“No showing off, please,” said Eve.
“There’s a kind of holiday tonight,” said the girl. “There’ll be fireworks, all that. Angelo says we can see them from here. He’s making Johnny sleep now, on two chairs in the kitchen. He wanted me to sleep, too, but I wouldn’t, of course. He’s fixing a basket for the hamster up where the cat can’t get it. We’re going to have the fireworks at dinner, and then he’ll take us down to the harbor, he says, to see the people throwing confetti and all that.”
“The fireworks won’t be seen from our dining room, I fear,” said Walter.
“We’re having our dinner out here, on the terrace,” said the girl. “He says the mosquitoes are awful and you people will have to smoke.”
“Do the children always dine with you?” said Walter.
There was no answer, because William of Orange came by, taking their attention. Mary put out her hand, but the cat avoided it. Walter looked at the determined child who was said to resemble him. She bent toward the cat, idly calling. Her hair divided, revealing a delicate ear. The angle of her head lent her expression something thoughtful and sad; it was almost an exaggerated posture of wistfulness. Her arms and hands were thin, but with no suggestion of fragility. She smiled at the cat and said, “He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care what we say.” Her bones were made of something tough and precious. She was not pretty, no, but quite lovely, in spite of the straight yellow hair, the plain way she was dressed. Walter knew instantly what he would have given her to wear. He thought, Ballet lessons … beautiful French, and saw himself the father of a daughter. The mosaic expanded; there was room for another figure, surely? Yes—but to have a daughter one needed a wife. That brought everything down to normal size again. He smiled to himself, thinking how grateful he was that clods like Frank Osborn could cause enchanting girls to appear, all for the enjoyment of vicarious fathers. It was a new idea, one he would discuss next winter with Mrs. Wiggott. He could develop it into a story. It would keep the old dears laughing for weeks.
Angelo strung paper lanterns on wires between branches of the fig tree. The children were fogged with sleep, but bravely kept their heads up, waiting for the fireworks he had said would be set off over the sea. Neither of them remarked that the sea was hidden by the hotel; they trusted Angelo to produce the sea as he produced their dinner. Walter’s nephew slept with his eyes wide. Angelo’s lanterns were reflected in his eyes—pinpoints of cobalt blue.
From the table they heard the crowd at the harbor, cheering every burst. Colored smoke floated across the dark sky. The smell of jasmine, which ordinarily made Walter sick, was part of the children’s night.
“Do you know my name?” said the little boy, as Angelo moved around the table collecting plates. “It’s Johnny.” He sighed, and put his head down where the plate had been. Presently Angelo came out of the house wearing a clean white pullover and with his hair well oiled. Johnny woke up as if he had heard a bell. “Are you taking us to the harbor?” he said. “Now?”
Mary, Johnny, and Angelo looked at Eve. It was plain to Walter that these children should not be anywhere except in bed. He was furious with Angelo.
“Is there polio or anything here?” said Eve lazily. Now it was Walter’s turn. The children—all three—looked at him with something like terror. He was about to deny them the only pleasure they had ever been allowed; that was what their looks said. Without waiting for his answer about polio, Eve said the children could go.
The candles inside the paper lanterns guttered and had to be blown out. The Osborns smoked conscientiously to keep mosquitoes away. In the light of a struck match, Walter saw his sister’s face, her short graying hair. “That’s a nice lad,” she said.
“The kids are mad about him,” said Frank.
“They are besotted,” said Eve. “I’m glad. You couldn’t have planned a better welcome, Walter dear,” and in the dark she briefly covered his hand with hers.
The family lived in Miss Cooper’s house as if it were a normal place to be. They were more at home than Walter had ever been. Mornings, he heard them chattering on the terrace or laughing in the kitchen with Angelo. Eve and Angelo planned the meals, and sometimes they went to the market together. The Osborns took over the household food expenses, and Walter, tactfully, made no mention of it. Sometimes the children had their meals in the kitchen with Angelo and the hamster and the cat. But there was no order, no system, to their upbringing. They often dined with the adults. The parents rose late, but not so late as Walter. They seemed to feel it would be impolite to go off to the beach or the market until Walter’s breakfast was over. He was not accustomed to eating breakfast, particularly during the hot weather, but he managed to eat an egg and some cold toast, only because they appeared to expect it.
