The Darts of Cupid: Stories (5 page)

"Well, this is my swan song," I said, "and now I’m going home." I got up hastily.

"Oh, Eve, look here—you can’t—," began Constance.

"Take her to the bathroom," said the Major.

When I heard Constance’s voice calling, "Are you all right, Eve?" I was looking in the mirror, dabbing my face. "May I come in?"

"Yes, do," and I opened the door. "I’m frightfully ashamed of myself, Constance," I said. "I thought I could hold my liquor like a gentleman, and I never felt a thing all along, till it was too late. I didn’t know I’d drunk so much."

"Oh, but Eve, you didn’t drink half of what I had. And I know exactly how it is. It suddenly hits you out of the blue, and it was Calvin’s fault anyway. When he puts the gin into the lemon, you can’t feel the kick, and it’s like drinking lemonade."

"Yes," I said, "and I felt stone sober all the time, too, I swear to God."

We walked past the elbow in the passage and came into the hall. "I’ll be all right now," I said, "as soon as I get out into the fresh air."

The Major came out of the drawing room. "Put her to bed, Constance," he said.

"No, but honestly, this is too—," I began.

"You heard me," said the Major, and he went in and shut the door behind him.

"I’m sure he is right, Eve," said Constance. "You are in no fit state to leave. And we’ve got lashings of spare rooms. And it’s no trouble, really." Linking her arm with mine, she walked me back past the bend in the passage and into a bedroom.

"It joins the bathroom, anyway," she said, "in case you feel queer again." And seeing that I was standing about, undecided and awkward, she added, with her most cordial smile, lowering her voice to a whisper, "And I’ll give you a really super nightie, Eve. Look." She opened a door in the built-in cupboard that ran the length of one wall. "I’ve never had it on," she said. "It’s prewar stuff, and it will suit you marvelously."

It was a gown of tea-rose yellow crepe de Chine, the square neck bordered with roses of ivory and fawn lace.

"I’m quite overcome," I said. "First I disgrace myself, and then this—it’s much too good."

"Come on, you’ll look lovely in it," and she glanced at me with a winning smile. At the door, she turned and smiled at me once more.

THERE WAS a double bed in the room, close to the window, and it was made up and opened, with the spread folded over the high foot rail of brass. There was a single bed close to the opposite wall, obviously not in use, because several blankets were stacked side by side on the bare mattress. I wondered briefly if I was going to occupy the bed that had been got ready for the Captain, and whether they would not want now to take out the other bed and carry it into the drawing room, or whether there were other bedrooms in the flat. Then I was possessed once more by dizziness, and my limbs grew chill, as though they were enveloped in snow, and I undressed speedily, slipped into the nightgown, and got into bed. I felt better as soon as I lay down.

Constance came in again. She was now in partial undress, in a dressing gown which gaped open over her petticoat. "Calvin says that you are to take these," she said. "Not to chew, just swallow." She extended her hand, on the palm of which lay two white glazed pills. "And here’s some water." When she had taken the tumbler from me, she began to unpin my hair. She ran her fingers underneath the twisted tresses and shook them loose. "You look simply heaven, Eve," she said. "I knew you would, with your black hair on the yellow silk. You look like a mermaid."

I said, "Mermaids always drink and never vomit."

"Oh, Eve, you are the greatest fun!" she cried. "Just as Calvin said you’d be."

"I don’t feel it, though," I said.

"You poor lamb, of course. Do you think you’ll be all right now?" After several inquiries of the same nature, and reassurances on my part, she left and turned the light out. I cannot fall asleep while lying on my back, but I did not dare yet to turn on my side; I remained stretched out flat, taking deep breaths. The light went on and the Major came into the room and, wordless and without giving me a glance, passed into the bathroom.

I thought, Oh, God, how awkward. I suppose they’ve got another bathroom that’s occupied, what with everybody going to bed now. I saw him coming back, and again he did not look at me. He was in shirtsleeves and carrying a towel over one arm. I saw him standing in front of the cupboard and rummaging among the shelves, and I closed my eyes, thinking, I suppose this is his dressing room and now he’s looking for some pajamas. I’m hanged if I want to know what color pajamas he wears.

