This Is Not for You (9 page)

“I’ve envied you,” Sandy said quietly, as we stood together waiting for you to be able to leave. “I still do, but I don’t envy her. I can see you better than that in the dark.”

“Not better,” I corrected. “More clearly.”

Your work had never been taken very seriously by your teachers, who found you both too easily influenced and unconsciously distorting. Technically you were both ham-handed and picky so that small areas of obsessively careful detail often lived in a large carelessness of design. None of them imagined that you’d amount to much; yet they were puzzled by your almost humble confidence that you would and weren’t willing, quite, to disabuse you of it. Perhaps that was why the party after your show, unlike any of the others, turned into a mild sort of orgy.

Twenty of us started out, and we picked up others along the way, some connected with the college or the neighborhood, others friendly strangers, mostly men to balance the party I found myself with a grotesquely tall medical student who chinned himself on street signs. Sandy settled with the young music librarian who looked enough like her to be her brother. I think they may have been dimly related. It was a musical family. You spent the earlier part of the evening trying to deal with Richard Dick, who had turned up without his wife and was telling you that he’d made an awful mistake: you were really the one he’d cared for all this time. We had begun with beer, but gradually more and more orders of whiskey came to the tables. Some people were trying to dance in a space entirely canceled if people came out of the men’s and women’s toilets at the same time. Richard and Robin were preparing to have words. A stray freshman was sick. Someone began to ask for identification cards. Just before we were thrown out, the sculpture instructor suggested that we go back to his house where there was wine and room to dance. In a sorting out of cars, we lost a few of the drunkest and strangest, but it was still a large and boisterous party as it continued in private, more united now in celebrating the night for you.

You rarely drank very much, but I was not surprised to see you uncertain of your footing and giggling. You’d had very little sleep for several weeks and enough to drink to let yourself be as tired and relieved and foolish as you felt. Richard was now too drunk to be more than a superficial nuisance, and there were a number of others who insisted on dancing with you, on taking you out to the terrace, where the drugs of eucalyptus and bright distant city helped the cheap wine to make no one feel responsible for nothing very important.

Wanting a rest from my acrobatic giant, I took my turn with Richard, who decided now with gallant lack of focus that really I was the one he had wanted all these years, but he mistook a wine bottle for me and followed it out into the kitchen. I moved toward the door and met you in it.

“Absolutely everybody’s kissed me tonight but you,” you said, your face very solemn and childish.

“Then it’s probably time to go home,” I said, not seeing Sandy until I tried to move past you out onto the terrace. “Is this everybody?”

“Somebody,” you said.

Sandy met my anger with a shake of her head and a hand on my arm. “You have such a bad memory, Kate. Kiss the girl. It’s a game everybody’s playing on the terrace.”

“Kiss the girl,” someone else called, and it became a chorus, a song.

And so, there in the doorway, I kissed you on the mouth, for the crowd. And you moved on into the room of dancers.

“I’m going to take her home and come back for you,” Sandy said. “All right?”

“I should have brought my car,” I said.

“And your sense of humor. I haven’t had a drink since we got here.”

“All right,” I said.

I had begun helping to clean up by the time Sandy came back, and she stayed to dry glasses.

“I am too tired,” our host admitted. “You finish. I sleep. Have coffee if you like.”

We did, taking our cups out onto the terrace.

“Did she get back all right?”

“Yes, and Monk was right behind us so I left her to put Esther to bed.”

“Quite a night.”

“Kate—”

“Don’t start, Sandy.”

“But she was crying.”

“She was tired and had too much to drink. All right. It’s hard on her.”

“It’s a little hard on you too, isn’t it?”

“But I enjoy it,” I said.

“You don’t, you know. But I suppose you think you’ll last. It’s only a couple of weeks now, isn’t it? But then she’s going to be in London, too.”

“That will be different. There wasn’t any problem here until about a month ago.”

“Well, come on. Let’s go. Say, what happened to your flagpole?”

“Five men carried him out some time ago, same ones who took Richard.”

“Men.”

“Men,” I said to you the next day over a 4 P.M. breakfast. “It’s time you met some men.”

“All right, Kate.”

“We’re not going to share a flat in London. In fact, we’re not going to see much of each other for a while.”

