Snow White and the Giants (9 page)
Read Snow White and the Giants Online
Authors: J. T. McIntosh
"No, thanks," she said. "I'll swim back." A thought struck her. "Who's she?"
"My sister."
I wasn't telling her, I was reminding her. She must know about Dina.
But she didn't. It showed.
And I was startled. How could she know what she knew and not know
about Dina?
I started asking questions again. "You didn't know about Dina? You
didn't even know she existed? Yet you knew Jota would meet me at 3:10
this afternoon."
"Did I?"
"Greg did. And you wanted to meet him . . . you arrived precisely on cue."
"Tell me about Dina."
"Do you know about my mother?"
"Something . . . she's sick, isn't she?"
"If you want to use a euphemism, yes."
"And Dina?"
"Sick too -- using the same euphemism. Pretty, healthy, stable in her
way. But that's the way of a child. That's how she'll stay."
"I wonder."
What do you mean, you wonder?"
She sat on a couch, drawing up her legs. "You're not sick -- in that way."
"If I am, I hope it doesn't show. But Sheila and I have no children."
"Why not?"
"Don't be dense."
"I think you're wrong. I think your children would be normal."
"And their children?"
She shrugged. "You know the difference between heredity and environment.
If environment, illness, anything like that was the cause of what happened
to your mother -- "
"It can't be."
"Why not?"
"Because of Dina."
She questioned me briefly but rather thoroughly about my mother, about
Dina, about me.
Presently she smiled, and her smile was warmer now. "I knew you were
sorry for yourself, Val," she said. "It shows. I didn't know you had so
many good excuses for being sorry for yourself."
"Excuses?" I said.
"Oh, sure. Even if you're no psychologist, you know that self-pity is
self-destruction. If you've only one leg and everybody else has two --
too bad, but self-pity can only make your situation worse."
"Thanks for the lecture," I said.
She smiled. "Don't do that," she said. "That's self-defense. You're
putting up a barrier. It's not in the least necessary, because I'm not
trying to psychoanalyze you . . . "
"What else are you doing?"
She got up again and began to move about. I tried not to watch
her, because she affected me almost as she would affect a lusty
seventeen-year-old boy who had been in solitary confinement for a
year. Yet it was impossible not to watch her.
"This is only 1966," she said. "It's not long since psychiatry was
born. Clever men found out that many things which had always been assumed
to be straightforward physical ailments were actually caused by mental
factors. And, of course, they went too far. Now almost everything short
of a broken leg or diptheria is supposed to be psychosomatic. Quite soon
now other clever men will start swinging the pendulum again. Things in
the blood other than alcohol can cause disturbances -- "
"Obviously," I said.
"And a great deal of what used to be called madness can be very simply
dealt with."
"Loop it out of existence," I retorted. "It's easy."
"No, not that . . . I think there's something quick and easy that could
cure Dina. Not your mother. She really is psychotic. Dina is . . . well,
she just needs a certain stimulation -- I think. I can't be sure. It
depends on whether there's anything fundamentally wrong in the heredity
line. Hers and yours."
"Is there a way of finding out?"
She looked at me with sudden suspicion, and relaxed instantly. "There's
a way I could find out about you," she said. "And your children, It's
a rather curious way to find out such a thing . . . But it would be
infallible. It would settle whether there was any chance of your passing
on . . . what you're afraid you might pass on."
"Will you do it?" I asked quickly.
She smiled and looked away. "You don't know what you're asking."
"What do you mean?"
"And because you don't know what you're asking . . . Turn around, Val."
Perhaps I was slow, but I hadn't the faintest idea what was coming.
I thought she was going to hypnotize me or drug me, though where she'd
get the drugs was quite a question.
A moment later she said: "All right. Turn back."
She was on the thick carpet, naked, her marvelous body twice as marvelous
as even my heated imagination had been able to picture it.
She beld out her arms to me, yet like a fool I hesitated.
"This way?" I said stupidly.
"This is part of it. But if you're reluctant . . . "
I ran to her.
Chapter Five
I had read and heard of acts of love which were not merely sex, which were
more even than the consummation of true love: timeless moments when two
people met and were reborn. I had not believed such things could happen.
