by Jane Rule
“Oh no,” Monk protested. “I just hope I look like you when I’m your age.”
“For all our sakes, I devoutly hope you don’t,” he answered.
There weren’t many embarrassing moments that Christmas. Robin’s Care packages, set next to Andrew’s amber necklace, troubled everyone else more than they seemed to trouble Monk, who talked about “hands across the water” and offered to bake us all tollhouse cookies when she next had the kitchen in her flat to herself. Andrew tried not to look as if he’d be poisoned by them, and Doris quickly opened another present to distract us all. Andrew and Monk had the majority of Christmas horrors from younger brothers and sisters, amateur scarves, glass-encrusted bottle openers, pictures of horses, a bow-tie that lit up, and a bird whistle. You opened more presents than you wanted to from your mother, a winter wardrobe almost entirely unsuitable for the life you were leading, but Doris admired her taste, and you were glad not to complain, in fact to be elegantly dressed for the final few days of the house party, though the number of young bankers and lawyers and politicians you attracted were a nuisance to you for weeks afterwards.
“Most of them are dull,” Frank admitted to me, “but most responsible people are, and she’s got to find someone who will take care of her.”
“I suppose so,” I said, “but somehow I can’t imagine Esther wife to anyone like that.”
Wife to anyone, I might have said. You were simply no good at the ordinary encounter, the physical and emotional details of a day. You could have kept a man’s principles and hopes in very good order, but not his house and his children. Monk tried to advise you as she did me.
“People don’t always want to be talking about their souls and their visions,” she said to you impatiently “As for the Slade uniform, which year is it that you learn the difference between boys and girls?”
“With clothes on, I’m not sure,” you answered.
“Well, socially that happens to be important.”
More important and sometimes more difficult than Monk would have imagined. I often was not sure through the first pint of beer whether a companion was male or female. That doubt one night made me reticent with a tall Negro for longer than pleased her. Later, when I was certain and friendly, she accused me of prejudice. “Look if you’re a nigger, I’m a—” clootch, squaw, I would have gone on to say, if my nose hadn’t been broken in the middle of the sentence and my two front teeth knocked out shortly after that. Yes, grotesque. That part of my living was. Spoken of at all. I had to speak of this, lie about it, because I was in the hospital for a week with those and other painful but fortunately not serious injuries. I quite unreasonably wanted to keep Frank and Doris from knowing that I had been in any trouble at all. You pointed out to me that, even if I could keep them ignorant for the week I was in the hospital, my face would not heal completely for some weeks after that.
“What am I going to tell them?” I asked. It was difficult to talk.
“A car accident?” you suggested… or perhaps asked.
“Frank would want to check that out, legally,” I said.
“A fall?”
“Does it look like a fall?”
“No,” you admitted.
I couldn’t really see to judge because my eyes were badly swollen. I hadn’t told you what had happened, but I gathered from your silence that it was pretty obvious.
“I’ve already told the police I won’t lay charges. Thank God I’m twenty-one.”
“Couldn’t you just not tell them—I mean, just say you don’t want to talk about it?”
“Maybe, but try to put them off for a little while, E., would you? I haven’t the face to face them with just yet.”
The next day, when I couldn’t see at all, Doris came.
“Don’t blame Esther, darling. She begged me not to come for at least two or three days. She said you didn’t want to see anyone. You can’t see anyone, can you?”
“I didn’t want you to see me,” I said.
“It’s not a pretty sight. Your doctor said you were badly but inexpertly beaten—no permanent damage.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Good as new in a few days.”
“Weeks. Hurt pretty badly?”
“Some. Can you keep Frank out of it?”
“He’s in Scotland this week.”
“Thank God for that.”
“I’ll have to tell him something sooner or later.”
“I’m not awfully good at talking at the moment.”
“Of course not.”
She had taken the hand that wasn’t bandaged and stayed quiet for a while. Then she gave me bits of news about the children and friends.
