Short Stories: Five Decades

by Irwin Shaw

  “I came down from the embassy earlier than I expected,” the consul said, when my husband had seated himself, “because I had to tell you this myself. You’re suspended, John, as of close of business this day.”

  My husband has told me, speaking of that moment, that he experienced a curious sense of relief. Subconsciously and without apparent reason, for almost two years, he had been living in expectation of hearing just those words. Now that they had been finally said, it was almost as though a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. Certainty, even of so disastrous a nature, was, for a flicker in time, more comfortable to bear than continuing doubt.

  “Repeat that, please,” my husband said.

  “You’re suspended,” the consul said, “and I advise you to resign immediately.”

  “I’m permitted to resign?” my husband asked.

  “Yes,” said the consul. “Friends of yours have been working for you behind the scenes and they’ve managed that.”

  “What’s the complaint against me?” my husband asked. Curiously enough, despite his premonitions of the last two years, he had, up until that moment, no inkling of what the complaint would be.

  “It’s a morals charge. John,” the consul said. “And if you fight it, that much is bound to get out and you know what people will think.”

  “They’ll think that I’ve been kicked out for homosexuality,” my husband said.

  “Well, not the people who really know you,” said the consul. “But everyone else …”

  “And if I fight it and win?”

  “That’s not possible, John,” the consul said. “They’ve had people after you and they know all about the lady who tried to commit suicide. They have statements from the doctor, from the porter at the lady’s apartment, from somebody at the embassy who went out and did some detective work on his own and then tipped them off.”

  “Who was that?” my husband asked.

  “I can’t say,” the consul said, “and you’ll never find out.”

  “But it happened more than five years ago,” my husband said.

  “That makes no difference,” said the consul. “It happened.”

  “If I resign suddenly, like this,” my husband said, “the people who don’t think it’s because of homosexuality will think it’s because I’m a security risk—or disloyal.”

  “I told you,” the consul said, “that everybody concerned has agreed to keep it as quiet as possible.”

  “Still,” my husband said, “these things always leak a little.”

  “A little,” the consul admitted. “Perhaps the best thing would be for you to leave as quietly as possible and go to some place where you’re not known for a year or so and let it blow over.”

  “What if I were to go to all the people I’ve worked for in the Service,” my husband said, “and got statements from them about the value of my work for those periods while I was with them—that is, a defense of my record to balance against this one extracurricular offense—”

  “There are no extracurricular offenses any more,” the consul said.

  “Still,” my husband persisted. “What if I got the statements—some of them from people very high in the government by now—”

  “It wouldn’t do any good,” the consul said.

  “Even so,” my husband said, “perhaps I’d like to try. Would you make such a statement for me?”

  The consul hesitated for a moment. “No,” he said.

  “Why not?” my husband asked.

  “For several reasons,” the consul said. “Remember, you’re being treated leniently. You’re being permitted to resign and people have agreed to do their best to keep it quiet. If you oppose them, you’re bound to anger someone who’ll talk and you’ll find yourself all over the newspapers and dismissed summarily, to boot. Secondly, if I give you a statement, no matter how closely I keep it to a professional evaluation of your work in this consulate, I’ll seem to be encouraging you in your opposition and lining myself up on your side. Believe me, John,” the consul said, and according to my husband, he sounded sincere, “if I thought it would help you, I’d do it. But knowing that it would hurt you, it’s out of the question.”

  My husband nodded, collected his things, and walked out of his office for the last time. He came home and told me what had happened. We cancelled the bridge party I had intended to give and discussed the matter the better part of the night. A good deal of the time we spent speculating on the identity of the person at the embassy who had taken it on himself to track down John’s story. We could fix on no one and to this day we have no hint as to who it might possibly have been.

  In the morning John sent in his resignation and two weeks later we flew to America. We bought a car and set out West, looking for a small, quiet place, in which we could live cheaply and without neighbors. We had a lovely trip and we enjoyed the richness of the scenery and talking once more to Americans, after being so long abroad.

  We found our little house, by luck. After five minutes of inspecting it and surveying the empty desert lying on all sides of it, we made our minds up and have not regretted the decision for a moment. I have rearranged the furniture to suit our tastes and had two large bookcases built for John’s books. The hurricane lamps I bought the day John worked for the last time serve us wonderfully for our dinners in the patio under the starry desert sky.

  There was only one incident in all the time that made me feel that perhaps our plan for ourselves was not going to work out, and it was entirely due to my thoughtlessness that it happened at all. Several months ago, on one of my trips to town, I bought a fashion magazine which had in it an article, illustrated by photographs, entitled, with typical vulgarity, “Fashionable Americans Abroad.” There, pictured on a snowy terrace at St. Moritz, was the consul and his wife. They were both deeply tanned and smiling widely. They looked, I must confess, very handsome and young and lucky in their skiing clothes. Thinking, foolishly, that it would amuse my husband, I passed him the magazine, saying, “He still manages to get around, doesn’t he?”

