The Rose Garden (4 page)

Years later, Tom's father became a member of the club his grandfather had been kept out of, and at twenty-one Tom, too, was admitted. The thin-faced old man Tom's grandfather had pointed out to him no longer sat in the second-story window. Tom quickly appropriated his chair. He felt timid about doing this, but to his astonishment no one else seemed to want it. The elderly men and the middle-aged men had been seduced away, first by the club movie room and then by the new television room, and the younger men darted in and out, having no patience for anything. Tom felt with disappointment that club life had lost its grandeur. There was a rowdiness, unheard but felt, that Tom was sure was not consistent with gentlemanliness. He struck up no friendships with his fellow-members.

Tom arrived at the club every day at ten o'clock. In the mornings, he sat in the chair by the window, reading the papers. At twelve-thirty, he made his way to the dining room and enjoyed a two-hour lunch, always eating alone, always at the same table. All the imagination and appreciation he was capable of were spent at the luncheon table. In the afternoons, he simply sat and watched the street. At five o'clock, he sent for his car, quartered at a nearby garage, and drove home to Liza.

Early one October, Liza received a telephone call that disturbed her very much. The call was from Clara Longacre, who invited her to drop over for bridge the same afternoon. Clara, at thirty, was the recognized social leader at the Retreat—merely because, Liza often thought viciously, of having grown up there. Clara's natural sense of superiority made it impossible for her to doubt herself. She
knew
she was better than anybody else. She was untouchable. Liza longed more than anything in the world to impress Clara, to deprive her, even if it was only for a minute, of her eternal self-satisfaction. Sometimes she lay awake in bed and
gritted her teeth in the struggle to bring forth some scheme that would crack that natural armor. Now she was not disturbed at the invitation to bridge; she had often been to bridge at Clara's house. It was the tone of the invitation that had unsettled her. Always before, in speaking to her, Clara's manner and her amused tone of voice had implied an awareness that Liza was a
person
—a possible adversary, even. This time, she was merely casual, as if she had forgotten that Liza was in any way different from the others. Liza wondered distractedly if perhaps they were all beginning to take her for granted. After all, she had done nothing extraordinary for a year—not since she had torn out the whole riverside wall of her house to install those two outsize picture windows. At night, from the opposite bank of the river, her house appeared to be a glittering sheet of white light—the most spectacular establishment in the community, whether you admired it or not. Even that, which had outraged all the rest of them (they said that, like her furniture, it was alien to the spirit of Herbert's Retreat), had drawn only an amused smile from Clara. Liza had always felt that Clara's amusement might mask a
touch
of chagrin, enough to make a small victory for herself. This time Clara's voice had been casual and friendly, but that was all. I will not be patronized by her, Liza thought wildly. I must
show
her.

She went to the bridge party in a scattered, anxious frame of mind. Clara had also asked Arabelle Burton and Margaret Slade. They all come running when Clara rings the bell, Liza thought.

As they were adding up their scores at the end of the afternoon, Clara asked, “Aren't you and Tom having an anniversary soon, Liza?”

“Not till February,” Liza said.

“I know it's February,” Clara said. “How could any of us forget the month of your arrival, Liza? We had all just settled down
after Christmas when you charged in to rouse us out of our lethargy. How many years is it?”

“Seven,” Liza said, and wondered if Clara was laughing at her secretly. They don't dare laugh at me to my face, she thought. I'm too quick for them.

“Seven is a very special anniversary in most marriages, isn't it?” Margaret Slade said indistinctly. As usual, she had a cold in her head. “I mean isn't it the most crucial year after the first, or something?”

“Is it?” Clara said. “Look, Liza, I'd like to give a party for you on your anniversary. Seven years is a long time. We should have a celebration. Will you let me?” She sounded perfectly sincere, and friendly, and Liza stared at her, baffled, not knowing what to say. Surely Clara was being patronizing?

