Thunder On The Left Part 2

"Needn't do that, I wrote to her yesterday. I said you were busy and wanted me to ask her."

"Well, of all things - "

She curbed herself savagely. She wouldn't lose her temper. d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n . . . his d.a.m.ned impudence.

"When is she coming?"

"I don't know yet. Tomorrow morning, I dare say."

"Well, then, we'll have the Picnic tomorrow, get it over with."

He began to say something, put out his hand, but she brushed fiercely past him and ran into the diningroom. She tore her letter into shreds, together with the clean sheet she had brought down. The room was full of a warm irritating buzz.

"George!" she cried angrily, with undeniable command. "Come here and put out this d.a.m.ned bee!"

III

The kitchen was hot, flies were zigzagging just under the ceiling, swerving silly triangles of ecstasy in the rising savour of roast and sizzling gravy.

"Lizzie, you must keep the screen door latched. There was a big bee in the dining room. That's how they get in. - Where are the children?"

"It's that man, he always leaves it open."

"The ice man? Well, speak to him about it."

"No, ma'am, the one in the garden. The one Nounou took 'em down to the beach to get away from. She didn't think he was quite right."

What on earth was Lizzie talking about?

"A man in the garden? What's he doing here?"

"I gave him a piece of cake. He saw it in the pantry window and asked for some. Then he was in again for a gla.s.s of water."

Another problem. Life is just one perplexity after another. But there must be some explanation.

"He asked for a piece of cake? Who is he, the gardener?"

Lizzie was flushed with heat and impatience. Her voice rose shrilly.

"He didn't exactly ask for it, but he was lookin' in the window at it and he says, 'They always give me a piece of cake when I want it.' No, he ain't the gardener. I don't know who he is. I thought maybe a friend of yours, one o' the artists. He was playin' with the kids."

She stepped outside, resolutely attempting not to think. Automatically she adjusted the lid of the garbage can. But the mind insists on thinking. Was it better for the can to stand, there in the sun, or to go in the cellar entry where it would be cooler? Sunlight is a purifier: the heat would tend to dry the moist refuse . .

. but the sun attracts flies too. She stooped to lift the can, then paused, abandoned the problem, left it where it was. Just like George to have rented an old-fashioned barracks like this, not even gas for cooking. No wonder the place had stood empty for years and years. The idea of cooking with coal in July. If the oil range didn't come soon Lizzie would quit, she could see it in her face. The ice box was too small. If they took enough ice to last through the day, there was no room for the ginger-ale bottles. She had known it would be like this.

The garden seemed to sway and tremble in brilliant light. A warm sweetness of flowers floated lightly, the air was not really hot after all. Why did Nounou let the children leave their croquet mallets lying all anyhow about the lawn? Remind George that Nounou's wages will be due on the twenty-third. If you don't remind George of those things he complains about being taken by surprise. Beyond the hedge of rose bushes, a blue glimpse of water. It was a heavenly place. There must be some consolation in a garden like this. If one could breathe it in deeply and not think, not think, just slack off the everlasting tension for a few moments. Of course it's quite useless, but I'm going to pray. G.o.d, please help me not to think. . . . In France, Catholics say vous to G.o.d, and Protestants say tu. That's rather curious. . . . There, I'm thinking again. No wonder the artists come here in summer, the Island is so lovely. Loafers, that's what they are, idling about enjoying themselves making pictures while other people plan the details ofmeals and housekeeping . . . and Picnics. She could imagine Miss Clyde sitting in the garden sketching, relishing it all, romping with the children, while she was doing the marketing. Are there enough blankets for the guest-room bed? And with only one bathroom . . . Miss Clyde is probably the kind of person who takes a terrible long time over her bath.

The strip of beach gravel that led toward the rose-trellis was warm and crackly underfoot. Among the grey pebbles were small bleached sh.e.l.ls. Once upon a time, she had told the children, those sh.e.l.ls belonged to snails who lived in the sea. When the tide went out, their little rocky pool got warm and torpid in the glare. Then the sea came back again, crumbling over the ledges with a fresh hoa.r.s.e noise: great gushes of cold salty water pouring in, waving the seaweeds, waking up the crabs. She could imagine the reviving snails wriggling happily in their spiral cottages, feeling that coolness p.r.i.c.kle along their skins. She would like to lie down on the gravel and think about this. Would reality, joy, truth, ever come pouring in on her like that? There was a bench in the rose-garden, if she could get so far. When things are a bit too much for one (fine true old phrase: they are just a little too much for us, adorable torturing things) it's so strangely comforting to lie flat on sun-warmed earth . . . the legend of Antaeus . . . but not here, Lizzie could see her from that synoptic pantry window. How large a proportion of life consists in heroically denying the impulse? But just round this corner, behind the shrubbery - Someone was doing it already. Oh, this must be the man Lizzie spoke of. How very odd, sprawled on the gravel, playing with pebbles. Lizzie must have been right, one of the artists. Unconventional, to come into a private garden like that . . . asking for a piece of cake. Never be surprised, though, at artists.

