Collected Stories of Reynolds Price

by Reynolds Price

  “Ron went on a night shift at the Works; and Mary started bringing chaps home, that’s all. One night when I was still cool towards her, she climbed on the bus with this soldier, younger than her—she’s always picked youth, except old Ron—and ginger-haired. Well, she set him by me on the long seat, you know, and made introductions polite as a party. You know I’m not nosey—I’ve got my own life to lead, which takes my time—but I reckon I all but amputated my tongue with my teeth on that ride. I nodded to her not him, and sat still. I was cold as marble and when the bus stopped I said to Mary, ‘After you. Very far after you.’ She said ‘Righto!’ and smiled and stepped off, her chap in hand. We went that way for weeks after too—Mary in front with some new soldier (seldom one twice) and me behind. A time or two she tried to speak, turn and ask me questions—how was Buck and the dog? I’d ask her how was Ron and she’d say something cheeky—’Keeping busy’ or ‘Away a good bit’—but she stopped soon enough. She’d stopped coming round from the first awful night, and God knows I didn’t set foot in their door. I didn’t know what I might walk in on—some chap in his pants or old Ron hacking Mary down with a knife. The awful part is, I don’t think he knew. I’d see the chaps leave her gate about dawn—she took that care—and Ron might have gone on in the dark till this day but that one night they had a power failure at the Works and Ron got home long before the dance ended.

  “It was dead-winter, cold and pouring with rain; and when Ron come in, he must have found her boots in the hall. She’d left them; the rain hadn’t started till late, so he took it in his head to meet her at the bus and have her boots ready for her so she wouldn’t spoil her shoes no worse than they already were. The first sad thing was, the bus was late—maybe five or ten minutes—and Ron himself was soaked to the skin, just standing in the open, no shelter or nothing. I had stepped onto the platform early; ahead of Mary and this night’s chap—I’d had enough of tailing her, like spying from behind—so I saw Ron first as the bus rolled past him; he had a little torch which of course was illegal. Christ, what could I do? Well, nothing. No time to gather my wits—and none of my business. I stepped down and shunned him—he didn’t see me, wasn’t looking for me. I tried to walk on but I had to look. I went a few yards, then turned and saw it by his dim little light. She leapt off the bus nimble as a cat, the chap on her heels—not so young this one and big, far bigger than Ron. She took a few strides—head down in the rain, her chap a bit behind—before she saw Ron. She stopped of course but she never lost breath—why fear him now, was her thought, I guess—and she said, ‘What the Hell are you up to, moping in the rain?’ I could see him side-face. He saw the soldier. Then he took a step to Mary. He held out her boots and he tried to explain. He really did. But he flung them in her face. He had bought them; he figured they were his to use. They were good boots, peacetime, fur-lined with brass buckles. One of the buckles cut into her mouth. Which was when I left—the sight of Mary all blood from the mouth down, her soldier standing there dumfounded in the rain, old Ron’s mouth working still trying to explain. Well, I left them to it—not from fear, understand; more like disgust. My life is too short to stand by watching others ruin theirs; I’ve got my own fight. And to this very day I’m in total darkness about what happened after that—who went with who, what awful things were said. I didn’t lay an eye on Mary or Ron for weeks after that, more like months. For all I knew they were dead, murdered, hanged. Well, they weren’t. They had moved. To Mary’s father’s. He had had a fall shortly after that night, was crippled-up bad; so they moved in with him, and there they’ve been ever since—what? fifteen years.”

  “That’s her scar,” Charles Tamplin said. It was not a question. He had finished his breakfast and, with his right hand, traced the exact path of Mary’s scar down his face.

  Bett said, “You noticed that. Don’t miss a trick, do you? Well, to be fair with you, I couldn’t swear to it. I didn’t have her face memorized, you know; and after that night it was so many months till I saw her again that I didn’t notice it right off. Buck did, at once. We met her in a shop in town one morning—just greeted one another—and the moment she left, Buck said ‘Well, she got it.’ ‘—Got what?’ I said. ‘—What she’s been begging for. Someone knocked Hell out of her mouth.’ And I hadn’t said a word to Buck about the boots. Then I remembered—she’d held up her hand when she spoke to us, like someone with new teeth, shielding her mouth; but there had been a scar. So I guess it was Ron. He’d marked her at last. And from what I knew in years after that, Buck was right again—the Hell had been knocked right out of her. Not that she sprouted wings of course; but between her sick Dad and whatever Ron had done, she kept home at night for the rest of the war—long after the war. I say ‘kept home.’ What I mean is, I didn’t see her down at the Assembly Rooms for years; and if she’d been dancing between here and London, old Bett would have seen her—I didn’t stop but then I’d kept my head and all, hadn’t I?”