I didn't even love Miranda, and quite certainly she didn't love me. Yet
what happened then and there shocked us, drained us, and left us two
different people.
Although I was aware of none of the details, which were unimportant and
probably quite conventional, I knew that she was as much taken aback as
I was. I also vaguely understood why: it was only a few minutes before
that I had made her see me as something more than a character in a play,
and now we were together with a background of silent thunder.
We didn't discuss it; we didn't try to explain it or explain it away. It
was not love, it was not passion. It was destiny. It was one of the
moments, big or small, after which things are never quite the same again.
And we recognized this, dimly, yet with no possibility of pretense that
nothing particular had happened.
Miranda's reaction didn't really surprise me, though I couldn't understand
it. "Val," she said softly, "without meaning to, I've done something more
tragic than Greg could ever manage to do."
I didn't reply. What was there to say to that?
She jumped up. "You must stay till I come back," she said.
Before I could emerge from euphoria -- which I had no particular desire
to do, anyway -- she was gone.
I slept. When I awoke, Miranda was leaning over me, wearing her white
bikini.
"You needn't worry," she said. "Your children will be entirely
normal. There isn't the slightest doubt."
Only in that moment did I realize how much I wanted children -- more
than that, wanted Sheila and me to have children. Always when Sheila
had said or hinted that things would be different if we had children
I had been irritated at the irrelevance. Things would be different if
I were seventy-five feet tall, or if Sheila were a man, or if I were a
millionaire, or if we could have children.
All I said was: "You had that tested --
that
way?"
She nodded. "In the circumstances, it was the only way. I could hardly
. . . " She checked herself.
"You went to the copse."
"Perhaps."
"What about Dina?"
"I think I'll be seeing Dina." She was evasive. "I'll do something . . .
she won't remember what, and it'll be better if nobody else knows."
She didn't want to talk any more. "I mustn't see you again, unless
. . . No, I shan't see you again, Val. You're not going out tonight,
and I . . . Goodby, Val."
She ran from the room. And I knew somehow that she meant goodby --
not au revoir.
By the time Sheila drove up, twenty minutes later, I had carefully
removed all evidence that Miranda had been in the house. I left my own
glass where it was, but washed hers and put it away.
I just didn't know how I'd act and how Sheila would act after what had
happened. Not only had I been faithful to Sheila since we got married,
I had been faithful to her since the day we met.
After hearing her mini drive up and stop, I waited in the hall. Sheila
might guess what had happened the moment she saw my face . . . Belatedly I
realized I should have found something to do, instead of simply standing
waiting for Sheila with no prepared explanation of what I'd been doing
all afternoon.
She came in and said: "What's her name, Val?"
"Miranda," I said. It would have been fatuous to ask what she was talking
about, whose name she meant, and even more fatuous to ask how she had
found out.
"Why did you do it, Val?" Sheila asked quietly. She should have waited
for an answer, but she surrendered some of her advantage by going on:
"I thought . . . with Dina out of the way for a while, we might have had a
chance. Dina's the root of all the trouble, you know. All of it. You don't
think so, but you don't have to put up with Dina at her worst, all day."
So we were talking about Dina, not Miranda, and the heat was temporarily
off.
"Lots of people have in-law trouble," I said rather weakly.
"Yes, but not this kind of trouble," said Sheila bleakly. "If she
was a cripple, I could speak to her plainly and reach some kind of
understanding. If she was old I could at least try to manage her. But
she's just . . . well, you know."
"I know."
"I hate her, Val, do you know that? She does. Of course, she hates me,
so we're even. But she hated me first."
Some people could ignore dislike. Sheila wasn't one of them. She couldn't
be indifferent.
She went back to Miranda then, trying to work up the fury she had felt
earlier. But it was too late. And I had realized with relief that she
wasn't talking about Miranda and me in the lounge an hour ago, but
Miranda and me in the Red Lion earlier.
"Did you have to humiliate me, Val?" she demanded. "Did you have to take
her where everybody knows you, and me? Couldn't you have taken her to
some hotel out of town?"
"You've got it wrong, Sheila," I said.
