Poached Egg on Toast

by Frances Itani

  The English couple is having problems with conversation, because Mrs. Allenby refuses to answer a question her husband thinks perfectly innocuous, even solicitous and kind.

  “Did you sleep well, my dear?” is all that he has said, shaking out his table napkin. Now he keeps on at her under his breath. “Answer me, Geòrgie, talk to me. Never mind your silent act. I’ve had enough of that. I know you can hear me. You damned well answer.”

  But Georgina will not; she is harbouring a grudge as she is wont to do, because the night before, when they had lain side by side, he had fallen asleep while she had been telling him her deepest and innermost feelings of regret about how her life has turned out. She has never had this conversation with him before. She’d had the whole long drive to think about her life (he had done all the driving; she had only to sit and stare out the window), and at night she chanced it, hopeful that the act of sharing her sorrows would also take them away. It was only after she cleansed herself of grief—even making up things as she went along, she’d been so caught up in her woes—that she realized, when he did not answer, that he’d been asleep throughout the most important revelation of her life. And now, at breakfast, he can’t understand why she is angry.

  Young Chippy Dickinson begins to raise his voice at the table, and his parents, heads lowered threateningly, try to hush him, but do not seem to know how to go about this in any practical, workable way. The two Markham children jab each other with fists, spill their orange juice, and then, breakfast is over. The tables empty; the guests run upstairs for toques and mittens, and grab their ski poles; the men huddle over coughing engines and frosted rear windows and drive out of the parking lot one after the other, heading for the ski school, where lessons begin punctually at eight thirty.

  Opa stays in the kitchen to clean up while Maria and Bridget tug laundry baskets out from under the stairs. They begin the week’s work, trying to create the illusion of neatness in rooms above. Rooms which, without exception, have been left in that macaronic state familiar to any of us who has spent days or weeks or months delving up to our elbows in suitcase laundry.

  By Friday, the guests at the Pension have been through their share of successes and mishaps. There have been individual glories on the hills, but the Pension can now account for one broken ankle (Mrs. Allenby), and one pulled tendon (Mr. Featherby). Chippy Dickinson cannot take his final ski lesson because of a slight fever; his mother, Shelby, has volunteered to stay behind so her husband can have a day to himself. Mr. Dickinson, embarrassed but cheered at finding himself detached from the usual responsibilities of family, winds several lengths of scarf about his neck and leaves in the morning, whistling.

  Mr. Featherby begins to drink whisky about eleven in the morning and, by three, he is dragging his swollen leg up and down stairs looking for Bridget, who, he has learned, does not mind listening as he tags after her.

  “There isn’t a person who truly cares about me, Bridget,” he says, sorrowfully. “Even the children side with their mother. Oh yes, they know where the power lies in this family. Truth is, my Ruby is a bitch, Bridget, in every sense of the word.”

  “Oh now, Mr. Featherby, you watch what you say,” says Bridget, agreeing with him nonetheless. What she has seen in six days this week is enough to rot your socks and more. She doesn’t wonder Mr. Featherby turns to drink whenever he can get away from his Ruby.

  “She’s all perfume and smiles on the outside,” he says, “but behind closed doors she wields her power until she has the children and me gasping for breath. At home, she leaves notes for me everywhere: Pick up after yourself. I asked you to clean the oven two weeks ago. When are you going to fix the lid on the mailbox? Keep your dirty socks in pairs or wash them yourself. She puts No Smoking signs on the kitchen wall, and tapes them over the toilet roll in the bathroom. There are so many notes lying around at one time they depress even her because she’s forced to read them herself.”

  Mr. Featherby starts down the stairs to sign out another shot of whisky. Bridget plugs in the iron and dabs at it with a finger of spit until she is satisfied with the sizzle and the smell. She pushes the iron back and forth, wondering vaguely if she should do something about Mr. Featherby. Maria is away for two days, having gone to Salzburg to visit a friend and to bring back supplies.

