing?” Sylvia looked at her, startled. She half smiled. “That might be fun,” she admitted, but she could hear Payton’s amusement filtering through her own voice. She glanced at the clock. “Five minutes to spare. Not bad, not bad at all. Let’s go, now. We’ll have to juggle the place cards around. We’re one short for dinner. Payton has been detained. One of those meetings.” Her voice was casual as if this happened often enough.
“What is Payton, exactly?” Kate asked as they left the room. “Oh I know he’s something in the State Department, but that’s always sort of vague, isn’t it?” She glanced at Payton’s door as they passed it. The idea of separate rooms still amazed her: why have a wife at all if you couldn’t see her through the day and then didn’t have her beside you at night?
“He isn’t actually in the State Department. He’s just attached to it, as one of their expert advisers on trade. Mostly about European commerce. He used to be an international lawyer, but he’s given up his own practice now.” Sylvia led the way downstairs, and as they reached the half-way landing, she turned to add, “To tell you the honest truth, I don’t know very much about his work nowadays. Payton is—well, he’s careful. Security-conscious. He doesn’t really trust any woman except his own secretary. And she’s”—Sylvia half smiled—“well, she isn’t exactly feminine.”
“I see,” Kate said. “I don’t ask questions about Payton’s work.”
“Unless you want to hear the perfect non-committal answer. And another thing—you don’t have to worry about any serious political conversation at the dinner table. We don’t talk politics except in a general kind of way, where it’s anyone’s guess. You’ll never meet a real politician in this house. Payton keeps all that for his club.”
“Oh!” Kate said, disappointed. Washington without politicians? She followed her cousin into the Wedgwood blue and white dining-room.
“We’ll put Stewart Hallis at the head of the table,” Sylvia said, picking up the place cards and rearranging them. “That always flatters him.”
“What is he?”
“International lawyer. He’s hoping to follow Payton’s footsteps, I think. Expert adviser. Then—” Sylvia shrugged her shoulders. Then what? Payton’s ambition was too high to let himself talk about it.
“Then?” Kate asked.
“Then I’ll place you on Stewart’s right.” She looked at Amy’s name, and moved it away from Stewart Hallis’s left. He didn’t like Amy Clark. She studied the cards in her hands thoughtfully, and placed them carefully. “I’ll put Lieutenant Turner as far away from you as possible, then he won’t think I’ve asked him here for your benefit and he’ll calm down and take some notice of you. The guest on the other side of the table always seems better value than the one you get landed with. I know, we’ll give him Miriam Hugenberg, hyacinth-blue hair and all.”
Kate began to smile, and then as the doorbell rang they retreated, running with a flurry of long skirts across the hall into the drawing-room. They struck a nonchalant pose of patient waiting, caught each other’s eye, and began to laugh.
3
It was Lieutenant Robert Turner who had arrived first, punctual to the minute. He hesitated at the doorway of the room for a moment, a little puzzled, a little too erect and stiff in his manner, as he found his hostess and her cousin in a fit of laughter. He had never seen Sylvia laugh like that in all the weeks he had known her. He stood waiting, not knowing quite what to do, a young man with alert eyes, a tanned healthy look to his face, pleasant features and a polite smile. Then the smile broadened and he came forward. “It sounds like a good joke anyway,” he said.
“It was nothing at all,” Sylvia said, recovering herself. “That’s the silly part. Bob, this is Kate Jerold... Lieutenant Turner.”
“The sillier a joke the more I enjoy it,” Kate said, as she shook hands. “How do you do?” And then the order of her phrases struck her as ridiculous and her hard-found seriousness melted away again.
“You’re very like your brother,” Robert Turner told her. “Not in looks,” he added quietly, gallantly, trying to hide his surprise as he studied the girl’s face. “Geoff used to go right into a spiral where everything seemed funny and funnier. I generally had to push him into the nearest irrigation ditch to get him normal again.” His tense manner had left him, his shoulders were relaxed, and he looked as if he might even enjoy this evening. It was an easy beginning after all, Sylvia thought. When he had entered the room, he had obviously felt that he was strictly on duty tonight. Even the way he had stood at the door—“Lieutenant Turner reporting, sir”—Sylvia turned away towards the tray of drinks in order to hide her smile.
“Bob, would you fix the cocktails?” she called back to him, heartlessly interrupting the questions and answers about Geoff and Korea. We’ve the entire evening for talk, she thought; let’s not exhaust the bond-in-common all in the first five minutes. And then went to welcome Martin and Amy Clark and then bring them over to Kate.
Amy Clark was a sweetly pretty woman of about thirty, a round-faced plump little blonde with anxious grey eyes and a hesitant smile. She wore a brocade jacket over her black dinner dress, partly to disguise what she had worn with so many variations for the last four years, partly to hide a waistline straining with her last month of pregnancy. Martin Clark was of middle height, broad-shouldered, square-faced, reddish-fair hair rapidly leaving a high forehead, blue-eyed, firm-mouthed. His smile was guarded, but his handshake was friendly enough, and then he went over to help Bob Turner with the drinks.
