Mavis Gallant - The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant

The girl’s letter had been written on a line guide. Her hand was firm. “Dear Uncle Walter,” she said. “Thank you for letting us sleep in your house and for everything too. We had a lovely time. Will you please tell Angelo that on the way to Paris Daddy was fined 900 francs for overtaking in a village. He was livid. On Monday I had two teeth out, one on each side. I hope the hamster is healthy. Will you please tell Angelo that our trunks have arrived with my books and he can have one as a present from me, if he will tell me which one he likes best.

Successful Show Jumping

Bridle Wise

Pink and Scarlet

The Young Rider

“These are my favorites and so I would like him to have one. Also, here is a poem I have copied out for him from a book.

FROM THE DREAM OF AN OLD MELTONIAN

by W. Bromley Davenport

Though a rough-riding world may bespatter your breeches

Though sorrow may cross you, or slander revile,

Though you plunge overhead in misfortune’s blind ditches,

Shun the gap of deception — the hand gate of guile.

“Tell Angelo we miss him, and William of Orange, and the hamster too. Thank you again for everything. Your affectionate niece, Mary.”

Walking to the kitchen with the letters in his hand, he tried to see the passionate child — dancer, he had thought — on the summer beach. But although eight days had passed, no more, he had forgotten what she was like. He tried to think of England then. Someone had told him the elms were going, because of an American disease. He knew that all this thinking and drifting was covering one displeasure, one blister on his pride: It was Mary’s letter he had been waiting for.

“These letters are intended for you,” he said, and put them in Angelo’s hands. “They were addressed to me by mistake. Or perhaps the family didn’t know your full name. I didn’t know you were interested in horses, by the way.”

Angelo sat at the kitchen table, cleaning the hamster’s cage. Mme. Rossi sat facing him. Neither of them rose. “Master-servant,” Eve had said. She ought to have seen Angelo’s casual manner now, the way he accepted his morning’s post — as though Walter were the servant. The boy’s secretive face bent over the letters. Already Angelo’s tears were falling. Walter watched, exasperated, as the ink dissolved.

“You can’t keep on crying every time I mention the children,” he said. “Look at the letters now. You won’t be able to read them.”

“He is missing the family,” Mme. Rossi said. “Even though they made more work for him. He cries the whole day.”

Of course he was missing the family. He was missing the family, the children were missing him. Walter looked at the boy’s face, which seemed as closed and vain as a cat’s. “They meant more work for you,” he said. “Did you hear that?”

“We could have kept the children,” Angelo mumbled. His lips hung open. His face was Negroid, plump. One day he would certainly be fat.

“What, brought them up?”

“Only for one week,” said Angelo, wiping his eyes.

“It seems to me you overheard rather a good deal.” Another thought came to him: It would have been a great responsibility. He felt aggrieved that Angelo did not take into consideration the responsibilities Walter already had — for instance, he was responsible for Angelo’s being in France. If Angelo were to steal a car and smash it, Walter would have to make good the loss. He was responsible for the house, which was not his, and for William of Orange, who was no better and no worse, but lay nearly paralyzed in a cardboard box, demanding much of Angelo’s attention. Now he was responsible for a hamster in a cage.

“They would have taken me on the farm,” Angelo said.

“Nonsense.” Walter remembered how Eve avoided a brawl, and he imitated her deliberately mild manner. He understood now that they had been plotting behind his back. He had raised Angelo in cotton wool, taught him Kipling and gardening and how to wash the car, fed him the best food … “My brother-in-law is Irish,” he said. “You mustn’t think his promises are real.”

The boy sat without moving, expressionless, sly. He was waiting for Walter to leave the room so that he could have the letters to himself.

“Would you like to go home, Angelo?” Walter said. “Would you like to go back and live in Italy, back with your family?” Angelo shook his head. Of course he would say no to that; for one thing, they relied on his pocket money — on the postal orders he sent them. An idea came to Walter. “We shall send for your mother,” he said. The idea was radiant now. “We shall bring your old mother here for a visit. Why not? That’s what we shall do. Bring your mother here. She can talk to you. I’m sure that is all you need.”

“Can you imagine that lazy boy on an English farm?” said Walter to Mrs. Wiggott. “That is what I said to him: ‘Have you ever worked as a farmer? Do you know what it means?’ ” He blotted imaginary tears with his sleeve to show how Angelo had listened. His face was swollen, limp.

“Stop it, Walter,” said Mrs. Wiggott. “I shall perish.”

“And so now the mother is coming,” said Walter. “That is where the situation has got to. They will all sit in the kitchen eating my food, gossiping in Calabrian. I say ‘all’ because of course she is bound to come with a covey of cousins. But I am hoping that when I have explained the situation to the old woman she can reason with Angelo and make him see the light.”

“Darling Walter,” said Mrs. Wiggott. “This could only happen to you.”

“If only I could explain things to Angelo in our terms,” said Walter. “How to be a good friend, a decent host, all the rest. Not to expect too much. How to make the best of life, as we do.”

“As we do,” said Mrs. Wiggott, solemn now.

“Live for the minute, I would like to tell him. Look at the things I put up with, without complaint. The summer I’ve had! Children everywhere. Eggs and bacon in the hottest weather. High tea — my brother-in-law’s influence, of course. Look at the house I live in. Ugly box, really. I never complain.”

“That is true,” said his old friend.

“No heat in winter. Not an anemone in the garden. Les Anémones, they called it, and not an anemone on the place. Nothing but a lot of irises, and I put those in myself.”

B ecause I was born on the first day of April, I was given April as a Christian name. Here in Switzerland they make Avril of it, which sounds more like a sort of medicine than a month of spring. “Take a good dose of Avril,” I can imagine Dr. Ehrmann saying, to each of the children. Today was the start of the fifty-first April. I woke up early and sipped my tea, careful not to disturb the dogs sleeping on the foot of the bed on their own Red Cross blanket. I still have nightmares, but the kind of terror has changed. In the hanging dream I am no longer the victim. Someone else is hanged. Last night, in one harrowing dream, one of my own adopted children drowned, there, outside the window, in the Lake of Geneva. I rushed about on the grass, among the swans. I felt dew on my bare feet; the hem of my velvet dressing gown was dark with it. I saw very plainly the children’s toys: the miniature tank Igor has always wanted, and something red — a bucket and spade, perhaps. My hair came loose and tumbled down my back. I can still feel the warmth and the comfort of it. It was auburn, leaf-colored, as it used to be. I think I saved Igor; the memory is hazy. I seemed very competent and sure of my success. As I sat in bed, summing up my progress in life as measured by dreams, trying not to be affected by the sight of the rain streaming in rivulets from the roof (I was not depressed by the rain, but by the thought that I could rely on no one, no one , to get up on the roof and clear out the weeds and grass that have taken root and are choking the gutter), the children trooped in. They are home for Easter, all three — Igor, with his small thief’s eyes, and Robert, the mulatto, who will not say “Maman” in public because it makes him shy, and Ulrich, whose father was a famous jurist and his mother a brilliant, beautiful girl but who will never be anything but dull and Swiss. There they were, at the foot of the bed, all left behind by careless parents, dropped like loose buttons and picked up by a woman they call Maman .