So Little Time (73 page)

“It was sweet of you to come so suddenly,” Madge said. “We'll have supper in a few minutes now. Gwen, will you take Sally upstairs to the blue room? You don't mind my calling you Sally, do you, dear?”

Madge was looking at the gabardine tailored suit and at the page bob and at the organdy blouse and at the little bag that Sally was holding which just matched her shoes and at the heels that were too high for her. She was seeing everything at once.

“I'd love it,” Sally said. “I'd love it if you would, Mrs. Wilson.”

Something about it made Jeffrey wince. He had that awful helplessness of someone in a dream.

“Of course, Mother,” he heard Jim say, “yes, of course call her Sally.”

A cheerful drum-like voice from the end of the hall started with a roar and ended at a more moderate pitch.

“…
by the courtesy of Your Own Foot Shop. Remember, Your Own Foot Shop where your feet from the street meet a treat
.…”

Jeffrey whirled on his heel at the sound.

“What the devil's that?” he asked.

It was the radio, of course, and Charley had turned it on.

“It's just the seven-thirty news, Dad,” Charley said.

And then they all stood there involuntarily listening, all of them—Madge and Jim and Sally and Gwen—as though the voice had put a stop to all the small cares in the house. The radio made a breaking, crashing sound, although the evening was quite clear. It was Jeffrey's first intimation that a September thunderstorm might end that muggy day.

“
Russian resistance continues all along the front with heavy fighting in the vicinity of Moscow. In the meanwhile, the R.A.F. has not been idle. Continuing their air offensive, large bomber formations streaked across the Channel into Western Germany, finding their targets with difficulty because of inclement weather
.”

Jeffrey raised his voice against the other voice.

“Turn that damn thing off,” he shouted at Charley.

46

Conversation in the Small Hours

Before Jeffrey was fully awake his common sense told him that the sound that had awakened him was from one of those thunderstorms that sometimes swept up the valley. Nevertheless there was a familiar booming cadence like guns, and for just an instant when his eyes were closed and he was moving into consciousness, he might have been back where the Squadron slept beyond the flying field. The sound of the thunder was not alarming as much as it was insistent. When the guns had awakened him, their cadence would rise and fall like thunder. As Jeffrey listened a flash of lightning lit up the room where he and Madge were sleeping so that he knew he had been dreaming, but the mood of the dream was left with him.

He felt very definitely that he would not live forever, and then he was wide awake and listening to the rain outside. All at once he felt very weary, for his time had not been severed suddenly in one grand sweep, as it would have been had he died out there when he was young, and as Jim might die. Instead his time had been cut off bit by bit without his having noticed, painlessly but surely. There was the lack of resilience in his muscles and the grayness in his hair. They still said that he looked “so young,” but that in itself meant that he could not be young. The years had been cut off one by one without his knowing where they had gone. There were all the things that he meant to do and which he knew he never would. There was that play which he wrote too late, and that was gone. There was Marianna Miller and that was gone—none of it would ever come back, and what there was in the present was not as important as the past.

“Jeff?” He heard Madge call quite softly to him. “Are you awake?”

“Yes,” he said, “I'm awake.”

“How long has it been storming?”

“I don't know,” he said. “It woke me up.”

“Do you think it's blowing in anywhere?”

“No,” he said, “there isn't any wind. It isn't blowing in.”

“Jeff,” she said, “turn on the light.”

“Why?” he asked. “It's all right. Go to sleep.”

“Jeff,” she asked, “what were you thinking about?”

“About my sins I guess,” he said. “Go to sleep, Madge.”

“No,” she said. “Turn on the light.”

He turned on the light on the bedroom table, and there he was and there she was, and all the present and all the years of their intimacy were back. Madge had propped herself up on her elbow and was looking at him across the space between their twin beds.

“Jeff,” she said, “I don't see what he sees in her.”

“What?” Jeffrey asked. “Who?”

Then he realized they were back exactly where they had been before they went to sleep. He heard Madge sigh.

“Jeff,” Madge said, “you must have thought—you couldn't help thinking … she was very unattractive.”

