by Irwin Shaw
“It’s not too late,” she said flatly. “Even now.” She was angry and she was reacting to the jibe. “If you must know, he still wants to marry me.”
“As of when?”
“As of this afternoon,” she said.
“Four children and all?” Beauchurch said. “To say nothing of his wife and your husband and your children.”
“I told him it was absurd,” Ginette said. “We had it all out three years ago.”
“Three years ago?” Beauchurch said. “I thought you said you’d only seen him twice since 1946—yesterday and today.”
“I was lying,” Ginette said, evenly. “Of course I saw him when I was here before. I would have had to be a monster not to see him. I saw him every day.”
“I’m not going to ask you what happened,” Beauchurch said. He stood up. He felt shaken, confused. The light through the ornate lampshades was dusty and melancholy, and his wife’s face, turned away now, was in evening shadow, hidden, unfamiliar. Her voice was cold and distant and devoid of affection. Whatever happened to the holiday? he thought. He went over and poured himself a drink from the bottle on the table near the window. He didn’t ask Ginette if she wanted one. The whiskey bit at his throat.
“Nothing happened,” Ginette said. “I think I would have had an affair with him, if he had asked me.…”
“Why?” Beauchurch asked. “Do you still love him?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t know why. Atonement, restitution.… Anyway, he didn’t ask me. It was marriage or nothing, he said. He couldn’t bear losing me again, he said.”
Beauchurch’s hands trembled as he brought the glass to his lips again. A wave of anger toward the man engulfed him, at the arrogance, the egotism, of that permanent, despairing, broken, unwavering love. He put the glass down slowly to keep from throwing it against the wall. He stood immobile, closing his eyes. If he made the slightest movement, he was afraid of what it would lead to. The thought of Mestre and Ginette sitting at café tables during a distant Parisian summer, conferring, cold-bloodedly offering and refusing terms for the looting of his life, was infinitely harder to bear than the thought of their two bodies clasped in bed together. It was less innocent; it lacked the grace and normality of the pardonable weaknesses of the flesh; it ignored, as though they had never existed, the fair claims Beauchurch had established in the years of marriage; it was a conspiracy against him by enemies who were the more hateful because they had never made themselves known to him. If Mestre had been in the room that moment Beauchurch would have gladly killed him. “God damn him,” Beauchurch said. He was surprised at how routine, how calm, his voice sounded. He opened his eyes, looked down at Ginette. If she said the wrong thing now, he felt that he would strike her and leave the room, the country, leave everything, once and for all.
“That’s why I came home two weeks earlier the last time I was here,” Ginette said. “I couldn’t stand it any more. I was afraid I’d give in. I ran away.”
“I’d prefer it,” Beauchurch said, “if you said you ran back.”
Ginette turned her head and stared steadily out of the shadows at him. “Yes,” she said, “that’s better. That’s what I mean. I ran back.”
She said the right thing, Beauchurch thought. It took a little coaching, but finally it was the right thing. “And in the future,” he said, “when you come to France, to Paris, are you going to see him again?”
“Yes,” she said. “I suppose so. How can we escape each other?” She lay in silence for a moment. “Well, there it is,” she said. “The whole story. I should have told you long ago. Now—are you going to help him?”
Beauchurch looked down at her lying on the bed, the bright hair, the small delightful head, the womanly face with the hesitant touches of girlhood still faintly evident there, the slender, warm, well-known, deeply loved body, the long competent hands lying flat on the bedspread, and he knew there would be no violence, no flight that evening. He knew, too, that he was more than ever inextricably entwined with her, with her memories, her wounds, betrayals, her other country, with her foreign dangers, her decisions, agonies, responsibilities, her lies, her commitments to renounced loves. He sat down beside her and leaned over and kissed her forehead gently. “Of course,” he said. “Of course I’ll help the bastard.”
She laughed a little, softly, and brought up her hand and touched his cheek. “We won’t come to Paris again for a long time,” she said.
“I don’t want to talk to him, though,” Beauchurch said, holding her hand against his cheek. “You make all the arrangements.”
“Tomorrow morning,” she said. She sat up. “I sincerely hope that package is for me,” she said.
“It is,” he said. “It is that very thing.”
She swung lightly out of bed and crossed the room, her stockinged feet making no noise on the faded old carpet. She unwrapped the package neatly, folding the paper carefully and making a little skein of the string. “It is just what I wanted,” she said, as she picked up the book and ran her hand over the cover.
“I was going to buy you a diamond,” Beauchurch said. “But I thought it would be crass.”
“What a narrow escape,” she said. She smiled at him. “Now,” she said, “come in and talk to me and give me a drink while I take my bath. Then we’ll go out and have a sinful, expensive dinner. Just you and me.”
Carrying the book, she went into the bathroom. Beauchurch sat on the bed, squinting at the yellowish patterns of the old paint on the opposite wall, measuring his pain and his happiness. After a while he stood up and poured two good drinks and carried the glasses into the bathroom. Ginette was lying deep in the huge old tub, holding the book out of the water, gravely turning the pages. Beauchurch set her glass down on the rim of the tub and sat down on a chair facing her, next to a large, full-length mirror, whose surface, beaded with steam, mistily reflected the marble, the brass, the shining tiles of the warm, out-sized room, shaped for a more spacious age. He sipped at his drink and looked soberly at his wife, stretched out in the shimmering, fragrant water, and knew that the holiday was repaired. More than the holiday. And more than repaired.
