Mary McCarthy

by Mary McCarthy

  But now, for the first time, she recognized, she had done something that Warren might take a grave view of. He might not think it was funny or delightfully in character for Jane to be suppressing this telegram. And once she started lying, she would have to keep it up. If she did not produce the telegram the minute she got home, she would have to claim she had never got it, no matter what, assuming she was questioned. Her original plan had been to “discover” the telegram in their mailbox early tomorrow morning, when she could come to the village on some pretext. Warren, she reckoned, would be too busy packing and trying on the suit to press any inquiries about why it had not been delivered earlier. And by the time he got back from Savannah, it would be too late to follow it up; nobody would remember. Only two people, Jane reasoned, had seen her get the telegram this morning, and one of them, after all, was an idiot, who did not know one day of the week from another. The real problem, she now decided, was the Western Union man, who was the old-fashioned, conscientious type. If the phone was still off the hook and he kept trying to get them, he might send a man out from the phone company or even drive out himself in his old Ford to deliver it in person. Or would he check with the postmistress, to find whether the Coes had got their mail? That would make three people who knew. And what if Warren’s relations, down there, got worried when they did not hear from him and put a tracer on the telegram?

  Jane stopped the car by the roadside. She was shivering all over. This was what it felt like, apparently, to embark on a career of crime. It was not worth it; she could see that at once. Honesty was the best policy. Whoever said that was right. She marveled, sitting there, at the women who made a practice of deceiving their husbands. How did they do it? She thought of the New Leeds wives who had had clandestine love affairs: Ellen Gray, in the old days, and Martha, when she was married to Miles. She could understand their doing it once, but to keep it up, as a regular thing? Her teeth began to chatter, as her mind stole amazedly back over the course of romantic history: Queen Guinevere, Mary Stuart—living every hour in the fear of discovery. How had they done it? She had never approved, much, of adultery; the fun of marriage was sharing things with your mate. But she had never before considered how much courage adultery took, far more than the act repaid—days of suspense for a few seconds of pleasure. She had always thought of herself as a hardy soul, but now she saw that she had never really dared. Daring, she cogitated, was a matter of taking chances. It was like statistics or gambling; you had to compute probabilities. And there was always the unforeseen, the little thing you overlooked that would catch you up in the end—what they called contingency. She herself already felt like a different person, just for thinking of deceiving Warren, or rather she felt the same, but everything else had changed and become somehow slippery, like when Alice went through the looking-glass—into the fourth dimension, Warren said; that mathematician had explained it to him.

  Devoted as she was to Warren, she had always found his mathematical theories a little bit boring, and she noticed that other people did too. But now she perceived that there was a human side to all that: people who were afraid began to count and reckon, just as she was doing, and they were faced, straight off, with infinity. And when you were afraid, something queer happened to time. Looking at her watch, she found that only ten minutes had passed since she left the drugstore, though it seemed like an hour at least. Her thoughts, evidently, were racing like her pulse; that was what it must mean to live a double life, like Paul.

  And yet, she reflected, it was not anything wrong she was contemplating. To keep Warren in ignorance was the kindest and most sensible thing. It would be almost a sacrifice, on her part, to go through all this anxiety so that he could have a few hours’ peace. The only way it could hurt Warren not to know would be if the story got out that he had had a party the night after his mother’s death. But he could always say that he didn’t know, which would be true. Furthermore, it was not a party, exactly, but something educational. After all, it was a tragedy they were going to read, which would put Warren right in the mood.

