Letty Fox (58 page)

“Where's Palyi now? I don't know his other name!”

A shadow crossed her face for the first time; “He's married again, of course,” she said, without a smile.

After a moment, she came back and poured me a drink, “If it's too watery, tell me. But the one you remind me of, Letty—well, not exactly, you're strictly feminine, you know—not exactly, just something about the foreheads—you have a fine forehead, and then—no, it must be the forehead; everything about you is distinctly not male. The hair? Perhaps that too!”

She sat down, and told a fine-drawn story of her second marriage, and the man I reminded her of—her phrases transparent, broad, natural and clean, new cambric. I understood as the story went on that it was not a marriage by law, yet, it was in fact, of her senses and inclinations. Then came Adrian; and now, “I'm a prisoner of his kindness.”

Her small face had become tragic, the eyes sunken. She ran her hands through her hair. I remembered having seen my mother do it, but here, I thought, Oh, here is the queen; my mother is just an actress; Lucy Headlong is the firebird. Down she comes and drinks up men's souls and bodies like milk and nothing puts out the fire. But I looked at her composedly and mentioned the birds settling in the trees. I was slowly learning not to give myself away in any company except that of a man, and as for that, foolish as it was, it was my business. The lean, wary game in sex was not mine, and I despised it. I smiled artificially at my hostess and she went on in a low tone, to tell me who it was, the one who had maddened her with love, two years ago. It was a famous man, one of the best known in the world.

“I stared at his ears which were long, open, and animal, and filled with hair. Eventually, I cured myself in this way. For the sake of both men, I could not make a scandal.”

I became sober, thinking of the treasury of knowledge that was there, that I needed so badly in my own affairs. Why not make use of it? She was in every sense my friend. She had bridged the gap of our ages and made herself mine. I said, with some hesitation, “You have a lot of experience in love, so to speak; I'm not really asking for myself, but just from want of general knowledge—what would you say is the axiom of the love affair? One doesn't know that kind of thing.”

It seemed a stupid, blundering question. She looked at me doubtfully, but was searching for something. In a moment, she said, “All I know is, that when you want to get one person, it's another person who falls in love with you.”

Certain incidents in my own life made me nod my head, “There's nothing you can do about it.”

She smiled, “But it seems to me, from what you say, you must know.”

“I don't know—”

A silence fell between us, full of this penetrating and courteous question, “ ‘And now, you, my guest, tell your share.”

She pushed across another drink. I twiddled the glass in my fingers and lifting my eyes which I felt soft and full, I said with the utmost naïveté, “Mrs. Headlong, I have had, really, no experiences, but those I have told you.”

She started, “It's impossible! Not the way you talk! You seem so very much the modern, sophisticated—” she halted.

I took up, “The overdone young woman, the girl about town? I do; but that's play-acting. My mother was an actress once, don't forget. But I never had the velleity of the stage, and I just bring it plain and subtle into private life. I acted little girl, I acted young girl, and now I act knowing girl.”

Mrs. Headlong withdrew into herself. After a moment I began once more about the fish in the lake and the corn in the garden behind the yews. But I did it with sophisticated weariness and even rudeness, as if to dismiss too intimate a subject of conversation, raised by herself. She took this humbly, and now spoke of lunch, “Josie is off. I must do it myself. Let's go into the kitchen, or would you rather stay here?”

I went in with her. The kitchen was the length of two or three ordinary kitchens, winding a little, as if, in fact, several rooms had been thrown together; a buttery bar; a serving foyer. Two doors led out of the serving foyer, one to the nursery dining room, one to a powder room. The disposition of this powder room was such that Lucy Headlong could make any kind of exit from her guests, from breakfast room, kitchen, nursery, outdoor dining room, or general foyer, not to mention a few others, and find herself in a private make-up room. Wonderful for a fading beauty!

