by Irwin Shaw
She went out of the building and through the main gate, under the big sign, “Boylan’s Brick and Tile Works.” The plant and the sign, with its ornate lettering that looked as though it advertised something splendid and amusing, had been there since 1890.
She looked around to see if Rudy was by any chance waiting for her. Sometimes he came by the Works and walked her home. He was the only one in the family she could talk to. If Rudy had been there, they could have had lunch in a restaurant and then perhaps splurged on a movie. But then she remembered that Rudy had gone with the high-school track team to a neighboring town for a meet.
She found herself walking toward the bus terminal. She walked slowly, stopping often to look into shop windows. Of course, she told herself, she was not going to take the bus. It was daytime now and the fantasies of night were safely behind her. Although it would be refreshing to drive along the river and get out somewhere and breathe a little country air. The weather had changed and spring was announcing itself. The air was warm and there were little white clouds high in the blue sky.
Before leaving the house in the morning, she had told her mother she was going to work in the hospital that afternoon to make up for the time she had lost. She didn’t know why she had suddenly invented the story. She rarely lied to her parents. There was no need. But by saying she had to be on duty at the hospital, she avoided being asked to come and work in the store to help her mother handle the Saturday afternoon rush. It had been a sunny morning and the idea of long hours in the stuffy store had been distasteful to her.
A block from the terminal she saw her brother Thomas. He was pitching pennies in front of a drugstore with a gang of rowdyish-looking boys. A girl who worked in the office had been at the Casino Wednesday night and had seen the fight and told Gretchen about it. “Your brother,” the girl said. “He’s scary. A little kid like that. He’s like a snake. I sure wouldn’t like to have a kid like that in my family.”
Gretchen told Tom that she knew about the fight. She had heard similar stories before. “You’re a hideous boy,” she said to Tom. He had just grinned, enjoying himself.
If Tom had seen her she would have turned back. She wouldn’t have dared to go into the bus terminal with him watching. But he didn’t see her. He was too busy pitching a penny at a crack in the sidewalk.
She drifted into the terminal. She looked at the clock. Twelve thirty-five. The bus upriver must have left five minutes ago and of course she wouldn’t hang around there for twenty-five more minutes waiting for the next one. But the bus was late and was still standing there. She went up to the ticket window. “One for King’s Landing,” she said.
She got into the bus and sat up front near the driver. There were a lot of soldiers on the bus, but it was still early in the day and they hadn’t had time to get drunk yet and they didn’t whistle at her.
The bus pulled out. The motion of the bus lulled her and she drowsed with her eyes open. Trees flashed by, newly budded; houses, stretches of river; there were glimpses of faces in a town. Everything seemed washed and beautiful and unreal. Behind her the soldiers sang, young men’s voices blending together, in “Body and Soul.” There was a Virginia voice among the others, a slow Southern tone, sweetening the song’s lament. Nothing could happen to her. Nobody knew where she was. She was between event and event, choiceless, unchoosing, floating among soldiers’ yearning voices.
The bus drew to a halt. “King’s Landing, miss,” the driver said.
“Thank you,” she said and stepped down neatly onto the side of the road. The bus pulled away. Soldiers blew kisses at her through the windows. She kissed her fingers to the young men in return, smiling. She would never see them again. They knew her not, nor she them, and they could not guess her errand. Singing, their voices waning, they disappeared north.
She stood on the side of the empty road in the hushed Saturday afternoon sunlight. There was a gas station and a general store. She went into the store and bought herself a Coke from a white-haired old man in a clean, faded, blue shirt. The color pleased her eye. She would buy herself a dress that color, fine, clean, pale cotton, to wear on a summer evening.
She went out of the store and sat down on a bench in front of it to drink her Coke. The Coke was icy and sweet and stung the back of her mouth in little tart explosions. She drank slowly. She was in no hurry. She saw the graveled road leading away from the highway to the river. The shadow of a little cloud raced down it, like an animal running. It was silent from one coast to the other. The wood of the bench under her was warm. No cars passed. She finished her Coke and put the bottle down under the bench. She heard the ticking of the watch on her wrist. She leaned back, to catch the weight of the sun on her forehead.
