Collected Novels and Plays (41 page)

“Now don’t
you
start,” she said, squeezing his hand. He gathered that Vinnie supposed him about to cry, which he saw no need for. His mistake amounted to having assumed that a single exposure to the scene would do the trick. “Don’t worry about tomorrow,” she finished bravely. “I’ll face them all, I won’t let you down.”

As the organ swelled, she rose, facing them all. Francis held the hymnal under her eyes, but the words—“Rock of Ages”—were written in her heart. A hard nut to crack; he wouldn’t give up, though, he simply wouldn’t. After all, Fern had come round. Women, as Benjamin said, could never resist attention—or was it Benjamin himself they couldn’t resist? Another summer, if not this one, would find Vinnie installed nearby,
in a rented cottage, what the society columns called “a familiar sight at the Beach Club.” That winter they might give the West Indies another try. Francis would see to it she didn’t get sick before reaching Jamaica. A sidelong glance at her, earnestly singing, filled him with happiness. No, despite her efforts, Vinnie was coming alive. She couldn’t hold out much longer.

Halfway through the service she whispered, “Who is that stout pink-faced woman next to Ben?”

“Don’t you know? That’s Harriet. The first Mrs. Tanning.”

“Oh.”

Later, while the church emptied, the christening party moved into the front pews. The organ’s mind wandered. “No,” said Vinnie, “let’s just stay put. Or you move up if you want.” But Mrs. Gresham turned round and beckoned with such authority, they ended by joining her. The two old friends kissed. “Vinnie, Vinnie, Vinnie!” she exulted. “Did I ever dream I’d see you here! It’s been a long time,
darling, much
too
long! You out for the summer? No? Now why not? Where else is there to go? All the
resorts
are ruined. Look at Southampton. I say we’re in Heaven’s back yard, by comparison. You remember Nell Sturdevant. It’s Vinnie Tanning, Nell!”

“Vinnie, angel! Hi there, Francis! You’re getting fat!”

“So are you, Nell—isn’t it fun!”

“Hi, Nelly!” said a familiar voice directly over Francis’s head. He twisted and saw a jeweled tennis racket dangling at eye level. Automatically he started to rise, then realized that Irene was gazing coolly past him and had no intention of speaking. Charlie lingered in the aisle, a certain distance behind her. Now there was somebody who’d
really
gotten fat.

“How are you, Irene?” said Mrs. Sturdevant without smiling, ostentatiously loyal to Benjamin.

But Boopsie, who was loyal to everybody, had her reputation to protect. “You cute thing!” she cried. Francis and his mother leaned forward to let her hold Irene’s hand. “When’d you get back? You look divine! Come see me!”

His head bowed, Francis considered Irene’s foot. A blue vein throbbed against the cutting braid of straw that fastened her sandal. It was a distinctly human foot, he thought, a mortal foot, neglected, down-to-earth, one painted toenail peeling. It told a simple story of scars and calluses, one he would never have been able to read in Irene’s face. Francis felt wiser and warmer for his glimpse of it.

Tied to the church door, her beagles whined in anticipation.

“You’re not leaving!” Boopsie was saying. “Stay for the christening! It’s Enid’s child!”

“I know,” said Irene in a voice that carried. “That’s why we’re running along. Charlie Cheek and I’ve stood about all we can from the Tanning family.” Francis looked up in time to see her small eyes, narrowed, range from pew to pew. She dared anybody to say she didn’t belong there. Benjamin, catching sight of her, nodded gravely, mischievously. It had been wise of Prudence to stay at home. “This is so
pathetic, so familiar,” sighed Vinnie. But by then Irene had pivoted and, with a toss of her head that impressed no one, was marching Charlie Cheek up the aisle, as if marrying the poor man all over again.

The ceremony got under way. Grouped round the font, Enid, Larry, the godparents (Lily among them), and the baby itself were reminded that the soul cannot die. “Dost thou, therefore, in the name of this Child,” asked the rector, a fine amateur athlete, “renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world …?”

Smiling, they did so. The baby shook its fists in delight or protest.

Outside the church, professional photographers snapped pictures. Vinnie didn’t want to be in any of the groups, but Francis overrode her objections. After all, little Tanning Burr was the center of every shot. Now in Enid’s arms, now in Lily’s, now in the arms of the new nurse, Alice’s successor, the baby smiled beautifully, trustingly. A far cry, Francis thought, from Xenia’s little monkey, who any day now would have to start living
by his wits, while his mother lived by hers. A picture taken just then caught Francis with a comic, dazed expression on his face. He had been thinking that, when all was said and done, a real advantage went with being born where there was security and love. Although he had been told so all his life, it had never before struck him without irony.

