The Theoretical Foot (23 page)

vi

Nan lingered in the room after the others had gone out on the terrace. It was quiet there. The candles were low, and lines made by the heavy net across the dark table zigzagged here and there, pulled by a wine glass or a coffee cup. The flowers looked brighter than when she'd picked them.

She lifted her cup to drink her half-cold bitter coffee.

She could see herself in the mirror. It was like an illustration from some storybook, perhaps
The Princess and the Goblin,
perhaps some other book where the tiny delicate girl stood in the palace candlelight with stars and darkness behind her through the great window. Nan looked small and ageless. She smiled at her own bland romanticism.

To François, who stood suddenly in the kitchen door, she said carefully and in schoolgirl French, “The dinner was excellent. It was beautifully served.”

He bowed and then laughed a little with his eyes twinkling. “Did Madame notice?”

Nan shook her head. She didn't know what he was talking about and didn't really care but she acted as if she were listening.

“My collar,” François said as he leaned down precariously from the step and clutched his napkin-wrapped throat. “Did not Madame see that from the first course at the beginning of the banquet I was completely nude about the neck?”

Nan shook her head at him again and smiled as he cackled delightedly.

“So much the better,” he said. “So much the better! If I may be permitted, it seems to me that all went very well. Even the aspic . . .”

Nan started. She must say something about the aspic, of course, but what a bother it was to try to make people happy. She murmured graciously and more or less grammatically in French and left him bowing and teetering in the doorway.

Outside, the terrace seemed empty at first. Then she saw that Honor and Football Joe and his little love stood by the table at the far end, talking with Sara. They were all smoking and the lights from their cigarettes were level with the lights from far down the lake as if the people, their warm bodies, were part of the night, all but invisible but for that little fire.

Dan stepped from the shadows near the house.

“May I get you a chair or scarf or a cigarette or something?” he spoke with nonchalance as if he were world-weary. Nan smiled secretly, then at him. She was pleased not to be forced to walk out alone in the company of the others. In spite of her new freedom she still liked the reassurance of attention.

She took his arm lightly.

“It's warm now,” she said in a low voice. “Will you sit with me there in the deck chairs?” She heard her voice making this sound provocative. I really am a bitch, she thought for the second time that day with an undoubted feeling of complacency. Yes, a bitch. What a pity that I've discovered this so late in life!

Daniel resisted the impulse to take her in his arms, to kiss the politely charming smile from her lips, to carry her far away down toward the brook and into the night. He held her chair for her carefully then sat on the gravel by her side.

“May I get you some brandy?”

“Brandy is too strong. I tried to like it but I just can't. My husband used to give me one sip from his glass. I felt like a taster for the Borgia, rather. I was never poisoned but I simply hated it.”

They were whispering to each other. From the group at the end of the terrace came the sound of easy laughter. A soft breeze brought the sound of the bell clangor from the village to them.

“Curfew,” Nan murmured. “Dan, where is Timothy?”

Daniel held the match cupped for her with his hands. When did he suddenly become enslaved to the will of any beautiful creature, not dominated by Timothy but his dominator? It was a queer thought, leaving him to wonder which was she? Could I rule her? he asked himself before he could stop the question that shouldn't have been put into words. Well, could you dominate Sue Harper, Tennant? Of course. She may be Kelly's girl but I could have her. He felt self-confident and warm and when the match burned at his palm he dropped it with a comforting oath.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Tim's walking up the path with Lucy up there toward the gate.”

“Oh dear.”

“What? Why, Nan? Are you afraid Lucy is making a scene? Or should I have said that?”

“Oh yes, Dan. You know that this summer has been rather difficult. Poor Lucy . . . there's no use talking about it. But really she's not well. She's so different here. At home she's the most thoughtful loving person. A little overwhelming at times perhaps, but so loving. But here . . . I'm afraid she's really made it hard for Sara.”

Nan did not want to talk about Lucy with this boy. She felt disloyal. Dan Tennant was too perspicacious.