Of course she wasn’t going to go to the house on the river. Let the food go cold, let the wine go unpoured, let the suitors languish by the side of the river. Unknown to them, their lady is near, playing her single, teasing game. She wanted to laugh, but would not break the wilderness silence.
It would be delicious to push the game further. To go halfway down the gravel road between the stands of second-growth birch, white pencils in the woodshade. Go halfway and then return, in inner mirth. Or better still, weave through the forest, in and out of the shadows, Iroquois maiden, silent on her stockinged feet over last year’s leaves, down to the river, and there, from the protection of the trees, spy out, Intelligence agent in the service of all virgins, and watch the two men, their lusty plans prepared, sitting waiting on the porch. And then steal back, her crisp dress flecked with bark and sticky buds, safe, safe, after the edge of danger, but feeling her power.
She stood up and crossed the highway toward the leafy entrance of the gravel-top road. She heard a car coming fast, from the south. She turned and stood there, as though she were waiting for a bus to take her in the direction of Port Philip. It wouldn’t do to be seen plunging into the woods. Secrecy was all.
The car swept toward her, on the far side of the road. It slowed, came to a halt opposite her. She did not look at it, but kept searching for the bus she knew wouldn’t appear for another hour.
“Hello, Miss Jordache.” She had been named, in a man’s voice. She could feel the blush rising furiously to her cheeks as she turned her head. She knew it was silly to blush. She had every right to be on the road. No one knew of the two black soldiers waiting with their food and liquor and their eight hundred dollars. For a moment she didn’t recognize the man who had spoken, sitting alone at the wheel of a 1939 Buick convertible, with the top down. He was smiling at her, one hand, in a driving glove, hanging over the door of the car on her side. Then she saw who it was. Mr. Boylan. She had only seen him once or twice in her life, around the plant which bore his family’s name. He was rarely there, a slender, blond, tanned, cleanly shaven man, with bristly blond eyebrows and highly polished shoes.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Boylan,” she said, not moving. She didn’t want to get close enough for him to be able to notice her blush.
“What in the world are you doing all the way up here?” Privilege his voice suggested. He sounded as though this unexpected discovery, the pretty girl alone in her high heels at the edge of the woods, amused him.
“It was such a lovely day.” She almost stammered. “I often go on little expeditions when I have an afternoon off.”
“All alone?” He sounded incredulous.
“I’m a nature lover,” she said lamely. What a clod he must think I am, she thought. She caught him smiling as he looked down at her high-heeled shoes. “I just took the bus on the spur of the moment,” she said, inventing without hope. “I’m waiting for the bus back to town.” She heard a rustle behind her and turned, panic-stricken, sure that it must be the two soldiers, growing impatient and come to see if she had arrived. But it was only a squirrel, racing across the gravel of the side road.
“What’s the matter?” Boylan asked, puzzled by her spasmodic movement.
“I thought I heard a snake.” Oh, good-bye, she though
t.
“You’re pretty jittery,” Boylan said gravely, “for a nature lover.”
“Only snakes,” she said. It was the stupidest conversation she had ever had in her life.
Boylan looked at his watch. “You know, the bus won’t be along for quite some time,” he said.
“That’s all right,” she said, smiling widely, as though waiting for buses in the middle of nowhere was her favorite Saturday afternoon occupation. “It’s so nice and peaceful here.”
“Let me ask you a serious question,” he said.
Here it comes, she thought. He’s going to want to know whom I’m waiting for. She fumbled for a serviceable short list. Her brother, a girl friend, a nurse from the hospital. She was so busy thinking, she didn’t hear what he said, although she knew he had said something.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I missed that.”
“I said, have you had your lunch yet, Miss Jordache?”
“I’m not hungry, really. I …”
“Come.” He gestured to her with his gloved hand. “I’ll buy you lunch. I despise lunching alone.”
