I and My True Love (37 page)

She looked down at her white hands, slender and delicate, lying against the fine wool of her grey skirt. Then she glanced at the woman beside her, dozing in a reclining seat, her cheap gaberdine suit already crumpled, her crisply laundered blouse with its unnecessary frills bulging out like the dinner shirt of a drowsing elderly gentleman at his club, her mouth half open, her glasses slipping down her small blob of nose, her round placid cheeks curved in peace. Across the aisle, a dark-haired man, glossy, flamboyantly dressed, a diamond ring on his little finger, sat frowning at the countryside. Beside him, looking at a magazine, bored with it and her companion and herself, was a pretty blonde with a deep sun tan, wearing an inappropriate dress and a piece of mink around her shoulders. In front of them, was an old man, quietly dressed, quietly smiling. And a young woman reading to a child on her knee. And over there were two young soldiers, asprawl and asleep.

She looked back at the dark-haired man and his diamond ring. A job, she thought, wasn’t only to be valued in economic terms: or else, those of us who had money would sleep with a smile on our faces like the woman at my shoulder. What has made her so content? Does she demand little, and so she is content with little? That’s what the cynic would say, if only to make himself feel superior. I would like to ask her. I’d like to ask all these people what they do for a living, and why some can smile so easily and why some look at you with worried self-absorbed eyes.

She looked at the reflection of her face in the window. I’ve learned something on this journey, she told herself, even if it’s only to be interested in strangers. Payton would be shocked.

Payton...

Quickly, she picked up one of the magazines that lay beside her. How strange we can be, she thought, for she was trembling. Am I still so afraid of him? And I was always afraid, a little afraid?...

She looked up to find that the woman beside her had opened her eyes. The woman was watching her. Not hostilely, not critically. Rather with the half-conscious stare of someone whose mind had just wandered out of sleep and wasn’t yet focusing properly.

“Still travelling through these mountains?” the woman asked, and then she flushed a little as she remembered how Sylvia had preferred not to talk. So she pulled her jacket into place and smoothed her hair, straightened her glasses and lifted the newspaper from where it had fallen at her feet. If she doesn’t want to talk I’m sure I don’t, the woman thought as she glanced along the aisle.

“We’ve left the Rockies behind us,” Sylvia said. “We’re coming to a desert of stone.” She looked slightly awed at the twists and corkscrews and columns of red rock that rose precipitously from the waves of hard-packed earth and melting snow. The giant peaks and the forests were gone; the slopes of grass, white-covered, and the ice-blue torrents had given way to a land that was fiery and hard and brittle.

“Utah,” the woman said, finding her bearings, relaxing a little but still hesitant about talking.

“It could be the moon.” Except that the moon was cold and this red land, even as it pushed its way through the snow, shimmered with heat.

The woman smiled and the fine wrinkles round her eyes deepened. Honourable wrinkles, Sylvia thought, not the lines of bitterness. “Is this your first trip to the coast?” Her voice was friendly, eager.

Sylvia said, “I’ve been to San Francisco, but we travelled by air.”

“Are you going all the way?”

“Yes.” All the way...

“I’ve been travelling from Buffalo—that’s where I live. I come west every summer. This year, I had to leave early, though. I’m going to Sacramento.”

Sylvia nodded. She looked out of the window.

The woman watched her curiously, then she glanced down at the newspapers in her lap. “Care to read them?” she asked. I’m sure I don’t want to talk if she doesn’t, she reminded herself. “I got them when I stepped out for a breath of air at Denver this morning.”

“No, thanks,” Sylvia said quickly. “Would you like the magazines?” She held them out.

“No, thanks,” the woman said, a little stiffly. She became engrossed in the child, who had escaped from his mother and was now swaying down the aisle, in drunken generosity, offering everyone within reach a taste of the lollipop held in his tight grasp. Sylvia smiled, too, watching the hiccupping walk, the swaying balance that almost ended in disaster and was suddenly controlled with a violent jerk. The child laughed in triumph and then sat down with a thud. The mother gathered him up and dusted him off and trapped him once more on her knee.

Sylvia glanced at the newspapers on the other woman’s lap. Why should she look at them? She had refused to buy any in Chicago as she waited for this train.