Beyond this serving foyer, lined with handsome dressers and cupboards containing heavy serving ware, stretched two kitchens joined into one. The first had the dinner ware and the preserves and the ordinary wine that the servants perhaps could get at, and the second was the cooking and washing-up kitchen, where stood the usual things. From this the staircase led down to the paved yard, a kind of castle-yard, and the garages were below. I hung about, feeling this domesticity unworthy of us. I'm not the kind of woman that can mess in another woman's kitchen, or in any kitchen. I'd always lived in hotels or apartments with Mother or some woman to wait upon me, and there's nothing bores me more than the false intimacy of the kitchen. Nevertheless, there I was obliged to be, hoisting myself against some cupboard or other, fiddling with egg-timers and oven-holders. Everything had been left ready by some servant. We had cold fowl, salad, Barsac, cheese, and coffee. Afterwards, Lucy Headlong washed the dishes herself, and I made no move to help, for this is a debasing relationship, this hanging together with gummy gaiety over the greasy plates and steaming bowl; a woman looks like a waiter with a towel on her arm.

I wandered out onto the lawns, and looked for the tabby cat, supposed to have her hide-out in the gardener's toolshed. I saw Washington wandering sulkily in the distance. He took no notice of me.

Mrs. Headlong soon joined me, in no way put out by my behavior. I saw that I had been right. Rather noticeably, I examined my small, white, plump hands and manicured nails. She was in a pleasant mood, and I thought to myself, There is only one method in this life, and that is to overrule; altruism is a confession of ugliness. I could see that Lucy Headlong had all her life done just this, and that her present mildness toward me was perhaps a result of her advancing age. How old was she? At least forty-three.

“Would you like to go to a cocktail party? While you were consulting the daisies on the lawn the phone rang, and we were invited to the Dichters'.”

“Who's that?”

“Don't you really know the Dichters?”

“No; you forget, Mrs. Headlong, I don't know anyone. My background's an ordinary one. Anything I have I owe to myself alone. You know what that means—the self-made woman.”

She smiled, “What wonderful arrogance, and how I love that in a woman,” she said, stepping sprightly in the direction of the garage. “Come, let's drive about, and then we'll drop in when we please, when it suits us, to the cocktail party. Tell me, do you need anything, lipstick, a scarf? Go into my own little powder room which is just outside the kitchen at the bottom of the broad staircase.”

“I know where it is,” I said, with mild and shining insolence. “I looked; I looked everywhere in your beautiful house.”

“Yes, you have taken it to yourself, bless you, little Letty,” she said, “I know.”

I had now got over this feeling of surprise and wonder which made me nervous when I first came. We drove through the beautiful afternoon, through high and low roads and visited many beauty spots.

About five, I think, we came to the cocktail party; a crowd of nondescripts squashed together, knees and glasses touching on dirtstained divans and chairs, in a couple of little rooms, with cigarette ashes on the carpet. Perhaps my manner showed what I thought of them. I was treated coolly and did not get into talk for at least half an hour. I sat holding my glass.

The Dichters, poor German exiles, with a fantastic shoddy happiness of their own, in their poverty and fame unknown here, scandalized me with their Bohemian life. Everything was harem-scarum, sketchy; the carpet was worn and had been thin to begin with, the books were dog-eared, the shelves of plain white pine thrown together, and the house was a mere shack, with a lean-to kitchen.

After a while, I felt it necessary to say something, and the middle-aged woman beside me began to converse with me, asking polite questions about Lucy Headlong and myself, how long had I been staying, did I know her well, did I like the house, and whether I was staying alone, or there was a house-party, and how long I was staying. The woman seemed timid and sweet, but in retrospect, I resented her questions. I must admit at the time I was only engaged in playing reticence and hinting at the casual intimacy of my hostess and myself. I mentioned someone, some people we all knew, and I soon became the center of a small circle. But I was bored. The men had a strange and poor look, with the sunken eyes and the strawlike hair of the starved intellectual; a distressing feeling. Their conversation all seemed to me to say only one thing: How hungry I really am, and all my sacrifice has brought me only one thing, I am hungry and therefore distorted. I could not stomach their opinions; I smelled the unclean attic upon them, the exile driven out in horror, fear and dirt; the creature without clothes to his back, or a roof over his head. Besides, there were two or three hungry curs prowling round us and these were lifted onto the laps of the women's dark, long-wearing dresses. Round me, some people discussed with ludicrous surprise and ignorance some animal they had seen. It was just an opossum. They had never seen one. I had seen plenty on Uncle Hogg's farm. At length I laughed, and told them what they had seen.