  “Yes,” Charles Tamplin said.

  “Like you,” Bett said.

  He said “Thank you,” smiled quickly—“But you see her now. She’s your friend again.”

  Bett said, “Never. Not my friend. I don’t have friends—no, I really don’t. I’ve never felt the need. I’ve had Buck of course all these years and Peter while he lived and my old Mum; but the rest are just faces I natter with, wave to as I go about my own business. Mary, least of all—”

  “But you see Mary. What about yesterday?”

  “That’s only her. The past few years she’s begun dropping in. I give her a laugh—a little time-off from her old Dad and Ron. But it’s got to stop—I must make it stop. She’s dangerous, she is. Oh not to me—and not to you either; I was only joking a minute ago. It’s herself she’ll ruin of course—again. Herself and her poor Dad and Ron, though if you ask me, they’d be damned lucky if she took her lad and flew off to China.”

  “What lad?” he said.

  “Don’t ask me that. I know—know his name and his job (a chauffeur); but not him, thank God—and I’m sorry I know. She told me before I could stop her, bragged it to me—how he’s put new life in her. If that’s life, Christ! Deliver me. ‘Life and hope,’ she said. Hope for what?—a slit throat. He’s a bad one, he is—this new one she’s got. He’ll throw knives not boots, you mark my words.”

  Bett had finished, he knew. That was often her exit—“Mark my words,” a justified sibyl, generally right. She scratched at her hair, glanced toward his clock—“Crumbs! Half-past nine, and all my work! You can make me talk worse than anyone—and what about? Pure rubbish, I reckon. Your mind’s meant to be on higher things. I thought that was your latest plan anyhow.” She was sweeping his dishes onto a tray.

  He did not answer.

  “Eh?” she said and laughed and pointed to Picasso’s naked woman, asleep while love or death poised above her—“Higher things such as that lady’s bare bum, eh? You don’t fool me.”

  “I do,” he said. “I’ve fooled you completely” and moved to his desk. But he said it to the walls. Bett was gone; hurled into her day, he thought, her desperate useless day.

  And surely he had, for he spent the whole morning in his quiet room in the silent house and, ignoring lunch, on into the afternoon, not moving from his desk—beneath the lady’s bum, Christ’s hand (untouched, untouching), beside the dancers—writing into his notes, with sustained exhilaration of loathing, Bett’s ragged wasteful gamy tale in Bett’s own words of Mary entirely surrendered; and with—toward the end, as time reached the present, this warm afternoon—the thrill of power, to have gripped in his own hands this proper mess, this shoal of rubbish, and made it part of his own hard understanding of what, in the world, he could stride across; his own needs harnessed, tense but obedient. Then he read through the pages and wrote at the bottom these questions they raised—

  —The name of the story?—Scars perhaps.

  —Why should Bett tell this story at all? Why is she so clearly fascinated by Mary that she tol
erates her here against Buck’s orders, after all this past and whatever is present and threatens now? Why tell it to me?

  Who am I—must she think—to need this news? (I am all she has—her Wedding Guest. She cannot speak of it to Buck or her mother, cannot even mention the past to Mary.)

  —What is Mary’s demon? Simple sexual famine? “Appreciation”? What is her vision of the life she insisted to me she was having? What has Ron withheld all these years—or lacked? Why—as Bett asks—has he not thrown her out or at least struck (or scarred) again? Why—knowing what he knew—did he follow Mary to her father’s house?

  —And who is her father in all of this? What does he know of her? need from her? fear? Why is he her one apparent pole?

  —Why should she be anyone’s pole, center?—least of all, three men’s: her old Dad’s, Ron’s, her lethal lad’s?

  —Surrendered to what?

  Then he clamped the pages neatly into his folder—the latest in all that awaited him there, his past and others’, subdued but unfinished, requiring him. Then he was tired—as exhausted as from love—so again he lay on his bed, clothed fully, leaned on only by yellow light, alone in the house.