You’re afraid, she told herself.

You won’t even face that problem, she told herself.

She said suddenly, “I’ve changed my mind. May I see the papers?”

“Certainly.” The woman passed them over quickly to her.

“Would you?” Sylvia held out the magazines in fair exchange.

The woman nodded and smiled.

Sylvia had to pretend to study the headlines first before she could turn inside and search for the gossip section. But Washington gossip didn’t travel so far, after all. She took a deep breath of thankfulness and then, as she began to glance over the columns of news in a more leisurely fashion, she began to smile at herself. Had she really imagined that a gossip paragraph about Jan and herself was of such importance that any newspaper outside of her own circle would print it? Then in a corner of the second page, her amused eyes saw a small paragraph about Washington, and her smile died away.

The date-line was Sunday.

There has been considerable speculation in diplomatic circles this week-end over recent rumours of a leak in diplomatic information dealing with international trade. It is reported that the country involved is Czechoslovakia. The rumours have so far not been denied.

She reread the paragraph. Why should I worry about it? she wondered. And yet she was troubled and couldn’t dismiss the lines of newsprint. Payton would be angered: he always resented any reflections on the State Department and no doubt its critics were already adding this piece of information to their store of ammunition. She read the report for the third time. Then she let the paper lie on her lap, and she stared out of the window.

“It doesn’t seem natural, does it?” the woman beside her asked, following her glance. “Look at that ridge over there, all carved out. Reminds me of
Anna and the King of Siam.
Did you see it? This woman goes out to—”

“Yes, I saw the movie,” Sylvia said quickly.

“Funny, they always make me think of Siam.” She pointed to the pinnacles and turrets, carved by wind and erosion out of the soft cliff of limestone.

Sylvia nodded.

“Never knew there could be so many shades of red.”

“No,” Sylvia agreed.

“And all that snow melting... How did they ever do it?”

Sylvia looked at her in surprise.

“The people who first came out here,” she explained. “Every time I make this journey, I think of them, poor souls. Some of them came on foot. Did you know that?”

Sylvia shook her head.

“All the way from Illinois. On foot. Three thousand of them. Pushing and pulling handcarts holding their few pots and pans and the youngest. And”—she lowered her voice appropriately—“women gave birth on the way. Imagine. This is the route they travelled. No road for them, either.” She watched a car speeding along the highway that stayed close by the railway line and kept it company. She shook her head. “Pushing and pulling.”

“On foot?” Sylvia thought of the distance she had come. The woman’s got her history all wrong, she decided, as she looked at the uneven ground, with its thin hard grass and low stubborn bushes.

But the woman was saying, “Yes. They were some of the Mormons, the ones who hadn’t enough money for a horse or a wagon.” She shook her head again as she stared out of the window. “Well, I suppose if you have to do it, you do it,” she said reflectively. “But still—” She shook her head again. “Wait until you see Salt Lake City tonight, its lights stretching for miles. We’ll get there just after ten o’clock.” She looked at her wrist watch. “It’s six, now. I think I’ll have something to eat. Is it too early for you?”

“No,” said Sylvia. Let me keep my thoughts on Siam, and shades of red, and Mormons who walked, and anything except Czechoslovakia.

“Just drop the papers under the seat. Nothing but scandal in them, anyway. Corruption and Communists. I’d take some of those mink coats and gangsters and make them walk all the way to Salt Lake City, just to learn them how this country was built.” Her lips snapped shut. “Thanks for the magazines,” she said, handing them back. She began to smile. “A hundred and fifty dollars for a dress? Who’s crazy enough to pay that? A month’s wages. For
one
dress?” She rose, stretching her back, pulling down her light-green jacket. She tried to brush out the wrinkles on her skirt. “Two nights on a train and one more to go. Well, who am I to complain?” And she nodded to the rough red land that folded away to the jagged line of a wind-hewn, snow-edged horizon. “At least we can eat, without worrying about losing our scalps.” She wrinkled her brow. “Now is Utah a dry state? Or can we have a cocktail before supper?”

