The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant (53 page)

“Alas,” said Walter.

“Terrible, is it?” said his brother-in-law, who had not bothered to look.

“I think I’ll make up my own mind,” said Eve. So she had sat, with her face set, when Walter tried to introduce her to some of his friends and his ideas, fifteen years before. She had never wanted to be anything except a mother, and she would protect anyone who wanted protection—Walter as well. But nothing would persuade her that a church was ugly if it was familiar and reminded her of home.

Walter did not desire Eve’s protection. He did not think he could use anything Eve had to give. Sometimes she persuaded him to come to the beach with the family, and then she fussed over him, seeing that the parasol was fixed so that he had full shade. She knew he did not expose his arms and legs to the sun, because of his scars. She made him sit on an arrangement of damp, sandy towels and said, “There. Isn’t that nice?” In an odd way, she still admired him; he saw it, and was pleased. He answered her remarks (about Riviera people, French politics, the Mediterranean climate, and the cost of things) with his habitual social fluency, but it was the children who took his attention. He marveled at their singleness of purpose, the energy they could release just in tearing off their clothes. They flung into the water and had to be bullied out. Mauve-lipped, chattering, they said, “What’s there to do now?”

“Have you ever wanted to be a ballet dancer?” Walter asked his niece.

“No,” she said, with scorn.

One day Angelo spent the morning with them. Frank had taken the car to the Citroën garage and looked forward to half a day with the mechanics there. In a curious way Angelo seemed to replace the children’s father. He organized a series of canals and waterways and kept the children digging for more than an hour. Walter noticed that Angelo was doing none of the work himself. He stood over them with his hand on one hip—peacock lad, cock of the walk. When an Italian marries, you see this change, Walter thought. He treats his servants that way, and then his wife. He said, “Angelo, put your clothes on and run up to the bar and bring us all some cold drinks.”

“Oh, Uncle Walter,” his niece complained.

“I’ll go, Uncle Walter,” said the little boy.

“Angelo will go,” Walter said. “It’s his job.”

Angelo pulled his shorts over his bathing suit and stood, waiting for Walter to drop money in his hand.

“Don’t walk about naked,” Walter said. “Put on your shirt.”

Eve was knitting furiously. She sat with her cotton skirt hitched up above her knees and a cotton bolero thrown over her head to keep off the sun.
From this shelter her sunglasses gleamed at him, and she said in her plain, loud voice, “I don’t like this, Walter, and I haven’t been liking it for some time. It’s not the kind of world I want my children to see.” “I’m not responsible for the Riviera,” said Walter.

“I mean that I don’t like your bullying Angelo in front of them. They admire him so. I don’t like any of it. I mean to say, the master-servant idea. I think it’s bad taste, if you want my opinion.”

“Are you trying to tell me you didn’t have a servant in South Africa?”

“You know perfectly well what I mean. Walter, what
are
you up to? That sad, crumbling house. Nothing has been changed or painted or made pretty in it for years. You don’t seem to have any friends here. Your telephone never rings. It hasn’t rung once since I’ve been here. And that poor boy.”

“Poor?” said Walter. “Is that what he’s been telling you? You should have seen the house I rescued him from. You should just see what he’s left behind him. Twelve starving sisters and brothers, an old harridan of a mother—and a grandmother. He’s so frightened of her even at this distance that he sends her every penny I give him. Twelve sisters and brothers …”

“He must miss them,” said Eve.

“I’ve sent him home,” Walter said. “I sent him for a visit with a first-class ticket. He sold the first-class ticket and traveled third. If I hadn’t been certain he wanted to give the difference to his people, I should never have had him back. I hate deceit. If he didn’t get home that time it was because the cat was worrying him. I’ve told you the story. You said it was sad. But it was his idea, taking the cat.”

“He eyes the girls in the market,” said Eve. “But he never speaks.”

“Let him,” said Walter. “He is free to do as he likes.”

“Perhaps he doesn’t think he is.”

“I can assure you he is, and knows it. If he is devoted to me because I’ve been kind to him, it’s his own affair.”

“It’s probably too subtle for me,” she said. She pulled her skirts a little higher and stroked her veined, stretched legs. She was beyond vanity. “But I still think it’s all wrong. He’s sweet with the children, but he’s a little afraid of me.”

