Mavis Gallant - Home Truths

She discovered this was a conversation neither Roy nor Lisbet could credit. They unpacked their loot from Italy on the wobbly terrace table — plastic table mats, plastic roses, a mermaid paperweight, a bottle of apéritif that smelled like medicine, a Florentine stamp box … “Rubbish, garbage,” Sarah said in her mind. “But Roy is happy.” Also, he was drunk. So was Lisbet.

“Meg could not have said those things,” said Roy, large-eyed.

“Meg doesn’t always understand Sarah,” said Lisbet. “The accent.”

“Mrs. Reeve was doing the talking,” said Sarah.

“She wouldn’t have talked that way to an Englishwoman,” said Roy, swinging round to Sarah’s side.

“Wouldn’t have dared,” said Lisbet. She shouted, “Wouldn’t have dared to me!”

“As for Tim, well, Tim really is the real thing,” said Roy. “I mean to say that Tim really is.”

“So is my aunt,” said Lisbet, but Roy had disappeared behind the white net curtain, and they heard him fall on the bed. “He’s had rather a lot,” said Lisbet. Sarah felt anxiety for Roy, who had obviously had a lot of everything — perhaps of Lisbet too. And there was still the picnic next day, and no one had bought any food for it. Lisbet looked glowing and superb, as if she had been tramping in a clean wind instead of sitting crouched in a twilit bar somewhere on the Italian side. She should have been haggard and gray.

“Who was driving?” Sarah asked her.

“Took turns.”

“What did you talk about?” She was remembering his “God, what a cow!”

“Capital punishment, apartheid, miscegenation, and my personal problems with men. That I seem cold, but I’m not really.”

“Boys, boys, boys!” That was Meg Reeve calling her dogs. They rolled out of the lavender hedge like a pair of chewed tennis balls. They might well have been eavesdropping. Sarah gave a shiver, and Lisbet laughed and said, “Someone’s walking on your grave.”

The sunlight on the terrace next morning hurt Roy’s eyes; he made little flapping gestures, meaning Sarah was not to speak. “What were you drinking in Italy?” she said. He shook his head. Mutely, he took the dried laundry down and folded it. Probably, like Meg, he did not much care for the look of it. “I’ve made the picnic,” Sarah next offered. “No reason why I can’t come — we won’t be doing much walking.” She stood on one leg, like a stork. The picnic consisted of anything Sarah happened to find in the refrigerator. She included plums in brandy because she noticed a jar of them, and iced white wine in a thermos. At the last minute she packed olives, salted peanuts, and several pots of yogurt.

“Put those back,” said Roy.

“Why? Do you think they’ll melt?”

“Just do as I say, for once. Put them back.”

“Do you know what I think?” said Sarah after a moment. “I think we’re starting out on something my father would call The Ill-Fated Excursion.”

For the first time ever, she saw Roy looking angry. The vitality of the look made him younger, but not in a nice way. He became a young man, an ugly one. “Liz will have to drive,” he said. “I’ve got a blinding headache, and you can’t, not with that.” He could not bring himself to name her affliction. “How do you know about this place?” he said. “Who took you there?”

“I told you. Some Americans in my hotel. Haynes — no, Hayes.”

“Yes, I can imagine.” He looked at her sidelong and said, “Just who were you sleeping with when I collected you?”

She felt what it was like to blush — like a rash of needles and pins. He knew every second of her life, because she had told it to him that night on the beach. What made her blush was that she sensed he was only pretending to be jealous. It offended her. She said, “Let’s call the picnic off.”

“I don’t want to.”

She was not used to quarrels, only to tidal waves. She did not understand that they were quarrelling now. She wondered again what he had been drinking over in Italy. Her ankle felt in a vise, but that was the least of it. They set off, all three together, and Lisbet drove straight up into the hills as if pursuing escaped prisoners. They shot past towns Sarah had visited with the Americans, who had been conscientious about churches; she saw, open-and-shut, views they had stopped to photograph. When she said “Look,” nobody heard. She sat crumpled in the narrow back seat, with the picnic sliding all over as they rounded the mountain curves, quite often on the wrong side.

“That was the café, back there, where you get the key,” Sarah had to say twice — once very loudly. Lisbet braked so they were thrown forward and then reversed like a bullet ricocheting. “Sarah knows about this,” said Roy, as if it were a good thing to know about. That was encouraging. She gripped her ankle between her hands and set her foot down. She tested her weight and managed to walk and hop to the cool café, past the beaded curtain. She leaned on the marble counter; she had lost something. Was it her confidence? She wanted someone to come and take her home, but was too old to want that; she knew too many things. She said to the man standing behind the counter, “j’ai mal,” to explain why she did not take the keys from him and at once go out. His reaction was to a confession of sorrow and grief; he poured out something to drink. It was clear as water, terribly strong, and smelled of warm fruit. When she gestured to show him she had no money, he said, “ Ça va.” He was kind; the Hayeses, such an inadequate substitute for peacocks, had been kind too. She said to herself, “How awful if I should cry.”

The slight inclination of Roy’s head when she handed the keys to him meant he might be interested. She felt emboldened: “One’s for the chapel, the other’s the gate. There isn’t a watchman or anything. It’s too bad, because people write on the walls.”

“Which way?” Lisbet interrupted. She chased her prisoners another mile or so.

Sarah had told them no one ever came here, but they were forced to park behind a car with Swiss license plates. Next to the gate sat a large party of picnickers squeezed round a card table. There was only one man among them, and Sarah thought it must be a harem and the man had been allowed several wives for having been reasonable and Swiss until he was fifty. She started to tell this to Roy, but he had gone blank as a monument; she felt overtaken by her father’s humor, not her own. Roy gave the harem an empty look that reminded her of the prostitutes down in Nice, and now she knew what their faces had been saying. It was “I despise you.” The chapel was an icebox; and she saw Roy and Lisbet glance with some consternation at the life of Jesus spread around for anyone to see. They would certainly have described themselves as Christians, but they were embarrassed by Christ. They went straight to Judas, who was more reassuring. Hanged, disembowelled, his stomach and liver exposed to ravens, Judas gave up his soul. His soul was a small naked creature. Perceiving Satan, the creature held out its arms.

“Now, that man must have eaten Sarah’s cooking,” said Roy, and such were their difficulties that she was grateful to hear him say anything. But he added, “A risk many have taken, I imagine.” This was to Lisbet. Only Sarah knew what he meant. She fell back and pretended to be interested in a rack of postcards. The same person who trusted visitors not to write their names on paintings had left a coin box. Sarah had no money and did not want to ask Roy for any. She stole a reproduction of the Judas fresco and put it inside her shirt.

Roy and Lisbet ate some of the picnic. They sat where Sarah had sat with the Americans; but it was in no way the same. Of course, the season was later, the river lower, the grass drooping and dry. The shadows of clouds made them stare and comment, as if looking for something to say. Sarah was relieved when the two decided to climb up in the maquis, leaving her “to rest a bit” — this was Lisbet. “Watch out for snakes,” Sarah said, and got from Roy one blurred, anxious, puzzled look, the last straight look he ever gave her. She sat down and drank all the brandy out of the jar of plums. Roy had an attitude to people she had never heard of: nothing must ever go wrong. An accident is degrading for the victim. She undid the towelling strips and looked at her bloated ankle and foot. Of course, it was ugly; but it was part of a living body, not a corpse, and it hurt Sarah, not Roy. She tipped out the plums so the ants could have a party, drank some of the white wine, and, falling asleep, thought she was engaged in an endless and heated discussion with some person who was in the wrong.