He was standing over her now, as she dreamed this – hard upon her, he bore her to his will. Her fingers arched, attacked, clashed at the enigma of the keys, the old, taut strings echoed their long-spent vibrations, sustained jarring harmonies and excruciating rhythms. His shadow encloaked her; he was the sea, the night, the menacing yet benevolent image which she must fight off even as she submitted to it. And, in the background, clear and far away from the night, another music sounded, a series of graceful phrases, a pattern of notes etched in metallic tones that were above all this, complete in themselves, in touch with an ease and perfection, an essence, which was not hers then nor now, but for which she was meant, to which she was dedicated. Yet the aria she heard was in conflict with the black, engorging shadow, did not arise out of it, seemed to exist apart from it in a different time. These sweet sounds had nothing to do with the comforting pressure she felt, the warm, close darkness, the cold, blank countenance of her dead father, resting on a pillow of peach plush in a fetid atmosphere of roses, the mourning draperies that hid a relative’s kneeling form. They persisted in the face of the jolting, alarming, hammering intrusion of an even stranger dissonance, a noisy, chaotic uproar that dissipated the blackness in ever-widening eddies of bright sunlight, that shaped itself ultimately in images rather than music, in a black leather world starred with a brown leather face, a wildly ticking wheel that spun black-and-white like an insane roulette table, a croaking, guttural voice that commanded her (she was aware that it was now for the second or third time), ‘This is the Plaza, lady! That’s where you said to go … you sure she’s all right, buddy?’
And another voice – a soft, drawling voice she knew well enough to fear – was saying, ‘Reckon she’ll do. Just had a little faintin’ spell, but she’s comin’ round. Purty soon she’ll be chipper as a tom-tit. Thank you kindly for your trouble.’
She opened her eyes. Jimmy was smiling at her blandly. He had just handed the driver some money, and the man had turned his head. She started to get up, but Jimmy’s arm held her own, held it down. This restraint reminded her of her predicament, added to her resolve, caused her to fight his grasp. He laid his guitar aside and helped her out of the taxi with both hands. They walked side by side, her arm locked in his, to the doorman.
‘The lady had a faintin’ fit,’ Jim drawled to the uniformed man. ‘Will you see to her while I get my instrument?’
The doorman helped her up the steps as Shad went back to the cab.
As she reached the top step, she shook off the doorman’s assisting hand and turned about. Her movements seemed slow and ponderous, and Jimmy, too, seemed to be walking down to the cab with great deliberateness. The scene, glaringly illuminated by the blazing sun, was unreal, theatrical. This is not a familiar hotel, where I have danced and dined, that I am standing before, but a back-drop – the man beside me in his elegant uniform is not actually a doorman, he is only an old character actor, and that man I am watching, who is opening the door of the cab now, is reaching in for his guitar, he is not Jim Shad, but just my leading man! But as she thought this, as she tried to convince herself that the conversation in the taxi had not taken place, had been but a larger part of the dream she had had when she fainted, her cold, sceptical self withdrew and acted. She turned to the doorman – he was an old man, with a puffy red face and china-blue eyes – and said, ‘That man has been annoying me! Will you please prevent him from following me?’ And before he could answer her – she waited only long enough to see his tired eyes begin to kindle with indignation – she ran into the dark, cool lobby of the hotel, down a corridor she knew well and out a side entrance. Another taxi was waiting at the kerb.
She gave the driver her address, and sat back in a corner so she might not be seen from outside. Her fright was by no means spent, but she knew that she was now relatively safe from Jim. Oh, he would get around the doorman without difficulty by telling him some sort of lie and perhaps pressing a bill into his hand. But by then she would be blocks away – it was the delay she had effected that had assured her escape for the time being, at least.
For the time being! She sighed and pressed her cold hand to her brow. What would he do next? Would he go to Basil and tell him the truth? Hardly yet. He would first try to see her again – if it was money he wanted. And it probably was, although he had denied it. But then he would deny it, of course. Hadn’t it always been a part of his character to do things obliquely, to force another to infer what he wanted from his actions?