Perhaps he's doing a still-life painting: something very modern, a slice of cocoanut cake on a lettuce leaf.

Artists (she had a vague idea) enjoyed making pictures of food. But he'd been playing with the children, Lizzie said. What sort of person would play with children before being introduced to their parents?

Perhaps he wanted to do a portrait of them.

Portraits of children were better done with the mother, who could keep them quiet . . . I always think there's no influence like a mother's, don't you? . . . On the bench in the rose-garden, that would be the place. She could see the picture, reproduced in Vanity Fair . . . Green Muslin: Study of Mrs. George Granville and Her Daughters. But even if it were painted at once it couldn't possibly be printed in a magazine before next - when? January? George would know about that. But strange the man didn't get up, he must hear her coming. He looked like a gentleman.

"How do you do?" she said, a little coldly.

He was studying the pebbles; at the sound of her voice he twisted and looked up over his shoulder. He seemed faintly shy, yet also entirely composed.

"Hullo!" he said. "I mean, how do you do." His voice was very gentle. (How different from George.) Something extraordinary about his way of looking at her; what clear hazel eyes. Instead of offering any explanation he seemed waiting for her to say something. She had confidently expected a quick scramble to his feet, a courteous apology for intruding. She felt a little angry at herself for not being able to speak as reprovingly as he deserved. But there was a crumb on his chin, somehow this weakened her. A man who would come into people's gardens and ask for cake and not even wipe the crumbs off his chin. He must be someone rather special.

"You're doing just what I wanted to," she said.

He looked at her, still with that placid inquiry.

"I mean lying on the ground, in the sun."

"It's nice," he said.Really, of all embarra.s.sing situations. If he didn't get up, she felt that in another minute she would be sprawling there herself. A very ungraceful pose for the portrait: Mrs. George Granville and Her Daughters, p.r.o.ne on the gravel. Women ought not to lie like that anyway, it humps up the sitting-part so obviously. Yet they always do in bathing suits, most candid of all costumes. . . . Perhaps for that very reason. What queer contradictions there are in good manners. This was too absurd. Thank goodness, he was getting to his feet. The crumb shone in the sunlight, it adhered to his chin with some of Lizzie's sticky white icing.

"Was the cake good?" She meant this to be rather cutting, and was pleased to see him look a little frightened.

"Awfully good." Now he looked hopeful, rather like a dog. She could not altogether understand the queer way he had of studying her: steadily, yet without any of the annoying or alarming intimations that long gazes usually suggest. But he made no movement to leave.

"I suppose you're waiting for another piece."

"Yes," he said, smiling.

Now, she felt, she had him trapped. This would destroy him.

"You haven't finished the first."

He understood at once, and ran his tongue toward his chin until he found the crumb. She watched it disappear with the feeling of having lost an ally. She had counted on that crumb to humiliate him with.

"All gone," he announced gaily. What could one do with a man like that?

"I suppose you're an artist." Not knowing what else to do she had turned toward the house, and he was walking with her. He was tall and pleasantly dressed and had rather a nice way of walking: politely tentative, yet with plenty of a.s.surance.

"I'm Martin."

Her mind made little rushes one way and another, trying to think if she had heard of him. He must be very famous, to give his name with such easy simplicity. Why do I know so little about art? she asked herself.

Well, how can I keep up with things, there's always so much to do. It's George's fault, expecting me to run a big house. If we'd gone to the Inn . . . what are the names of the famous painters? Sargent was the only one she could think of. She could see George at the pantry window. In a moment she would have to introduce them, what should she say? What was George doing in the pantry?

"George, let that cake alone!" she called. It sounded a pleasant humorous cry, but George's well-tuned ear caught the undertone of fury. That was just like George. Whenever he was angry or upset he went to the pantry and got himself something to eat.

"I was saving the cake for the Picnic," she explained.

