Doctor's Wife (8 page)

    The clock, which she thought she had set for seven,
shrilled loud and late in the room. Hurrying, she pulled off her
nightgown and sat naked at the dressing table, beginning a long,
careful job of doing her face. Before leaving home she had
consulted Madge Stewart at McElvey’s. Madge had been trained at
Elizabeth Arden in London, and now she put on the base in the way
Madge had shown her and took out the new terra-cotta makeup Madge
said would be just right in the sun. First she did her eyes, not
too much eyeliner, trying for the natural look Madge talked about.
She rubbed the blusher in high on her cheekbones, with a touch of
it across her forehead along the hairline to give the beginnings of
a tan. She was pleased with the result. She took out her yellow
sundress, gave it a touch with the traveling iron, unpacked her
blue swimsuit, put it with a towel and the suntan cream in her
little traveling bag, adding the blue sun hat as an afterthought.
Then went into the bathroom, still naked, and began to comb her
hair. The sunglasses she mustn’t forget, brand new with very big
rims, all the rage in
Vogue
this year. At the last minute
she put on lipstick and faced the mirror.

    Awful. Too much. Why did I trust Madge, why didn’t I
have a trial run at home, the one day I want to look my best and
it’s awful, too much eyeliner, take a bit off, oh, God, I should
have got up at six, too much blusher, put on powder, start all
over, but it’s too late, I must go down and order the picnics. She
felt like weeping, but if she wept it would make her eyes even
worse. She was shocked at herself for caring so much. But there it
was. She did.

    So, giving up, she put on her underthings and the
yellow sundress and went down and managed to order the lunches and
be on the terrace before nine. But he was there already: he must
have come early. He jumped up, smiling at her. “Hey, you look
terrific. Good morning.”

    “No, I don’t.”

    “Yes, you do. What a great dress.”

    You would wait a long time before an Irishman would
tell you you had on a great dress. “Thank you,” she said.

    •

    At ten they caught the boat for Cap Ferrât. The
beach there was sheltered, smart and private with real sand,
brought in by truck and laid over the pebble stones. In the rear
were a restaurant and changing rooms, and when the boat let them
off at the small jetty, they paid their admissions and went
straight up to change. A few minutes later Mrs. Redden emerged,
wearing her blue sun hat and the big new sunglasses, feeling naked,
white, and conspicuous in the swimsuit, which was also blue and
new. As she came down the steps to the beach, instinctively she
hunched her shoulders, trying to make herself’ smaller, peering out
uncertainly at the blue-tinted world revealed through her new
sunglasses.

    Two teen-aged girls, sleek, tanned to an even cocoa
brown, flashed by like a reproach. Then a man and his wife, wearing
the most minimal of
cache-sexe
, both stringily muscled in
a way that reminded her of racehorses, came parading past, as in a
paddock. She moved a few awkward steps in the sand, pausing blindly
before a platoon of beach mattresses.

    Then she saw him coming toward her. He was wearing
white swimming trunks. “I’ve got us two lilos,” he said. “This
way.”

    “Which way?” She stared into the sun.

    As though it were the most natural thing in the
world, he put his arm around her waist, his hand resting on her
hip. She hesitated, then went on down the beach, his arm still
around her waist, walking in step with him.

    When they came to the lilo mattresses, she put her
traveling bag on one and sat, her legs tucked under her. “I look
like a corpse in this crowd.”

    “You won’t for long. That sun’s very strong. Have
you got some suntan oil?”

    She nodded and took out the crème solaire bronzante.
“Great,” he said. “You put some on my back, then I’ll do
yours.”

    He turned, presenting her his back. Obedient, she
squeezed cream into her palm, and began to rub it across his
shoulders, kneading it in. He had a long straight back and a deep
chest, a boy’s body, more like Danny’s than Kevin’s. She put more
cream on her palm and began to rub it in just above the top of his
swimming trunks.

    “Good,” he said. He turned, holding out his hand,
and she squeezed cream into it. He rubbed the cream over his chest
and forearms, then took the tube from her.

    “Your turn. Lie down. Relax.”

