by May Sarton
If they had been alone, Violet would have had an answer to that; she bit her lip. Instead she turned and deliberately looked out at the grove of oak trees as if she could project herself into its cool shade in a single concentrated look.
“Violet, I asked you a question. Can we cable and put this madness off?”
“I’ll tell mother myself,” Sally said then.
“You’ll do nothing of the sort. This is my responsibility,” Violet answered quickly. “Charles,” she tried to smile, “please be reasonable. He’ll only be here a weekend.”
“After all,” Sally said for she was getting angry now too, “I’m engaged to the man.”
“You’re nothing but a child.”
“I’m twenty-one.” She glared at Charles who glared back.
“You’re both children,” Violet announced and laughed her slightly theatrical laugh. But it had been the wrong moment to choose to break Charles’s rising fury of impotence.
“Damn it, Violet, I’m not a child and I’m sick and tired of being treated as one. Will you listen to me!” he roared, quite red in the face. Sally instinctively withdrew farther along the step. He looked as if he would become violent at any moment.
“Yes, dear,” Violet said in her patient voice.
“And don’t put me off with that priggish smug tone of voice. All my life I’ve had to listen to that tone of voice—”
“Poor Charles,” Violet said ironically. “You have had a hard life.” She knew very well that all he wanted was to make her really angry. Then the whole thing would blow up and blow over, but Violet would not give in this time. And there was Sally who evidently minded this very much and did not understand it and would not forgive. It must not turn into a serious argument, at all costs.
Abruptly Charles sat down. He felt sore from top to bottom, sore and at cross-purposes with himself and with everyone else. It was humiliating beyond words that Sally should witness his defeat. All his joy in himself, in the morning, in the goodness of life had withered away and Charles felt old and diminished.
Both he and Violet were too absorbed in themselves to notice that Sally was crying. But once the tears began she could not stop them and now she gave a little sobbing croak.
“What is the matter, Sally?” Charles said crossly. He felt ashamed. “Now look what you’ve done, Violet.”
“What I’ve done!” Violet was suddenly furious. “You talk about responsibility, Charles, but you can’t take it.”
“Oh please—please—please don’t.” Sally, sobbing, got up. ‘It’s all my fault,” she said in a desperate attempt to appease the jealous gods. “Only…” and she broke down completely, and ran down the terrace steps and off down the road, where she did not know. All she wished was to get away from them, from the house, from all that was happening so much beyond her control, so deeply disturbing.
“Let her go, Charles,” Violet said harshly, as Charles moved to follow. “Don’t you dare follow her.”
She was standing now too. They faced each other. For a second all they could feel was the immense vacuum Sally left behind her. The letdown was as great as the tension had been. They were actors alone on a stage before an empty house. It was Violet, with her quick honest perception who knew this and so was the first to drop into her chair with a sigh and pick up her drink. Then she said in a normal tone of voice, quite quietly and as if she had complete confidence in Charles, and all the words they had spoken were just a scene they had played out, but now they had become real people again and left the play,
“This is all about Sally, really, isn’t it, Charles?”
Charles looked down at her quizzically, humbly, tenderly, and said, “The maddening thing about you, Violet, is that you always know these things about half a second before I do, so you always win.”
“Dear,” she said then and it was her turn to look a little ashamed of herself, “don’t you see, that’s why I thought it quite clever of me to let Ian come?”
“But Violet,” he protested, “I never meant—”
“Of course, darling, but she is very attractive—and vulnerable—and innocent—and so, darling, are you.”
Charles resisted her smile, but he was ready to capitulate. “I hate the idea of this actor, this—this—self-satisfied success-boy who can fly about as if it were nothing at all. A weekend indeed!”
“I don’t think it’s such a foolish idea either to let Sally see him in these particular surroundings.” Violet added, “I’m hoping he won’t altogether fit in.”
