The Theoretical Foot (7 page)

“The Gare et Suisse.”

“And Timothy, my boy,” Dan went on, “keep Sara out until she's in a bonny mood again, for hunger creeps upon me and I would eat well tonight.” Dan then waved his hand airily and heaved himself, in all his lanky bulk, up and onto his haunches so his small head was now perched like a bird's on his long and even scrawny neck.

(He's a good boy, Timothy Garton thought, and too perceptive for his years. How much does he know all the female hullabaloo that's going on, what with Lucy being such a cat and with Susan sleeping on the couch. Well, if he doesn't kill himself first he'll make as fine a man as his sister is a woman. Honor, too, for all I know. Yet we're both right to stay this way, decent and distant, with no hold of confidence one on the other.)

“Are you sure you don't want me to go down with you?” Joe asked the question wistfully, feeling the desparate certainty that this was his chance, perhaps the only one, to talk to Tim and Sara—or to someone, anyone—about the terrible decision that lay ahead
of him. And he knew now that it was tonight he must make this decision. He could wait no longer. He
must
talk to them.

He stood up and announced, almost belligerantly, “I'll go with you. You're too goddamned little a guy, Tim, to haul our suitcases around,” then beamed down affectionately at the man's impassive face. He put one hand on the man's shoulder, which seemed bony and birdlike under Joe's huge paw.

I've
got
to go with you, Tim, old chap, Joe thought. I know now you're the only person in the world who can tell me what to do with this lovely goddamned little woman I've got in my blood and around my neck and before me until I die. Help me! Ask me to come with you!

He then shook Tim back and forth slowly, beaming down at him with a smile on his big infantile face.

“Okay, then, Joe, you'll come along,” Tim said, looking up at Joe pleasantly, his large blue eyes appearing clear and candid. “Let's get going, though, Sara wants to get back by six and I'd thought we might drive around the lake, then home on the corniche. The sun will be at our backs.”

Tim turned toward the path up to the terrace, after one quick glance at Dan, catching sight of his squinting gaze. Tim's shoulders drooped now slightly, as if he were tired.

(Damn, damn, damn, he swore. My one chance! Why am I always so thoughtful and kind and generous
—
when you get right down to it, generally weak? Why don't I say to this tactless child, No, you cannot come. But Sara and I must get away, it's been weeks, months, God knows how long, since we've been alone. By Christ I'll get her far away, and soon! There are only a few days until they all leave and then we'll go to the south of France, to Cassis maybe, or Thorenc, or someplace nobody's ever heard of. And I'll have her all to myself. No hurt feelings, no female fights, no thoughtfulness, no cursed over-sensitive souls all over the goddamned place. I'll tell her this afternoon. We'll start to make plans. It will be fine. She'll hate to miss the chrysanthemums here but . . .)

He then looked at Dan again and said, “Dan, you'd better go into the house and mix yourself a drink. We're having La Prairie wine tonight and then maybe champage, so I'd suggest you coast
over from beer with a good stiff vermouth and soda and that you take one up to Honor.” Then Tim added, “Come on, Joe.”

Joe followed him rather stiffly up the twisting steps, pulling on his shirt and fumbling clumsily with the zipper of his pants as he went. He felt happy. By Jove, it had looked for a minute like he wouldn't get Sara and Tim alone and now . . .?

Then something hit him like a sandbag behind the knees. He grunted and fell sprawling, his hands clawing at the turf under the side of his face, and then at the tense body that twisted him farther and farther down the slick and grassy slope.

Joe cursed and writhed expertly on top of Dan Tennant's wiry figure. It had been more than a year since Joe last lunged and sweated down a barred football field, but he felt again the same hot and vicious anger, the excitement and the cunning that had made him one of the finest fullbacks in the United States of America.

(I'm a bastard, he thought. I am indeed and I like it. And I'll go get Sara and I'll spirit her off and we will escape and I'll tell her my secret plan.)

Joe grunted and grinned down into Dan's panting and impudent face.

