Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

Constance knew that she was looking sullen, and she tried to change the set of her face, because she also knew that she looked younger, childish, sixteen, seventeen, when she was sullen. She was sure that everything she did with her face at that moment made her look more sullen than ever, and she wished the horn would blow and her father would get off the ship.

“You’ll probably drink a lot of this,” her father said. “In France.”

“I don’t expect to stay in France long,” she said. “I’m going to look for someplace quiet.” Her voice sounded to her as though it were coming out of the nursery, wailing and spiteful and spoiled. She tried to smile at her father. The last few weeks in the apartment, while the argument had been going on and the hostility had been so close to the surface, had been painful to her, and now, in the last ten minutes before the ship pulled away, she wanted to recapture an earlier, easier relationship as far as she could. So she smiled, but she had the impression that the smile was crafty and cold and coquettish. Her father turned around and looked vaguely out the porthole at the covered wharf. It was rainy and there was a cold wind blowing and the men on the dock waiting to throw off the lines looked miserable.

“It’s going to be a choppy night,” her father said. “Have you got the Drama-mine?”

The hostility returned, because he asked about the Dramamine. At a moment like that. “I won’t need Dramamine,” Constance said shortly. She took a long drink of the champagne. The label on the bottle was impeccable, like all Mark’s gifts, but the wine was sourish and acidy.

Her father turned back toward her. He smiled at her, and she thought, bitterly, This is the last time he’s going to get away with patronizing me. He stood there, a robust, confident, healthy, youngish-seeming man, looking privately amused, and Constance thought, How would you like it if I just got out of here and walked off this precious boat—how would you ever like it?

“I envy you,” her father said. “If someone had only sent me to Europe when I was twenty …”

Twenty, twenty, Constance thought. He’s always harping on twenty. “Please, Father, let’s cut that out,” she said. “I’m here and I’m going and it’s all settled, but let’s spare ourselves the envy.”

“Every time I happen to remind you that you’re twenty,” her father said mildly, “you react as though I’d insulted you.”

He smiled, pleased with himself that he was so damned perceptive, that he understood her so well, that he was not one of those fathers whose children slide irrevocably away from them into mysterious, modern depths.

“Let’s not discuss it,” Constance said, pitching her voice low. When she remembered, she always made a point of pitching her voice low. It sometimes made her sound forty years old on the telephone, or like a man.

“Have a great time,” her father said. “Go to all the bright places. And if you decide you want to stay on, just let me know. Maybe I’ll be able to come over and join you for a few weeks—”

“Three months from now,” Constance said crisply, “to this day, I’ll be coming up the harbor.”

“Whatever you say, my dear.”

When he said “my dear,” Constance knew he was humoring her. She couldn’t bear being humored there in the ugly little cabin, with the weather bad outside, and the ship ready to leave, and the sounds of people saying goodbye, laughing loudly, in the next room. If she had been on better terms with her father, she would have cried.

The horn blew for visitors to go ashore, and her father came and kissed her, holding her for an extra second, and she tried to be polite. But when he said, very seriously, “You’ll see—three months from now you’ll thank me for this,” she pushed him back, furious with him for his obnoxious assurance, and mournful at the same time that they, who had been so close to each other, were no longer friends.

“Goodbye,” she said, her voice choked and not pitched low. “The whistle’s blowing. Goodbye.”

He picked up his hat, patted her shoulder, hesitated a moment at the door, looking thoughtful but not disturbed, and went out into the corridor and disappeared among the other visitors who were streaming up toward the gangplank and the shore.

When she was sure her father was off, Constance went up to the boat deck and stood there, alone in the sharp, blowy rain, watching the tugs pull the ship into the stream. As the ship went slowly downriver into the harbor and then headed into open water, she shivered in the wintry air, and, approving of herself a little for the grandeur of the sentiment, thought, I am approaching a continent to which I have no connection.

Constance braced herself against the crossbar of the lift as she approached the mid-point of the hill. She made sure that her skis were firmly in the ruts as she came up onto the flat section of packed snow where there was a short line of skiers who had come down only halfway and were waiting to pick up empty hooks and go back to the top. She always felt a little uncertain here, because if you were alone on one side of the T bar, the first person in the line would swing into place alongside you and there would be an extra, sudden pull as the new weight caught that could throw you off balance. She saw that there was a man waiting for the place next to her, and she concentrated on keeping erect gracefully as he settled into place beside her. He did it smoothly, and they skidded easily past the waiting line. She was conscious that he was looking across at her, but she was too occupied for the moment with the terrain in front of her to turn her head.

“Oh, I know you,” the man said as they started safely up the hill again, leaning against the pull of the bar, their skis bumping a little in the ruts. “You’re the grave young American.”

Constance looked at him for the first time. “And you,” she said, because everybody talked to everybody else on the hills, “you’re the gay young Englishman.”

“Half right,” he said. He smiled. His face was a skier’s brown, with an almost girlish flush of blood along the cheekbones. “At least, one-third right.” She knew his name was Pritchard, because she had heard people talking to him in the hotel. She remembered hearing one of the ski teachers say about him, “He is too reckless. He thinks he is better than he actually is. He does not have the technique for so much speed.” She glanced across at him and decided he did look reckless. He had a long nose—the kind that doesn’t photograph well but that looks all right just the same, especially in a long, thin face. Twenty-five, Constance thought, twenty-six. No more. He was leaning easily against the bar, not holding on with his hands. He took off his gloves and fished a package of cigarettes out of his pockets and offered them to Constance. “Players,” he said. “I hope you won’t hate me.”

“No, thank you,” Constance said. She was sure that if she tried to light a cigarette she would fall off the lift.

He lit his cigarette, bending over a little and squinting over his cupped hands as the smoke twisted up past his eyes. He had long, thin hands, and ordinarily you had the feeling that people with hands like that were nervous and easily upset. He was tall and slender, and his ski pants were very downhill, Constance noted, and he wore a red sweater and a checked scarf. He had the air of a dandy, but a dandy who was amused at himself. He moved easily on his skis, and you could tell he was one of the people who weren’t afraid of falling.

“I never see you in the bar,” he said, tossing the match into the snow and putting on his gloves.

“I don’t drink,” she said, not quite telling the truth.

“They have Coca-Cola,” he said. “Switzerland, the forty-ninth state.”