The Theoretical Foot (21 page)

“Sue, darling,” he said softly. “You look so beautiful!”

He looked down into her great black-rimmed eyes and realized that he did not know her at all. The woman who this morning had almost been his life was gone now, turned into mist. Would her heart break? When he told her that she must go? That she had to leave, that he had to be alone? He needed to think about Honor and about time and space.

“Where is Mr. Garton?” Susan winked faintly at Joe as she asked it, then turned to Daniel. The gravel hurt her feet. She stood cautiously on tiptoe as she looked at him. Then, as he stared down at her, she winked one eye outrageously at him. She felt very silly. She
loved him, with his big nose and solemn eyebrows, yes, she loved dear Joe and her golden dress and the sherry and Sara Porter. She felt very silly, most definitely!

“Yes, where is Timothy?” Nan, watching the others saw her with new eyes, saw that Susan did not love Joe. She saw that Joe loved only her and that Honor loved only herself. She saw . . . yes, she
saw
that young Dan loved her but it did not matter. “Where is Timothy?” She asked, holding her glass steady as a stone. She wanted to see him and to know that he was near, so then when the time came she could tell him that he was no longer necessary to her.

Honor tried not to look in the mirror, because doing that every time she heard Timothy's name seemed weak and superstitious. She turned toward the lake. Far down toward Geneva the red and white lines of Évian hung on the water's edge. She thought deliberately of last night, of going into the casino there and nodding to the headwaiter and pretending not to notice the stares of the Chinese statesmen and their white-gowned German mistresses, and eating crayfish with her fingers. She was sure that if she concentrated on such things she would not think about seeing Timothy.

Everyone was talking. Joe Kelly had the softest voice you ever heard in a man. Dan's was ridiculously deep. He was saying things to Susan Harper. Honor smiled. Nan knew the sorts of things men like Daniel would say to girls like Susan.

“. . . like a fish out of water, as I've always put it.”

That was Tim Garton. How had he got here? Honor wondered, turning slowly on her silver heel, and looked at him as he stood talking to his sister. He wore a soft blue blazer and his hair was blue white in the light. He stood easily in his own skin. Yes, that was what Honor so loved about him, that he was so accustomed to living as if he had done it all several times before and was no longer ill at ease. She sighed, feeling without touching them the pins in her hair and the cloth binding her small waist and the line of silver leather around her ankles. She was irked by her body and longed to be impervious to it as Tim seemed to be to his.

“
Salud
,” he said and touched his almost-empty glass to hers.

“
Salud
,” she answered.

His green eyes were small and sat incredibly far back in his small head. She smiled automatically at him and then wondered why.

“Let's drink to tomorrow,” he murmured.

She shivered and touched his glass again. What good was it to tell him that they were escaping and that they would be hurting Sara and wasting their own energy and money on something that would not help? She knew because she had done it before. She was sure Dan had as well. Then why bother again? Honor started to tell him.

“Dan,” she said quickly. Then she stopped. His eyes were deep and excited and his lips curved and she saw that he looked very young. She was a woman and resignation surged in her. “To tomorrow.”

Timothy laughed at her. “You sound like a woman both triumphant and full of resignation,” he said.

Honor laughed. “Damn you, Tim Garton,” she said and felt much better.

Sara had disappeared. François's back, respectful, with old trousers shining in a V between the sharp edges of his fresh white apron, stood in the kitchen door, where he listen to Sara's last instructions. A cigarette butt fumed on the step just outside the kitchen, where he had thrown it.

“But where is Lucy?” Nan knew, but she had to say it aloud, dutifully. It was a way of proving that she still thought of her old friend, still felt connected with her. She knew that Lucy was in her room, perhaps hiding just behind the heavy blue curtains listening to them all, torturing herself with their gaiety and their forgetfulness of her.

“Where is dear Lucy?” She asked again, mockingly fervent. They all stopped talking and Honor said, “Yes, where is she?” in a manner that sounded as tactless as if she'd just blurted out, “Oh God, I'd almost forgotten all about that fat old bore.” Nan felt her lips tighten. Other people might be thoughtless, but she could never
permit herself to be influenced by them. She felt filled with loyalty and affection now. She put her glass down and started toward the end of the terrace.

“I'll go find her,” she said.

Lucy stood with dramatic suddenness in the main doorway. She wore a long black chiffon dress and her hair was piled up elaborately on the top of her head. It made her look handsome.

They all stood looking at her, thinking for the most part that night and a little makeup and perhaps some excitement were becoming to her. Timothy stepped to the table and started to pour her sherry. Honor said to herself, If she says, “
Hell-oh-ooh
!” in that horrible way of hers I'll scream. I will hit her. I cannot stand it.

