No More Meadows (41 page)

Washington was having two days of Indian summer. It was as hot as it had ever been in July, and although there was a storm approaching, it was sucking air into a stifling vacuum before it could bring relief. Everyone felt limp, and Christine saw that she was not alone in having to smother yawns. There seemed to be nothing to breathe in the little living-room where Mrs Gaegler told about the feeling in her stomach and the electric fan whirled the stale air uselessly round and round. When the heat came down Mrs Gaegler had insisted on closing all the windows in the house, to keep the hot air from coming in, although Christine thought that you could argue a better case for opening the windows to let the hot air out. However, her mother-in-law fussed so much if the windows were opened, and slipped so many discs in her spine reaching to shut them again, that Christine was forced to let her have her way and seal the house up like a biscuit tin.

Vinson made the drinks for everyone except Christine, and then there was a jaunty hammering on the door and Matthew came in and broke up the spiritless boredom of the room with his cheerful presence and exuberant greeting of Edna and Milt. He was the only Gaegler who seemed perfectly at ease with his family. Edna and her mother were fairly polite to each other on
the surface, but behind their quick, critical eyes they seemed to be sparring in unspoken combat, like two women in love with the same man. Vinson had been quiet ever since his mother came, and he was even more constrained in the presence of his whole family, as if he could not be himself in front of them.

When Christine went to the kitchen to give the finishing touches to the dinner, Edna followed her out, her slight stoop pulling her dress up on one hip. She was wearing the same brown dress – a little uneven now at the hem – which she had worn for Christine's wedding, and a little hat shaped like a canoe on her untidy coffee-coloured hair.

‘How've you been, honey?' she asked, putting down her drink and picking up a cloth to wipe some saucepans on the draining-board. Edna was one of the few women Christine knew who would come into a kitchen and do what was wanted without asking.

‘How do you get on with Mother?' she asked, polishing a saucepan more brightly than Christine ever could.

‘Oh – very well, really.'

Edna laughed, screwing up her monkey face. ‘You'll get used to her. You have to know how to treat her. Vinson never did know. He lets it get him down when she fusses all the time about her health. Me and Matt, we just pay no attention.'

‘One day,' Christine said, ‘she'll have something really wrong with her and no one will believe it.'

‘She'll never have anything wrong with her,' Edna said, ‘unless it's penicillin poisoning.'

‘Why do you always talk about me behind my back?' Mrs Gaegler came round the kitchen door, her round eyes aggrieved. If you were asleep or trying to telephone she could shake the whole house with the noise of her high heels, but at inconvenient moments she could creep up on you like an Indian.

Christine felt guilty, but Edna said blandly: ‘I was saying how much I like that gown, Mother. It's very becoming to you.'

‘Oh, do you think so?' Her mother twirled around delightedly. She was a sucker for the glibbest compliment. ‘But that's more than I can say for your hat, Edie. You're not of an age to wear that kind of frivolous thing any more.'

That came well from her, whose hats were all about twenty
years too young for her, but Edna did not mind. She took off the canoe and threw it up on to the top of the refrigerator.

‘I hate any hat,' she said, ‘but Milt doesn't care for me to go out without one. I guess I'll take my shoes off too if Christine doesn't mind. My feet are always happier when they can feel the floor.' She kicked her shoes into a corner and ambled across the kitchen for her drink, very short and flat-footed in her stockinged feet.

‘You'll have to watch yourself, Edie,' her mother told her. ‘You've gotten a bit cranky in your forties.'

‘I always have been,' Edna said. ‘It's inherited.'

‘Harry Gaegler,' said her mother, who did not see how this could mean her, ‘never took his shoes off until he went to bed, whatever else he may have done.'

‘What are you looking for? Can I help you?' Christine asked, for Mrs Gaegler was questing distractedly about the kitchen.

‘Yes, dear. I want some fresh newspaper to put down for Honeychile.'

‘I can't see why you don't train her to use the garden,' Christine said, encouraged by Edna's presence to voice an irritation that had been with her ever since her mother-in-law started spreading newspapers on prominent bits of the floor.

Edna winked at her. ‘Honeychile isn't like other dogs. Didn't you know that?'

