And Gertrude.
Time slapped against her like a gust of wind and blew her back into the path by Mimi, leaving the lights of the village, turning now onto the darker, colder path leading to the villa. Gertrude could not die there in that firelit room in the chalet. Death in the present could not intrude like a discord into the harmonic pattern of death in the past and death in the future—
She clutched the ice cream bag to her and staggered slightly and put her hand out towards his arm and righted herself and coughed gently and was brave again and she looked up and there she was ahead of herself in the snow clasped in her lover’s arms, dissolving in love.
But the picture did not fade and Mimi’s hand came roughly against her arm and they stood frozen still on the snow and Mimi’s sibilant intake of breath seemed like a scream but the two figures at the turn of the path did not hear.
When Emily went into the kitchen Courtney was sitting by the stove reading the paper and Connie was trying to fit together the pieces of a picture puzzle. “Where are Virginia and Mimi?” Emily asked, stepping from one world into another, from the world of love into the world of dailiness.
“They went to the village to get ice cream for dinner,” Courtney said. “It seemed a reasonable enough request. But I thought if it was too cold for Connie to go skating this afternoon it was too cold for her to go get ice cream and I’d finished work for the day so I came in here to sit with her. I have a small libation made for us.” He handed her a glass.
“Oh, thanks, darling. I had a Pernod at the casino with Gert, but this looks very pleasant, anyhow.” She took a sip and stood leaning against the sink.
“Anything on for this evening?” Courtney asked.
Emily shook her head. “Not a thing. Bed early for a change. How about taking the three girls to the mer de glâce tomorrow? These are the holidays so couldn’t you take a day off from your typewriter?”
“Why not?” Courtney said. “I think I’d rather enjoy going.”
“Good. I’ll tell the girls they can plan on it, then.”
Connie looked up from her puzzle. “Me, too? Am I going, too?’
“Yes, Connie. You, too.” The heavy front door slammed and Emily looked up,” listening. “There come Virginia and Mimi now.”
“May I go see them?”
“Oh—all right, Con. They had a vacation from you all afternoon.” As the child ran off, Emily asked Courtney, “She didn’t bother you while we were skating?”
“No. She slept till just a few minutes before you got back. And Virginia and Mimi gave her a bath before they went for the ice cream.”
“Good.” She looked away from him, running her finger over the scarred porcelain lip of the sink. “I was going to ask Abe and Sam for Christmas dinner but they’re going on down to the South of France for Christmas.”
“You’ve been lonely this winter,” Courtney said abruptly. “You’ve missed our Sunday night gatherings; you’ve missed going out. I’ve realized that.”
“I’ve managed very nicely,” she said, smiling at him, reaching out to touch her finger against his lean, narrow face. As she moved her hand towards him he reached up and ran his hand across his hair, not a rebuff, exactly, but the instinctive gesture of a solitary animal disturbed and troubled by too intimate contact.
“I haven’t been too lonely,” Emily said lightly, withdrawing her hand. “After all, there’s always Gertrude.”
Courtney finished his drink and put the glass down on the bare wood of the kitchen table, polished to a silky gray from innumerable scrubbings. “Strange, unhappy creature, that Gertrude,” he said absently.
“Court, what do you think of Gert and Kaarlo?” Emily asked abruptly.
His narrow blue eyes widened in surprise. “Think of them? In what way?”
“Their way of life.”
“I don’t imagine it can be very satisfactory.”
“Do you—do you disapprove of it?”
“I don’t know. I suppose they have their own reasons for not marrying.” His voice was slightly impatient.
“This whole business about living outside the conventional social codes can be very confusing,” Emily said.
“Why?”
“Gert’s husband is dead, Kaarlo’s never had a wife, neither of them has any family they need consider. So if they don’t want to marry I don’t see any particular reason why they should.”
“Not everybody is as unencumbered as Gertrude and Kaarlo. There’s usually a husband or a child or someone around to be hurt.”
“I suppose so.”
Courtney laughed. “My dear Emily, you are as runny and sweetly naïve now as you were when I first saw you sitting in the front row at my history lectures.”
“I am not naïve!”
“Of course you are.”
“I’m a big girl now and I ought to have done some developing. It may have been funny and sweet when I was sixteen, but it would be pretty pathetic in me now.”
“All right,” Courtney said, “you’re as sophisticated as the Sphinx.”
“Do you think Gert’s sophisticated?”
“Not particularly. And a fool to behave as she does to Kaarlo. Wonder how long he’ll stand for it, or Gertrude herself, for that matter? Just as well they aren’t married.”
“I don’t think being married would stop Gert if she wanted somebody.”
“No, Emily, I know that.”
“Has she ever made a pass at you?”
“On occasion.”
“I don’t think I like that,” Emily said after a moment.
“It couldn’t have been less important.”
“Would it bother you if somebody made a pass at me?”
He laughed again. “People have, haven’t they?”
She laughed, too. “On occasion. And also completely unimportant. But I think I’d prefer you to be bothered.”
