A Winter's Love

by L'Engle, Madeleine;

  “Good,” Emily said.

  “Believe it or not, I’ll be teaching some actual Greek as well as everything else. Haven’t done that in a long time and it ought to be fun.”

  “Yes,” Emily said.

  “Emily, where are you? You’re so far away.”

  “I’m right here, Court,” Emily said.

  Across the room the orchestra began playing the Chanson des Rues.

  “Nice sentimental music,” Courtney said. “Hey, there’s somebody waving at us.”

  Emily’s heart went cold with fear (and why was she so afraid now of seeing Abe when she had run so eagerly after him earlier that evening?), but it was not Abe, it was Michel Clément, sitting with the beautiful and expensive woman who was his wife. Emily waved back.

  “Let’s have another drink, Emily,” Courtney said.

  “Oh—” she reached across the table for his hand and smiled and then yawned—“let’s go home, Court. I’m half asleep.”

  “Home? Where is home? Is that villa with the spiders home? I hope Tom’s right about the house. I want a nice conventional little white cottage with green shutters and a hundred feet of bookshelves, floor to ceiling.”

  Emily started to push her chair back. “Come on, darling.”

  “No. Got to listen to the music. Playing it expressly for us. Got to give them a pourboire for playing it expressly for us. Pretty sentimental ditty. Let’s have another drink.”

  —Well, at this point why not? Emily thought. Getting all rigid about drinking never stopped anybody from having another. More apt to make them take three more. “All right, darling,” she said, and signalled to the waiter.

  Courtney listened to the music for a moment, then: “Isn’t much alternative, Em.”

  “Alternative to what?”

  “Richwood College. Indiana. I don’t like writing in a vacuum. I like fitting it in between a dozen other things and swearing because I don’t have enough time to do it. If I’m a writer I’m a teaching writer. So we have to go to Indiana. There isn’t any place else.”

  “There are other universities,” she said, denying now the words she had spoken to Abe.

  “No place I want to go. Every place I’ve offered myself the responses have been full of enthusiasm and cordiality—and negative. I’ve written a few letters this winter. I haven’t shown you the answers.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with Tom’s college,” Emily said.

  “Except we like living in New York.”

  “Maybe we’ll like the Middle West.”

  “Not much like New England, I don’t think,” Courtney said. As he put down his glass he slopped some of the contents onto the table and Emily wondered how she was going to get him down the icy path to the villa. “As for me,” he said, “I was born and brought up in New York and the only time I’ve lived out of it was my first teaching years and the stint in Washington during the war. I like the filthy lying slut of a beautiful city. Let’s have another drink and a toast to New York and to the great primordial womb that spawned among other things Courtney Bowen.”

  It got later and later and still he did not want to leave and she realized with a feeling of panic that he would never be able to make the icy path back down to the villa without falling. He had chosen the hotel because they would be walking downhill on the way home, but it looked as though he would do more sliding and tumbling than walking; and it was too cold a night to think of struggling along with him, pulling him up out of snowdrifts, trying to keep his feet steady on the ice, with anything but a sinking heart.

  Now he began to recite poetry, his voice a little too loud so that people at neighboring tables turned to look at him.

  “Lars Porsena of Clusium”

  Courtney intoned,

  “By the nine gods he swore

  That the great house of Tarquin

  Should suffer wrong no more.”

  “Please, Court,” she said softly. “Please stop.” She could see Dr. Clément dancing with his wife, and once he looked over at her and smiled and she was afraid that he might come ask her to dance.

  Courtney continued, his voice still loud and clear:

  “But when the days of golden dreams had perished

  And even despair was powerless to destroy,

  Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,

  Strengthened and fed without the aid of joy.”

  “Please, Court,” she said again.

  He smiled and put down his glass. “Perhaps Virginia will be able to write that way some day. Though I hope she’ll never feel that way. Please God.”