“All right.”

“Little dog, don’t you understand?”

“I guess so. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. It’s what you want.”

“That’s right,” I said.

And there was nothing left then of our college days together except what is recorded in too many home movies and too many albums, yours among them here on the shelf, our young faces under Oxford caps, across our throats and shoulders gold hoods against black academic gowns: Ramona Ridley, Sandra Mentchen, you and I.

T
HROUGH CONNECTIONS AT THE
bank, Frank found me a flat in the neighborhood of the British Museum, and Doris furnished it for me with things from their attic. I hadn’t much mind for my surroundings in those days, and I paid almost as little attention to my bank account, into which Frank or Mother seemed to have put a substantial supplement to my Fulbright money. I was not what they or I considered extravagant. I was expected to live comfortably. It was arranged. By the middle of August, my trunks had arrived to be unpacked into waiting book shelves and drawers. I had established myself with the butcher and green grocer, found a char who would come in two mornings a week, and bought my first picture to hang in the front hall, a Picasso line drawing of two female nudes in passive company.

“Do you really want to live alone?” Doris asked, turning from the drawing, her arms full of parcels.

“Yes, I think so. At least, I don’t mind at all.”

“When does Esther arrive?”

“The end of the month. She’s going to Edinburgh first, for the festival.”

“And she’ll stay with you until she finds a place,” Doris said.

“Yes.”

“You should have taken the double bed.”

“She can sleep on the couch,” I said.

“Darling, you really ought to cover up that bite on your neck.”

“It isn’t a bite,” I said, covering it quickly with my hand.

“Well, nibble then. The teeth marks show.” She had put her parcels down and was rummaging in her handbag. “There.” She had found a Band-Aid. “All these years in London, and I’ve never met a cannibal. I lead a sheltered life.”

“Do you?” I said, letting her put the Band-Aid on my neck.

“Umhum,” she said. “I never did have the fear of God put in me, but I don’t like the look of the v.d. clinics or jail.”

“Are you going to start worrying about me and nagging me after all these years?”

“I suppose not,” Doris said, “though somebody should. It’s the only part of being loved that you’ve missed. You might even like it.”

“No,” I said. “I wouldn’t like it.”

“Put these eggs in the fridge, and get me a vase for the flowers. Don’t make a face. You don’t have to do anything about them. The char will pitch them when they’re finished.”

“Do you want a drink?” I asked. “Frank sent over a bottle of Scotch, a bottle of gin, and half a dozen bottles of wine yesterday.”

“Well, yes. I’m glad he remembered. Do you notice he’s a bit dopey these days?”

“I hadn’t, no,” I called, in the kitchen by this time.

“It’s usually a woman,” Doris said, following me out. “But sometimes it’s just business.”

“Do you mind, Doris?”

“As little as I can manage, and he’s very discreet, which is thoughtful of him. Sensible, too. If I ever met one of them, I’d kill her.”

Doris had found the vase for herself and was arranging rust and violet snapdragons. She did not seem at all distressed.

“I never really know how you feel,” I said.

“That’s because I tell you, which is always confusing. You never tell me a thing. I can make you up for myself, whole cloth, and never be uncertain.”

“What would you like me to tell you?” I asked.

Doris went on arranging flowers until her silence made me wonder if she’d heard my question. I didn’t want to repeat it.

“What I’d really like to know you can’t tell me. You don’t know yourself,” she said finally “Don’t put any more gin in that. It doesn’t save steps. I’ll still want another.”

That was always the way conversations were between Doris and me, sparring and scatty with more flavor of intimacy than intimacy itself. I almost always enjoyed them because I could be as frank or as frankly evasive as I liked, but after she’d gone I sometimes felt heavily lonely for an ease between us that there never really was.

What was it that she wanted to know? Had it to do with you? But there was no point in discussing you with Doris. There was nothing to say.

Rather early in the morning on the first of September, you phoned from Paddington Station. I could hear the inevitable Scottish cold in your voice and the inevitable uncertainty.

“Come right over,” I said. “There’s plenty of room for you.”

“What will I do with all my stuff?” you asked, relaxing into plaintiveness.

“Check your trunk and bring everything else.”

