Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“How much of this stuff do I put in?” Constance asked, confused by the flood of talk, holding up the glass of rum, and carefully making sure not to look at Pritchard.

“Half,” he said. “You have to have something in reserve for the second cup.”

“It smells good,” Constance said, sniffing the fragrance that rose from the cup after she had measured out half the glass of rum and squeezed the lemon into it.

“Perhaps”—Pritchard prepared his own cup—“perhaps I’d better talk only on impersonal subjects.”

“Perhaps that would be better,” Constance said.

“The chap who receives all those letters,” Pritchard said. “Why isn’t he here?”

Constance hesitated for a moment. “He works,” she said.

“Oh. That vice.” He sipped his tea, then put down his cup and rubbed his nose with his handkerchief. “Hot tea does that to you, too?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to marry him?”

“You said impersonal.”

“So. The marriage is arranged.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No. But you would have said no if it wasn’t.”

Constance chuckled. “All right,” she said. “Arranged. Anyway, approximately arranged.”

“When?”

“When the three months’re up,” she said, without thinking.

“Is that a law in New York?” Pritchard asked. “That you have to wait three months? Or is it a private family taboo?”

Constance hesitated. Suddenly, she felt that she hadn’t really talked to anyone in a long time. She had ordered meals and asked directions in railroad stations and said good morning to the people in shops, but everything else had been loneliness and silence, no less painful because she had imposed it on herself. Why not, she thought, selfishly and gratefully. Why not talk about it, for once?

“It’s my father,” she said, twisting her cup. “It’s his idea. He’s against it. He said wait three months and see. He thinks I’ll forget Mark in three months in Europe.”

“America,” Pritchard said. “The only place left where people can afford to act in an old-fashioned manner. What’s the matter with Mark? Is he a fright?”

“He’s beautiful,” Constance said. “Melancholy and beautiful.”

Pritchard nodded, as though noting all this down. “No money, though,” he said.

“Enough,” said Constance. “At least, he has a good job.”

“What’s the matter with him, then?”

“My father thinks he’s too old for me,” Constance said. “He’s forty.”

“A grave complaint,” Pritchard said. “Is that why he’s melancholy?”

Constance smiled. “No. He was born that way. He’s a thoughtful man.”

“Do you only like forty-year-old men?” Pritchard asked.

“I only like Mark,” said Constance. “Although it’s true I never got along with the young men I knew. They—they’re cruel. They make me feel shy—and angry with myself. When I go out with one of them, I come home feeling crooked.”

“Crooked?” Pritchard looked puzzled.

“Yes. I feel I haven’t behaved like me. I’ve behaved the way I think the other girls they’ve gone out with have behaved. Coquettish, cynical, amorous. Is this too complicated?”

“No.”

“I hate the opinions other people have of me,” Constance said, almost forgetting the young man at the table with her, and talking bitterly, and for herself. “I hate being used just for celebrations, when people come into town from college or from the Army. Somebody for parties, somebody to maul on the way home in the taxi. And my father’s opinion of me.” She was getting it out for the first time. “I used to think we were good friends, that he thought I was a responsible, grown-up human being. Then when I told him I wanted to marry Mark, I found out it was all a fraud. What he really thinks of me is that I’m a child. And a child is a form of idiot. My mother left him when I was ten and we’ve been very close since then, but we weren’t as close as I thought we were. He was just playing a game with me. Flattering me. When the first real issue came up, the whole thing collapsed. He wouldn’t let me have my own opinion of me at all. That’s why I finally said all right to the three months. To prove it to him once and for all.” She looked suddenly, distrustfully, at Pritchard, to see whether he was smiling. “Are you being amused at me?”

“Of course not,” he said. “I’m thinking of all the people I’ve known who’ve had different opinions of me than I’ve had of myself. What a frightening idea.” He looked at her speculatively, but it was hard for her to tell how serious he was. “And what’s your opinion of yourself?”

“It’s not completely formed yet,” she said slowly. “I know what I want it to be. I want to be responsible and I don’t want to be a child and I don’t want to be cruel—and I want to move in a good direction.” She shrugged, embarrassed now. “That’s pretty lame, isn’t it?”

“Lame,” Pritchard said, “but admirable.”

“Oh, I’m not admirable yet,” she said. “Maybe in ten years. I haven’t sorted myself out completely yet.” She laughed nervously. “Isn’t it nice,” she said, “you’re going away in a few days and I’ll never see you again, so I can talk like this to you.”

“Yes,” he said. “Very nice.”

“I haven’t talked to anyone for so long. Maybe it’s the rum.”

Pritchard smiled. “Ready for your second cup?”

“Yes, thank you.” She watched him pour the tea and was surprised to notice that his hand shook. Perhaps, she thought, he’s one of those young men who came out of the war drinking a bottle of whisky a day.

“So,” he said. “Tomorrow we go up to the top of the mountain.”

She was grateful to him for realizing that she didn’t want to talk about herself any more and switching the conversation without saying anything about it.

“How will you do it—with your ankle?” she asked.

“I’ll get the doctor to put a shot of Novocain in it,” he said. “And for a few hours my ankle will feel immortal.”

“All right,” she said, watching him pour his own tea, watching his hand shake. “In the morning?”

“I don’t ski in the morning,” he said. He added the rum to his tea and sniffed it appreciatively.

“What do you do in the morning?”

“I recover, and write poetry.”

“Oh.” She looked at him doubtfully. “Should I know your name?”

“No,” he said. “I always tear it up the next morning.”

She laughed, a little uncertainly, because the only other people she had ever known who wrote poetry had been fifteen-year-old boys in prep school. “My,” she said, “you’re a queer man.”

“Queer?” He raised his eyebrows. “Doesn’t that mean something a little obscene in America? Boys with boys, I mean.”

“Only sometimes,” Constance said, embarrassed. “Not now. What sort of poetry do you write?”

“Lyric, elegiac, and athletic,” he said. “In praise of youth, death, and anarchy. Very good for tearing. Shall we have dinner together tonight?”

“Why?” she asked, unsettled by the way he jumped from one subject to another.

“That’s a question that no European woman would ever ask,” he said.

“I told the hotel that I was going to have dinner up in my room.”

“I have great influence at the hotel,” he said. “I think I may be able to prevent them from taking the tray up.”

“Besides,” Constance said, “what about the lady you’ve been having dinner with all week—the French lady?”

“Good.” He smiled. “You’ve been watching me, too.”

“There’re only fifteen tables in the whole dining room,” Constance said uncomfortably. “You can’t help …” The French lady was at least thirty, with a short, fluffed haircut and a senselessly narrow waist. She wore black slacks and sweaters and very tight, shiny belts, and she and Pritchard always seemed to be laughing a great deal together over private jokes in the corner in which they sat every night. Whenever Constance was in the room with the French lady, she felt young and clumsy.