Then Jeffrey sighed. He wished that Madge did not feel it necessary to go over Sally Sales in the middle of the night.

“I don't know, Madge,” Jeffrey said. “I told you I didn't know what I saw in her. All girls that age look alike. There isn't anything to see. When Gwen grows up she'll look like that. They all do.”

“Gwen will
not
!” Madge said.

“All right,” Jeffrey said, “all right, she won't look like that, unless she can't help it. They all wear the same clothes. They all do the same things. It's life.”

“They don't all do the same things,” Madge said. “Gwen is a lady, at least she ought to be.”

“Gwen is an overmannered silly little girl,” Jeffrey said.

“Jeff,” Madge said, “why do you keep saying that again and again? I've told you and I've told you Gwen is simply going through a phase. All girls go through it and all girls get over it.”

“Well, it's a hell of a phase,” Jeffrey said. “I don't believe the Sales girl ever went through any phase like that. If I had to pick between the two of them to live on a desert island with, I'd pick Sales.”

Madge laughed softly but not agreeably.

“What's the joke?” Jeffrey asked.

Madge laughed again softly but not agreeably.

“You,” Madge said. “Dear, you're amazing sometimes.”

“Oh,” Jeffrey said, “am I?”

“Sometimes I think you know so much about people,” Madge said, “and then you show your blind spot; but then only women can judge women.”

“Darling,” Jeffrey said, and he laughed too, “didn't someone say that before?”

“Darling,” Madge said, “I'm not finding fault. I know you can't help it, because you do have a very queer taste in women. I don't mean vulgar exactly. I just mean queer. Now I know you like that Mrs. Newcombe. I do watch you sometimes, darling. I suppose it's because you've been in the theater so much, where everyone is overdressed and overemphasized and overemotional. There are all those theater people like Marianna Miller.”

Jeffrey sat up straighter in bed.

“Madge,” he said, “maybe I'd better go downstairs and see about the windows. It's a little windier now. It may be blowing in.”

“I don't know why you always change the subject when I talk about Marianna,” Madge said, “because I like her, Jeff. I really like her very much. I know how good she is professionally, but you know what I mean. There are all sorts of little things about her that you seem to miss.”

“What,” Jeffrey said. “What sort of things do I seem to miss?”

“All sorts of little things,” Madge said. “And you're so sensitive and so perceptive sometimes. You're able to be so devastating about so many people. You tear poor Fred and Beckie apart, for instance, and yet you don't see any of those things in Marianna Miller.”

“What things?” Jeffrey asked.

It was as though he had been awakened again by the sound of the thunder. Madge seemed to be talking unnecessarily about something which was over long ago.

“I like her, dear,” Madge said. “I like her very much and she's very sweet in a great many ways, but I don't see why you've never seen that she's a little on the dull side. I suppose it's her looks that make you miss it. And she is pretty when you add her features all together and don't take them individually. I know she has a certain charm, and I love having her with company because she's so gay. But I don't see why you don't see that she's overemotional and a little vulgar.”

“Vulgar?” Jeffrey asked. “Why is she vulgar?”

“Now don't be hurt, dear,” Madge said. “Perhaps I shouldn't have said vulgar, but egotistical, and there are any number of other little things—”

“Go ahead,” Jeffrey said, “what little things?”

Madge laughed again and this time her laugh was soft and happy.

“Darling,” she said, “you'd find out in a day if you'd ever lived with her. There are all sorts of things that would drive you crazy and that's why I've never worried about Marianna—little small-town cosmetic-counter things—that Bellodgia, clouds and clouds of Bellodgia, and those billowy dresses and that bouncy little obvious way she has, and that sort of a night-club-hostess voice. Of course, you don't notice because all a man sees is her face. He wouldn't see that she doesn't wash behind the ears.”

“My God,” Jeffrey said, “Marianna washes all the time.… She washes and washes.”

“Why, Jeffrey,” Madge asked, “how do you know how much she washes?”