  Suddenly the lights in the room went down and they were plunged into complete darkness for a moment before a spotlight splashed onto the center of the dance floor. Vincent, Madame Pedroti’s sleek and suave master of ceremonies, introduced a singer. She came slinking through the tables in a long chartreuse dress, undulating her hips suggestively until she reached the spotlight and the microphone. As though it were her lover she held the microphone to her, and started singing throatily into it.

  “She’s trying to be a combination of both Piaf and Dietrich,” Emily whispered to Courtney, “and succeeding at neither.”

  In the corners of the room the tables were in almost complete darkness so that people had to guess at where their mouths were if they were eating. Little red points lit up the blackness from cigarettes, and when a match flared it was as though a tiny spotlight were thrown for a moment on a particular table. There was a kind of soothing magic about the darkness in spite of the spotlight on the center of the floor and the deliberately hoarse voice of the singer.

  There was considerable applause as the song was finished, the spotlight went off and the lights went on, making everyone blink a little, and the singer swayed over to a table where an obese man in evening clothes, with an expensive cigar, waited, and sat down next to him, passing her hand caressingly over the rolls of fat on the back of his neck. Now the spots showed on the tablecloths, the cigarette butts in the ashtrays, lipstick stains on napkins, signs of strain and dissipation on faces.

  Clément and his wife left. They looked over at Emily’s and Courtney’s table; Madame Clément inclined her head slightly, coldly; Dr. Clément smiled warmly.

  “Let’s have some coffee,” Emily said.

  “Rather have your coffee when we get home. Don’t feel like paying old octopus Pedroti for her filthy coffee. Rather have Emily’s coffee. Much better coffee any old how.”

  Finally then he sent for the bill which he had to sign. He walked fairly steadily as they left the hotel, but rather as though he were on ice, and it was when they actually got on ice, she knew, that the trouble would begin. And indeed, as they stepped out into the cold, Courtney turned to her, saying, “Emily I’m very wobbly on my feet.”

  She put her arm around him. “We’ll manage,” she said. “Just don’t try to take it too fast.”

  The hotel driveway itself was not so bad. Courtney leaned on her and put one foot gingerly in front of the other, then slipped and almost fell, finally finding his balance by putting both arms around her neck and nearly throwing her. “This leaving New York and going to Richwood,” he said, “This is not a step up. No one could possibly construe it as a step up.”

  “The important thing is that you’ll be doing what you want to do and what you should be doing,” she said. “Only snobs will be thinking about whether or not it’s a step in either direction, and they don’t matter.”

  “Emily, don’t you see,” he said, desperation in his voice. “You want me to share and I’ve been trying to share, I tried tonight, but right now you’re asking too much of me. It’s as though I were ill, as though I were mentally ill. I know I’m isolated from you, from the children, from life. It’s as though there’s a great sheet of glass between me and the rest of the world. I can see people, I can talk to them, but there’s no actual contact with anyone. It’s even between us, between you and me, this strange, cold barrier. And if, by isolating myself
, I’ve also isolated you from me, if I should—if I should have driven you from me, I—But I’m going to break it, Emily, I promise you one of these days I’m going to be able to break it. Physical effort has been almost impossible for me this winter, but I did save you from the crevasse on the glacier, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, darling, you saved me,” she said.

  They turned out of the hotel driveway now, crossed the main road, and started down the narrow lane to the villa. Almost immediately Courtney’s feet went out from under him and, this time, clutching at Emily did not save him; he fell full force into a drift at the path’s edge, fortunately not hitting the hard-packed ice of the path itself. For a moment she thought he was going to disappear completely into the snow, but then he flung himself free, waving arms and legs, and shouting with laughter. “Come on,” he cried. “Pull! Pull!”

  She took hold of his hands and she began to laugh, too, as she stood there, tugging.

  “Court!” she gasped. “Come on, try to help yourself. I can’t budge you.”

  He continued to laugh. “I’m freezing to death! Come on, Emily, pull!”