“Smart fellow, eh?” Joe asked as he dug his fingers into the boney body beneath him.

“Damn right!” Dan said. He was panting, and just then he heard the sound of the little Fiat backing recklessly up the driveway, then honk once at the gate, he relaxed and lay quietly under Joe's hard and heavy body.

“I was tackle at dear old Princeton Prep,” he told Joe, languidly. “Now, how about that drink, Joe? Tim recommends vermouth and he ought to know.”

Joe got up from the ground slowly. Something was over and done with and it would never happen again and he felt that now his life was running surely in channels that he could not see and would never love.

“Right-o,” he said and was amazed at himself that he felt no real resentment, only a kind of quiet anguish that he knew would never leave him again.

vii

Susan stared through the vanishing curtains of a strange dream of twisting leaves and tendrils with Joe all entwined about an old vine-ridden tree and herself tearing and pecking at the monstrous plant with her little beak and her tiny brittle claws.

Joe laughed at her gratingly, a sound like dry wood as her wings beat the air.

The tendrils turned into tough cloths, striped cruelly with bands of torturing red and green and yellow. She pulled up and wrenched, feeling the lines wrap themselves around her wings then her throat and over her open and panting beak.

Susan, now strangling, sat up wildly, opening her eyes. “Joe!” Her heart was pounding and as she saw him standing against the soft afternoon light glowing through the swaying curtains, she gasped in relief.

“You,” she said. “You aren't caught, I mean . . .?” She then laughed at her own foolishness as she lay blinking at him, then stretched voluptuously against the soft velvet of the couch.

Joe looked both dark and strong and to Sue he seemed more natural than he'd been all day. It was as if something was no longer troubling him or, if he had been troubled, she didn't know. Perhaps it was only she herself who was troubled?

“Joe, darling,” she said with sudden resolution. “Sit down here and talk to me.” She moved in order to make a little empty half circle with her body on the chaise. “I want to ask you something.”

Joe began to sit down, then frowned and straightened himself. “I'd like to, Sue, but . . .? That is, Tennant and I . . .?”

“Dan Tennant?” she asked. “What about him? He's a child. He can wait.”

Joe smiled involuntarily at Sue's scoffing dismissal of a person of her own age, then began to explain, “You see, we thought we'd have a little drink and then walk up to the village to look at our room at the inn. Of course, I know it will be all right but we thought it might be a nice walk, that is, there's not much to do here and Tim and Sara are out and since you've been asleep I . . .?”

Susan knew now Joe was trying to get away from her and she felt suddenly desparate. She knew he was irrevocably bored with her, that he would rather do anything than sit beside her in this cool room and talk. She closed her eyes.

“Joe,” she said. “I've got to talk to you.” Her tight voice sounded small and foolish to her buzzing ears. “Don't put me off. I've decided something and I have got to tell you. Now. So go tell Dan and bring your drink up here if you want but please come back.”

She heard him sigh, heard him moving softly away.

She felt quite cool. It was without surprise that she recognized the complete blankness of her brain. She was not at all upset. It seemed clear to her that when the time came, and it was apparently almost upon her, she would do what she had to do, as a woman would in giving birth to a child. She didn't know what would come out but she was irresistibly moved to talk with her love, to say to him things yet unthought of, to finish something. She'd felt this way before and nothing had happened, but
this
time.

Sue lay quietly on the couch waiting.

A few moments later she heard Joe's soft and heavy steps. She opened her eyes and saw him standing beside her, a tall glass in either hand, his heavy brows now dark and somber above his clearly puzzled eyes. When he noticed that she was watching him he started, almost sleepily, then smiled down at her.

“Here, my sweet Sue,” he murmurred. He handed her one of the glasses, then sat down on the couch beside her.

She took a sip of the liquid, pale and brown, which was pleasantly mild and so cold the glass was already covered with dew. She wiped her hand absently on her skirt, then set the glass on the floor beside her.

“Joe,” she said, “we've got to settle this business.”

