by Amanda Cross
“And sex,” Grace said, her eyes on the speedometer. “I used to notice that. Years ago, of course.”
“We are nearly at the turning anyway,” Lina said, slowing down.
Grace unfolded Kate’s directions and began to read them aloud.
Despite the threatening rain, Reed and Kate walked across a field in which the hay had only just been cut. The brown dog, who gave every sign of having enlisted under Reed’s banner, accompanied them. They walked on one edge of the fifty-acre field, and could see the baler drive in and begin to work on the other.
“He’s got to gather it in,” Kate said, “even though it probably isn’t dry yet. If hay is rained on, after it’s been cut and lying on the ground, it’s finished. So much farm lore have I acquired.” Together they regarded the baler as it scooped up the hay, transformed it, by some unseen process, into neat, rectangular bundles, and then shot the bundles into the wagon. “I never tire of watching it,” Kate said.
“Let’s cross the brook and climb the hill,” Reed said. “I want to talk to you. I don’t know why I should mind having my privacy invaded by distant machines, but I do. Shall we leap over this barbed-wire fence?”
“Of course not. You’ll do something irreparable to your trousers. One lies humbly on the ground and rolls under. Thus.” Kate accomplished the movement with a grace that bespoke practice. “One must be careful,” she added, “to pick a place free of cow dung.”
“Perhaps,” Reed wistfully said, “if I had taken up tennis and kept leaping over tennis nets . . .”
“Vigorous people are so exhausting,” Kate said. “This summer has been rather full of vigorous young people. All the young men who are counselors at Leo’s camp, after they’ve finished eight long hours with the boys, begin to play heated games of basketball exactly when any sane person, it seems to me, would lie down with a cool drink. De gustibus, as they say.”
“Kate?”
“Mmm.”
“Will you marry me?”
Kate stared at Reed a moment, and then patted his shoulder. “That’s very kind of you, Reed, it really is, but no thanks.”
“I didn’t ask you if you’d like to go out to tea. Good grief, I’ve heard proposals that one eat in a certain restaurant treated to more profound consideration.”
“But there’s probably an active choice between two restaurants. What William James called a forced option. I don’t intend to marry.”
“Meaning: there have been men you wanted to marry, and men who wanted to marry you, but they have never been the same men? Who said that?”
“Barrie. That’s not what I mean, Reed. It’s a matter of world enough and time.”
“I didn’t realize I was addressing my coy mistress.”
“You know, never, until recently, have I stopped to consider what those words mean. The young lover says them, and we tend to think they mean only that life is short, youth but an instant, days fleeting. But it’s more profound than that. Haven’t you ever noticed how everyone you know has either world or time, but never both? People who have a world, a job, work, a place to put their lives—they are always short of time. It’s the condition of having a world. But people with time: widows on park benches, old men, women with their children at school, even children at a loose end—these have time enough, but no world. Either world or time, never both. I’ve decided that I would rather have the world.”
“And marriage, you are certain, provides only time.”
“Time or, if you like, a different world for which I do not happen to be suited. This summer has been a revelation. Reed. I have experienced the world of domesticity for which I don’t care, even with all the assistance provided by my brother, and I’ve also experienced time, unformed, filling the day. I think—well, I’ll read a book, but then I think, really, I ought to work first, and then I don’t get to work and in the end, like the ship-wrecked sailor in the poem by Milne, I shamefully lie about and do nothing at all.”
“What happened to the sailor in the end?”
“All right, he got rescued. But I’m not shipwrecked, only momentarily becalmed. Reed, I am certain you don’t realize what a selfish unwomanly, undomestic creature I am. I don’t want to take care of anybody, really, or be the angel in the house. I’d rather ague about medieval symbolism with Grace Knole. Try explaining that in a woman’s magazine.”
“My dear, I don’t want to be taken care of, and I can’t say that your angelic qualities are the ones which, above all others, have overwhelmed me. Couldn’t we share a world, and a certain amount of time?”
