Mavis Gallant - The Cost of Living - Early and Uncollected Stories

“If they would only stay in the garden,” Paula said. “I hate it, always having to call them and fetch them. The girls, at least, could help with the sandwiches.” She began to pile the plates one on another, drawing the crumbs on the tablecloth toward her with a knife. “And they’re probably eating things. Glacéed pineapple. Cherries in something — something alcoholic . Really, it’s too much. And you don’t help.”

She seemed close to tears, and the Major, looking down at his cornflakes, wondered exactly how to compose his face so that it would be most comforting. Paula was suspicious of extravagant tastes or pleasures. She enjoyed the nursery fare she gave the children, sharing without question their peas and lamb chops, their bland and innocent desserts. Once, long ago, she had broken off an engagement only because she had detected in the young man’s eyes a look of sensuous bliss as he ate strawberries and cream. And now her own children came to the table full of rum-soaked sponge cake and looked with condescension at their lemon Jello.

“You exaggerate,” the Major said, kindly. “Madame Pégurin takes a lot of trouble with the children. She’s giving them a taste of life they might never have had.”

“I know,” Paula said. “And while she’s at it, she’s ruining all my good work.” She often used this expression of the children, as if they were a length of Red Cross knitting. As the Major drank his coffee, he made marks in a notebook on the table. She sighed and, rising with the plates in her hands, said, “We’ll leave it for now, because of the picnic. But tomorrow you and I must have a long talk. About everything.”

“Of course,” the Major said. “We’ll talk about everything — the little Goulds, too. And you might try, just this once, to be nice to Mrs. Baring.”

“I’ll try,” said Paula, “but I can’t promise.” There were tears in her eyes, of annoyance at having to be nice to Colonel Baring’s wife.

Madame Pégurin, in the interim, descended from the shuttered gloom of her room and went out to the garden, trailing wings of gray chiffon, and followed by the children and Louise, who were bearing iced tea, a folding chair, a parasol, a hassock, and a blanket. Under the brim of her hat her hair was drawn into tangerine-colored scallops. She sat down on the chair and put her feet on the hassock. On the grass at her feet, Margaret and Ellen lay prone, propped on their elbows. John sat beside them, eating something. The little Goulds, identical in striped jerseys, stood apart, holding a ball and bat.

“And how is your mother?” Madame Pégurin asked Joey and Henry. “Does she still have so very much trouble with the vegetables?”

“I don’t know,” Henry said innocently. “Where we live now, the maid does everything.”

“Ah, of course,” Madame Pégurin said, settling back in her chair. Her voice was warm and reserved — royalty at a bazaar. Between her and the two girls passed a long look of feminine understanding.

In the kitchen, attacking the sandwiches, Paula Marshall wondered what, if anything, Mrs. Baring would say to Madame Pégurin, for the Barings had been snubbed by her so severely that, thinking of it, Paula was instantly cheered. The Barings had wanted to live with Madame Pégurin. They had been impressed by the tidy garden, the house crowded with the salvage of something better, the portrait of Monsieur Pégurin, who had been, they understood, if not an ambassador, something just as nice. But they had offended Madame Pégurin, first by giving her a Christmas present, a subscription to the Reader’s Digest in French, and then by calling one afternoon without an invitation. Mrs. Baring had darted about the drawing room like a fish, remarking, in the sort of voice reserved for the whims of the elderly, “ My mother collects milk glass.” And the Colonel had confided to Madame Pégurin that his wife spoke excellent French and would, if pressed, say a few words in that language — a confidence that was for Madame Pégurin the depth of the afternoon. “I wouldn’t think of taking into my house anyone but the General,” she was reported to have said. “Or someone on his immediate staff.” The Barings had exchanged paralyzed looks, and then the Colonel, rising to it, had said that he would see, and the following week he had sent Sergeant Gould, who was the General’s driver, and his wife, and the terrible children. The Barings had never mentioned the incident, but they often, with little smiles and movements of their eyebrows, implied that by remaining in a cramped room at the Hotel Bristol and avoiding Madame Pégurin’s big house they had narrowly escaped a season in Hell.

Now they were all going to the picnic, that symbol of unity, Sergeant Gould driving the General and Madame Pégurin, the Barings following with the mayor of Virolun, and the Marshalls and the little Goulds somewhere behind.

The Major came into the kitchen, carrying his notebook, and Paula said to him, “It will be queer, this thing today.”

“Queer?” he said absently. “I don’t see why. Look,” he said. “I may have to make a speech. I put everyone on the agenda but myself, but I may be asked.” He frowned at his notes. “I could start with ‘We are gathered together.’ Or is that stuffy?”

“I don’t know,” Paula said. With care, and also with a certain suggestion of martyrdom, she rolled bread around watercress. “Actually, I think it’s a quote.”

“It could be.” The Major looked depressed. He ate an egg sandwich from Paula’s hamper. The basket lunch had been his idea; every family was bringing one. The Major had declared the basket lunch to be typically American, although he had never in his life attended such a function. “You should see them all in the garden,” he said, cheering up. “Madame Pégurin and the kids. What a picture! The photographer should have been there. He’s never around when you want him.”

Describing this scene, which he had watched from the dining-room windows, the Major was careful to leave out any phrases that might annoy his wife, omitting with regret the filtered sunlight, the golden summer garden, and the blue shade of the parasol. It had pleased him to observe, although he did not repeat this either, that even a stranger could have detected which children were the little Goulds and which the little Marshalls. “I closed the dining-room shutters,” he added. “The sun seems to have moved around.” He had become protective of Madame Pégurin’s house, extending his care to the carpets.

“That’s fine,” Paula said. In a few minutes, the cars would arrive to carry them all away, and she had a sudden prophetic vision of the day ahead. She saw the tiny cavalcade of motorcars creeping, within the speed limit, through the main street and stopping at the 1914 war memorial so that General Wirtworth could place a wreath. She foresaw the failure of the Coca-Cola to arrive at the picnic grounds, and the breakdown of the movie projector. On the periphery, scowling and eating nothing, would be the members of the Virolun Football Club, which had been forced to postpone a match with the St. Etienne Devils because of the picnic. The Major would be everywhere at once, driving his sergeant before him like a hen. Then the baseball, with the mothers of Virolun taking good care to keep their pinafored children away from the wayward ball and the terrible waving bat. Her imagination sought the photographer, found him on a picnic table, one sandaled foot next to a plate of doughnuts, as he recorded Mrs. Baring fetching a cushion for General Wirtworth and Madame Pégurin receiving from the little Goulds a cucumber sandwich.

Paula closed the picnic hamper and looked at her husband with compassion. She suddenly felt terribly sorry for him, because of all that was in store for him this day, and because the picnic was not likely to clarify his status, as he so earnestly hoped. There would be fresh misunderstandings and further scandals. She laid her hand over his. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have been listening more carefully. Read me your speech, and start with ‘We are gathered together.’ I think it’s quite appropriate and very lovely.”