Rest and Be Thankful (12 page)

Mrs. Peel stood quite silenced. She was wondering if a cheese
fondu,
or an omelette and a salad, and some canned soup would be enough. She was worrying about a room for Dewey Schmetterling, the totally unexpected. She was thinking that their solitary bottle of Scotch was going to be insufficient. She was remembering that Prender always insisted on Daiquiris in summer. Remarkable how she had forgotten about that.

But Sally took charge. She smiled charmingly. “Come upstairs. While you are washing I’ll make some sandwiches. I’m afraid dinner is over. We eat at half-past six, you see, so that we can go out riding in the evening. And our help is quite free, once the dishes are all washed up, so”—she lifted Miss Bassinbrook’s hatbox—“let’s move these, shall we? Housekeeping is a little different out here, you know. Delightfully rustic, as Prender would say. Margaret, will you attend to the fire in the living-room?”

Mrs. Peel, as she lit the kindling under the logs, was lost in amazement and admiration. Living-room, Sally had reminded her:
she
would have led them into the little sitting-room and established a bridgehead for future invasions.

Then she went into the kitchen and started slicing Mrs. Gunn’s excellent home-baked bread for sandwiches.

Sally came downstairs smiling. “Well, this
isn’t
Paris or New York,” she said, in reply to Margaret Peel’s raised eyebrows. “They may as well get into the picture right away. They have hot and cold, electric light, clean towels, and good beds. They have someone to prepare their meals and wash their dishes, and someone to pay for it all. If they don’t think that’s enough they can go back where they came from.” They both began to laugh then.

“I begin to understand that for the first time in my life,” Margaret Peel said, referring to Sally’s last sentence, and went into another fit of laughter.

“Coffee,” Sally said, becoming practical again, “gallons of it. That will help our Scotch situation, I hope. I wish I had the courage to offer Prender some beer! And here’s plenty of fruit for dessert. I’ll serve it on ice, Spanish-fashion, and add an exotic touch.”

Sally has become so practical, Mrs. Peel thought, as she carried dishes into the living-room, where they had set up a card-table complete with supper cloth and a candlestick for the impromptu meal. Of course, Prender might have written to say he was coming, or he could have telephoned from Three Springs: that would have saved all this trouble. She sank into an armchair wearily, for she had been on her feet practically all day. There had been so many little last touches to give each room. All involved so many journeys, up and downstairs: books, flowers, candlesticks, writing-paper, matches, soap, ashtrays, and all the rest of it. In Rapallo, now, they could have nine maids for the cost of one in America. Europeans, or almost-Europeans like Prender, kept forgetting that. In Rapallo, too, no one—not even Prender—had expected everything to be run like the Ritz: everyone had laughed when things like plumbing went wrong and said, “The Italians, they are so charming, aren’t they?” But here, two thousand miles from New York, with the nearest store some twenty-five miles away and not a lime to be seen, Prender had wanted his Daiquiris.

“Cheer up,” Sally said, carrying a large pot of coffee into the room, “August has only thirty-one days. Besides, the rest of our guests won’t be like this, I’m sure. It is only Prender being very Atherton Jones. I like Miss Bassinbrook. She was appreciative, at least. Just
loved
your darling flowers on her
divine
writing-table. And such a
sweet
bed-lamp which really
worked.
I wonder what’s keeping them?”

She placed the coffee-pot near the glowing logs. “Between you and I, as they say in polite circles, I am furious about D. Schmetterling. He isn’t invited. He isn’t an unknown author. He had a smashing success with his book of satires on his poor family. He has enough money of his own, thanks to his family, to rent a whole dude ranch for himself. So it’s
damnable
that he should be taking up a room here. We need the space.”

Mrs. Peel didn’t even flinch at Sally’s vehemence tonight. “I know he doesn’t like us, yet he keeps
haunting
us,” she said miserably.

“I shouldn’t be surprised if we are part of his studies for his next smashing success. I’m sure he sees us as a mixture of Lucia and Tish. And I rather dislike being spreadeagled on a slide under a microscope.”

“Oh, no! He couldn’t! He wouldn’t!”

“He could. Besides, he has no imagination. So he
has
to write from life: one of those specimens who’ve got to borrow because they can’t invent. Margaret, I’ll really get fighting mad if he picks our guests for copy.”

