William Styron: The Collected Novels: Lie Down in Darkness, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice (47 page)

Loftis was aware of the noise but for a solitary instant he felt—looking at Peyton and Helen and Harry—islanded in silence. And during this moment he again tried vainly to recall what he had said or done to bring on such a tense and obvious, such a mutual sense of uneasiness.
Ah, those smiles, those smiles.
Was it the kiss he gave Peyton?

Then all at once he had a flicker of insight and during this moment—so brief that it lasted, literally, one blink of Peyton’s eyes—he knew what the smiles were about and he had a crushing, chilling premonition of disaster. Harry smiled politely, but he faded before his sight, for Loftis was watching Peyton. She held her glass in the air, touched it to her lips. But along with her smile there was something else he was conscious of, too: she had already drunk too much. Her face rubbed pink as if by a scrubbing brush, she glowed with a fever, and in the way her eyes sparkled, her lips moist and parted, he knew somehow, with a plummeting heart, that she was beyond recovery. It was a moment of understanding that came sharp and terrible. He felt that he had waited all of his life for this moment, this flash of insight to come about. He had just said crazy, unthinking, harmless words, but he had said words like “fickle” and “love” and “death,” and they, in their various ways, had sent a secret corrosion through these two women’s hearts. God help him, hadn’t he known all along that they hated and despised each other? Had he had to spend twenty years deceiving himself, piling false hope upon false hope—only to discover on this day, of all days, the shattering, unadorned, bitter truth? Those smiles … of course … how Peyton and Helen had always smiled at each other like that! There had been words, too, attitudes, small female gestures which it had been beyond him to divine, or even faintly to understand.

And he had gone on for years deceiving himself—too proud, too self-conscious, maybe just too stupid to realize that it had always been he himself who had been at the focus of these appalling, baffling female emotions. Not anything he had done or had failed to do had made them hate each other. Not even Dolly. None of his actions, whether right or wrong, had caused this tragedy, so much as the pure fact of himself, his very existence, interposed weaponless and defenseless in a no-man’s-land between two desperate, warring female machines. Now he had kissed Peyton, said the wrong words, and he had somehow hurt her. And the smile she wore concealed her hurt—to everyone else, at least—just as Helen’s smile, echoing Peyton’s, concealed only the wild, envenomed jealousy which stirred at her breast. What had she done? Why had Helen deceived him like this? Those smiles. He was chilled with a sudden horror. Those smiles. They had fluttered across the web of his life like deceptive, lovely butterflies, always leading him on, always making him believe that, in spite of everything, these two women really did love each other. That, deep down, there was motherly, daughterly affection. But no. Now he saw the smiles in a split moment for what they were: women smiles—Great God, so treacherous, so false, displayed here—himself between them—like the hateful wings of bats.

Oh, Peyton, I love you so. …

He reached out his arm, the smiles dissolved. There was a sudden squeal from the kitchen. In came La Ruth, scattering guests in every direction with her pushcart, upon which rested an enormous cake. Her face was a single grin; tramping forward, she made blissful little quacking noises, bowing left and right to the guests, who were convulsed. But something was wrong. In some way a chain of hot dogs had become tangled up behind her, in the strings of her apron. Oblivious, ecstatic, she trailed them after her on the floor—ten of them, at least—and she came on toward Peyton, whooping and shouting, shoving her cart, propelled forward by waves of high, hysterical laughter. Then, right in front of Peyton, she stopped and looked around her. “Here de cake,” she said, her smile fading; “What I done wrong now?”

“Oh, La Ruth,” he heard Peyton say, amused.

The room was suddenly quiet. Even the music had stopped, and the guests turned, peering over their glasses to see what would happen. La Ruth examined her skirts, scowling, looked behind her, but found nothing. There were titters from the crowd. Then this is what Loftis saw next: he saw Ella Swan push through the milling people, hobbling down upon La Ruth irate and frantic, her apron flapping. She flew swiftly through the crowd like an outraged black bantam hen, punch ladle in hand, a shriveled black Cassandra, muttering threats and doom. It was a scene that should have been avoided, but no one thought to halt it and Loftis, his head still giddy from drink and the slow encroaching premonition of disaster, stood stiff in his tracks, and saw Ella snatch the hot dogs from La Ruth’s apron and hold them dangling before her. “Looka here,” she yelled in a quavering, aged voice, “look what you done. Tol’ you to wait. Git on outa here!”

“Mama, I——
“

“Hush yo’ mouf! Messin’ up Peyton’s weddin’! I’ll knock you to yo’ knees directly!”

