The Theoretical Foot (24 page)

viii

Honor ran from the room, then stopped and stood breathing quickly in the darkness outside, her head full of music. She laughed to think that for once she had forgotten to move slowly in a manner better suited to her stateliness.

“Oh, Joe,” she said, “that was fun.”

He stood with the lights behind him so, when she turned, she saw only the black outline of his enormous shoulders and the thick wedge-shaped ears against his skull.

“Why are you staring at me?” he asked. Even without music playing his voice was almost too soft to hear.

“Am I staring? I was thinking that I had planned not to call you Joe. I don't believe in calling people by their given names until I get to know them.”

“But you know me now.”

Honor laughed again, turning toward the lake beyond. At the edge of the terrace daisies in a long line glowed like faces.

“Do I?” she asked.

“Yes, Honor,” Joe said, sounding impatient. “Goddamn it, you know me better than anyone.”

“Do I?”

He stood close to her but without touching her at all and Honor was too conscious of him suddenly. She surprised herself by wondering if she could breathe calmly.

“You should always wear silver,” Joe then went on in a conversational way. She started, felt annoyed with him. She smiled teasingly.

“Like George Sand? Have you ever read
Mare Nostrum
? It's by Blasco Ibáñez or one of those boys. George Sand was in it, I think. She wore a silver dagger in her hair, as I remember.”

“If you're Sand, who is your Chopin?”

Honor suddenly hated this impassive large man with his thuggish face and purring voice. What business is it of yours? she wondered. Who are you? she'd have liked to suddenly scream at him. How dare you ask me such a question?

“Must I have a Chopin?” She spoke lightly, scornfully. “No dagger, no lover. I am the cat that walks by itself. Let's get more champagne. Let's dance again.”

“You stay here.”

He took her hand, pulled her close, then seemed to fling her hand away, as if it hurt him.

“I saw you there tonight,” he said, his voice so quiet she, in spite of herself, leaned nearer. She rubbed her wrist where he'd held it. The man was a boor and a brute.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” she remarked. She wished there were more light so he could see the look of disdain on her face, her lifted eyebrow, her eyes bright with anger.

“I saw you there. I wasn't asleep when you stood there at the table with François looking down at the flowers set before the mirror. You carried flowers in you hand, in a bowl, and you were wearing a long white thing like a winding sheet. You were so beautiful. I said then as I watched you from under my half-closed lids that if you saw me you'd think I was sleeping. I said then that as long as you're alive I will hunt you, that you, Honor Tennant, will be my wife.”

Honor laughed. How dare this conceited bully talk to her like that?

“You're such a romantic, Mr. Kelly.”

“You're damn right about that, my girl. I am a romantic. I am common. I'm an orphan. We will marry. I'll give you a silver dagger and I will be your lover. I don't need you yet as I've already got you here inside me.” He held her by the wrist.

“I've never heard anything so foolish,” she said. She was terribly disturbed.

“Let go of me, Joe. You're hurting me. You are completely crazy.”

She moved away from him, walking slowly toward the dark in which sat the fountain. Joe was there moving along beside her.

“Don't think I'm leading out into the darkness for another little thrill,” she said. “I don't need any kissing.”

“You won't get any,” he said. “I don't want any of
your
kissing, at least not tonight. But please realize I love you, Honor. I love you more than you have the brains or the guts to yet know. I'll wait for you.”

They stood beside the fountain without saying more. Some little lettuces lay there floating in the cool water, which would crisp them for tomorrow. The leaves broke the steady rhythm of the water into spatterings as they drifted under the path of its stream.

What about Sue? Honor wanted to ask. And I'm going away tomorrow and what, anyway, would my sister have to say about tonight?

ix

Susan sat on the terrace atop a cold iron table. She felt very happy. She had not sniffed once since before dinner, years ago. She was a little drunk, which was delightful. She swung her legs back and forth under her skirts, feeling with voluptuous delight the clouds of gauze and gold that scraped delicately against her skin.

She'd danced in her white walking shoes that no one knew about aside from Honor. She'd danced with Daniel. He was too tall. He danced stiffly. He was definitely the most darling boy in the world.

Timothy had danced with her, too, and she knew now she would never again dance as well. He moved to the music as naturally as he walked, perfectly. He was charming, exciting. He was everything.

As Joe was dancing with her, she had not let herself think—in feeling his arms around her and spinning to the music in the candlelight—that she would soon be thousands of miles from him, alone and loveless. Would it break his heart? Dear Joe! She almost moaned at the thought of hurting him, he was so defenseless. But now she was determined, now, that leave she must. She would tell him in the morning.

Lucy was a nice woman who'd talked to her. She was nice but she seemed not to have much fun. Earlier in the evening Sue had had the feeling that Lucy hated everyone, particularly Sara, also Joe and Sue herself. All this was because Lucy so believed in sins
of the flesh. I may believe this, too, she thought, but not like Mrs. Pendleton. This isn't her fault, really. It's just how old people are. How terrible it must be to grow old!

And Nan Garton and she had sat together talking as naturally as if Sue were not almost swooning with shyness and delight, as if Nan were not one of the most famous and certainly the most lovely of people in the entire world. Could that really have happened? When she went back to school and told them, would anyone believe her? Yes, yes! She would have this dress! “Keep it,” Nan Garton had said. “Please keep the dress, Susan. It was so obviously made for you. When you wear it you can think of me.” Susan laughed, knowing she'd never wear it again but that she'd have it for her children and grandchildren and she'd show it to them and tell them about this night and how she'd talked with the exquisite Anne Garton Temple.