“That's a wonderful idea—a seventh-anniversary party for Liza!” Margaret Slade cried. “We'll all bring appropriate presents. What
is
the seventh anniversary, anyway? Arabelle, you always know about things like that. What's the seventh anniversary—leather? paper?”

“Brass and copper,” Arabelle said.

“Well, then, that's settled,” Clara said. “It's a brass-and-copper party. That should be easy enough, but I'm afraid you're going to find yourself with a lot of ashtrays and hand bells.”

“You'll have to tell us what you'd really like, Liza,” Arabelle said. “Your house is so special I'm afraid anything I'd pick out would be an anachronism.”

“Don't worry about that, Arabelle,” Margaret said, blowing her nose heartily. “We're all in the same boat there. It would be hard not to bring an anachronism into Liza's house. We'll probably end up settling for the least anachronistic thing we can find, and hope for the best.”

“Why not bring the
most
anachronistic thing we can find?” Clara said. “An anachronism party would be much more fun than just sticking to brass or copper. Liza, I think I'll give you a cobbler's bench.”

“Oh, that's marvelous!” Margaret cried. “I'll bring a kerosene lamp.”

“I'll bring a mustache cup,” Arabelle said.

Liza smiled stiffly. They were baiting her. They had never dared make fun of her before. Trembling, she decided to meet their challenge.

“You must have read my mind, Clara,” she said quickly. “As a matter of fact, Tom and I were laughing about anachronisms only the other night. As Tom said, a seventh anniversary is something of an anachronism anyway. The anachronistic lucky seven, and so on. So we decided to celebrate the occasion with our first anachronism. I won't tell you what I thought of. It's something quite extraordinary, I promise you.”

Clara stared at her in astonishment. “You mustn't take us seriously, Liza. It's only a joke. We wouldn't think of defacing your house.” To the maid, who had stalked in bearing the tea tray, she said, “Mattie, you'll have to take that back. You know I won't tolerate tea bags in the house. Please go back and make the tea properly, just as I showed you.”

“They didn't have nothing but tea bags at the store, Mrs. Longacre,” Mattie replied. “Afraid it's tea bags or nothing, Ma'am.”

“Oh, all
right!
” Clara said, and glanced in exasperation at her friends.

This maid was new to the community, and probably would not stay long, because she was already complaining about the lack of entertainment around. It was seldom that one of the houses at Herbert's Retreat was not in an uproar with a maid just gone or
about to go, a dinner planned and the hostess frantically phoning her neighbors to discover which of the remaining maids would be available to help out for the evening. All this gave the maids a great sense of power, of course. For some of them, the power was satisfaction enough. Those were the ones who stayed on year after year. The others flew in and out of Herbert's Retreat like birds, carrying their baggage with them, entering service there with misgiving and leaving with rancor.

“I forgot to pick up my tea at Vendôme on Thursday,” Clara said when Mattie had left the room, “and I just had to tell that fool to get what she could in the village. Oh, just once, to have a good maid!”

Liza sat ready to deal with them one by one or all together when they took up the attack where they had left off. But if they
were
baiting her, as she thought, they seemed to have had enough of it. “Speaking of maids, as we do all the time,” Arabelle said, “Clara, I loved your cute little story in this week's
Flyaway
about that maid in White's Hotel.”

The
Flyaway
was the weekly publication circulated at the Retreat. Liza had not yet taken her new copy from its wrapper.

“The most extraordinary, wonderful caricature of an English maid I've ever seen,” Clara said, pleased. “And of course White's Hotel is the perfect background for her.”

Travel, hotels in Switzerland, hotels in Cannes, matching embroidery wools in that little shop on the Left Bank, driving through Cornwall on the wrong side of the road, White's Hotel in London—it was one way of dealing Liza out, and they didn't even have to do it on purpose. They couldn't avoid doing it. At such times, Liza sat, silent, with no stories to match with theirs, no recommendations, no frantic experiences. To travel, she and Tom would have to leave the Retreat, and she didn't dare. And
anyway, even if they had picked up and gone to Europe the summer before, like Clara, she still held the trump cards. Liza could stay at White's Hotel if she chose to, but Clara's grandparents had stayed there.