  Mrs. Allenby is also in the Pension this day. She emerged tentatively from her room at noon, asking Bridget for a bowl of broth. No one has brought food to her, and she feels deserted and comfortless. She is still holding her grudge against Mr. Allenby and has been miffed most of the week, feeling that he is somehow responsible for her broken ankle, even though he wasn’t on the same slope when she fell. Now, in a below-the-knee cast, she is confined to her room, reading and resting during the day, multiplying new grudges until the pre-dinner hour when the remaining healthy skiers return frozen-fingered to the Pension and sit together over a glass of wine or beer before dinner.

  And what do the members of this group discuss as they rub at aching muscles, as they try to ignore significant and painful signs of the body’s deficiencies? Which of the duty-free airports in Europe stock Spence Markham’s brand of pipe tobacco? Who are the worst drivers in the world—the French or the Turks? Do little red-haired girls really have fiery tempers? Which are the best topless beaches in France between the fourteenth of July and the twenty-eighth of August?

  Mr. Featherby returns to the landing, where Bridget is still ironing. He sets a glass of gin beside the heap of freshly folded linen, and raises his whisky to his lips.

  “Come on, Bridget,” he says. “We’ll have one together. We’ll drink to the merry day when men and women will be free to look one another in the eye and say ‘Screw off,’ when the going gets tough. Down the hatch, Bridget. You’re a damned fine woman, and the hour for respectable drinking has descended upon the house.”

  “Ah,” Bridget thinks, as she clinks glasses with Brighton Featherby, “why is it that the world is never just? Why does Opa rock himself to sleep in the kitchen chair every night with sorrow in his heart; why should Maria have to climb the stairs to an empty room, while Ruby Featherby makes her husband and children knuckle to her iron will?”

  But Bridget has been called upon to witness her own behaviour often enough; it is not in her to pass long-term or serious judgment on others. For she knows that Brighton Featherby will in all likelihood carry out his wife’s orders for the next twenty-five years, that Geòrgie Allenby will forgive her husband once her ankle bone mends, that Opa will suffer until the day he is laid to rest beside his son in the shadow of Disappearing Mountain, and that most other injustices of the world will never be rectified. She has known for a long time that the world does not turn the way decent men and women think it should, that evil often triumphs over purity and truth, that the power-hungry, the stupid, the self-righteous and the boring will always make themselves heard.

  After the ironing is done, Bridget takes some prohibitive action. She locks the doors of the liquor cupboard against Mr. Featherby’s invasion; she makes a pot of coffee, but even while she pours his cup, he sneaks up behind her and pats her on the bum. He tries to lay his head on her breast, but she sits with him at the bottom of the stairs while he drinks two cups of coffee, and she listens while he continues to talk about Ruby who, he tells her, was a nurse in her younger years—before the children.

  “She was a surgical nurse, Bridget. She worked on a fortybed ward and often came home at night telling me what it was like getting those poor souls ready to go under the knife. For years, I pictured her making rounds in the early mornings with a market basket over her arm, collecting false teeth and other prosthetic devices. Any glass eyes? Wooden legs? Dildos?’ I know that is probably not the way it was, but it always seemed that way to me. She’s forty-two if she’s a day, though she’d never admit it. But who, in this day of root canal and matched crown, would know how many teeth are her own and how many are cemented in?”

  Brighton Featherby and Bridget enjoy a muffled an
d wicked laugh, despite the fact that Brighton’s own wife is the target of the laughter. And now, Bridget thinks, even a little wistfully, if Mr. Featherby were not quite so drunk, she might consider going to bed with him. Yes, she has learned to keep worry and discontent at arm’s length; they do not weaken and distract her as they once might have. She knows enough of her place in the world of survivors to act above regret, and to rise in the morning without lingering over past, present and future wounds. In other words, she can imagine herself sleeping with him, in perfectly good conscience.

  Mr. Dickinson is having trouble with Chippy before dinner. The six-year-old has humiliated his father in a full games room, and Bridget has come upon them in the first-floor hall. The two, father and son, are in sock feet, facing each other. Mr. Dickinson, not much taller than Chippy, leans over him, holding him by the shoulders. In an apologetic voice, he questions the child’s behaviour.

  Bridget thinks, for a moment, that Mr. Dickinson might be close to tears. Chippy had overturned the chess set when caught cheating, had flung the pieces at one of the Featherby children—his opponent—and had run out of the room. Cries of “He’s a cheater, a cheater! “ had followed him out.

