Mavis Gallant - The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant

T he great age of the winter society Walter Henderson frequents on the French Riviera makes him seem young to himself and a stripling to his friends. In a world of elderly widows his relative youth appears a virtue, his existence as a bachelor a precious state. All winter long he drives his sporty little Singer over empty roads, on his way to parties at Beaulieu, or Roquebrune, or Cap Ferrat. From the sea he and his car must look like a drawing of insects: a firefly and a flea. He drives gaily, as if it were summer. He is often late. He has a disarming gesture of smoothing his hair as he makes his apologies. Sometimes his excuse has to do with Angelo, his hilarious and unpredictable manservant. Or else it is Mme. Rossi, the femme de ménage , who has been having a moody day. William of Orange, Walter’s big old ginger tomcat, comes into the account. As Walter describes his household, he is the victim of servants and pet animals, he is chief player in an endless imbroglio of intrigue, swindle, cuckoldry — all of it funny, of course; haven’t we laughed at Molière?

“Darling Walter,” his great friend Mrs. Wiggott has often said to him. “This could only happen to you.”

He tells his stories in peaceful dining rooms, to a circle of loving, attentive faces. He is surrounded by the faces of women. Their eyes are fixed on his dotingly, but in homage to another man: a young lover killed in the 1914 war; an adored but faithless son. “Naughty Walter,” murmurs Mrs. Wiggott. “Wicked boy.” Walter must be wicked, for part of the memory of every vanished husband or lover or son is the print of his cruelty. Walter’s old friends are nursing bruised hearts. Mrs. Wiggott’s injuries span four husbands, counted on four arthritic fingers — the gambler, the dipsomaniac, the dago, and poor Wiggott, who ate a good breakfast one morning and walked straight in front of a train. “None of my husbands was from my own walk of life,” Mrs. Wiggott has said to Walter. “I made such mistakes with men, trying to bring them up to my level. I’ve often thought, Walter, if only I had met you forty years ago!”

“Yes, indeed,” says Walter heartily, smoothing his hair.

They have lost their time sense in this easy climate; when Mrs. Wiggott was on the lookout for a second husband forty years ago, Walter was five.

“If your life isn’t exactly the way you want it to be by the time you are forty-five,” said Walter’s father, whom he admired, “not much point in continuing. You might as well hang yourself.” He also said, “Parenthood is sacred. Don’t go about creating children right and left”; this when Walter was twelve. Walter’s Irish grandmother said, “Don’t touch the maids,” which at least was practical. “I stick to the women who respect and admire me,” declared his godfather. He was a bachelor, a great diner-out, “What good is beauty to a boy?” Walter’s mother lamented. “I have such a plain little girl, poor little Eve. Couldn’t it have been shared?” “Nothing fades faster than the beauty of a boy.” Walter has read that, but cannot remember where.

A mosaic picture of Walter’s life early in the summer of his forty-fifth year would have shown him dead center, where nothing can seem more upsetting than a punctured tire or more thrilling than a sunny day. On his right is Angelo, the comic valet. Years ago, Angelo followed Walter through the streets of a shadeless, hideous town. He was begging for coins; that was their introduction. Now he is seventeen, and quick as a knife. In the mosaic image, Walter’s creation, he is indolent, capricious, more trouble than he is worth. Mme. Rossi, the femme de ménage , is made to smile. She is slovenly but good-tempered, she sings, her feet are at ease in decaying shoes. Walter puts it about that she is in love with a driver on the Monte Carlo bus. That is the role he has given her in his dinner-party stories. He has to say something about her to bring her to life. The cat, William of Orange, is in Angelo’s arms. As a cat, he is film star, prizefighter, and stubbornness itself; as a personality, he lives in a cloud of black thoughts. The figures make a balanced and nearly perfect design, supported by a frieze of pallida iris in mauve, purple, and white.

The house in the background, the stucco façade with yellow shutters, three brick steps, and Venetian door, is called Les Anémones. It belongs to two spinsters, Miss Cooper and Miss Le Chaine. They let Walter live here, rent-free, with the understanding that he pay the property taxes, which are small, and keep the garden alive and the roof in repair. Miss Cooper is headmistress of a school in England; Miss Le Chaine is her oldest friend. When Miss Cooper retires from her post fifteen years from now, she and Miss Le Chaine plan to come down to the Riviera and live in Les Anémones forever. Walter will then be sixty years of age and homeless. He supposes he ought to be doing something about it; he ought to start looking around for another place. He sees himself, aged sixty, Mrs. Wiggott’s permanent guest, pushing her in a Bath chair along the Promenade des Anglais at Nice. It is such a disgusting prospect that he hates Mrs. Wiggott because of the imaginary chair.

Walter knows that pushing a Bath chair would be small return for everything Mrs. Wiggott has done for him: It was Mrs. Wiggott who persuaded Miss Cooper and Miss Le Chaine there might be a revolution here — nothing to do with politics, just a wild upheaval of some kind. (Among Walter’s hostesses, chaos is expected from week to week, and in some seasons almost hourly.) With revolution a certain future, is it not wise to have someone like Walter in charge of one’s house? Someone who will die on the brick doorstep, if need be, in the interests of Miss Cooper and Miss Le Chaine? Having had a free house for many years, and desiring the arrangement to continue, Walter will feel he has something to defend. So runs Mrs. Wiggott’s reasoning, and it does sound sane. It sounded sane to the two ladies in England, luckily for him. He does not expect a revolution, because he does not expect anything; he would probably defend Les Anémones because he couldn’t imagine where else he might go. This house is a godsend, because Walter is hard up. In spite of the total appearance of the mosaic, he has to live very carefully indeed, never wanting anything beyond the moment. He has a pension from the last war, and he shares the income of a small trust fund with his sister, Eve, married and farming in South Africa. When anyone asks Walter why he has never married, he smiles and says he cannot support a wife. No argument there.

This picture belongs to the winter months. Summer is something else. In all seasons the sea is blocked from his view by a large hotel. From May to October, this hotel is festooned with drying bathing suits. Its kitchen sends the steam of tons of boiled potatoes over Walter’s hedge. His hostesses have fled the heat; his telephone is still. He lolls on a garden chair, rereading his boyhood books — the Kipling, the bound albums of Chums . He tries to give Angelo lessons in English literature, using his old schoolbooks, but Angelo is silly, laughs; and if Walter persists in trying to teach him anything, he says he feels sick. Mme. Rossi carries ice up from the shop in a string bag. It is half melted when she arrives, and it leaves its trail along the path and over the terrace and through the house to the kitchen. In August, even she goes to the mountains, leaving Walter, Angelo, and the cat to get on as best they can. Walter wraps a sliver of ice in a handkerchief and presses the handkerchief to his wrists. He is deafened by cicadas and nauseated by the smell of jasmine. His skin does not sweat; most of his body is covered with puckered scars. Twenty years ago, he was badly burned. He reads, but does not quite know what he is reading. Fortunately, his old books were committed to memory years before.