The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant (52 page)

“This is a dreadful story,” said Eve, slowly turning her head. “It’s sad.”

Frank said nothing, but seemed to agree with his wife. Walter supposed they thought the cat and the valet should not have been traveling at all; they had come up from South Africa, where they had spent twelve years bullying blacks. He said, “They were traveling third class.”

Mary, his niece, sauntered back to the table, as if she had just learned a new way of walking. She flung herself in a chair and picked up her father’s cigarettes. She began playing with them, waiting to be told not to. Neither parent said a word.

“And how was your journey?” said Walter gravely.

The girl looked away from the cigarettes and said, “In a way, I’ve forgotten it.”

“No showing off, please,” said Eve.

“There’s a kind of holiday tonight,” said the girl. “There’ll be fireworks, all that. Angelo says we can see them from here. He’s making Johnny sleep now, on two chairs in the kitchen. He wanted me to sleep, too, but I wouldn’t, of course. He’s fixing a basket for the hamster up where the cat can’t get it. We’re going to have the fireworks at dinner, and then he’ll take us down to the harbor, he says, to see the people throwing confetti and all that.”

“The fireworks won’t be seen from our dining room, I fear,” said Walter.

“We’re having our dinner out here, on the terrace,” said the girl. “He says the mosquitoes are awful and you people will have to smoke.”

“Do the children always dine with you?” said Walter.

There was no answer, because William of Orange came by, taking their attention. Mary put out her hand, but the cat avoided it. Walter looked at the determined child who was said to resemble him. She bent toward the cat, idly calling. Her hair divided, revealing a delicate ear. The angle of her head lent her expression something thoughtful and sad; it was almost an exaggerated posture of wistfulness. Her arms and hands were thin, but with no suggestion of fragility. She smiled at the cat and said,
“He
doesn’t care. He doesn’t care what we say.” Her bones were made of something tough and precious. She was not pretty, no, but quite lovely, in spite of the straight yellow hair, the plain way she was dressed. Walter knew instantly what he would have given her to wear. He thought, Ballet lessons … beautiful French, and saw himself the father of a daughter. The mosaic expanded; there was room for another figure, surely? Yes—but to have a daughter one needed a wife. That brought everything down to normal size again. He smiled to himself, thinking how grateful he was that clods like Frank Osborn could cause enchanting girls to appear, all for the enjoyment of vicarious fathers. It was a new idea, one he would discuss next winter with Mrs. Wiggott. He could develop it into a story. It would keep the old dears laughing for weeks.

Angelo strung paper lanterns on wires between branches of the fig tree. The children were fogged with sleep, but bravely kept their heads up, waiting for the fireworks he had said would be set off over the sea. Neither of them remarked that the sea was hidden by the hotel; they trusted Angelo to produce the sea as he produced their dinner. Walter’s nephew slept with his eyes wide. Angelo’s lanterns were reflected in his eyes—pinpoints of cobalt blue.

From the table they heard the crowd at the harbor, cheering every burst. Colored smoke floated across the dark sky. The smell of jasmine, which ordinarily made Walter sick, was part of the children’s night.

“Do you know my name?” said the little boy, as Angelo moved around the table collecting plates. “It’s Johnny.” He sighed, and put his head down where the plate had been. Presently Angelo came out of the house wearing a clean white pullover and with his hair well oiled. Johnny woke up as if he had heard a bell. “Are you taking us to the harbor?” he said. “Now?”

Mary, Johnny, and Angelo looked at Eve. It was plain to Walter that
these children should not be anywhere except in bed. He was furious with Angelo.

“Is there polio or anything here?” said Eve lazily. Now it was Walter’s turn. The children—all three—looked at him with something like terror. He was about to deny them the only pleasure they had ever been allowed; that was what their looks said. Without waiting for his answer about polio, Eve said the children could go.

