The Sundial (16 page)

Her shoes, which were destined for the soft levels of a dance floor in a nightclub in the city, twisted and turned and hurt her feet brutally over these unseen stones, and her silk skirt was fouled with burrs. Wait, she told herself with her teeth set, wait till I get somehow into the city and to a telephone; my mother will let Mrs. Halloran know what
we
think of this kind of treatment; what a rotten way to treat a guest. Wait until I wander into the city from the hills, bedraggled and tattered, telling of having been abandoned and robbed on the road; wait, she said over and over again through her teeth, wait till I can get even with all of them.

An abrupt sound startled her, the sound of wheels upon the road, and she turned toward it. The noise was bewilderingly loud for a minute, and then began to fade away. Although she had moved involuntarily away from the sound she realized in that minute that it had been
much
farther away than it should have been; had come, in fact, from the left of her instead of the right—or
should
it have been on the right? Was she then on the wrong side of the road and going perhaps steadily away from it? She turned and started sharply left, and almost immediately felt the ground begin to slope away under her feet; have I turned around in the fog? she wondered, and saw ahead of her a tree shape blurred in the fog. The trees, she thought, the trees were on our left as we came—toward the river? Moss grows on the north side of the trees, the drop down to the river is slow at first and then sharp, but, by the time she had thought, she had lost the tree and had no idea whether she was going toward it or not.

A small feeling of genuine apprehension came slowly upon her. This was not, could not possibly be, a small unimportant delay in her getting to the city; no matter how she stumbled and struggled along, she was lost; it was very possible that she would not get to the city tonight at all, would not reach a telephone, would not sleep in a hotel; she might even find herself, with embarrassment and relief, embracing the first of the search party to reach her; it might be that she would be sought for generally, over the hills, with men calling to one another and listening for her voice in reply, led by the intrepid driver of the car, perhaps even laughing when they found her, asking her if she'd ever do
that
again, telling their wives when they got home that yes, they'd found the fool woman, scared to death and half-crazy . . . if, indeed, it occurred to the driver to send anyone to look for her?

She shook her head violently to rid her mind of this cloudy nonsense, and caught her foot on a rock or a root and fell heavily. In the fog there was no one to see if there were tears in her eyes, and for a minute she lay on the ground saying “Oh, damn, damn
damn”
over and over again to herself, and almost aloud. No, she thought, it was really too much; she had not deserved this of anyone, it
was
too much. It occurred to her that she might just lie here without moving until someone found her and the thought brought her to her feet again hurriedly. For heaven's sake, she informed herself, imagine lying on the ground with a circle of men looking down with flashlights and dogs nosing at your shoes and probably they'd want to carry you back, and what would you look like
then?
It seemed that she had probably sprained her ankle and it hurt just enough for her to lose some perspective on her position. I shall
not
be lost, she said grimly, perhaps again aloud, and stamped on, putting her weight down firmly on her hurting ankle. If I hear one dog baying or one man shouting I will climb into a tree and hide, if I can find a tree, and she laughed wildly.

The sound of her own laughter in the fog startled her and for a minute she stood still. What on earth? she thought, and, is this possible? for
me?

In order to find out more clearly where she was she brought both hands to her face and first rubbed her eyes and then bit sharply on her fingers, without knowing why. Then she said, still aloud, “
Now,
my girl,
now,
Julia, my fine creature, suppose you just get a goddam hold of yourself. What would they say if they saw you now? That bastard captain? Or even Arabella? They're all laughing at me now,” she assured herself wisely, “Arabella's got the captain, and they're sitting in the light and laughing at me, but they can't, they
can't.
” Blaze a trail, she thought, pile rocks together in a signal of distress, write messages and set them afloat in bottles . . .

“Now listen here,” she said. She was moving slowly, almost aimlessly; her hand brushed against a large rock and she did not lose her balance, but leaned peacefully against the rock and looked out blindly into the solid fog. “
Now
we're getting somewhere,” she said to the rock, “
now
we're making some progress. Just got to be a little careful not to fall down the hillside into the river,
that's
all. Only thing we need to worry about—otherwise everything is fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine . . .” I got out of the car and turned right, she thought, or left, went uphill or down, and hurt my ankle and walked. “Close your eyes, my sweet baby,” she said aloud, “you can see better with your eyes closed, close your eyes and take my hand and I will show you the way home.”

She closed her eyes and with one hand resting against the rock began to walk; it was more than a rock, although she did not actually care, it was a wall, and she went awkwardly and clinging along beside it, following the line of the wall through weeds and rocks and falling through ditches. There now, she thought, as the ground under her feet seemed to be going a little uphill, there now, all I needed to do was sit down and think it out. I
do
hope that man is frightened because he lost me; see, I am thinking clearly because I can remember how I got here; I was not always walking in this fog, not at all.