Sue picked up the glass that sat beside her on the iron table and emptied it. I'll never grow old in the pathetic way Mrs. Pendleton has, she said, as a toast to herself. I will have children and grandchildren and I'll show them this dress and tell them about my triumphs.

She looked through the open windows into the room. Someone had put out new candles in the pewter holders and the light inside was brighter now than it had been all night. Timothy was dancing, his face rapt. Sara Porter, in his arms, had her head bowed, as if she were almost asleep. It was a slow dance and they moved effortlessly, like one body. That's the way I want to be, Susan thought.

She liked watching Daniel too. He was in love with Nan, it was obvious in the way he danced with her. He'd put on the “Valse Triste” record and he moved, with Nan held lightly in his arms, into the shadowy corner of the room. He held Nan rigidly away from his body, his face as pale as death. As Sue watched his long thin limbs moving in an almost painfully graceful rhythm, she pitied him. The poor boy is suffering, she thought, and she felt a little like crying.

x

Timothy stopped the record before another waltz had really begun and stood by the gramophone as a fugue called and frolicked in the air.

Lucy had come unnoticed from the kitchen. She now stood by the table where Sue sat swinging her legs. Honor walked from the darkness near the fountain, Joe Kelly silent and enormous just behind her. Nan stood with young Daniel in the doorway, each laughing a little and still breathing fast from their last dance. All rested as the music surged around them. It was played on an organ and reminded them of church.

“This sounds so good to me,” Nan said, “after the other.”

“It's the end of the evening,” Sara said. “Let's have one last drink, shall we? For a bonne bouche? Giuliano! You're the one who will be fresh as you haven't been dancing. Dash down to the cellar, will you? For the bottle there in the icebox? It'll be cold enough now.”

“Why do you call Joe that?” Susan asked. She'd blurted this out. She sounded to her own ears like she was being impertinent.

Sara laughed. In the light from the flickering candles standing far away from her across both the terrace and the width of the room her face was as white as a moth's wings and just as mysterious.

Because the man's her lover, Lucy thought contemptuously. Or he once was, very obviously. How very crude of poor little Susan to ask, how cruel for him to have brought her here. So typical of Sara to have invited one of her discarded lovers, asking him to bring his
present mistress, to the house where she was nothing but a
kept woman
! Oh, Nan! Nan! I must get you away from the corruption of their influence.

Nan heard the music, heard Sue's question, heard her own passionate heart as it beat firmly and steadily within her. She was uplifted by the wine and by those moments when her body was being held closely by Dan and by Football Joe and by Timothy too. Nan felt powerful, longing only to tell her dear brother that she at last loved him and all the world truly, as she was now free of the obsession. Giuliano? What did it matter? An affectation or affection? What did any of this mean, all these syllables and phrases? No matter now. I am free of all this. Good-bye, Timothy.

Dan and Honor looked at one another in the near dark, each seeing the other carefully. They heard how Sara was binding the younger man to her with her tiny silken web of romantic thread that was strange, lovely, exciting. It will hold him, they knew, causing him to listen for his name being said by her, her singling him out, this the same queer mesh she weaves around everyone, including the two of us.

Joe came across to them with a bottle clumsily wrapped in a crumpled towel. He was thumbing up the cork.

“Why is it?” Honor asked abruptly. “You'll tell us why Sara calls you Giuliano, won't you, Joe?”

He held the bottle that was carefully pointed out toward the emptiness where the lake was. His face was blank.

“I don't know,” Joe said. “Why do you?” he asked Sara. His voice was softer than ever and more full of wonderment as he spoke to her.

Sara laughed. “Oh, I don't know. Maybe because it's fun? And now let's have one last glass. I'll hold Tim's for him until he comes.”

Except for Lucy, they all held out their glasses and Joe filled them carefully.

“God,” Daniel suddenly exclaimed. “I didn't know Tim could dance like that!”

In the room the man alone was whirling lightly in front of the great mirror, watching his own movements with what seemed like
speculative laughter in his eyes. He rose on his toes and swooped and swung around to the music that now pounded the air, moving faster and faster, and now his feet began to twinkle on the shining floor and as the watchers stood in the darkness looking in at him and at his image doubled in the glass, they could hardly follow the intricate pattern of tappings he was making in counterpoint to the fugue. Faster now and more wildly, he spun and leaped.

There was the sound of glasses breaking and all their eyes swung to where Sara stood watching, the two glasses she'd held lying in shards now on the gravel and her hands at her throat.

“Stop!”

Her voice was a harsh scream, as shrill and shocking as a peacock's.

“Stop!” she cried again.

Timothy, now panting, stood and looked at her as the music, too, ended with a major resolution, as if in relief.

“I'm sorry,” Sara said. “Please excuse me.”

“It's late,” Tim told her gently, looking at her in a puzzled way.

“My throat hurt,” she told him. “As if something . . .?”

“Well, let's all just have this drink and then go on to bed, shall we? I'll have a sip of Nan's.”

“And you'll drink from mine,” Honor told Sara, her sister's strange cry still echoing in her ears.

They drank to one another, then stood for a few more minutes talking softly of the night and the smell of jasmine in the air, and each thought vaguely of tomorrow. Then they said good night and Timothy left to take Susan and Joe Kelly up the hill to the village in the little car, the others going to their rooms without more words.

When he got back the house was silent. Tim blew out the candles and the night flooded into the room. He ran quickly up the stairs. Sara would be waiting for him.