И. Маевская: Лучшие истории о любви / Best love stories

“But there’s nothing left there, honey.”

“I don’t care.”

We walked downtown. The taxi driver in front of the hotel repeated her objection: “Nothing there now, cap.”

“Never mind. Go there anyhow. I want to find where I used to live.”

He obeyed, with professional disgust.

“You won’t find a single thing, darling,” said Ailie. “The contractors took it all down. [46]”

We rode slowly along the margin of the fields. It might have been here —

“All right. I want to get out,” I said suddenly.

I left Ailie sitting in the car, looking very beautiful with the warm breeze stirring her long, curly hair.

It might have been here. That would make the company streets down there and the mess, where we dined that night, just over the way.

The taxi driver regarded me indulgently while I stumbled here and there in the knee-deep underbrush, looking for my youth. I tried to find a vaguely familiar clump of trees, but it was growing darker now and I couldn’t be quite sure they were the right trees.

“They’re going to fix up the old race course, [47]” Ailie called from the car.

No. Upon consideration they didn’t look like the right trees. All I could be sure of was this place that had once been so full of life and effort was gone, as if it had never existed, and that in another month Ailie would be gone, and the South would be empty for me forever.

There was little chance but Donald was in the mood, healthy and bored, with a sense of tiresome duty done. He was now rewarding himself. Maybe.

When the plane landed he stepped out into a mid-western summer night and headed for the isolated airport. He did not know whether she was alive, or living in this town, or what was her present name. With mounting excitement he looked through the phone book for her father who might be dead too, somewhere in these twenty years.

No. Judge Harmon Holmes – Hillside 3194.

A woman’s amused voice answered his inquiry for Miss Nancy Holmes.

‘Nancy is Mrs Walter Gifford now. Who is this?’

But Donald hung up without answering. He had found out what he wanted to know and had only three hours. He did not remember any Walter Gifford and there was another suspended moment while he scanned the phone book. She might have married out of town.

No. Walter Gifford – Hillside 1191. Blood flowed back into his fingertips.

‘Hello?’

‘Hello. Is Mrs Gifford there – this is an old friend of hers.’

‘This is Mrs Gifford.’

He remembered, or thought he remembered, the funny magic in the voice.

‘This is Donald Plant. I haven’t seen you since I was twelve years old.’

‘Oh-h-h!’ The tone was totally surprised, very polite, but he could distinguish in it neither joy nor certain recognition.

‘ – Donald!’ added the voice. This time there was something more in it than struggling memory.

‘…when did you come back to town?’ Then cordially, ‘Where are you?’

‘I’m out at the airport – for just a few hours.’

‘Well, come up and see me.’

‘Sure you’re not just going to bed?’

‘Heavens, no!’ she exclaimed. ‘I was sitting here – having a highball [48]by myself. Just tell your taxi man…’

On his way Donald analysed the conversation. His words ‘at the airport’ meant that he had retained his position in the upper bourgeoisie. Nancy’s aloneness might indicate that she had matured into an unattractive woman without friends. Her husband might be either away or in bed. And – because she was always ten years old in his dreams – the highball shocked him. But he thought with a smile – she was very close to thirty.

At the end of a curved drive [49]he saw a dark-haired little beauty standing against the lighted door, a glass in her hand. Startled by her final materialization, Donald got out of the cab, saying:

‘Mrs Gifford?’

She turned on the porch light and stared at him, wide-eyed and tentative. A smile broke through the puzzled expression.

‘Donald – it is you – we all change so. Oh, this is remarkable!’

As they walked inside, their voices repeated the words ‘all these years’, and Donald felt a sinking in his stomach. In part because of a vision of their last meeting – when she rode past him on a bicycle, cutting him dead [50]– and in part because of fear lest they have nothing to say. It was like a college reunion – but there the failure to find the past was disguised by the hasty lively atmosphere. Horrified, he realized that this might be a long and empty hour.

‘You always were a lovely person. But I’m a little shocked to find you as beautiful as you are,’ he said desperately.

It worked. The immediate recognition of their changed state, the bold compliment, made them interesting strangers instead of fumbling childhood friends.

‘Have a highball?’ she asked. ‘No? Please don’t think I’ve become a secret drinker, but this was a sad night. I expected my husband but he wired he’d be two days longer. He’s very nice, Donald, and very attractive. Rather your type.’ She hesitated, ‘ – and I think he’s interested in someone in New York – and I don’t know.’

‘After seeing you it sounds impossible,’ he assured her. ‘I was married for six years, and there was a time I tortured myself that way. Then one day I just put jealousy out of my life forever. After my wife died I was very glad of that. It left a very rich memory – nothing spoiled or hard to think over.’

She looked at him attentively, then sympathetically as he spoke.

‘I’m very sorry,’ she said. And after a proper moment, ‘You’ve changed a lot. Turn your head. I remember father saying, “That boy has a brain.”’

‘You probably argued against it.’

‘I was impressed. Up to then I thought everybody had a brain. That’s why I still remember it very well.’

‘What else do you remember?’ he asked smiling.

Suddenly Nancy got up and walked quickly a little away.

‘Ah, now,’ she reproached him. ‘That isn’t fair! I suppose I was a naughty girl.’

‘You were not,’ he said stoutly. ‘And I will have a drink now.’

As she poured it, her face still turned from him, he continued:

‘Do you think you were the only little girl who was ever kissed?’

‘Do you like the subject?’ she asked. Her momentary irritation melted and she said: ‘What the hell! We did have fun. Like in the song.’

‘On the sleigh ride. [51]’

‘Yes – and somebody’s picnic – Trudy James’s. And at Frontenac that summer.’

It was the sleigh ride he remembered most and kissing her cool cheeks in the straw in one corner while she laughed up at the cold white stars. The couple next to them had their backs turned and he kissed her little neck and her ears and never her lips.

‘And the Macks’ party where they played post office and I couldn’t go because I had the mumps, [52]’ he said.

‘I don’t remember that.’

‘Oh, you were there. And you were kissed and I was crazy with jealousy like I never have been since.’

‘Funny I don’t remember. Maybe I wanted to forget.’

‘But why?’ he asked in amusement. ‘We were two perfectly innocent kids. Nancy, whenever I talked to my wife about the past, I told her you were the girl I loved almost as much as I loved her. But I think I really loved you just as much. When we moved out of town I kept you in my heart.’

‘Were you that much – in love?’

‘My God, yes! I – ’ He suddenly realized that they were standing just two feet from each other, that he was talking as if he loved her in the present, that she was looking up at him with her lips half-parted and a clouded look in her eyes.