The Iron Gates

by Margaret Millar

  Edith tried to look shocked. “I’m sure such an idea never entered Andrew’s head.”

  “I was joking, darling.”

  “What a way to joke!”

  “But the main idea, I suppose, is to give Giles the impression of male solidarity behind me. ‘None of your funny work, Frome, or else . . .’ ‘Be good to our little Polly’—that sort of thing.”

  “I consider it quite touching,” Edith said.

  “Yes, isn’t it? And so redundant. They both know that since I have decided on Giles, nothing in this world can stop me from marrying him.” She glanced briefly at Lucille.

  “I’m glad you feel like that,” Lucille said quietly. “It’s bad policy to interfere with marriages.”

  The girl flushed and turned away again.

  “There’s altogether too much fuss made about marrying,” Edith said. “When I was young I naturally had some experience with moonlight and roses, but the roses nearly all turned out to be the crepe-paper ones from the dime store, and the moonlight no better than a street lamp, not so good for seeing purposes.” She smiled affectionately at Polly’s back. “But I expect you’ve known that for years.”

  “Off and on,” Polly said. “I lapse. This is my nicest lapse.”

  “I’m really very anxious to see him,” Edith said with a break in her voice. “It’s so hard to believe you’re old enough to be getting married. It seems like yesterday . . .”

  “I never thought you’d get sentimental about me.”

  “As if I’d ever get sentimental,” Edith said and briskly pushed back her chair. “I’m going up to hurry Andrew along. If he looks for the scarf much longer he’ll have the whole house torn up.”

  She went out in a flutter of silk and sachet.

  Left alone with her stepmother Polly came back to the table and poured herself another cup of coffee.

  Because she felt embarrassed with Lucille she focused her eyes carefully on the objects on the table, examining and appraising them as if she were at an auction—the silver coffee urn with the little gas flame under it, the red cups on white saucers, the remains of Edith’s breakfast, two pieces of toast sagging against the toast rack, a bald and imperturbable boiled egg in a red bowl, and a corner of Lucille’s blue sleeve.

  “I’m glad Giles could get his—his furlough,” Lucille said politely.

  Polly did not look up. “So am I, naturally.”

  “Three weeks, is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re being married on Friday—five more days.”

  “We have to wait for the license. Then we’ll go down to the registry office and get the mumbo-jumbo over with and be off.”

  “Where are you going?”

  Polly shrugged. “Here or there. It doesn’t matter.”

  “No, I guess not,” Lucille said, and the two were silent again.

  In the hall there were sounds of laughter and running footsteps, and a few seconds later Martin came bursting into the room. His hair was rumpled and his tie wasn’t tied but he had the self-assurance and smiling arrogance of a man who has achieved success early and easily. He had had his back broken when he was a child and sometimes his walk was stiff and painful; but he never talked about it and he was almost always smiling, and if he lived a secret bitter life of his own behind the smile he never let on.

  He looked so much like his father that Lucille’s lips curved involuntarily when she saw him and her eyes were soft as a lover’s.

  “Edith just flung me down the stairs,” Martin said cheerfully. “What in hell’s the hurry? It’s only nine-thirty and the Big Four don’t meet until noon.”

  He pulled out a chair and sat down, and ran his two hands over his hair to smooth it. In the process he knocked over a cup on the table and narrowly missed Polly’s head with his elbow.

  “I don’t think Giles is going to like you, Martin,” Polly said crisply. “You’re too violent.”

  “Of course Giles will like me. I’m going to give him lots of advice. I’ll tell him everything a young man in his condition should know.”

  “He’s twenty-nine, darling. A year older than you are.”

  “But totally lacking in experience.”

  Polly made a face at him.

  So far Martin hadn’t even looked at Lucille but she knew the omission was not deliberate as it would have been in Polly’s case.