"A Picnic!" said the stranger. His brown face was bright with interest. "When?"

If George could invite people to the Picnic, why shouldn't she? By the way, I mustn't forget to order some sardines.

"Where are you staying?" she asked.Apparently he didn't understand this, for he replied, "I don't mind." He was looking at the pantry window, where George's guilty face peered out from behind the wire screen.

"How funny he looks, like a guinea-pig in a cage," he said.

That was exactly what George did look like, squinting out into the sunshine. The end of his nose, pressed against the mesh, was white and red, like a half-ripe strawberry.

"George, this is Mr. Martin, the famous artist. He's coming to our Picnic."

IV

George was in a fidget, in the little sitting room that opened off the hall. It was just under the stairs and when any one went up or down he could hear the feet and couldn't help pausing to identify them by the sound. It was astonishing how many footsteps pa.s.sed along those stairs: and if they ceased for a while it was no better, for he found himself subconsciously waiting for the next and wondering whose they would be. He had laid out his maps and papers and the portable typewriter, all ready to begin work: the draft of his booklet on Summer Tranquillity (for the Eastern Railroad) would soon be due.

His mind was too agitated to compose, but he began clattering a little on the machine, at random, just to give the impression that he was working. Why should any one invent a 'noiseless' typewriter, he wondered? The charm of a typewriter was that it did make a noise, a noise that shut out the racket other people were making. What a senseless idea, to imagine that he could really get some work done here, buried in the country. He could not concentrate because there was nothing to concentrate from. There was only the huge vacancy of golden summer, droning pine trees, yawning beaches, the barren pagan earth under a crypt of air. The world shimmered like a pale jewel with a flame of uneasiness at its core.

The place to write about Summer Tranquillity would have been that hot secret little office of his in town, where the one window opened like a furnace door into a white blaze of sunshine, where perspiration dripped from his nose on the typewriter keys, but where he had the supreme sensation of intangible solitude.

What on earth were they walking about for, upstairs? Was she showing the man the whole house? He looked distractedly across the garden. The listless beaming of the summer noon lay drowsy upon the lawn, filling him with an appalling sense of his absurd futility. As Phyllis had so often said, he was neither business man nor artist. What the devil was he working for, what goal was there, what fine flamboyant achievement was possible? He had a feeling of being alone against the world, a poor human clown wrestling with grotesque obsessions; and no longer really young. He leaned toward the gla.s.s-paned bookcase, tilting his head anxiously to see the reflection of the top . . . certainly it was receding in a V above each temple - but that made the forehead seem higher. He had always believed that, among advertising men, he looked rather more intellectual . . . he turned again to the window, a little ashamed of his agitations. Beyond the gla.s.s veranda he caught the stolid gaze of the cook at the pantry window. He averted his head quickly: ridiculous that you can't do anything without catching someone's eye. All this was just insanity. He took up the page he was working on and rolled it into the typewriter. Page 38 . . .

like himself, thirty-eight, and forty only two pages away. I suppose that at forty a man feels just as young as ever, but . . . it's absurd to feel as young as I do, at thirty-eight. . . . Well, I must keep my mind clear (he thought, rather pathetically) - it's the only capital we have.

Phyllis's footsteps were coming downstairs. He was always worried when he heard them like that: slow and light, pausing every few treads. That meant she was thinking about something, and in a minute there would be a new problem for him to consider. When he heard them like that he usually rushed into the hall, demanding hotly, "Well, what is it now?"

"What is what?"

"You know I can't work when you come downstairs like that."

"Like what?"

"As though you were worrying."

"Well, why didn't you take a house where I could slide down the banisters?"This time the feet came down so slowly he felt sure she wanted him to rush out. The rushing out always put him in the wrong. Well, he just wouldn't. He would stay where he was, that would show her he was indignant. He took out page 38, put in a blank sheet and rattled the keys vigorously. But he felt cheated of a sensation. He always enjoyed bursting out, through the door at the foot of the stairs, and catching her transfixed on the landing, with the big windows behind her - half frightened, half angry. He would not have told her so, but it was partly because she was so pretty there: the outline of her comely defiant head against the light, her smooth arm emerging from the dainty sleeve that caught and held a pearly brightness.

How lovely she is, he thought; it's gruesome for her to be so pretty and talk such nonsense . . . she needs someone to pump her full of indigestible compliments, that would silence her - She was at the telephone. He could hear her talking to the grocer. "I'm sorry, Mr. Cotswold, is it too late to catch the driver? I've got some unexpected guests . . ."

