Too Much Happiness (10 page)

“Mrs. Winner’s got herself in hot water tonight.”

Then she made a little leap and started to tickle me, as she did every once in a while, without the least warning, having discovered that I was extraordinarily ticklish.

One morning Nina did not get out of bed. She said she had a sore throat, a fever.

“Touch me.”

“You always feel hot to me.”

“Today I’m hotter.”

It was a Friday. She asked me to call Mr. Purvis, to tell him she wanted to stay here for the weekend.

“He’ll let me—he can’t stand anybody being sick around him. He’s a nut that way.”

Mr. Purvis wondered if he should send a doctor. Nina had foreseen that, and told me to say she just needed to rest, and she’d phone him, or I would, if she got any worse. Well then, tell her to take care, he said, and thanked me for phoning, and for being a good friend to Nina. And then, having started to say good-bye, he asked me if I would care to join him for Saturday night’s dinner. He said he found it boring to eat alone.

Nina had thought of that too.

“If he asks you to go and eat with him tomorrow night, why don’t you go? There’s always something good to eat on Saturday nights, it’s special.”

On Saturdays the cafeteria was closed. The possibility of meeting Mr. Purvis disturbed and interested me.

“Should I really? If he asks?”

So I went upstairs, having agreed to dine with Mr. Purvis—he had actually said “dine”—and asked Nina what I should wear.

“Why worry now? It’s not till tomorrow night.”

Why worry indeed? I had only one good dress, the turquoise crepe that I had bought with some of my scholarship money, to wear when I gave the valedictory address at the high school commencement exercises.

“And anyway it doesn’t matter,” said Nina. “He’ll never notice.”

Mrs. Winner came to get me. Her hair was not white, but platinum blond, a color that to me certified a hard heart, immoral dealings, a long bumpy ride through the sordid back alleys of life. Nevertheless I pressed down on the handle of the front door to ride beside her, because I thought that was the decent and democratic thing to do. She let me do this, standing beside her, then briskly opened the back door.

I had thought that Mr. Purvis must live in one of the stodgy mansions surrounded by acres of lawns and unfarmed fields north of the city. It was probably the racehorses that had made me think so. Instead, we travelled east through prosperous but not lordly streets, past brick and mock-Tudor houses with their lights on in the early dark and their Christmas lights blinking already out of the snow-capped shrubbery. We turned in at a narrow driveway between high hedges and parked in front of a house that I recognized as
modern
because of its flat roof and long wall of windows and the fact that the building material appeared to be cement. No Christmas lights here, no lights of any kind.

No sign of Mr. Purvis either. The car slid into a basement
cavern, we rode in an elevator up one floor and came out in a hall dimly lit and furnished like a living room with upholstered hard chairs and little polished tables, and mirrors and rugs. Mrs. Winner waved me ahead of her through one of the doors that opened off this hall, into a windowless room with a bench and hooks around the walls. It was just like a school cloakroom except for the polish on the wood and carpet on the floor.

“Here is where you leave your clothes,” Mrs. Winner said.

I removed my boots, I stuffed my mittens into my coat pockets, I hung my coat up. Mrs. Winner stayed with me. I supposed she had to, to show me which way to take next. There was a comb in my pocket and I wanted to fix my hair, but not with her watching. And I did not see a mirror.

“Now the rest.”

She looked straight at me to see if I understood, and when I appeared not to (though in a sense I did, I understood but hoped to have made a mistake) she said, “Don’t worry, you won’t be cold. The house is well heated throughout.”

I did not yet move to obey, and she spoke to me casually, as if she could not be bothered with contempt.

“I hope you’re not a baby.”

I could have reached for my coat, at that point. I could have demanded to be driven back to the rooming house. If that was refused, I could have walked back on my own. I remembered the way we had come and though it would have been cold to walk, it would have taken me less than an hour.

I don’t suppose that the outside door would have been locked, or that there would have been any effort to bring me back.

“Oh no,” said Mrs. Winner, seeing I still did not make a move. “Do you think you’re made any different from the rest of us? You think I haven’t seen all you got before now?”

It was partly her contempt that made me stay. Partly. That and my pride.