The candles inside the paper lanterns guttered and had to be blown out. The Osborns smoked conscientiously to keep mosquitoes away. In the light of a struck match, Walter saw his sister’s face, her short graying hair. “That’s a nice lad,” she said.

“The kids are mad about him,” said Frank.

“They are besotted,” said Eve. “I’m glad. You couldn’t have planned a better welcome, Walter dear,” and in the dark she briefly covered his hand with hers.

The family lived in Miss Cooper’s house as if it were a normal place to be. They were more at home than Walter had ever been. Mornings, he heard them chattering on the terrace or laughing in the kitchen with Angelo. Eve and Angelo planned the meals, and sometimes they went to the market together. The Osborns took over the household food expenses, and Walter, tactfully, made no mention of it. Sometimes the children had their meals in the kitchen with Angelo and the hamster and the cat. But there was no order, no system, to their upbringing. They often dined with the adults. The parents rose late, but not so late as Walter. They seemed to feel it would be impolite to go off to the beach or the market until Walter’s breakfast was over. He was not accustomed to eating breakfast, particularly during the hot weather, but he managed to eat an egg and some cold toast, only because they appeared to expect it.

“Change has got to come in South Africa,” said Eve one morning as Walter sat down to a boiled egg. The family had eaten. The table was covered with ashes, eggshells, and crumbs.

“Why at our expense?” said Frank.

“Frank is an anarchist, although you wouldn’t think it at times,” said Eve, with pride.

Married twelve years and still talking, Walter thought. Frank and Eve were in accord on one thing—that there was bad faith on all sides in South Africa. They interrupted each other, explaining apartheid to Walter, who
did not want to hear anything about it. Frank repeated that no decent person could stand by and accept the situation, and Eve agreed; but she made no bones about the real reason for their having left. They had failed, failed. The word rolled around the table like a wooden ball.

So Frank was an anarchist, was he, Walter thought, snipping at his egg. Well, he could afford to be an anarchist, living down there, paying next to no income tax. He said, “You will find things different in England.”

“An English farm, aha,” said Frank, and looked at Eve.

“Just so long as it isn’t a poultry farm,” said Walter, getting on with his revolting breakfast. The egg had given him something to say. “I have seen people try that.”

“As a matter of fact, it
is
a poultry farm,” said Eve. Frank’s face was earnest and red; this farm had a history of arguments about it. Eve went on, “You see, we try one thing after the other. We’re obliged to try things, aren’t we? We have two children to educate.”

“I wouldn’t want to live without doing something,” said Frank. “Even if I could afford to. I mean to say that I’m not brainy and it’s better for me if I have something to do.”

“Walter used to think it better,” said Eve. She went on, very lightly, “I did envy Walter once. Walter, think of the money that was spent educating you. They wouldn’t do it for a girl. Ah, how I used to wish we could have exchanged, then.” Having said this, she rounded on her husband, as if it were Frank who had failed to give Walter credit, had underestimated him, dragging schoolroom jealousy across the lovely day. Frank must be told: Walter in Hong Kong in a bank. Walter in amateur theatricals, the image of Douglas Fairbanks. He was marvelous in the war; he was burned from head to foot. He was hours swimming in flames in the North Sea. He should have had the Victoria Cross. Everyone said so.

The two children, sitting nearby sorting colored pebbles they had brought up from the beach, scarcely glanced at their courageous uncle. The impossibility of his ever having done anything splendid was as clear to them as it was to Walter. He agreed with the children—for it had all of it gone, and he wanted nothing but the oasis of peace, the admiration of undemanding old women, the winter months. If he was irritated, it was only by his sister’s puritanical insistence on working. Would the world have been a happier place if Walter had remained in Hong Kong in a bank? Luckily, there was William of Orange to talk about. There was William of Orange now, stalking an invisible victim along the terrace wall. Up in the fig tree he
went, with his killer’s face, his marigold eyes. “Oh, the poor birds!” Eve cried. “He’s after birds!” She saw him stretch out his paw, spread like a hand, and then she saw him detach ripe figs and let them fall on the paved terrace. She had never seen a cat do that before. She said that William of Orange was perfectly sweet.

