The Towers of Love (18 page)

“Don't say anything,” she whispered, looking down at him.

Through a kind of panic that tells all, yes all, about itself before it is spent, he saw himself etched out, anatomised, drawn with the precision of a text-book illustration—nerves, muscles, glands, bone, the pink shell of his skull reflecting the harsh laboratory light, his poor twigs of fingers stretched out stiffly, his eyes bright and unblinking and transparent, pulsing with blood that pumped upward from his heart, his small candy-box heart that was beating in the quiet room. He closed his eyes, tried to shut it out—and then he seemed to be running, running out of the bedclothes, out of the room, down the long stairs, naked into a moist night that was empty of stars, across the terrace, across the soft mat of grass to the river, and then into the river, down, under the waterfall, with waves slurring over him, folding over him, down among the great slippery rocks he had visited as a child with his snorkel, rocks he had pretended were an underwater city of tombs—tombs of turtles, tombs of fishes, empty now, deserted habitations of the dead. And as he went still farther down, farther than he had ever gone before, where the rocks became shifting pebbles stirring in the sandy bottom, he saw that the river was his life, that each pebble, each scale of fish that swam in it, was some moment of it, and he knew suddenly that he must seize something—a stone, a scale,
this
stone,
this
scale—but objects slipped away from his fingers, fluttered out of reach, slid away in the darkness and he fell again through the tower of water, knowing that he must go deeper, still deeper, to find what he needed to find, and when at last he touched something, he clung to it as a kind of anchor, however feeble, thinking yes, this is it, yes, I am safe at last, but he saw that what he was holding was his own hand; his two hands were clasped together in a violent grip, in an attitude of prayer or begging, and from the river around him came his own voice saying, Fool! Fool! There is nothing here for you but yourself. “It's no use,” he whispered to her.

But then, all at once, its white shape flashing towards him through the dark water, was another hand, her hand, Edrita's hand. There seemed to be no chance at all that the hand would reach him, but as it drew nearer, he began to see that it might reach him, and then, with sudden ease, it did reach him.

“You see?” she was whispering. “There's nothing wrong with you—nothing at all.”

“Edrita—”

“Hush.”

“Oh, thank God. Thank God.”

Later, as they lay in the shadowy room, she said, “You don't know how I've waited for this. I've waited for it so long. I've waited for it most of my life, it seems.”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

“That horrible woman!”

“What horrible woman?”

“
All
horrible women—me too.”

“You're not horrible.”

“All women are horrible who try to make men do things that women want. I have my horrible side. I wanted to seduce you. I made up my mind, two days ago when we were walking in the woods. I decided then that I was going to. I plotted and I planned.” She ran her finger across his eyelids, closing them, and laughed softly. “See? I'm just another scheming woman.”

“But I'm glad.”

“So am I.”

And still later, she said, “All those years with someone you didn't love. How could you do it?”

“I could ask you the same question,” he said.

“I had my house, a few friends, the baby …”

“I had my job.”

“Yes. Your job, to you, was like me and the house. And the baby.”

“That's right.”

“And there wasn't—anyone at all? No other girl?”

“Not really.”

“What do you mean—not really?”

“Well, there was one girl.”

“Ah,” she said. “Tell me about her.”

“Oh, there was nothing between us—nothing like that. We were just friends. She worked at the office. She was just a nice girl, and sometimes we'd have lunch together—and talk. That's all there was to it. Ellen Brier.”

“Ah,” she said again, “I dislike her already. I hate her already. I'm jealous of her already.”

“You don't need to be. She was just a nice girl.”

“I don't like her name. Ellen Brier. I'll bet she has thorns. I'll bet she scratches—like this,” and, laughing, she dug her nails into his shoulder to show him what she meant.

“Let's not talk about her,” he said.

“Yes, let's not.”

He didn't know why he had mentioned Ellen Brier. She did not seem to belong in his life any more. She certainly did not belong in this afternoon. He closed his eyes, moved his cheek to a cool stretch of pillow.

“Sleepy?” she asked him.

“I feel as though I've just crawled out of some funny, dark little hole,” he said.

Her voice was drowsy. “If there is any darkness,” she said. “If there ever
was
any darkness where I was, it's all gone now.”

He knew without looking at her that her eyes were also closed. “When you press your face very close to the grass,” she was saying, “at first all you can see are the shadows and the darkness. But if you keep your face there, very close, for a little while, you begin to see all sorts of wonderful little shafts of light through the grass, and you might almost be in the middle of some marvellous tropical jungle, all full of green plants and growth, because you keep seeing more and more of these wonderful little shafts of green light through the blades of grass, shining through and lighting up everything. That's the kind of green light I'm in now. I'm there, with my face very close to the grass, and all these little heavenly green shafts of light are shining through, all over me.”

Nine

They had been good years, those Army years, their little rented house in Sacramento. It had been a house almost exactly like every other house on the street (identical in floor plan, but painted a different colour), and above all the houses tall television antennas marched in monotonous formation towards the horizon. In summer, matching lawn-sprinklers twirled in matching rhythm over the squares of grass and sets of paired yews that each front yard contained.

But the house had had a certain distinction to them—for a while, at least. It had been their house, with its own special personality—the gas heater in the hall that hummed in the night, the front porch that slanted imperceptibly towards the house so that, in the rainy winter months, little eddies of water poured under the front door and had to be staunched with rags, the window-frames that rattled when trucks went by on the street. But it had seemed like fun, their first house with its rented furniture, rented dishes, and rented pots and pans. And because it was clearly temporary, it was, as Anne often said, “like camping out.” And they had made assets of the house's shortcomings, and because the house was temporary, they never troubled to fix anything. If there was anything, as far as Hugh was aware, that bothered Anne at all during this whole time, it was that he was not an officer.

