Lucy Crown

by Irwin Shaw

  Yours Truly,

  (Sgt.) Jack Mc Cardle.

  p.s. They tell me I am going to get a medical discharge and a partial disability pension.

  (Sgt.) Jack Mc Cardle.

  Lucy folded the letter carefully and placed it in its envelope and dropped it back into her bag. Then she saw Tony coming toward her, on the shady side of the street. At least he turned out handsome, she thought, watching him approach, at least that. He walked deliberately, as though he planned each step. There was none of the exuberance or thoughtless grace of an athlete in the way he walked, but rather the feeling of a city man who has made a conscious decision long ago to be private to himself, not to allow himself to be swept up into the tempo of the crowds around him. He was wearing his dark glasses and they seemed like an affectation, because it was a cool day and there was no glare. They seemed like a further, conscious barrier that he was putting up between himself and the world, the stage props of a carefully guarded and unrelenting austerity.

  He stopped at the table and Lucy saw that he had shaved and put on a clean shirt and a pressed suit, sober and well-cut and expensive-looking, which he carried easily and well, making Lucy remember the care and taste with which Oliver had always dressed. Tony’s expression was polite, but there was still the small, enigmatic twist at the corner of his mouth.

  Lucy smiled up at him, making no claims of familiarity with the smile.

  “You found it all right?” Tony said, seating himself beside her. “The bistro?”

  “No trouble at all,” Lucy said, noting that Tony’s voice was softer and deeper than Oliver’s had been.

  Tony nodded and signaled a waiter and ordered two coffees, without asking her whether she wanted another or not. “Dora told me you saw me in the bar last night,” he said. “You should have come over.”

  “I wanted to think about it,” Lucy said, not telling him that she hadn’t been sure it was he.

  “We could have had a bottle of champagne to celebrate,” he said. “A meeting like this would have been more fitting in the middle of the night.” He spoke mildly, his accent generalized American and hard to place, and Lucy couldn’t tell whether he was making fun of her or not. “Well, we’ll have to make do with coffee. Dora told me what you’re doing here in France. It sounds most impressive.”

  “It’s not as impressive as all that,” Lucy said, searching for mockery and hurrying to turn its edge if it was there.

  “Protecting the new generation all over the world,” said Tony. “They can use some protecting, can’t they? What did you think of Bobby?”

  “He’s a beautiful little boy.”

  “Yes, isn’t he?” Tony said objectively, admitting a fact. “He’ll change, though, before it’s too late.” He smiled. “When you left, he wanted to know where you’d been all this time.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Oh, I said you’d been busy,” Tony said lightly. “That seemed to satisfy him. You know the new theory about children, I’m sure. Tell them the truth, but only as much as they seem to want at the moment. No overload of truth at the age of four, the books say.”

  The waiter came with their coffee and Lucy watched Tony stir the sugar into his cup. He had long hands, with the nails carelessly manicured and she remembered that until he was eight he had bitten them so badly that the cuticles had often bled. Now, the psychiatrists said, that was a sign of insecurity, a fear of being left alone, of being unloved. What the hell was he insecure about when he was eight? she thought. Maybe I’ll start biting my nails tonight.

  She raised her cup and tasted the coffee. “It’s surprisingly good,” she said, like a well-mannered guest at her host’s favorite restaurant. “After everything you hear about French coffee.”

  “When you visit a country,” Tony said, “you find that no one has ever told the truth about it.”

  He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes gently, in what looked like an habitual, assuaging gesture. Without the glasses, his eyes, deeply fringed with dark lashes, seemed thoughtful and gentle and the air of restraint and austerity vanished from his face.

  “Do you still have to wear those dark glasses?” Lucy asked.

  “Most of the time.”

  “The eyes are no better?”

  “No.”

  “Have you tried doing anything about it?”

  “Not for a long time,” Tony said, putting the glasses on again, giving Lucy the impression of a flat, impenetrable barrier being raised against her. “I tired of the medical fakes,” he said. Listening to his slow, unaccented deep voice, with its undertone of weariness and skepticism, Lucy remembered the rushed, shrill confusion of his speech when he was a boy. We saw a deer, she remembered, in the high adolescent tones. He came down to the lake to drink …

  “Tony,” Lucy said, impulsively, “what’s the matter? What’s wrong with you?”

  He looked surprised. He hesitated for a moment, twisting his cup in its saucer. “Ah,” he said, “I see that Dora didn’t waste her time.”

  “It isn’t only Dora. Anybody can see in a minute that …”

  “Nothing’s wrong with me,” Tony said harshly. He shook his head, irritated. Then he smiled and resumed the tone of formal good manners. “By the way, what did you think of her? Dora …”

  “She’s very pretty.”