  He had slept an hour when the doorbell woke him gently (a bell that worked on a wind-up spring always unwound so that callers announced themselves timidly, like broken toys). He lay a moment waiting for Bett’s footsteps—silence—so he stepped to his window and, hid by the curtain, looked to the street. A clean black Austin stood at the curb and a driver waited—or sat, staring forward, not noticing the house: a man maybe twenty, large head, black hair, hunched shoulders in black, huge hands on the wheel. Was it he who rang? No—the bell gave a final spent wheeze, a hand rapped. He did not want to go and did not know why till a voice called “Bett?”—Mary’s voice, out of sight. He would not go, had not made a sound, crouched in on himself behind the curtain, then crept to his bed, lay silently down and waited for Mary’s footsteps departing. But the sound was the unlocked front door opening, Mary entering. Once more “Bett?”, then “Mr. Tamplin?”, then her steps climbing quickly toward his door.

  He flung himself backward into feigned dead-sleep so deep that when she knocked at last, he heard as in paralyzed terror of dream, could not reply. But she knocked again, then opened his door. He did not look, lay still on his back, eyes clamped, unflickering—so that while he had known the voice as Mary’s, he could not see her face (see any face yet) nor chart her progress across his floor as her steps moved slowly toward his bed. Her steps?—was it she? Was it Mary at all? Why? Come for what? And was his sleep sham? Was he locked in actual nightmare now or was someone, something, here by his bed, above his vulnerable body, poised unseen for an unknown purpose? He wished to scream. Scream what?—Help or Leave? And scream to whom? He saw faces now. The old faces rose as they had yesterday and would always rise; each, judge and victim. He fought them off, fought back a scream by clenching his jaws again and again.

  “You kept your promise.” She spoke above him.

  He opened slowly on Mary’s face, her scar smoothed off by the tension of a smile, her black coat open, touching his bed. “What promise?” he said. He remembered none.

  “—To carry me away to America and happiness.”

  He was genuinely dazed from his sham sleep, his terror. “When did I promise that?”

  “You don’t remember? Shame,” she said. “I suppose you promise that to every girl. You Yanks are rotten.” But her smile hung on.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “My promises now are all to myself.”

  “No,” she said. “Sweet love, don’t fear. I’ll survive somehow.” Then she laughed (her scar returned)—“What a face! Don’t weep. I’ve made arrangements. No, I meant you had promised to be better dressed when we met again.”

  He studied his body a moment, relieved. “So I am,” he said. He smiled, sat up. “Bett’s out, of course.”

  “Out where?” Mary said, suddenly efficient.

  “Her mother’s, I guess.”

  “When’s she due back here?”

  “God knows,” he said. He stood, took the steps to reach his open door, took his post there to see her out.

  “Where’s Buck?” she said.

  “At work, I’m sure. Bett’s always home before Buck, making tea.”

  “Then we’ll wait,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “Not us, sweet love—not you and me. My friend in the car—” Mary pointed to the street. “We’ll wait in Bett’s sitting room. I’ll call him in.” She moved toward the door, one step from Charles Tamplin.

  He shut the door, shut them both in his room. “Bett’s is locked,” he said, speaking rapidly. “She always locks their part of the house whenever she leaves. Got in the habit when the dog was alive—Peter being so ferocious, would push doors open and lunge after me if I made a sound. No it’s locked, I know—”

  Mary smiled again slowly. “Up here,” she said. “There’s rooms up here. The stairs aren’t locked. No way to lock them. I’m here, look.”

  He thought a moment, leaned against his shut door. “Buck,” he said. “Buck may come any time. He’s often early.”

  “Let him come,” Mary said. Her smile was set now. “Let him join the party.”

  “I’m leaving too,” he said. “I must run into town.” His door stayed shut.

  “Can we stay here then?” She gestured behind her, meaning his room.

  He looked past her, followed her pointing hand. The room—walls, bed, desk, papers, pictures—seemed blotched and stinking as though her hand had blindly sown stain, as though he must scrape it all, scour it with acid before he could rest again, work again here. He faced her—“Please. No.” It was begging—he the beggar.

  “You know what I’m asking for?”

  He nodded.

  “Only this much space—” In the air she measured off the width of two bodies.