Still, as he had reminded her, he was lucky to have been accepted by the Army at all.

After college, and after he had become engaged to Anne, he had wanted to go to journalism school. There had been a family discussion about that.

“Darling,” his mother had said, “I just don't think journalism is the right field for you.”

“But it's what I want to do,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “I know, and I'm sure it's a terribly exciting and rewarding field. But—”

“But what?”

“But it's a terribly fast-
paced
field, Hugh. Well, it's running around, here and there, meeting deadlines, all that sort of thing. It's an exhausting field that requires endless energy and stamina, and—Hugh, I hate to keep harping on your health, but I just don't think you're cut out for it. Physically.”

He had become very angry with her then. “Oh, for Christ's sake!” he had said. “Physically! Physically! I'm so god-damned sick and tired of hearing what I can and can't do physically. What am I cut out for, physically? Aren't I cut out for anything? I'm
not
in a wheel-chair. I'm not on crutches or in braces. What do you want me to do with my life? Swim in the summer, sit under sun-lamps in winter, and do my damn' little setting-up exercises twice a day? You're working it out so I can't do anything else. Everybody—all my friends—Joe, and all the rest, they're all going off to the Army or the Navy or the Air Force, and I can't do any of that—physically. So here I'm going to sit, is that it? For God's sake, Sandy, I've got to do
something
!”

She had looked at him. They had been sitting on the terrace and now she stood up. “Please don't be angry with me,” she had said. And she had gone into the house.

A little later she had come out again and walked across the terrace to him. “Hugh,” she said, “you feel badly, don't you—and ashamed—that all your friends are going into the service now, for this Korean thing, and you can't. That distresses you, doesn't it?”

“Of course it does.”

“Well,” she had said softly, “something might be arranged.”

“What do you mean? What might be arranged?”

“I've been thinking,” she said. “If you were to go into the service, it wouldn't be a combat position. It couldn't be that. They probably wouldn't be able to send you out of the country; you wouldn't see any action. You'd have to accept that part.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I'm talking about what would happen if you went into the service. You wouldn't join the Army and see the world. But on the other hand, there would be things you could do—things that would interest you, and things, in a way, that would teach you. I'm thinking of Public Information work, for example. That's the sort of thing that would interest you. It would be like newspaper work, in a way—though less hectic, I should think. And I should think that if you had a chance to do something like that, it might help you decide whether this is the sort of work you'd really like to do. The time in the service would be put to good use. It would give you experience—and time to decide.”

“Well, I can't get in, so there's no point talking about it,” he said.

“I told you that something might be arranged,” she said. “You could marry Anne now, and not wait. She could go with you, wherever it happened to be. I don't want to tie you down here, you see. You're wrong about that. I want you to be a man and to be able to do—just as much as possible—what the other men your age are doing.”

“What sort of thing could you arrange?” he asked her.

“Hugh,” she said, smiling, “would you be terribly shocked if I told you that it
is
arranged? If you want it, that is, it's yours.”

“How in hell did you do that?” he asked her.

She laughed a little breathless laugh. “I did it just now,” she said. “On the telephone.”

“But how?”

“Darling,” she said, “I've always believed in going right to the top. It was one of Papa's mottoes, you know—go right to the top. To hell with the lackeys! And Papa was right. It's so much quicker and simpler when you go right to the top. It eliminates all that dreary red tape.”

“Who did you go to?”

“To the top, darling. To the Pentagon. To General Isham—I met him when he was just a colonel, under Roosevelt. I've just talked to him. He sends you his best regards.”

He shook his head back and forth in bewilderment. She reached out and touched his hand—a swift, nervous, and excited gesture. “Hugh, will you please tell me one thing, right now?” she said. “Will you please tell me, right this minute, that I, Sandy Carey, your grey-haired mother, am a rather remarkable woman? Will you please say that? Because, don't you think—don't you think really I
must
be? Because do you realise what I've just done? I've just picked up the telephone and called the Pentagon! I'll tell you a secret. I had no idea whether the general would remember me. But I thought: Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Another of your grandfather's brilliant mottoes! And, as it happened, he
did
remember me! And the switchboard put me through to him
instantly
! I know what he thought at first, of course. He thought: Here's another woman with a draft-dodging son. I was so proud to be able to tell him that it wasn't that—that I had a son who
wanted
to serve his country, despite his limitations! He was so pleased to hear that, and I was proud to be able to tell him that it was true—proud of you. Now, Hugh, won't you say that you're a
little
impressed with me? Won't you say that, in some ways, I'm a really
astonishing
woman?” She put her hand in the crook of his arm and they walked back across the terrace together.

Whimsically, Anne had christened the little house in Sacramento “Rosemede Acres.” And once, several years after they had moved out of it, they had taken a trip to California together and Hugh, on an impulse, had suggested that they drive from San Francisco to Sacramento just to see Rosemede Acres again. They had made the trip, though Anne had not really wanted to go, and when they reached the sub-division where they had lived they found that it had grown enormously since they had left, that it extended itself now over many miles of arid valley, and now contained an elaborate shopping centre, a drive-in movie theatre, restaurants, a roller-skating rink, and a Bowl-a-Torium. The sub-division had been named Fruitridge Manor, though of course it was not on a ridge nor did it contain anything approximating a manor or a fruit tree. And, though they had driven for a long time among the maze of streets that stretched with puzzling sameness everywhere, they could not find Rosemede Acres, and even the residents of the area, mowing their lawns with their power mowers, whom they stopped to ask for directions, seemed not to have even heard of their old street. It had been a very hot afternoon and Anne, looking cross and wilted beside him in the front seat of the car, had said, “For God's sake, Hugh, will you give up this silly wild-goose chase? We're not going to find it, and I want to get back to the Fairmont and take a bath.”