"Of course. Obviously. What else could be expected? She's a rich client,
the daughter of the Earl of Shoreditch."
"She's one of the giants," I said.
"The what? Oh, those kids. Don't be ridiculous. I hear she's about the
same height as me."
"I mean, she's with them. Listen, Sheila. There's something very strange
happening here in Shuteley, something fantastic. This afternoon Jota was
killed. I might have been killed too, but instead I killed my opponent -- "
"Killed?" She stared at me. "Jota dead?"
I explained what had happened. She listened, yet I knew I wasn't getting
through to her. It wasn't that she disbelieved what I said. It was rather
that she was the kind of woman, the kind of womanly woman, who saw her
own family and household and everything that affected them in technicolor
and everything else in black and white. The giants were all black and
white, except Miranda, who had lunched with me at the Red Lion. Besides,
she wasn't a giant.
It might have made a difference to Sheila's attitude, I thought, if
Miranda had been six feet four. Then she'd have been a freak and anything
I did might have been laughed off as temporary aberration, as if I had
fallen desperately in love with the fat lady of a traveling circus.
"Anyway," I said, "they'll be gone tomorrow."
"How do you know?"
"I told you. Greg said -- "
"And you believe everything you're told?"
"Sheila, these giants know things. One of the things . . . "
"Well, go on."
"They say," I muttered, "that I needn't worry about my children. That
there's no reason why they shouldn't be normal. And I believe it's true."
Sheila's head came up quickly. For a moment there was radiance in her
face. She had fought against my decision, not so much became she wanted
children, though she did, as because she believed we needed them.
Then the radiance died. "Who told you -- Miranda?"
"As a matter of fact, yes."
"And anything she says must be true?"
"It's not like that."
"Isn't it?" She paused, and then asked: "Is she very beautiful?"
"Very. But she'll be gone tomorrow too."
"So you have to make hay while the sun shines?"
The phone rang. "I'll get it," I said at once, too quickly, for Sheila
looked at me calculatingly. Invariably she answered the phone, even
if I was at home, because I wasn't often called at home and if I was,
her answering it gave me a chance to think or pretend not to be home.
She was doing me an injustice this time, for the possibility that Miranda
might be calling had not crossed my mind.
It was, in fact, Jota.
"Haven't much time," he said. "I'm out for a stroll with some of the
giants . . . Val, something happens tonight. They haven't said anything
definite -- I guessed from the way they talk about tomorrow, as if
everything's going to be different."
He wasn't telling me anything I didn't know.
"Good? Bad?" I said.
"They're excited. That's all I can say. Except -- they seem to think
they're going to do me a good turn. I think now they let me stay with
them so that they'd know where I was and could keep an eye on me. One
other thing -- go out. Take Sheila with you. Go right away. Don't waste
any time."
"Why?"
"I don't know why. Think they tell me everything? But I gather you're
supposed to stay at home tonight. It's taken for granted. It's assumed
you
must
stay at home."
"Then I suppose I must," I said.
"Don't be an idiot. Why give in? They think you'll stay at home. So go
out. Don't be a vegetable."
"Jota," I said. "What you and Greg were saying to each other . . . that
must be important. What exactly did you mean when -- "
Jota chuckled and rang off.
"So it wasn't Miranda," said Sheila. "What a disappointment for you."
"Sheila," I said, "lets go out for dinner."
"And we'll happen to run into Miranda."
"Don't be silly. You pick the place. Right out of town somewhere. Sheila
. . . I love you.".
She looked at me doubtfully, suspiciously. But I met her gaze fair
and square.
It was hypocritical, telling Sheila I loved her so soon after what had
happened. I was quite certain that what had happened between Miranda
and me would never happen again. She had called it tragic . . . anyway,
she had called something tragic. We had met without meeting, and then
suddenly in an explosion of feeling we had fused in one way and been
blown apart in another.
"We never go out to dinner," Sheila said.
That reminded me: Miranda, not just Jota, had said "You're not going
out tonight." That was another of the things she knew. It wasn't in the
cards that I would leave the house again that day.
"We're going this time," I said. "Go and get yourself all dolled
up. There isn't a girl in Shuteley who can hold a candle to you when
you really try."