Voyage Out, Voyage Home
Constance sat impatiently in the little chair in the first-class cabin, taking occasional sips of the champagne that Mark had sent. Mark had been called out of town and hadn’t been able to come, but he’d sent champagne. She didn’t like champagne, but she didn’t know what else to do with it, so she drank it. Her father stood in front of the porthole, drinking, too. From his expression, Constance could guess that he didn’t like champagne either. Or perhaps he didn’t like this particular vintage. Or he didn’t like it because Mark had sent it. Or maybe it wasn’t the champagne at all but just that he was embarrassed.
Constance knew that she was looking sullen, and she tried to change the set of her face, because she also knew that she looked younger, childish, sixteen, seventeen, when she was sullen. She was sure that everything she did with her face at that moment made her look more sullen than ever, and she wished the horn would blow and her father would get off the ship.
“You’ll probably drink a lot of this,” her father said. “In France.”
“I don’t expect to stay in France long,” she said. “I’m going to look for someplace quiet.” Her voice sounded to her as though it were coming out of the nursery, wailing and spiteful and spoiled. She tried to smile at her father. The last few weeks in the apartment, while the argument had been going on and the hostility had been so close to the surface, had been painful to her, and now, in the last ten minutes before the ship pulled away, she wanted to recapture an earlier, easier relationship as far as she could. So she smiled, but she had the impression that the smile was crafty and cold and coquettish. Her father turned around and looked vaguely out the porthole at the covered wharf. It was rainy and there was a cold wind blowing and the men on the dock waiting to throw off the lines looked miserable.
“It’s going to be a choppy night,” her
father said. “Have you got the Drama-mine?”
The hostility returned, because he asked about the Dramamine. At a moment like that. “I won’t need Dramamine,” Constance said shortly. She took a long drink of the champagne. The label on the bottle was impeccable, like all Mark’s gifts, but the wine was sourish and acidy.
Her father turned back toward her. He smiled at her, and she thought, bitterly, This is the last time he’s going to get away with patronizing me. He stood there, a robust, confident, healthy, youngish-seeming man, looking privately amused, and Constance thought, How would you like it if I just got out of here and walked off this precious boat—how would you ever like it?
“I envy you,” her father said. “If someone had only sent me to Europe when I was twenty …”
Twenty, twenty, Constance thought. He’s always harping on twenty. “Please, Father, let’s cut that out,” she said. “I’m here and I’m going and it’s all settled, but let’s spare ourselves the envy.”
“Every time I happen to remind you that you’re twenty,” her father said mildly, “you react as though I’d insulted you.”
He smiled, pleased with himself that he was so damned perceptive, that he understood her so well, that he was not one of those fathers whose children slide irrevocably away from them into mysterious, modern depths.
“Let’s not discuss it,” Constance said, pitching her voice low. When she remembered, she always made a point of pitching her voice low. It sometimes made her sound forty years old on the telephone, or like a man.
“Have a great time,” her father said. “Go to all the bright places. And if you decide you want to stay on, just let me know. Maybe I’ll be able to come over and join you for a few weeks—”
“Three months from now,” Constance said crisply, “to this day, I’ll be coming up the harbor.”
“Whatever you say, my dear.”
When he said “my dear,” Constance knew he was humoring her. She couldn’t bear being humored there in the ugly little cabin, with the weather bad outside, and the ship ready to leave, and the sounds of people saying goodbye, laughing loudly, in the next room. If she had been on better terms with her father, she would have cried.
The horn blew for visitors to go ashore, and her father came and kissed her, holding her for an extra second, and she tried to be polite. But when he said, very seriously, “You’ll see—three months from now you’ll thank me for this,” she pushed him back, furious with him for his obnoxious assurance, and mournful at the same time that they, who had been so close to each other, were no longer friends.
“Goodbye,” she said, her voice choked and not pitched low. “The whistle’s blowing. Goodbye.”
He picked up his hat, patted her shoulder, hesitated a moment at the door, looking thoughtful but not disturbed, and went out into the corridor and disappeared among the other visitors who were streaming up toward the gangplank and the shore.
When she was sure her father was off, Constance went up to the boat deck and stood there, alone in the sharp, blowy rain, watching the tugs pull the ship into the stream. As the ship went slowly downriver into the harbor and then headed into open water, she shivered in the wintry air, and, approving of herself a little for the grandeur of the sentiment, thought, I am approaching a continent to which I have no connection.
Constance braced herself against the crossbar of the lift as she approached the mid-point of the hill. She made sure that her skis were firmly in the ruts as she came up onto the flat section of packed snow where there was a short line of skiers who had come down only halfway and were waiting to pick up empty hooks and go back to the top. She always felt a little uncertain here, because if you were alone on one side of the T bar, the first person in the line would swing into place alongside you and there would be an extra, sudden pull as the new weight caught that could throw you off balance. She saw that there was a man waiting for the place next to her, and she concentrated on keeping erect gracefully as he settled into place beside her. He did it smoothly, and they skidded easily past the waiting line. She was conscious that he was looking across at her, but she was too occupied for the moment with the terrain in front of her to turn her head.