“I’m sure he isn’t staying... It just happened that he was driving across the country to California, and so Prender and Miss Bassinbrook came with him. I’m sure it was all as simple as that.”

“It just happened,” Sally said. “But how I wish Prender wasn’t always tempted to save money. A train ticket would have been much cheaper in the long run for all of us.”

“Sarah,” Mrs. Peel said sharply, “I don’t think your trip to Europe last year did you any good at all.”

“On the contrary,” Sally said equally sharply. “If it hadn’t been for that I might never have grown up at the ripe age of thirty-seven. Pippa’s passing is definitely from the kindergarten to the first grade. And it’s Sally, Margaret. Sally... I am no longer anyone’s kindly great-aunt. I’ve discovered a very good rule: from now on anyone I spend time on has got to justify
his
existence in
my
life.”

Mrs. Peel said nothing. She stared at the little dancing flames stitching the logs together.

Sally reached out a hand and touched her arm gently. “You certainly justified your existence in my life. Remember 1932? That hideous day in October when I was—well, I wasn’t very happy, was I? You didn’t know how unhappy, when you came to see me that night because you were worried about me. And you stayed to talk until dawn came. You didn’t know; but you—you saved my life.” She spoke the last words with difficulty and embarrassment. How often the truth sounded trite; and the untruth witty.

Margaret Peel’s gentle face turned towards her friend. The brown eyes, which could look so young, were now old with deep wisdom.

Yes, she had known. She had talked that night to a girl clearly marked for self-destruction. She had talked against time, and waited for the first sign that the dreadful determination had weakened. Then it had been safe to stop talking, but not to leave alone. She had brought Sarah to her flat. It was then that this easy partnership had begun. But from Paris to Wyoming had been a long journey in years. It had taken all that time for Sarah to speak of that night.

She touched Sally’s hand in reply.

Then, “The coffee is going to boil,” she said, pulling out her handkerchief to move the pot farther away from the blazing logs.

Sally rose. “They are coming downstairs. Thank goodness.” She went to welcome the guests, invited and uninvited.

Mimi Bassinbrook had changed her dress and her face. Mrs. Peel, taking one look at the off-shoulder blouse, gave up her chair next to the fire. After all, that was less of a sacrifice than having to nurse a guest with pneumonia.

Prender Atherton Jones was more cheerful, having tested the mattress, the plumbing, and the view from his window.

Dewey Schmetterling was imperturbable. His dark hair was smoothly controlled. His face—which once had a tendency to be full-fleshed and volubly expressive—was fixed in its carefully disciplined mask. As a boy he had become conscious of the fact that his nose was more prominent than his chin; so he carried his head high, with an almost imperceptible backward tilt. He had decided his eyes were too large, too emotional, and so his eyelids were trained to narrow them to a coldly appraising stare. His eyebrows looked best in a slightly quizzical frown, so they stayed that way. He held his lips tightly to give his mouth a firm line. All this had been so constantly remembered—just as a determined woman can improve her waistline by pulling in her diaphragm even during the most intellectual conversations—that it had become seemingly natural. His appearance, made to match the character he had adopted, was that of a handsome bird of prey, waiting for the moment to strike. Among men, he found, this more than made up for his height; he could do little, though he had tried hard enough, to extend his five feet four inches. For men were wary of him. Women, because he seemed incalculable and indifferent, found him interesting. When he did turn on the charm, at moments of his own choosing, the effect was overwhelming. For the charmed one, a little nervous, a little apprehensive, a little doubtful that she was quite up to Dewey’s standard, suddenly felt she was not only the most charming and beautiful, but certainly the wittiest woman in the room. Five minutes of that made a whole evening memorable. Other men were puzzled that Schmetterling, as in all branches of his career, could achieve so much by working so little. They explained it in terms of women’s natural instinct for wealth. Dewey, dressed with superb understatement, was surrounded by an aura of good living, clinging as unobtrusively, but tantalisingly, as the scent of the costliest French perfume round a pretty woman’s throat. No expense, provided it was in good taste, was spared: the best was not good for Dewey.

“My dear Sarah,” he said now, looking at the plate of sandwiches and conveying the right amount of amazement and amusement. “And coffee too. How delicious! We’ll stay awake all night and tell each other stories. A Western
Decameron.”
He looked appraisingly at Sally’s checked shirt and tight Levis as he lifted a sandwich. Then he turned unerringly on Mrs. Peel and stared at her tweed suit.