“The first thing you know, you’d want to have your boss to dinner, or he’d invite you to a party that couldn’t be refused, and I’d find myself planning menus, and picking up a new evening dress because all your associates had seen the old one, and having my hair done, and making conversations with lawyers at dinner parties. As it is, we can be together now when the fancy takes us—and I prefer you that way, not hog-tied, hag-hidden. Just Reed; not my husband, my house, my drapes—rather two circles, as Rilke said, which touch each other. You know, you never told me, even that day on the hills, how England was.”
“I had other things on my mind on the hills, as I have now. England was chiefly notable for the fact that you were not there.”
William and Emmet emerged from the house and proceeded, with a certain amount of preparation, to occupy lounge chairs in the sun. Emmet applied sun-tan lotion, and William some idiotically named concoction which promised to, and astonishingly did, keep off insects.
“It may give you skin cancer,” William cheerfully observed, “but it does prevent bites. Have some.”
“Thank you, no. For some reason insects do not find me overwhelmingly attractive. In fact, they bite me only in the absence of all other sentient life, and then only as the final alternative to starvation. It’s supposed to have something to do with the nearness of the blood to the surface of the skin. But there are multitudinous theories.”
“I shouldn’t think you’d worry about sunburn, then.”
“I don’t worry,” Emmet said. “Not brood, that is, or tremble with anxiety. But I find it rather more satisfactory to get evenly tan all over than to look as though I’d been tipped in boiling water and had a layer of skin removed, in flakes.”
“It’s none of my business . . .” William began.
“Always a sure sign that one is certain it is.”
“You’re probably right. Please omit the introductory syllables. Why, then, do you affect these effete mannerisms, positively inviting everyone within earshot or reach of gossip to consider you limp of wrist?”
“How do you know I’m not limp of wrist, as you so coarsely put it—if you’ll forgive my saying so.”
“For one thing, you visibly restrain a shudder every time you look at Leo.”
“Oh dear, is it that obvious? I am sorry. I don’t mind some little boys, about five perhaps, with short pants and Prince Charles haircuts, bless their well-bred little hearts; Leo’s a shade on the hearty side, don’t you find?”
“Leo’s all right, as long as someone takes him seriously, and treats him with dignity. You haven’t answered my question.”
“Which question, dear William, was that?”
“Oh, hell, Emmet, I admit you’re entertaining, very entertaining, and I particularly admire the way you hold your liquor.”
“Your own capacity is quite beyond praise.”
“Not like yours. You simply get cleverer as the evening progresses. Do you think your tolerance for liquor is correlated with your nonattraction for mosquitoes?”
“It’s not so much mosquitoes, Kate tells me, as deer flies and a kind of flying ant. Whatever it is you’re obviously panting to say, why not say it?”
“I’ve nothing against fags, as it happens, though they do seem to have been swarming over the landscape recently, but you
’ve been carrying on a passionate love affair for three years with a married woman. Why do you insist on suggesting that you couldn’t be aroused to passion by anything more feminine than a choirboy?”
“May I respectfully inquire how . . .”
“Don’t worry. It’s far from common knowledge. Lina Chisana, who’s coming up this weekend, went to school with your—ah—mistress. They’re close friends. So are Lina and I. Neither of us gossips, as you can probably gather since your—ah—mistress told Lina. Let me, however, get this off my chest by admitting that I’ve told Kate. She, not unnaturally, was concerned about you and Leo. I’ve known her three years also, by the way, and she is reputed to be as sea-green incorruptible as Carlyle and as discreet as the tomb.”
“ ‘Mistress,’ ” Emmet said, examining his legs for signs of sunburn, “has always seemed to me a word which might be used with more precision. Ought we not, etymologically, to reserve it for a woman financially supported by a man, usually maintained by him in some establishment, clothed by him, and expected to lie with him whenever he should choose to present himself?”
