August Is a Wicked Month (13 page)

‘In nature the bees do it, or the wind,’ he said, his fingers yellow from pollen dust.

‘Or the wind,’ she said longing for it. It was a special wind he conjured up: blowing pollen dust, sending seeds like velvet arrows to their appointed nests, scattering white geranium petals that fluttered like white butterflies; that wind in the tender blue inside elbows and thighs, no harsh sun, no Denise, the world soft with harmony and he and her joined together with fragments of wind like music falling upon them. It was too intimate, too physical a thought and she looked away. He stood straight as an arrow, his whey eyes saying to her, ‘All right, I’ll take you on.’

She looked towards his hands doing the wind’s work, bringing the seed from one yellow flower to another. An act of creation. If I could put out my hand, she thought, but I cannot. Denise was there, saying, ‘I quit America, I got a single ticket. I ended up in Scotland, cheapest fare, costs less to Scotland than anywhere in the world. Europe’s for me, it’s so goddam old, you know historic, you can live realistically, open up, grow, men treat you like a woman…’ And already the simple moment had gone, Denise was speaking to him saying how men treat a girl and he was listening with a smile. The actor’s downfall. He daren’t lose a customer. Ellen felt hollowed again.

‘Shall we take a walk?’ he said, to Denise.

‘Why not?’ she said; They cantered off and Ellen followed a little behind. There was no telling how the evening would go.

Later they sat in the large room where Ellen had been earlier. She re-saw things as if she’d been away for a long time, the small gay coloured birds of nylon, the ear-ring under the clock, the picture that had been changed by lightning.

‘I lived through a yellow thunderstorm here,’ Ellen said idly, moving the ice around in her drink. He suggested they get stoned. But she liked him better sober. He had just been saying how he had always wanted to have two women together and this was his chance. Ellen looked at Denise with distaste. There was black blood in that girl somewhere. Their eyes met, they did not smile, but gleamed, the bare gleam of rivalry in their big eyes, her green eyes and Denise’s brown ones. He was working his tongue in his mouth, the next thing he had to do was to spit. He stood midway between them, both hands on his belt as if guns were hanging there.

‘You smoke like an amateur,’Denise said to Ellen who was holding a cigarette between her middle and her ring finger.

‘And you’re so observant,’ Ellen said in a voice that people were accustomed to accept as real. A hard, formidable voice.

‘And what are you going to do in Europe?’ Bobby asked of Denise, pretending not to notice the duel.

‘Well I can’t give up acting, that’s one thing,’ she said. Up to that moment it had not been declared that she was an actress at all. It was quite touching the way she said it. Ellen watched him react. She tried to read the answer in the inclinations of his body. Then he suddenly walked as if he had made up his mind and sat on the sofa beside Denise.

‘You’re a good girl, sunshine, what else do you do?’ he asked.

‘I’m learning style,’ she said, ‘and writing…mainly for the discipline.’

‘That’s a Jesus brilliant thing to do,’ he said.

‘What’s that supposed to be, an insult?’ Denise said. She’d painted her lips a bit more. She and Ellen had withdrawn to his bedroom just before cocktails. Ellen had left her bag in there, by mistake.

‘No joke,’ he said. ‘I admire you. I admire women who are on the ball.’

‘Oh that’s cute, you’re getting so Latin, lover, what’ll you give me…’

‘Marshmallows of course,’ he said. He punched at one of her breasts then the other.

‘Hands off,’ she said, and then looked at Ellen and said to him, ‘She thinks we’re stupid.’

Ellen was gazing into her glass of whisky, apparently indifferent to their flirtation.

‘She’s thinking what is the colour of the wind,’ Ellen said, still looking into the glass, a half-smile of serenity on her face. It was not easy to keep so cool, but she wanted now to be the lone, interested observer.

‘Egg-head stuff,’ he said. ‘All we want now is some very nice spiritual guy to make up a foursome.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ Ellen said, smirking, tucking her feet up under her black skirt, drawing the skirt higher, very daintily with her thumb and first finger.

‘I follow you,’ he said, following the line of her very white, milk thigh beneath the darkness of the silk skirt. She’d decided not to use sun lotion. If her legs were white she was going to make a virtue out of it. Be the nurse she once set out to be.

