‘Milt’s henpecked,’ Matthew said, drying his hands on a paper towel and throwing it neatly across the room into the waste bin.
‘I guess he is,’ said Edna equably.
‘Do you think they’re ready for dinner?’ Christine asked Matthew.
‘I imagine so. Milt and Vin are discussing economic trends over a Scotch and water and Mother’s crawling about the floor with bits of newspaper, but otherwise they’re ready. Anything I can do?’
‘You can carve the meat if you like.’
Matthew carved very well. He was useful in a kitchen – more useful than Vinson, who used too much finesse and took a long time to get anything done. Matthew had come out to see Christine once or twice while he had been in Washington, and she found him nice to have about, even when she was busy. He was easy and friendly and he made himself at home.
‘What goes on?’ Vinson came into the kitchen, looking a little put out. ‘What’s everyone doing in here? This is no sort of a party. I wish you’d learn to organize a little better, Christine. You shouldn’t have to spend so long in the kitchen when you have guests.’
‘It isn’t guests. It’s family,’ Christine said through a cloud of steam as she drained the peas.
‘When I entertain them in my house my family are my guests,’ said Vinson pompously.
‘Relax, brother,’ said Edna, going out with a pile of plates.
‘Where are her shoes?’ Vinson asked. ‘Listen, Christine, I’m always telling you, when you’re a hostess you must arrange things so that you’re not in the kitchen so much. It only needs a little method.’
‘Do it the Navy way,’ Matthew said, without looking up from his carving.
‘What are you doing with that roast? I told you I’d carve for you, Christine. I wouldn’t let Matt –’
‘He’s doing it very nicely,’ Christine said soothingly. ‘You were busy drinking with Milt – being a host, you see.’
‘Bring the food in and let’s eat,’ Vinson said. He did not like her to tease him in front of Matthew.
Christine had taken a lot of trouble with the dinner. Vinson was proud of her, and everyone complimented her, except Mrs Gaegler, who would hardly eat anything. She sat bolt upright turning things distastefully over with a fork, as if she thought there might be grubs underneath.
When Milt, who, as usual, was loud in praise of everything, asked her: ‘Aren’t you glad Vin married such a lovely girl who can cook so wonderfully?’ Mrs Gaegler would only say: ‘I’m surprised that an Englishwoman can cook meat at all, when they get no practice at it over there.’
‘You’re eating nothing, Mother,’ said Vinson, hastily, afraid that she was going to start on England. ‘Try some of this potato salad. You know you like it.’
‘I’ve told you, Vinson,’ she said snappishly, ‘I feel painfully sick in my stomach tonight. How can you expect me to eat?’
‘It’s the heat,’ Milt said easily, helping himself from a dish. ‘No one can eat in this weather.’
‘Except you,’ Edna said. ‘You always break your diet when we come out. You have just no willpower.’
‘Don’t pick on me, Edie,’ Milt said, and Mrs Gaegler backed him up, choosing to side with him against her daughter, in the same way as she often tried to side with Christine against her son.
‘You can’t object to me eating salad,’ Milt said. ‘And this is just the most wonderful salad I ever tasted. Christine, you are just the cleverest girl –’
‘The salad would be all right if you didn’t pick all the eggs out of it for yourself, like the glutton you are.’
‘I notice you’re eating potatoes, Edie,’ her mother said, ‘which is much worse.’
‘Oh no. Eggs have far more calories than potatoes.’ Edna had read many magazine articles on dieting and was as calorieconscious as any American. She visualized them as tangible lumps of fattening stuff, marching straight to the waistline.
‘Ah, but,’ said Mrs Gaegler, who knew all about calories too, ‘eggs consume their own calories. Potatoes don’t.’
After this statement, which was too baffling to be contested, she leaned forward and delicately picked a piece of meat off the dish to give to Honeychile, who had been yapping round the table, high-stepping like a show hackney, ever since the meal started.
‘You shouldn’t feed dogs at the table,’ Matthew said.