“He doesn’t care what you think about him,” said Mary, looking up from her heap of stones.

“You know, darling,” said Eve, laughing at Walter, “if you aren’t careful, you’ll become an old spinster with a pussycat.”

Frank sat on the terrace wall wearing a cotton shirt and oversize Army shorts. He was burned reddish brown. His arms and legs were covered with a coating of thick fair hair. “What is the appeal about cats?” he said kindly. “I’ve always wanted to know. I can understand having them on a farm, if they’re good mousers.” He wore a look of great sincerity most of the time, as if he wanted to say, “Please tell me what you are thinking. I so much want to know.”

“I like them because they are independent,” said Walter. “They don’t care what you think, just as Mary says. They don’t care if you like them. They haven’t the slightest notion of gratitude, and they never pretend. They take what you have to offer, and away they go.”

“That’s what all cat fanciers say,” said Frank. “But it’s hard for someone like me to understand. That isn’t the way you feel about people, is it? Do you like people who just take what you can give them and go off?”

Angelo came out of the house with a shopping basket over one arm and a straw sun hat on his head. He took all his orders from Eve now. There had never been a discussion about it; she was the woman of the house, the mother.

“It would be interesting to see what role the cat fancier
is
trying on,” said Walter, looking at Angelo. “He says he likes cats because they don’t like anyone. I suppose he is proving he is so tough he can exist without affection.”

“I couldn’t,” said Frank, “and I wouldn’t want to try. Without Eve and the children and …”

The children jumped to their feet and begged to go to market with Angelo. They snatched at his basket, arguing whose turn it was to carry it. How Angelo strutted; how he grew tall! All this affection, this admiration, Walter thought—it was as bad as overtipping.

The family stayed two weeks, and then a fortnight more. They were brown, drowsy, and seemed reluctant to face England and the poultry farm. They were enjoying their holiday, no doubt about that. On the beach they met a professor of history who spoke a little English, and a retired consul who asked them to tea. They saw, without knowing what to make of it, a monument to Queen Victoria. They heard people being comic and noisy, they bought rice-and-spinach pies to eat on the beach, and ice cream that melted down to powder and water. They ate melons and peaches nearly as good as the fruit back in Africa, and they buried the peach stones and the melon skins and the ice-cream sticks and the greasy piecrusts in the sand. They drove along the coast as far as Cannes, in the Parma-violet Citroën Frank had hired, sight unseen, from South Africa. He had bought his new farm in the same way. Walter was glad his friends were away, for he was ashamed to be seen in the Citroën. It was a vulgar automobile. He told Frank that the DS was considered exclusively the property of concierges’ sons and successful grocers.

“I’m not even that,” said Frank.

The seats were covered with plastic leopard skin. At every stop, the car gave a great sigh and sank down like a tired dog. The children loved this. They sat behind, with Eve between them, telling riddles, singing songs. They quarreled across their mother as if she were a hedge. “Silly old sow,” Walter heard his nephew saying. He realized the boy was saying it to Eve. His back stiffened. Eve saw.

“Why shouldn’t he say it, if he wants to?” she said. “He doesn’t know what it means. Do you want me to treat them the way we were treated? Would you like to see some of that?”

“No,” said Walter, after a moment.

“Well, then. I’m trying another way.”

Walter said, “I don’t believe one person should call another a silly old sow.” He spoke without turning his head. The children were still as mice; then the little boy began to cry.

They drove home in the dark. The children slept, and the three adults looked at neon lights and floodlit palm trees without saying much. Suddenly Eve said, “Oh, I like
that.”
Walter looked at a casino; at the sea; at the Anglican church, which was thirty years old, Riviera Gothic. “That church,” she said. “It’s like home.”