“Mama, I diden’——”

“You hush up!” she yelled, brandishing ladle and hot dogs. “Draggin’ dem weenies in here like dat. I oughta knock you in de head one!”

“Ella!” he heard Helen say, moving toward her, but it was too late: with her head buried in the folds of her apron, La Ruth had begun to cry. A great, agonized tremor of grief ran through her body; hair askew, hands over her face, she threw back her head and howled. “
Ooo-oo,
Jesus! I’nt mean to do it! Dey all got scritched up offa de table someways.” And broke down again, incoherent, and hid her face in her apron, in a new convulsion of misery. Sweating, Loftis wondered how long all this could go on; it was low comedy enacted, it seemed—because of the horror which had seized him—upon the stage of high tragedy, and the foolish guests, egging La Ruth on with snickers, were unaware of the calamitous events about to proceed from the wings.

Then Peyton darted forward. He saw it in a flash. Saw her set the glass down on the table, unsteadily—she was tight, her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright with glaze—and move toward Ella, calming her with a touch of her hand and a brief murmur. Then, lone in her command of the situation, she went up to La Ruth and put her arms about her shoulders with a little hug, saying, “That’s all right, La Ruth. Thank you for the lovely cake. Everything’s O.K., La Ruth.” It was that quick. It took no more than five seconds, but immediately the colossal awkwardness of the scene had vanished. The music began again with a soggy lurch and the air was touched with the murmur of voices, the tinkling kiss of glasses. La Ruth dried her eyes, looked up gratefully at Peyton and trudged back to the kitchen. It had been a gesture neither lofty nor patronizing, but spontaneous and unaffected, and it afflicted him with such love that he hardly knew how to bear it.
Now don’t be an ass,
his conscience said, but she seemed to be fading from him, vanishing in a powder of crushed-up dreams, and he found himself beside her, kissing her in front of everyone, much more than a father.

“Don’t smother me,” she whispered, and pushed him away angrily. “Don’t
smother
me, Daddy! You’re crazy! What will people think! Daddy, don’t!” Beads of champagne rose up between them, a green smell of grapes, and she had indeed pushed him away furiously, where he stood witless with horror and desire, his heart pounding, a smear of red grease sticky across his lips. What had he done? “Don’t smother me,” she said again in a thick voice—for she had become suddenly and astonishingly befuddled. “Damn you, Daddy! You’re spoiling everything!” And turned and weaved toward the cake with unsteady steps, the skirt about her hips shining slickly in the light. He stood shattered and bewildered in the center of the floor, thankful for the confusion which had hidden from other eyes his moment of madness. No one had noticed or heard, thank God. He turned … but yes, Harry had noticed. He caught Loftis’ eye, looked away quickly, his dark face red with embarrassment. Harry had heard and … oh, Jesus … Helen, who stood in a bright oval of sunlight, staring not at him but at Peyton’s retreating back, cruelly and with icy loathing.

Peyton and Harry had begun to carve the cake.

“Smile!”

There was a white blossom of light, cheers from the guests. The champagne hit him like a fist. Already he was hopelessly drunk. …

Six o’clock. Five minutes have passed since the first wedge was cut from the cake. There is a lull in the celebration, for it is the duty of each guest to have some of the cake, although cake goes poorly with whisky or champagne, and it is the last thing the guests want to eat. Few of them would care, really, about eating, but the guests have been to too many weddings. The cake has become symbolic of something and they have to face it: it must be eaten. Besides, it would be a pity to let that huge thing go to waste. Peyton and Harry have eaten the first slice; Ella, aided by one of the colored boys, is carving away the rest. The guests crowd around, their champagne put aside for the moment, and hold out plates. With its golden insides exposed and with white frosting crumbling softly around its edges, the cake looks like a great snow-covered mountain which has had one slope blown away by dynamite; at its peak, as if upon the top of Everest, stands a tiny bridal couple, embowered by pink sugar roses, whose faces have the serenely fatuous looks of store-window mannequins. Part of the groom has been chipped away. You can see through his morning coat to his guts, which are made, quite obviously, of nothing but candy. The bride’s bouquet has become hacked off, too. It rests far below in the gaping crevasse. And now, while Ella chops perilously about the top of the cake, the couple becomes undermined by her knife; there is a rush of avalanching crumbs, bride and bridegroom tilt, totter, lean forward as if looking for the lost bouquet, and almost fall, but are halted by Monk Yourtee who, amid rowdy, pointed laughter, snatches them from the brink and gnaws off the bridegroom’s head.