‘I'm glad you understand that,' her mother said, not seeing the wink, because she was bending down to the cupboard under the sink. ‘Some people' – she straightened up and glanced at Christine – ‘just don't seem to see that a dog has to be treated with psychology like everyone else. Oh me.' She pressed the palm of her little pink hand to her forehead. ‘Bending down that way has sent my blood pressure way up. Thank you, dear.' She took the newspaper from Christine and went out.

Christine and Edna began to dish up the food. Matthew put his curly head round the door. ‘Can I wash my hands?' he asked. ‘I've been helping Milt change a wheel, and I don't want to muss up your bathroom, Chris. Your house always looks so clean. If I thought Carol could be like you I'd marry her tomorrow, if she'd marry me.' Carol was his girl friend, who played small parts on television and gave him a lot of trouble.

‘I wish Milt were like you, Matt,' Edna said. ‘When he's been doing a dirty job around the car he leaves the bathroom floor covered with dirty towels and a scum on the basin an inch thick. I get tired of telling him.'

‘Milt's henpecked,' Matthew said, drying his hands on a paper towel and throwing it neatly across the room into the waste bin.

‘I guess he is,' said Edna equably.

‘Do you think they're ready for dinner?' Christine asked Matthew.

‘I imagine so. Milt and Vin are discussing economic trends over a Scotch and water and Mother's crawling about the floor with bits of newspaper, but otherwise they're ready. Anything I can do?'

‘You can carve the meat if you like.'

Matthew carved very well. He was useful in a kitchen – more useful than Vinson, who used too much finesse and took a long time to get anything done. Matthew had come out to see Christine once or twice while he had been in Washington, and she found him nice to have about, even when she was busy. He was easy and friendly and he made himself at home.

‘What goes on?' Vinson came into the kitchen, looking a little put out. ‘What's everyone doing in here? This is no sort of a party. I wish you'd learn to organize a little better, Christine. You shouldn't have to spend so long in the kitchen when you have guests.'

‘It isn't guests. It's family,' Christine said through a cloud of steam as she drained the peas.

‘When I entertain them in my house my family are my guests,' said Vinson pompously.

‘Relax, brother,' said Edna, going out with a pile of plates.

‘Where are her shoes?' Vinson asked. ‘Listen, Christine, I'm always telling you, when you're a hostess you must arrange things so that you're not in the kitchen so much. It only needs a little method.'

‘Do it the Navy way,' Matthew said, without looking up from his carving.

‘What are you doing with that roast? I told you I'd carve for you, Christine. I wouldn't let Matt –'

‘He's doing it very nicely,' Christine said soothingly. ‘You were busy drinking with Milt – being a host, you see.'

‘Bring the food in and let's eat,' Vinson said. He did not like her to tease him in front of Matthew.

Christine had taken a lot of trouble with the dinner. Vinson was proud of her, and everyone complimented her, except Mrs Gaegler, who would hardly eat anything. She sat bolt upright turning things distastefully over with a fork, as if she thought there might be grubs underneath.

When Milt, who, as usual, was loud in praise of everything, asked her: ‘Aren't you glad Vin married such a lovely girl who can cook so wonderfully?' Mrs Gaegler would only say: ‘I'm surprised that an Englishwoman can cook meat at all, when they get no practice at it over there.'

‘You're eating nothing, Mother,' said Vinson, hastily, afraid that she was going to start on England. ‘Try some of this potato salad. You know you like it.'

‘I've told you, Vinson,' she said snappishly, ‘I feel painfully sick in my stomach tonight. How can you expect me to eat?'

‘It's the heat,' Milt said easily, helping himself from a dish. ‘No one can eat in this weather.'

‘Except you,' Edna said. ‘You always break your diet when we come out. You have just no willpower.'

‘Don't pick on me, Edie,' Milt said, and Mrs Gaegler backed him up, choosing to side with him against her daughter, in the same way as she often tried to side with Christine against her son.

‘You can't object to me eating salad,' Milt said. ‘And this is just the most wonderful salad I ever tasted. Christine, you are just the cleverest girl –'

‘The salad would be all right if you didn't pick all the eggs out of it for yourself, like the glutton you are.'