At that moment a white-coated man appeared in the doorway and asked if they wanted anything.

‘Dinner?’ he asked, looking at Bobby, then at each of the guests. None of them responded to the question.

‘Any pussy cats in the garden?’ Denise asked the white-coated figure. He did not know what to say.

‘Are there,’ she repeated, ‘any pussy cats in the garden?’

He said that he did not know and bowed slightly and excused himself. They went on sitting, drinking, once Bobby stood up to click on a light but Denise put her hand out to restrain him, she said the light brought the mosquitoes and if there was one thing in the world she was allergic to it was boring mosquitoes. He shrugged and sat down again. The distance between them on the couch was at least a yard. Ellen, who had been looking at a magazine, closed it and folded her hands and waited.

‘You may not know it but you are still a woman in your wiles,’ Ellen said. Spears of conversation like that escaped from her mouth.

‘And under your armpits,’ Bobby said, jocosely. Denise was dressed in a light-blue sleeveless dress and an arc of black showed when she raised her arms above her head and murmured something inaudible but cuddlesome.

Outside the night ripened. It was immense and black. They still sat. In the complete darkness only the paler things showed, her white shirt, and his, her pair of hands, their hands. She felt for her heat spots and scratched them violently. Crickets from the garden. Bobby and Denise got on to talking about old movies, ones she’d never seen. Ellen’s eyes getting used to the darkness imagined that they were drawing nearer to each other. Two of their four hands went out of sight. Perhaps they had them clenched under his, or her, thigh. The conclusion being reached was that they loved Gary Cooper. Then Bobby stood up and walked with long strides towards the door, his white shirt disappearing into the greater darkness of the hall.

‘For the sake of old times I’ll show you the pussy cats,’ he said. Denise stood up and ran, absolutely ran after him.

Ellen was not sure what she would do. Whether it would be something ridiculous and shameful or tragic and noble. For a long time she did nothing except sit there and think about ineptitude. Then she rose and decided to get her handbag.

T
HEY LOCKED HER OUT
. She hung around the hall, her back to their door, not stirring, just waiting for sounds of them, and once again she thought, ‘This is not me, I am not doing this,’ and she remembered the calvary journeys her mother made across the narrow hall to her father’s bedroom and the don’ts and the don’ts and the don’ts; she waited now, as then, knowing that the first sounds that would carry them heavenwards would also be the beginning of the end. She felt no humiliation, they would be empty for each other after and she would still be unexplored for him, and therefore desirable. To pass the time she began to fit on the hats. They were the hats left by each of the summer visitors. It was one of Sidney’s little crazes, to have each person leave a hat on the big table. She tried first a linen one, then a straw one over that, then another straw that was wider, and lastly the very ornamental one with baubles, and dolls’ mirrors stitched on its wide brim. She set herself little time limits. She thought, ‘By the time I count a hundred, or put on four more hats or jump from the gold tile to the black spotted one’ – there were many colour tiles in the big hall – ‘he will have opened the door and he will be saying: “How ‘bout us going drinking, ma’am?”’

Their light was out and from under the door came the sounds: the murmur and bed-creak and whisper of people in the dark. There were foot sounds soon after and a thud as if a shoe or a clothes brush had been dropped, and then it was quite still for a while as she tried to deduce what part of the ritual was over and what yet to come. Her bag was in there so she could not even smoke, and she daren’t go upstairs in case they heard her departure and sneaked out. Not that they would. Anyhow she wanted to be there when they came out, smiling, disapproving, triumphant. She planned what she would say, she would say, ‘Anyone for tennis?’ and he, being as he was the first one likely to appear, would tell her to get her hair combed because they were going out and then the Princess would come, her hair all neat again but her dress a little wrinkled around the middle.

‘It must be ten,’ she thought as the clock from another room began to strike. The chimes were slow, steady, and friendly. She counted ten. A good omen.