Joe kept twirling his glass between his enormous heavy hands and did not look at her.

“Oh,
darling
!” Her voice broke suddenly, sounding almost like a cry and she had to clear her throat for camouflage. “Don't just sit there! I don't want to sound like an hysterical female and everything but we've simply got to make up our minds! My boat sails in only a few days.”

Seven days, she cried out within herself.
Seven!
Time's passing, it's growing late, it's almost evening of one day and where is everybody? Sara? Tim? Won't someone help me?

Joe was still gazing downward and as Susan stared at him it seemed that he had never looked so handsome, so strong. She felt suddenly that he knew exactly what they were going to do. She was relieved and a little proud of his ruthlessness so that when he finally spoke his words were like a blow in the face, after the conviction she was certain she had seen in him.

“I don't know,” he said. “I don't know.” He sounded miserable.

For a moment she was too shocked and disappointed to speak. Then she said, in a weak voice, “But I thought . . .?”

Joe put down his glass with a thump and finally looked at her squarely. His eyes looked hot and unhappy.

“I don't know what all this is about, Sue,” he said in a rather complaining tone. “I thought everything was all set. God, you know I can't live without you. I thought you wanted to come to England with me. I thought it was all decided that you'd stay in London or someplace and then when I was through we could get married if you wanted to and . . .” His voice trailed off as he dropped his eyes.

She sighed. What was the use? She felt very tired and her head still ached and here they were back in the same old groove, saying the same old things. She'd felt for a moment that now was the time
to finish all their arguments, that now, for some miraculous reason, they'd be able to decide, but she'd been wrong.

Joe peered at her. Perhaps he felt ashamed as he looked at her tiny body with its weary bones, looked into her darkly shadowed eyes. Perhaps he wanted to finish things. He straightened his shoulders, then gulped his drink.

“Susan!” he said, then grinned suddenly, infectiously. “You know, I feel as if I were going to have a tooth pulled or something and I wonder why?”

Sue smiled back at him. “I've been feeling rather that way, too, darling, on the brink somehow? It's the altitude maybe?” Now she frowned. “But you know, Joe, we really do have to decide what I'm to do. I thought I'd talk with Sara Porter. Yes, that's what I'll do. You know her and she seems like such a sensible person.”

Joe looked over. “What makes you think so?”

“Well, she's quiet and she seems so resolute and . . .”

“It's a funny thing about Sara,” he said. “Everyone speaks of her as if she were all that, so practical, so dependable, and she
is
! And yet nobody knows anything about her, really, except maybe Tim. She never lets you know a single intimate thing. And yet she's not the negative personality that that might indicate. She's a force at least as far as I'm concerned and yet I don't quite know her. God knows she never says a word about what she thinks or feels . . .”

Sue stirred. “I thought I'd talk to her. I like her. I have the feeling she could tell me what to do.”

“
I
can tell you what to do. Stay with me. Oh, Sue, my sweet Susan, stay with me!”

As he slid to his knees on the floor before her, his face seemed to crumple. His hands, cold from the sweating glass, pressed on her flushed cheeks, then down her throat and onto her tender pointed breasts. She shuddered, her free arm going round his heavy head. For a moment she lay there, feeling his familiar thick-breathing weight against her. Her heart thudded. She stirred uneasily, then suddenly stiffened.

“Stop, Joe,” she said. “Sit up. We can't.” She twitched away with irritation swelling within her. How dare he take advantage, yes, take advantage! That's all it was to know so well her weakness and her hunger for him, to know how abject was her love. She pushed him away viciously.

Joe bent over to pick up his glass. His face was flushed, his lips were curled in a secret smile.

“So you want to leave me,” he said softly, a statement. He didn't look at her. “So you want to talk it all over with Sara, just girls together. Christ, women. You cannot even believe what your own blood is telling you.”