“I mustn’t stay too long, but I’ll be back tomorrow.”
I nodded, wondering if I could hide behind my swollen mask long enough to make the raising of the subject finally too awkward for her. Monk was told I had been in some kind of accident which I was still vague about and was too sick for visitors. But on the fifth day, when my eyes were really beginning to open again, Andrew arrived, bringing a bed jacket made like a cape so that I didn’t have to struggle into it, the catalogue of a show in Paris we had talked about going over for, and a precious box of chocolates for the nurses. He didn’t stay with pleasantries long.
“You’ve got to put your mind to what you’re going to tell Doris—and everyone else, Kate. Make it a blatant lie, if you want, but you’ve got to say something. Doris is simply beside herself.”
“Tell me what to say,” I said. “What can I say?”
“Was it someone you knew?”
“What difference does it make, Andy? It’s not a paternity case, after all.”
“It does make a difference. It could happen again, Kate. You could get yourself killed.”
“Possibly, but not probably. I made a mistake, a very stupid mistake. It was my own fault. It won’t happen again.”
“Why did it happen at all?”
“You imagine, Andy. You make up something.”
“You were restless,” he said. “You went out for a walk and went too far into Soho. It seemed quiet enough, so you stopped for a drink. Stupid, of course, dressed in dollar signs the way you are, but you didn’t think of that. On the street you were followed. Somebody tried to grab your purse, and, stupid again, you didn’t simply let go. You put up a fight and were beaten up.”
“If I’d said that in the first place—”
“Well, they were young kids. They didn’t get your money. You thought of the kids at the orphanage. And you felt the whole thing was your own fault, wandering around on your own at that time of night. It isn’t as if you could think very clearly right afterwards.”
“Can you tell Doris that and make her believe it?”
“I can try. I will try. But, Kate, you ought to try to tell somebody what really happened.”
“Why?”
“It could help.”
“I’ll be more careful, Andy. I didn’t like it much myself.”
“No,” he said. “And I wish you wouldn’t risk it again… ever. There are other solutions.”
“How’s dragon slaying?” I asked.
“Pretty good, actually. Slow, but that’s as well. You’d be a hell of a looking bridesmaid at the moment.”
“And work?”
“Slow, too. And that’s not so good, but there’s time.”
You came to the hospital every day to tell me about your classes, about parties with Marcus and Clide and Purple Bell, who sent a bunch of flowers. You didn’t want to tell me about the orphanage, but, after I’d asked several times, you admitted that the recreation hour had been canceled until I was well enough to go again.
“What happened?”
“A minor sort of riot,” you said, trying to grin. “Monk and I just couldn’t control them. Nobody was hurt finally, but I don’t know why. It took three of the permanent staff to calm them down again. After that we got our temporary walking papers.”
“After Monk told them just
what was wrong and why it really happened.”
“Well, a bit.”
“It must have been frightening,” I said.
“It was, partly because of what might have happened, but it was more than that. It was being helpless. It was knowing that good will doesn’t mean a thing. Why is that, Kate?”
“They don’t understand the language.”
“But you could control them.”
“Only sometimes, and that will doesn’t have anything to do with good will.”
The thought of going back there depressed me terribly. I was, of course, afraid, not of the physical violence, which never seemed quite real, even after it happened, but of the aggressive pointlessness of it all, whether the assault of my will or theirs. And I wondered what real difference there was between the state of my face now and the state of my mind on other brief if not so abrupt occasions. Perhaps there had been no misunderstanding at all between you and the children, between me and the Negro. This possibility I could not discuss with you or with Andrew because it infected my sense of all relationships, not as an idea but as a fear.
At first, when I didn’t leave my flat, everyone understood that I must feel shy about my face. You and Monk brought me books. Doris did my shopping. But after the bruises turned green, then yellow, and finally faded altogether, leaving my face only slightly swollen, after my new teeth were fitted, still I didn’t go back to lectures or suggest new plans for the orphanage. Frank invited me to go along on a business trip to Paris, but I refused. Andrew’s extra theater tickets went to you or Doris or one of the boys. Then I began not always to answer the phone or door bell.