Then in the lonely hallway where it was beginning to get dark she turned to face their door and reaching out put her hand on the brass knob that had the likeness of Sidney’s face. In fact was Sidney’s face. She held it for a while before turning it. If she turned it back and forth the inside knob – someone else’s face – would move and one or other of them would see it and call out. Strange, how when the urgency was over people regained their embarrassment. Then she remembered that it was dark in there and they would not see the knob being turned, so she knocked on the door very lightly, and, in the light, inconsequential voice which she had rehearsed she said, ‘Anyone for tennis?’ They made no answer. She knocked louder and with her other hand she turned the knob and gave the door a little push. Through the narrow slit of darkness she said,

‘I want my handbag.’ They made no answer.

‘Can you please hand me out my handbag?’ she said, galled by their ill manners. She waited, knowing she could not retreat, and after a decent interval she pushed the door and entered the room.

In the half-light she saw the bed, the covers in a mound, then her eyes travelled farther up and she saw the empty dented shapes of big, square, white pillows and clicking on the light she saw how trespassed the bed had been and how empty it was. It was the emptiest bed she’d ever seen. They’d gone. The window was open wide and she remembered having heard the footsteps and the thud and she stood staring at the empty bed as if she could not think what to tell herself to do next. Then she flung herself on it, face down, hitting, pounding, cursing and crying with her fists and with her eyes, and when the temper had passed she lay on her back and pulled the sheet up over herself, and stretching and tensing her legs she felt the smooth, silk feel of the sheet over her.

When she was calm she got up and opened his bureau drawers. She picked out several silk handkerchiefs but just tossed them and threw them back, and his shirts were too big for her and the silver brush set was in such awful taste she would not be bothered to steal it. But she wanted to violate the place in some way. She thought, ‘What can I do to this house short of burning it?’ She passed water and left the lavatory unflushed and then drank liquor straight from the bottle and poured what she could not drink down a sink. She was ready to go. She dialled the operator to ask about a taxi and then she said, into the telephone, ‘Do you speak English by any chance?’ and so surprised was she when the girl said ‘yes’ that without having intended to she asked for her husband’s London number. She would ask him to meet her at the airport. She would see her son sooner in that way and hand him the big present and hug him and they would all go out to tea. They might even get on well. He and her. They would compare holidays; she would hold back the sordid bit. Who knows, they might even look in each other’s faces and see something they cherished. Rock would have the present on the table. He would eat several cakes. If possible she would pay the bill. They would be happy. Even briefly happy. As she thought this she was fitting on a blue suede jacket of Bobby’s and wondering if she could have the sleeves shortened when the call came through and she heard two voices, one French, the other English, talking in French and then the English voice talking to her directly in English, and then to her amazement her husband at the other end saying,

‘Where are you?’

‘I’m in France,’ she said, ‘I was lonely so I came away for a little holiday.’

He was saying how he had put
SOS
bulletins all over England for her and she thought for an insane second that he had missed her so desperately he was calling her back, and then she knew that his voice was furious and she said, ‘What?’

‘Mark,’ he said, ‘got killed.’ He never used the pet-name of Rock.

‘What?’ she said again. He must be out of his mind. She shouted at him to speak up, to explain himself.

‘Where is he?’ she said, not waiting for his reply.

‘He got killed,’ he said, ‘on the road. A car ran over him.’

‘God almighty,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t you find me? ‘

‘There has been an
SOS
out for you for three days,’ he said. ‘How were we to know you were vacationing?’

‘Three days, where is he?’ she said again. ‘In hospital?’

‘I told you, he’s dead.’

‘And buried?’ she said, as if only by being buried was his death absolute. He said yes, buried.

‘How could you bury him without me?’ she said.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘it’s not the time for feeling injured. I saw him, I was with him…’

‘And why didn’t you get killed?’ she thought bitterly. She asked where he was buried.

‘In Wales,’ he said, ‘where we were.’

‘But how…how?’

‘He went for the milk, he went every morning…’

‘You fool, too lazy to go yourself,’ she said, and thought hatefully of the various tins of plaster and the small useless bottles of medicine that he’d transferred from the larger bottles. A spume of hatred and blame fell out of her mouth and if there was one pleasure in the world that she could have relished at that moment it would have been the pleasure of being able at last to blame him for the most terrible crime possible. Their roles at last reversed!