I sat down. I removed my shoes. I unfastened and peeled
down my stockings. I stood up and unzipped then yanked off the dress in which I had delivered the valedictory address with its final words of Latin.
Ave atque vale
.

Still reasonably covered by my slip, I reached back and unhooked the fastenings of my brassiere, then somehow hauled the whole thing free of my arms and around to the front, to be discarded in one movement. Next came my garter belt, then my panties—when they were off I balled them up and hid them under the brassiere. I put my feet back into my shoes.

“Bare feet,” said Mrs. Winner, sighing. It seemed the slip was too tiresome for her to mention, but after I had again taken my shoes off she said, “Bare. Do you know the meaning of the word? Bare.”

I pulled the slip over my head and she handed me a bottle of lotion and said, “Rub yourself with this.”

It smelled like Nina. I rubbed some on my arms and shoulders, the only parts of myself that I could touch with Mrs. Winner standing there watching, and then we went out into the hall, my eyes avoiding the mirrors, and she opened another door and I went into the next room alone.

It had never occurred to me that Mr. Purvis might be waiting in the same naked condition as myself, and he was not. He wore a dark blue blazer, a white shirt, an ascot scarf (I did not know it was called that), and gray slacks. He was hardly taller than I was, and he was thin and old, mostly bald, and with wrinkles in his forehead when he smiled.

It had not occurred to me either that the undressing might be a prelude to rape, or to any ceremony but supper. (And indeed it was not to be, to judge by the appetizing smells in the room and the silver-lidded dishes on the sideboard.) Why had I not thought of such a thing? Why was I not more apprehensive? It had something to do with my ideas about old men. I thought that they were not only incapable but too worn down, made too dignified—or depressed—by various trials and experiences
and their own unsavory physical decline to have any interest left. I wasn’t stupid enough to think that my being undressed had nothing to do with the sexual uses of my body, but I took it more as a dare than as a preliminary to further trespass, and my going along with it had more to do with the folly of pride, as I have said, more to do with some shaky recklessness than with anything else.

Here I am, I might have wished to say, in the skin of my body which does not shame me any more than the bareness of my teeth. Of course that was not true and in fact I had broken out in a sweat, although not for fear of any violation.

Mr. Purvis shook hands with me, making no sign of awareness that I lacked clothing. He said it was a pleasure for him to meet Nina’s friend. Just as if I was somebody Nina had brought home from school.

Which in a way was true.

An inspiration to Nina, he said I was.

“She admires you very much. Now, you must be hungry. Shall we see what they’ve provided for us?”

He lifted the lids and set about serving me. Cornish hens, which I took to be pygmy chickens, saffron rice with raisins, various finely cut vegetables fanned out at an angle and preserving their color more faithfully than the vegetables that I regularly saw. A dish of muddy green pickles and a dish of dark red preserve.

“Not too much of these,” Mr. Purvis said of the pickles and the preserve. “A bit hot to start with.”

He ushered me back to the table, turned again to the sideboard and served himself sparingly, and sat down.

There was a pitcher of water on the table, and a bottle of wine. I got the water. Serving me wine in his house, he said, would probably be classed as a capital offense. I was a little disappointed as I had never had a chance to drink wine. When we went to the Old Chelsea, Ernie always expressed his satisfaction
that no wine or liquor was served on Sundays. Not only did he refuse to drink, on Sundays or any other day, but he disliked seeing others do it.

“Now Nina tells me,” said Mr. Purvis, “Nina tells me that you are studying English philosophy, but I think it must be English
and philosophy
, am I right? Because surely there is not so great a supply of English philosophers?”

In spite of his warning, I had taken a dollop of green pickle on my tongue and was too stunned to reply. He waited courteously while I gulped down water.

“We start with Greeks. It’s a survey course,” I said, when I could speak.

“Oh yes. Greece. Well as far as you’ve got with the Greeks, who is your favorite—oh, no, just a minute. It will fall apart more easily like this.”

There followed a demonstration of separating and removing the meat from the bones of a Cornish hen—nicely done, and without condescension, rather as if it was a joke we might share.