  My husband looked for a long time at the photograph and gave it back to me, finally, without a word. That night, he went for a long walk across the desert and did not come back until just before dawn, and when I saw him the next morning, his face looked old and ravaged, as though he had spent the night in bitter struggle. The peace and forgetfulness that I had thought we were achieving were all vanished from his face and for once, in my presence, his defenses were gone and all the violence of his pride, his endless ambition, his baffled jealousy, were plainly evident, all focussed and brought to an unbearably painful point in the smiling image of the man he had once admired and served so faithfully.

  “Never do anything like that to me again,” he said, in the morning, and although we had not spoken a word to each other for nearly twelve hours, I knew what he meant.

  But it is all over now, although it took the better part of three months, and during that time my husband said hardly a word to me, hardly even read—but spent the days staring across the desert and the nights staring into the fire, like a bankrupt going over his accounts again and again, running the losses through his head, in helpless, silent hysteria. But this morning I came in from town with a letter from Michael, who, alone among our old friends, continued to correspond with us. It was a short letter and my husband read it quickly, standing up, and without changing his expression. When he had finished he handed the letter to me.

  “Read this,” he said.

  “Dear Children,” the letter began, in Laborde’s hasty scrawl. “Just a note to keep you au courant. The weather’s beastly, the natives sullen, and the consulate is rocking. Goldilocks is out. Resigned suddenly, as of two days ago, with no explanation. Except that at every cocktail party and every bar where English is spoken, the guess is Kinsey. The first bit of poison leaked three days ago in a column in Washington. Goldilocks and bride, tear-stained, departed yesterday for an Alp, to ponder the irony of destiny. Burn this letter and kee
p a bed warm for me in the desert. Love …”

  I folded the letter and gave it back to my husband. He put it thoughtfully into his pocket. “Now,” he said, “what do you think of that?”

  He did not expect an answer and I said nothing. He took a turn around the small patio, touching the sun-warmed adobe wall, and stopped in front of me once more. “Poor man,” he said, and the pity was real and revivifying. “He was doing so well.”

  He took another turn around the patio and said, “What do you think happened?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I suppose somebody sent a letter to somebody.”

  “Somebody sent a letter to somebody,” he repeated, nodding gently. He looked at me for what seemed like a long time, searchingly. Then he touched my hand and smiled in a very strange manner.

  “Do you know what I’ve been thinking?” he said. “I’ve been thinking it might be a nice idea if we both got into the car and drove into C—and bought a good bottle of wine for dinner.”

  “Yes,” I said, “that would be a very nice idea.”

  I went in and changed and then we drove down the long, straight fifty miles to C—. We bought a bottle of Bordeaux that my husband said was of a quality he hadn’t expected to find so deep in the heart of America. He seemed delighted with the crowds on the streets and the things in the windows and insisted upon buying me a very pretty little cotton dress, in a green plaid design, that he saw in a shop.

  We drove home and I prepared the dinner and we sat out under the stars and ate it slowly. The Bordeaux, my husband said, was exceptionally good, and we became quite tipsy over the unaccustomed wine, and we laughed unreasonably as we sat across from each other at the table and if there had been anybody there to see us, he would have thought that we were very happy indeed, that night.

  Victoria put the folder down.

  The story had never been printed. There had been three rejection slips and she had given up. The editors during that period were cowardly, she told herself. She had started four or five more stories and never finished them. Wishing does not make a writer, nor education, nor injustice, nor suffering. The house was sold, at a profit, and they moved to Los Angeles.

  She looked at the photograph of her husband, grave, soberly lighted, falsely calm, falsely honorable. She was not sorry he was dead.

  She looked out the window. It was still raining. The rain on the window drowned the drowning world outside. It had turned out to be a good day for funerals. A good day for questions, too. Victoria. Victory. Victory over what?

  What sort of love could it have been that demanded that price for its survival? In a time of sharks, must all be sharks? Who was the monster who had sat, in the pretty new dress—proud, wily, subservient, dining under the desert stars, and had smiled in pleasure and complicity at the man across the table, enjoying the wine?

  The blond hair had been wet that day, too, although Borden was young then and had not yet begun to use dye.

  Mixed Doubles

  As Jane Collins walked out onto the court behind her husband, she felt once more the private, strong thrill of pride that had moved her again and again in the time she had known him. Jane and Stewart had been married six years, but even so, as she watched him stride before her in that curious upright, individual, half-proud, half-comic walk, like a Prussian drill sergeant on his Sunday off, Jane felt the same mixture of amusement and delight in him that had touched her so strongly when they first met. Stewart was tall and broad and his face was moody and good-humored and original, and Jane felt that even at a distance of five hundred yards and surrounded by a crowd of people, she could pick him out unerringly. Now, in well-cut white trousers and a long-sleeved Oxford shirt, he seemed elegant and a little old-fashioned among the other players, and he looked graceful and debonair as he hit the first few shots in the preliminary rallying.

  Jane was sensibly dressed, in shorts and tennis shirt, and her hair was imprisoned in a bandanna, so that it wouldn’t get into her eyes. She knew that the shorts made her look a little dumpy and that the handkerchief around her head gave her a rather skinned and severe appearance, and she had a slight twinge of female regret when she looked across the net and saw Eleanor Burns soft and attractive in a prettily cut tennis dress and with a red ribbon in her hair, but she fought it down and concentrated on keeping her eye on the ball as Mr. Croker, Eleanor’s partner, sliced it back methodically at her.