He hastened into the hall. "Don't forget the sardines," he shouted.

She looked at him calmly with the instrument at her mouth. She seemed surprisingly tranquil.

"Never mind, then, thank you," she said to Mr. Cotswold, in the particularly cordial and gracious voice which (George felt) was meant to emphasize the coolness with which she would now speak to him.

"If you want sardines you'll have to go down and get them yourself. The driver's left."

She went into the sitting room and automatically pulled the blind halfway down. He followed her and raised it to the top of the window again. She sat on the couch, and he was surprised to see a dangerous merriment in her face.

"I suppose you think you can shut yourself in here and just let the house run itself," she said. "Like a sardine."

"I have to do my work, don't I?"

She looked at the sheet in the typewriter, on which was written wildly Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of this absurd family. But she did not comment on it, and George felt that this was one of her moments of genius. He wondered, in alarm, what she was going to do with him next. He felt helpless as only a husband can.

"Well, anyhow, they pack sardines in oil, not in vinegar," he said angrily. This sounded so silly it made him angrier still. He closed the door and cried in a fierce undertone, "What's the idea, this man Martin? Who is he? Is he staying for lunch?"

"He's an artist. I thought you liked artists."

"Yes, but we don't have to fill the house with 'em."

"I've put him in the spare room."

"In the spare room! What about Miss Clyde?"

"I haven't the faintest idea. He seemed to expect it, somehow. He's a very irresistible person."

"I guess I can resist him. If we've got to have him in the house we can put him in here, on the couch."

"It's too late. He's in the spare room now, washing his hands.You needn't have been so rude when I brought him in.""I didn't like his looks," George mumbled.

This wasn't true. George had liked his looks, but he had resented (as must every man burdened with many perplexities) that gay and careless air. He looks as if he didn't have a thing on earth to worry about, George thought. And he comes floating in here, with casual ease. among the thousand interlocking tensions of George's difficulties, to gaze with untroubled eye on his host's restless alertness. Or was this some sort of joke that Phyllis was putting over on him?

"I'm going to put the two older children on the sleeping porch, so Ben and Ruth can have their room.

Miss Clyde will have to go on this couch."

"How about me?"

"Well, we can sleep together I suppose. It won't kill us, for a few nights."

Not if I know it, George thought. That old walnut bedstead, with the deep valley in the middle, so that we both keep rolling against one another. Unless you clutch the post and lie on a slope all night. Besides, Phyl is so changeable in temperature. When she goes to bed she's chilly and wants to kindle her feet against you. Then by and by she gets warmed up and it's like sleeping with a hot bottle five feet long. On a night in July, too. Whenever I get comfortable, she wants to turn over on the other side; that brings us face to face. Impossible! How unexpected life is. If any one had told me, twelve years ago, that it would be so irritating to sleep in the same bed with a pretty woman, I wouldn't have believed it. Phyl doesn't like it either, yet she was annoyed by that booklet I wrote for the Edwards Furniture Company on The Joys of the Separate Bed. I'll sleep on the window seat in the upstairs hall. No: that won't do, if Miss Clyde is in the den she'll have to be coming upstairs to the bathroom and Phyl won't like me spread out there in public. It's funny: sleeping is the most harmless thing people ever do, why are they so furtive about it?

But George rather liked the idea of Miss Clyde on his couch. It seemed, somehow, to add piquancy to a dull situation. To conceal this private notion, he argued against it.

"Miss Clyde will be a long way from the bathroom," he said.

"There's no other place to put her. You're always talking about artists, their fine easy ways, I guess she won't mind if someone sees her in a wrapper."

She'd look charming in a wrapper, George thought. The queer little boyish thing! I can just imagine her. It would be blue, a kind of filmy blue crepe. Coming up the stairs the morning sunlight would catch her, through those big windows: her small curves delicately outlined in a haze of soft colour, her hair tousled, a flash of white ankle as she reached the top step. He would sit up on the window seat, as though just drowsily awakened. Oh . . . good-morning! Good-morning. What a picture you would make. Silhouette Before Breakfast. Life is full of so many heavenly pictures. . . . The bay window above the garden would be calm and airy in the before-breakfast freshness of July; the house just beginning that dreamy stir that precedes the affairs of day. She would come across to him . . . he had hardly dared admit, even to himself, how far they had gone in imagination.

"I'm d.a.m.ned if I want strange women careering all over the house in their wrappers," he said with well-simulated peevishness.