She hit her foot against another rock and stumbled, and twisted against a tree; this is really too much, she thought, tears in her eyes, and stepped ahead and knew as she put her foot down that it was a mistake; she was over the edge into the river because her foot went down and down and never found the ground and she fell and rolled wildly downhill; this is really more than I can endure, she thought deliberately, and fell unendingly, wracked and bruised, lying against the great iron gates with the elaborate H worked into the scrollwork on either side.

_____

“Good morning, Julia,” said Mrs. Halloran at the breakfast table. “I heard that you had come back to us. I am only sorry that you had such miserable weather. We had a singularly clear, bright night.”

“Go to hell,” Julia said distinctly through her cut mouth.

“Julia, behave yourself,” Mrs. Willow said.

“If I had been there,” the captain said, helping himself to elderberry jelly, “I would have given that fellow a bad time.”

“You're really
terribly
bruised,” Arabella said. “After breakfast will you tell me what he
really
did to you?”

“All of you go to hell,” Julia said.

“Odd that the gardeners should have been out so early,” Mrs. Halloran said. “Of course, you were there quite a while, as it was. But I would not have expected the gardeners to find you so early.” She nodded to the captain. “Coffee, Captain? When you go upstairs,” she continued to Julia, “be sure to put the money back on my dressing table, since you had no chance to spend it. Strange, is it not, how one can manage to cling to some unimportant trifle at a time of strain? Julia kept her pocketbook as someone, running from a burning house, might carry out a worthless vase, or an old newspaper.”

“Go, go, go to hell,” Julia said.

“My dear,” Mrs. Halloran said, “if you continue uncooperative I shall not let you go to the city again.”

On the morning of Sunday, June thirtieth, Gloria, in the middle of her breakfast, suddenly stood up, spilling Miss Ogilvie's coffee, and stood, her hands over her face. “It's true,” she said faintly, “it's all true.”

“Gloria, you have upset Miss Ogilvie's coffee,” Mrs. Halloran said.

“Look,” Gloria said. She took her hands down from her face and pointed. “The pink roses,” she said, “we're having breakfast.”

“The pink roses are from the rambler,” Aunt Fanny said. “It was my mother's favorite, and there were six bushes planted for her in the rose garden. Not one of them, I am pleased to say, has died; I have made a particular point of looking after them, and—”

“Don't you see?” Gloria said. “There are the pink roses on the breakfast table, and I'm wearing my blue and white dress and a minute ago we were all laughing at something Essex said—don't you see? It's all exactly the way I saw it, before, when I was looking into the mirror.”

“Well, of course,” Mrs. Willow said comfortably, “it had to happen sometime, didn't it?”

_____

Twice during the month of June large trucks had delivered further shipments for Aunt Fanny, which had been stored in the library. Only one wall of books still stood and because the ashes of books—unlike the ashes of cloth, flesh, or even tea leaves and coffee grounds—are not healthy for growing things the gardeners had twice emptied the barbecue pit and taken the ashes to the village dump, which was just beyond the cemetery. Most of the property now stored in the library was in cartons, items purchased by Aunt Fanny in quantity and neatly packed. There was a carton of anti-histamine preparations, in addition to the carton of first-aid kits. There were cartons of plastic overshoes and rubbers, in assorted sizes, of instant coffee, of cleansing tissue and sunglasses. Suntan lotion, salted nuts in cans, paper napkins, soap, both bar and flaked, toilet paper (four cartons). Two complete tool boxes, with a keg of nails, since the bags of nails which Robinson Crusoe brought from the ship had proved so comforting; mindful of Robinson Crusoe, Aunt Fanny had added a grindstone, and, with some embarrassment, several shotguns and an assortment of hunting knives. At Miss Ogilvie's suggestion the library stock also included a small portable cooking stove, with several cans of fuel, and an entire carton of folders of matches. Maryjane proposed the citronella for mosquitoes—there was a great roll of mosquito netting standing in a corner—and several remedies for bee stings, sunburn, and snake bite. Essex and Mrs. Halloran added as many cartons of cigarettes as Aunt Fanny would allow them room, and from the cellars of the house Mrs. Halloran brought up a representative selection of wines, although she confessed that she was puzzled by her own gesture. Foreseeing the day when their cigarettes would run out, Essex bought a pamphlet on the growing of tobacco, and thoughtfully laid in a gross of corncob pipes. Arabella suggested needles, thread, pins, hair curlers, deodorants, perfumes, bath salts, and lipsticks. Mrs. Willow, naming herself as the only really practical person in the house, insisted upon blankets, a wheelbarrow, reels of nylon rope, axes, shovels, rakes, and a barometer. It was Gloria's conceit to begin a file of daily newspapers, which she planned to continue until their last publication. The captain supervised the storage of eight bicycles in the cellar, but voted against the addition of a motor bike, since a motor bike would require gasoline and he felt that in anticipation of a general holocaust the storage of gasoline in the cellar would be unwise. Julia, who continued sullen, asked for and was granted the inclusion of a carton of knitting needles and several cartons of variously colored yarns. “So I will have something to do with my time,” she explained disagreeably.