‘This isn’t dogs. It’s Honeychile. There, I was afraid she wouldn’t eat that beef,’ Mrs Gaegler said as Honeychile spat the meat out on to the carpet. ‘She’s so very particular about what she eats. When she was expecting her babies she wouldn’t take anything but salmon, and towards the end her nerves were so upset she wouldn’t touch anything at all. It’s a wonder she came through it. She had two veterinaries at her accouchement – Dr Stiegler and an assistant. My goodness, I’ll never forget that night. It just drained me. I don’t think I could go through that again, though I sold those puppies for fifty dollars apiece. Honeychile is too sensitive to be a mother. When she was nursing, you know, I had to stuff paper in the doorbell, because every time it rang her milk went away.’
Vinson was looking uncomfortable. He did not like this kind of talk at the dinner table. He gave Christine his almost inaudible whistle, to indicate that she should fetch the dessert and make a diversion. They were at opposite ends of the table and she was laughing surreptitiously with Matthew about Honeychile’s confinement, but she looked up at once and said: ‘Yes, Vin?’ although no one else had heard the whistle.
‘Now isn’t that something?’ Mrs Gaegler drew everyone’s attention to Christine. ‘He’s trained his wife to answer when he calls her under his breath. Looks as if he’s got her just where he wants her, doesn’t it, folks?’ She laughed affectedly, pretending that she had meant it as a joke.
‘Well, I think that’s wonderful,’ Milt said. ‘Simply wonderful. That’s just the most beautiful thing –’
‘Harry Gaegler used to shout for me at the top of his voice,’ Mrs Gaegler said, ‘and, my goodness, that man had a voice like a hog caller. But I would never answer. I wouldn’t let any man think I was at his beck and call. Do it again, Vinson. I want to see it again.’
Vinson was never averse to showing off Christine’s tricks as if she were a trained dog, but she got up quickly and went out with Edna to the kitchen. As she went she heard Mrs Gaegler say: ‘You could never teach an American girl that, but English girls don’t seem to have the same strength of character.’
‘You’re mad, aren’t you?’ Edna said, putting down a pile of plates.
‘Wouldn’t you be?’ Christine threw the silver into the sink with an infuriated clatter.
‘Oh, sure. I’d be hopping mad. I’ve never seen Mother so trying.’
‘Nor me. I wonder if there is really something wrong with her.’
‘No. She always starts complaining about her stomach as soon as she sees food.’
‘I know, but that doesn’t usually stop her eating it.’
‘She’s all right. The day when she doesn’t complain of anything – that will be the day we know she’s really ill.’
Mrs Gaegler would not eat any of the dessert, which was blueberry pie. ‘I couldn’t hold it. My stomach feels like it’s turned upside down,’ she said, as if she were afraid the pie would fall out of it.
‘You’re missing the most wonderful blueberry pie,’ Milt said. ‘Best I ever tasted.’
‘Is it all right?’ Christine asked Edna. ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever made it.’
‘Don’t they have blueberries in England?’ Matt asked. ‘I should have thought they could.’
‘Of course they could,’ his mother said, ‘but they would never get anyone to pick them. The British just don’t want to work. That’s why they’ll never be anything but a second-class nation.’
Christine felt her face reddening. ‘We’re not a –’ she began, and was near to tears, but Matthew Came to her rescue.
‘Look, Mother,’ he said, ‘when we
can stand up to what the British took in World War II we might have the right to judge what makes a second-class nation. I was in London the night the City was on fire. I’ve seen Plymouth. We should judge the British on that, not on whether they want to pick blueberries.’
‘What’s eating you, Matt?’ Vinson said acidly. ‘I thought all you Kansas University boys were isolationists.’
When everyone got up to go to the other end of the room for coffee Christine took his arm and drew him aside. ‘Vin! You were horrid to Matt. He was only trying to be nice to me by sticking up for England.’
‘It wasn’t his place. If anyone’s going to stand up for my wife, it’s me.’
‘Well, why didn’t you?’
‘He didn’t give me a chance. He jumped right in with his slick talk. Just like he’s been trying to jump in ahead of me ever since we were children. That smarty pants. It’s a damn good thing I saw you first, or he’d have jumped in there too.’
‘Don’t be silly. He wouldn’t have been interested in me. He’s got a girl.’
