Mavis Gallant - The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant

The mourners attending Mr. Cranefield’s party reached the motor road and began to straggle across: It was a point of honor for members of the British colony to pay absolutely no attention to cars. The two widows had fallen back, either so that Barbara could make an entrance, or because the older woman believed it would not be dignified for her to exhibit haste. A strong west wind flattened the black dresses against their breasts and lifted their thick veils.

How will he hear me, Molly wondered. You could speak to someone in a normal grave, for earth is porous and seems to be life, of a kind. But how to speak across marble? Even if she were to place her hands flat on the marble slab, it would not absorb a fraction of human warmth. She had to tell him what she had done — how it was she, Molly, who had led the intruder home, let him in, causing Alec, always courteous, to remove himself first to the hospital, then farther on. Disaster, the usual daily development, had to have a beginning. She would go back to the cemetery, alone, and say it, whether or not he could hear. The disaster began with two sentences: “Mummy, this is Mr. Wilkinson. Mr. Wilkinson wants to tell you how he came to drive me home.”

Barbara descended the steps to Mr. Cranefield’s arm in arm with her new friend, who was for the first time about to see the inside of an English house. “Look at that,” said the older widow. One of the peacocks had taken shelter from the wind in Mr. Cranefield’s electric lift. A minute earlier Alec’s sister had noticed, too, and had thought something that seemed irrefutable: No power on earth would ever induce her to eat a peacock.

Who is to say I never loved Alec, said Barbara, who loved Wilkinson. He was high-handed, yes, laying down the law as long as he was able, but he was always polite. Of course I loved him. I still do. He will have to be buried properly, where we can plant something — white roses. The mayor told me that every once in a while they turn one of the Russians out, to make room. There must be a waiting list. We could put Alec’s name on it. Alec gave me three children. Eric gave me Lou Mas.

Entering Mr. Cranefield’s, she removed her dark veil and hat and revealed her lovely head, like the sun rising. Because the wind had started blowing leaves and sand, Mr. Cranefield’s party had to be moved indoors from the loggia. This change occasioned some confusion, in which Barbara did not take part; neither did Wilkinson, whose wrenched shoulder was making him feel ill. She noticed her children helping, carrying plates of small sandwiches and silver buckets of ice. She approved of this; they were obviously well brought up. The funeral had left Mr. Cranefield’s guests feeling hungry and thirsty and rather lonely, anxious to hold on to a glass and to talk to someone. Presently their voices rose, overlapped, and created something like a thick woven fabric of blurred design, which Alec’s sister (who was not used to large social gatherings) likened to a flying carpet. It was now, with Molly covertly watching her, that Barbara began in the most natural way in the world to live happily ever after. There was nothing willful about this: She was simply borne in a single direction, though she did keep seeing for a time her black glove on her widowed friend’s black sleeve.

Escorting lame Mrs. Massie to a sofa, Mr. Cranefield said they might as well look on the bright side. (He was still speaking about the second half of the 1950s.) Wilkinson, sitting down because he felt sick, and thinking the remark was intended for him, assured Mr. Cranefield, truthfully, that he had never looked anywhere else. It then happened that every person in the room, at the same moment, spoke and thought of something other than Alec. This lapse, this inattention, lasting no longer than was needed to say “No, thank you” or “Oh, really?” or “Yes, I see,” was enough to create the dark gap marking the end of Alec’s span. He ceased to be, and it made absolutely no difference after that whether or not he was forgotten.

W ithout the slightest regard for her feelings or the importance of this day, he had said, “Bring back a sandwich or some bread and pâté, will you, anything you see — oh, and the English papers.” He spoke as if she were going out on a common errand or an ordinary walk — to look at the Eiffel Tower, for instance. A telephone dangled on the wall just above his head; all he had to do was reach. It was true that her hotel gave no meals except breakfast, but he might have made a show of trying. He lay on the bed and watched her preparing for the interview. Her face in the bathroom mirror seemed frightened and small. She gave herself eyes and a mouth, and with them an air of decision. Knowing he was looking on made her jumpy; she kicked the bathroom door shut, but then, as though fearing a reprimand, opened it gently.

He took no notice, no more than her aunt had ever taken of her tantrums, and when she came, repentant, tearful almost, to kiss him good-bye, he simply held out the three postcards he had been writing — identical views of the Seine for his children in England. How could he? There was only one reason — he was evil and jealous and trying to call thunderbolts down on her head. An old notion of economy prevented her from throwing the cards out the window — they were stamped, and stamps seemed for some reason more precious than coins. “I don’t want them,” she said. Her hand struck nervously on the bottle of wine beside the bed.

“No, that’s dangerous,” he said quickly, thinking he saw what she was up to. She was something of a thrower, not at him, but away from him, and always with the same intention — to make him see he had, in some way, slighted her. As he might have done with a frantic puppy, he diverted her with a pack of cigarettes and the corkscrew.

“I don’t want them, leave me alone!” she cried, and flung them out the open window into the court. “This is your fault,” she said, “and now you’ve got nothing to smoke.” But he had a whole carton of cigarettes, bought on the plane, the day before.

He had to console her. “I know,” he said, “I know. But do bring another corkscrew, will you? I really can’t use my teeth.”

Oh, she would pay him out! For this, and for the past, and for failing to see her as she was.

Hours later he was exactly as she had left him — reading, under a torn red lampshade, on the ashy bed. The room smelled of smoke and hot iron radiators. You would not have known that a woman had ever lived in it. The first thing she did was open the window, but the air was cold and the rain too noisy, and she had to close it again. He did not say, “Oh, it’s you,” or “There you are,” or anything that might infuriate her and set her off again. He said, as if he remembered what her day had been about, “How did it go?”

She had no desire except to win his praise. “Leget wants me,” she said. “I don’t mean for this film, but another next summer. He’s getting me a teacher for French and a teacher only for French diction. What do you think of that? He said it was a pity I had spoken English all my life, because it’s so bad for the teeth. Funny that Aunt Freda never thought of it — she was so careful about most things.”

“You could hardly have expected her to bring you up in a foreign language,” he said. “She was English. Millions of people speak English.”

“Yes, and look at them!” She had never heard about the effects of English until today, but it was as if she had known it forever. She could see millions and millions of English-speaking people — black, Asian, and white — each with a misshapen upper jaw. Like her Aunt Freda, he had never been concerned. She gave him a look of slight pity. “Well, it’s happened,” she went on. “I shall be working in Paris, really working, and with him.” She untied her damp head scarf and unbuttoned her coat. “When I am R and F that coat will be lined with mink,” she said. “Coat sixteen guineas, lining six thousand.” R and F meant “rich and famous.” His response was usually “When I am old and ill and poor …” She remembered that he was ill, and she had not brought him his sandwich. She dropped on her knees beside the bed. “Are you all right? Feeling better?” The poor man lay there with an attack of lumbago — at least she supposed that was what it was. He had never been unwell before, not for a second. Perhaps he had put something out of joint carrying his things at the airport, but that seemed unlikely. He had come with just one small case and a typewriter, as if he were meeting her for the weekend instead of for life.