“All right. I’m wildly jealous. That make you feel any better? What’s this all about anyhow?”
“Nothing particular. I suppose I’m just being naïve again. Would it bother you if I should—if I should ever have an affair with somebody or something?”
“I suppose it would bother me, yes.”
“Would you still want to keep me?”
“I imagine so, Emily. What nonsense you’re talking. You’ve been seeing too much of Gertrude.”
“But wouldn’t it hurt you terribly?”
“I wouldn’t enjoy it, but I’d probably get over it. But you’re not like Gertrude, you know, and thank God for that.”
This could hardly be construed as permission, permission even in an indirect way to sleep with Abe. But after all it wouldn’t kill Courtney. After all perhaps her compunctions were simply another indication of her naïveté.
But could they do it? Could they be together a few times and then just let go? It was done, and not infrequently. It was done by any number of people. But that, she thought, was when it didn’t matter, when it was purely—what was the word? Carnal. But she couldn’t just say, “All right. Abe, let’s go up to your room, taking care, of course, that Madame Pedroti doesn’t see us and that Sam’s busy elsewhere. Let’s be lovers a few times and then you go on down to Bandol with Sam for the rest of the holidays and maybe I’ll see you one of these years in New York or Indiana.”
—But that’s what I’m going to do, she thought, moving from the table and looking unseeingly into the pot of ragout still simmering gently on the stove. That’s what I’m going to do because I’m weak and my desire is strong and it wouldn’t kill Courtney and perhaps it will be all right, perhaps then we will be able to let this thing go and just go back to being friends again the way we were in New York.…
“Remember that first summer we spent in Paris?” Courtney said, “and I took you to Jacky Bowman’s studio for dinner?”
She pulled herself back to the kitchen, back to Courtney. “How could I ever forget it?” she asked lightly.
“I think it was a terrible disillusi
onment to you,” Courtney said, smiling. “I’d told you that he was living in sin with a girl from Arkansas who was in Paris supposedly studying art. They’d been living together for almost five years. So I took you there and she’d put on at least twenty pounds and there were corsets and other assorted articles of underwear hanging on lines about the room and she certainly couldn’t cook and there wasn’t a bottle of wine in the place.”
“Evian water, I remember,” Emily said. “They’d bought it especially for me.”
“I’ll never forget your face,” Courtney said. “There was illicit love in all its squalor, and your romantic heart was almost unbearably disappointed. Let’s eat now, Em. It’s late and I’m hungry.” He stood up and took his glass to the sink.
At dinner Virginia was so silent that Emily asked her several times if she were feeling ill; but though the child denied it, as soon as Connie was settled for the night she went upstairs, too. After a few minutes Emily followed her up. Virginia was huddled under the covers, her eyes tightly closed, her hair rather wild-looking as though she had been pushing her fingers through it.
“Vee,” Emily said.
Virginia made an almost imperceptible movement.
Emily came into the chilly room and sat down on the side of the bed, putting the back of her hand briefly against Virginia’s forehead, her cheek, her neck; but the child was quite cool. “Head ache, darling?”
“No.”
“Throat sore?”
“No.”
“No pains anywhere?”
“No.”
“Then what is it? You haven’t acted like yourself all evening.”
“Nothing.”
Emily’s hand went out and she began to stroke Virginia’s forehead, gently, rhythmically, smoothing back the straggly red locks, suddenly dank and lifeless as though the child were indeed ill. After a moment Virginia moved away, burying her face in the pillow.
“Darling, what is it?” Emily asked. “Has someone hurt you?”
A shake of the head.
“You were so happy this afternoon while we were skating. What’s happened to disturb you so now?”
“Nothing.”
“Mimi hasn’t done anything to upset you, has she?”
Another shake of the head.
“Can’t you tell mother about it?”
“There isn’t anything to tell.”
Emily tried to make her voice light. “Any time you can’t eat ice cream for dessert I know there’s something wrong.”—Could it be because she knows Sam prefers Mimi and she feels hurt and left out? Emily wondered.
“I think I have a slight stomach-ache,” Virginia said. “Would you play the piano for me, mother? Just for a few minutes? I think maybe it would put me to sleep.”
“Of course, darling.” Emily bent over Virginia and kissed her tenderly, then stood up and tucked the covers in about the child’s thin shoulders.
At the head of the stairs she met Courtney. “I’m coming up to read,” he said. “How about putting the plumbing to bed?”
“I’ll do it when I come up. Virginia wants me to play the piano for a few minutes to put her to sleep. Won’t bother you, will it?”
“No, I like it. Might put me to sleep, too. Is she all right?”
“I’m not sure. She says she has a stomach-ache.”
“That could be it,” Courtney said. “Children always seem to get upset stomachs at Christmas-time. I know I always did. How about bringing a couple of hot-water bottles when you come up? I forgot, as usual, to fill mine.”
“All right. Do you want it now?”