People came up to Vinnie, whom Francis held firmly by the arm. He felt her stiffen under Wally Link’s kiss. Once, unaccountably, they met head-on Enid and
her
mother. Introductions were sketched in. Both Mrs. Tannings laughed airily without saying very much. The moment passed.
To Francis’s surprise Vinnie kept on smiling. “At least somebody else is in the same boat,” she whispered.

“Not one bit,” he replied sternly, tightening his hold on her. “Why, Harriet’s here, off and on,
all
summer.”

The worst was Natalie. As they strolled through the churchyard Francis caught sight of her standing nearby, alone. She was looking about, a dazzling smile on her face, but seeing little more than blurred forms, colors, light and shade. He remembered an afternoon in her bed-sitting-room in town, its blind drawn upon a sooty court. “What would I do with a view, my pet?” she had laughed. Having missed her yesterday, he impulsively detached himself from
Vinnie, went over to kiss her, tell her he was back and, without thinking, escort her across the short stretch of grass that separated them from his mother. “Look who’s here!” he gaily announced.

Vinnie checked a backward movement. “Well, Natalie,” she managed to say in a gentle voice.

“Is that Vinnie?” the other asked, squinting in vain. “Oh good heavens,” she added under her breath.

Both turned on Francis in exasperation. Only then he recalled that, for his mother, Natalie was the Other Woman, the first of several, equaled in malignity only by Fern. He grinned idiotically, imagining all the things Vinnie would say, once alone with him. That moment was postponed by Benjamin’s coming up to them, leading Mr. and Mrs. Durdee, whom he presented ceremoniously. Francis gave no sign of recognition. Even after Mr. Durdee’s “Well, how
are
you?
” with its note of hearty reproach, he replied merely that he was very well, thank you, and risked a bewildered shrug not lost on his father; the old man seemed already at a loss to know why in God’s name he had invited Warren Durdee in the first place. They had gone thirty years without meeting, a fact that ought to have warned Benjamin. Responding to his silent appeal, Vinnie set about being nice. She’d heard Ben speak of Warren Durdee for
years, she felt she’d known him all her life. Father and son
watched her tenderly. Natalie meanwhile had drawn out Mrs. Durdee on the subject of names. “I hate mine,” she was saying, “always have. Bertha—Birdie Durdee. Could you
invent
a duller name?” “I think it’s a perfectly lovely name,” said Benjamin, and leaned over to plant a kiss on her veiled cheek. “I wouldn’t put it
past Warren,” he added, “to have spent the last thirty years keeping us apart.” “Listen to him!” cried Bertha and Natalie together. “Hey now,” Mr. Durdee said feebly, no-doubt reliving the months he had shared his quarters with Benjamin and Howie Burr.

At a light kick from his mother, Francis took her arm. “Oh, should we be going?” she asked. “I’ll see you all at lunch, then.”

As the car started so did she. How could Francis have exposed her, deliberately, to that hideous meeting? What had he thought he was doing? What did he think she was made of. Francis shot quick looks at her face, stricken, white, from which the mild voice proceeded, that even now could not sound other than controlled and reasonable. “Why, that woman lived in my house, ate at my table! I know what I’m talking about, Son. I found letters from Natalie in your
father’s handkerchief drawer!” Francis sighed, hating to acknowledge the reality of her suffering.

“Well, you handled it beautifully,” he risked.

“What else could I do?” Vinnie lapsed into a dry silence. Presently she had him stop the car while she powdered her nose and arranged her hair, which was decidedly gray now. He felt a vast relief. The camel’s back hadn’t been broken. In time even the obstacle of Natalie might be surmounted. For that matter, Francis had already witnessed an instant he was long to treasure. It had come when the two women, recovering from their initial
stupefaction, turned towards one another and partook of a certain wry amusement that could only have been at his expense. They checked it promptly. But he had had time to read, in both Natalie’s face and his mother’s, how young you had to be, how hopelessly inexperienced, to have contrived a situation in such wild bad taste. Francis’s eyes shone. He guessed that he had hit upon a most valuable tactic. Not until
seeing Benjamin draw near with
the Durdees did he relax the stupid grin that had provoked that spark of sisterhood.