“I don’t quite see . . .”
“Today we use the word for any woman to whom a man has made love. But, after all, why should she be his mistress? They are more properly one another’s lovers, are they not?”
“Try telling that to Mary Bradford.”
“Oh, screw Mary Bradford, if you can stand the idea. Which reminds me, since we’re exchanging confidence in this charming, not to say girlish fashion, how long is it since you, in your devout way, have had a woman, even in your dreams?”
William stood up. “I’m sorry, Emmet. Clearly, I’ve offended you. Please accept my apologies. I merely thought . . .”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, sit down. What so infuriates me about people committed to a life of chastity is that they seem to think its purity will be impugned if they discuss it. I wasn’t trying to give you tit for tat, only to serve you, humbly, as you, I gathered, wished to serve me. Never mind. I’m damnably in love with a married woman who can’t get a divorce, and who’s married to a brute. The reason this summer’s work is enticing me into a serious consideration of modern fiction is because I find the earlier, more melodramatic works a little too close to the bone.”
“I’m sorry. Where is she this summer?”
“With her husband. Sailing about on a blasted yacht. Would you mind frightfully if we talked about something else?”
“All right; James Joyce. How does it go with the early letters?”
“I humbly thank you, well, well, well. Sam Lingerwell was truly a great man. When the effects of your bug-away wear away, come in and let me show you a few letters. That is, if Leo and his athletic cohorts have not descended upon us. Do you know, I think I’ve met your Lina. Italian-looking, with an enormous vitality and an infatuation with eighteenth-century poetry. So she arrives with Grace Knole, does she? Imagine a household with three such distinguished and brilliant women in it, none of them married, and all existing in some emphatic attitude toward virginity.”
“What in hell does that mean?”
“Elementary, my dear boy. One is now confirmed in her virginity, which only the grave is left to try. One is already regretting her virginity, which will soon, I would guess, be gladly sacrificed to the first man who presents himself in the right light amidst the properly alcoholic ambiance; and the third . . .”
“That’s a goddamn offensive thing to say!” William stood up, upsetting the bottle of bug-away, which leaked onto the ground to the great distress of such ants as happened to find themselves in its path.
“And the third . . .”
“Emmet, for Christ’s sake.”
“Ah, I see that the vigorous Leo has returned, accompanied by Mr. Artifoni himself.”
“Perhaps,” William said, “I ought to apologize. I thought I meant well.”
“No apologies in order, anywhere around, as far as I can see. Only a warning, or shall we say, a suggestion. I very much liked Miss Lina Chisana when I met her, and so does the woman I love. I hope you weren’t offended by my evident assumption of Kate Fansler’s nonvirginity. I’m sure she wouldn’t be.”
“Oh, damn virginity,” William said.
“My point exactly,” Emmet said, arising slowly and with dignity. “I quite look forward to the feminine injection into our household, particularly Grace Knole. What time are they expected, do you know?”
Mr. Mulligan, meanwhile, conferred with his cleaning woman-cum-cook about tomorrow’s cocktail party. “It better not rain,” he said, “because I’ve invited the whole town of Araby, and if we can’t overflow on to the lawn, we shall have to overflow upward, toward the bedrooms. Offer up obeisance, Mrs. Pasquale, to whatever gods there be.”
Chapter Five
Araby
Whether due to the ineffectiveness of Mrs. Pasquale’s prayers, or her gods, or merely to meteorological conditions, the weather on Saturday could scarcely have been worse. A steady downpour drenched the lawn and trees, leaving treacherous puddles on all the chairs and tables. “However,” Mr. Mulligan remarked to Mrs. Pasquale, “one can never tell. They do, after all, say about Berkshire weather, if you don’t like it, wait ten minutes. Have we dusted the bedrooms, Mrs. Pasquale?” Mrs. Pasquale, who was doing something with hard-boiled eggs, ignored him. He wandered off to stare from the living-room window.