But Charles was not listening. He had had a shock. He was beginning to see what the summer madness had almost led him into and felt shaken. It was hard, feeling guilty as he did, to forgive Violet for her prescience. He could not quite forgive her, as a matter of fact.
“We are getting old, Violet. It’s disgusting to get old,” he said out of all this.
“If you fight it with the wrong weapons, it may be disgusting,” Violet said tentatively.
“Whatever are you talking about?” Charles bristled.
It was not the moment to try to talk this over and Violet knew it. “Never mind, darling, you said yourself a half-hour ago that we are old and beautiful—remember?”
“I was boasting,” Charles said cruelly.
“I expect you were, darling,” Violet said, lifting a hand to her face as if to shield it. “I think the truth is that we’re both rather spoiled, far more spoiled than Sally, for instance. We have rather a lot to learn, Charles, you know…” but this Charles was not ready to concede, not yet.
Still, the scene on the terrace had sobered them. They had come out, each in his own way, chastened, relieved to find each other sane and simple as after a storm. The next days seemed suspended at the meridian of summer. Never again would the sun be so hot, the grass so sweet-smelling, the trees so fresh and lush, nor the twilights so beautifully long. “Still pond, no more moving,” Sally thought. And indeed they seemed at times like players in a game of Blind Man’s Buff, waiting to be touched by Ian, the only possible It. The intimate music Sally had captured, as she leaned out of the window and looked down at Aunt Violet and Uncle Charles standing in the path, now included her. They were for the first time, able to be silent together—Aunt Violet looking like an angel in a niche in an old basket-chair Charles had found in the cellar; Charles, relaxed after a morning of tramping about, a glass in his hand, occasionally making a remark which no one answered; Sally lying flat on her back on some cushions, looking up dreamily at the darkening sky, at the small motion of the leaves as they stirred just before darkness fell, and the stones of the house warmed in the afterglow. At such times she wished that they could go on a little while just as they were. I shall never be the same again, she thought. What disturbing violent sweetness would Ian bring with him, forcing her back where decisions had to be made, where she must meet huge unknown forces in herself, in him? Sally was afraid. She had been afraid ever since her decision. Almost, she wished she had not made it.
She saw the episode of her attachment to Violet as an episode, a clarification, the revenge of life itself perhaps on her deliberate shutting out and refusal of all experience here, on her having called it and willed it to be a prison. Yet it had changed her. She felt much older and in some ways, more vulnerable. She had had a glimpse of what passion could be. And she wondered how she would meet Ian—would he be the same? Would he blot out everything and take her back with one triumphant kiss? Was he coming because he had at last decided to ask her to marry him? This thought brought Sally to her feet; she stretched and lifted her arms to the sky in a gesture of hope and abandon. Then she sat down again, with a long sigh—the suspense of these days!
Never again, Violet thought, moved by the unconscious wordless hope in Sally’s look and stretch towards the sky; never again would the curve of the hill as it rose and encircled the house seem as gentle, nor the long gold rays of the sun lie across the fields with such extreme beauty. It was the still moment before a major change. Fro
m her basket-chair she looked over at Charles (who was still rather distant for he hadn’t quite forgiven her) and thought they had reached a plateau in their marriage. Later they would take life up again, and they would find out how they had changed, but for the moment it was a rest to have no emotional demands made upon her, to sit here quietly and sew with a sense of being both very completely herself and also, in some way, all the women who had sat on this terrace in the late summer evenings.
In this mood she turned to Sally and said, “It was a wonderful thing when your father came here, so many years ago. It was wonderful to see Barbie grow up overnight.”
“Why did he come?” Sally sat up, hugging her knees, while the rooks suddenly rose in the air, then settled again like a noisy sigh in the trees.
“It was an accident really. He was staying with friends and wanted to see the house. So they drove over. He was such a silent guest, I hardly noticed him at first—the house was full up and I had two jealous young men to cope with myself—but Barbie liked him plainly, and soon she got him laughing. You know how funny she can be when she’s in the mood…” Sally nodded solemnly. This was her mother, but it was also in a queer way herself she was hearing about. When Ian came would she too grow up in a night?