    Careful of her makeup, she spread her towel on the
lilo and lay with her head turned to one side, watching the quiet
Mediterranean waves fold on the sand like the turning pages of a
book, thinking of the wild bays of home, the long cold breakers,
the deserted dunes, the rainy beauty of Gorteen strand. He began to
knead her shoulders and neck, skillful and slow, his hands moving
down her back to her waist, and up again. Mrs. Redden pressed her
body into the mattress, aroused, the stranger behind her, his hands
on her, strong, sure, caressing her. And then, all at once, he took
his hands away.

    “What about your legs?”

    “Oh, I can do that myself,” she said. She twisted
around and sat up on the lilo. He had been kneeling by her
mattress, and when she turned abruptly, he dropped his hands as
though to hide his genitals. She felt her face go hot. She began to
cream her legs, stretching her toes out toward the warm quiet
waves. He said, “I wonder if Debbie got away yesterday. You met
her, didn’t you, that first day you arrived?”

    It was as though he had slapped her. “How did you
know I met her?”

    “She mentioned it.”

    “Is she your girl?”

    “Debbie?” He laughed. “God, no. She’s my sister’s
friend.”

    “She’s pretty.”

    “Do you think so? I think she’s a pain. I have to be
nice to her for Martha’s sake, but she’s heavy going, Debbie.
Wow!”

    “How old is your sister?”

    “She’s twenty-four.” He pulled a wallet from the
waistband of his trunks and passed a snapshot over. “That’s her.
Martha.”

    Mrs. Redden looked at a girl, dark-haired, carrying
a tennis racquet, smiling.

    “My parents,” he said, handing her a second
snapshot. “At our summer place in Springs.”

    A man and a woman sitting in white wicker chairs on
the sundeck of a house, woods in the background, the man in a
rollneck sweater looked a little older than Kevin; the woman, thank
goodness, looked much older. “Your father is young.”

    “He’s in great shape. He’s fifty-six, though.”

    She handed back the photograph. Twelve years older
than Kevin.

    “My grandmother.” An old lady in a curved,
high-backed chair, the sort of chair Mrs. Redden associated with
films about the South Seas. The old lady glared at the camera;
intent dark eyes like her grandson’s. “Gran’s a disciple of Teddy
Roosevelt. Speak softly and carry a big stick.”

    “I never heard that expression.”

    “Didn’t you? Well, her big stick is the purse
strings. Grandpa left money in a trust fund for our education and
Grandma administers it. A few years ago I had a big run-in with her
when she wanted me to become a doctor like Dad. Which is why I
wound up in Ireland getting my Ph.D. at Trinity instead of some
place like Princeton.”

    “And who paid for your education?”

    “Oh, my father paid the first two years. But then
Gran came around. Actually, she was nice about it. For instance,
this year when I got my degree she sent me the rest of the trust
money that was due to me from the education fund. Just gave it to
me as a gift.”

    Behind, in the beach restaurant, a girl began to
sing in Spanish, accompanying herself on a guitar. “What about
you?” he asked. “Were you a big family?”

    “No. Four. My oldest brother, Ned, is a dentist in
Cork. I have a brother, Owen, who’s a doctor in Belfast, and a
sister, Eily, who’s married to an engineer and lives near
Dublin.”

    “And your parents, are they both alive?”

    “No, my father died years ago. My mother died just
last spring.”

    “I suppose you still miss her?”

    “I don’t know. We fought a lot. She once called me a
born liar. I don’t think I ever forgave her for that.”

    He laughed. “Why did she say it?”

    “Oh, when I was small I was always making up stories
about myself. That I was an explorer’s daughter, or related to some
famous person. Anything but the truth—that I was Sheila Deane of 18
Chichester Terrace, Belfast, a very ordinary little girl.”

    “And for that she called you a born liar?”

    “Yes. I suppose she wasn’t too bad, really. Poor
Kitty. Funny, when I think of her now, it’s always with a cigarette
in her mouth, the cigarette bobbing up and down as she talks. She
was a great storyteller and people loved to hear her yarns. Trouble
was, she’d do anything to get a laugh. Even if it meant telling a
story against us, or even against herself. She died of cancer.”

    “The cigarettes?”

    “I suppose. There’s a lot of cancer in our family.
Both sides. My father’s brother died of it, too.”