Obediently, feeling small and childish, under adult orders, she crossed the road behind the Buick and stepped into the car, as he leaned over from his side to open the door for her. The only other person she had ever heard use the word “despise” in normal conversation was her mother. Shades of Sister Catherine, Old Teacher. “It’s very kind of you, Mr. Boylan,” she said.
“I’m lucky on Saturdays,” he said as he started the car. She had no notion of what he meant by that. If he hadn’t been her boss, in a manner of speaking, and old besides, forty, forty-five at least, she would have somehow managed to refuse. She regretted the secret excursion through the woods that now would never take place, the obscene, tantalizing possibility that perhaps the two soldiers would have glimpsed her, pursued her … Limping braves on tribal hunting grounds. Eight hundred dollars worth of war paint.
“Do you know a place called The Farmer’s Inn?” Boylan asked as he started the car.
“I’ve heard of it,” she said. It was a small hotel on a bluff above the river about fifteen miles farther on and supposed to be very expensive.
“It’s not a bad little joint,” Boylan said. “You can get a decent bottle of wine.”
There was no more conversation because he drove very fast and the wind roared across the open car, making her squint against the pressure on her eyes and swirling her hair. The wartime speed limit was supposed to be only thirty-five miles an hour, to conserve gasoline, but of course a man like Mr. Boylan didn’t have to worry about things like gasoline.
From time to time, Boylan looked over at her and smiled a little. The smile was ironical, she felt, and had to do with the fact that she was sure he knew she had been lying about her reasons for being alone so far from town, waiting senselessly for a bus that wouldn’t arrive for another hour. He leaned over and opened the glove case and brought out a pair of dark Air Force glasses and handed it to her. “For your pretty blue eyes,” he shouted, over the wind. She put the glasses on and felt very dashing, like an actress in the movies.
The Farmer’s Inn had been a relay house in the post-colonial days when travel between New York and upstate had been by stagecoach. It was painted red with white trim and there was a large wagon wheel propped up on the lawn. It proclaimed the owner’s belief that Americans liked to dine in their past. It could have been a hundred miles or a hundred years away from Port Philip.
Gretchen combed her hair into some sort of order, using the rear-view mirror. She was uncomfortable and conscious of Boylan watching her. “One of the nicest things a man can see in this life,” he said, “is a pretty girl with her arms up, combing her hair. I suppose that’s why so many painters have painted it.”
She was not used to talk like that from any of the boys who had gone through high school with her or who hung around her desk at the office and she didn’t know whether she liked it or not. It seemed to invade her privacy, talk like that. She hoped she wasn’t going to blush any more that afternoon. She started to put on some lipstick, but he reached out and stopped her. “Don’t do that,” he said authoritatively. “You’ve got enough on. More than enough. Come.” He leaped out of the car, with surprising agility, she thought, for a man that age, and came around and opened the door for her.
Manners, she noted automatically. She followed him from the parking lot, where there were five or six other cars ranged under the trees, toward the entrance to the hotel. His brown shoes, well they weren’t really shoes (jodhpur boots, she was later to discover they were called), were highly shined, as usual. He was wearing a hounds-tooth tweed jacket, and gray flannel slacks, and a scarf at the throat of his soft wool shirt, instead of a tie. He’s not real, she thought, he’s out of a magazine. What am I doing with him?
Beside him, she felt dowdy and clumsy in the short-sleeved navy-blue dress that she had taken so much care to choose that morning. She was sure he was already sorry he had stopped for her. But he held the door open for her and touched her elbow helpfully as she passed in front of him into the bar.
There were two other couples in the bar, which was decorated like an eighteenth-century tap room, all dark oak and pewter mugs and plates. The two women were youngish and wore suede skirts with tight, flat jerseys and spoke in piercing, confident voices. Looking at them, Gretchen was conscious of the gaudiness of her own bosom and hunched over to minimize it. The couples were seated at a low table at the other end of the room and Boylan guided Gretchen to the bar and helped her sit on one of the heavy, high, wooden stools. “This end,” he said in a low voice. “Get away from those ladies. They make a music I can do without.”