‘He’s always got a girl. A different one every month. You watch out.’
‘Oh, Vin, don’t talk such nonsense. He’s your brother.’’
'I’d still kill him if he ever tried to make a pass at you.’ He gripped her arm and stared at her. Looking into his flecked eyes, strange and bitter with unreasonable jealousy, Christine could believe that he meant it.
‘When you two love-birds have finished your tête-à-tête there,’ Milton called out, ‘come on over, Vin, and pour us a drink.’
Vinson went over to them and Christine finished clearing the table. The kitchen was suffocatingly hot. Mrs Gaegler said that no one should use an oven in this weather, and perhaps she was right.
Christine opened the back door and stepped out on to the grass. It was almost as hot outside. The storm could not be very far away. There was that breathless, suspended pause on the earth and air, when every leaf hangs motionless, waiting for the rain. Thick clouds covered the stars and moon, and away to the left, above the roofs of the town, the black sky was slit by a streak of yellow light. In the night’s silence Christine could hear very clearly the sugary throb from one of the Meenehans’ television sets and a tap dripping in the kitchen behind her.
The music stopped and the burst of studio audience applause which followed it almost drowned the first rumble of thunder. Here it came again, like barrels rolling down a distant cobbled street. Christine waited, her face to the sky, longing to feel the first drops of rain. She did not want to go indoors to the crosscurrents of the family party. She wanted to stay out here where the night was quiet and smelled of meadows, and the grass and trees were beginning to stir in the first hint of breeze. For a moment, as the breeze blew suddenly into a wind and flung a gust of raindrops against her lifted face, she thought she was in England, and all the summer storms of her childhood came back to her in a wave of homesickness.
She stood tiptoe on the grass as the rain fell drop by enormous drop, ceased suddenly as the wind held its breath in a pause while the thunder rolled, and then came all at once hissing down in a torrent on the earth, on the houses, on the trees and bushes, and sent Christine running indoors.
‘It’s coming! The storm’s coming!’ she called. As she ran into the living-room a deafening clap of thunder exploded over the house, and Mrs Gaegler screamed and fell off the sofa on to the floor.
Everyone looked at each other for a moment, and then began to laugh because they had been frightened.
‘Come on, Mother.’ Vinson stooped to help her up. ‘They didn’t get you that time.’
‘I’ve been struck! I was struck by a thunderbolt!’ she wailed. ‘No you weren’t.’ Vinson settled her rigid body back on the sofa. ‘You just got a fright, and so – whoops!’ The lightning stabbed, the thunder clashed and Mrs Gaegler screamed and fell against the back of the sofa with her eyes closed.
‘I’m in shock,’ she announced, opening her eyes very wide and staring round at them. ‘I’m in a state of shock. My head … Vinson, give me another shot of whisky. The thunderbolt must have knocked my glass over.’
‘Do you think she should?’ Vinson looked at Christine, who was on her knees with Matthew, picking up the pieces of the glass which Mrs Gaegler had broken.
‘Of course,’ his mother snapped. ‘Why ask her? She’s always talking about when she was a nurse, but she’s never done any good for me. I must have a stimulant. I feel that I’m failing. My heart… my nerves….’ The storm was a heaven-sent opportunity for her to go through most of the symptoms in her repertoire. Christine had never seen her put on such a good act. When Vinson handed her the glass of rye and water she took a greedy gulp and almost immediately gasped and clutched at her stomach. ‘A stabbing pain – right through me! And you needn’t all look at each other,’ she said, as the family exchanged glances. ‘You’ll never know the pain I was in there for a moment. I think I’ll go and get myself a sedative.’
‘I’ll get it for you,’ Christine said.
‘I wouldn’t dream of bothering you,’ Mrs Gaegler said coldly. She got up with the face of a martyr and went upstairs to sulk because no one believed in her pain.
The family talked desultorily, while the thunder rumbled into the distance and the sheets of rain lifted to a spatter and gradually ceased. Christine opened the window and the cool air came in like a draught of water.