“Perhaps you think he should be familiar with women and call them silly old sows.”

“No, not at his age,” she said mildly. “Johnny is still a baby, you know. I don’t expect much from him.” She was veering away from a row.

“My telephone never rings because my friends are away for the summer,”
he said. “This summer crowd has nothing to do with my normal life.” He had to go on with that; her remark about the telephone had annoyed him more than anything else.

Yet he wanted her to approve of him; he wanted even Frank to approve of him. He was pushed into seeing himself through their eyes. He preferred his own images, his own creations. Once, he had loved a woman much older than himself. He saw her, by chance, after many years, when she was sixty. “What will happen when I am sixty?” he wanted to say. He wondered if Eve, with her boundless concern for other people, had any answer to that. What will happen fifteen years from now, when Miss Cooper claims the house?

That night, William of Orange, who lost no love on anyone, pulled himself onto the terrace table, having first attained a chair, and allowed Walter to scratch his throat. When he had had enough, he slipped away and dropped off the table and prowled along the wall. Eve was upstairs, putting the children to bed. It was a task she usually left to Angelo. Walter understood he and Frank had been deliberately left together alone. He knew he was about to be asked a favor. Frank leaned over the table. His stupid, friendly face wore its habitual expression of deep attention:
I am so interested in you. I am trying to get the point of everything you say
. He was easy enough; he never suggested Walter should be married, or working at something. He began to say that he missed South Africa. They had sold their property at a loss. He said he was starting over again for the last time, or so he hoped. He was thirty-seven. He had two children to educate. His face was red as a balloon. Walter let him talk, thinking it was good for him.

“We can always use another person on a farm—another man, that is,” said Frank.

“I wouldn’t be much use to you, I’m afraid,” said Walter.

“No. Well, I meant to say … We shall have to pack up soon. I think next week.”

“We shall miss you,” said Walter. “Angelo will be shattered.”

“We’re going to drive the Citroën up to Paris,” said Frank, suddenly lively, “and turn it in to Cook’s there. We may never have a chance to do that trip again. Wonderful for the kids.” He went off on one of his favorite topics—motors and mileage—and was diverted from whatever request he had been prodded by Eve to make. Walter was thankful it had been so easy.

Unloved, neglected, the hamster chewed newspaper in its cage. The cage
hung from the kitchen ceiling, and rocked with every draft. Angelo remembered to feed the hamster, but as far as the children were concerned it might have been dead. William of Orange claimed them now; he threw up hair balls and string, and behaved as if he were poisoned. Angelo covered his coat with olive oil and pushed mashed garlic down his throat. He grew worse; Angelo found him on the steps one morning, dying, unable to move his legs. He sat with the cat on his knees and roared, as William of Orange had howled on the train in his basket. The cat was dying of old age. Walter assured everyone it was nothing more serious than that. “He came with the house,” he repeated again and again. “He must be the equivalent of a hundred and two.”

Angelo’s grief terrified the children. Walter was frightened as well, but only because too much was taking place. The charming boy against the baroque wall had become this uncontrolled, bellowing adolescent. The sight of his niece’s delicate ear, the lamps reflected in his nephew’s eyes, his sister’s disapproval of him on the beach, his brother-in-law’s soulless exposition of his personal disaster—each was an event. Any would have been a stone to mark the season. Any would have been enough. He wanted nothing more distressing than a spoiled dinner, nothing more lively than a drive along the shore. He thought, In three days, four at the most, they will disappear. William of Orange is old and dying, but everything else will be as before. Angelo will be amusing and young. Mrs. Wiggott will invite me to dine. The telephone will ring.

The children recovered quickly, for they saw that William of Orange was wretched but not quite dead. They were prepared to leave him and go to the beach as usual, but Angelo said he would stay with the cat. The children were sorry for Angelo now. Johnny sat next to Angelo on the step, frowning in a grown-up way, rubbing his brown knees. “Tell me one thing,” he said to Angelo from under his sun hat. “Is William of Orange your father or something like that?” That night the little boy wet his bed, and Walter had a new horror. It was the sight of a bedsheet with a great stain flapping on the line.