  A smile twitched at Jane’s lips; her eyes goggled. She felt tickled by her own power of reasoning. Other people would say she was outrageous, but it was only the truth she was thinking. Wasn’t tragedy supposed to be a cathartic? She put on an innocent expression and arranged her plastic hood attractively over her tawny hair. A brand-new idea had come to her. She was going to the Western Union office and send a telegram for Warren to his old aunt: “Impossible leave today because of storm. Taking plane Savannah tomorrow morning. Grief-stricken. Love to all.” But as she considered this message, she saw that it would not do. It would satisfy the Western Union man, but the dating would give her away. Warren’s aunt would be bound to let the cat out of the bag by asking Warren about the storm; old people like that were always interested in weather conditions. Jane pondered. Lying was not easy, when you had to cover your tracks. But it stimulated your brain, like doing a chess problem: you had to think ahead to all the possible moves on the other side of the board. The easy thing would be to go home and tell Warren now and get it over with, but she could not bear to give up, now that she was started. A solution would come to her; solutions always had. The point was to word a telegram so that it could sound as if it had been sent tomorrow, in case Warren ever saw it, and at the same time to fix it so that the Western Union man would not wonder. . . . Just as she was despairing, the light suddenly broke: she would send a night letter! “Warren taking plane. He will arrive Savannah, today, Saturday, P.M. and will phone you from airport. Both of us very sad to hear of mother’s passing. Condolences to all. Signed, Jane Coe.” She counted over the words to make sure it was long enough not to surprise the Western Union man that it was going as a night letter; luckily, her small economies were famous in the village. He would not think a thing of it, unless she started explaining. “Never apologize, never explain,” she said to herself sagely, starting up the engine.

  Tomorrow morning, when she brought Warren the bad news, she would tell him that she had just sent that message for him, from the Western Union office, and he would say, “Wonderful, dear,” as he always did when she thought ahead for him. Then, even if his aunt should happen to show him the telegram, Warren would be too hot and bothered to notice the NL, for night letter, up among the symbols at the top. If he did, he would think it was a mistake.

  In the little telegraph office, heated by a station-stove, Jane lost her usual aplomb. The Western Union man in his brown buttoned sweater unnerved her; he was so silent and poky. He did not make a sound as she wrote out the message for him, printing in big letters. She felt she ought to say something as his cracked brown finger moved laboriously over the yellow sheet she handed him, marking each word while she waited, sweat breaking out on her brow. Finally, he looked up over his glasses and scratched his head. “Sure you want to send it this way, Mrs. Coe?” he said, with a sharp look. Jane nearly passed out; she felt just as she used to when she was called into the head mistress’s office. “As a night letter, you mean?” she blurted out. “Yes . . . I think so. . . . It’s cheaper, and the person it’s going to will be out all day anyway. When they get it, you see, today will be tomorrow, or the other way around.” She could have killed herself when the telegrapher, nodding his old head slowly back and forth like a rocker, finally saw fit to reply. “That’s your business,” he observed. “Tweren’t that I was thinking of.” He got up from his stool and meandered over to the window. “Looks to me,” he said, “like a three-day blow. Doubt Mr. Coe will get a plane tomorrow morning.” Relief made Jane giddy; she nearly laughed aloud. “Why don’t you add, ‘Weather permitting’?” she suggested brightly, pointing to the telegram. “Put it after ‘plane.’ ‘Weather permitting, he will arrive Savannah . . .’?” The telegrapher considered. “That’s it,” he nodded. “Don’t cost you no more.”

  Jane bolted out of the office. He was a rare one, all right, she said to herself, and he held her in the palm of his hand, if he only knew it, li
ke that awful creature in Madame Bovary. She was still shaking when she drove up to the cleaning woman’s house and parked for a minute to steady her nerves before having to face another native. The way they watched you steadily, without saying a word, seemed to her suddenly sinister, like being surrounded in the jungle. She longed for a confidante, to whom she could explain herself, but Warren was the only person who would understand and sympathize. Some day, she decided, she would tell him what she had gone through this morning, and they would laugh about it together; it would become one of Jane’s exploits. “Do you remember the time your mother died?” she could hear herself begin, and her face, in the car mirror, at once assumed a sheepish bad-girl look, with the lower lip thrust out and the long chin dropped, while the big blue eyes rolled appealingly, ready to dance, if only a partner invited. She was two people, really, as Warren had delightedly discovered, first on their honeymoon, and then again and again, just as he thought he had her settled. There were big Jane and little Jane, stern Jane and guilty Jane, downcast Jane and blithe Jane—she knew this from scolding herself as she used to scold her doll. And it was bad Jane, she recognized, who had the upper hand this morning. She had just done something awful. But now that she admitted it boldly, gazing hangdog at herself in the mirror, she promptly felt much better. Fear left her; some day she would confess to Warren and that would take care of remorse. She honked the horn for the cleaning woman and waited, at the wheel, unflurried. There was plenty of time for everything, so long as she took it easy and reminded herself that nothing mattered, really. She could still get Will Harlow, and if she didn’t, so much the worse. Moreover, if she was lucky, she might catch the high-school principal at lunch, when she went to get the glasses.