But what if he did go to Basil? She reached into her bag and lighted a cigarette with trembling fingers. If he did that, if he told Basil all he knew … She would not let herself consider what might happen. Basil had been patient and – what was the phrase people used when they thought a man’s wife took advantage of him? – long-suffering, that was it. He had been inordinately kind to her throughout her long illness. Now, just as they were ready to begin all over again, Jim Shad had to appear!
She looked out of the window and saw that she was within a block of her house. A sudden caution made her rap on the glass partition and stop the cab. She would pay him now and walk the remaining distance. By doing this she could make sure she was not being followed.
Crossing the avenue, she saw that another taxi was parked directly in front of the house. That might mean nothing, or it could be dangerous. She slowed her pace, hesitated every few feet, waited to see who was going in or coming out. At this moment the sun, which had been hidden by the western skyline, streaked red-golden fingers of fire along the street, lighting it eerily. And someone opened the door of the house and ran down the steps to the taxi.
She saw her only for an instant and in unusual light, but her profile was clear; it had the stamp of youth; the grace of her movements was unforgettable. When she looked up at the door out of which the girl had come it had closed. And when she looked back at the taxi, it was pulling away.
As she walked more rapidly to the house, Ellen could not help remembering what the doctor had said to her: ‘Your husband might have met someone during those two years. You may be right – he may have changed.’ When she had opened the door with her key, she went at once to the console table in the hall, jerking open its drawer and searching anxiously through the letters and cards inside it.
It was not there, although it had been there only a few days before, the lavender envelope addressed to Basil in an interestingly feminine hand. That it had been there, that she had not been mistaken, there was no doubt – the pungent perfume which had scented it still lingered provocatively in the drawer. But the letter itself was gone.
4
The lid of the mailbox felt cold and wet to her fingers as she held it down, gazing for the last time at the square envelope, her own handwriting on it, watching the rain-drops fall upon it, the wet circles of damp form and spread. Reluctantly, she released the lid, heard the noise it made as it shut. The letter was gone now – she could never get it back. Tomorrow he would be reading it! This thought pleased her, and made her glance around to see if anyone had seen what she had done.
The curving village street was deserted. The low-sweeping branches of the oaks that marched along its either side were heavy-laden with the rain, their leaves rustled with its weight, and rivulets of black water ran down their trunks. She would have to be getting back to the dormitory or she would catch her death! Pulling her slicker tighter about her, she started to trudge down the street. It was silly of her to pay so much attention to one poor little letter! She laughed at herself, and a big drop of rain ran down her nose and wet her lips, making her laugh harder. A famous man like Jim Shad would never pay any mind to a note from a schoolgirl. Still, he might – you never could tell – and if he did, if he granted her the interview for the Conservatory News, wouldn’t that smart Molly Winters be jealous!
This hope warmed her even though the spring rain was cold, and she began to hum the aria by Bach that was her very own. She usually felt better when she hummed it, and whe
n she felt fine she would hum it, too, because it was so appropriate. She liked the way it rose and fell, its quiet dignity, the ease with which it moved, the perfect little trills and decorations. But, and she sighed, she could never play it – let alone hum it! – the way she heard it in her head. Mr Smythe said that one day she would, that all she had to do was practise and practise and practise; that he had never had a pupil with such fine natural gifts. But, then, funny Mr Smythe, with his curly hair that never quite hid his bald spot, was an old dear. He just liked her, that was all.
She had first had the idea of writing to Jim Shad two weeks before, when Molly and Ann and herself had slipped out, after the house superintendent had gone to bed, and had taken a taxi to Middleboro. They had heard him on the radio before that, and had been planning to go to the Black Cat to see him for many months. The trouble was that the Black Cat, a popular roadhouse outside of Middleboro, was ten miles away from the conservatory, and the girls were not allowed out later than eleven o’clock, even on a Saturday night. It was expensive, too – it had cost them nearly five dollars the last time they had gone, what with taxi-fare both ways and Cokes at fifty cents apiece. They wouldn’t have been able to go even at that if Molly had not just received her next month’s allowance and if Ellen had not found out when the house superintendent went to bed and how they could sneak out through the cellar door without awaking her.