Outside, the sun sinks slowly behind a frieze of sycamores. A gentle breeze rises from the bay, filled with the faint, cool snap and odor of autumn. Leaves flutter across the lawn, troop up the slope and over the terrace and, one by one like vandals, begin to invade the room. The waiters close the doors and pull the windows down. Above the sound of music and the laughter the churchbell begins to strike six chimes, and one or two people look at their watches and decide that it’s almost time to leave. Yet no one leaves. Not yet. The cake must be eaten and then there’s space for more champagne. With cake-filled plates and reloaded glasses they scatter to the corners of the room. For a moment the conversation almost ceases. The mouths of the guests are full of cake. A brief contemplative sag has come; there’s more thought than talk, and all good Episcopalian minds turn to thoughts of things done, things left undone, words said in an alcoholic fog, not more than five minutes ago, which would have better been left unspoken. Thus chewing, briefly ruminating, they pause to sanctify Peyton’s marriage—the champagne its mystical blood, the cake its confectionery flesh.

Regard them now—Peyton and Harry, Loftis and Helen. Peyton is listening—appears to be listening—to Mrs. Overman Stubbs, who talks of her own bridal clothes, of Overman, of their honeymoon in New Orleans. Years ago …

She turns to Harry. “And your parents?” she asks, a woman with sweetness and solicitude engraved on every part of her plump and rouged, middle-aged face. Sweetness unadulterated, direct and without reticence, almost obsessed in its need to be spread everywhere, it leaves an odor behind her wherever she goes, like the smell that clings to one upon leaving a bakery. She is a good woman and on this day she feels an extraordinary tenderness. She has lived most of her life in Port Warwick, and Harry is the third Jew she has ever met. He’s not strange at all, she thinks, he’s handsome, with a sad sweet look in his eyes, and impulsively she wonders about his home, his family, the mysterious New York Jews, asks again, “Your parents? They couldn’t come?”

“They’re dead.”

“Oh——” Almost imperceptibly her lips quiver, she turns blindly away: there, she’s done it again. Her sweetness, her need to be nice. It so often makes her blunder. “Oh,” she says, and looks up and smiles once more at Peyton, timidly, moving aside—“Well, congratulations again!”—bogged down by a swift confusion.

Peyton drains her glass and squeezes Harry’s hand, then turns. Her face, upon which happiness has rested tangible and alive, making her eyes sparkle, suddenly and just for the briefest moment goes slack and angry, the gay façade dissolving like a film of plaster. “Let’s go soon,” she whispers. The churchbell chimes.

“What’s the matter, honey?”

“This … all this——”

“What? Take it easy on the champagne.”

“I don’t like this,” she said.

“Why, honey?”

“I—I don’t know. I—oh, Tommy!” The happy look reassembles mechanically: she smiles, throws her arms about a young naval officer, who steadies her, because she is tottering a little.

Far off to the west the last chimes waver, die, fading seaward like great globes of brass borne upon a powerful and uncanny wind. The music ceases. There is a loud, drunken shriek of female laughter, cutting through the murmurous undertow of voices, yet above both of these, laughter and voices, the bell sounds roll toward the sea, return foreshortened on vibrating blasts, fade, return, and sink finally out of the sphere of hearing.

Loftis says, “Yes, yes.” Monroe Hobbie has him clutched by the elbow, in a raw, anguished, dentist’s grip. He speaks of love, of olden times, of lost ladies and one, in particular, who left him for a dirty wop. His eyes, bifocaled, reflect sorrow, his voice the memory of a vanquished love, but Loftis doesn’t hear. Lost himself, his heart hollow as a drum, he watches Peyton through the crowd, thinking not of vanquished love, but of chimes and bells. He drinks. The bells toll on through his memory. Seaward-borne, they strike reefs of recollection, shatter and recover, come back to smother his soul like something heavy and outrageous.
Time! Time!
he thinks.
My God, has it finally come to this, do I finally know?
And lost in memory, thinking not of Peyton but of this final knowledge—this irrevocable loss of her—he recalls the incessant tolling bells. With a steady, brazen certainty they had struck off the passing hours, marched through the house night and day forever. It seems that he had heard them for the first time, though they are silent now, motionless in their yokes. The guests reel giddily before his eyes, on his arm the dentist’s clutch is raw and painful.
Those bells,
he thinks,
those bells.
Why now did they return to afflict him with such despair?
Count off twenty years.
The light in the room deepens toward gold, sending sandy threads through Peyton’s hair.