So Little Time (10 page)

“Sure,” Jim said, “it's obvious isn't it? The best minds of your generation have been saying it. You're not sore, are you? I mean, you're not so dumb—I mean, it's perfectly obvious.”

Then the apartment door was opening and Jeffrey stood up.

“Here's your mother and Gwen,” he said.

“You're not sore, are you?” Jim asked again. He looked anxious, almost hurt.

Jeffrey stood looking at him, and he had to answer something.

“You see, some of us were killed,” he said, “not so many, but quite a lot.”

Jim looked surprised, as though he had never thought of it in that way.

“Maybe it wasn't such a bad way to die,” Jeffrey went on, but it sounded old and dusty, and he seemed to be speaking from a great distance. He was sorry that he had brought it up.

“Well,” he said again, “here's your mother and Gwen.”

Madge and Gwen came into the room together and Jeffrey found himself trying to remember what it was they had said they were going to do together that afternoon. It always left him confused because it was never clear to him exactly what it was that women did do in New York. They were always out somewhere on meaningless errands of their own. They filled the busses and Schrafft's and all the teashops and the Museum of Modern Art and the Plaza and all the department stores. Madge was dressed in her light brown broadcloth suit with her hat that looked too small and her gloves that always fitted her without a wrinkle and with a little sable scarf tight about her neck. She was one of those timeless people who sometimes looked younger as they grew older. When she saw Jim her face lighted up and she might have been a girl whom he had asked to a college dance.

“Why, Jim!” she cried and she ran to him and threw her arms around him and Jim bent down and kissed her forehead.

“Hello, Mom,” Jim said, “you've got a new hair-do, haven't you?”

Jeffrey wished that he had not read the works of Sigmund Freud, for they made even the most normal family relationship, when you stopped to think of it, seem slightly clinical.

“Daddy,” Gwen said, “Daddy, darling.”

Jeffrey had noticed lately that Gwen's whole manner toward him had changed. Gwen was now making him into a romantic character, a quaint old lovable gaffer who bumbled about, making mistakes because of growing senility.

“Where do you think we've been, Daddy darling?” Gwen asked. “We've been out shopping.”

She seemed to expect him to express incredulity that such a slip of a girl could ever have been shopping. In spite of himself, Jeffrey discovered that he was doing what Gwen wanted, speaking just like a dear old gentleman.

“Well,” he said, “shopping, eh?” If he had let himself go, he would have pinched her cheek playfully. It was the subconscious again, for the time had passed when he could be natural with Gwen. He would never spank Gwen again, and he would never wash her face.

“And what do you think we bought, Daddy?” Gwen asked. Jeffrey pulled himself together.

“My God, Gwen,” he said, “I don't know.” But Gwen's mind had already leapt to something else.

“Why, Daddy,” she said, “oh, Daddy.” Her voice was reproachful, and her eyes were wide. “Hasn't anyone brought you your pipe and your tobacco?” And then she turned on Jim before Jeffrey had time to answer.

“Jim,” she said, “at least you might see that Daddy has his pipe when he comes home tired.”

Jim gazed at her critically.

“We all see you,” he said; “we're right in there with you, Gwen. Where did you buy the lipstick?”

But she was living a life of her own and no brother of hers was going to spoil it.

“Well, Daddy likes it,” she said, “don't you, Daddy dear? It's Orange-Tan.”

“All right,” Jim said, “if you want to look like a hostess, that's all right with me.”

“Jim,” Madge cried, “what a thing to say to Gwen. What do you mean by a hostess, dear?”

Jeffrey pulled himself together. The atmosphere was heavy with a new sort of emotional tumult.

“I've got to get dressed,” he said. “I know I'm missing a lot, but you'll excuse Daddy dear, won't you?”

“Why, Jeff,” Madge said, “are you going out? Jeff, you never told me.”

“Madge,” Jeffrey said, “I told you yesterday. It's the Air Squadron dinner. Minot's coming here to pick me up at seven.”

“You never told me,” Madge said again. “Have you ordered cocktails? Minot always likes one. Jim, ask Albert to get the cocktail things.”