“Change has got to come in South Africa,” said Eve one morning as Walter sat down to a boiled egg. The family had eaten. The table was covered with ashes, eggshells, and crumbs.
“Why at our expense?” said Frank.
“Frank is an anarchist, although you wouldn’t think it at times,” said Eve, with pride.
Married twelve years and still talking, Walter thought. Frank and Eve were in accord on one thing—that there was bad faith on all sides in South Africa. They interrupted each other, explaining apartheid to Walter, who did not want to hear anything about it. Frank repeated that no decent person could stand by and accept the situation, and Eve agreed; but she made no bones about the real reason for their having left. They had failed, failed. The word rolled around the table like a wooden ball.
So Frank was an anarchist, was he, Walter thought, snipping at his egg. Well, he could afford to be an anarchist, living down there, paying next to no income tax. He said, “You will find things different in England.”
“An English farm, aha,” said Frank, and looked at Eve.
“Just so long as it isn’t a poultry farm,” said Walter, getting on with his revolting breakfast. The egg had given him something to say. “I have seen people try that.”
“As a matter of fact, it is a poultry farm,” said Eve. Frank’s face was earnest and red; this farm had a history of arguments about it. Eve went on, “You see, we try one thing after the other. We’re obliged to try things, aren’t we? We have two children to educate.”
“I wouldn’t want to live without doing something,” said Frank. “Even if I could afford to. I mean to say that I’m not brainy and it’s better for me if I have something to do.”
“Walter used to think it better,” said Eve. She went on, very lightly, “I did envy Walter once. Walter, think of the money that was spent educating you. They wouldn’t do it for a girl. Ah, how I used to wish we could have exchanged, then.” Having said this, she rounded on her husband, as if it were Frank who had failed to give Walter credit, had underestimated him, dragging schoolroom jealousy across the lovely day. Frank must be told: Walter in Hong Kong in a bank. Walter in amateur theatricals, the image of Douglas Fairbanks. He was marvelous in the war; he was burned from head to foot. He was hours swimming in flames in the North Sea. He should have had the Victoria Cross. Everyone said so.
The two children, sitting nearby sorting colored pebbles they had brought up from the beach, scarcely glanced at their courageous uncle. The impossibility of his ever having done anything splendid was as clear to them as it was to Walter. He agreed with the children—for it had all of it gone, and he wanted nothing but the oasis of peace, the admiration of undemanding old women, the winter months. If he was irritated, it was only by his sister’s puritanical insistence on working. Would the world have been a happier place if Walter had remained in Hong Kong in a bank? Luckily, there was William of Orange to talk about. There was William of Orange now, stalking an invisible victim along the terrace wall. Up in the fig tree he went, with his killer’s face, his marigold eyes. “Oh, the poor birds!” Eve cried. “He’s after birds!” She saw him stretch out his paw, spread like a hand, and then she saw him detach ripe figs and let them fall on the paved
terrace. She had never seen a cat do that before. She said that William of Orange was perfectly sweet.
“He doesn’t care what you think about him,” said Mary, looking up from her heap of stones.
“You know, darling,” said Eve, laughing at Walter, “if you aren’t careful, you’ll become an old spinster with a pussycat.”
Frank sat on the terrace wall wearing a cotton shirt and oversize Army shorts. He was burned reddish brown. His arms and legs were covered with a coating of thick fair hair. “What is the appeal about cats?” he said kindly. “I’ve always wanted to know. I can understand having them on a farm, if they’re good mousers.” He wore a look of great sincerity most of the time, as if he wanted to say, “Please tell me what you are thinking. I so much want to know.”
“I like them because they are independent,” said Walter. “They don’t care what you think, just as Mary says. They don’t care if you like them. They haven’t the slightest notion of gratitude, and they never pretend. They take what you have to offer, and away they go.”