Monk telephoned one morning while the cleaning woman was there.
“Warn Miss George that I’ll be over in about half an hour,” she said.
I hadn’t the energy to go out to avoid her, and, anyway, I was trying to keep to myself, calling as little notice to the habit as I could. Monk arrived with two suitcases.
“Where are you off to?”
“Here,” she said, setting the cases down.
“Here?”
“That’s right. My landlady has gone to Greece for three weeks, and I simply can’t stay alone there. It’s too easy. I’m not asking you if I can stay. I’m telling you. And don’t suggest I go to Frank’s and Doris’ because it’s just as easy there.”
“Why not be easy?” I suggested.
“Really, Kate! Is that kind advice for a friend in distress?”
“I’m not good at kind advice, and I’m nobody to spend three weeks with just now, Monk.”
“I wouldn’t say that. Your cheerful best is always pretty exhausting. I really like morbid people. I grew up with a whole crowd of them.”
I couldn’t discourage her. I hadn’t enough interest in my own comfort to be forceful. Once I realized how determined she was, whether she stayed or not didn’t seem to matter. I made no effort to make her feel welcome, but she didn’t seem to need it. When the cleaning woman had gone, Monk unpacked her clothes and books, finding places to put everything away. Then she explored the kitchen, which was well stocked with food I hadn’t bothered to eat.
“This is going to be fascinating,” she said. “I’ve never watched slow starvation before. It’s a perfect idea for a TV play.”
I sat with a book I had been holding when she came in and ignored her. She found the extra key and went off to an afternoon class. I had not moved when she got back, but I began to feel just a little foolish in my sullenness. When she brought in sherry, I tried to be civil.
“No, now don’t strain yourself. I have plenty to sulk about myself. We’ll just sulk together.”
She stared at the gas fire in such a ridiculously accurate imitation of me that I felt a weak threat of amusement, then a stronger sense of irritation. I did nothing but drink my sherry After a few minutes Monk went back to the kitchen. She was a quiet cook, one of the few I’ve known. The occasional opening of a drawer or cupboard, the gentle scraping of a spoon in a saucepan were undisturbing sounds. She came back into the sitting room, poured me another glass of sherry, and then pulled out the dropleaf table, which I hadn’t bothered to set for weeks. After she went back to the kitchen, I noticed candles and five daffodils. I got up, went into the bathroom, washed and made up my still slightly blurred face. Then I went into the bedroom and put on my lounging pajamas.
“Well,” Monk said. “Who’s coming? Do I have to go out for the evening, or can I sit in the bathroom and read?”
“You’ll do whatever you please,” I said, “obviously.”
It was a light, delicious meal. Monk had discovered the French habit of serving things one at a time so that no plate was ever crowded, and she had a flare for seasonings so that ordinary white fish could taste as delicate as sole, a green salad be worth the trouble of eating it. She bothered with bright garnishes, not so much things like parsley, which was, she said, nothing but an adjective; hers had the strength of prepositional phrases. I ate without real pleasure, but I was not put off.
“Now, how about a little brandy with your coffee?” she suggested.
“There isn’t any brandy”
“But there is. I brought over the last of a bottle Frank gave me last month.”
We moved over to the fire, leaving the candles burning, and sat in unselfconscious silence for some time.
“Would you like me to put on a record?” Monk asked finally.
“Yes.”
When she chose Deller singing “In Darkness Let Me Dwell,” I did not know whether she mocked or consoled me. It didn’t matter. It was all the same thing, and that sort of reducing of gesture was a possible revelation, one that could be lived with.
It was a week after Monk moved in that I returned to lectures, but we never did go back to the orphanage. It remained a debt, collecting different kinds of emotional interest for each of us.
At the end of the second week, I was recognizable enough to Monk for her to risk raising the subject of Andrew, who had been noticeably absent.