Jeffrey was tying his tie when Madge came upstairs. He was sure he had told her that he was going out. He could remember it distinctly.

“Jeff,” she said, “I'm awfully glad you're going to have a good time. You always do at the Contact Club dinner, don't you?”

Jeffrey examined his tie in the mirror.

“What's the matter with Gwen?” he asked. “Where did she get that ‘Daddy darling' stuff?”

“Darling,” Madge told him, “it's just a phase. I used to be that way with Father. Don't you remember?”

Jeffrey shook his head. He did not remember.

“Jeff, what were you and Jim talking about when we came in?”

“Oh, this and that,” Jeffrey told her. “About the war.”

“Jeff,” she said, “he's going out somewhere. Do you know where he's going?”

“Oh, out with a girl, I guess,” Jeffrey answered.

“What girl?”

“It doesn't matter much what girl at his time of life,” Jeffrey said. “Just a girl. Her name is Sally Sales.”

“Oh, dear,” Madge said, “Sally Sales.”

Jeffrey had picked up his coat, and now he held it by the collar.

“Do you know her?” he asked. “What's wrong with her?”

“There's nothing wrong with her,” Madge answered, “I've only heard Beckie speak about her. She just isn't the type of girl for Jim. She's—Oh, I don't know, I just wish it weren't Sally Sales.”

“Madge,” Jeffrey told her, “you can't have Jim to yourself all the time. You mustn't be jealous of his girls.”

“Of course I'm jealous,” Madge said, “and I'm not ashamed of it. Darling, any mother is.”

Jeffrey put on his dinner coat. If it was not one thing, it was another. When you were in love you had a feeling that all problems would be automatically settled once you had married the girl you loved. When the children were born and the house became filled with screams and diapers, you were certain that the problem would solve itself when the children were able to walk and button themselves. The future kept holding a bundle of hay in front of you, and you plodded after it, but you never got the hay. Now that Jim was grown up, there was a new kind of emotion, and a whole new tangle of jealousies and values, far more complicated than any that had gone before. Motherhood was more intense than fatherhood, a force with which it was impossible to argue.

“Well,” Jeffrey said, “there must be some girl who is almost good enough for Jim.”

“I wish you wouldn't joke about it,” Madge said. “I was thinking the other day, whenever I come to you with a problem, you try to pass it over. It doesn't help when I'm worried, Jeffrey.”

“Everybody's worried,” Jeffrey said. “You are, I am, everybody is.”

“Jeff,” she said, “you don't know what boys and girls are like now. He might marry her.”

“Who?” Jeffrey asked. “Who might?”

“Sally Sales. Aren't you listening, Jeffrey?”

It had a sort of universal value. When he answered he could almost hear the same thing being said by a million other people.

“Every time Jim speaks to a girl, you think he's going to marry her,” Jeffrey said. “Why don't you put your mind on Gwen? Now almost any minute Gwen might marry—one of the elevator boys or the man who fixes the telephone or someone.”

“Oh, Gwen,” Madge said, and she laughed. “I don't see how you can help noticing—Gwen isn't the type that attracts men at all.”

“There's the bell,” Jeffrey said. “That must be Minot, now.”

There was one good thing about middle age. There might be new worries, but a lot of old ones were gone. There were a lot of things which you finally knew you could not do, so that it was logical to give up trying to do them. Jeffrey knew that he would never read all the books in the library, for example—that it was impossible, simply because of the cold mathematics of time. He knew that he would never succeed completely in doing much that he had wished. There was a pack trip, for instance, which he had always wanted to take in the Rockies. He could think about it still, but he would never have the time. Among other things that he would never do or be, he knew finally that he would never be the sort of person that Minot Roberts was. He was not even sure that he cared much now for those attributes in his friend which he had admired for so long. His manner and his composure would never be like Minot's and he would never have Minot's sportsmanship or his code of honor or his generosity. Now, he was not sure that he wanted to be as far removed from the world as Minot.