“That’s what all cat fanciers say,” said Frank. “But it’s hard for someone like me to understand. That isn’t the way you feel about people, is it? Do you like people who just take what you can give them and go off?”
Angelo came out of the house with a shopping basket over one arm and a straw sun hat on his head. He took all his orders from Eve now. There had never been a discussion about it; she was the woman of the house, the mother.
“It would be interesting to see what role the cat fancier is trying on,” said Walter, looking at Angelo. “He says he likes cats because they don’t like anyone. I suppose he is proving he is so tough he can exist without affection.”
“I couldn’t,” said Frank, “and I wouldn’t want to try. Without Eve and the children and …”
The children jumped to their feet and begged to go to market with Angelo. They snatched at his basket, arguing whose turn it was to carry it. How Angelo strutted; how he grew tall! All this affection, this admiration, Walter thought—it was as bad as overtipping.
The family stayed two weeks, and then a fortnight more. They were brown, drowsy, and seemed reluctant to face England and the poultry farm. They were enjoying their holiday, no doubt about that. On the beach they met a professor of history who spoke a little English, and a retired consul who asked them to tea. They saw, without knowing what to make of it, a monument to Queen Victoria. They heard people being comic and noisy, they bought rice-and-spinach pies to eat on the beach, and ice cream that melted down to powder and water. They ate melons and peaches nearly as good as the fruit back in Africa, and they buried the peach stones and the melon skins and the ice-cream sticks and the greasy piecrusts in the sand. They drove along the coast as far as Cannes, in the Parma-violet Citroën Frank had hired, sight unseen, from South Africa. He had bought his new farm in the same way. Walter was glad his friends were away, for he was ashamed to be seen in the Citroën. It was a vulgar automobile. He told Frank that the DS was considered exclusively the property of concierges’ sons and successful grocers.
“I’m not even that,” said Frank.
The seats were covered with plastic leopard skin. At every stop, the car gave a great sigh and sank down like a tired dog. The children loved this. They sat behind, with Eve between them, telling riddles, singing songs. They quarreled across their mother as if she were a hedge. “Silly old sow,” Walter heard his nephew saying. He realized the boy was saying it to Eve. His back stiffened. Eve saw.
“Why shouldn’t he say it, if he wants to?” she said. “He doesn’t know what it means. Do you want me to treat them the way we were treated? Would you like to see some of that?”
“No,” said Walter, after a moment.
“Well, then. I’m trying another way.”
Walter said, “I don’t believe one person should call another a silly old sow.” He spoke without turning his head. The children were still as mice; then the little boy began to cry.
They drove home in the dark. The children slept, and the three adults looked at neon lights and floodlit palm trees without saying much. Suddenly Eve said, “Oh, I like that.” Walter looked at a casino; at the sea; at the Anglican church, which was thirty years old, Riviera Gothic. “That church,” she said. “It’s like home.”
“Alas,” said Walter.
“Terrible, is it?” said his brother-in-law, who had not bothered to look.
“I think I’ll make up my own mind,” said Eve. So she had sat, with her face set, when Walter tried to introduce her to some of his friends and his ideas, fifteen years before. She had never wanted to be anything except a mother, and she would protect anyone who wanted protection—Walter as well. But nothing would persuade her that a church was ugly if it was familiar and reminded her of home.
Walter did not desire Eve’s protection. He did not think he could use anything Eve had to give. Sometimes she persuaded him to come to the beach with the family, and then she fussed over him, seeing that the parasol was fixed so that he had full shade. She knew he did not expose his arms and legs to the sun, because of his scars. She made him sit on an arrangement of damp, sandy towels and said, “There. Isn’t that nice?” In an odd way, she still admired him; he saw it, and was pleased. He answered her remarks (about Riviera people, French politics, the Mediterranean climate, and the cost of things) with his habitual social fluency, but it was the children who took his attention. He marveled at their singleness of purpose, the energy they could release just in tearing off their clothes. They flung into the water and had to be bullied out. Mauve-lipped, chattering, they said, “What’s there to do now?”