  “Isn’t she?” Tony said pleasantly.

  “And very unhappy.”

  “That’s the way it goes,” he said, his voice flat.

  “And afraid.”

  “Who isn’t afraid these days?” Tony asked. Now he sounded flippant and impatient and Lucy had the feeling that he was on the verge of getting up from the table and fleeing.

  “She’s afraid you’re going to leave her,” Lucy went on stubbornly, hoping that perhaps by disturbing him, questioning him, wounding him, to make a connection between them.

  “It probably would be the best thing in the world for her,” Tony said, smiling. “It’s not so serious. Everybody we know leaves everybody else we know all the time.”

  “Tony,” Lucy said hurriedly, moving away from that subject, “why do you live in Europe?”

  Tony glanced at her, amusedly. “You’re so American,” he said. “Americans think it’s somehow immoral to live in Europe.”

  “It’s not that,” Lucy said, thinking of the shabby, characterless, uncomfortable apartment, so obviously furnished only for brief passages and people without roots. “It’s just that you’re not at home here … and your wife and child.”

  Tony nodded. “Exactly,” he said. “That’s the great thing about it. It takes away most of the feeling of responsibility.”

  “How long is it since you’ve been back home?”

  Tony looked as though he were considering this. He tilted his head back and half-closed his eyes, the sun glittering on the dark glasses. “Eighteen years,” he said.

  Lucy felt herself flushing. “I don’t mean that,” she said. “I meant since you were back in the States.”

  “Five, six years,” he said carelessly, bringing his head forward again, and pushing his cup thoughtfully a little distance away from him on the table, like a man making a move on a chessboard.

  “Do you ever intend to go back?”

  Tony shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “Who knows?”

  “Is it a question of money?”

  Tony grinned. “Ah,” he said, “I see that you’ve caught on that we’re not the richest young Americans in Europe.”

  “What happened to all the money you got when the will was settled and the business was sold?” Lucy asked.

  Tony shrugged again. “The usual,” he said. “False friends, riotous living and bad investments. Easy come, easy go. I wasn’t particularly anxious to hold onto it. It made me uncomfortable.” He peered at her closely. “How about you?” he asked. “Do you feel comfortable with it?” His tone was not censorious, merely inquisitive.

  Lucy decided to ignore the question. “If you ever need any money �
�” she began.

  Tony waved, interrupting her. “Be careful,” he said, “this may be costly.”

  “I mean it.”

  “I’ll remember it,” he said gravely.

  “Dora says you’re not particularly happy with your work …”

  “Did she actually say that?” Tony sounded surprised.

  “Not exactly,” Lucy admitted. “But she said you used another name and …”

  “I’m not good enough to make it really worth while,” Tony said thoughtfully, seeming to be talking for himself rather than for her. “And, after that, it’s just a grind. A rather pointless, depressing grind.”

  “Why don’t you do something else?” Lucy asked.

  “You sound like my wife.” Tony smiled. “It must be a general female optimism—that if you don’t like what you’re doing all you have to do is close up shop and start something else the next day.”

  “What happened to the medical school?” Lucy asked. “I heard you were doing very well, until you quit …”

  “I dabbled among the corpses for two years,” Tony said. “I had a light touch with the dead and my professors thought highly of me …”

  “I heard,” Lucy said. “I know a man from Columbia and he told me. Why did you stop?”

  “Well, when the estate was settled it seemed foolish to be slaving fourteen hours a day with all that money in the bank, and suddenly the idea of travel seemed very attractive. Besides,” he said, “I discovered I wasn’t interested in healing anybody.”

  “Tony …” Lucy said. Her voice sounded strained inside her head, and muffled.

  “Yes?”

  “Are you really like this, Tony? Or are you putting it on?”

  Tony leaned back and watched two girls in black dresses crossing the street diagonally in front of them. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m waiting for someone to tell me.”

  “Tony,” Lucy said, “do you want me to get up from here and leave you alone?”

  He didn’t answer immediately. He took off his glasses slowly and put them on the table with great care. Then he looked at her soberly, his face exposed, not defending himself, the deep, familiar eyes sad, considering. “No,” he said finally, and he reached out and touched her hand gently. “I couldn’t bear it.”

  “Will you do something for me?”

  “What?” Now his voice was guarded again.

  “Will you come with me to Normandy today? I want to visit the town where your father was killed, and the cemetery in which he’s buried. I have a letter from a man who was with him when it happened and I know the name of the town … It’s Ozières.”

