Дэймон Найт: Orbit 6

‘Your father’s going to sleep at ten,’ said my mother. ‘Be back by eleven. Be happy.’ And she kissed me.

But Ruth’s father, who drove Ruth and I and Ruth’s mother and our guest to the Country Club, did not laugh. And neither did anyone else. Our visitor seemed to have put on a strange gracefulness with her dress, and a strange sort of kindliness, too, so that Ruth, who had never seen her but had only heard rumours about her, cried out, ‘Your friend’s lovely!’ and Ruth’s father, who taught mathematics at high school, said (clearing his throat), ‘It must be lonely staying in,’ and our visitor said only, ‘Yes. Oh yes. It is,’ resting one immensely long, thin, elegant hand on his shoulder like some kind of unwinking spider, while his words and hers went echoing out into the night, back and forth, back and forth, losing themselves in the trees that rushed past the headlights and massed blackly to each side.

‘Ruth wants to join a circus!’ cried Ruth’s mother, laughing.

‘I do not! said Ruth.

‘You will not,’ said her father.

‘I’ll do exactly as I please,’ said Ruth with her nose in the air, and she took a chocolate cream out of her handbag and put in her mouth.

‘You will not! said Ruth’s father, scandalized.

‘Daddy, you know I will too,’ said Ruth, serenely though somewhat muffled, and under cover of the dark she wormed over to me in the back seat and passed, from her hot hand to mine, another chocolate cream. I ate it; it was unpleasantly and piercingly sweet.

‘Isn’t it glorious! said Ruth.

The Country Club was much more bare than I had expected, really only a big frame building with a veranda three-quarters of the way around it and not much lawn, but there was a path down front to two stone pillars that made a kind of gate and somebody had strung the gate and the whole path with coloured Chinese lanterns. That part was lovely. Inside, the whole first storey was one room, with a varnished floor like the high school gym, and a punch table at one end and ribbons and Chinese lanterns hung all over the ceiling. It did not look quite like the movies but everything was beautifully painted. I had noticed that there were wicker armchairs scattered on the veranda. I decided it was ‘nice’. Behind the punch table was a flight of stairs that led to a gallery full of tables where the grown-ups could go and drink (Ruth insisted they would be bringing real liquor for ‘mixes’, although of course the Country Club had to pretend not to know about that) and on both sides of the big room french windows that opened on to the veranda and the Chinese lanterns, swinging a little in the breeze. Ruth was wearing a better dress than mine. We went over to the punch table and drank punch while she asked me about our visitor and I made up a lot of lies. ‘You don’t know anything,’ said Ruth. She waved across the room to some friends of hers; then I could see her start dancing with a boy in front of the band, which was at the other end of the room. Older people were dancing and people’s parent’s, some older boys and girls. I stayed by the punch table. People who knew my parents came over and talked to me; they asked me how I was and I said I was fine; then they asked me how my father was and I said he was fine. Someone offered to introduce me to someone but I said I knew him. I hoped somebody would come over. I thought I would skirt around the dance floor and try to talk to some of the girls I knew, but then I thought I wouldn’t; I imagined myself going up the stairs with Iris March’s lover from The Green Hat to sit at a table and smoke a cigarette or drink something. I stepped behind the punch table and went out through the french windows. Our guest was a few chairs away with her feet stretched out, resting on the lowest rug of the veranda. She was reading a magazine with the aid of a small flashlight. The flowers planted around the veranda showed up a little in the light from the Chinese lanterns: shadowy clumps and masses of petunias, a few of the white ones springing into life as she turned the page of her book and the beam of the flashlight moved in her hand. I decided I would have my cigarette in a long holder. The moon was coming up over the woods past the Country Club lawns, but it was a cloudy night and all I could see was a vague lightening of the sky that direction. It was rather warm. I remembered something about an ivory cigarette holder flaunting at the moon. Our visitor turned another page. I thought that she must have been aware of me. I thought again of Iris March’s lover, coming out to get me on the ‘terrace’ when somebody tapped me on the shoulder; it was Ruth’s father. He took me by the wrist and led me to our visitor, who looked up and smiled vaguely, dreamily, in the dark under the coloured lanterns. Then Ruth’s father said:

‘What do you know? There’s a relative of yours inside!’ She continued to smile but her face stopped moving; she smiled gently and with tenderness at the space next to his head for the barely perceptible part of a moment. Then she completed the swing of her head and looked at him, still smiling, but everything had gone out of it.

‘How lovely,’ she said. Then she said, ‘Who is it?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Ruth’s father, ‘but he’s tall, looks just like you — beg pardon. He says he’s your cousin.’

‘Por nada,’ said our guest absently, and getting up, she shook hands with Ruth’s father. The three of us went back inside. She left the magazine and flashlight on the chair; they seemed to belong to the Club. Inside, Ruth’s father took us up the steps to the gallery and there, at the end of it, sitting at one of the tables, was a man even taller than our visitor, tall even sitting down. He was in evening dress while half the men at the dance were in business suits. He did not really look like her in the face; he was a little darker and a little flatter of feature; but as we approached him, he stood up. He almost reached the ceiling. He was a giant. He and our visitor did not shake hands. The both of them looked at Ruth’s father, smiling formally, and Ruth’s father left us; then the stranger looked quizzically at me but our guest had already sunk into a nearby seat, all willowiness, all grace. They made a handsome couple. The stranger brought a silver-inlaid flask out of his hip pocket; he took the pitcher of water that stood on the table and poured some into a clean glass. Then he added whisky from the flask, but our visitor did not take it. She only turned it aside, amused, with one finger, and said to me, ‘Sit down, child,’ which I did. Then she said:

‘Cousin, how did you find me?’

‘Par chance, cousin,’ said the stranger. ‘By luck.’ He screwed the top back on the flask very deliberately and put the whole thing back in his pocket. He began to stir the drink he had made with a wooden muddler provided by the Country Club.

‘I have endured much annoyance,’ he said, ‘from that man to whom you spoke. There is not a single specialized here; they are all half-brained; scattered and stupid.’

‘He is a kind and clever man,’ said she. ‘He teaches mathematics.’

‘The more fool he,’ said the stranger, ‘for the mathematics he thinks he teaches!’ and he drank his own drink. Then he said, ‘I think we will go home now.’

‘Eh! This person?’ said my friend, drawing up the ends of her lips half scornfully, half amused. ‘Not this person!’

‘Why not this person, who knows me?’ said the strange man.

‘Because,’ said our visitor, and turning deliberately away from me, she put her face next to his and began to whisper mischievously in his ear. She was watching the dancers on the floor below, half the men in business suits, half the couples middle-aged. Ruth and Betty and some of their friends, and some vacationing college boys. The band was playing the foxtrot. The strange man’s face altered just a little; it darkened; he finished his drink, put it down, and then swung massively in his seat to face me.