Milt and Edna, who had a long drive home, were getting ready to leave when Mrs Gaegler came down the stairs. ‘I’ve just vomited,’ she informed them. ‘In the basin,’ she added, as if that made it more interesting. They tried to respond suitably to the news, although they only half believed it. She had made herself sick before now by pushing a spoon down her throat.
Edna found her shoes, retrieved the canoe-shaped hat from the top of the refrigerator and followed Milt out to the car over the cool wet grass.
‘Let’s drive Matt home,’ Christine said, as she and Vinson turned back to the house. Vinson always insisted on guiding people down the driveway from the garage in case they cut up his bank.
‘Didn’t he come in Mother’s car?’
‘No, it’s being mended. He ran into a bus the other day, but don’t tell your mother. He came over in a cab tonight.’
‘Let him take one back then.’
‘He could, but I’d like to go for a drive. The air’s so wonderful now.’
‘We’d have to take Mother. She won’t like being left alone.’
Mrs Gaegler, however, said she felt much too ill to go out. She would crawl into bed – not that she would sleep – and pull the sheets over her head. That was all she was able for. ‘But you go ahead and have your fun. Don’t worry about me. I don’t want to spoil anyone’s enjoyment. You go. Leave me. Why shouldn’t you? Why should you worry about me?’
Having successfully made them feel bad about leaving her, she made her exit, hauling herself hand over hand up the banisters, pausing on every third step to gasp a little. She looked smaller than usual, and her girlish ankles weakly climbing were suddenly pathetic.
‘We shouldn’t have left her, Vin,’ Christine said as they went out.
‘She’s all right. I think she’s a little tight as a matter of fact. That’s all that’s wrong with her.’
Matthew wanted to drive, but Vinson would not let him. They all sat on the front seat with Christine in the middle, and Matthew sang ‘Allentown Jail’. He had a pleasant, mournful voice. Christine felt cosy driving along with the three of them close and friendly together. Once or twice Vinson glanced across to see how near to her Matthew was sitting.
When they got to the house where Matthew was staying, his friend Bob came out and insisted that they should come in for a drink. Christine had Coca-Cola and Vinson had several drinks and became more happy and relaxed than Christine had seen him since his mother arrived. Bob played the piano and Matthew sang, and Bob’s wife, who was half Hawaiian, took off her shoes and danced a hula.
T
hey stayed for quite a while. Every time Christine said they ought to go Bob said he would not hear of it. Christine was quite happy to stay because Vinson was enjoying himself. It was easy, friendly company, and although she was tired she could sit back and dream to the music and nobody bothered her.
Some time after midnight she asked Vinson: ‘Don’t you think we should ring up your mother and tell her we’ll be home soon, in case she’s worrying?’
‘No, it’s all right.’ Vinson waved a careless hand from the piano, where he was singing now, not quite sober. ‘She’s O.K., I told you; it was the whisky. She’s probably in a dead sleep by now.’
‘But just in case she isn’t.’ Christine was troubled by the instinct that makes a nurse go back and look at a patient just once more. When she rang her home number, there was no answer. Her mother-in-law must be asleep. No need to worry then. Her instinct had been wrong.
Nevertheless, when they did get home much later, she quietly opened the door of the room that was to be her baby’s, and looked in at her mother-in-law.
Mrs Gaegler was not there. The bed was tumbled, but empty. Honeychile jumped yapping off the bed, skittered between Christine’s legs and fled downstairs.
‘Vin, come quickly!’
‘What’s wrong?’ His voice was vague with drowsiness and whisky.
‘Your mother – she’s not here.’ Christine ran downstairs and met him coming slowly up. They searched the house. There was no Mrs Gaegler, and her dog went leaping everywhere in a frenzy, scattering the rugs, its ridiculous front legs beating the air.
When the telephone rang Christine got to it first. It was Dr Bladen, the doctor who had stuck a hypodermic needle so many times into Mrs Gaegler.
‘I’ve been trying to get you for some time,’ he said. ‘I’ve been ringing your home every half-hour since we took Mrs Gaegler senior away.’
‘Took her away? What’s happened? What’s happened to her?’ Christine pushed at Vinson, who was trying to get hold of the telephone.
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