“Have you ever wanted to be a ballet dancer?” Walter asked his niece.
“No,” she said, with scorn.
One day Angelo spent the morning with them. Frank had taken the car to the Citroën garage and looked forward to half a day with the mechanics there. In a curious way Angelo seemed to replace the children’s father. He organized a series of canals and waterways and kept the children digging for more than an hour. Walter noticed that Angelo was doing none of the work himself. He stood over them with his hand on one hip—peacock lad, cock of the walk. When an Italian marries, you see this change, Walter thought. He treats his servants that way, and then his wife. He said, “Angelo, put your clothes on and run up to the bar and bring us all some cold drinks.”
“Oh, Uncle Walter,” his niece complained.
“I’ll go, Uncle Walter,” said the little boy.
“Angelo will go,” Walter said. “It’s his job.”
Angelo pulled his shorts over his bathing suit and stood, waiting for Walter to drop money in his hand.
“Don’t walk about naked,” Walter said. “Put on your shirt.”
Eve was knitting furiously. She sat with her cotton skirt hitched up above her knees and a cotton bolero thrown over her head to keep off the sun. From this shelter her sunglasses gleamed at him, and she said in her plain, loud voice, “I don’t like this, Walter, and I haven’t been liking it for some time. It’s not the kind of world I want my children to see.” “I’m not responsible for the Riviera,” said Walter.
“I mean that I don’t like your bullying Angelo in front of them. They admire him so. I don’t like any of it. I mean to say, the master-servant idea. I think it’s bad taste, if you want my opinion.”
“Are you trying to tell me you didn’t have a servant in South Africa?”
“You know perfectly well what I mean. Walter, what are you up to? That sad, crumbling house. Nothing has been changed or painted or made pretty in it for years. You don’t seem to have any friends here. Your telephone never rings. It hasn’t rung once since I’ve been here. And that poor boy.”
“Poor?” said Walter. “Is that what he’s been telling you? You should have seen the house I rescued him from. You should just see what he’s left behind him. Twelve starving sisters and brothers, an old harridan of a mother—and a grandmother. He’s so frightened of her even
at this distance that he sends her every penny I give him. Twelve sisters and brothers …”
“He must miss them,” said Eve.
“I’ve sent him home,” Walter said. “I sent him for a visit with a first-class ticket. He sold the first-class ticket and traveled third. If I hadn’t been certain he wanted to give the difference to his people, I should never have had him back. I hate deceit. If he didn’t get home that time it was because the cat was worrying him. I’ve told you the story. You said it was sad. But it was his idea, taking the cat.”
“He eyes the girls in the market,” said Eve. “But he never speaks.”
“Let him,” said Walter. “He is free to do as he likes.”
“Perhaps he doesn’t think he is.”
“I can assure you he is, and knows it. If he is devoted to me because I’ve been kind to him, it’s his own affair.”
“It’s probably too subtle for me,” she said. She pulled her skirts a little higher and stroked her veined, stretched legs. She was beyond vanity. “But I still think it’s all wrong. He’s sweet with the children, but he’s a little afraid of me.”
“Perhaps you think he should be familiar with women and call them silly old sows.”
“No, not at his age,” she said mildly. “Johnny is still a baby, you know. I don’t expect much from him.” She was veering away from a row.
“My telephone never rings because my friends are away for the summer,” he said. “This summer crowd has nothing to do with my normal life.” He had to go on with that; her remark about the telephone had annoyed him more than anything else.
Yet he wanted her to approve of him; he wanted even Frank to approve of him. He was pushed into seeing himself through their eyes. He preferred his own images, his own creations. Once, he had loved a woman much older than himself. He saw her, by chance, after many years, when she was sixty. “What will happen when I am sixty?” he wanted to say. He wondered if Eve, with her boundless concern for other people, had any answer to that. What will happen fifteen years from now, when Miss Cooper claims the house?
The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant Page 40