by May Sarton
“Good morning, Miss. There’s a letter for you”—the very young postman grinned—“There, I’ve put it on top.”
“Oh thank you, thank you very much.” Sally ran through the glass door, letting it swing shut behind her, flung down the rest of the mail and fled up the stairs with the letter in her hand. She both wanted to open it and didn’t want to. She sat on the bed turning it over, feeling quite ill suddenly. What if? What if? But now she was lying on her stomach reading it, tasting the “Darling Sal” which crept through her blood like a liquor, like some wonderful drug which would give everything again its just proportion, like some inward sunlight, wholly healing. The rest of the letter was all about himself, about a radio program he would be on for the next three weeks as a substitute, about his chances for summer theatre jobs, about the vague possibility of a lead in a road company. “Don’t do anything foolish,” it ended. As if I could, she thought. She had waited for the letter with such passionate anxiety, with the attention of her whole person for so many days and nights, that now it seemed disappointing. It’s Ian, I want, not his letters, she pushed her face into the pillow. Oh Ian … But in the disorder of the room, in her inward disorder, she could not at the moment even imagine his kisses. It was as if the letter had taken him one step farther away, not brought him closer at all. She sat for a long time with the silver frame in her hands trying to make his face real. But she was frightened when after this intense contemplation what rose behind her eyes was not his face at all, but Aunt Violet’s. She slammed the silver frame down on the bed. “They won’t get me,” she said aloud, “they won’t.” She turned the knob on the radio to let some loud music blot out everything else. It came as it always did, suddenly out of the air, this loud crazy sound of love and self-pity. Sally abandoned herself to it this time without caring whether the house hated it or not.
Downstairs, satisfied at last with the spiky symmetrical mass of foxglove and larkspur and Canterbury bells, Violet winced as the music upstairs took possession again. Just when it seemed as if Sally might be adapting herself a little, slightly tamed, this sort of thing always happened. And Violet went out into the garden to find Charles. Now the sun was out, everything steamed; waves of mist rose up from the grass.
“Oh, Charles, there you are!” she cried, as if she had been looking for him for ages.
“I’ve been here for hours,” he said. “Look at this bed. Better, eh?”
“It’s lovely,” she said, looking vague.
Charles stuck his spade in upright. “You’re not paying attention. If you looked at what I’ve done, you’d realize that I’ve nearly finished transplanting the iris. Here I slave away…” he began to scold her, all the time looking at her with intense pleasure, as if he had really been a long way off and she had found him.
“Sally has finally got her letter.” She glanced up at the square windows at the top of the house. Even from here one could hear the distant throbbing.
“Well, maybe then we’ll have some peace. And now for Heaven’s sake, pay attention to me for a few minutes.”
Violet was not to be distracted. “Charles,” she said earnestly, “perhaps we should invite someone here. Don’t you think it might help?”
“Here, you intolerable woman, take my arm and come for a walk. If we have to talk about Sally, a subject of which I am heartily tired, let’s do it at least in pleasant surroundings.” He prodded her elbow.
“But it is splendid about the iris,” she said, with maddening inconsequence, refusing to budge. “You really have done wonders, Charles,” she said peering now intently at the dug-up bed and the fat gnarled roots scattered about.
“I don’t want to be disturbed. There’s too much to do, Violet. And I thought this summer was to be peace and quiet and a chance to get thoroughly settled.”
So they talked, still standing by the bed, picking up and dropping the threads, at entire cross-purposes, and in entire communion.
It was Sally’s turn to sit in the embrasure of the window and look down into the garden. The voices broke into laughter suddenly, then murmured together. She went back to turn off the radio. It was as if some intimate music which she could just barely catch were coming from the garden, and the interval between Aunt Violet, leaning on a parasol, and Uncle Charles beside her, filling his pipe, were a musical interval. She looked down, fascinated. The two figures, vertical in the midst of the horizontal lawn, with small exact shadows lying before them, gave the whole scene focus. She saw Uncle Charles put an arm round Aunt Violet’s shoulders in such a way that she wondered if he were asking forgiveness for something; she wondered what tender words accompanied the gesture.
“I have been wondering,” Charles was saying at that moment, “whether pigs mightn’t be a good idea. There are those old stables—”
“But Charles, the smell!” Violet protested. “Surely not so near the house!”
At that second, aware that the radio had been turned off, they both looked up. Sally withdrew quickly without making a sign, then realized this made it look as if she had been really spying. She felt miserably lonely.
“She watches us,” Charles said softly. “Whatever do you suppose she’s thinking?” Again he looked up at the blank window. The sense that they had been watched from above, perhaps for some time, unnerved him.
“She has gathered that we are still very much in love.”
“Whatever makes her think that?” Charles was cross. He felt intruded upon, but also, and this surprised him, somehow pleased.
“What?”
“Well, whatever she thinks.” He was unwilling to repeat the words aloud.
“Aren’t we?” Violet was enjoying herself immensely.