Amy chose that moment to say, “Look, Sylvia. Isn’t it awful?” She lifted the brocaded jacket and then let it drop again.
Sylvia caught a glimpse of an opened side-seam hastily stitched with black thread, that gaped and showed a good deal of Amy.
“I only discover
ed I wouldn’t get into it, tonight—just as I was getting ready to come here,” Amy said. “You should have seen me at seven o’clock stitching frenziedly. So if I start coming apart, I’ll give you a sign and you can take me upstairs and put me together again.” She sighed, shaking her head.
“That’s the latest style, I’m told,” Sylvia said. “In swimsuits. So you’re only adapting a new fashion, Amy.”
“Or a very old one,” Kate said, and wondered too late whether she had been included in this conversation. “You remember the picture of St. Anne? The one where the Virgin and she are comparing notes?”
“What’s this?” Martin Clark asked, bringing a glass of fruit juice for his wife. “Discussing Van Eyck’s school at this stage of the evening?”
“Oh, Kate’s the picture specialist in the Jerold family,” Sylvia said. “She graduated in Fine Arts—is that the right phrase, Kate?—at Berkeley.”
“Would you take it as a compliment if I said that was very hard to believe?” a strange voice asked. It belonged to a dark-haired man of medium height who had come quietly into the room. His face was broad, with a high aquiline nose and a jutting chin, and there seemed to be a perpetual touch of amusement hovering around his full red lips. His eyes were dark, observant; at this moment, they were smiling too.
“Not,” Kate said, “if you mean that we don’t study art in California.”
“Quick, she’s quick,” the stranger said approvingly. “I’m Stewart Hallis, by the way. I live just across the street, and this is one of the houses I can walk into unannounced. So I do. Frequently. Sylvia doesn’t even bother to say hallo to me any more.”
“Hallo, Stewart,” Sylvia said.
“Hallo, darling.” He kissed her hand. “Hallo, Amy. Clark...” He turned back to Kate. “Hallo, Kate.” His smile became a very personal welcome.
“And this is Lieutenant Turner,” Sylvia said.
“Ah yes, the Army. I must salute the Army.”
It seemed to Kate that the Army didn’t share his enthusiasm. Nor did Martin Clark seem overcome by the charms of Mr. Hallis. It was natural somehow, for Clark and Turner to drift away together as if by mutual consent, leaving Hallis to entertain the ladies. This he did by finding a comfortable chair, slightly removed, and then devoting himself entirely to Kate.
Miriam Hugenberg, a very merry widow, arrived scarcely half an hour late in a flurry of excuses and explanations. Again, the only introductions necessary were to Kate and Bob Turner; and from across the room, Kate received a nod and a smile from the lieutenant as if he felt the two strangers had better stick together. Mrs. Hugenberg, her figure well-dieted and adorned in pink, her thin neck heavily encircled by a rope of sapphires and diamonds, quickly took charge of the drawingroom. Her hyacinth-blue curls nodded approvingly at the Army, her quick brown eyes didn’t object to the visitor from California who remained decorative and silent as young girls should be; and talking gaily about Paris to the room in general and Stewart Hallis in particular, she was finally persuaded after two cocktails into the dining-room. The men heaved a sigh of relief. Even Stewart Hallis had been despondent, Kate noted. She had learned one thing at least: it was quite useless to be witty before dinner if your audience was hungry.
It could have been a difficult party. There had been the usual tendency for the old Washington hands to start talking about the names they knew, quite forgetting that neither Kate nor Turner could possibly be interested in “young Svenson” or “whatever happened to Betty Meyer?” or “Jimmy Dalziel’s divine house.” But Sylvia, manoeuvring as skilfully as a Hudson River pilot, avoided that grim shipwreck of dinner parties and edged her guests towards topics so general that everyone knew them. In addition, the food was excellent, the wine good, the candlelight flattering, the table (with its roses and silver on gleaming mahogany) pleasing.
Everyone relaxed a little, the initial tensions were eased. Stewart Hallis seemed to have decided that he’d rather raise one of his well-marked eyebrows in Kate’s direction than listen to Miriam Hugenberg on Jimmy Dalziel’s house. (Besides, he preferred his own house.) Miriam, fortunately, had decided that the silent young lieutenant on her left needed some help in understanding the Washington scene, and she was delighted to give it. (It was the least we could do for our boys, she thought in a sudden surge of patriotism. So young, nowadays, with all these medals and wounds and things—really, it was amazing.)
“So you’ve reversed the process,” Stewart Hallis said, admiring Kate’s shoulders. “You’ve come east, young woman. And what next?”
“I’ve a job in Washington.” This is a strange type, Kate thought: I’m never sure whether I should be angry or laugh with him.