“Perhaps I just assume it,” Jeffrey said. “Never mind it, Madge.”

“I don't mind it,” Madge said, and she laughed again. “I always feel perfectly safe when you're with Marianna, because I know you couldn't stand her for a day, but I didn't mean to be hard on Marianna. I just brought her up, just as an example, because—”

“Because what?” Jeffrey asked and he sat up straighter.

“Because it shows you're so oblivious in some ways. Now that little thing—what's her name? I keep forgetting it.”

Madge puckered her forehead and smiled, seemingly amused by her own forgetfulness, but of course she knew her name.

“You mean Sally Sales?” Jeffrey asked. They were back again with Sally Sales. No matter how long he lived he still made curious and disturbing discoveries about himself. There in the middle of the night he seemed to be more involved with Sally Sales than he was with Marianna Miller, perhaps because of his earlier thought that Marianna Miller and all that he associated with her was gone for good, cut off by time, while Jim was still a part of him. He could see Jim helping Sally from the train and that light on her hair and that embarrassed understanding between them, and her loneliness in the hall.

“Of course,” Madge said, “I don't know why I keep forgetting. Sally Sales. Jeff, didn't it occur to you, really, that she's a little common? That's what I can't understand in Jim, because I would have thought Jim would see it. He's always been very fastidious. You do admit, don't you, that she's common?”

“How do you mean?” Jeffrey asked, and he was anxious to know. He did not want Sally Sales to be common.

“Any woman would see,” Madge said. “Of course, superficially she's rather pretty, and she has a pretty figure. I suppose you noticed her figure?”

“If she's all right superficially, what's wrong with her?” Jeffrey asked. “And I didn't notice her figure.”

Madge sighed again and looked straight ahead of her at the shadows in the corner of the room, as though she were conjuring up Sally Sales and her pretty figure.

“Her ankles, Jeff,” Madge said. “Didn't you notice her ankles?”

“Yes, I did,” Jeffrey said. “She couldn't help it. She was wearing high-heeled shoes.”

“Yes,” Madge said. “Those dreadful little shoes and the bag that matched.”

“No kid knows how to dress,” Jeffrey said, “when she's as young as that.”

“Her mother might have taught her,” Madge said. “It shows where she came from.”

“My God,” Jeffrey said, “look what Gwen manages to buy when you let her in a store. No young girl knows how to dress.”

“Darling,” Madge said. “Gwen's years younger, and she's going through a phase, and suppose you let me worry about Gwen's clothes, and don't keep comparing her with Gwen.”

“I only say,” Jeffrey said, “that no young girl knows how to dress, and no boy does either. You've got to be older before you know how to wear clothes. Look at that uniform of Jim's.”

“He was stunning in it,” Madge said. “What's the matter with it?”

“Never mind,” Jeffrey said. “I wish you wouldn't be so hard on her, Madge.”

“I'm not, dear,” Madge said. “I feel a little sorry for her really—but that hair-do and the lipstick—ugh, that lipstick!”

“Kids don't know about lipstick when they first try it out,” Jeffrey said. “You didn't know about it. Ugh, your own lipstick!”

“Why, Jeff,” Madge said, and she laughed, “why haven't you ever told me you didn't like it, dear?”

“Because I'm not a woman,” Jeffrey said, “thank God; and what about Gwen's lipstick?”

“Jeffrey,” Madge said, “please. Don't keep trotting out poor little Gwen, when she's going through a phase.”

“All right,” Jeffrey said, “maybe little Sales is going through a phase.”

“I hope she is, dear,” Madge said, “but I don't think she'll change much. She's a little old to change.”

“Old?” Jeffrey repeated. “My God, Madge!”

“Not in terms of you and me, dear,” Madge said, “but if you notice her eyes and forehead you'll see what I mean. Of course she's older than Jim—perhaps three or four years older.”

“Well, she isn't,” Jeffrey said. “She's just nineteen.”

Madge laughed.

“Why darling,” she said, “I didn't know you'd got so far with her. It didn't seem to me she said anything to anybody. When did she tell you? After dinner?”