* * *

They came down through the mountains, under a wide canopy of night sky. For more than an hour the lights of the distant city and its clustering suburbs had been a glittering background to the dark shapes of hills and trees through which they travelled.

“It’s coming no nearer,” Sylvia said, looking at the garland of lights that marked Salt Lake City.

“It will come all right,” the woman remarked with a smile for the lights. “Cheery, isn’t it? It’s good to see houses again.”

The train seemed to feel that, too, for it rushed towards the lights as if it was fleeing from the blackness of the mountains, from the miles of snowbound loneliness through which it had come. In the coach, most of the lights had been dimmed and the chairs were angled back for those who stretched out to sleep. The child had cried with exhaustion, but he too was now asleep.

“You must rest more tonight,” the woman said gravely, watching Sylvia sitting so tensely as she looked out at the darkness. “Is this your third night on a train, too? Then you ought to try and sleep.”

Sylvia nodded. She didn’t know whether she should smile or grit her teeth. Her companion had decided she needed to be looked after.

At dinner, she had coaxed Sylvia to eat. This train journey was a holiday, wasn’t it? They might as well relax and enjoy themselves. And after she had decided what was best for them to eat, she had set out to keep Sylvia from brooding in the simplest way possible: she talked about herself.

She was a widow, her husband had been a bus driver, her eldest boy was a doctor, her daughter a schoolteacher, her youngest son had a job in Sacramento. She spent the winters in Buffalo, cold as it was, because her friends were there and a good steady job on the catering staff of a school. Summers, she went out to another steady job as a waitress in a hotel on the rim of the Grand Canyon.

Usually, that was. This year, she had left Buffalo early. For a special visit to Sacramento, where she was needed right now. The school had given her leave of absence—she had worked there twenty-two years, after all—and so she could make this trip to Sacramento, go on to Canyon in June, and still depend on her job in Buffalo in the fall.

In June then, with luck and all going well, she’d be looking right over the rim of the Canyon again. It was quite a view. Funny thing about her—or was it a funny thing about the place?—she had tried other National Parks, and she had worked one summer in Santa Fe too, but she kept going back to the Grand Canyon. There, she now had her own group of friends who also came to work through each summer, that was what she liked. Variety in scenery and in friends.

It was a good life. Difficult at times, of course. There was the cost of living. There was the income tax she had just paid. (“I didn’t know if I could plan on this trip until I had that all figured out,” she said with a laugh.) But then, there were so many people needing help in Europe, in other parts of the world too. No wonder the taxes were high, nowadays.

She couldn’t help wondering, though, when she read what foreigners sometimes said about America, if the people in those other countries knew it was mostly people like her who were sending over a bit of their work, just to help everyone along? For money was work. And there were more workers like her in America than there were people who didn’t notice the dollars slipping away. Yes, sometimes she couldn’t help wondering...

But now, she was going to forget taxes and swollen ankles and vats of stew and troughs of rice pudding and heavy trays heaped with dirty dishes. Now she was going to visit Sacramento for a few weeks; there was another baby expected, and with two children already aged three and two, someone had to take charge and her daughter-in-law’s mother had broken her thigh and so here she was.

Sylvia listened and marvelled: I know almost everything about her except her name. But perhaps people talked frankly, confined so closely as this on trains, because they felt that all their information was still their own private business as long as they didn’t give their names.

Now the woman had fallen silent. She was studying her face in a small mirror and adding a dab of powder, a stroke of lipstick, an extra pat to the tight curls and rigid lines of a permanent wave that had to last through the summer. “I’ll look better tomorrow,” she said determinedly. “A hot shower and a change of clothes and we’ll all feel like human beings again.”

Now the train was slowing up.

“We’ll be here for half an hour,” she told Sylvia. “I’m going to get some fresh air, stretch my legs. You’ll sleep tonight if you do that, too.”

“I’ll sleep anyway, I think,” Sylvia said. I’m exhausted with kindness, she thought.

But she rose when she saw the wide, open platform, and beyond it the large brightly lit station buildings. I’ll get a newspaper there, she told herself. She followed the compact little body in its tight green suit along the aisle, between the rows of quiet figures twisted into the strange curves and angles of sleep. Why should I worry about a newspaper? she asked herself.