A Winter's Love

by L'Engle, Madeleine;

  “You’re not,” he said.

  “But I am. I must be. Courtney—”

  “And what do you think this makes me?” he said. “Courtney’s my friend. And here I am doing my utmost to make love to his wife without the slightest compunction.” Then he said in an odd way, “I’m not jealous of Courtney. I wonder why? I’m just terribly happy.”

  “Yes—” she said.

  “Emily, why couldn’t this have happened years ago?” he asked. “Why didn’t I meet you years ago?”

  —Years ago there was Kristina, she thought, but she said nothing. In the New York days Abe had talked often to her of the bitterness of the years with Betty and the joy of those with Kristina; now he mentioned neither of them and she did not feel their presence; she was not jealous of Kristina as Abe was not jealous of Courtney; at this moment of falling night and blossoming stars she was simply happy; in spite of her words there was no feeling but joy in her heart.

  Ahead of them Mimi lifted her voice in a Christmas carol, high and clear and triumphant.

  “Ce matin

  J’ai rencontré le train

  De trois grands

  Rois qui aliaient en voyage.”

  Sam and Virginia joined in, Sam’s voice still not entirely a steady baritone, Virginia’s husky alto much less assured than Mimi’s soprano.

  “I was—I was going to ask you and Sam to have Christmas dinner with us,” Emily said after a moment.

  Abe nodded. “Yes, I thought you probably would.”

  Ahead of them the voices rang clear against the snow.

  “Adeste fideles,

  laeti triumphantes…”

  “I don’t think we’d better,” Abe said. “Isn’t that what you were thinking?”

  “Venite, venite in Bethlehem.…”

  “I don’t know,” Emily said. “I would like so terribly much to have you come.” But she knew that Abe was right and that it would be better if they did not come.

  “Sam’s never been to the South of France,” Abe said. “I think we’ll leave a few days before Christmas and go to Bandol. We have some pretty good friends there.”

  “Are you sure it wouldn’t work out for you to come?” Emily asked desperately, not willing to accept the fact of it. “Virginia and Mimi will be so disappointed.”

  “You know it wouldn’t do, Emily,” Abe said gently.

  She wanted to be unhappy about it, she knew that she was going to be unhappy about it, but at this moment with the children singing ahead of them and Abe beside her, all she could feel was joy that she was alive once more; and even if what lay ahead was pain, pain was part of living.

  Now the children, showing off their prowess with languages, were singing a German carol,

  “Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her,

  Ich bring’ euch gute neue Mär …”

  The snow around them and the crimson-stained peaks of the mountains, the dark pines holding the snow on their outstretched arms, all these things communicated to Emily for the first time in weeks the strength of their beauty; and she felt a rush of physical well-being as the wind slapped against her cheeks and a few flakes of snow brushed her lips.

  Ahead of them the children had reached the rink and Emily and Abe hurried to catch up with them, and now she let Abe hold her hand as they ran across the snow. The music from the amplifier blared loudly one moment, then lost itself in a gust of wind, then reverberated back like an echo as it hit the sides of the mountains. Emily and Abe followed the children to a bench near the long white-napkined table on which stood great aluminum urns of coffee and tea and hot chocolate, covered dishes of croissants, brioches, shortbreads, scones, all kinds of pastries. Several white-coated waiters stood behind the table, stamping their feet, beating their hands together against the cold.

  Sam bowed deeply, almost losing his balance, and motioned the girls to a bench. “Asseyez-vous, mesdemoiselles. I brought a buttonhook. I’ll put on your skates for you. Take off your shoes, Vee.”

  “You won’t object if I offer to put on your skates for you?” Abe asked, smiling at Emily.

  She shook her head and sat down and Abe went down on one knee on the ice before her and took off one of her ski boots. For a moment he held her foot in its heavy white woolen sock in the palm of his hand.

  “I’d like to take that ungainly sock off,” he said, and slipped his fingers for a moment down inside it, “but I suppose I’d better not.”

  She shook her head and he held out one of her skates and she pushed her foot down into it. “You have beautiful feet,” he said softly, “and delicate, slender ankles.”