“No. I’ll keep my socks on till you come up.”
She went on downstairs. Mimi was curled up in one of the plush chairs, reading. “Virginia all right?” she asked.
“She says she has a stomach-ache,” Emily said. “Do you know if anything could have happened to upset her, Mimi?”
“She’s probably just in one of her moods,” Mimi said, looking down at her book. “At school Virginia’s famous for her moods. Just one of the problems of puberty. Don’t worry about her, Mrs. Bowen.”
“She asked me to play for her.” Emily sat down on the rickety piano bench and held her fingers for a moment over the piano keys. Then she began a Chopin nocturne.
When she had finished Mimi said, “That was terrific, Mrs. Bowen. You ought to play more, anybody who can play like that. Your family’s just too used to you to appreciate you.”
Emily laughed. “Thanks, Mimi.”
“Play something else now, please.”
Emily started another nocturne, and then the phone rang. She ran to answer it, explaining her unwonted haste by calling back to Mimi, “It’ll waken Virginia.”
She fumbled for the receiver in the dark hall, banged her hand against the antiquated phone box, finally managed to tug the receiver off the hook.
But of course it wasn’t Abe.
“Emily, it’s Gert. I’m lonely. Come on up.”
“Where’s Kaarlo?”
“Oh, he’s asleep. All this getting up before dawn’s crack. Every once in a while he goes to bed right after dinner and I could jump upland down on him and he wouldn’t notice. So do come up and keep me company.”
“I can’t tonight.”
“Why?”
“Virginia isn’t well, and I’m going to bed early myself for a change.”
“Damn. Must you?”
“Yes, I must.”
“What’s the matter with Virginia?”
“Oh, nothing much. At least I hope not. I think it’s just a slightly upset stomach.”
“And you really won’t come?”
“Not tonight, Gert.”
“Then stay on the phone and talk to me for a few minutes, will you? I’m depressed.”
“Let me get the chair from Court’s study, then. No, that won’t do any good, the phone’s too high. Okay, but just a few minutes, hunh? I’m tired and the wall’s too cold to lean against.”
“Everybody in your household in bed already?”
“Everybody except Mimi and me.”
“I like your Mimi,” Gertrude said. “If Henri and I had had a child I like to think she’d have been something like Mimi.”
“Yes,” Emily said, shifting her weight from one leg to the other. “She’s a nice child.”
Gertrude sighed in exasperation, the sound coming sibilantly through the earpiece. “But that’s exactly what she’s not. She’s not in the least nice. That’s what I like about her.”
“Do you think Virginia’s ‘nice’?”
“No. I pay her that compliment. I’m not—simpatico—with her as I am with Mimi. But I think Virginia’s an artist. Disagreeable and terribly immature right now. But she’ll grow up one day and be somebody. I don’t know what. Maybe an actress or a poet. But Somebody.” Then her voice changed, tightened. “I have a bone to pick with you. Might as well pick it now.”
“Now what?” Emily asked, leaning for a moment against the wall that was so ice cold that she could feel it through her heavy sweater.
“Kaarlo’s cousin Pierre tells me he saw you and Kaarlo going into the first hut yesterday morning.”
“Yes, we did. Why?”
“What were you doing there?”
“I was out for a walk and Kaarlo was coming down from the mountain and we met just before the hut and we went in and sat and Kaarlo made coffee.”
Gertrude’s voice was cold as the wall. “I’ll thank you to lay off Kaarlo if you please, Emily.”
Emily stood up straight. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“Just what I say. Keep your hands off Kaarlo.”
“You must be absolutely mad,” Emily said after a moment. “Or did Pierre make up a tale? It doesn’t sound like him.”
“Pierre made up no tales. He simply remarked in passing that he’d seen you and Kaarlo going into the first hut. He didn’t make anything out of it. I did.”
“Then you can unmake it. What utter nonsens
e, Gert!”
“Is it?”
“You know it is.”
“Well, knowing you, perhaps it is. I’m sorry.”
“You’d better be.”
“I said I was.”
“Okay, then,” Emily said, but her voice betrayed her anger.
“I wouldn’t blame you, you see,” Gertrude said. “So don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad.” She shivered. “We’ve been talking for hours and hours and you may have the phone by you but I’m standing up in the cold hall and it’s worse than Greenland. I’ve got to hang up before I congeal.”
“Oh, hell,” Gertrude said. “All right. Going to get up to see me tomorrow?”
“Do my best.”
“Make it more than your best, will you? Good night, Em.”
“’Night, Gert.” Emily put the earpiece back on the hook and returned to the living room. Mimi was still there, reading, “Not ready for bed yet, Mimi?” she asked.
“Just going to finish my page,” Mimi said. “But play something else first, please, Mrs. Bowen. Finish the nocturne you started and then one more thing. Please!”
Emily sat back down at the piano and held her hands out over the keys. She finished the nocturne as requested and was starting Chabrier’s Suite Pastorale when Mimi asked suddenly,
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