“Maggie, you disappoint me. Where’s your fancy dress? I expected a pair of pearl-handled revolvers at least. You must let me send you them.” He looked at the sandwich in his hand reflectively. “As a bread-and-butter letter.” He kept the phrases, as well as the accent, of the school in South-eastern England where he had been educated.

“I’m the spangled-skirt type, I’m afraid. Not Annie Oakley,” Mrs. Peel said, trying to smile. But a pink spot of annoyance spread over each cheek as she turned to Mimi Bassinbrook.

“I adore the West, don’t you, Mrs. Peel?” Mimi said. “Wasn’t it clever of Prender to have thought this up? He has the most original ideas. I know we are going to have the most wonderful time.” She smiled up at Prender Atherton Jones, and patted the chair next to hers.

Prender was half gratified by Mimi’s renewed allegiance (it had been a hideous journey, with Dewey winning most of the laughs and almost all the attention), half embarrassed at the look in Sally Bly’s eye. As Mimi went on chattering gaily to Mrs. Peel he spoke quietly to Sally. “Mimi has a genius for getting things slightly mixed. That’s one of her attractions frankly.”

“I think she has many,” Sally said, and was very efficient with the coffee-cups. “Two lumps, cream; here you are, Prender. Dewey? Black and strictly unsweetened? Tea for Miss Bassinbrook? Why, of course. Shan’t be a minute.”

When she returned from the kitchen with the teapot the group had settled cosily round the fire.

“To think,” Mimi was saying, as she watched the blazing logs, “that it was over ninety degrees in New York on the day we left. And the humidity! My fingers slipped all over the typewriter keys, and the sheets came out all permanently curved as if they had lockjaw or something.”

Mrs. Peel, interested, said, “And what are you writing, Miss Bassinbrook?”

“Oh...just a few odd things at the moment. New York is so distracting, you know. I hope to really get down to work here, of course.”

Better start by giving up split infinitives, Sally thought. But then she was slightly soured at the moment by the lemon she had forgotten to bring from the kitchen, and which Miss Bassinbrook now requested most charmingly and naturally. Sally left them talking about humidity, New York, Singapore, the Amazon jungles, and returned with the sliced lemon to hear them arguing about politics. At least, Prender was making gloomy predictions and passing dire judgments.

“We are, in fact,” he was saying, “approaching the police state.”

Sally looked at him sharply. “If you had lived in Nazi-occupied France,” she suggested, “you wouldn’t throw around that charge so lightly.”

“Intellectual freedom is dying,” he said, ignoring the interruption.

“How?” Sally asked. Prender was always so evasive with direct questions: he preferred to make broad general replies, decked out with noble phrases, which proved that anyone disagreeing with him must be narrow-minded and mentally limited.

He descended to Sally’s practical level with obvious distaste. He said coldly, “I am talking of political investigations. Witchhunts. Opinions are being persecuted. Is that clear enough, Sarah?”

“You’d tolerate all opinions? Even destructive ones?”

“The air in Wyoming must be full of fire and brimstone,” Dewey said. “And are you going to run for Congress, Sarah?” The prospect amused him highly.

Mrs. Peel said, “It isn’t a laughing matter, Dewey. I’ve seen how Communists can use tolerance to get into power. And once they are in power they aren’t tolerant. Last year, in Paris—”

“Freedom cannot be qualified,” Prender said.

Mrs. Peel sighed. If only he’d let her finish her story. A practical example, too. She tried once more. “You know, Prender, last year—”

“I may disagree with a Communist,” Prender went on, “but I shall fight for his right to disagree with me.”

“Naturally,” Mimi said, looking thoughtful and sympathetic.

“And for his right, eventually, to send you to a concentration camp just because you continue to disagree with him?” Sally asked.

Prender shook his head over Sally’s rabble-rousing. “If we ever were to reach that stage of—of concentration camps, we’d resist. We’d fight violence with violence. Then our conscience would be clear. That’s my whole argument: we must keep our conscience clear.”

“Even at the expense of our country’s future?” Sarah asked. “Wouldn’t our consciences be clearer if we were to fight ideas with ideas now?”