  “Ozières,” Tony said, putting his glasses on again, restoring the barrier, as though he was already regretting the moment of softness. “I’ve passed through there. I saw no plaques.” He laughed sourly. “What a place to get killed in!”

  “Didn’t you know?”

  Tony shook his head. “No. You sent me a telegram that he’d been killed. That’s all.”

  “Did you ever hear how it happened?”

  “No.”

  “He heard there were some Germans in the town who wanted to surrender,” Lucy said, “and he walked in under a white flag and five minutes later he was dead.”

  “He was a little old for things like that,” Tony said.

  “He wanted to get killed,” said Lucy.

  “Read the papers,” Tony said. “The world is full of people who want to get killed.”

  “Didn’t you get that feeling from him when you saw him during the war?”

  “I didn’t see him much,” Tony said, staring past Lucy, obviously not wanting to talk about it. “And when I did see him the only feeling I got from him was embarrassment that I wasn’t in uniform.”

  “Tony!” Lucy said. “That wasn’t true.”

  “No?” He shrugged. “Perhaps not. Perhaps he was only embarrassed that I was alive.”

  “Don’t talk like that!”

  “Why not?” Tony said harshly. “I made up my mind a long time ago I wasn’t going to lie about the way we felt about each other, my father and I.”

  “He loved you,” Lucy said.

  “Under a white flag,” Tony said, as though he hadn’t heard her. “I suppose there’re worse ways for fathers to die. Tell me something …”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you really just see me by accident at that bar last night, or did you come to Paris knowing you were going to look for me?” He was watching her quizzically, his face ready to disbelieve her.

  “I didn’t even know you were in Europe,” she said. “And when you went out and I asked the man if he knew where you lived, I think I was hoping he wouldn’t know and I wouldn’t be able to find out.”

  Tony nodded. “Yes,” he said, “I can understand that.”

  “I knew that, one day, we would have to meet somewhere,” Lucy said.

  “I suppose so,” Tony said. “I suppose if you have a son you must eventually see him …”

  “I would have arranged it differently,” Lucy said, remembering her fantasies, the deathbed, the kiss, “if I was arranging it.”

  “Still,” said Tony, “this will have to do. So now you want to visit the grave … Well, that’s natural enough. I don’t say we should do it, but it’s natural enough. Tell me,” he said conversationally, “did you notice how vulgar he became toward the end?”

  “No,” Lucy said.

  “Of the dead only good.” Tony smiled harshly. “Of course. Loud and empty, full of officers’ club jokes and patriotic editorials and speculation about chorus girls. He was always asking me if I had enough money to have a good time. He winked when he said it. I always told him I could use an extra hundred.”

  “He was a generous man,” Lucy said.

  “Maybe that was what was wrong with him.” Tony looked up at the sky. It was clear and blue, burning out whitely toward the south. “It’s a good day for a trip to the country. I have a date for lunch, but I guess I can explain about dead fathers and returned mothers and things like that. I’ll explain I have to travel to a battlefield, under a white flag.”

  “Don’t,” Lucy said thickly, standing up. “Don’t come with me if you feel like that.”

  “Tell me,” Tony said, without moving, still staring up at the hot sky, “why do you want to do this?”

  Lucy held onto the table to steady herself. She felt exhausted. She looked down at the tight, back-thrown face of her son, with the dark glasses casting a sharp, smoky shadow on the taut skin of his cheekbones.

  “Because we destroyed him,” she said dully. “You and I. Because we must not forget him.”

  Then she saw that Tony was crying. She watched, unbelievingly, clutching her gloves, as the tears rolled down from under his glasses. He bent forward in a sudden movement, covering his face.

  He’s crying, she thought. There’s hope. He’s crying.

  18

  THEY DROVE IN SILENCE, through the brilliant noon light, in Tony’s small, black two-seater car. The top was down and the wind, blowing gustily across them, would have made it difficult to speak, even if they had wanted to. Tony drove carelessly and too fast and chickens went scurrying off the road before them as they passed the old stone farmhouses and in the towns people stared at them, reproaching them for being Americans and for traveling so fast. Black and white cattle grazed in the green fields and for long stretches the road curved between tall graceful parentheses of poplars that sent back the noise of the car’s passage as a soft, repetitious whoosh, like cloth-muffled drums being played nervously, in an obsessed rhythm, in a distant room.

  There is no need to hurry, Lucy wanted to say, sitting uncomfortably in the wind, her hair wrapped in a scarf, feeling that she was too old for such a vehicle and that much speed. No need to hurry. He has been there for eleven years, he can wait another hour.