"Except Miranda, of course."
"Miranda isn't in Shute!ey. I don't think she's anywhere."
"My sister."
I wasn't telling her, I was reminding her. She must know about Dina.
But she didn't. It showed.
And I was startled. How could she know what she knew and not know
about Dina?
I started asking questions again. "You didn't know about Dina? You
didn't even know she existed? Yet you knew Jota would meet me at 3:10
this afternoon."
"Did I?"
"Greg did. And you wanted to meet him . . . you arrived precisely on cue."
"Tell me about Dina."
"Do you know about my mother?"
"Something . . . she's sick, isn't she?"
"If you want to use a euphemism, yes."
"And Dina?"
"Sick too -- using the same euphemism. Pretty, healthy, stable in her
way. But that's the way of a child. That's how she'll stay."
"I wonder."
What do you mean, you wonder?"
She sat on a couch, drawing up her legs. "You're not sick -- in that way."
"If I am, I hope it doesn't show. But Sheila and I have no children."
"Why not?"
"Don't be dense."
"I think you're wrong. I think your children would be normal."
"And their children?"
She shrugged. "You know the difference between heredity and environment.
If environment, illness, anything like that was the cause of what happened
to your mother -- "
"It can't be."
"Why not?"
"Because of Dina."
She questioned me briefly but rather thoroughly about my mother, about
Dina, about me.
Presently she smiled, and her smile was warmer now. "I knew you were
sorry for yourself, Val," she said. "It shows. I didn't know you had so
many good excuses for being sorry for yourself."
"Excuses?" I said.
"Oh, sure. Even if you're no psychologist, you know that self-pity is
self-destruction. If you've only one leg and everybody else has two --
too bad, but self-pity can only make your situation worse."
"Thanks for the lecture," I said.
She smiled. "Don't do that," she said. "That's self-defense. You're
putting up a barrier. It's not in the least necessary, because I'm not
trying to psychoanalyze you . . . "
"What else are you doing?"
She got up again and began to move about. I tried not to watch
her, because she affected me almost as she would affect a lusty
seventeen-year-old boy who had been in solitary confinement for a
year. Yet it was impossible not to watch her.
"This is only 1966," she said. "It's not long since psychiatry was
born. Clever men found out that many things which had always been assumed
to be straightforward physical ailments were actually caused by mental
factors. And, of course, they went too far. Now almost everything short
of a broken leg or diptheria is supposed to be psychosomatic. Quite soon
now other clever men will start swinging the pendulum again. Things in
the blood other than alcohol can cause disturbances -- "
"Obviously," I said.
"And a great deal of what used to be called madness can be very simply
dealt with."
"Loop it out of existence," I retorted. "It's easy."
"No, not that . . . I think there's something quick and easy that could
cure Dina. Not your mother. She really is psychotic. Dina is . . . well,
she just needs a certain stimulation -- I think. I can't be sure. It
depends on whether there's anything fundamentally wrong in the heredity
line. Hers and yours."
"Is there a way of finding out?"
She looked at me with sudden suspicion, and relaxed instantly. "There's
a way I could find out about you," she said. "And your children, It's
a rather curious way to find out such a thing . . . But it would be
infallible. It would settle whether there was any chance of your passing
on . . . what you're afraid you might pass on."
"Will you do it?" I asked quickly.
She smiled and looked away. "You don't know what you're asking."
"What do you mean?"
"And because you don't know what you're asking . . . Turn around, Val."
Perhaps I was slow, but I hadn't the faintest idea what was coming.
I thought she was going to hypnotize me or drug me, though where she'd
get the drugs was quite a question.
A moment later she said: "All right. Turn back."
She was on the thick carpet, naked, her marvelous body twice as marvelous
as even my heated imagination had been able to picture it.
She beld out her arms to me, yet like a fool I hesitated.
"This way?" I said stupidly.
"This is part of it. But if you're reluctant . . . "
I ran to her.
Chapter Five
I had read and heard of acts of love which were not merely sex, which were
more even than the consummation of true love: timeless moments when two
people met and were reborn. I had not believed such things could happen.
I didn't even love Miranda, and quite certainly she didn't love me. Yet
what happened then and there shocked us, drained us, and left us two
different people.