“Oh, I know you,” the man said as they started safely up the hill again, leaning against the pull of the bar, their skis bumping a little in the ruts. “You’re the grave young American.”
Constance looked at him for the first time. “And you,” she said, because everybody talked to everybody else on the hills, “you’re the gay young Englishman.”
“Half right,” he said. He smiled. His face was a skier’s brown, with an almost girlish flush of blood along the cheekbones. “At least, one-third right.” She knew his name was Pritchard, because she had heard people talking to him in the hotel. She remembered hearing one of the ski teachers say about him, “He is too reckless. He thinks he is better than he actually is. He does not have the technique for so much speed.” She glanced across at him and decided he did look reckless. He had a long nose—the kind that doesn’t photograph well but that looks all right just the same, especially in a long, thin face. Twenty-five, Constance thought, twenty-six. No more. He was leaning easily against the bar, not holding on with his hands. He took off his gloves and fished a package of cigarettes out of his pockets and offered them to Constance. “Players,” he said. “I hope you won’t hate me.”
“No, thank you,” Constance said. She was sure that if she tried to light a cigarette she would fall off the lift.
He lit his cigarette, bending over a little and squinting over his cupped hands as the smoke twisted up past his eyes. He had long, thin hands, and ordinarily you had the feeling that people with hands like that were nervous and easily upset. He was tall and slender, and his ski pants were very downhill, Constance noted, and he wore a red sweater and a checked scarf. He had the air of a dandy, but a dandy who was amused at himself. He moved easily on his skis, and you could tell he was one of the people who weren’t afraid of falling.
“I never see you in the bar,” he said, tossing the match into the snow and putting on his gloves.
“I don’t drink,” she said, not quite telling the truth.
“They have Coca-Cola,” he said. “Switzerland, the forty-ninth state.”
“I don’t like Coca-Cola.”
“Used to be one of the leading British colonies,” he said, grinning. “Switzerland. But we lost it, along with India. Before the war, in this town, the English covered the hills like the edelweiss. If you wanted to find a Swiss between January 1st and March 13th, you had to hunt with dogs.”
“Were you here before the war?” Constance asked, surprised.
“With my mother. She broke a leg a year.”
“Is she here now?”
“No,” he said. “She’s dead.”
I must be careful, Constance thought, avoiding looking at the man beside her, not to ask people in Europe about their relatives. So many of them turn out to be dead.
“It used to be very gay,” he said, “the hotels swarming, and dances every night, and everybody dressing for dinner, and singing ‘God Save the King’ on New Year’s. Did you know it was going to be this quiet?”
“Yes,” Constance said. “I asked the man at the travel bureau in Paris.”
“Oh. What did he say?”
“He said everybody was a serious skier here and went to bed by ten o’clock.”
The Englishman glanced at her momentarily. “You’re not a serious skier, are you?”
“No. I’ve only been two or three times before.”
“You’re not one of the delicate ones, are you?”
“Delicate?” Constance looked at him, puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“You know,” he said, “the advertisements. Schools for delicate children. Swiss for t.b.”
Constance laughed. “Do I look as though I have t.b.?”
He regarded her gravely, and she felt plump and unaustere and a little too bosomy in her tight clothes.
“No,” he said. “But you never can tell. Did you ever read The Magic Mountain?”
“Yes,” she said, feeling proud that she could show she was not completely uncultured, although American and very young, and remembering that she had skipped the philosophic discussions and cried over the death of the cousin. “I read it. Why?”
“The sanitarium it was written about isn’t far from here,” Pritchard said. “I’ll show it to you someday when the snow’s bad. Do you think this place is sad?”
“No,” she said, surprised. “Why?”
“Some people do. The mixture. The pretty mountains and the healthy types walloping down the hills, risking their necks and feeling marvellous, and the people with the bad lungs hanging on, watching them and wondering if they’re ever going to leave here alive.”
“I guess I didn’t think about it,” Constance admitted honestly.
“It was worse right after the war,” he said. “There was a boom here right after the war. All the people who hadn’t eaten enough or had been living underground or in prison and who had been frightened so long—”
“Where’re they now?”
Pritchard shrugged. “Dead, discharged, or destitute,” he said. “Is it true that people refuse to die in America?”
“Yes,” she said. “It would be an admission of failure.”
He smiled and patted her gloved hand, which was clutching tightly onto the middle bar. “You mustn’t be angry that we’re jealous,” he said. “It’s the only way we can show our gratitude.” Gently, he loosened her fingers from the wood. “And you mustn’t be so tight when you ski. Not even with your fingers. You mustn’t even frown until you go in for tea. The drill is—loose, desperate, and supremely confident.”
“Is that how you are?”
“Mostly desperate,” he said.
“What are you doing on this little beginners’ slope, then?” Constance asked. “Why didn’t you take the téléphérique up to the top?”