  She did not want to call attention to herself by speaking, so she watched the two of them in silence, forgetting Mildred and taking pride in the fact that these were Andrew’s children and both of them so good-looking and dark and clever. Martin was literary editor of the Toronto Review, and very young for his job. Polly had taken her degree in sociology at the university, and for four years had worked in various settlement houses doing everything from investigating cases to helping deliver babies.

  “Is that my egg?” Martin said, pointing to the red bowl.

  “Nobody can own an egg,” Polly said. “They’re so impersonal.”

  “I can.”

  “Don’t take it,” Lucille said, laughing. “It’s not very warm. Annie will make you another.”

  But Martin had already sliced the top off the egg, and was choosing a piece of stale toast from the rack. Lucille poured his coffee for him and then rose to leave. She would have liked to stay on at the table as she usually did on Sundays, but she knew she’d be in the way. Martin and Polly were already deep in a discussion of how Martin should and should not behave to Giles.

  “Do not be funny,” Polly said. “And above all do not slap him on the back or ask him what his officer’s swagger stick is for. Everyone asks him that and it’s very embarrassing because he doesn’t know. And above all . . .”

  Lucille closed the door softly behind her.

  She stood for a moment in the hall, uncertain of herself and her position, not sure what to do or where to go. She had a sudden shock of recognition.

  I’ve been here many times before, she thought. Alone in a hall with the doors closed against me, a stranger, a tramp.

  She had a vision of herself, her body bent forward in lines of furtiveness like a thief about to tiptoe past a sleeping policeman.

  Then from upstairs she heard Edith’s voice raised in angry solicitude, “I do believe you’ve given yourself a fever, Andrew!” and abruptly everything became normal again, the policeman woke, the thief was caught and put neatly behind bars, and Lucille’s thoughts folded and packed themselves into their proper files.

  “My dear Edith.” Andrew’s voice was raised too, and he sounded nervous and irritable. He doesn’t want Polly . to get married, Lucille thought. He still thinks of her as a little girl. “How can anyone give himself a fever?”

  “You know very well that I meant,” Edith said. “You’re coming down with a cold, and it’s a lot of nonsense anyway, this dashing out into the snow to meet . . .”

  “My dear Edith. I am not dashing out into the snow. I intend to conduct myself in a dignified manner in a closed car with a heater, providing . . .”

  “You know very well . . .”

  “. . . providing I am allowed enough privacy to get dressed.”

  “All right, get double pneumonia.”

  “Dear heaven!” Andrew said, and a door slammed.

  Lucille walked down the hall, thinking, with a smile, of Edith. Poor Edith, she thrives on imminent catastrophes and likes to think of herself as the great Averter of them. . . . I could do the menus and make out the shopping list for tomorrow. . . . I wonder if Giles is allergic to anything. . . .

  She went into the small book-lined room that Andrew called his den. The sun hadn’t reached this side of the house yet and the room was gloomy and smelled of unused books.

  She turned on a lamp and sat down in Andrew’s chair and stretched out her hand for a memo pad and a pencil. She began to plan the menus for the week, with one eye on rationing and the other on Annie’s limitations in the kitchen. Lobster, if available, and a roasting chicken. Mushrooms, or
perhaps an eggplant.

  She bent over the pad, frowning. She wanted everything to be perfect for Giles, not because he was Giles and about to marry Polly, but because she was Lucille. She had the subtle but supreme vanity that often masquerades under prettier names, devotion, unselfishness, generosity. It lay in the back of her mind, a blind, deaf and hungry little beast that must always be fed indirectly through a cord.

  While she planned she drew pictures absently on the back of the memo pad. Vaguely through a sea of lobsters and shrimp she heard Edith’s voice calling her.

  “Lucille, where on earth are you?”

  “In here. In the den.”

  Edith came rushing through the door with an air of challenging a high wind.

  “I think Andrew’s caught a cold,” she said with a tragic gesture. “Today of all days. His face is quite flushed.”

  “Excitement,” Lucille said. Edith was smoking, and her pallor, seen through a veil of smoke, reminded Lucille of oysters.

  “Oysters,” she said.