  “How about a helping hand?” a voice behind her said, and she whirled around.

  “Dr. Clément!” she cried. “Hello!”

  He took Courtney’s hands and with one quick, strong jerk had him on his feet. “Now,” he said, “I’ll go the rest of the way with you.” He took one of Courtney’s arms and indicated to Emily that she take the other.

  “Isn’t it rather late for a doctor to be out gallivanting?” Courtney asked, still weak with laughter.

  “I’m not on call. Come on, Bowen, let’s step it up a bit.”

  Now that he was firmly supported on either side Courtney could walk along quite steadily, and he started to sing La Marseillaise, for some reason obscure to Emily. “Come on, you two,” he shouted. “Sing!”

  Quite unconcerned Clément lifted his voice to the night also and their voices were clear and strong across the snow:

  “Allons, enfants de la patrie,

  Le jour de gloire est arrivé!”

  “Come on, Emily, sing!” Courtney insisted, and she joined in, and they reached the villa, still singing. Clément went in with them, helping Courtney up the stairs.

  “Get him to bed with a couple of hot-water bottles,” he said to Emily. “I’ll wait for you downstairs.”

  “Thank you,” Emily said, “you’ve been terribly kind, and you really don’t need to wait. Everything’s fine now.” She went back into the bedroom where Courtney was sitting on the side of the bed pulling off his shoes and socks. “Darling, please get undressed. I’m going downstairs and fill the hot-water bottle and fix a glass of warm milk for you.”

  “You’re nice, Emily,” Courtney said, “you’re very sweet, very kind.” He dropped one of his shoes on the floor with a thump.

  “Try to be quiet so you won’t waken the children.” She bent over and kissed the top of his head, gently, as she might have kissed Connie.

  Clément was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs and he followed her out to the kitchen, watching her as she built up the fire in the stove and pulled forward the kettle.

  “Thank you again for rescuing us,” she said, pouring milk into a saucepan. “Everything’s really all right now, so please don’t feel you need stay.”

  “I don’t,” he said. “Aren’t you going to offer me a cup of coffee?”

  “I’d love to.” She looked up at him in some surprise. “It won’t take a moment for the water to boil for the hot-water bottles and the milk to heat for Courtney.”

  Clément sat down. “I gather this kind of thing doesn’t happen very often?”

  “No. And every man’s entitled to it once in a while.”

  “It doesn’t upset you?”

  She laughed. “Yes, it does. But that’s quite stupid of me. I exaggerate its importance.” She picked the kettle up from the stove, filled two copper bottles, and wrapped them carefully in towels. “I had an uncle I adored who was an alcoholic,” she said, pouring the hot milk in the big cup Courtney used in the morning. “I suppose that has something to do with it. I’ll be right back down.”

  When she returned Dr. Clément had the coffee pot on and the fragrant smell was beginning to pervade the kitchen. “Oh—thanks,” she said. “You’re really very handy to have around, aren’t you?”

  “Sit down,” he ordered in his peremptory doctor’s manner. “You look tired.”

  “I am, a bit.” She pulled up one of the kitchen chairs and dropped into it. “I’m afraid it’s a sad commentary on my advancing age. I never used to get tired as easily as I’ve seemed to this winter.”

  “But you’ve been well?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said carelessly. “I’m strong as a horse. Just old age. Or maybe it’s premature senility. I haven’t felt very alive most of this winter. And I’ve resented it.”

  “And now, at this moment?”

  “What about this moment?”

  “Are you alive?”

  She turned from him to get down coffee cups. “Yes, I’m alive.” She poured the coffee and handed him a cup.

  He settled himself more comfortably, and stirred his coffee as though deep in thought, saying after a moment, “Do you know you are a very attractive woman, Mrs. Bowen?”

  “I?” She pushed the milk pitcher and sugar towards him.