“Hell-oh-ooh,” Lucy called gaily. She tried not to pant as she stood looking at them. She had run down the stairs too fast. She'd held her head high and kept resolutely from her ears and from her heart the sound of Nan's voice as it had floated up to her where she'd stood behind the curtains in her little room.

“I'll go find her,” Nan had said and Lucy knew that never would she be able to forget the complacent resignation that had echoed in her dear friend's voice. She'd clutched at the curtains feeling her world sway around her as she heard it and now knew that to Nan Garton—whose life was as dear to her as her own—she was a troublesome hysterical old nuisance. Then she had drawn herself up, feeling the comfort of a becoming dress and her best girdle. She'd hurried down the stairs as silently as her high party heels would allow her. She had stood for a minute looking out into the darkness, seeing the little group in the light at the end of the terrace, knowing that she'd been forgotten by all but her one dutiful friend.

“Oh, hell-oh-ooh!” she called. They looked glum. She would share them, make them at ease, no matter how her own heart bled. She saw their faces brighten. They were all there, she said resolutely to herself. These are bad people, except for my own darling Nan. It is she I must sacrifice myself to save. She stands there as defenseless as an innocent lamb with those two shameless visitors on either side of her. I shall force myself to be polite to them but no more. Good
and evil. This is what I see. Nan . . . and facing her the insolent masterful devil who is her brother, trying to take her from me, and then that tall pathetic Honor, who longs to be natural and girlish with me and has to pretend to be sophisticated. Daniel, sweet young Daniel—it is perhaps not too late to save him at least from the corruption of this place, with all its loose women visiting and their panderers such as that horrible Joe Kelly. Daniel is sensitive. I can deal with him being moved by my real womanliness. And Sara, where is she? Where is her flat smirking face? And her smooth brown hair and her holier-than-thou complacency? Is she hiding? Planning some new way to make them a laugh at me? But I'll show them what good breeding stands for. I'll prove to them that a lady is not daunted.

She pulled in her stomach and walked slowly toward the table, her black skirts fluttering.

“Lucy,” Nan called. “You had us all worried. Are you all right?”

Yes, yes . . . I am all right, Lucy thought, though my heart is broken and I am lonely unto death.

She smiled.

François, standing in the kitchen door, cleared his throat dramatically. They all looked at him.

“Sirs and ladies,” he said in a low voice that commanded their attention as if he were on the stage of the Comédie-Française, “Permit me to drink to your very good health.”

He raised a sherry glass somberly, looked at each of them in turn, then bowed to the invisible Sara and sipped once again. “The supper is served,” he said.

ii

Timothy looked down the length of the carved table covered with coarse net and flowers and silver. At the end of the corridor of faces, Susan's, Daniel's, Lucy's to his right, with Honor and his Nan and Kelly facing them, he saw the body and the visage of his own dear love. He looked far down at her, past the flickering light of eight candles to where she sat. Even though she did not look at him, but bent her smooth head to the speech of the guests, he could see her and feel her, like a holy ghost, and she made him feel strong, indomitable.

“But are you sure you don't want your sherry?” He heard Sara ask it, and although he listened politely to Susan telling him about art galleries in Munich, he could hear every word at the other end of the table.

“Quite sure, my dear,” Lucy said and tossed her head imperiously. “Quite. In fact, I have decided to go on the wagon.”

Sara groaned. “But Lucy,” she said, “how brave of you! But not tonight, surely. Leave it for tomorrow. Tonight is a party so you simply can't!”

Lucy laughed excitedly and turned over her wine glass. “Oh yes,” she cried. “I have decided. No more liquor.”

Joe leaned earnestly across the table. “But is it wise to stop so abruptly?” he asked in a soft away, as if genuinely concerned. He smiled at her.

Lucy felt her heart trip a little. This boy, in spite of his loose morals, was sensitive: he understood that she must protest, not at
the drinking but the whole wretched scheme of things. She bent toward him. Then she glanced at Sara and saw in her cold green eyes such a vindictive gleam of mockery that her very blood stood still. What a hateful, hateful creature, she moaned inwardly. Oh, my poor Nan! That you should be subjected to the presence of this woman, just to stay near your brother! Lucy tried to smile into the warm small brown eyes of the boy across from her. “Must needs,” Lucy said, being gaily noncommittal. “Needs must. When a woman reaches my age, you know . . .?”

Joe interrupted her dutifully. Christ, he thought, I am such a clumsy boor. I hope I haven't been too late. These goddamned old women put me off, always giving me cues. It's like being examined for epigrams by the Rhodes board. I'll flatter her. I'll dish it out. Sara looks fagged, I'll smooth things over for her. He pulled his warmest, most innocent smile from his well-stocked bag of tricks and spread it tenderly across his endearingly ugly mug. That's what he thought, his smugly ugly mug, but it was oh so endearing . . .