  Edith looked a little surprised. “I loathe oysters. Unless they’re covered with something and fried.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t like the color of the things.”

  “Neither do I,” Lucille said calmly, and added oysters to the list.

  “Though I wasn’t, as a matter of fact, talking about oysters,” Edith said with a certain coldness. “I was talking about Andrew. I think he should be sensible and stay home today.”

  “Oh, leave him alone, Edith.” Seeing her sister-in-law’s color rise she added quickly, “Andrew hates to be babied. The best thing you and I can do is to stay out of everyone’s way. Leave the three of them together. In a way it’s their morning, we mustn’t interfere. For the present—we’re—we’re outsiders.”

  Edith looked as if she were about to continue arguing, then with a sudden twist of her shoulders she turned and sat down on the edge of the desk.

  “You’re so reasonable, Lucille,” she said, almost complainingly. “I don’t know how you do it, always putting yourself in some other person’s place and coming out with exactly the right solution. It’s extraordinary.”

  “I’ve had a lot of practice.” Contented and smiling she leaned back and touched her hair lightly with the tips of her fingers. The little beast had been fed and had stopped gnawing for a moment.

  A few minutes later Edith went out, and Lucille sat with the memo pad on her knee, patiently waiting for Andrew to come in and say good-bye to her. But he didn’t come.

  He’s forgotten you.

  Well, of course he has. He’s with his children. It’s their day, after all. I said it myself.

  But he has forgotten you.

  Well, of course. I’m not a dewy-eyed bride any more. . . .

  She got up and went to the window and stood waiting to catch a glimpse of him as he left the house. She saw the three of them going up the driveway, close together, arm in arm. With the snow whirling around them they seemed like a compact unit, indivisible and invulnerable.

  While she watched, a squat dark cloud moved across the sun like a jealous old woman.

  Lucille stood, wanting to cry out, “Andrew! Andrew, come back!” as she had cried out to Mildred in the dream.

  But no sound came from her lips, and after a moment she went back to her chair and lighted a cigarette and picked up the memo pad again.

  She looked down at the pictures she had drawn while she was planning the menus. They were women’s faces, the faces of fat silly kewpie-doll women. They smirked and simpered at her from the paper, and tossed their coy ringlets and fluttered their eyelashes.

  Detachedly, almost absently, she burned out their eyes with the end of her cigarette.

  2

  Around noon on Sunday, December fifth, the Montreal Flier was derailed about twenty miles from Toronto. The cause of the derailment was not known but it was hinted in the first radio reports that it was the work of saboteurs, for the train had been passing a steep bank at the time and the number of people killed and wounded was very high. Volunteer doctors and nurses were asked to come to Castleton, the nearest hospital.

  Edith heard the news on the radio but paid little attention to it beyond thinking fleetingly that death and catastrophe were so common these days that one had to be personally involved to get excited over them.

  “All volunteer doctors and nurses report at once to Castleton Hospital, King’s Highway number . . .”

  She rose, yawning, and turned the radio off, just as Lucille came in.

  “What was that?” Lucille asked.

  “Some train wreck.”

  “Oh. Lunch is ready. Any calls for Andrew this morning?”

  “Two.” Years ago Edith had appointed herself to answer Andrew’s calls on Sunday. She said wistfully, “Remember the old days when I used to spend nearly the whole day at the phone?”

  “Andrew is sensible not to work so hard,” Lucille said. “His assistant is perfectly capable.”

  “Still it was rather fun to be so busy.”

  “Not for Andrew.” She smiled, but she was annoyed with Edith for bringing the subject up. She and Edith, between them, had made the decision that Andrew was to retire, at least partially. Now that he had, Lucille was beginning to doubt her own wisdom. Andrew’s health was better but he had spells of moodiness.

  “Doctors are too hard on themselves,” she said, as if to convince herself. “That’s why so many of them die young.”

  “Don’t talk about dying young. It upsets my digestive tract.” She turned away, biting her lower lip. “It makes me think of Mildred. . . . I can’t help wishing you hadn’t referred to her this morning, especially in front of Polly.”