“It was extraordinary because Barbie had never liked anyone since her unhappy experience with Philip. She just refused to be interested, so it seemed like a miracle, happening so suddenly—I’ll never forget how she came to my room that night (we had hardly communicated for months) and flung herself down on the bed, kicking off her shoes and said, ‘Oh Violet, will he come back? He’s such a peculiar creature…’”
Violet talked on, borne on the current of happy memories, as if at long last she had come to the point in her journey into the past when she could rest on the happy memories, when she could accept the whole and not be torn apart any longer by the broken parts.
The brilliant last rays of the sun were suddenly gone, and the stone terrace felt cold. And then Violet looked up and saw the tension in Sally’s face, the eyes so wide-open as if she was looking with a sort of cold triumph at the future. What was she thinking of? Her father had been so keen, so distinguished and calm—could Ian meet this figure and stand up against it?
But Sally was thinking with a wave of pride in the past, of almost arrogance, that she and the house waited alone for Ian, who could not possibly imagine what majesty of youth and age, and what judgment would stand on the terrace to greet him, she with the house behind her and its great cold eyes staring out behind hers. This was the image she created to protect herself against her rising fears, her rising weakness and love. For the first time, she thought, I have something. I’m protected.
The Friday they had waited for so happily and in such suspense threw them back roughly into time, into getting up at four o’clock in the morning, Sally’s teeth actually chattering in the cold, and Charles still half-asleep, growling and cross.
“Drive carefully, Charles, and be sure to see that Sally eats a good breakfast in Shannon. You’ll have plenty of time…”
Sally managed a wan smile when she was in the car. She felt rather sick.
Violet went back to bed, crept between the cold sheets, wide awake, and smoked a cigarette. For the last time she reckoned up as the grey dawn came what it would cost not to have told Barbie and for the last time decided that she would stand by her decision, and take the consequences. Perhaps later, after Ian had come and gone, she could explain the matter. But what if he was coming to make a definite proposal? Somehow she doubted that and felt that Sally, who had undoubtedly thought of it, doubted it too. Why then? To break the whole thing off? He didn’t sound as if he cared enough about other people to take all that trouble. It was all too mysterious and queer, the very color of daylight so grim and pale, and the furniture looming up in the half-dark. Violet missed Charles. She found it quite impossible to go back to sleep. Everything was at sixes and sevens, she felt, and she resented the intruder. After all, they had made their peace. He was not necessary, for all Sally thought. Violet’s nervousness increased as the morning finally came, a brilliant morning, with bold sunlight flooding the room.
At ten Violet was dressed and the dew had dried on the grass. She stood on the terrace, peering down the drive, wondering why they did not come? Was the plane late?
It distracted her to think for a moment of all the arrivals this terrace had seen, and that there was no way to approach the house more simply, more discreetly. All arrivals had to be formal, had to come down the winding drive and climb the steps of the terrace and to see the house for the first time at its most formidable, standing straight up in the air, unsoftened by perspective. The house always won the first round, she thought, with satisfaction. And any arrival must feel at first slightly diminished in stature and slightly in awe, even if he did not show it (here she chuckled remembering) by falling down on the bottom step. Here Charles had ridden up, dismounted, and she remembered shaded his eyes and frowned as he examined the façade; here Barbie’s young man had appeared, one among several faces in the carriage—and they had looked at the horses first and not at him; they had exclaimed at the beauty of the greys, perfectly matched, and never for a moment imagined that in the carriage was a young man who would take Barbie so far away and make her happy and produce Sally.
Violet was deep in these memories and enjoying them, when the whirr of the car became distinct. She ran down the steps as if suddenly she did not want to be formal nor formidable, as if her heart had intervened for Sally’s sake, and she would mitigate the arrival in every way she could.