“Your favorite?”

“We haven’t got to him yet, we’re doing the pre-Socratics,” I said. “But Plato.”

“Plato is your favorite. So you read ahead, you don’t just stay where you’re supposed to? Plato. Yes, I could have guessed that. You like the cave?”

“Yes.”

“Yes of course. The cave. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

When I was sitting down, the most flagrant part of me was out of sight. If my breasts had been tiny and ornamental, like Nina’s, instead of full and large nippled and bluntly serviceable, I could have been almost at ease. I tried to look at him when I spoke, but against my will I would suffer waves of flushing. When this happened I thought his voice changed slightly, becoming soothing and politely satisfied. Just as if he’d made
a winning move in a game. But he went on talking nimbly and entertainingly, telling me about a trip he had made to Greece. Delphi, the Acropolis, the famous light that you believed couldn’t be true but was true, the bare bones of the Peloponnesus.

“And then to Crete—do you know about the Minoan civilization?”

“Yes.”

“Of course you do. Of course. And you know the way the Minoan ladies dressed?”

“Yes.”

I looked into his face this time, his eyes. I was determined not to squirm away, not even when I felt the heat on my throat.

“Very nice, that style,” he said almost sadly. “Very nice. It’s odd the different things that are hidden in different eras. And the things that are displayed.”

Dessert was vanilla custard and whipped cream, with bits of cake in it, and raspberries. He ate only a few bites of his. But after failing to settle down enough to enjoy the first course, I was determined not to miss out on anything rich and sweet, and I fixed my appetite and attention on every spoonful.

He poured coffee into small cups and said that we would drink it in the library.

My buttocks made a slapping noise, as I loosened myself from the sleek upholstery of the dining room chair. But this was almost covered up by the clatter of the delicate coffee cups on the tray in his shaky old grasp.

Libraries in a house were known to me only from books. This one was entered through a panel in the dining room wall. The panel swung open without a sound, at a touch of his raised foot. He apologized for going ahead of me, as he had to do since he carried the coffee. To me it was a relief. I thought that our backsides—not just mine but everybody’s—were the most beastly part of the body.

When I was seated in the chair he indicated, he gave me my coffee. It was not so easy to sit here, out in the open, as it had been at the dining room table. That chair had been covered with smooth striped silk, but this one was upholstered in some dark plush material, which prickled me. An intimate agitation was set up.

The light in this room was brighter than it had been in the dining room, and the books lining the walls had an expression more disturbing and reproving than the look of the dim dining room with its landscape pictures and light-absorbing panels.

For a moment, as we left one room for the other, I had had some notion of a story—the sort of story I had heard of but that few people then got the chance to read—in which the room referred to as a library would turn out to be a bedroom, with soft lights and puffy cushions and all manner of downy coverings. I did not have time to figure out what I would do in such circumstances, because the room we were in was plainly nothing but a library. The reading lights, the books on the shelves, the invigorating smell of coffee. Mr. Purvis pulling out a book, riffling through its leaves, finding what he wanted.

“It would be very kind if you would read to me. My eyes are tired in the evenings. You know this book?”

A Shropshire Lad
.

I knew it. In fact I knew many of the poems by heart.

I said that I would read.

“And may I ask you please—may I ask you please—not to cross your legs?”

My hands were trembling when I took the book from him.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

He chose a chair in front of the bookcase, facing me.

“Now—”

“On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble—”

Familiar words and rhythms calmed me down. They took me over. Gradually I began to feel more at peace.

The gale, it plies the saplings double
,
It blows so hard, ’twill soon be gone:
To-day the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon
.

Where is Uricon? Who knows?

It wasn’t really that I forgot where I was or who I was with or in what condition I sat there. But I had come to feel somewhat remote and philosophical. The notion came to me that everybody in the world was naked, in a way. Mr. Purvis was naked, though he wore clothes. We were all sad, bare, forked creatures. Shame receded. I just kept turning the pages, reading one poem and then another, then another. Liking the sound of my voice. Until to my surprise and almost to my disappointment—there were still famous lines to come—Mr. Purvis interrupted me. He stood up, he sighed.