‘I notice you're eating potatoes, Edie,' her mother said, ‘which is much worse.'

‘Oh no. Eggs have far more calories than potatoes.' Edna had read many magazine articles on dieting and was as calorieconscious as any American. She visualized them as tangible lumps of fattening stuff, marching straight to the waistline.

‘Ah, but,' said Mrs Gaegler, who knew all about calories too, ‘eggs consume their own calories. Potatoes don't.'

After this statement, which was too baffling to be contested, she leaned forward and delicately picked a piece of meat off the dish to give to Honeychile, who had been yapping round the table, high-stepping like a show hackney, ever since the meal started.

‘You shouldn't feed dogs at the table,' Matthew said.

‘This isn't dogs. It's Honeychile. There, I was afraid she wouldn't eat that beef,' Mrs Gaegler said as Honeychile spat the meat out on to the carpet. ‘She's so very particular about what she eats. When she was expecting her babies she wouldn't take anything but salmon, and towards the end her nerves were so upset she wouldn't touch anything at all. It's a wonder she came through it. She had two veterinaries at her accouchement – Dr Stiegler and an assistant. My goodness, I'll never forget that night. It just
drained
me. I don't think I could go through that again, though I sold those puppies for fifty dollars apiece. Honeychile is too sensitive to be a mother. When she was nursing, you know, I had to stuff paper in the doorbell, because every time it rang her milk went away.'

Vinson was looking uncomfortable. He did not like this kind of talk at the dinner table. He gave Christine his almost inaudible whistle, to indicate that she should fetch the dessert and make a diversion. They were at opposite ends of the table and she was laughing surreptitiously with Matthew about Honeychile's confinement, but she looked up at once and said: ‘Yes, Vin?' although no one else had heard the whistle.

‘Now isn't that something?' Mrs Gaegler drew everyone's attention to Christine. ‘He's trained his wife to answer when he calls her under his breath. Looks as if he's got her just where he wants her, doesn't it, folks?' She laughed affectedly, pretending that she had meant it as a joke.

‘Well, I think that's wonderful,' Milt said. ‘Simply wonderful. That's just the most beautiful thing –'

‘Harry Gaegler used to shout for me at the top of his voice,' Mrs Gaegler said, ‘and, my goodness, that man had a voice like a hog caller. But I would never answer. I wouldn't let any man think I was at his beck and call. Do it again, Vinson. I want to see it again.'

Vinson was never averse to showing off Christine's tricks as if
she were a trained dog, but she got up quickly and went out with Edna to the kitchen. As she went she heard Mrs Gaegler say: ‘You could never teach an American girl that, but English girls don't seem to have the same strength of character.'

‘You're mad, aren't you?' Edna said, putting down a pile of plates.

‘Wouldn't you be?' Christine threw the silver into the sink with an infuriated clatter.

‘Oh, sure. I'd be hopping mad. I've never seen Mother so trying.'

‘Nor me. I wonder if there is really something wrong with her.'

‘No. She always starts complaining about her stomach as soon as she sees food.'

‘I know, but that doesn't usually stop her eating it.'

‘She's all right. The day when she doesn't complain of anything – that will be the day we know she's really ill.'

Mrs Gaegler would not eat any of the dessert, which was blueberry pie. ‘I couldn't hold it. My stomach feels like it's turned upside down,' she said, as if she were afraid the pie would fall out of it.

‘You're missing the most wonderful blueberry pie,' Milt said. ‘Best I ever tasted.'

‘Is it all right?' Christine asked Edna. ‘It's the first time I've ever made it.'

‘Don't they have blueberries in England?' Matt asked. ‘I should have thought they could.'

‘Of course they could,' his mother said, ‘but they would never get anyone to pick them. The British just don't want to work. That's why they'll never be anything but a second-class nation.'

Christine felt her face reddening. ‘We're not a –' she began, and was near to tears, but Matthew Came to her rescue.

‘Look, Mother,' he said, ‘when we can stand up to what the British took in World War II we might have the right to judge what makes a second-class nation. I was in London the night the City was on fire. I've seen Plymouth. We should judge the British on that, not on whether they want to pick blueberries.'