I heard a hinge creak, and then the light was turned off. The next moment, he was in bed with me, with one side of his body covering mine, and taking hold of my shoulders and hurting them in his grip. I turned my head away. "I must be sick again," I said.

He sat up, passed one arm under my waist and one under my back, drew me to a sitting position, propped me up, and tore apart the blackout curtains on the window; he slid the sash up. "Here, go right ahead," he said. He steadied me against his chest and laid his arms round me while I was shaken by my violent heaving.

Unlike the tall elegant windows in the front part of the house, this was a modern low window, with the sill about a foot beneath my head. It was a moonlit night. And while I was being sick I noticed, with that part of one’s mind that remains lucid and observant in any calamity, a pair of motoring gloves laid on the outside ledge. They were of an expensive make, with backs of pigskin and palms of crocheted yarn, and I was furiously ashamed when I saw that I had spattered them with my vomit.

"Finished?" he asked, laughing loudly.

"Yes, thank you," I said.

He propped me up against the pillows. I heard him moving about and I opened my eyes when I felt the light through my closed lids. He brought a basin and sponged me with warm water, gave me a lotion for rinsing my mouth, and dried me. Then he laid me down flat. I saw he was wearing nothing but his open pajama coat.

The light went out and he was in bed with me once more, extended over the full length of my body once more, with his virility pressing against my closed thighs while he grasped my wrists, raised my arms, and forced them to close round his neck.

"I’ve got to be sick again," I said. He released me and straightened up, and held me and supported me as he had done before, and as before I soiled the motoring gloves on the ledge and was desperate with shame at their sight. My shame was mingled with fury and indignation toward him for having wanted to make love to me, and at the same time I was flooded with gratitude.

This time, after he had cleaned me and put the lights out, he did not cover me with his body but came and lay by my side. "No more, worse luck," he said. "You are too weak now. There is nothing to think about and nothing to worry about. Go to sleep."

He turned me on my flank and pulled my nightgown up under my armpits. He placed my head against his chest and slid his arms about me and entwined his legs in a bewildering, complicated grip with mine, till my body was entirely enwrapped and enclosed and imprisoned in his, and as I drew a trembling breath and tried to stir he pressed me yet more closely to him and held me in utter captivity.

Mrs. Dicks had on one occasion, when she had tried to ingratiate herself with our crowd, brought to the office a valuable collection of prints drawn by the most famous Japanese masters between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries. They showed men with men, men with women, and women with women, all partly clothed, in the greatest variety of voluptuous pleasures. I had looked through them hastily, ashamed of my interest and reluctant to admire the possession of the woman whom I disliked. The only picture I remembered clearly forever after was one unlike any of the others, perhaps because it was fantastic and thus lacked the realism of the others. It was starkly timeless; it had a fairy-tale quality. It was a naked woman, dead, floating in the sea, with an octopus, larger than man-size, fastening round her and holding, caressing, and penetrating her with his many arms. Her face was serious, with that air of deep abandon and satisfaction that may be given to those who have been granted their most heartfelt desire. Her spread-out tresses, the waving algae, the undulating water—black, whitish, gray, and suffused with green—now appeared to me, as though floating toward me out of the moonlit night behind the window, and I knew that this was the rendering of love as it should be: trapped inescapably, secure and fastened, drowned in bed and water, both cradle and grave. I gave a sigh of contentment and fell asleep.

WHEN I WOKE UP, it was daylight, and I saw the Major standing behind the brass bars at the foot of the bed and looking at me over the top rail, like a keeper in the zoo who has come to look after his charge. He was in socks and underpants and vest. "I’m getting dressed," he said, "but I think I’ll undress again, now that you’re up."

"No," I said.

"Why not?" he asked, gripping the bed rail with one hand and pulling off his socks.

"Even if you are a beast," I said, "I couldn’t possibly. Think of Constance. I couldn’t look Constance in the face anymore. And she’s so sweet. She even gave me her best nightie to wear."

He said, "We’ve had Constance and her sweetness last night. She’s sweet—you said so, I said so, ad nauseam. Perhaps that’s what made you throw up." He rested both arms on the bed rail and leaned over it, looking down at me.

"I don’t understand you," I said, avoiding his eyes.

"You have that marvelous cold skin," he said. "You can lie for hours in bed with a man and you never get sticky and sweaty."

I did not speak.