The only books to be included were Aunt Fanny's Boy Scout Handbook, the encyclopedia, Fancy's French grammar—so that Miss Ogilvie could keep Fancy from forgetting the little she had gained—and a World Almanac. No writing materials of any kind were included, and gradually these books came to be called “unburnables” in order to differentiate them from the rest of the books in the library, which were absolutely burnable.

“In Tibet,” Essex remarked idly one morning, while moving over a carton of canned tunafish in order to make room for a carton of tennis balls, “in Tibet, arsenic is used in the preparation of paper pulp. In Tibet, the paper is highly poisonous, and lingering in a Tibetan library is consequently a matter of considerable danger. As a matter of fact, in Tibet curling up with a good book is frequently fatal.”

_____

Early in July Miss Ogilvie found one of Mrs. Halloran's handkerchiefs near the summer house. It had been tied around the neck of a dead garter snake, and the snake had been draped over a branch of a cypress tree. Miss Ogilvie, concerned, told the captain, who told Mrs. Halloran, who told him to dispose of it, and the captain dug a hole at the farther end of the rose garden and buried the snake and the handkerchief.

_____

According to the notes carefully kept by Mrs. Willow, it was on July tenth that Gloria again looked into the mirror. She reported then that she saw fruit trees, heavy with fruit, small figures, at some distance, bathing along the edge of a stream, and a pack of horses running in a glorious wild freedom. When pressed, she saw that on August twenty-seventh the people in the big house were gathered in the dining room for dinner as usual. On August twenty-eighth they sat, talking, in the drawing room. On August twenty-ninth they were dancing, she thought, on the lawn. On August thirtieth there was nothing; the mirror was dark. Pressed further, for August thirty-first, for September first, for September second, Gloria caught again one glimpse of the soft untouched green world she had seen before, asked to return to August thirtieth, she first saw only darkness and then fell back, screaming that her eyes were burned, and had to be put to bed with a damp cloth over her face and one of Maryjane's sleeping pills.

“Thus it seems,” Mrs. Willow wrote in her notes, “that August thirtieth is to be the day, the last this world will ever know.” And then—quite out of character, actually, and in a shaken hand, she added, “God help us all.”

_____

“But I insist that the house
must
be barricaded,” Aunt Fanny said, adding, with a kind of inspiration, “It is like a child hiding its head under a blanket. We have absolute faith in my father, of course, but even though his protection applies to the house and to everyone in it, I can see strong reasons for covering the windows and blocking the doors.”

“As
I
see it,” the captain said, “it sounds like we're hoping no one will notice us. With absolute faith in your father, of course,” he told Aunt Fanny.

“I am not happy about barricading the house,” Mrs. Willow said slowly. “Seems to me it sounds like
not
believing in Aunt Fanny's father, sort of. I mean, either he protects us or he doesn't.”

“He
told
us to barricade the house,” Aunt Fanny said, nettled. “I think of it as cooperating with him—showing him, as it were, that we are willing to go halfway to ensure our own survival, rather than wait passively for
him
to do it all.”

“Well, a blanket over the window is really not much protection,” Mrs. Willow said bluntly.

“Perhaps,” Essex said, “it was planned to give us something to do while we are waiting.”

“The human animal burrows instinctively in times of danger,” Mrs. Halloran said. “I find Aunt Fanny's picture of the child under the blankets not an inept one.”

“We would
feel
safer, I'm sure,” Essex said.

“Perhaps,” Gloria said softly, “the blankets over the windows
are
just to keep us from looking out?”

_____

“I am a rake,” Essex said. “I should have been born into a time when it was easier for a young man to borrow money. Or, of course, I should not have been born at all.”

“Silly,” Gloria said. “The sun is shining, and the sky is blue, and here we are, sitting quite close together on a bench all alone, and of all the things in the world to talk about you choose yourself.”

