The Rose Garden (19 page)

“Nothing, except Mrs. Ffrench asked Mrs. Maitland, ‘What's Charles going to surprise us with this year?' she says. ‘He had such an amusing outfit last year,' she says, ‘and the girls made such a fuss over him,' she says. ‘Oh, the girls adore Charles,' Mrs. Maitland says, ‘and he's like a little child about the dance, he's so excited about it. He pretends not to be, of course,' she says, ‘but you know it gets to be a bit of a bore, he can talk of nothing else all day afterward. You know, Charles is a tiny bit conceited,' she says, ‘and he rather fancies himself in the waltz.' And then they went on talking about the party Mrs. Ffrench is giving next Friday. That was in the afternoon, before Mr. Maitland and Mr. Tarnac got here.”

“‘The girls adore Charles,' ” Bridie repeated. “‘The girls adore Charles.' Sure they were all laughing their heads off at him, the way he was shaping around on the dance floor with his eyes closed and all. You never saw such a sketch in your life. We were all breaking our hearts laughing at him. And he brought those special little flat patent-leather shoes of his, too. I saw them when I was doing the room this morning. Well, I declare to God. And that one upstairs, Mrs. Harkey—I wonder what she's going to doll herself up in. I declare to God, all the parties and all they have to go to, and they have to take over our little party, too. Wouldn't you know it of them.”

“And every time one of the fellows asks one of them to dance,
one of us is left sitting!” Josie cried. “Oh, I know there's extra men and all, but still I don't think it's fair. And all the money they have to spend on themselves and all, and us trying to struggle along on what we make—How can we put up an appearance against them? It's not fair, so it's not.” She stood up. “Well,” she said, “I'd better be getting home. I have to get ready for the dance, although I haven't much heart for it now.”

Bridie folded her arms and leaned on the table. “Wait a minute now, Josie,” she said. “Maybe there's something we can do about all this. What do you say, Agnes?”

“Sure what could we do?” Agnes asked nervously. “You don't want to get into any trouble, now, Bridie.”

“No need to get into any trouble,” Bridie said. “We could just pass the word around. They only come around to look. That's what Mrs. Harkey said to me. ‘We're only going to drop around for a little visit,' she says to me, ‘Just for a look. It's such fun to sit and watch.' Well, then, let them look, if that's what they want. We'll boycott them. Very polite, of course, as though we thought they just came to look. As though we didn't think they wanted to dance. Who can make any trouble out of that?”

“I don't want to risk my job,” Agnes said.

“No fear of that,” Bridie said. “How can you risk your job when they won't know anything about it? They'll just think the fellows are shy, or something.”

Josie sniggered. “Oh, God,” she said, “there she'll be sitting up there with her black stockings on her, and nobody coming near her!”

Agnes smiled meanly, stood up, and brushed bread crumbs from the front of her skirt. “We'll have to make sure all the girls know about it, Bridie,” she said.

The dance began at nine o'clock. At eleven, George Harkey still waited, surrounded by the empty chairs he was holding for Leona,
on a dais at one end of the long village hall. His solitary dinner at the village bar-and-grill had been preceded by five very sweet Manhattans, and he was drowsy. He tried, with a monotonous lack of success but nonchalantly all the same, to count the eyelashes of his left eye with the fingers of his right hand and the eyelashes of his right eye with his other set of fingers. Head bent, eyes alternately glazing and wandering, he still could not entirely avoid seeing the feet of the dancers as they galloped past his perch. Underneath him, the dais, which had been built for some pageant, thudded industriously in time with the dancing, and around him the empty chairs rattled. Suddenly the hall darkened slightly. Someone had turned the lights down. To George, who had just then been gazing intently into the palms of his locked hands, the change seemed tremendous. The music, the laughter, the pounding of feet, and the voices, which formerly had come at him in one bright, enveloping blast of exhausting but familiar sound, now seemed to deepen and at the same time to grow more shrill. It was an ominous alteration. Was he in the same room? Had he, perhaps, slept?

