Charles Williams - Hell Hath No Fury

“Well, you don’t look as if they could overpower you,” he said, and grinned.

As they went out the gate Mrs. Robinson called back, “Make Mr. Madox some lemonade, Gloria.”

“Thanks,” I said. “We just had a soda.”

I didn’t notice the child until they had gone. She was maybe two or four years old or something like that, curled up in a long nightgown in the porch swing, a golden-haired girl with big saucer eyes. The whole place, I thought, is as blonde as an old-country smorgasbord.

“This is Gloria Two,” she said. “And this gentleman is Mr. Madox, honey-lamb.”

I never know what to say to kids. That itchy-kitchy-coo stuff makes me as sick as it probably makes them, so I just said, “How do you do?” Surprisingly, she stared back at me as gravely as her aunt and said, “How do you do?”

Then I thought of the funny name. “Gloria Two?” I asked.

Gloria Harper smiled. “They named her after me. And then when I came to live here it was a little confusing. Mostly we just call her ‘Honey.’“

“Isn’t that confusing too?” I asked.

She stopped smiling. “Why?”

“Doesn’t anybody call you that?”

“No.”

“They should. It’s the color of your hair.”

She shook her head. “It’s just sunburned.”

She took Gloria Two inside to put her to bed. When she came back I was admiring the water colors on the walls in the living room. I recognized one of them as being the wooden bridge over the river, the one we’d crossed going out to the oil well.

“They’re good,” I said. “Did you do them?”

She nodded. “I don’t have much talent, but it’s fun.”

“I like them.”

“Thank you,” she said.

We went out and sat down on the porch with our feet on the steps. A cocker spaniel came around the corner, looked me over, and jumped into the porch swing. I handed Gloria a cigarette and we smoked, not saying much. The honeysuckle vines looked like patent leather in the moonlight and the night was heavy with their perfume.

“It’s pretty, isn’t it?” she asked quietly. “Sometimes when it’s quiet like this you can hear the whip-poor-wills.”

We listened for them and it was very still now, but we didn’t hear any. “Well,” she said. “They’re kind of sad anyway.”

“They’re an echo or something. I think the ones you hear have been dead for a thousand years or so.”

She turned her head and looked at me. “Yes. I never thought of it before, but that’s the way they are.”

Her eyes were large, and they looked black here in the shadows. “You’re very pretty,” I said.

“Thank you. But it’s just the moonlight.”

“No,” I said. “I wasn’t talking about the lighting.” She didn’t say anything. I snapped the cigarette and it sailed across the fence. “Look,” I said. “What’s with Sutton?”

You could see her tighten up. She was there, and then she was going away. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Well, I guess it isn’t any of my business.”

“Please—“ Her voice was strung out tight and she was unhappy and scared of something. “It’s—You’re just imagining things, Mr. Madox.”

I started to say something, but just then a car pulled up in front of the gate and stopped. A boy in white slacks got out and came up the walk. He was about twenty-one and his name was Eddie Something and he was home from school for the summer. The three of us sat on the steps and talked for a while, about how hot it was and about school and about how many of them were going right into the Army.

“What outfit were you in, Mr. Madox?” Eddie Something asked.

“Navy. I got out on a medical and went into the merchant marines.” I thought of the “Mr. Madox” and the fact that we were talking about two armies ten years apart. What was I doing here, talking to these kids? Getting off the steps, I flipped the cigarette away and said, “Well, I’ll see you around.”

“You don’t have to go, do you?” Gloria asked.

“Yeah,” I said. I went out and got in the car and rammed it towards the highway, full of a black restlessness and angry at everything. Driving around didn’t do any good. I drove out to the river and went swimming, and when I came back to town it was still only ten o’clock. The rooming house was thunderously silent. Even the old couple in the next room had gone somewhere. I mopped the sweat off my face and tried to sit still on the bed.

Well? she said. She sat on the chair with her legs stretched out and the toes of the wedgies touching and stared at me, sulky-eyed, over ripe, and spoiling, and said, Well?

Well?

Everything was distorted perhaps because of the moonlight. Shadows were swollen and dead black and nothing looked the same as it did in the day. The filling station was a hot oasis of light, but I was behind it, walking fast along the alley. Beyond it I crossed the road and went into the trees. I pushed through the oleander hedge and stood for a moment in its shadow, looking at the house and the lawn. The only car in the drive was the Buick coupe, right where I’d left it, and all the windows in the house were dark. I went up the porch.

The screen door was unlatched.

A little light came in through the Venetian blinds in the living room. There was no one in it. I located the stairs and went up. The short hallway at the top had two doors in it and a window at the end. One of the doors was open.

She was lying on the bed next to a window looking out over the back yard. From the waist up she was in deep shadow, but moonlight slanted in across the bottom of the bed and I could see the gleam of that tiny chain around her

“Harry,” she said, her voice a little thick with the whisky. “You found the way, didn’t you?”

What’s so wonderful about it? I thought. Dogs do.

5

“Harry?”

“What?”

“You want another drink?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve had enough. I’ve got a headache.”

“It couldn’t be the whisky. It’s straight Bourbon. It wouldn’t give you a headache.”

Nothing but the best, I thought. “All right. It’s not the whisky.”

“I like you,” she said. “You don’t drink much, but you’re all right. Harry, you know what?”

“What?”

“You’re all right.”

“You said that.”

“Well, Godsakes, I’ll say it again if I want to. You’re all right. You’re sweet. You’re a big ugly bastard with a face that’d stop a clock, but you’re sweet. You know what I mean?”

“No.” I lighted a cigarette and lay on my back staring up at the ceiling. It must be nearly midnight. My head throbbed painfully and very slowly, like a big flywheel turning over, and the taste of whisky was sour in my mouth. She must bathe in cologne, I thought; the room was drenched with it. “Harry?”

“What is it?”

“You don’t think I’m fat, do you?”

“Of course not.”

“You wouldn’t kid ‘ninnocent young girl, would you?”

“No.” I turned and looked at her. Moonlight from the window had moved up the bed and now it fell diagonally across her from the waist up to the big spread-out breast which rocked a little as she shook the ice in her glass. I thought of a full and slightly bruised peach beginning to spoil a little. She was somewhere between luscious and full-bloom and in another year or so of getting all her exercise lying down and lifting the bottle she’d probably be blowzy.

“Well?” she said sarcastically. “Maybe I ought to turn on the light.”

“You asked me a question. Did you want it answered or didn’t you?”

She giggled. “Oh, don’t be so touchy. I was just kidding you. I don’t mind. Pour me another drink.”