“Even the men hang around in the hall trying to get a look at her,” Clara said. “I simply had to write about her. I'm sending her the article, of course.”

“Does she really wear high-buttoned boots, Clara?” Margaret Slade asked delightedly.

“High-buttoned boots, black lisle stockings, long black dress—alpaca, I suppose—apron like an English nanny's, for God's sake, not a maid's apron at all, but it's just right for Betty Trim, she's so outrageous anyway, and, to top it all off, a parlormaid's cap, but worn
backwards,
and behind it an enormous bun of the most wiggy-looking, coarse gray hair you've ever seen, except that it's not a wig. Oh, and of course she curtsies, and calls everyone ‘m'lady.' It's simply killing. I swear she has the coldest, fishiest eyes I've ever seen in a human head. She never smiles, and the porter told me she thinks of nothing but money. Nothing. She could tell you the amount she made in tips any day in the last fifteen years, but she won't talk, of course. She's very closemouthed. She reads nothing but her savings book. She just simply loves and adores money. I can't understand why she's not a cashier, or something. Maybe it would break her heart to have to handle money she couldn't put away in her bank. I couldn't say all that in the
Flyaway,
of course. I want to stay in her good graces.”

“Oh, Lord, and to think of what we have to put up with in our kitchens,” Margaret said enviously. “Imagine having a pearl like that in the house.”

“Oh, you can't imagine, Margaret,” Clara said enthusiastically. “She never makes a mistake. She knows her place to the last millimeter, and your place, too. She used to be a parlormaid, but she's
in the ladies' room now. She's a little queen there, of course. And then tips. And she's independent. You should see the ladies trying to charm her, but she never bats an eye. Isn't it killing the way we all go down on our knees to curry favor with someone who's really indifferent to us?”

“I know,” Arabelle said. “Do you remember that ghastly Miss Vesper at school? Why, we positively crawled.”

Liza let her mind wander, as she often did when they spoke of their snobbish school days. She was suffocating with a joyful idea, and fearful that Clara might spot her excitement and divine its cause.

That evening, Liza wrote to Betty Trim, the maid in the ladies' room of White's Hotel in London, offering her five times her present salary, describing the lightness of the work she would be expected to do, enjoining secrecy, and enclosing a check for the fare over. Betty replied, demanding ten times her present salary and an additional sum every month to equal the tips she had received during the corresponding month in her best year, which was 1947, and asking for a signed contract guaranteeing her job for three years. She returned the check, saying she would require a ticket on the
Queen Mary,
complete and paid for, when the date of her departure was set, and she requested a bank draft to cover the amount of her return fare. She also asked for traveling expenses. Liza sent a ticket for the earliest date she could get, which was December 19. For good measure, she made it a first-class ticket, and added a generous check for expenses and a surprise Christmas bonus. She also sent a signed contract, binding on herself and on Betty, with a copy for Betty to sign and return. Betty replied, not enclosing her own signed copy, because, she explained, it was too much to expect a person to sign away her life in a strange land. She did, however, return the ticket, saying that she could not leave
her job until after her Christmas and New Year's tips were in, and suggesting January 2 as the earliest date on which she could be expected to start her journey. She added that a second-class ticket would be more suitable, considering her station in life. Liza sent her the ticket she asked for, and enclosed an additional bank draft for emergencies. She begged Betty to reply by cable. Betty replied by ordinary mail, confirming the arrangement and explaining that to her mind a cable that was not for an emergency was a wasteful extravagance.

Liza, groveling, was nevertheless triumphant.

“She needn't lift a finger unless she wants to, except to serve tea,” Liza said to Tom. “And there'll be a cleaning woman in every day. What's more, you'll meet her at the pier in a taxi, and drive her out here. If the boat docks on schedule, you should have her out here by one, at the very latest.”