A Negro in a starched white jacket came to take their order. “Afternoon, Mr. Boylan,” the Negro said soberly. “What is your pleasure, sir?”
“Ah, Bernard,” Boylan said, “you ask the question that has stumped philosophers since the beginning of time.”
Phoney, Gretchen thought. She was a little shocked that she could think it about a man like Mr. Boylan.
The Negro smiled dutifully. He was as neat and spotless as if he were ready to conduct an operation. Gretchen looked at him sideways. I know two friends of yours not far from here, she thought, who aren’t giving anybody any pleasure this afternoon.
“My dear,” Boylan turned to her, “what do you drink?”
“Anything. Whatever you say.” The traps were multiplying. How did she know what she drank? She never drank anything stronger than Coke. She dreaded the arrival of the menu. Almost certainly in French. She had taken Spanish and Latin in school. Latin!
“By the way,” Boylan said, “you are over eighteen.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. She blushed. What a silly time to blush. Luckily it was dark in the bar.
“I wouldn’t want to be dragged into court for leading minors into corruption,” he said, smiling. He had nice, well-cared-for dentist’s teeth. It was hard to understand why a man who looked like that, with teeth like that and such elegant clothes, and all that money, would ever have to have lunch alone.
“Bernard, let’s try something sweet. For the young lady. A nice Daiquiri, in your inimitable manner.”
“Thank you, sir,” Bernard said.
Inimitable, she thought. Who uses words like that? Her sense of being the wrong age, wrongly dressed, wrongly made-up, made her hostile.
Gretchen watched Bernard squeeze the limes and toss in the ice and shake the drink, with expert, manicured black-and-pink hands. Adam and Eve in the Garden. If Mr. Boylan had had an inkling … There wouldn’t be any of that condescending talk about corruption.
The frothy drink was delicious and she drank it like lemonade. Boylan watched her, one eye raised, a little theatrically, as the drink disappeared.
“Once again, please, Bernard,” he said.
The two couples went into the dining room and they had the bar to themselves, as Bernard prepared the second round. She felt more at ease now. Th
e afternoon was opening up. She didn’t know why those were the words that occurred to her, but that’s the way it seemed—opening up. She was going to sit at many dark bars and many kindly older men in peculiar clothes were going to buy her delicious drinks.
Bernard put the drink in front of her.
“May I make a suggestion, pet?” Boylan said. “I’d drink this one more slowly, if I were you. There is rum in them, after all.”
“Of course,” she said, with dignity. “I guess I was thirsty, standing out there in the hot sun.”
“Of course, pet,” he said.
Pet. Nobody had ever called her anything like that. She liked the word, especially the way he said it, in that cool, unpushy voice. She took little ladylike sips of the cold drink. It was as good as the first one. Maybe even better. She was beginning to feel that she wasn’t going to blush anymore that afternoon.
Boylan called for the menu. They would order in the bar while they were finishing their drinks. The headwaiter came in with two large, stiff cards, and said, bowing a little, “Glad to see you again, Mr. Boylan.”
Everybody was glad to see Mr. Boylan, in his shiny shoes.
“Should I order?” Boylan asked her.
Gretchen knew, from the movies, that gentlemen often ordered for ladies in restaurants, but it was one thing to see it on the screen and another thing to have it happen right in front of you. “Please do,” she said. Right out of the book, she thought triumphantly. My, the drink was good.
There was a brief but serious discussion about the menu and the wine between Mr. Boylan and the headwaiter. The headwaiter disappeared, promising to call them when their table was ready. Mr. Boylan took out a gold cigarette case and offered her a cigarette. She shook her head.
“You don’t smoke?”
“No.” She felt that she was not living up to the level of the place and the rules of the situation by not smoking, but she had tried two or three times and it had made her cough and go red eyed and she had given up the experiment. Also, her mother smoked, day and night, and anything her mother did Gretchen didn’t want to do.