James Salter - All That Is

In the morning she had no makeup. For some reason—the purity of her bare features—she looked like a Swede. She talked about her marriage. Her ex-husband had been a businessman, a sales manager. In the daylight the house seemed drab. There were no bookshelves. The magical dining room, he noticed, had some kind of striped wallpaper. It had been there when they moved in, she said.

It was all still asleep, untouched by the wand. Along the road there were farmhouses, some with their land, and one, old and white, that was a boardinghouse. You could rent a room by the week or for the season and look out at the flat, unbroken fields and walk meditatively or ride a crippled bicycle to the beach about a mile away. Further along was a cemetery that the road split around like a wrecked ship and still further a drab, unpainted house beneath the trees that was rented to young people who sometimes had parties outside at the end of the day and into the evening, cars parked around haphazardly and pitchers of cheap wine.

In earlier years the painters had all come because it was cheap and because of the light, clear, transcendent light that seemed to come for miles in the long afternoon. Life was casual. There were large houses behind the hedges and others on flag lots, some from the earliest days. The flood of discovery had not yet swept in. Simple cottages, some belonging to the farmers, stood on the dunes.

The country suited Christine, she said this herself. It was beautiful and open. The light was such as you had never seen, the air and the wind from the sea. She avoided going back to the city and Bowman came on the long weekends. Her feeling of happiness greeted him. Her glorious smile. At the roadside stand with its flatbeds of produce, fresh corn, tomatoes, strawberries right from the field, they recognized her. Normally hardened to customers, when she stood at the counter with her arms filled, they relented and smiled.

She had decided to renew her broker’s license, and she went to see Evelyn Hinds, whose name she’d seen on For Sale signs. Mrs. Hinds’ office was in her house just off New Town Lane, white with a white picket fence and a neatly lettered sign.

Evelyn Hinds was a dumpling of a woman with bright eyes that took things in immediately and a ready laugh. She was at ease with people. Her first husband had crashed at sea—it was thought he crashed, no one ever saw him again—but she’d been married two times after that and was on good terms with both her former husbands. Christine came to see her in dark slacks and a short linen jacket.

“Chris, can I call you that?” Mrs. Hinds said. “How old are you, do you mind my asking?”

“Thirty-four,” Christine said.

“Thirty-four. Really? You don’t look it.”

“Well, it’s worse than that. I sometimes claim to be a bit younger.”

“And you live out here?”

“Yes, I’m living here now. I have a sixteen-year-old daughter. I was a broker in the city for seven years.”

It was not quite that long but Mrs. Hinds didn’t question it.

“Who were you with?” she said.

“A small firm in the village, Walter Bruno.”

“Did you do sales or rentals?”

“I did mostly sales.”

“I love to put customers together with houses.”

“I like that, too.”

“It’s like marrying them off. Are you married?”

“No, I’m separated,” Christine said. “I’m not looking for a husband.”

“Thank goodness.”

“What do you mean?”

“No one else would have a chance,” Mrs. Hinds said.

She liked Christine and took her on.

It was a small agency, just four of them. She told Bowman she was going to like it.

“I’ve seen her name,” he said. “What’s she like?”

“Very straightforward, but there’s one other important thing. Now that I’m doing it again,” she said, “I’ll find you a house.”

Anet, who had come home from school, was waiting at the station with her mother, and Bowman met her for the first time when he got off the train. She had a fresh, young face and hung behind Christine a bit. Car doors were slamming and families calling out to one another.

“These have been the most beautiful days,” Christine told him as they walked to the car. “They say it’s going to be like this all through the weekend.”

“When did you get here?” he asked Anet.

He wanted it to be easy between them.

“When did I get here?” she turned to Christine.

“On Wednesday.”

“It’s great to have you here,” he said.

They worked their way out of the traffic around the station and went along in the early evening, the headlights bright and flowing ahead like an invitation to a wondrous night.

“Where should we go?” he said to Christine. “Did you make dinner?”

“I have some things at home,” she said.

“Should we go to Billy’s? Let’s go there. Have you been to any of these places yet?” he asked Anet somewhat foolishly.

“No,” she said.

“I’d rather go to that first place, the two brothers,” Christine said.

“You’re right. That’s a better idea.”

As they went up the steps and then in, Bowman felt a full-bodied happiness, the two women and the aura they gave. Anet talked during the meal but only to her mother. Bowman enjoyed it, however. It seemed comfortable. They drove home through a deep, luxurious blue, past houses with their reassuring lights.

Anet was not shy but she kept her distance from him. She belonged to her mother and, certainly, to her father. She was loyal to them both. It was hard to win her acceptance. He also sensed her unhappiness that he was her mother’s lover, a word he never used—there was a jealousy born in the blood. She expressed it by excluding him although they sometimes sat together, the three of them, in a natural way listening to music or watching TV. He noticed the womanly gestures that were like her mother’s. He was always, despite himself, aware of her presence in the house, sometimes terrifically aware. His thoughts went back to Jackie Ettinger, the girl long ago in Summit, the almost mythic girl. He never knew Jackie. It seemed he would not know Anet either.

When he was away from her—during the week—he was able to think about it more calmly, the figure he wanted to be, the longtime consort—that was not the word—the man her mother loved, probably not in any way more sexually than Anet’s father although that was clearly not so, given the intensity of Bowman’s feelings, an emotional intensity that was almost constantly present.

On a Sunday morning when the heat of the day had not yet begun but the light was dazzling all along the beach, the surf in a line almost violent in its brightness, they sat near the dunes with sections of the paper, reading in contemplation, feeling the sun. The water was cold, there were only a few other people. It was like Mexico, he felt, though he had never been there. The simplicity. It was June and summer had arrived. People were there but not yet the crowds. It was a kind of exile. They were reading what had happened in the world. When the sun was above their shoulders they would go home for lunch.

The Murphys in Antibes must have had such a life. They’d had a house, themselves, further east. Gerald Murphy liked to swim and swam for a mile in the ocean every day. Bowman had mentioned this but to no one’s interest. Other people, three or four of them, were swimming he noticed. He got up and went down to the water. He was surprised to find it warmer than he expected. It came in around his ankles almost temptingly. He went in up to his knees.

He came back to where they were lying near the weathered palings.

“The water’s warm,” he said.