He raised his eyes fearfully and gazed down the length of the hall. Dimly, far away across the sea of jiggling heads, he perceived the glitter of instruments. There was the stage, there were the musicians. In front of the stage stood a bank of the same thick, stiff green shrubbery that sprouted at intervals in tubs along the side walls, separating into chummy groups the empty chairs that had been set aside for tired dancers. Were there any tired dancers? George couldn't tell. The nausea that had been caressing him at intervals all day embraced him without warning, and roughly. He closed his eyes tight and gripped the seat of his chair with both hands, but still, in his horrified vision, the dance floor swung right, swung left, with sickening precision, as though some giant pendulum had control of it, and the dancers, oblivious, whirled giddily
on, and he was increasingly aware of the Manhattans and of the two tough pork chops that since suppertime had lain, almost forgotten, inside him.

The wave passed, leaving its victim trembling but not seriously impaired. He opened his eyes, put his hand to his hip pocket, and took out a large silver flask. He unscrewed the top, poured some whiskey into one of the two sticky glasses that some earlier Retreat visitors had left on the chair beside him, and drank. That was better. He hoped no one had noticed him, but it was too late to worry now, and he poured another drink, finished it off, and set the glass on the floor, so carelessly that it turned on its side and rolled dismally under one of the chairs.

He recorked the flask, crossed his legs, and sat back to survey the festivities, with the suave, aloof smile he had often seen Charles Runyon wear. On George's square, earnest face the smile sat awkwardly, but he knew only that he felt tired, and tried to solve the problem by leering on one side of his face while he rested the muscles of the other side.

At this moment, through the wide entrance door at the side of the hall, he saw Leona enter, pause, and raise her arms in greeting to the merrymakers. She was wearing a sleeveless white crêpe dress that clung to her tall, slender figure, and there were diamonds in her ears. She raised herself on tiptoe, waved to the band, and pranced gracefully to the dais and to George. Behind her, Charles, Dolly, and Lewis followed confidently, their smiles radiating pleasure, camaraderie, and, above all, approval.

Leona tripped up the steps and stood beside George, regarding him with a humorous
moue
that he found peculiarly repellent.

“Well, George, all alone? Poor George has been sitting here all alone,” she said to Charles, who had already taken a chair and arranged himself in an attitude.

“Never mind the poor-George stuff,” George muttered, but no
one heard him.

Dolly plumped herself down beside him. “Where is everybody?” she demanded. “Are we the only people here?”

“The Gieglers were here,” George said, “but they left. The Ffrenches left, too, and the Pearsons. Some of the others were here. The Allens, I think. Anyway, they're all gone. But now you're here,” he added with an effort.

“George, how do you like my fancy dress?” Dolly asked.

She was wearing her favorite cocktail skirt, of black satin cut in a wide circle, and with it a tight, sleeveless, modestly low jerkin blouse of black-and-white striped satin that laced at the back with red corset strings. There were towering red heels on her black satin sandals, and a small triangle of rhinestones glittered on each black net instep. Her hair was piled in curls on top of her head and decorated with a bright-red rose.

“You look fine, Dolly,” George said. “What do you mean, fancy dress? It's just a dress, isn't it?”

“Well, it's a little costumey, don't you think? Lewis said I looked like a French doll.”

“Dolly means it's not quite what one wears,” Leona interrupted, leaning across George to twinkle brilliantly at Dolly. “You must excuse George, Dolly. I suspect he's not seeing quite clearly. Didn't you dance at all, George?”

“No one asked me to dance,” George said. He stood up. “No one asked Nat Ffrench to dance, either,” he said, “or Rita, or the Gieglers, or anybody. Nobody asked anybody to dance. So they left.”

“Been to the bar, George?” Lewis asked boisterously. He was in great good humor, and looked large, solid, and secure in his well-cut dark-blue suit.

“I didn't go near the bar,” George said. “It's in the room behind the stage. You have to walk right through the dance to get to it.”

