Mavis Gallant - The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant

“It’s all right, Meg,” said Roy. “Sarah favors the cooking of the underdeveloped countries. All our meals are raw and drowned in yogurt.” He said it so kindly Sarah had to laugh. For a time she had tried to make them all eat out of her aunt’s bowls, but the untreated wood became stained and Roy found it disgusting. The sight of Sarah scouring them out with ashes did not make him less squeamish. He was, in fact, surprisingly finicky for someone who had spent a lifetime around colonial prisons. A dead mosquito made him sick — even the mention of one.

“It is true that Roy has never lacked for pretty girls,” said Tim. “We should know, eh, Roy?” Roy and the Reeves talked quite a lot about his personal affairs, as if a barrier of discretion had long ago been breached. They were uncomfortable stories, a little harsh sometimes for Sarah’s taste. Roy now suddenly chose to tell about how he had met his future brother-in-law in a brothel in Hong Kong — by accident, of course. They became the best of friends and remained so, even after Roy’s engagement was broken off.

“Why’d she dump you?” Sarah said. “She found out?”

Her way of asking plain questions froze the others. They looked as if winter had swept over the little terrace and caught them. Then Roy took Sarah’s hand and said, “I’m ashamed to say I wasn’t gallant — I dumped the lady.”

“Old Roy probably thought, um, matrimony,” said Tim. “Eh, Meg?” This was because marriage was supposed to be splendid for Tim but somehow confining for his wife.

“She said I was venomous,” said Roy, looking at Sarah, who knew he was not.

“She surely didn’t mean venomous,” said Tim. “She meant something more like, moody.” Here he lapsed into a mood of his own, staring at the candles on the table, and Sarah remembered her shared vision of his unassuming gravestone; she said to Roy in an undertone, “Is anything wrong with him?”

“Wrong with him? Wrong with old Tim? Tim!” Roy called, as if he were out of sight instead of across the table. “When was the last time you ever had a day’s illness?”

“I was sick on a Channel crossing — I might have been ten,” said Tim.

“Nothing’s the matter with Tim, I can promise you that,” said his wife. “Never a headache, never a cold, no flu, no rheumatism, no gout, nothing.”

“Doesn’t feel the amount he drinks,” said Roy.

“Are you ever sick, Mrs. Reeve?” Sarah asked.

“Oh, poor Meg,” said Tim immediately. “You won’t get a word out of her. Never speaks of herself.”

“The ailments of old parties can’t possibly interest Sarah,” said Meg. “Here, Roy, give Sarah something to drink,” meaning that her own glass was empty. “My niece Lisbet will be here for a weekend. Now, that’s an interesting girl. She interviews people for jobs. She can see straight through them, mentally speaking. She had stiff training — had to see a trick cyclist for a year.”

“I abhor that subject,” said Roy. “No sensible prison governor ever allowed a trick cyclist anywhere near. The good were good and the bad were bad and everyone knew it.”

“Psycho-whatnot does not harm if the person is sound,” said Meg. “Lisbet just went week after week and had a jolly old giggle with the chap. The firm was paying.”

“A didactic analysis is a waste of time,” said Sarah, chilling them all once more.

“I didn’t say that or anything like it,” said Meg. “I said the firm was paying. But you’re a bit out of it, Roy,” turning to him and heaving her vast garments so Sarah was cut out. “Lisbet said it did help her. You wouldn’t believe the number of people she turns away, whatever their education. She can tell if they are likely to have asthma. She saves the firm thousands of pounds every year.”

“Lisbet can see when they’re queer,” said Tim.

“What the hell do you mean?” said Roy.

“What did she tell you?” said Meg, now extremely annoyed. “Come on, Tim, get to Friday.”

But Tim had gone back to contemplating his life on the Other Side, and they could obtain nothing further.

Sarah forgot all about Mrs. Reeve’s niece until Lisbet turned up, wearing a poncho, black pants, and bracelets. She was about Roy’s age. All over her head was a froth of kinky yellow hair — a sort of Little Orphan Annie wig. She stared with small blue eyes and gave Sarah a boy’s handshake. She said, “So you’re the famous one!”

Sarah had come back from the market to find them all drinking beer in The Tunnel. Her shirt stuck to her back. She pulled it away and said, “Famous one what?” From the way Lisbet laughed she guessed she had been described as a famous comic turn. Roy handed Sarah a glass without looking at her. Roy and Tim were talking about how to keep Lisbet amused for the weekend. Everything was displayed — the night racing at Cagnes, the gambling, the smuggling from Italy, which bored Sarah but which even Roy did for amusement. “A picnic,” Sarah said, getting in something she liked. Also, it sounded cool. The Hayeses, those anxious tourists at her hotel in Nice, suddenly rose up in her mind offering advice. “There’s this chapel,” she said, feeling a spiky nostalgia, as if she were describing something from home. “Remember, Roy, I mentioned it? Nobody goes there.… You have to get the keys from a café in the village. You can picnic in the churchyard; it has a gate and a wall. There’s a river where we washed our hands. The book said it used to be a pagan place. It has these paintings now, of the Last Judgment, and Jesus, naturally, and one of Judas after he hung himself.”

“Hanged,” said Roy and Lisbet together.

“Hanged. Well, somebody had really seen a hanging — the one who painted it, I mean.”

“Have you?” said Roy, smiling.

“No, but I can imagine.”

“No,” he said, still smiling. “You can’t. All right, I’m for the picnic. Sunday, then. We’ll do Italy tomorrow.”

His guests got up to leave. Tim suddenly said, for no reason Sarah could see, “I’m glad I’m not young.”

As soon as the others were out of earshot Roy said, “God, what a cow! Planeloads of Lisbets used to come out to Asia looking for civil-service husbands. Now they fly to Majorca and sleep with the waiters.”

“Why do we have to be nice to her, if you feel like that?” said Sarah.

“Why don’t you know about these things without asking?” said Roy.

My father didn’t bring me up well, Sarah thought, and resolved to write and tell him so. Mr. Holmes would not have been nice to Lisbet and then called her a cow. He might have done one or the other, or neither. His dilemma as a widower was insoluble; he could never be too nice for fear of someone’s taking it into her head that Sarah wanted a mother. Also, he was not violent about people, even those he had to eliminate. That was why he gave them comic names. “Perhaps you are right,” she said to Roy, without being any more specific. He cared for praise, however ambiguous; and so they had a perfect day, and a perfect night, but those were the last: In the morning, as Sarah stood on the table to tie one end of a clothesline to the plane tree, she slipped, had to jump, landed badly, and sprained her ankle. By noon the skin was purple and she had to cut off her canvas shoe. The foot needed to be bandaged, but not by Roy: The very sight of it made him sick. He could not bear a speck of dust anywhere, or a chipped cup. She remembered the wooden bowls, and how he’d had to leave the table once because they looked a little doubtful, not too clean. Lisbet was summoned. Kneeling, she wrapped Sarah’s foot and ankle in strips of a torn towel and fixed the strips with safety pins.

“It’ll do till I see a doctor,” Sarah said.