Sue was suddenly so furious that her hand shook. She looked down at the brown drops that spilled from her glass and lay for a second gleaming before they melted into the rubbed velvet of the couch. She waited until her hand was as steady as she hoped her voice would be, then spoke slowly and clearly, saying to him:

“I know what I'm going to do, Joe. I'm going back to America.”

She tried then not to witness the look of sheer relief that flared across his face and brightened his hot brown eyes. She prayed she'd one day forget she'd seen it as she went on calmly, “I'll go back to school and then, if you finish at Oxford and I finish there and if you haven't found another girl and I haven't fallen in love with yet another local hero, we might see one another again.”

There was a long silence. Upstairs a door banged. They listened with a particularly polite attention to the first rush of water as it filled a bathtub. Joe finally spoke.

“Look, Sue,” he said. “I think you're crazy. I think you should think this over. You should talk to Sara, see what she says. Talk to anyone at all, I don't see what the rush is. We have plenty of time to decide. Why don't you talk to Tim? You know now what I think, of course . . .?”

Yes, I do, Sue thought bitterly. But why can't you say what you think, she wondered, because I'm so little? Because you think I haven't brains enough to see what you
really
think, you poor stupid child?

“I might,” she said, agreeing automatically. “Or maybe I won't. I think perhaps I won't talk to anyone, that maybe I know already.”

He looked almost panic-stricken and gulped at his glass. “No,” he protested. “You'd better see what they think. Tim's the swellest person in the world,
he'll
tell you.”

“Why don't you ask him then?”

“Ask him what?
I
don't need to ask him anything. I know what we should do without getting anyone's advice. You ought to follow me to London.”

“Oh, please, stop,” she said. “You've said that so often it sounds like famous last words. Round and round. I'm tired of it.” She looked away.

“All right,” he said stiffly. “If that's the way you feel, maybe you're right after all. Maybe you had better go home.”

Joe stood up, his face averted, then walked to the window.

It's to hide his relief, Sue thought and winced. She called to him softly, “Joe, Joe darling, please forgive me. Come here. I'm a little cranky from drinking all that beer and gin, then falling asleep so hard. Come here!”

He turned slowly and went to her side.

“Look, Sue,” he said. “We're all mixed up about this thing. I think it would be best to wait. You're right. I'm a hypocrite and sometimes I do really think you ought to go home. Most of the time I don't. I want you near me, I want to sleep with you. I want you near me to eat with and drink with. I get so damned lonely at Oxford, pretending I don't mind being the crude Yankee, going to damned silly teas for Rhodes men, trying to ape the manner of the well-born Oxonians or else trying awfully hard to act the part of Wild West rodeo riders, using slang I haven't thought of since I used to read the Sunday funny papers when I was a kid at home. And I don't understand English girls. And I
need
you. Sue, we're made for each other, you know that, at least in bed.”

Joe stopped, looked at her seriously, then moistened his full lips.

She lay before him without moving. At last she was getting some of what she'd asked for. She felt stunned and that she'd been
within a spiritual hare's breath of turning tail and throwing herself in his big fumbling passionate arms.

She drew in her breath and stared up at him, her eyes very bright, mouth curved into a hypnotized half smile.

“So?” she said it provocatively. She was daring him.

Joe was silent for a moment. His eyes shifted. He then finished the last tepid swallow in his glass.

“So,” he said. “I want you to wait until tomorrow morning to decide. You know what I think. In a way it would be cutting our own throats to stay together this year. It will hurt your father and it would make things damned hard for me at college. But I don't know if we can live without one another.”

He then turned away abruptly and she was horrified to find herself wondering coldly if the little tremor in his voice was sincere. He had sounded so
very
frank, so very man-to-man. Had he suddenly come to some decision of his own? It would be almost funny if after all her feminine worrying and shilly-shallyings it was finally
Joe
who took matters in his own hands and decided everything for her.

She shivered at the thought that maybe he already knew, that he was simply waiting until she felt fresher and better in the morning to tell her she must go. Oh God, to have Joe tell her the bitter truth that she'd always seen herself telling him? That would be unbearable.