  He looked at her over his coffee cup, his eyes serious, his lips smiling. “Did it occur to you to wonder why I came along just at the moment I did tonight?”

  “I was too grateful to wonder.”

  “I saw that you were having difficulties in getting your husband home, and all winter I have thought, here is a woman I would like to know better; so after I had taken my wife home I turned around and headed back for the hotel.”

  She sat silent, drinking her coffee. The night noises were suddenly loud around them, the creaking of the house, the baying of the dogs, the ticking of an old tin alarm clock on the kitchen shelf. Upstairs one of the children coughed in her sleep. Finally Emily said, “I’m very grateful that you did come when you did. It was a most propitious moment. Thank you.”

  “May I take that as a double entendre?”

  “No,” she said. “It was quite straightforward.”

  He held out his coffee cup to be refilled. “How did you meet your husband?”

  “He was one of my professors at college. I got to know him while I was doing some graduate work.”

  He reached out and touched one of her hands. “You really are very charming, Mrs. Bowen. When I ask you questions you answer me just like a good little girl. Sometimes I wish my wife weren’t quite so sophisticated. Let us talk about each other, shall we?”

  It took an effort for her not to look at the clock on the shelf. “All right. You talk about yourself.”

  “I am very simple,” he said. “I am a doctor fortunate enough to be connected with an excellent hospital. I have a wife who is far too beautiful for her own good and who would not stay with me for a minute were I not reasonably successful; and I, who have for some time known this, therefore have no compunction in pulling the rather inebriated husbands of attractive women out of snowdrifts and insinuating myself into their homes. I suppose you would be very upset if I were to kiss you?”

  “I would prefer you not to.”

  “I was afraid that would be your reaction. A pity. But in any case tell me about yourself.”

  “You already seem to have found out almost everything,” she said.

  “Gertrude de Croisenois says you play the piano superbly.”

  She stood up angrily. “This is getting very exaggerated. I play the piano reasonably well. I get a great deal of personal pleasure from it. And that’s as far as it goes.”

  “Sit down,” he ordered. “There is nothing to be upset about. You never wanted to be a professional?”

  “Sure, when I was fifteen I had the usual romantic dreams of being a great concert pianist and playin
g in a gorgeous evening gown, the ugly duckling turned into a swan, to all the greatest and most distinguished audiences in America and Europe. Fortunately I gained enough musical knowledge to know that I could never be anything but second class. My music is one thing I’ve managed to be realistic about.”

  “Will you play for me some day?”

  She sighed. “This is becoming a Thing, too. Yes, if you like.”

  “Now tell me more about yourself, “he said.

  She finished her coffee without speaking. Then, “You know all about me. But perhaps you could help a friend of mine solve a problem.”

  “Go ahead,” he said. “I enjoy personal problems when I have no responsibility as a physician to solve them.”

  “She told me,” Emily said, “because sometimes it clarifies issues to tell them to someone else, to put them into words.”

  “Go on.”

  “This woman—she’s about my age—has a husband she loves deeply. And a while ago she fell madly in love with another man.” The drinks she had had with Courtney, which were giving her the courage to make this confession to Clément, had also befuddled her mind and she knew that she was doing it stupidly. And perhaps it wasn’t courage at all but the utmost in cowardice which was causing her to spill over now, a weak inability to contain her problems within herself.

  “And?” Clément asked.

  “And—and now she doesn’t know what to do.”

  “She is this other man’s mistress?”

  “No. She—she was brought up in New England in a climate of opinion where something like that is considered a terrible sin, and it’s deeply embedded in her. And I told you that she loved her husband. Oh—” she said, “this is the old classic gambit, isn’t it? You know perfectly well I’m talking about myself.”

  “Go on,” he said gently. “Perhaps it will help you to clarify it if you can talk about it. But what I don’t see is, if you love this man—You do love him?”

  Her voice shook. “Quite terribly.”

  “Then I don’t see why you don’t sleep with him. He loves you, too?”