  Mr. Croker, a vague, round, serious little man, was a neighbor of the Collinses’ hosts. His shorts were too tight for him, and Jane knew, from having watched him on previous occasions, that his face would get more serious and more purple as the afternoon wore on, but he played a steady, dependable game and he was useful when other guests were too lazy or had drunk too much at lunch to play in the afternoon.

  Two large oak trees shaded part of the court, and the balls flashed back and forth, in light and shadow, making guitarlike chords as they hit the rackets, and on the small terrace above the court, where the other guests were lounging, there was the watery music of ice in glasses and the bright flash of summer colors as people moved about.

  How pleasant this was, Jane thought—to get away from the city on a week end, to this cool, tree-shaded spot, to slip all the stiff bonds of business and city living and run swiftly on the springy surface of the court, feeling the country wind against her bare skin, feeling youth in her legs, feeling, for this short Sunday hour at least, free of desks and doors and weekday concrete.

  Stewart hit a tremendous overhead smash, whipping all the strength of his long body into it, and the ball struck the ground at Eleanor’s feet and slammed high in the air. He grinned. “I’m ready,” he said.

  “You’re not going to do that to me in the game, are you?” Eleanor asked.

  “I certainly am,” Stewart said. “No mercy for women. The ancient motto of the Collins family.”

  They tossed for service, and Stewart won. He served and aced Eleanor with a twisting, ferocious shot that spun off at a sharp angle.

  “Jane, darling,” he said, grinning, as he walked to the other side, “we’re going to be sensational today.”

  They won the first set with no trouble. Stewart played very well. He moved around the court swiftly and easily, hitting the ball hard in loose, well-coached strokes, with an almost exaggerated grace. Again and again, the people watching applauded or called out after one of his shots, and he waved his racket, smiling at them, and said, “Oh, we’re murderous today.” He kept humming between shots—a tuneless, happy composition of his own—like a little boy who is completely satisfied with himself, and Jane couldn’t help smiling and adoring him as he light-heartedly dominated the game and the spectators and the afternoon, brown and dashing and handsome in his white clothes, with the sun flooding around him like a spotlight on an actor in the middle of the stage.

  Occasionally, when Stewart missed a shot, he would stand, betrayed and tragic, and stare up at the sky and ask with mock despair, “Collins, why don’t you just go home?” And then he would turn to Jane and say, “Janie, darling, forgive me. Your husband’s just no good.”

  And even as she smiled at him and said, “You’re so right,” she could sense the other women, up on the terrace, looking down at him, their eyes speculative and veiled and lit with invitation as they watched.

  Jane played her usual game, steady, unheroic, getting almost everything back quite sharply, keeping the ball in play until Stewart could get his racket on it and kill it. They were a good team. Jane let Stewart poach on her territory for spectacular kills, and twice Stewart patted her approvingly on the behind after she had made difficult saves, and there were appreciative chuckles from the spectators at the small domestic vulgarity.

  Stewart made the last point of the set on a slamming deep backhand that passed Eleanor at the net. Eleanor shook her head and said, “Collins, you’re an impossible man,” and Croker said stolidly, “Splendid. Splendid,” and Stewart said, grinning, “Something I’ve been saving for this poin
t, old man.”

  They walked off and sat down on a bench in the shade between sets, and Croker and Jane had to wipe their faces with towels and Croker’s alarming purple died a little from his cheeks.

  “That overhead!” Eleanor said to Stewart. “It’s absolutely frightening. When I see you winding up, I’m just tempted to throw away my poor little racket and run for my life.”

  Jane lifted her head and glanced swiftly at Stewart to see how he was taking it. He was taking it badly, smiling a little too widely at Eleanor, being boyish and charming. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Something I picked up on Omaha Beach.”

  That, too, Jane thought bitterly. Foxhole time, too. She ducked her head into her towel to keep from saying something wifely. This is the last time, she thought, feeling the towel sticky against her sweaty forehead, the last time I am coming to any of these week-end things, always loaded with unattached or semi-attached, man-hungry, half-naked, honey-mouthed girls. She composed her face, so that when she looked up from the towel she would look like a nice, serene woman who merely was interested in the next set of tennis.

  Eleanor, who had wide green eyes, was staring soberly and unambiguously over the head of her racket at Stewart, and Stewart, fascinated, as always, and a little embarrassed, was staring back. Oh, God, Jane thought, the long stare, too.

  “Well,” she said briskly, “I’m ready for one more set.”

  “What do you say,” Stewart asked, “we divide up differently this time? Might make it more even. Croker and you, Jane, and the young lady and me.”

  “Oh,” said Eleanor, “I’d be a terrible drag to you, Stewart. And besides, I’m sure your wife loves playing on your side.”

  “Not at all,” Jane said stiffly. The young lady! How obvious could a man be?

  “No,” said Croker surprisingly. “Let’s stay the way we are.” Jane wanted to kiss the round purple face, a bleak, thankful kiss. “I think we’ll do better this time. I’ve been sort of figuring out what to do with you, Collins.”