Whatever she had imagined, it was not at all the young man who came gravely towards her and bowed in a slightly foreign way as he shook her hand, and then smiled a dazzling smile as he said,
“This is such an adventure, Mrs. Gordon.” It was his turn now to look up at the house, to frown slightly, and then to say to Charles with imperturbable self-assurance, “What perfect proportions!”
“Not bad, eh?” Charles said, and in the tone of his voice Violet read a greal deal. He did not like Ian, but he had not been able to be contemptuous of him. That was something.
Sally was standing at a little distance from them.
“Well, children,” Violet said, trying to weld the disparate group into an entity, “we’d better come in.… Did you have a decent breakfast in Shannon?” she asked, slipping an arm through Sally’s while Charles and Ian took the elegant leather bag out of the car and argued politely about who would carry it up.
They sat in the library where Violet had lit the fire though the day would be hot, and drank coffee. They had time now to look at each other. Ian, Violet noted, was dressed almost too impeccably in a grey tweed jacket, with a foulard round his neck, a yellow sweater, grey flannels and some sort of American moccasins made of suede. He did not seem quite real, though very much more presentable than she had foreseen. He was almost too sure of himself, too polite, leaping to his feet whenever she rose, lighting her cigarette very gracefully, and in general as slightly too impeccable as his clothes. But he had, she must grant, a handsome, even a distinguished face, good bones and a firm wide mouth to set off the very dark eyes and long lashes.
“You must be exhausted,” Violet said, refilling his cup.
“Well, not exactly. But I would love to shave and have a wash.”
“You can’t have a bath,” Sally said, “you know.” She seemed rather pleased to forbid him something he might expect.
“Oh well,” he laughed easily, “I’m clean under the surface, though you might not know it.” In fact he looked too clean, Violet thought.
“What an adventure!” he said again, after he had looked around the room, taking it all in, Violet thought, as if it were a stage set, and then aware a little uncomfortably that he was taking her in too.
“Can you believe you were in New York last night?” Sally asked. There was always in her speech to him a directness, almost a blunt quality as if she must cut through to f
ind him, as if she must protect herself by a manner where he was concerned. And she had chosen to be honest and direct where another girl might have chosen to be devious and flattering.
“No, I can’t.” Then he turned again to Violet, “Sally’s looking superb, isn’t she?” He said it, Violet thought, in a slightly patronizing way.
“I’m glad you think we’ve taken good care of her,” Violet answered simply. “It has been lovely for us to have her here, hasn’t it, Charles?”
“As foreign occupations go, it has been bearable,” he granted. He had meant it as a humorous remark, but it turned out to have a barb in it and Sally felt it. He felt it too, and was sorry, and made matters worse by trying to mend things. “At first we were treated rather roughly, but lately we have been given a few privileges—”
“The barbarian is being gradually civilized, he means,” Sally said quickly.
“What made you a barbarian at first?” Ian asked, with real interest. “What is it we do wrong?” He turned to Violet. “One’s always hearing about it, the awful behavior of Americans. In what way?” he persisted in his gentle elaborately polite voice.
Sally giggled with pleasure at the remembrance. “Oh, I wore jeans to dinner and played jazz all morning, and didn’t wear shoes you can wade through brooks in—what else, Uncle Charles? Oh yes, the worst—I fell downstairs the day I arrived—or rather upstairs, the terrace steps,” she amended, suffused with laughter, “and Aunt Violet thought I was drunk.”
They all laughed now except Ian, who seemed left out.
“Were you?” he asked. It was the first thing he had said or done that was out of key, that suggested New York, night clubs.…
“Of course not,” Sally said briefly. And then as if she could not sustain the conversation a moment longer, as if she must while still on this wave of merriment manage to get him away to herself, she got up quickly, went over and pulled him up by one hand and said, “Come and meet Annie in the kitchen. She’s dying to meet you.” She gathered the cups onto the tray and took it, a thing she had never done before. “And then you can unpack,” she added over her shoulder. Ian held the door for her to pass through and closed it carefully behind them.