  “I’m really sorry. It just slipped out.”

  “You’ll have to be careful. She might not want Giles to know how—how Mildred died.”

  “She’s probably told him already.”

  “No, no, I don’t think so. Such a terrible thing.” Edith closed her eyes and Lucille saw that the lids were corpse-gray with the blue veins growing on them like mold.

  “So bloody,” Edith said. “So—bloody. I—really . . .”

  “Edith, you mustn’t.” Lucille put out her hand and touched Edith’s thin pallid arm. “Come along and have your lunch.”

  “I couldn’t eat a thing.”

  “Certainly you can.”

  “No. Just remembering it upsets me. . . .”

  “We’ll see,” Lucille said, a trifle grimly.

  She walked out, leaving Edith to wander wispily behind her like a little unloved ghost.

  Lucille estimated the situation and acted as usual with good sense. Given any sympathy or encouragement Edith would mope herself into indigestion or a migraine.

  “Sweetbreads for lunch,” Lucille said cheerfully.

  Edith brightened at once. In spite of the tug of her conscience she saw Mildred floating away out of her mind and the blood frothed into yards and yards of beautiful pink gauze trailing Mildred down the years.

  “I adore sweetbreads,” she said.

  She ate too heartily and had indigestion anyway, and by two-thirty she had begun to fidget because Andrew and the children hadn’t returned. Lucille tried to calm her and succeeded only in making herself nervous and impatient.

  At four o’clock Lucille built a fire in the living-room grate to cheer them up. But the wood was damp and the flames crept feebly up along the log like dying fingers beckoning for help.

  “They should be here,” Edith said. “They should be here. I can’t think what has happened.”

  “Probably nothing at all,” Lucille said and poked the log again and turned it.

  “I told you that wood wouldn’t burn.”

  “My dear Edith,” Lucille said, “it is burning.”

  “Not really burning. I’m surprised at Andrew worrying me like this, I’m surprised at him. He should know better.”

  “How could Andrew know you were going to eat too much and make
yourself nervous?”

  “You’re going too far, Lucille.”

  “I should have said that two hours ago.”

  “It carries a nasty implication,” Edith said coldly. “As if I would not worry about Andrew if I hadn’t eaten too much, which I’m not admitting in the first place. I think you might . . .”

  The telephone in the hall began to ring. The two women looked at each other but did not move.

  “Aren’t you going to answer it, Edith? It’s probably a call for Andrew.”

  Edith didn’t hear her.

  “An accident,” she whispered. “I know—an accident . . .”

  “Don’t be silly,” Lucille said and went out to answer the phone herself.

  The operator’s nasal voice twanged along the wire.

  “A collect call from Castleton for Mrs. Andrew Morrow. Will you accept the call?”

  “This is Mrs. Morrow. Yes, I’ll take it.”

  “Here is your party. Go ahead.”

  “Hello,” Lucille said. “Hello?”

  For a moment there was no reply but a confused background of sound. Then, “Hello, Lucille. This is Polly.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “There’s been an accident.”

  “Polly . . .”

  “No, not ours. We sort of happened into it and Father and I are staying to help. There’s a little hospital here, that’s where I’m phoning from.”

  “Polly, you sound funny.”

  “Maybe I do. I’ve never seen a train wreck before. Anyway, I’m in a hurry. There aren’t enough doctors and nurses. Tell Edith not to worry. Good-bye.”

  “Wait—when will you be home?”

  “When they can spare us. Martin and Giles are helping get the bodies out. Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye,” Lucille echoed.

  Edith was tugging at her sleeve. “What is it?”

  “Nothing much,” Lucille said. “There was a train wreck and Andrew’s helping.”

  “How awful!” Edith said, but the words meant nothing to Lucille. She was looking over Edith’s shoulder, smiling. Andrew was safe, her world was safe. All the trains on earth were of no importance if Andrew wasn’t on them.