“How do I get there?”

“By cab.”

“There’s a queue ten miles long,” you said, your voice fading away as you looked to confirm your own statement.

“Jump it,” I said.

“Jump it?”

“All right, don’t jump it. People will move along. I’ll have coffee waiting.”

An hour later I opened the door to you and a cab driver and a corridor full of luggage. You looked simply awful.

“You look wonderful,” you said, as all three of us shifted suitcases into the sitting room. “You look marvelous. You have no idea how marvelous you look.”

“I’ll take care of the cab driver,” I said.

When I came back into the room, you were sitting on the couch without having bothered to take off your coat.

“God, it’s good to be here. Up all night on the train. Exhausted. Filthy cold. It rained every bloody day we were there. We swam everywhere we went. Spent the family fortune in taxis.”

“We?”

“John,” you said. “I’ll have to tell you about John. He’s going to phone. What time is it?” and before I could answer, “Are you sure it’s all right to be here? Are you sure you have room?”

“You’re sitting on your bed.”

“I’ll just stay tonight. I’ll find myself a room tomorrow. I really could look this afternoon—”

“Stop it, little dog. Stay for a week. Stay as long as you need to. There’s no problem.”

“No problem,” you repeated, rubbing your forehead.

“No, so take off your coat while I get coffee. How was the festival?”

“It rained,” you said. “It was all right. It was good. Just nobody there. I mean I didn’t meet anybody until John turned up, and I didn’t meet him until three days before I left.”

“And who’s he?”

“A director. He had a play on up there. He came back to London yesterday and said he’d phone here around noon. He’s going to help me move my stuff.”

Between getting coffee and moving suitcases out of the way, I heard a few more details.

“He’s sort of old—well, bald, and he knows simply everybody.”

“Everybody?”

“Gielgud and that whole crowd.”

I stalled a moment in the kitchen so that I wouldn’t have to comment on that remark.

“Oh, I’ve had a letter from Monk,” you called. “She’s coming over. She’ll be here in three or four weeks.”

That returned me to the sitting room at once. “How on earth…?”

“I even wonder if she didn’t plan it that way from the first,” you said, half grinning. “Her father is sending her to England to get her away from Robin.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“John says he can help her get into RADA. She’s going to be awfully late, but I think that’s what she wants to do. Oh, that coffee really tastes like home.” You drank it and then looked around you for the first time. “You’re so settled here, Kate. It’s really… your own place, isn’t it?”

“Doris did it for me.”

“I’ll have to find something less…” You didn’t finish your sentence.

“You’ll need some place to work,” I said. “It may not be easy to find.”

“John has some leads,” you said without much confidence. “You cook and everything like that, don’t you?”

“A little,” I said. “I’ve got a woman to clean and iron.”

“I mustn’t do that. Mother’s given me a household book. How to get clay off the carpet and tomato stains off the pillow cases, I hope. It’s my do-it-yourself year.”

“Maybe you and Monk—”

“No,” you said. “You’re not going to hold my hand, and I’m not going to hold hers. Everybody has to be independent.”

The phone rang: a careful English voice asking for you.

“Ask him to lunch if you like,” I said.

You always had an odd, alert expression when you were listening on the phone, as if the message coming through were in code. Whenever I telephoned you, I tried not to imagine your face, mouth a little open, eyelids blinking rapidly. If I did, I had to control the temptation to speak in riddles and numbers. “Come to lunch” or “I have an extra ticket for the theater” never seemed worthy of your concentration. John had probably not known you long enough to notice and was suffering from nothing more than your pauses and apologies.

“Maybe that wasn’t a good idea,” you said, as you hung up. “Maybe we’re too much trouble. Maybe you won’t like him.”

“I’ll like him,” I said.

But I didn’t. He was a tall, pale man with a sharp face and thinning blond hair, so mannered in his politeness that I was as suspicious of him as you usually were of “grown-up” men, as you called them. He was not a flatterer, however; instead he fed you names of important people he knew, another each time your attention wandered, which it did occasionally from tiredness and uncertainty. He treated you rather as if you were a parking meter with the time always running out. I was a problem he hadn’t the attention to calculate. With perverse sympathy, I watched him making that basic mistake.