But Jim Shad was worth it. He was simply gorgeous! He was tall and thin and his face was sunburned and he had a dark curl of hair that fell down over his eye. He sang in a lilting tenor voice, real slow and easy like, just drawling out the words in a way that made you know he was singing for you. Ellen was especially fond of the songs he sang: some of them came from England and were centuries old, others came from the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee or from far out West. She remembered one of them more than any of the others it was the one about ‘The Blue-Tail Fly’. She liked that song almost as much as she liked Bach’s aria.
Today was Monday; that would mean he would get her letter Tuesday and, if he sat right down and wrote a reply, she would get it Wednesday – or Thursday at the latest. Oh, what she would give to see the look in Molly Winters’ eyes right now! She would be so jealous when she saw that Jim Shad had written to Ellen! Then, when they went to the Black Cat on Saturday, Jimmy – she liked to call him Jimmy to herself, but of course she would have to call him Mr Shad to be polite – would come to their table and talk to her. And all he said, except the most special parts, she would have printed in the interview for the Conservatory News. Oh, it was just too good to be true!
The rain began to fall torrentially, great, curtsying, misty sheets of it danced down the dark street to meet her, the street lamps became submerged globes of cold fire. Running, her rubber-soled sneakers made queer, rhythmical squishing sounds on the flowing pavement, and the gutters, flooded by the downpour, raced and gurgled. If the rain soaked through her hat, as it had done several times before, the curl would be gone from her hair and she would have to have a new wave set in it on Saturday. She just did not have enough money for the hairdresser and the Black Cat, so she began to run faster and faster, her heart pounding, the rain smarting as it struck her face. The last block of her way back to the dormitory was uphill, and by the time she reached the low, white-columned veranda her every breath was a painful gasp. She stood for a moment on the rain-swept porch, gazing at the glistening rockers and the swing that creaked in the wind, before she scraped her feet on the coco-mat and pushed open the door.
Her father, tall and spectre-like, barred her way. Behind him she could see the narrow hallway of her home and she smelled the hot, cloying scent of flowers that pervaded the atmosphere. Why, this could not be! Hadn’t she only a few minutes before mailed a letter and walked back to the dormitory in the conservatory town? Why was it that when she opened the front door of the dormitory she saw, not the wide corridor and red-carpeted stairs she was used to, not the broad, complacent face of the house-mother, but the stem, angry visage of her father? Puzzled, not understanding what was happening, she inched forward, tried to sidle past her father, her eyes on the streaks of dampness that mottled the rug as water ran from her hat and slicker.
Her shoulder was seized, clutched compulsively, and she felt herself drawn towards her father, felt the harsh, unyielding outline of his body. The hot smell of the flowers, an insinuation of decay, pierced her nostrils and filled her mouth and throat with nausea. Embarrassment and resentment made her stiff and bold – adamantly she refused to raise her eyes and look at him. Somewhere, above her, perhaps, someone was playing scales, going over them again and again, each time missing the same note. Then, as she listened, she heard her father’s voice, dry and rattling, catarrhal, saying, ‘Shameless! You are shameless! Going out, with your poor, your sainted, mother dead in the house. Running the streets like a loose woman. Speak to me! Say something! Tell me where you’ve been!’