“That's where it always is,” Leona said happily. “Go on, Lewis.
You play waiter. I'll have a Scotch-and-water.”

“I think I'll leave now,” George said. “I'd like some fresh air. I'll go along home, I think.”

“You'll do nothing of the sort, George,” Leona said. “You're not going to march out the minute I come in. Did you see Bridie?”

“She has a chair down there near the stage, I think,” George said. “I really think I'll go now, Leona.”

“Sit down, George,” Leona said.

“Oh, for heaven's sake, sit down and shut up, George,” Charles said.

“All right,” George said. “Didn't know I was so popular. But I'll sit at the back here. See, I'll sit here.”

He tilted a chair back against the wall and sat down, sleepy but resigned to staying awake. He closed his eyes.

“Isn't this gay?” Leona said. “Well, for goodness' sake, will you look at Edward! I forgot all about him. He's dancing with the Ffrenches' maid, Eileen something. He didn't come in with us, did he? I thought he stayed in the car.”

“He woke up when I was getting out,” Dolly said. “I took it for granted he'd gone to the bar.”

“Well, I never,” Charles said, two or three minutes later. “Our Edward is getting quite a whirl. There he is again, with a different girl.”

“The Bennetts' cook,” Leona said absently.

“Never you mind, Charles!” Dolly cried gaily. “Wait till the waltzes start. You'll put poor Edward completely in the shade.”

“Really, Dolly!” Charles snapped. “This brawl means nothing to me. Be serious, my dear, even if you can't be intelligent. I'm here to observe, not to dance.”

“Haw-haw,” George said from the back. They all turned to stare at him. He had the flask in the open again.

“George, what on earth! What are you doing with that ridiculous
flask?” Leona cried.

“My own flask.” George, unperturbed, took another swallow, keeping his eyes fixed on Leona.

“Well, here's a pretty how-de-do,” Charles whispered angrily. “You should have let him go home, Leona.”

“He'll go in a minute,” Leona whispered back. “Let's just ignore him.”

“It's bedlam in the bar,” Lewis said, returning with their drinks, “but I must say they gave me quick service. They're a nice bunch of fellows, those cops, or whatever they are.” He put the loaded tray on the floor of the dais and began to hand drinks around.

“What are they, anyway, Leona?” Charles asked. “It really interests me. It is in the nature of a social phenomenon, you know, this gathering. Who are these imported stalwarts?”

“Policemen, mostly. Firemen, I suppose, too,” Leona said. “Who cares, as long as they can dance?”

“The Department of Sanitation is represented, too,” Dolly whispered, gazing at a red-faced young man in a white linen jacket, who was dancing with the Gieglers' long-faced Agnes.

“Complete with carnation in lapel,” Charles remarked. “My, aren't we chic!”

Leona giggled. “You're both perfectly terrible,” she said. “That's a very respectable-looking coat. And a very nice-looking young man, too. I think you should be ashamed of yourselves.”

Dolly choked suddenly, and hid her face behind Leona's shoulder. “Leona!” she spluttered. “Will you look at our Josie in the dyed pink stockings. Did you ever see anything like it in your life?”

“Macabre, my dear,” Leona murmured. “Poor thing, she must have slaved to get that color. It matches her ears, though.”

Charles threw an arm casually over the back of his chair, and his black flannel coat slipped open to show more than a glimpse of the gray-and-rose brocade waistcoat he was wearing.

“This dais was a charming thought,” he said expansively. “What do they use it for? May queens and things? I adore sitting here, being at once a member of the audience and a player. And yet, not really of either group. The critic's lot is a lonely one, my dears. I feel remote from the rollicking servants, and just as remote, in a different way, from you delightful people. The cold, uncompromising eyes give me no peace. I say it ruefully, I assure you.” He sipped his ginger ale and smiled at them complacently.

Lewis made an impatient movement, and Dolly glanced at him warningly. “Well, I wish we'd start dancing,” she said. “I'm getting restless, sitting here like this. How do they make chairs this hard?”