Yet, when he saw Minot, he felt a great warmth of friendship for him and a certain wonder at how much that friendship had changed his life. If he had not met Minot Roberts years before in France, he would not have been where he was at all, but there was no use trying to be like Minot any longer.

Minot's hair was gray, but his figure looked extraordinarily lithe. He looked as though he could ride as well as he ever could, and his gray eyes were just as keen and the set of his jaw was just as firm as in the past. The trouble was that he looked too young. Time should have changed him in some way, and he seemed impervious to change. As Minot stood near the cocktail shaker and the glasses, he reminded Jeffrey of one of those portraits that you see in advertisements of some rare old blended whisky. You could almost make up a caption to put beneath him as you saw him standing there. You might have called it “The Portrait of a Gentleman Meeting His Old Friend,” the old friend being a bottle. You might have called it “Aristocrats, Both” or “Fifty Years in the Wood, but as Sound as Ever.” It was not right to think of Minot in that way. It was not loyal, but there it was.

“Minot,” Madge said, “it's been ages.”

“Madge, dear,” Minot said.

That was all. It was uncomplicated, but if Jeffrey had said it, he knew he would have sounded like a fool. Minot and Madge were speaking a language which he would never speak, but he felt no resentment. Madge had had her chance once and she had wanted him, not Minot. There had been times when Jeffrey had been amazed at that effort of Madge's at natural selection, and times when he was certain that Madge had made a mistake in not marrying a man with a background like her own, but now he was not so sure. It may have been that Madge had been endowed with a flash of intuition, an instinct for survival in that desire she once had possessed for change. There was something about Minot which was static, a little like the face of a clock which no longer ticked. It did not change Jeffrey's affection for him, but there it was. He had never thought before of Minot as a type, but that was what he was; and now—it may have been because the world was shaking with the new war—the type was a little outmoded, a little dry and sterile: beautiful, but of no present use. It was so exactly like the portrait beside the whisky bottle of distinction that Jeffrey wished he had not thought of it. It was not right. It was disturbing to think that the world might no longer have time for what Minot Roberts represented, and it was not because Minot was old. It was because he looked so young.

Minot looked at him as he always did whenever they met.

“Hi, boy,” Minot said.

“Hi,” Jeffrey answered.

It meant that they were very old friends, but Jeffrey could never convey in that monosyllable all that Minot could.

Jeffrey poured three of gin and one of vermouth into the cocktail shaker and stirred it carefully because Minot was always particular about Martinis.

“It's better to have one here before we go,” Jeffrey said; “they always have bad cocktails at the dinner.”

Minot smiled at him and the little wrinkles narrowed about the corners of his eyes. “Boy,” he said, “that's a good idea. We'll have one with Madge.”

Jeffrey looked up from the shaker.

“Here, you'd better do it.”

“It's all in the lemon,” Minot said. “Just the outside peel—That batman cuts the peel too thick, Jeff, but don't let it bother you, here we are.”

None of it ever spilled when Minot poured Martinis. His lean bronzed hand was as steady as a surgeon's.

“Here you are, darling,” he said to Madge, as he handed her a glass. “Down the hatch and happy days.”

That speech was not trite when Minot spoke it; it glowed with kindly hospitality, and it made Madge laugh.

“Minot,” she said, “why is it you always give me a sense of security?”

“That isn't kind,” Minot said. “Whenever I show up, dear, the Romans always hide their wives. You know, I've just thought of something.”

“Don't keep it to yourself,” Jeffrey said, “be sure to tell us, Minot.” But he said it affectionately as one would to one's best friend.

“It's a poem,” Minot said, “it's been running through my head all day. It goes something like this: ‘Four things greater than all things are, Women and horses and power and war.' We've got them all now, haven't we?”

It was exactly what Minot should have said, being what he was.

“Maybe we'd better be pushing on,” Jeffrey said.

“Why, Jeffrey,” Madge said, “don't be so rude. Minot's only just come.”

“He knows what I mean,” Jeffrey answered. “We've got to be going, to the war, at the Contact Club.”

“That's right,” Minot said. “It's time we were up and over the lines. I've got the car downstairs, but I'll tell you what we'll do first.”