“All you ever think about at night is bats.” Charles refused to be led on. He did not approve of putting his sentiments into words. It was inappropriate and embarrassing.
“And all you ever think about is sleep.”
“All right,” he said. And then, to change the subject, he added, “She displaces too much atmosphere, for me, that little object.”
“Yes,” Violet sighed, “she came and interrupted me fearfully while I was doing the flowers.”
On this, their talk lapsed, while each pursued his own thoughts. They walked slowly, arm in arm up the long avenue to the gate and back again. The stones of the house had turned a dull gold as they dried in the sun. There was everywhere the smell of earth and hay and Violet was thinking, Why can’t she feel this? Why doesn’t it speak to her? and she was thinking, How have we failed?
For Sally had wanted to talk, perhaps to confide, and Violet, determined to get the flowers done, to progress through the day without breaking its rhythm (eleven in the morning was not a time for heart-to-heart talks), had not responded, not really. She had thought of the house, of the garden, of making this new life with Charles seem real, as her job of this summer. She did not want to be distracted, yet that morning, meeting Sally’s eyes, so young and defiant, so hungry for love, she had had to face the fact that only one thing was really important, to make this summer flower for her niece. It would have to be taken on, all this. She could not evade it any longer.
“I think we’ve let her alone too much, Charles. She may not seem to, but she really wants to be looked out for. I wonder what we might invent?” Violet said, looking off at the purple hills back of the house, “We might go to the meadows and see if the wild strawberries are any good this year?” It was a question.
“Are there strawberries in the meadows?”
It always amazed Violet to remember that Charles had no memories of life here. “Of course,” she said, “hadn’t I told you?” For to her the image was so very clear; Barbie and she and Nanny sitting under a bush having a picnic tea, the heat and the flies, and Nanny’s fear of the cows, and the fun of splashing through the brook. Filled with these memories, she looked up at Charles by her side (she had not known he existed then) and saw him as he had first appeared on horseback, riding over with neighbors for tea, th
e joy that sprang out where he walked, the impression he made of clean beautiful power, so she who was always the leader and the center had felt intolerably shy, as if he must see her heart beating too fast under the white voile dress with a blue sash, must guess the terrible desire she felt to touch his head, to feel its shape with her hands.
“Do you remember the dress I wore when you rode over that first day?”
“Of course not,” Charles chuckled. “Was it nice?”
“You never remember anything.” She was suddenly sad that he did not remember.
“I remember thinking you were about the prettiest girl I had ever seen,” he said to placate her.
“Never mind, darling, don’t be polite.” She took his arm. “Good Heavens, you must have got wet through in that rain. You should have changed. Charles, you must be more careful,” she said feeling the damp all the way up his arm anxiously, “you’ll get rheumatism in your shoulder again.”
“I’m not as old as all that,” he said crossly. “I’m perfectly all right.” It was torn out of him, the little sharp phrase. So he too minded, he too felt the veil being slowly drawn over the brilliance of his physical being. Violet said nothing, letting him go up the steps alone, for suddenly she could not bear the thought of their growing old, of their dying. It seemed cruel that this house would go on, that the trees would outlive them and every spring seem young again, but they would grow old, would change, were changing, so that time had suddenly begun to accelerate in a frightening way, and she felt, standing still on the terrace that she was slowly but implacably being pulled away from all this, that she was on a moving stairway while everything else, the sun, the steps, the great bowl of hills that sheltered the house, remained stationary. Here where the past always flowed so gently into the present that they seemed beautifully woven together, it had never occurred to Violet so sharply before, that there was also the future, that they were not standing still, that little by little the future was eating into the past, into the present, and would finally devour them both.
After lunch they set out, carrying baskets and a small tin pail, and walking in single file, Charles in the lead, then Sally in her blue jeans, shirttails tucked in (was this a gesture of conciliation?), and finally Violet wearing a large straw hat, for her delicate skin could not stand the sun. They passed into the chill green gloom just behind the house; the empty stables where nettles, monstrously healthy, grew right up between the shafts of an old cart. They passed into the hot sunlight reflected off the brick wall of the garden, then through a glade of small trees to the shallow brown brook. Charles splashed through it happily. Sally, who had been whistling La Vie en Rose, stopped short. She had been dreamily contented, contented to be a passive member of the trio, to go wherever Uncle Charles led and for once not to think, even about Ian.
But she could not wade in her brogues. They would be ruined. Once again she was the stranger, who broke the rhythm, this time in spite of herself. Aunt Violet, just behind her, did not understand her hesitation.
“It’s my shoes,” she explained. “I’ll have to take them off.”
Sitting down, she watched Aunt Violet wade unconcernedly through the shallow brown water, flowing swiftly over flat stones. “I’ll catch up!” she called. She felt hot and uncomfortable. These people seemed entirely adapted to their surroundings, wearing shoes which water did not hurt, for instance. She got up clumsily, balancing her pail in one hand and her shoes and socks in the other, and almost fell as her foot slipped on a stone. Then she was safely across, wrenching the socks over her wet feet.