Although I was aware of none of the details, which were unimportant and
probably quite conventional, I knew that she was as much taken aback as
I was. I also vaguely understood why: it was only a few minutes before
that I had made her see me as something more than a character in a play,
and now we were together with a background of silent thunder.
We didn't discuss it; we didn't try to explain it or explain it away. It
was not love, it was not passion. It was destiny. It was one of the
moments, big or small, after which things are never quite the same again.
And we recognized this, dimly, yet with no possibility of pretense that
nothing particular had happened.
Miranda's reaction didn't really surprise me, though I couldn't understand
it. "Val," she said softly, "without meaning to, I've done something more
tragic than Greg could ever manage to do."
I didn't reply. What was there to say to that?
She jumped up. "You must stay till I come back," she said.
Before I could emerge from euphoria -- which I had no particular desire
to do, anyway -- she was gone.
I slept. When I awoke, Miranda was leaning over me, wearing her white
bikini.
"You needn't worry," she said. "Your children will be entirely
normal. There isn't the slightest doubt."
Only in that moment did I realize how much I wanted children -- more
than that, wanted Sheila and me to have children. Always when Sheila
had said or hinted that things would be different if we had children
I had been irritated at the irrelevance. Things would be different if
I were seventy-five feet tall, or if Sheila were a man, or if I were a
millionaire, or if we could have children.
All I said was: "You had that tested --
that
way?"
She nodded. "In the circumstances, it was the only way. I could hardly
. . . " She checked herself.
"You went to the copse."
"Perhaps."
"What about Dina?"
"I think I'll be seeing Dina." She was evasive. "I'll do something . . .
she won't remember what, and it'll be better if nobody else knows."
She didn't want to talk any more. "I mustn't see you again, unless
. . . No, I shan't see you again, Val. You're not going out tonight,
and I . . . Goodby, Val."
She ran from the room. And I knew somehow that she meant goodby --
not au revoir.
By the time Sheila drove up, twenty minutes later, I had carefully
removed all evidence that Miranda had been in the house. I left my own
glass where it was, but washed hers and put it away.
I just didn't know how I'd act and how Sheila would act after what had
happened. Not only had I been faithful to Sheila since we got married,
I had been faithful to her since the day we met.
After hearing her mini drive up and stop, I waited in the hall. Sheila
might guess what had happened the moment she saw my face . . . Belatedly I
realized I should have found something to do, instead of simply standing
waiting for Sheila with no prepared explanation of what I'd been doing
all afternoon.
She came in and said: "What's her name, Val?"
"Miranda," I said. It would have been fatuous to ask what she was talking
about, whose name she meant, and even more fatuous to ask how she had
found out.
"Why did you do it, Val?" Sheila asked quietly. She should have waited
for an answer, but she surrendered some of her advantage by going on:
"I thought . . . with Dina out of the way for a while, we might have had a
chance. Dina's the root of all the trouble, you know. All of it. You don't
think so, but you don't have to put up with Dina at her worst, all day."
So we were talking about Dina, not Miranda, and the heat was temporarily
off.
"Lots of people have in-law trouble," I said rather weakly.
"Yes, but not this kind of trouble," said Sheila bleakly. "If she
was a cripple, I could speak to her plainly and reach some kind of
understanding. If she was old I could at least try to manage her. But
she's just . . . well, you know."
"I know."
"I hate her, Val, do you know that? She does. Of course, she hates me,
so we're even. But she hated me first."
Some people could ignore dislike. Sheila wasn't one of them. She couldn't
be indifferent.
She went back to Miranda then, trying to work up the fury she had felt
earlier. But it was too late. And I had realized with relief that she
wasn't talking about Miranda and me in the lounge an hour ago, but
Miranda and me in the Red Lion earlier.
"Did you have to humiliate me, Val?" she demanded. "Did you have to take
her where everybody knows you, and me? Couldn't you have taken her to
some hotel out of town?"
"You've got it wrong, Sheila," I said.
"Of course. Obviously. What else could be expected? She's a rich client,
the daughter of the Earl of Shoreditch."
"She's one of the giants," I said.