"You are so exquisitely made," he said, "I could break every bone in your body."

"Go to hell," I said.

"I shan’t go to hell," he said, "but I may go to the office."

"Yes, do," I said. "Go to the office."

"I needn’t go," he said.

"You look so revoltingly clean and healthy it makes me ill just looking at you," I said.

"Yes. I suppose so," he said. "You are exhausted, but you’re looking very pleased with yourself just the same. So be it. Relax. I’ll put you down as a case of battle fatigue, but not incurred in the line of duty."

It was only when I heard his laughter that I knew he had strangled his desire.

I lay back on the pillows and nestled into the covers. I heard him come and go, opening and shutting doors and drawers, and felt reassured at these sounds. Once, I heard his voice and laughter outside in the hall, but I could not hear anyone answering. He returned, stopping in the door. He was fully dressed and carried his cap in his hand. "I told Constance not to disturb you," he said. "Go to sleep now, and when you wake up she’ll give you a nice breakfast." Once more, I heard his laughter outside, then the muffled slam of the front door.

When I woke up, I felt bright and light-headed and hungry. I went first of all to the window and looked out. The ledge was empty, the mortar dirty and eroded by many craters, and my heart tightened with remorse and shame and gratitude at the thought of the soiled gloves lying in the leaden moonlight. I took the Major’s dressing gown from a hook on the door and stepped into his bathroom slippers, plaited of raffia and lined with Turkish toweling, and made my way along the passage, around the corner, past the open door of the kitchen, past the closed doors of the dining room and the drawing room. I knocked at a couple of narrower doors and opened them. In one room I saw an ironing board surrounded by chests and boxes. The other was a bathroom. I went back to the drawing room, walking slowly and with a shuffle, trying to stifle the slapping noise the outsize slippers made at every step. From the dining room I heard Constance’s voice: "Is that you, Eve?"

"Yes, Constance, I’m afraid so. Outstaying my welcome."

"Do come in, you poor lamb."

I opened the door. It was not the dining room, as I now realized; I must have passed that before or after the kitchen. I saw the wide bed in the middle, well away from both walls, and in it Constance, half sitting up, facing me, and I thought again how pretty and how forgettable she was. Only then did I see more. Leaning against her shoulder was the Captain’s head.

"Do come right in, Eve," she said, giving me her delightful, cordial smile. Running her fingers through his hair, she added, "Doesn’t he look sweet with his curls? Just like a little boy."

"Yes," I said, forcing myself to look pleasant.

"He’s such a lamb altogether," she said. "We’ll be sorry to lose him, shan’t we? He’s got to leave tomorrow."

"Yes," I said.

I did not know what sickened me most about the sight of the pair—whether it was her pretty, unconcerned ease at having broken faith with the Major, or the sheer physical fact that she had lent her body, growing the seed of one man, for the use of another, or whether I was revolted by his clever, grinning face, tanned and with the jutting nose and chin, recalling those evil masked puppets carved of wood by the peasants of some Alpine regions. I felt that I might not have been pained so much at her betrayal if at least the Captain had resembled the fair, square-faced, masterful Major.

As I watched her smiling and caressing his curls, I realized that she was truly sweet "ad nauseam," as the Major had expressed it. It was just because she was so kind, so good-natured, and so welcoming that she found some attraction in every man and some reason for indulging him. Like a whore, she consorted choicelessly, and yet she was the opposite of a whore. A whore hires herself out for money and as an expression of contempt and hatred toward men, but Constance did so without heed of monetary gain, out of admiration.

"You needn’t dress yet, Eve," she said. "We’ll all have breakfast together. Calvin told us we should wait for you."

"He went to the office," I said.

"So he did," she said. "It’s the Calvinist in him. Aren’t these American names ghastly, really? This one here is a horror, too. He’s called Dallas."

I said, "What can’t be cured must be endured."

"Oh, Eve, you do come out with the screamingest things!" she cried, and, turning to the Captain, she said, "Look at her, standing there in Calvin’s dressing gown, and so serious. Doesn’t she look heartbreaking? Like a poor little orphan?" I recalled how she had coaxed me to accept the splendid nightgown, how she had loosened my plaited hair and admired it, how she must have known, and taken a pleasure in knowing, of the Major’s wish to lie with me, and I marveled at her goodness.