Uncle Charles and Aunt Violet were far ahead now and she ran to catch up. It was a little thing, this awkwardness of a moment, yet it had spoiled her sense of comfort and pleasure. She felt subtly put in the wrong. This would have been a satisfaction even two days ago; now, since Ian’s letter, it bothered her. For his letter instead of bringing him closer had, in a queer way, set her adrift. Now she was, she felt, entirely alone. So she ran desperately to catch up, as if she could find some mooring when she reached the two figures, walking so steadily off into the sunlight.
They were emerging into open fields, and the full blaze beat down. The soft turf was full of holes where the cows had stood and Sally stumbled several times, annoyed by her awkwardness. Did “they” never stumble? When they had come out in the third pasture, Aunt Violet turned.
“Here we are!” Then noticing her niece’s flushed face, “Don’t hurry, child. It’s far too hot.”
Sally came to a halt by her aunt, panting, brushing the gnats out of her eyes, and for the first time looked around. The house was out of sight. They were entirely surrounded by fields, broken up by rather scraggly hedges, tall enough to close in the view. They could not see anything near-by except their own green enclosure, but, off in the distance, the deep purple humps of the hills seemed much closer than they did from the house. High up in the sky there was a continual twittering.
“Larks,” Aunt Violet said, watching Sally’s frown, obviously puzzled because she could not see the bird in the blue above them.
The glare made Sally’s eyes hurt. She could feel the sweat down her back and the shirt clinging to her shoulders. She did not look at Aunt Violet because she was quite sure that her aunt must look cool and delightful and perfectly at home in these surroundings, as she did everywhere. She looked down instead, grateful for the tuft of buttercups, one thing at least which she did recognize and could name.
“Buttercups,” she said, pleased.
“There are masses of berries,” Uncle Charles shouted. He was already systematically at work, on his knees. “Come on and get to work, you lazy women!”
For a half-hour they picked with silent, sleepy concentration. Very slowly Sally lost her sense of awkwardness and began to enjoy trying to outpick Uncle Charles; they were at opposite sides of a patch, moving towards each other. Aunt Violet had started at the far end of the field, by herself. Every now and then Sally straightened up, lit a cigarette, stretched and gave herself the secret pleasure of looking at her aunt. The large straw hat, floppy, tied under her chin with a pale blue scarf, gave her a charmingly old-fashioned look. She was, Sally decided, far away somewhere in the past, in a time, she thought with a pang, when I wasn’t even born. She was wholly absorbed like a child, not to be touched. And this impression of Sally’s was quite true, for picking wild strawberries was such a summer tradition of the house that Aunt Violet was dreamily half-consciously re-enacting innumerable summers, listening to the change of note as the little berries first slowly covered the bottom of the empty basket and then plopped down on each other silently as the second layer began.
The air seemed full of birds. Every hedge broke into song, first one and then another; small birds swooped out and chattered, and always overhead there was the high sweet twittering of the invisible larks.
“Charles, your patch is much better than mine!” Sally watched his big hand gather in what looked like dozens of little strawberries in one quick skilful gesture.
“It’s all in the game,” he answered without looking up. And she felt how it was a game and Charles would take games seriously and have to win. She had cared about winning at first, glad to have this definite thing to do, but now she did not care at all. A kind of ease welled up inside her. She recognized it as The Spell. In a moment, if she did not take care, she would be happy, she would belong.…
Whenever this happened, she knew she must attack, show to herself and to them that she was not in any way a real part of life here. At college she had revolted in the same way against Miss Park’s brilliant lectures on sociology, against the atmosphere at Vassar of teaching responsibility, of teaching usefulness. She had revolted because she was in love with Ian who had nothing to do with all this, and about whom she had always a vague sense of guilt. She had reached outside her own world to find her love, and that had made it all the more inviolable, secret, and hers. Now as she looked for an arm against the spell of the sun and the strawberries and Charl
es’s intent self beside her, Miss Park’s lectures came to her aid.
“It’s all very well,” she said in such a loud and argumentative tone that Charles stopped picking.
“What’s all very well?” he asked, startled again by the fierceness of her gaze, so out of place.
“All this,” she looked around with a slightly remote, an indulgent air, looked down at Aunt Violet, looked off to the humped purple hills. “But what does it all mean?”
Charles was puzzled. For the first time he noticed that the sun was very hot on the top of his head, and that his knees were very stiff indeed.
“You know,” he said, panting a little as he straightened up, “we’d better sit down in the shade for a bit, call a break, what?”
He stretched himself out comfortably under the hedge and Sally sat down beside him, the cigarette hanging out of her mouth in a way he particularly disliked.
“Come and rest, Aunt Violet!” she called without taking the cigarette out of her mouth.
“No thanks.” Violet didn’t lift her head. She was much too involved in this moment to walk all that way, and besides she did not want to talk. The afternoon had taken on the color of eternity, as her afternoons as a child had done. It was a whole piece of time without beginning or end, going back as far as memory did, enclosing her like a dream. She was happy.