  At the far end of the enormous flooded field the hockey team was practising, and groups of skaters were standing around, watching. In the center of the rink, apparently oblivious of the admiring ring around him, a small, quite portly man with a silver goatee and a black beret, did figures with marvellous ease, his hands clasped behind his back, a look of serene concentration on his face, a monocle in one eye.

  “Believe it or not,” Emily said to Abe, “he’s considered one of the best mountaineers in the Haute Savoie.”

  All around were skaters, a few learning, tumbling, shrieking upon the ice; others skating in pairs, intent on each other; a group of university students playing crack-the-whip; and above them all were the mountains rising, their peaks flooded with crimson in the last light of the sun so that Emily sitting on the bench, Abe kneeling at her feet, were bathed in flaming light.

  Now Sam was putting on Mimi’s shoes, leaving Virginia sitting on the bench, moving the blades of her skates back and forth on the criss-crossed surface of the ice there at the edge of the rink. “That’s not tight enough, Sam,” Mimi said, and Sam started tightening the laces of her skates all over again, pulling at the buttonhook until it started to slip out of his cold fingers. When he had done he offered the hook to Abe.

  “Would you like this, dad? I should have asked you first.”

  “Thanks, I would, Sam,” Abe said, and tightened the laces of Emily’s skates. “Not too tight?” he asked her.

  “No. Just perfect.”

  Sam had his skates on now and looked from Mimi to Virginia and back to Mimi again, holding out his hands to pull her up. “I’ll be back for you in a moment, Vee,” he said, “I’ll just take Mimi Opp for a quick spin.”

  “Go on,” Virginia said. “I like to skate by myself. Honestly.”

  The music was loud and gay, the old song that would always mean to them that winter and the skating rink:

  Et—c ’est le même songe

  Qui—nous seduit jusqu’ au jour

  Oui.

  C’est—l’eternel et doux songe

  Qui—sonne aux heures d’amour.

  “Hold everything,” Abe said to Emily, and turned to Virginia. “Come along, Vee,” he said, “how about taking the old man around the rink once?” He held out his hands and after a fraction of hesitation she took them. “You skate beautifully,” Abe said after a moment. “How about trying a waltz?”

  “Oh—I’ll probably trip you up or something.”

  “I think we can manage.”

  She closed her eyes and her face stiffened into a grimace of concentration, but she managed the steps.

  “Bravo,” Abe said. “Now just relax. Enjoying the holidays?”

  “Oh—yes, thanks.”

  “Have fun at school?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Sam tells me you write poetry.”

  “Oh—that. Yes.”

  “Want to be a poet?”

  “Oh—yes. And stories, too. There’s not much of a living in it, though. I guess I’d have to do something else, too. Teach, like daddy, maybe. Mimi says I should just marry money.”

  Abe laughed. “Mimi has the practical French way of looking at it.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if I never married at all,” Virginia said.

  “What? Soured on marriage at this early age?” Abe asked.

  “Oh, I’m not so
ured on it at all,” Virginia explained earnestly. “It’s just that I don’t want to marry just anybody, and I’m afraid the right person might not ask me.” Then she went rigid in his arms.

  “What’s the matter?” Abe asked, as someone touched his sleeve and a voice said:

  “May I have the pleasure of this dance, Miss Bowen?” and there beside them was a thin, handsome lad, too handsome, grinning at them.

  “No,” Virginia said, “I’m sorry, I’m—I’m already dancing with someone.” She looked pleadingly up at Abe.

  “Still mad at me?” the boy asked.

  “I’m just—I’m just already skating,” Virginia stammered. “Please leave me alone, Beanie.”

  Beanie looked elaborately at his wrist watch. “I’ll give you ten minutes, pussycat,” he said. “Then I’m coming after you.” And with complete assurance he skated away.

  “So that’s the famous Beanie,” Abe said.

  “Yes. I wish he—he does make it so difficult. He just—he just won’t see he isn’t wanted. I don’t think I ought to dance with him if I—if I don’t want to, do you?”