  Eight

  “Titus reginam Beronicen, cui etiam nuptias pollicitus ferebatur . . . statim ab Urbe dimisit invitus invitam.” Miles cleared his throat and looked around the Coes’ living room. The dinner dishes were cleared, and the play-reading was about to begin. Warren and Jane Coe sat by the fireplace, sharing a book and a hassock. They had elected not to take parts; it would be more fun, they said, just to listen. The rest of the company was paired: Martha was looking on with the vicomte; Dolly with Harold Huber, a thin white-haired man in a red flannel shirt who used to be a lawyer and now ran a duck farm; Miles with Harriet Huber, a big pink woman with a gray pompadour. Helen Murphy had not come. The child was sick, and Helen had been calling all day, to try to change the date to next week, but somebody on the line had left the receiver off the hook, so in the end Miles had driven over alone, not to let the Coes down. Martha was alone too, and for a while, at dinner, it had looked as if she and Miles were going to play opposite each other, as the Emperor and the Jewish queen, but Martha had insisted that Bérénice be given to Dolly. Martha was quite high; the gin-and-french, without ice, before dinner, had evidently gone to her head, and she had gulped a lot of claret. Warren had not seen her that way for years, not since she had been married to Miles, and he had felt troubled as he repeatedly filled her empty wine glass. Her dark eyes glittered in her pale oval face, and she spoke very positively, interrupting Miles in the middle of his harangues. At the same time, she looked very pretty, with her tapering neck and gold knot of hair, like a girl in a locket; she had not reached the usual New Leeds state, where the eyes would narrow and the features slip out of drawing, like a loose mask—a thing Warren hated, no matter how many times he saw it happen. He was apprehensive for Martha, knowing her as he did and sharing her nervousness about Miles. An outsider might not have realized that she was tight, but Dolly Lamb, Warren noticed, when she came in after dinner with the vicomte, had given her a quick, quizzical look, the minute she heard her laughing, in clear, sharp peals, at something that was not awfully funny. Martha had noticed the look too and hastily set aside her glass of B and B. She asked for more coffee, but unfortunately it had run out, and Warren did not want to bother Jane, who seemed tired and preoccupied, with making a fresh pot. Instead, he hopped out to the kitchen and brought everybody a glass of water.

  “Titus reginam Beronicen,” Miles began again. “Reginam,” murmured Martha to the vicomte, with a grimace, making the g hard. “I hate that soft, squelchy church Latin; after all, it’s Tacitus he’s quoting.” The vicomte furled his lower lip, like a little flag, and shrugged. “A matter of taste,” he said. “Who knows how the Romans pronounced?” “We do know,” whispered Martha. “Quiet!” Warren begged. “I want to hear Miles translate it.” “Say,” said Harold Huber, “include me out on the Latin. We came here to parler français, the way Harriet got it.” “It’s just the preface,” explained Dolly in an undertone, pointing to the text. “Racine gives the locus classicus he got the plot from.” “Oh,” replied Harold Huber. “Shoot,” he said to Miles. “ ‘Against his will and hers, Titus sent Queen Bérénice, whom, it is said, he had even promised to marry, away from the City.’ ” Miles glanced at Martha for confirmation. She nodded. “ ‘He, unwilling, sent her, unwilling, away,’ ” she said dreamily. “ ‘Statim’. ‘At once.’ ”