  He nodded, shut his eyes.

  “You know what I’ve been through in my so-called life?—Bett’s told you of course—and you won’t help me into this new chance I’ve found?”

  He would have to look. He looked. She seemed young—taut with her hunger—but he shook his head, no.

  “That’s final?” she said.

  He nodded, yes.

  “Let me out,” she said.

  Then he saw that he blocked her, still leaned on his door. He opened it slowly, took a step aside; and she left through the narrow space, not touching him at all—no further word or look. But he shuddered in the chill air that moiled behind her; and though he heard the click of the gate, the black car leaving, old safety of silence, it heaved in his throat, slapped his teeth like nausea—suspicion that his room, his life in this house was ruined, fouled at least; infected by exposure to virulent dependence, the lethal illusion of contingency, the sight of lives propped together like cards, humped down like dominoes, a fallen row. Could a room recover, serve him again?

  He stood in his open door facing downward—the yellow hall; unable to take one backward step or look. He touched his pockets—car keys, wallet. He could walk straight forward, door open, no message; abandon all this as tainted burden; go like Bunyan’s Christian, stripped for the journey. Journey to where? He was three thousand miles from America his home. Cornwall perhaps?—Tintagel, grand shattered bone barnacled by tearooms. The Scilly Islands?—a bland Indies. Or Brighton?— the home of his nearest friend, acquaintance really, a fellow student now teaching there, sharing rooms with his mother high back on the chalk in sight of a sea flat as gray ditch water.

  Nonsense. Weak nonsense. His work was his journey; work his home—in the midst of whatever. And thinking of Brighton, he recalled unfinished work, notes he must make on a recent trip there, a scene to store, both eye and shield. He turned, faced his room—already cleansed—walked quickly to his desk and began to write, from flawless memory—a title first, Seeds. Then

  David Caldwell invited me to Brighton for Easter—two weeks in advanc
e, by letter, promising sun. I had meant to refuse and work on here; but early one morning I dreamt his death, in the form of a story my mother tells of her brother in France in the First World War—how he and a boyhood friend from home sat playing cards with others in a trench, took a direct hit from a German shell, and how my uncle looked round (in what light?), saw the others dead and his friend prone beside him. But his friend’s heart beat (he swore that always), an artery pumped live blood from a shoulder; so my uncle took him up, bore the friend in his arms like a child—how far? Say a hundred yards to a small aid station, told the man on duty (another friend), “He’s alive, work fast,” then laid his friend down and looked in full light. His friend lacked a head. The blood that had pumped from the stump of his neck was already drying. I dreamt that of David—I my uncle, he my friend; the identical story except that I bore David miles not yards through a no-man’s land white and rough as the moon—and woke so depressed that I stumbled through the morning unable to work, resisted the urge to phone and confirm he was still alive. We are not close friends.

  But at noon I did write and accept his invitation, still not wanting to go but curious now to crack my dream. So on Friday I spent three maddening hours on the Brighton road, reached the Caldwells’ at five and was met by the mother—David out with his girl. The mother (Nell Caldwell) is fiftyish, small, steady on thick legs. Beneath brown hair fine and thin as a baby’s, her round face smiles perpetually, from the nose downward. Her eyes, cheeks, forehead are lined, gathered, never relaxed. Is she worried, fearful, on guard?—against what? She has only one fear left—her own death (or David’s, I suppose, though they move so separately of one another, more like bees in a hive—considerate but busy—than mother and only child, that I doubt his death would break her stride). She has weathered all the rest—the death of her father when she was eleven; the need then for her to stop school, nurse three brothers; her early marriage in the deepest Depression to a boy from Kent, named Jack, who sold shoes and lived above the shop in two rooms where she joined him, to wait out the worst of those years—they hoped—before having a son, in ‘38. Then the war, the raids—she was caught in London the first day of bombing, waited in the Tube beneath Victoria Station till the trains recommenced, not knowing what ruins Brighton might be in, nor Jack nor David—“They were well,” she says, “Jack had worried over me, when I’d told him before, ‘I’m a born hedgehog—duck under danger; but there I’d seen them in my mind all day at the top of those stairs, David naked in the air, less than two years old, just tiles between them and whatever chose to fall. But they were well—Jack and David—and laughing, I felt I could kill them after all my worry.”