But she did not speak. Instead, the angry words with which she wanted to answer him clogged in her throat, battered against her tight lips; she pushed past his arm, ran down the hall and up the steep stairs. And he ran after her, his breath whistling between his teeth, caught her and pulled her down to him, his hand under her chin pinching the flesh, forcing her head up. But she would not open her eyes – she would not look at him – even when he began softly to curse her, to call her names she did not know the meaning of, to push her head back and back until her senses reeled and the black depths, like a furry animal, like a soft drape, like the night of sleep, drowned her…
She was next aware that she was kneeling in a flower-banked room, her hands pressed to her side, the thick, hot, sweetish scent of flowers all about her, walling her in, enclosing her with the thing in the casket. They had forced her to gaze at the thing, the cold, inanimate flesh that had been her mother, the pale, waxy eyelids, the powdered cheeks, the insipidly smiling lips that had never curved in just that way in life. They, her father and the minister, with soft, coaxing words had commanded her to kiss those lips, insisted that she know that chill. Then, with the murmuring of friends and relations at her back, the murmuring of a Roman crowd in an amphitheatre awaiting the spectacle, she had sunk trembling to her knees, had closed her eyes but refused to clasp her hands to simulate prayer, had held them rigid to her sides while the resonance of the minister’s voice above her intoned the eulogy.
‘… a good woman who has walked with us, a woman we have all known and cherished, a woman who has cared for her child, nurturing her, protecting her and now, having reached her allotted span, has surrendered the bowl of life to this child, bade her drink from it, bade her live the good life she has lived, do as she has done, be her mother’s daughter and to live in God’s presence all her days…’
The words horrified her, swam in her head like great, ugly, murdering monsters. Her eyes still closed, her hands weighted and inert, she rose, swaying, and turned about. The minister’s voice droned on, a buzzing machine that manufactured a tone, a mechanical exhalation: the mass of friends and relatives sighed, a great, mingled breath of disapprobation. She opened her eyes and confronted them, the blobs of cloth, the bulges of legs and arms, the bobbing pink balloons that were their faces. She confronted them for an instant as the starch of terror ran through her veins, immobilizing her, making her a fitting companion to the thing in the casket. Then she fled down the aisle, past the neighbour’s child dawdling on the piano stool, out into the hall, up the narrow stairs. As she reached the landing, she heard her father call, heard his anger echo and rebound in time, begin its existence in limbo. And she knew that it was already too late to return, that, having fled, she must continue to flee; that, once having left that scene, she would not go back and be a part of it again. But she ran on, down the second-floor corridor, which she did not even pause to inspect, throwing it open with a wild gesture, propelled through it by her fear. And she found herself, not in her room at home, but in her room in the dormitory – safe in the dim
darkness of a familiar place that had yet to know her father’s wrath, apart in distance as well as time from the house where she had passed her childhood, the place of rage and death, the sweet miasma of funeral flowers.
Molly Winters, her room-mate, was sitting at the desk, her head pillowed in her hand, asleep over the textbook on orchestration that she had been studying. On impulse, she slammed the door, causing Molly to jump into frightened wakefulness, to demand reproachfully, ‘Where have you been?’
‘I went out to mail a letter. It’s raining very hard.’
She went to the closet and hung her streaming coat and hat, fluffed her wet hair with her hands and walked to the mirror to see if the wave was gone. No, it was still there – although she did look bedraggled! She began to brush her hair vigorously to dry it, ignoring Molly, who continued to stare at her as if she had never seen her before and never would again. The silly girl, she thought; wouldn’t she be jealous if she knew I’d written Jimmy Shad!
‘Ellen, I won’t be able to go to the Black Cat with you Saturday.’ Molly spoke hesitantly, wistfully. ‘My parents are visiting me this week-end. I got their letter this afternoon.’
She went on brushing her hair as if she had not heard, although her pulse had quickened at Molly’s words. If Molly could not go, that would mean that Ann wouldn’t go – Ann would never go any place unless Molly went, too. And if Ann did not go, she would have to go alone or not at all. She had yet to go to a night club by herself, and she did not want to now; it was not nice. But she had mailed that letter to Shad – if she did not go, she would miss her chance of meeting him. On the other hand, if she did go she could see him alone without either Ann or Molly to interfere. She was going to go, that was all there was to it! She brushed her hair more rapidly, more vigorously.
Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly Page 10