  Before Abe could answer Sam and Mimi skated up to them. “Was that Beanie trying to make off with you?” Mimi demanded.

  “Yes.”

  “What an impression you must have made on him!”

  “Well, I’m not going to skate with him,” Virginia said.

  “Why not?”

  “He can go sit on a tack and press down, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Come on and skate with us,” Sam said. “Mimi’s trying to teach me to waltz and not succeeding. Maybe you’ll have better luck. I saw you just now with dad.”

  Relinquishing Virginia to them, Abe turned to look for Emily. She was skating slowly around the edge of the rink, with long, dreamy strokes of her blades. Abe skated quickly over to her. “Come, darling,” he said. “It’s all right if we skate together, isn’t it?”

  She put her hands in his and they went the entire round of the huge flooded field together without saying anything. Then Abe smiled down at her. “Don’t we do beautifully together, darling?” he asked.

  She nodded. Then she said, “Each time you call me darling I feel—I feel as though we were having an—an assignation.”

  He laughed. “We are, aren’t we?”

  “Yes. But, Abe, please be careful. Don’t let—don’t let the children—”

  His fingers tightened around hers. “Darling heart, please trust me.”

  “But I do,” she said. “I trust you implicitly. I always have.”

  “This is a first time,” Abe said. “When we’re old something will remind us and one of us will say, ‘Do you remember the first time we went skating together? The sky was full of stars and the Alps were beautiful about us. Do you remember how happy we were?’”

  “I’ll never forget,” Emily said softly.

  “The first time we met,” Abe said, “there in the crowded lobby of Carnegie Hall, full of cigarette smoke and people talking and coughing—and of them all it seemed to me that you were the only one who had listened to the music—Do you remember the night we went to the Lewisohn Stadium?”

  “Yes,” Emily said. “It was an all-Handel program.”

  “Where was Court?” Abe asked. “Why wasn’t he with us?”

  “He was on a ten-week lecture tour for the university,” Emily said, “speaking on the Homeric gods.” She looked at Abe in his dark skating clothes, his blue knit cap pulled down over his ears, starlight on his face, his brown eyes, his thin, rather bumpy nose. “Do you remember how hot it was that night?” she asked, her woolen-mittened hand clasped in Abe’s leather-gloved one, “at the Lewisohn Stadium?”

  “You wore a thin dress,” Abe said. “I don’t remember what it was like except that it was very pretty and your shoulders were bare.”

  “The stars were blurry,” Emily said, “the sky was so heavy and hot.”

  “And right after the concert it began to pour. I remember the thunder rumbling all through it, but the rain held off till the music was over.”

  “The people walking to the subway,” Emily said, “holding newspapers over their heads. And running into drugstores to get a soda and wait till the rain had stopped.”

  “And we walked,” Abe said. “Why didn’t we realize it then, Emily? People who aren’t in love don’t just walk for blocks and blocks in the rain the way we did. We didn’t even look for a taxi. And your thin dress got soaking and clung to your body. Your beautiful woman’s body. Why didn’t we know it then? It would have been so much simpler.”

  “Would it?”

  “Wouldn’t it?” he demanded. “You’ve had that many more years tying you to Courtney and your children. And I’ve had that many more years searching desperately for someone when all along you were the one I needed.”

  Across the rink Beanie was persistent. He skated to the end of the flooded field where Virginia, Mimi and Sam were practising figure threes, and bowed low before Virginia. “Come along, my haughty Virginia with the pretty cat’s eyes. Don’t be so mean to Beanie. Come skate with Beanie for five little old minutes.”

  “Don’t make an issue of it, Vee,” Mimi said in a low voice. “He isn’t worth it.”

  Silently Virginia let Beanie take her hands.—Anyhow it gives Mimi and Sam a chance to be together, she thought.

  “I saw you skating with Mr. Fielding,” Beanie said, “and I wasn’t deceived. You skate as well as I thought you did.”

  Virginia said nothing.

  They skated the entire length of the huge rink, and then Beanie swung around in front of Virginia, still holding her hands, and skated backwards. “Why so silent, pussycat?” he asked.

  “Because I haven’t anything to say.”