  “That’s not sportsmanlike,” Mr. Dickinson is saying in a soft voice. “Why did you do it, Chippy? Tell me why you act this way. Why did you do that in front of all those people?”

  Bridget finds herself slipping between them, something she would never have done had she not finished a second three-finger gin. She feels sorry for Mr. Dickinson who is so meek himself, he cannot control his son.

  “Never you mind about what the others think, Mr. Dickinson,” she says. “Chippy has been cooped up here all day not feeling very well. I’ll go in after dinner and pick up the chess pieces. You’ll help me, won’t you, Chippy?”

  But Chippy is sullen and will not answer. Bridget, watching the father’s face, says again, “Never mind now, Mr. Dickinson. There’ll always be something to humble us, no matter who we are. A small item like this won’t shake the world down around us.”

  But father and son stand staring at each other, heads bent, when Bridget leaves them. Mr. Dickinson needs an explanation.

  In the absence of Maria, Bridget and Opa serve dinner. Bridget has removed her topknot; she has slipped on a gypsy skirt and black sweater, and has twirled the orangewood stick between her eyelids. The atmosphere in the dining room has changed tonight, perhaps because of Maria’s absence, or Mr. Featherby’s drinking, Mrs. all-day grudge, or Shelby Dickinson’s confinement in her room with feverish Chippy. Cheeks wear a pale edge where there should be a natural outdoor glow. Conversation develops as a series of hysterical lurches. It is the eve of departure, after all. Mr. Featherby enters the dining room with eyes blazing, feet tripping, his face at once defiance and challenge—a rare combination, given his marital rank. And there he is, passing the cheeseplate to his wife during a lull, speaking in a loud, sweet voice. “Have a little tightener, Ruby?”

  The evening closes on a scene in the dining room. The Finn and German have eaten excessively and sign a chit for two Underbergs, which they take to their room in hopes that this will settle their stomachs. The Markham and Featherby children thump one another on the back as they scatter out of the room without a backward glance. Shelby and Harry Dickinson go to bed early, Shelby in meek and unexpressed frustration, Harry in guilt over having so enjoyed himself alone today, on the slopes. Chippy does not pick up the chess pieces, which now lie forgotten in the games room and can be seen in the firelight beneath the table and behind the legs of chairs. Mrs. Allenby has glared at Mr. Allenby throughout the meal, and resolves that her husband will pay for this, this being her broken spirit as well as her ankle. She looks forward to the long drive back to the Dover-Calais ferry, during which he will be captive at the wheel and will not dare to not listen to what she is now preparing to say. Angela and Spence Markham, in sock feet, have gone upstairs to pack.

  Opa dries and puts away the dishes. Because Maria is still in Salzburg, he takes a half-full bottle of brandy from the liquor shelf, tucks it inside his shirt and climbs the back stairs to his room, where he will partake of a furtive and harmless binge. Before he rinses the toothbrush cup into which he will pour the brandy, he stands looking out at Disappearing Mountain and sheds the evening tears for his son.

  But what of Ruby Featherby, Brighton and Bridget, below? What are they up to?

  One overhead light illuminates a corner table in the dining room. These three unlikely companions are sitting, each with a glass in hand. And they are laughing, three parallel laughs.

  Brighton laughs without purpose, because he is caught in that no man’s land between drunkenness and sobriety, wantonness and fidelity, deliverance and bondage.

  His wife’s laughter is not so undirected. No fool she, Ruby is as capable as the next woman of sniffing out a challenge to the observance of marital rites which take place between the sheets and according to the self-proclaimed laws of matrimony. This is one area over which she will never release her grip, and though Brighton’s drinking disgusts her, though she is exhausted from the slalom that carried on interminably all afternoon, though she will lie like a cool stone beneath Brighton when he climbs on top of her later in the night, she will stay by his side in the room until this person wearing the black eyeshadow removes herself to her own room. Ruby has seen through and looked past this temporary rival. She will defend her territory, despite her estimation of its present worth.