“He told me I had to make up my mind,” she said.
“And you can’t?”
“I couldn’t imagine being married to anyone else.”
“What about Robin?”
“Poor Robin. Think of all those food parcels!”
“You only have to return the ring.”
“And I’ll miss that. I like to look at it sitting there in the drawer. And it’s been awfully useful at some of those parties Esther gives.”
“I suppose Andy’d give you another.”
“Anyway, I can’t really send it back. He’d probably have to pay duty on it.”
“Give it to Mother to take back. She’ll be here in a couple of weeks.”
“Does Andy love me, Kate?”
“Yes.”
“Is he too good for me?”
“You said yourself that you were very much alike in lots of ways.”
“I don’t mean that. Is he too rich for me? Is he too handsome?”
I don’t know why I was surprised by the question. Just those attributes had made it possible for me to make friends with Andrew, put him out of reach enough to be a friend. But I didn’t say that.
“Those aren’t the sorts of things you have to live up to,” I said.
“Those are the sorts of things you can lose,” Monk said, “or have taken away from you by another woman.”
“He can lose them himself, of course.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
I don’t know what it was that finally made Monk decide, but on the last weekend she was with me, she came home late Saturday night with the news that she and Andrew were engaged. She was wearing his ring. The following weekend Frank and Doris gave them a party, the Monday after which Monk received a letter from her father ordering her to break her engagement or be disowned.
“Here we go again,” you said. “What more can he want in a son-in-law?”
“Apparently he objects because Andy’s a foreigner,” I
explained.
“A Canadian’s a foreigner?”
“Well, yes, and you see, they weren’t supposed to be. They were cowards—I suppose from Mr. Ridley’s point of view, traitors during the Revolution.”
“Holy God!”
“It is pretty ridiculous. Andy’s just furious, but Frank was marvelous with him, told him not to lose his head. Frank has asked Monk if he can write to her father.”
Nobody ever saw the letter that Frank wrote. Even Doris did not know what was in it, but I imagine, along with the praise Frank could genuinely offer for a young man he would have liked as a son, he used a banker’s language about the financial facts of Andrew’s life. The letter was followed by several telephone calls. The Ridleys did not accept an invitation from Frank and Doris to come to England for the wedding, but in all else they were not only cooperative but enthusiastic. The date was set for the first of May. Andrew sacrificed Frank as best man so that he could give Monk away. You were to be maid of honor, Ann, and a friend of Monk’s from RADA and I bridesmaids.
We expected Mother to be there for the wedding, but just a week before she had planned to arrive she wrote to say that she was having a little trouble with her legs. Her doctor did not think she should travel. Telephone calls to her gave us no more information. She felt perfectly well. Nothing was seriously wrong. She was sorry she couldn’t keep all the medical names straight, but the point was that she shouldn’t travel just now. Perhaps she could still come for the coronation in June. Your mother, whom no one expected, suddenly wired to have her plane met.
The role your mother chose to play is hard to describe: Paris dress designer, Negro mammy, Queen Mother, wicked step-sister to the maid of honor. They don’t add up, but your mother never did. She would work at one part until long after it failed, then switch to its opposite with the same result. The only constant thing about her was her aggressive uncertainty, whether she was deciding to keep her suite at the hotel or move in with you so that she could understand your life better, whether she was being a surprised foreigner who found all the customs charming and quaint or was telling everyone just how things ought to be done. Doris, after the first ten minutes, stiffened into pleasantries and played by those hard rules from then on. Frank courted her with some irony; Andrew nearly ignored her, and Monk hid from her. I did what I could to protect you, but you had your own defensive devices. Occasionally you had “talks” with her, in which you tried very earnestly to present your own views; three or four times you lost your temper with her; but mostly you sulked, eyes blank, mouth a little open, until anyone who didn’t know you might have wondered about brain damage. Stupidity may be the deadliest sort of passive resistance.