Fortunately for Walter, the family could no longer put off going away. “There is so much to do,” said Eve. “We got the Citroën delivered, but we didn’t do a thing about the children’s schools. I wonder if the trunks have got to London? I expect there hasn’t been time. I hope they get there before the cold weather. All the children’s clothes are in them.”

“You are preposterous parents,” Walter said. “I suppose you know that.”

“We are, aren’t we?” said Eve cheerfully. “You don’t understand how much one has to
do
. If only we could leave the children somewhere, even for a week, while we look at schools and everything.”

“You had your children because you wanted them,” said Walter. “I suppose.”

“Yes, we did,” said Frank. It was the only time Walter ever saw his easy manner outdistanced. “We wanted them. So let’s hear no more about leaving them. Even for a week.”

Only one rainy day marred the holiday, and as it was the last day, it scarcely counted. It was over—the breather between South Africa and England, between home for the children and a new home for Eve. They crowded into the sitting room, waiting for lunch. They had delayed leaving since early that morning, expecting, in their scatterbrained way, that the sky would clear. The room smelled of musty paper and of mice. Walter suddenly remembered what it was like in winter here, and how Angelo was often bored. His undisciplined relations began pulling books off the shelves and leaving them anywhere.

“Are all these yours?” Mary asked him. “Are they old?”

“These shelves hold every book I have ever bought or had given me since I was born,” said Walter. And the children looked again at the dark green and dark wine covers.

“I know
Kim,”
said Mary, and she opened it and began to read in a monotonous voice, “ ‘He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam-Zammeh on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaibgher.’ ”

“I can still see him,” said Eve. “I can see Kim.”

“I can’t see him as I saw him,” said Walter.

“Never could bear Kipling, personally,” Frank said. “He’s at the bottom of all the trouble we’re having now. You only have to read something like ‘Wee Willie Winkie’ to understand that.”

“Why is the gun ‘her’?” Mary asked.

“Because in an English education it’s the only thing allowed to be female,” said Frank. “That and boats.” He hadn’t wanted the change; that was plain. For Eve’s sake, Walter hoped it was a change for the good.

“This book is all scribbled in,” Mary complained. She began to turn at random, reading the neat hand that had been Walter’s at twelve: “ ‘Shows foresight,’ ” she read. “ ‘Local color. More color. Building up the color. Does not wish to let women interfere with his career.’ That’s underlined, Uncle Walter,” she said, breaking off. “ ‘A deceiver. Kim’s strong will—or
white blood? Generous renunciation. Sympathetic. Shows off. Sly. Easily imposed on. Devout. Persistent. Enterprising.’ ”

“That will do,” said Frank. “ ‘Shows off’ is the chief expression where you’re concerned.”

“Those notes were how Kipling was introduced to me, and I used them when I was teaching Angelo,” said Walter. “Angelo doesn’t like Kipling, either. You can keep the book, if you want it.”

“Thank you very much,” said Mary automatically. She placed the book more or less where it had been, as if she recognized that this was a bogus gesture.

“Thank you, darling Walter,” said Eve, and she picked up the book and stroked the cover, dirtying her hand. “Johnny will love it, later on.”

Walter’s first dinner invitation of the autumn season arrived by post eight days after the Osborns had gone. In the same mail were three letters, each addressed by his sister. Eve thanked him for his great kindness; he would never know what it had meant, the holiday it had been. They were in a hotel, and it was a great change from the south. In a P.S. she said they were moving to the new farm soon. The children were their great worry. She went on about schools. The postscript was longer than the body of the letter.

The other two envelopes, although addressed by Eve, contained letters from Mary and Johnny. The boy spelled difficult words correctly, simple words hopelessly, and got his own name wrong.

“Dear Uncle Walter,” he wrote. “Thank you for letting us stay at your house.” A row of dots led out to the margin, where he had added, “and for Kim.” The text of the letter went on, “It was the most exciting, and enjoyable time I have ever had. Please tell Angelo on the way back we were fined for overtaking in a village, but we got safley out of France. I hope the hamster is well and happy. Tell Angelo there are two very small kittens down in the kitchin of the hotel where we now rent two rooms. They are sweat, white, snowballs, also there is a huge golden labridore, he is very stuppid. Love from Johny.”