“Lucy,” he began and then stuttered in a shy way. “I . . . I mean . . . Mrs. Pendleton . . . You know, I never have quite got over being scared, since I got out of the orphanage, you know, of all these forks and things . . .”

He saw her lean impetuously across the table. Her breasts are dragging down, he thought coldly and looked piteously into her sympathetic eyes.

Timothy sighed. Joe Kelly, he saw, would go far. He was a good boy and would be an intelligent politician. What was this about Lucy's not drinking? Another bid for attention, he imagined. He saw Nan look sharply at her friend across the table.

“But, Lucy dear,” Nan said clearly, “are you really on the wagon?”

For a few seconds there was silence. Honor put down the empty sherry glass that she had brought to the table and looked blankly at the two women who sat catacorner from each other, her face flat. Daniel stared at his older sister and noticed that her mouth was taut under its makeup.

“Of course,” Joe Kelly heard, “we all know what it is to have such a thing forced upon us.”

Lucy teetered self-consciously, like a whore, he thought, boasting of the clap before her uninitiated sisters.

“But Lucy,” Honor said, “just for the party tonight!”

Lucy laughed again, her eyes shining.

Susan Harper spoke suddenly. Her eyes shone, too, and she knew she felt a little crazy, as if nothing mattered but getting all the unwilling attention away from this queer old woman who was in some wordless way trying to taunt Sara Porter.

“What does it matter?” Sue's voice was high and she laughed. “If Mrs. Pendleton wants to stop drinking—what does it matter? Why is it anyone else's earthly concern?”

Lucy looked at her. This child had been charming at first before it became clear what she really was, and even then she had seemed very girlish and sweet. She was different now. Perhaps Timothy and his woman had already influenced her by telling her lies. Lucy shrugged.

“Yes,” she said lightly. “As Miss Harper says, what does it matter what I do?”

“But Lucy,” Nan urged, “do drink just a little, won't you, just for tonight! Everything is so lovely and we all want you to have fun!”

(Oh hell, Timothy thought violently. Why does my Nan go on and on, placating, urging, smoothing? What difference can it make that this tortured woman have her way? She is bent on self-castigation. Nan, Nan . . . let her whip herself.)

“Oh no, never mind about me,” Lucy said, smiling understandingly into the fervent brown eyes of the boy across from her then turning toward her hostess.

“Sara, my dear,” she murmured graciously, “I think that your François has been trying to attract your attention now for several minutes.”

Honor, too, had seen François patiently and discreetly hovering. What did he want, she wondered. Had the meal burned? She hoped not. She was hungry and felt careless and happy, ready to get
a little drunk or to talk about dormice. She watched the servant, all the while talking as she was to Nan, whose conversation was queer and spasmodic tonight. Perhaps she feels a little silly, too, Honor thought. Perhaps she knows now that I have found the secret of her flowers. What will she say tomorrow when she learns that Dan and I have run away? Should we say good-bye to anyone?

François was whispering to Sara with his head down. She spoke softly to him. He disappeared and then, while they all talked not too self-consciously, he came back with a green bottle and poured pale golden wine rather tremblingly into each glass except for Lucy Pendleton's. They lifted their glasses solemnly as François stood at attention.

“To us,” Timothy said and smiled down the whole table without looking to its end. “Better never lived.”

François relaxed, scuttling toward the kitchen.

Sara then leaned forward. “He forgot his collar and tie,” she explained clearly. “Poor man. This is a great day for him and he forgot his collar and tie. I told him to carry on and to simply fold a napkin around his throat.”

“But of course,” Nan cried.

“Why not?” Susan laughed, feeling sillier than ever. Mosca the Gadfly, she cried to herself. That's me and that's François too. She looked cautiously sideways at Dan Tennant who sat beside her.

Dan seemed quite unaware of her. His long nose and his queer birdlike profile loomed above her. She glanced quickly away. He was the darlingest, but definitely the
darlingest,
boy she'd ever seen. She was in love with Joe Kelly, however. No, she was in love with this boy Daniel or was it the silver-haired man who sat on her left? Oh, she thought, I so want to be young again waiting for Father to play with me and to comfort me. I want to be old and to not have all these problems.

François passed down the table and up toward Sara again with a fair napkin folded impeccably about his throat over his grimy shirt and under his white coat, and a platter of little cheesecakes balanced on one arm. They were hot and fragrant. The wine tasted good with
them. The strangers gathered here together grew easier and began to talk almost merrily as they ate and drank.

The candles fluttered now as the valet, watching from the kitchen steps with his hot black eyes, walked softly to the windows and drew one curtain expertly across the first night breeze from Geneva. Timothy noticed this and lifted his glass. François bowed profoundly.