“We are more intelligent than Julia and the captain,” Essex said. “We could leave here. We could go into the village—I assume that having climbed over the gate once you could do so again—and walk, if need be, to the city. Or we could wait for the bus, sitting in the lobby of the Carriage Stop Inn. If we did not choose to stay in the city—and I do you the credit of assuming that you would want to get farther away than that—we could go on, as far as we could manage, and then settle down temporarily in another hotel, or inn, or rooming house; at any rate, some kind of a furnished room to live in. All the furnished rooms I have ever seen had wicker furniture, and a painting of the Bridge of Sighs on the wall. We would have to find money somehow. One of us, in short, would have to work.”

“That's not hard,” Gloria said. “I can work.”

“I expect it would have to be you, anyway. I would sit in the furnished room and pretend I was a writer, perhaps. When you came home in the evening after a long day ushering in the movie theatre—”

“—selling jewelry in the five and ten—”

“—I would expect to be asked at once how the writing went today. I ought to get some paper and a pencil, so I would look authentic.”

“And how did the writing go today, dear?”

“Very poorly, my love. One ballade, three villanelles, a kind of triolet thing, and an outline for a learned article on Freud. Gloria,” Essex said, turning to look at her; “I have never loved anyone in my life until now.”

“I know,” Gloria said. “I know perfectly.”

“I want to mate with you in a brave new world, all clean and shining, and yet I want to be your husband in this world, and live along in the kind of grimy squalor married people live in. I want a furnished room and jobs and dirty diapers in the corners and poor food—can you cook?”

“Admirably.”

“You would have to cook poorly, to meet my ideal. I want the kind of dismal future only possible in
this
world. I could put up with your long hours at the five and ten—”

“—ushering at the movie theatre—”

“I could put up with your inferior cooking—”

“I am an excellent cook.”

“And your poor housekeeping—”

“I keep a lovely house.”

“And your squalling children—”

“They are lovely, clean children, and all in bed asleep.”

“—but I would always be afraid. Or at least for as long as always lasted.”

“Afraid of Aunt Fanny, you mean?”

“Afraid of Aunt Fanny.”

Gloria was silent.

“If Aunt Fanny is right,” Essex went on after a minute, “and I ask your pardon for profaning this bright summer morning with Aunt Fanny's name; if Aunt Fanny is right, we shall, putting it into the baldest of terms, find ourselves in a situation of strong comic possibilities. Imagine, if you can, Aunt Fanny's new world.”

“I have been trying to imagine it for quite a while,” Gloria said.

“Fresh, untouched, green, lovely. Untrammeled, except by ourselves. A lifetime of warmth and beauty and fertility. The kind of life and world people have been dreaming about ever since they first began fouling this one. I can sometimes catch glimpses of what it will be like, and they are tantalizing—”

“I have seen it, you forget,” Gloria said. “In the mirror. It is more beautiful than you can believe.”

“I am afraid so. Aunt Fanny must
not
be wrong. That world
must
exist.” He sat forward, anxious, holding his hands tightly together and scowling with earnestness. “It
must
; we cannot be promised such a thing, like children, and see it withdrawn. Oh, Gloria,” he said, “I couldn't
stand
not being there.”

“
I
could,” Gloria said, “and I have seen it.”

He sighed, and relaxed. “Put it, then,” he said, “that if I have one I cannot have the other. I want to live with you in a room furnished in wicker, with a picture of the Bridge of Sighs, and your bad cooking—”

“Superlative cooking.”

“—and your job at the five and ten—”

“—the movie theatre—”

“—and the children, and the struggles and the cheapness and all the things we can get for ourselves in this world; I never
dreamed
of wanting these things. But I want the green and gold world more.”

“You haven't tried either one.”

Essex shivered. “I have tried one,” he said. “How do you suppose I have been captured by Aunt Fanny?”

“I wouldn't care, you see,” Gloria said. “I can believe in either one, for myself. I would be happy enough if the end of the world caught me sitting in our wicker chair looking at the Bridge of Sighs. Unless, of course, I should happen to be still at work at the five and ten. A miserable way to go.”

“But then we would lose everything,” Essex said. He looked at her curiously. “You see,” he went on, as one explaining glibly something better left unexplained, “you see, in Aunt Fanny's new world, we will at least be . . . alive . . . together. We could not possibly, of course, be . . . well, living in our own room with the wicker furniture; we would not be . . .”

“Dying romantically, in one another's arms?”

Essex shivered again. “I don't want to die,” he said, and Gloria laughed. “But I
don't
,” Essex said, and Gloria laughed again. “I should have
expected
you'd never understand,” Essex said.

“But I'm afraid I do,” Gloria said.

“
None
of you is serious about this,” Essex said, and then added, making his voice light, “Poor Gloria—had we but world enough.”

“Essex,” she said, but he was standing.