  “Pronto,” Miles chuckled. “Forthwith. Subito. There you have it, boys and girls. Yet in Racine it takes five acts to bring off.” He took out a handkerchief and blew a trumpet blast on his long nose. “Racine’s a microscopist,” he explained. “A slow-motion camera trained on the passions.” “Precisely,” said Martha. “Unlike Corneille,” continued Miles, “he’s interested in process. Racine’s a kind of scientist—bear in mind that this is the seventeenth century, the great age of French science and invention.” Warren nudged Jane. “Gee, this is interesting,” he said. “Racine,” Miles went on, with a gimlet stare at his audience, “is a scientific observer of human behavior; he takes a single action and enlarges it, under his microscope, the way you might study a plant or the organs of an animal.” “Yes,” put in Martha, excitedly. “How clever of you, Miles. That’s why the unities were necessary to Racine. People think the unities were arbitrary and artificial—a convention of academicians. But I can see that you could look at them as scientific, as if he were setting up a laboratory, for a controlled experiment.” “Excuse me for living,” Warren bashfully interjected, when he saw that she was through, “but what are the unities?” The vicomte sighed and laced his broad red hands over his belly; Harriet Huber yawned. “Time, space, and action,” ventured Dolly. Martha nodded. “The action takes place in one day on a single set. Here it’s the cabinet or closet, as they used to call it—Titus’s glorified private study, where he transacts his personal business. Next door, on one side, stage right, I think, are his imperial apartments; stage left, on the other side, are the apartments of the queen, Bérénice. Rome and Jerusalem, and the parley-ground between.” “What’s she doing there, anyway?” inquired Harold Huber. “She’s his guest,” said Martha. “She and her suite. In history, her brother Agrippa was with her.” “Isn’t she Titus’s mistress?” Jane wondered. “Evidently,” said the vicomte, widening his blue eyes. Miles and Martha exchanged an interrogatory look. “I don’t think so,” said Martha. “No,” said Miles. “She isn’t. Racine doesn’t set it up that way. For five years, they’ve been engaged, but he hasn’t tampered with her. Racine makes that plain in the preface”—he tapped the book—“where he compares her to Dido. Bérénice, he says, doesn’t have to die in the end because she, unlike Dido with Aeneas, hadn’t gone the whole way with young Titus.”

  “Oh, I bet they slept together,” said Jane airily. “Everybody knows about those long engagements. You can’t tell me they didn’t have intercourse.” She giggled. A look of amusement passed between Miles and Martha. “Not in Racine, Jane,” said Martha. “He says they didn’t, and you have to suspend your disbelief for the purposes of the play.” “Maybe they did in history, dear,” said Warren. “But this is a work of art, and you have to accept the artist’s convention.” “Oh, pooh,” said Jane. “If they didn’t sleep together, that was the whole trouble. That’s why their affair fizzled out. If he’d had them sleep together, he
could have had a happy ending.” “Maybe that’s why he didn’t,” suggested Dolly gravely. “He didn’t want a happy ending, you mean?” put in Warren. “Right,” said Miles.

  “Will somebody please tell us what this is all about?” Plump Harriet Huber querulously patted her pompadour. Except for her batik robes and the priests’ vestments she sometimes wore, she was a very ordinary woman, who had formerly been a singer. Harold Huber was brighter than she was and keen as a whip, Warren had found, on his specialty, which had been railroad law. He had come a cropper through some arbitrage deal and nearly been put in jail, but he had a sharp head for business and had made good, up here, with his duck farm, which he had bought up cheap from a derelict writer who had mortgaged the ducks to go to Paris. Everybody ate ducks, to help Harold, but poor Harriet always seemed a little out of things, like somebody’s mother. “All you people,” she complained now, “seem to have read the play ahead of time.” “Yes, Miles, give us the story,” chimed in Harold Huber. “I think Paul should do it,” said Jane with a hostess’s eye on the vicomte, who sat blinking drowsily in his canvas chair. “Let the baron tell it,” Miles conceded grandly. “Ah well,” said the vicomte, opening his eyes, “it is many years since I have seen it performed. Mon oncle, le duc, took me when I was a little shaver, to see Bernhardt in the role. It was before her break with the Comédie Française. He had a mistress, I believe, who was playing the part of the confidante—your part, my dear girl,” he added, to Martha. “Later, there was a quarrel between her and Bernhardt.” “Let’s get on with the story,” Miles said impatiently.