Mavis Gallant - Home Truths

Helen failed to reward her. She stared, stolid, as if the words had been in a foreign language. But there remained about the table the knowledge that an attempt had been made, and Mrs. Holland and Helen, both natural victims, could not look away from May, or at each other. Ruth had finished eating. She sighed, stretched, began to tug on her coat. She said to Mrs. Holland, “Thankyouverymuchforalovelytea. I mean, if our darling new headmistress asks did we thank you, well, we did. I was afraid I might forget to say it later on.”

“Thanks for a lovely tea,” said May. She had been afraid to speak, in case the effort of forming words should release the tight little knot of tears she felt in her throat. It was so much more difficult to be cruel than to be hurt.

“Thank you,” said Helen, as if asleep.

“Ican only hope they thanked you,” the headmistress said when Mrs. Holland delivered them, safe, half an hour later. “Girls are apt to forget.”

“They thanked me,” said Mrs. Holland. The three girls had curtsied, muttering some final ritual phrase, and vanished into an area of dim, shrill sound.

“Study hall,” said the headmistress. “Their studies are over for the term, but they respect the discipline.”

“Yes, I suppose they do.”

“It was kind of you to take them out,” said the headmistress. She laid her cold pink hand on Mrs. Holland’s for a moment, then withdrew it, perplexed by the wince, the recoil. “One forgets how much it can mean at that age, a treat on a rainy day.”

“Perhaps that’s the answer,” Mrs. Holland said.

The headmistress sensed that things were out of hand, but she had no desire to be involved; perhaps the three had been noisy, had overeaten. She smiled with such vague good manners that Mrs. Holland was released and could go.

From an upstairs window, Ruth watched Mrs. Holland make her way to the car. May and Helen were not speaking. Helen was ready to forgive, but to May, who had been unkind, the victim was odious, and she avoided her with a kind of prudishness impossible to explain to anyone, let alone herself. They had all made mistakes, Ruth thought. She wondered if she would ever care enough about anyone to make all the mistakes those around her had made during the rainy-day tea with Mrs. Holland. She breathed on the window, idly drew a heart, smiled placidly, let it fade.

Asummer night: all night someone has been learning the Charleston.

“I’ve got it!” the dancer cries. “I’ve got it, everybody. Watch me, now!” But no one is watching. The dancer is alone in the dining room, clinging to the handle of the door; the rest of the party is in the living room, across the hall. “Watch me!” travels unheard over the quiet lawn and the silent lake, and then dissolves.

The walls of the summer house are thin. The doors have been thrown back and the windows pushed as high as they will go. Young Irmgard wakes up with her braids undone and her thumb in her mouth. She has been dreaming about her cousin Bradley; about an old sidewalk with ribbon grass growing in the cracks. “I’ve got it,” cried the witch who had captured Jorinda, and she reached out so as to catch Jorindel and change him into a bird.

Poor Mrs. Bloodworth is learning to dance. She holds the handle of the dining-room door and swivels her feet in satin shoes, but when she lets go the handle, she falls down flat on her behind and stays that way, sitting, her hair all over her face, her feet pointing upward in her new shoes. Earlier, Mrs. Bloodworth was sitting that way, alone, when, squinting through her hair, she saw Irmgard sitting in her nightgown on the stairs. “Are you watching the fun?” she said in a tragic voice. “Is it really you, my sweet pet?” And she got to her feet and crawled up the stairs on her hands and knees to kiss Irmgard with ginny breath.

There is prohibition where Mrs. Bloodworth comes from. She has come up to Canada for a party; she came up for just one weekend and never went away. The party began as a wedding in Montreal, but it has been days since anyone mentioned the bride and groom. The party began in Montreal, came down to the lake, and now has dwindled to five: Irmgard’s mother and father, Mrs. Bloodworth, Mrs. Bloodworth’s friend Bill, and the best man, who came up for the wedding from Buffalo. “Darling pet, may I always stay?” said Mrs. Bloodworth, sobbing, her arms around Irmgard’s mother’s neck. Why she was sobbing this way nobody knows; she is always crying, dancing, embracing her friends.

In the morning Mrs. Bloodworth will be found in the hammock outside. The hammock smells of fish, the pillow is stuffed with straw; but Mrs. Bloodworth can never be made to go to bed. Irmgard inspects her up and down, from left to right. It isn’t every morning of the year that you find a large person helplessly asleep. She is still wearing her satin shoes. Her eyeballs are covered with red nets. When she wakes up she seems still asleep, until she says stickily, “I’m having a rotten time, I don’t care what anybody says.” Irmgard backs off and then turns and runs along the gallery — the veranda, Mrs. Bloodworth would say — and up the side of the house and into the big kitchen, where behind screen doors Mrs. Queen and Germaine are drinking tea. They are drinking it in silence, for Germaine does not understand one word of English and Mrs. Queen is certainly not going to learn any French.

Germaine is Irmgard’s bonne d’enfant . They have been together about a century, and have a history stuffed with pageants, dangers, near escapes. Germaine has been saving Irmgard for years and years; but now Irmgard is nearly eight, and there isn’t much Germaine can do except iron her summer dresses and braid her hair. They know a separation is near; and Irmgard is cheeky now, as she never was in the past; and Germaine pretends there have been other children she has liked just as well. She sips her tea. Irmgard drops heavily on her lap, joggling the cup. She will never be given anything even approaching Germaine’s unmeasured love again. She leans heavily on her and makes her spill her tea. Germaine is mild and simple, a little dull. You can be rude and impertinent if necessary, but she must never be teased.

Germaine remembers the day Irmgard was kidnapped. When she sees a warm August morning like this one, she remembers that thrilling day. There was a man in a motorcar who wanted to buy Irmgard ice cream. She got in the car and it started moving, and suddenly there came Germaine running behind, with her mouth open and her arms wide, and Molly, the collie they had in those days, running with her ears back and her eyes slits. “Stop for Molly!” Irmgard suddenly screamed, and she turned and threw up all over the man’s coat. “Le matin du kidnap,” Germaine begins softly. It is a good thing she is here to recall the event, because the truth is that Irmgard remembers nothing about that morning at all.

Mrs. Queen is standing up beside the stove. She never sits down to eat, because she wants them to see how she hasn’t a minute to waste; she is on the alert every second. Mrs. Queen is not happy down at the lake. It is not what she expected by “a country place.” When she worked for Lady Partridge things were otherwise; you knew what to expect by “a country place.” Mrs. Queen came out to Canada with Lady Partridge. The wages were low, and she had no stomach for travel, but she was devoted to Lady P. and to Ty-Ty and Buffy, the two cairns. The cairns died, because of the change of air, and after Lady P. had buried them, she went out to her daughter in California, leaving Mrs. Queen to look after the graves. But Mrs. Queen has never taken to Canada. She can’t get used to it. She cannot get used to a place where the railway engines are that size and make that kind of noise, and where the working people are as tall as anyone else. When Mrs. Queen was interviewing Irmgard’s mother, to see if Irmgard’s mother would do, she said she had never taken to the place and couldn’t promise a thing. The fancy might take her any minute to turn straight around and go back to England. She had told Lady Partridge the same thing. “When was that, Mrs. Queen?” “In nineteen ten, in the spring.” She has never felt at home, and never wants to, and never will. If you ask her why she is unhappy, she says it is because of Ty-Ty and Buffy, the cairns; and because this is a paltry rented house and a paltry kitchen; and she is glad that Ty-Ty and Buffy are peacefully in their graves.