Mavis Gallant - Home Truths

“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.

Lisbet looked up. How small her eyes were! “You don’t want a doctor for that, surely?”

“Yes, I do. I think it should be X-rayed,” Sarah said. “It hurts like anything.”

“Of course she doesn’t,” said Roy.

Getting well with the greatest possible amount of suffering, and with your bones left crooked, was part of their code. It seemed to Sarah an unreasonable code, but she did not want to seem like someone making a fuss. All the same, she said, “I feel sick.”

“Drink some brandy,” said Lisbet.

“Lie down,” said Roy. “We shan’t be long.” It would have been rude not to have taken Lisbet on the smuggling expedition just because Sarah couldn’t go.

In the late afternoon Meg Reeve strolled down to see how Sarah was managing. She found her standing on one foot hanging washing on a line. The sight of Sarah’s plaid slacks, bought on sale at Nice, caused Meg to remark, “My dear, are you a Scot? I’ve often wondered, seeing you wearing those.” Sarah let a beach towel of Roy’s fall to the ground.

“Damn, it’ll have to be washed again,” she said.

Meg had brought Roy’s mail. She put the letters on the table, face down, as if Sarah were likely to go over the postmarks with a magnifying glass. The dogs snuffled and snapped at the ghosts of animal-haters. “What clan?” said Meg.

“Clan? Oh, you’re still talking about my slacks. Clan salade niçoise , I guess.”

“Well, you must not wear tartan,” said Meg. “It is an insult to the family, d’you see? I’m surprised Roy hasn’t … Ticky! Blue! Naughty boys!”

“Oh, the dogs come down here and pee all over the terrace every day,” said Sarah.

“Roy used to give them chockie bits. They miss being spoiled. But now he hasn’t time for them, has he?”

“I don’t know. I can’t answer for him. He has time for what interests him.”

“Why do you hang your washing where you can see it?” said Meg. “Are you Italian?” Sarah made new plans; next time the Reeves were invited she would boil Ticky and Blue with a little sugar and suet and serve them up as pudding. I must look angelic at this moment, she thought.

She said, “No, I’m not Italian. I don’t think so.”

“There are things I could never bring myself to do,” said Meg. “Not in my walk of life.”

The sociologist snapped to attention. Easing her sore ankle, Sarah said, “Please, what is your walk of life, exactly?”

It was so dazzling, so magical, that Meg could not name it, but merely mouthed a word or two that Sarah was unable to lip-read. A gust of incinerator smoke stole between them and made them choke. “As for Tim,” said Meg, getting her breath again, “you, with all your transatlantic money, couldn’t buy what Tim has in his veins.”

Sarah limped indoors and somehow found the forgotten language. “Necessity for imparting status information,” she recorded, and added “erroneous” between “imparting” and “status.” She was still, in a way, half in love with Professor Downcast.