  As for Bridget, she knows when trump has been pulled. She laughs because she can make things uncomfortable for a short time, and does. She laughs because, despite the obstacles, she and Mr. Featherby will carry a current between them to their separate rooms. But Bridget also knows that the most pressing problems at hand are that nineteen new guests will be arriving tomorrow between the hours of one and six, and Maria will have to be picked up at the station.

  Messages

  Pauline was startled by the memory of Mae West swinging herself around. “Liebling, Ich habe meine Schlüssel im Zimmer liegen gelassen.” Darling, I’ve left my keys in my room. This was hopeful—Pauline’s first dream in German. The reruns on the 10-inch black-and-white were invading, but they were invading dubbed.

  Pauline put her key on the ring, gathered up the garbage, and called for Maggie. Maggie had been learning about Japan at school and had borrowed Pauline’s kimono to practise her Geisha kick. Since breakfast she’d been doing a high-speed shuffle around the dining-room circuit, her right foot making a side-stepping circle, followed by a quick below-the-knee thrust under the cloth. The extra folds of kimono, a foot longer than Maggie, were straightening out behind. Pauline would have laughed if Frau Becker hadn’t been on her mind.

  The past five weeks, when Frau Becker came to clean on Fridays, she’d been arriving with food. Not only had she been bringing food, she’d begun to ask for food. Last week she brought windfalls, a paper shopping bag full, bumping against the front fender of her bike. They’d been in her storeroom most of the winter and were shrivelled, almost dried. The week before that, Torte — Maggie called it a pie, Frau Becker’s solid body shaking with laughter at the abruptness of the word—and before that, six brown eggs, the feathers of her dark hens stuck to the splotchy shells.

  “Butter,” she’d said, the first time, to Pauline. “Sie können mir Butter bringen.” She’d even opened her change purse and had taken out two Mark seventy, and snapped it shut. She offered the coins with a quick glance into Pauline’s face. “Sie verstehen, Frau Stanton,” she said. “Sie verstehen.” And yes, Pauline had understood. German in 15 Easy Lessons had been on her bedside table for six months and, anyway, who wouldn’t have understood the word Butter. It was just that trading-off or even selling goods from the commissary was Verboten. She’d been warned by Richard’s host family when she arrived. Once the villagers find out you have a NATO connection, look out. Coffee, butter, sugar—they especially want cigarettes and whisky, she’d been told. It always com
es down to that, cigarettes and whisky.

  But Pauline was the one who had to look directly into Frau Becker’s face, the one who had to read what was behind her eyes. She pushed the hand back, and Frau Becker returned the coins to her purse. But before Frau Becker reached for the mop and chamois, she held three fingers up to Pauline, her order firmly placed: “Drei Pfund Butter, bitte.”

  The following Friday, three packages of butter were tucked into the bicycle bag and the order given for the next week: Schinken. Frau Becker seemed to know that ham in the commissary that week was half the price of ham in the village store, though Pauline could not even think about how she got this information. The commissary was in the city and Frau Becker did not go to the city. She did not speak one word of English—except to say to Maggie, “Byeee-Byeee,” as she left each Friday at four. The rest of the time, she muttered through her work, always muttering, as if telling herself stories. Stories related in dialect that Pauline could not or was not intended to know.

  As for Pauline’s German, she was not able to struggle through complicated explanations such as the reasons why commissary purchases were Verboten. Es tut mir leid. Ich verstehe nicht, she could say, as her book had taught her. I’m sorry. I don’t understand. But Frau Becker’s head, with the greyblond bun pinned tightly behind, gave the nod each week when she placed her order: You understand.

  Pauline stood for a moment by the radio. Maggie had set the dial to short wave, trying to satisfy her longings for her own language. Pauline turned the knob, catching a German voice speaking English, a woman’s voice: “Ninety-five pair-cent said they pray-fair-red blon-dis.” Then it was gone. Lost in a garble of static and tongues and retorts.

  Pauline left the key under the lantern for Frau Becker, helped Maggie with her jacket, and together they wheeled the outdoor garbage container to the curb. She thought of Mae West, one hand on her hip, the other holding out her bathroom waste to the garbage collector: “Come on back, honey. I think you’ve forgotten my garbage this time.”