I went up to Lucy Headlong, and asked her if we could not go soon. Evening had come. I longed for our tranquil cocktail under the trees, above the lake. She looked toward me with her society woman's air and said, in a brief whisper, “Soon, just a moment while I take leave,” and shortly I was out of that hole, and we were speeding away. A few people came to wave us good-bye, but most sat there, hardly answering us; everything about the place was dismal and dubious.

“Who are they, and do you really like them?” I asked my friend after we had gone some distance, and had lighted our cigarettes. The air of the hilltops had blown away all this sadness from below. She looked at me in surprise, “You didn't like it? If I'd known, I would never have taken you there. They are old friends of mine,” she continued apologetically.

“They don't seem very friendly.”

She waited for a long time, pointing out views between trees and down glades; then she said curiously, “They offended you?”

“I don't mean that. No, they were nice, but they're awfully slow, don't you think? I got a funny impression, that was all. It was dull, odd—”

I don't know, to this moment, why I said a thing so out of character; it was the result of days of unquestioning comradeship. She said quickly, but not sharply, “Then you shan't go there again, if they don't amuse you.”

“Oh, I'll admit, if you don't mind, that it was—boring—I don't like Bohemians. I'm very prejudiced.”

She was again silent, running the machine fast and slick through the upland. She said in a hesitating way, then, “Did they say anything you didn't like?”

“Oh, no, just so dull—”

Nothing persuaded me to this rudeness, but the consideration with which Mrs. Headlong treated me. There were instants when I felt she was companionable, but I never felt myself her equal for longer than this.

We came home. A local couple came after dinner, the young man being a rising dramatist, one of those socialists who are extreme puritans, who detest all satire and have nothing of the Molière in them. I had an amusing time nagging and upsetting him, with my easygoing and cynical views of human nature, and saw Mrs. Headlong smiling all the time, with her small head on one side.

Afterwards, Mrs. Headlong and I were in excellent mood, laughing at the naïveté of these soft, pliant men, who are born and trained to compatibility and success.

My hostess said I must sleep in a room upstairs, near hers, not her husband's, but a studio, opening out of her own room, and reached by a small staircase, so that it looked out from the roof. Here, said she, I would neither see nor hear the soft animals of the night, probably not even the bullfrog. This suited me. I had been frightened without knowing it, in the well of stone and silence. When I put out the light and looked upwards, I saw, floating like a sail on the ocean on a dim night, the bellied canvas which protected the room from the direct light of the glassed studio roof. It floated and floated, more and less visible, according to my thoughts. It was sometimes like white woman's hair floating; sometimes, like a cloud. On this side of the hill, too, something slid past, a larger-bodied animal this time, but it was far below me, except on one side, where the slope approached the window. There were four windows, two groups and two single ones. The curtains were wide open all night. What haunted me was my imagination; it was not fevered with projects, anguish, regret, disgust at myself as usual, but calm and rocking as a rowboat on a shallow bay into which the tide is flowing. It went on moving all night, but always in the same place and no form of fantasy came to me, and no misery nor idea. I began once more to enjoy that gentle endless insomnia in which the other nights had been passed. But now I was the victim of some physical irritation, and the desire for love, without the dream of any masculine body, began to fill me. It started like a pinpoint and spread; it ran through my veins. I thought about my discomfort, but did not dare put on my light, for fear of waking my hostess; the doors between our rooms were open to get the breeze. Between us was the staircase and a round place opening into a bathroom, but the light from either room would fall upon the staircase. I lay on a wide studio bed, invisible from anywhere, but I could see the light on the staircase when she switched it on. She, too, was restless. The strange spirit of the place kept us awake. For there was unquestionably a haunting here, or it might have been another kind of life that was here, the life of a local wind, or a sweet miasma from the ancient ground, or the thickness coming from the trees, or it might have been something ineffably inhuman; but a kind of life.