The whole town of Araby was not, of course, coming—only the summer residents, and only such of these as were in their houses that weekend, and whom Mr. Mulligan found invitable. The year-round people would not be invited, nor expect to be. Mary Bradford, since her ancestors had apparently sustained some connection with the Mayflower, and her husband with Scarsdale, might have been invited on general social grounds, but her personality made such an invitation better ungiven. It was tacitly assumed by the summer people that the Bradfords could not attend cocktail parties which were given inevitably, if not consequently, at milking time.
The town of Araby, to quote from the standard picture book on the Berkshires, is situated north of Pittsfield, and owes its continuing rural character to the fact that it was bypassed by the railroads. Certainly it is outstanding, if not unique, in western Massachusetts for being totally without any commercial establishment whatever. Mail is delivered by Rural Free Delivery, and Araby’s inhabitants learn to live with the fact that the nearest pack of cigarettes to be bought is eight miles away. Taxes are high, since only homes can be assessed to raise the money for roads and schools. The summer people are taxed, in fact though not in principle, at twice the rate of the year-round people, which, since the summer people are all clearly rich as Croesus, strikes the board of assessors as only equitable. Mr. Mulligan had been known to observe that his barn, a modest-sized building originally designed to house horses, in which he now kept his car, was assessed at nearly twice the value of the Bradford barn, which contained a fortune in milking equipment and hay elevators. But somehow the summer people never found the time or energy for a thorough investigation into these matters.
Araby’s name was often commented upon, since almost alone among New England towns it was called after neither an English dukedom nor an Indian phrase. Tales of how this odd nomenclature originated were widespread and of equal dubiety. The commonest of these relates how an early settler had fancied himself a sheik, and liked to say he was “of Araby.” How he transferred this strange inclination into the town’s name was never properly explained, nor likely to be.
By the second weekend in July nearly all the summer people were “up,” and of these, nearly all crowded into Mr. Mulligan’s living room. The contingent from Kate’s house, six strong, arrived halfway through the proceedings, when the casual acquaintances were about to take their leave, and the hilarity was about to ascend to its highest decibel count. Mr. Mulligan greeted them with the greatest possible enthusiasm, and immediately announced that he
intended to monopolize Grace Knole, because she was so distinguished and fascinating, and Lina, because she was fascinating and unknown to him.
“And the young man is well cared for, I trust,” he called to Emmet and William as they helped themselves to martinis.
“Gone visiting,” William said.
“A chum from that jolly day camp,” Emmet said. “His turn to invite the chaps for wienies and marshmallows. What a round of social activity country living is, to be sure.”
“Martini or scotch?” Reed asked Kate.
“What would you say if I asked for a Manhattan?”
“Whiskey and sweet vermouth? I’d know you’d changed so you’d probably consent to marry me, and I’d feel if you’d changed that much, I probably wouldn’t want you after all.”
“I’ve heard more gallant statements.”
“I am not feeling gallant. Only old, foolish and oddly apprehensive.”
“Of what, Reed? How unlike you. Whenever I get vague feelings of apprehension, you always accuse me of some particularly feminine idiocy.”
“If you must know, our walks on the hills are the only part of this whole rural interlude I view with entire satisfaction. What was Mr. Artifoni, of the physical fitness and first-aid routine, going on about when we returned home from the hills yesterday?”
“Mary Bradford.”
“That woman again? It seems scarcely believable.”
“I couldn’t agree more. It seems all the cars of parents delivering or calling for their offspring at the A.B.C. pass along our road, frighten Mary Bradford’s chickens, and threaten her children, so she insists, with imminent extinction. She’s taken to arriving at the camp, as it’s dispersing and making loud, threatening remarks and talking of suing Mr. Artifoni. I believe she actually bullied a state trooper into giving speeding tickets to parents. Anyway, Mr. Artifoni has murder in his eye.”
“So of course the first thing he did was to come around and talk to you.”