The main stumbling block, of course,
was
Benjamin; he saw this now. To the degree that Vinnie had loved him and been hurt by him, she would continue to resist any prolonged immersion in his element. Well, Benjamin wouldn’t last forever. Francis had his first glimmering of a scene: the Cottage with himself as master; the summers to be spent there with Vinnie, with a whole little crowd—Prudence, Natalie, Jane, Xenia, Adrienne. For it would all be
his one day.

Towards the end of lunch Mr. Tanning stood up, but not to make a speech. “Too much excitement for Grandpa,” he mumbled and, draining his glass of champagne, made his way into the house. A few guests looked up, half-rose, their faces puckering in inverse proportion to the concern they felt. Beyond, the blue sea sulked and smoked. The air had lost part of its early morning clarity. You were not invited to scan the distances. When the cakes were brought
everybody agreed it was a crime to cut them. They had been decorated with beautiful white sugar roses, the name
Tanning Burr Buchanan
, and, best of all, a border of babies—oval candies not an inch long, to each of which had been applied, in sugar, a tiny pink face, three dots for buttons, the frill of a bonnet.

You would have thought they were real, to hear the women talk. “These are the cutest things I’ve ever seen!” declared Mrs. Gresham. “Whose idea! Enid, it was
yours!
”

From the neighboring table Enid shook her head, mouth full of cake.

“Then Francis! With his cute sense of humor!”

“Not I,” he assured her.

“I’ll bet it was Prudence,” said Mrs. Sturdevant. “Wasn’t it, pet?” She looked slyly round to her hostess’s chair, but found it empty.

Boopsie was vexed. “Louis Leroy,” she called, “where did these babies come from?”

“Somebody
please
tell Boopsie the facts of life!” a distant male voice put in.

“At least she asked the right man!” cried Natalie.

The accordionist struck up “Some Enchanted Evening.” Everyone was uncontrollably laughing.

“Shut up!” shouted Boopsie, laughing herself. “I want to know!”

Louis Leroy smiled and shifted. “Loretta, she brought them from the village, Miss Gresham.”

“Well, you tell her for me, Louis,” she said, speaking very distinctly lest he forget or garble her message, “that I think they’re perfectly adorable. Can you remember that?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, all agleam.

Mrs. Durdee turned back to Francis. “I don’t know when I’ve had so much fun,” she sighed. They had been talking about spiritualism. Francis, describing his own experiences, found that Meno served brilliantly as a conversation piece. His companion had laughed till she cried. She wondered if she mightn’t make a good medium. Once in Marseille she’d been another person for an entire evening—“Don’t ask me who.
All I know is, I wasn’t myself.” Her slice of cake had two babies on it. “Here,” she said, scraping one onto his plate, “you don’t have any.”

She
was
psychic. “I hope you stay longer than the weekend,” said Francis.

“We’d love to, but Warren has to get back to his office.”

Better yet, he thought. “Then why don’t
you
stay?”

“For one thing, I haven’t been asked.”

“Don’t imagine you won’t be!” he chuckled, resolving to suggest it to Benjamin.

Mrs. Durdee smiled at him. “We’ve met before, Francis, only you’ve forgotten.”

“Have we really? Where?”

“Last year in Rome. Through that sculptress, Xenia Grosz.”

“Xenia? How funny! Yes, she’s a dear friend. She was out here last summer, did you know? But we were never in Rome at the same time. You have me confused with one of her other young men. I sometimes wonder
how
she
keeps them all straight,” he finished with a malicious smile. What he meant to deny was not the fact of his earlier meeting with Mrs. Durdee, which Francis remembered vividly, so much as his impression of her,
ill and querulous in that “authentic” restaurant. It embarrassed him to have taken the easy view of her, the Italian view. Falling through vine leaves, the light of Rome had splotched her face with greens and yellows, like camouflage. He hadn’t once questioned the evidence of splashing water whose lovely voice made hers sound brittle and unmusical. He saw how the skins of eggplants, of apricots and cherries, to say nothing of the other diners’, brown,
olive, red-mouthed, lustrous—he saw how he had let all that, itself illusory, make the American woman unreal. And here she was today, perfectly nice, delightful really. Seeing her where she belonged, against a whitening sky and flat sea, Francis found in her exactly the kind of cool artificial prettiness he most liked. She was rather in the style of Fern. He imagined her having a very tonic effect on Benjamin. For Prudence, wonderful as she was, could be the least bit tiresome
and self-righteous. As now, for instance, leaving her guests to their own devices.