  “Did you know you have very pretty eyes? Pretty green kitten’s eyes. I like girls with green eyes and red hair.”

  “My hair’s not so terribly red.”

  “Come on, let’s make up,” he wheedled. “I said I was sorry.” She looked down at the ice helplessly. “Honest. And Parson Sam’s doing his best to reform me. So please don’t go on being mad at me. You can’t stay mad at little old Beanie.”

  “No.” Virginia smiled in spite of herself, pleased in spite of herself by Beanie’s remarks about her eyes. “I suppose you wheedle everybody out of it.”

  “Usually.” Beanie grinned at her. “Come on, let’s skate fast. Hold my hands tight and we’ll race.”

  They flew over the ice and now she could forget that it was Beanie with whom she was skating and simply enjoy the speed, cleaving through the cold dark air as a bird breaks through the sky.

  Emily, still flushed from skating, was fixing dinner when Gertrude, in ski clothes, white parka and black trousers, stalked into the kitchen. “Where’s everybody?” she demanded. “I knocked and I knocked and finally I just walked in.” She sat down and tipped her chair back against the wall.

  Emily looked up from the stove, a spoon in her hand, a smudge of flour on one cheek. “We’re all right here. Court’s in his office and Vee and Mimi are in the living room amusing Connie. Rather noisily, I admit. I guess they didn’t hear you.”

  “What’s that you’re cooking?” Gertrude asked. “Smells good. Ragout?”

  “Um.”

  “Got much more to do?”

  “No. Just let it simmer for an hour.”

  “Come on down to the casino and have a drink. There’s at least an iota of gaiety there at Christmas-time and I’m getting bored with the Splendide.” Emily hesitated and Gertrude pushed her mahogony hair back from her white forehead with an impatient gesture. “Oh, come on. I had to get out or go nuts and if I go on down to the casino by myself I’ll drink too much and get potted and Kaarlo won’t like it. Bring the kids along if you want to. I’ll treat them to lemonade. Or are Virginia and Mimi old enough for vermouth cassis?”

  “They’re all right here with Connie.”

  “Come on, then.”

  “All right, but I
can’t stay long.”

  “Who said anything about staying long?” Gertrude demanded. “I just want a drink. One lousy little drink. Even Clément wouldn’t deny me one lousy little drink.”

  Emily put her outdoor things on again, told the girls where she was going, and followed Gertrude. Outdoors the cold seemed as tangible as black marble, and Gertrude led the way, refusing Emily’s arm, stepping quickly and nervously over the hard-packed snow. As they got into the village an urchin, far too scantily clothed, Emily thought, tagged along behind them, whistling through his teeth, one note, repeated and repeated, until he disappeared into an alley, yelling at some unseen antagonist, “Hé, espèce de putain!”

  The hobnails of their boots scraped against the snow and Emily, slipping and almost falling, thought that the only reason she was tagging along with Gertrude like this was that she, too, found it impossible to stay alone with her thoughts. And then there was an only half-admitted desire to go back to the casino (like a criminal to the scene of his crime) so that she could live again that evening with Abe, knowing that his presence would be there, almost a visual impact against her retina, and that his words would echo against her ear, louder than when they had first been spoken. A strange thing, this desire to visit again the scene of that evening (though this time she would be going only into the bar, would indeed not even see the beautiful formal room in which they had dined) almost as though she had not skated with him that afternoon, as though she would not see him again.

  But when? When? When Abe and Sam had left them at the villa nothing had been said about another meeting, and was it because this was understood, or because Abe felt that another meeting, like Christmas dinner, was something better avoided?

  As they went into the casino Gertrude raised her head at the sound of music and laughter like a horse to the scent of danger. Through large open doors they could see the green baize of the roulette table, hear the sound of chips being raked across, and the voice of the croupier intoning, “Faits vos jeux, messieurs, ’dames, faits vos jeux.”

  “In the days when I had money to throw around I used to like rouge et noir,” Gertrude said. “I’d probably go in now and then and lose my last sou trying to make a haul even now if Kaarlo weren’t so dead against it.”