    They lay for a while without talking. In the warm
sun she began to feel drowsy. She thought of home. I left a big
cooked ham for Mrs. Milligan and told her to make sure they eat
lettuce and lots of vegetables and to buy a roast next week, but
will she? All she knows how to cook is fried stuff, Danny and his
father will live off fried stuff and cake until I’m home again.
Well, at least Kevin gets a good lunch at the hospital three days a
week.

    Kitty dead. And my father, long ago. I remember that
morning, Owen coming into our room in his pajamas to tell Eily and
me to go downstairs to the big bedroom. Kitty weeping, Daddy dead
in the bed: he died in his sleep in the middle of the night, Kitty
asleep beside him. That was one time I was sorry for you, poor
Mama, to wake like that in the morning and find your man cold
beside you.

    The Spanish guitar music stopped, and behind them,
the girl started to sing a song; the lyric was French and familiar,
yet Mrs. Redden could not remember the song’s title. She turned to
Tom to ask if he knew, but he was not there. She sat up,
alarmed.

    There he was down by the water’s edge, talking to
the boat boys. She called his name. He turned and beckoned her to
join him.

    “I rented a
pédalo
,” he said. “Come on,
let’s try it out.”

    She laughed. Kevin would never have done that.

    Leaning back, bicycling, their legs moved the absurd
little boating machine out into the bay, chuffering along under the
rose and white façades of the big villas up on the cliffs, the
smell of the sea in their nostrils, lolling under an azure sky,
seeing small sailboats, the distant frieze of seafront at
Villefranche and, farther down, a haze of heat over Nice. She no
longer thought of her makeup, or even that she was getting red. She
offered her face to the sun, as to a host on an altar, this boy
beside her, holiday, holiday, holiday, never end.

    And, later, after she had gone back to the changing
room, showered, and put on her yellow sundress, she joined him,
carrying the picnic basket the hotel had made up. He waited at a
table under a Cinzano umbrella of bright red, white, and blue
stripes, a bottle of local white wine in an ice bucket beside him.
Kevin would have ordered beer. She opened the waxed-paper picnic
packages and laid it out, all colors—white chicken breasts, two
kinds of yellow cheese, fresh black figs, dull-red tomatoes, green
grapes, and brown crusty bread—and they ate it all up like greedy
children and drank off all the wine, which went to her head.

    “Let’s go for a swim,” he suggested.

    “So soon after eating?”

    “It will cool us off.”

    In the sea he swam, and swam well. She lingered in
the shallows, not wanting to wet her hair. Afterward, they lay on
the lilos under a cloudless sky. The beach was quieter now, as most
of the bathers had gone home for lunch. In the stillness she turned
her head to look at him. His eyes were closed, and so, cautiously,
she raised herself up and, leaning on one elbow, examined his face.
Asleep, he looked so young. He opened his eyes and smiled at her.
She lay back on the lilo and, after a while, felt him take her
hand. She pulled her hand away.

    “What’s wrong?”

    “Nothing.”

    He tried to take her hand again.

    “Don’t.” Embarrassed, she sat up, hugging her knees.
“Listen, let’s go up to the restaurant and get a cup of
coffee.”

    On the restaurant terrace they passed the stringily
muscled couple, who sat at a corner table sipping orangeade and
staring at a strange board with little black and white stones on
it. Tom said it was a Japanese game called go. Now that they were
no longer on dangerous ground, Mrs. Redden became lighthearted
again. “What should we do tonight? What about going into Nice and
wandering around and having dinner some place?”

    “Fine,” he said. They ordered coffee, and for a
moment she felt tense when he leaned across the table and touched
his fingers to her cheek. “Your face is burned,” he said. “You’ve
had too much sun. How do you feel?”

    “All right.”

    But, later in the changing room, she felt a stinging
pain along the top of her shoulders. Her face was hot, and with the
sun, the sea air, and the wine, she felt sleepy as they waited on
the jetty for the boat to take them back to Ville-franche, a
sleepiness that increased as the boat crossed the bay and let them
off on the dock, directly below her hotel. She thought of taking a
shower, to wake her up. “What should we do?” she asked. “Should we
meet here again around five and take a bus into Nice?”