"The what? Oh, those kids. Don't be ridiculous. I hear she's about the
same height as me."
"I mean, she's with them. Listen, Sheila. There's something very strange
happening here in Shuteley, something fantastic. This afternoon Jota was
killed. I might have been killed too, but instead I killed my opponent -- "
"Killed?" She stared at me. "Jota dead?"
I explained what had happened. She listened, yet I knew I wasn't getting
through to her. It wasn't that she disbelieved what I said. It was rather
that she was the kind of woman, the kind of womanly woman, who saw her
own family and household and everything that affected them in technicolor
and everything else in black and white. The giants were all black and
white, except Miranda, who had lunched with me at the Red Lion. Besides,
she wasn't a giant.
It might have made a difference to Sheila's attitude, I thought, if
Miranda had been six feet four. Then she'd have been a freak and anything
I did might have been laughed off as temporary aberration, as if I had
fallen desperately in love with the fat lady of a traveling circus.
"Anyway," I said, "they'll be gone tomorrow."
"How do you know?"
"I told you. Greg said -- "
"And you believe everything you're told?"
"Sheila, these giants know things. One of the things . . . "
"Well, go on."
"They say," I muttered, "that I needn't worry about my children. That
there's no reason why they shouldn't be normal. And I believe it's true."
Sheila's head came up quickly. For a moment there was radiance in her
face. She had fought against my decision, not so much became she wanted
children, though she did, as because she believed we needed them.
Then the radiance died. "Who told you -- Miranda?"
"As a matter of fact, yes."
"And anything she says must be true?"
"It's not like that."
"Isn't it?" She paused, and then asked: "Is she very beautiful?"
"Very. But she'll be gone tomorrow too."
"So you have to make hay while the sun shines?"
The phone rang. "I'll get it," I said at once, too quickly, for Sheila
looked at me calculatingly. Invariably she answered the phone, even
if I was at home, because I wasn't often called at home and if I was,
her answering it gave me a chance to think or pretend not to be home.
She was doing me an injustice this time, for the possibility that Miranda
might be calling had not crossed my mind.
It was, in fact, Jota.
"Haven't much time," he said. "I'm out for a stroll with some of the
giants . . . Val, something happens tonight. They haven't said anything
definite -- I guessed from the way they talk about tomorrow, as if
everything's going to be different."
He wasn't telling me anything I didn't know.
"Good? Bad?" I said.
"They're excited. That's all I can say. Except -- they seem to think
they're going to do me a good turn. I think now they let me stay with
them so that they'd know where I was and could keep an eye on me. One
other thing -- go out. Take Sheila with you. Go right away. Don't waste
any time."
"Why?"
"I don't know why. Think they tell me everything? But I gather you're
supposed to stay at home tonight. It's taken for granted. It's assumed
you
must
stay at home."
"Then I suppose I must," I said.
"Don't be an idiot. Why give in? They think you'll stay at home. So go
out. Don't be a vegetable."
"Jota," I said. "What you and Greg were saying to each other . . . that
must be important. What exactly did you mean when -- "
Jota chuckled and rang off.
"So it wasn't Miranda," said Sheila. "What a disappointment for you."
"Sheila," I said, "lets go out for dinner."
"And we'll happen to run into Miranda."
"Don't be silly. You pick the place. Right out of town somewhere. Sheila
. . . I love you.".
She looked at me doubtfully, suspiciously. But I met her gaze fair
and square.
It was hypocritical, telling Sheila I loved her so soon after what had
happened. I was quite certain that what had happened between Miranda
and me would never happen again. She had called it tragic . . . anyway,
she had called something tragic. We had met without meeting, and then
suddenly in an explosion of feeling we had fused in one way and been
blown apart in another.
"We never go out to dinner," Sheila said.
That reminded me: Miranda, not just Jota, had said "You're not going
out tonight." That was another of the things she knew. It wasn't in the
cards that I would leave the house again that day.
"We're going this time," I said. "Go and get yourself all dolled
up. There isn't a girl in Shuteley who can hold a candle to you when
you really try."
"Except Miranda, of course."
"Miranda isn't in Shute!ey. I don't think she's anywhere."
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