“You actually came here with a job all waiting and ready? Original. And what agency are you going to be in?” The curve of her throat was excellent, her chin firm and smooth.
“Oh, I’m not in any work connected with the government.”
“Amazing.” And he was amazed. Nice breasts, he noted, and a slender waist. Natural, too. He glanced at Miriam.
“I’m going to work in the Berg Foundation,” Kate said. Martin Clark was interested. “That’s the new Contemporary Art Collection?”
“Yes. Do you know it?”
“I haven’t been inside, yet. To tell you the truth, I’ve never been feeling quite strong enough when I’ve passed by.”
“And to tell you more truth,” Hallis said with a touch of annoyance that Kate’s attention had been diverted, “Clark isn’t very contemporary-minded.”
“Don’t you approve?” Kate asked Martin Clark.
“Not altogether,” he admitted with a smile against himself. “When I’m in a room with mobiles I always feel as if I were dodging a flock of bats.”
“The Berg has some French impressionists, too,” Kate said helpfully.
“No good enticing Clark with whipped cream,” Hallis said. “He’s strictly a seventeenth-century man.”
“Yes,” Clark said calmly, “just an old founding-father type.” He eyed Hallis for a moment, and then turned to Kate. “I’ll visit you one day and you can explain everything to me. I’m sure you’ll do it kindly.”
“And where do you live in California?” Hallis asked, snatching the conversation quickly away from Clark. “In the misty belt or the thirsty belt?”
“We’ve a ranch in northern California,” Kate answered safely. “In the foothills of the Sierras, south-east of San Francisco.”
“Cowboys and palominos and beefsteaks?”
She shook her head. “Peach trees and apricots, figs and vines.”
Hal lis stared for a moment. “A ranch—of course, how stupid of me.” But he looked more amused than stupid.
Lieutenant Turner said suddenly, “Ranch is a Spanish word. It didn’t always mean cattle.” He looked encouragingly at Kate.” In Texas, we’ve—”
“Ah, you’re from Texas?” Hallis asked, and Turner fell silent.
“How wonderful!” Miriam Hugenberg broke in. Washington gossip didn’t seem to interest the lieutenant and he wouldn’t think about Korea. Thankfully now, Miriam plunged on. “And there’s California across the table. Really, you never need to travel in America: all you have to do is to live in Washington and meet people. It saves so much energy!”
“To spend on travelling in Europe,” Hallis said, glancing with veiled annoyance at Miriam Hugenberg’s pink and white face. Not that he disapproved of travelling in Europe: he went there each summer. But he had sensed Miriam’s tactics and he knew he’d get little more conversation with Kate.
“Well”—Miriam shrugged her shoulders—“where else is there to travel?”
“Texas doesn’t approve,” Hallis announced with a mischievous smile, his eyebrows raised expectantly.
Bob Turner studied the flowers on the table.
“Lieutenant Turner may have learned to appreciate travelling in America,” Mrs. Clark suggested, her soft voice amiable enough. But she looked at Hallis with a critical eye.
/> Sylvia said quickly, “Isn’t it odd, though, how you never seem to meet anyone who was born in Washington? What happens to them?”
“They leave to escape us, I expect,” Martin Clark said. “But you, Sylvia, are almost Washington. Your part of Virginia across the Potomac just escaped the city’s clutches. Amy is from New Orleans. And I’m from Boston. So is Payton.” He grinned suddenly. “Which proves Boston is rather versatile. And Hallis—where did you come from, Hallis?”
There was just the hint of a pause. “Indiana.”
“The corn belt,” Clark said reflectively. “And Miriam?”
“Born in Sweden, educated in England, finished in Switzerland—not literally, I hope; lived in Paris, married in Rome, widowed in Brussels. That’s how you are when you’ve a father, then a husband, in the Foreign Service.” She turned to the lieutenant. “So you will forgive me if I’m confused? Some day, I do promise to visit Texas. And then my confusion will be complete.” She laughed gaily.
Bob Turner went through the agony of sudden blankness of mind. He could think of nothing to say that wouldn’t sound impolite. He looked across the table and saw Kate was watching him.
Amy Clark said, “I wish it were. I mean, that bit about travelling when you’re in the Foreign Service.” Her voice developed an unexpected edge. “It seems that if you want to get a decent job abroad, you really ought—first of all—to make either money or a name for yourself in an outside profession. But if you take all the required examinations and training for the Foreign Service—why, you spend the first ten years of your life filing papers in Washington.”
“Oh, come now—” Hallis said, raising a disapproving furrow on his brow. A snide attack on me, he thought. And wrong, too. Martin Clark was dull, narrow-minded, pedestrian: he’d never get on. Didn’t Sylvia see that? Yet she’d keep inviting them to her house. Some form of stupid sentiment, no doubt. But Sylvia ought to realise that sentiment didn’t mix with dinner parties. “That isn’t always the case, Amy.” He congratulated himself on his mild voice.
I and My True Love Page 3