He picked up some gravel in one long hand and jiggled it with a tiny rattling noise. Nan could smell smoke from his cigarette and the faint clean odor of pine soap on his skin. Why had she opened such a conversation? How could she discuss one of her dear friends with this child? Was Lucy right? Did Nan really make herself cheap? Was she throwing herself at Dan's head?

He leaned very close to her. She could see his strange eyes twinkling far back between their short thick lashes. And in each pupil a red crown from the casino at Évian was reflected like a tiny flame.

“Fortunate they,” he quoted solemnly, “who though once only and then but far away have heard her massive sandal set on stone . . .”

Nan clapped her hands over her mouth and tried not to laugh that she heard Lucy's ponderous footsteps. Daniel was impudent.
She felt cross to think that she had believed him sensitive, sentient. He was an impertinent schoolboy. She laughed in spite of herself, then half-rose from her seat, repentantly, crying as she did so, “Lucy, darling! Come sit here with us, please!”

Lucy came slowly across to them. Her black dress fluttered majestically about her. She felt handsome and dignified. When Daniel stood beside her as she settled herself into the chair next to Nan, she smiled understandingly at him. She seemed to hear Sara's deceitful breathy voice once more saying at the supper table, “How lovely you look tonight, Lucy!” And then she was looking once again into the young man's eyes, knowing that it was really he who saw not with Sara's sly superficiality but deeply, as only a young man could. She thrilled again, to the core of her body, knowing that, even if it was hopeless, this lad loved her under his charming speechlessness.

“Thank you, Dan,” she said softly.

“Not at all, Lucy. May I get you some brandy, your cigarettes, a shawl, or something?”

Lucy laughed gaily. “Nan! Did you hear this young rascal? A shawl! Not yet, my dear boy! In a few more years perhaps, but not tonight, certainly!”

Daniel stuttered uncomfortably and hurried to the kitchen.

François was putting dirty plates in neat piles on the drain board. Sara stood beside him with a bottle of cognac in one hand and a little glass in the other.

“Here now,” she was saying. “This is ordered, François. Monsieur would wish it. Leave the dishes. Drink this . . . you must be tired. Drink it and then you go on up the hill.”

“Oh, Madam,” he protested, giggling self-consciously. “François is never tired but if Madame insists . . . if Monsieur Garton would wish it . . .”

He turned, his hand outstretched toward the little glass, then whipped to attention as he saw Daniel.

“Is there something I can do for Monsieur?” His eyes were shining.

Sara sighed. “Get out,” she said softly to Dan in English. “Do not lead him on, for God's sake. He's longing to stay here until midnight, thinking valiantly over these dishes. I want him to go home.”

“Trust me.” Dan said to François in his most insouciant French, “To your health, old fellow. No, nothing tonight. But in the morning I probably will need your help.”

François nodded, bowed. Daniel bowed. Sara said good night and walked down the steps into the living room.

“Whatever for?” Her voice sounded puzzled as she handed the bottle of cognac absently to her brother.

“Oh, nothing much. I thought I might get him to help pack for me, you know? As a rehearsal, as we will be leaving one of these days soon.” Dan felt he sounded foolish.

“You're a nut,” Sara said. “After all these years of going back to school, you don't really need a valet to pack your two suitcases, do you? And anyway,” she went on in a quiet voice, “don't let's talk about your leaving. I hate it. Don't talk about it until just the night before you have to go. That's soon enough.”

Daniel cleared his throat. “All right.”

The table stood pushed toward the end of the room. The green rugs were rolled up. Candles flickered along the top of the bookcases and cast strange shadows into the room and into the other room in the mirror. Timothy stepped soundlessly from the hall and started the gramophone.

As the music of the German tango swooped firmly into the air, Daniel stood miserably waiting for something to happen. He knew he should ask Sara to dance with him, but perhaps Tim would first. He hated to dance with Sara more than anything he knew. She danced well in a strangely languorous way that excited him so he trembled. She was cold, impersonal, and in some fashion almost lascivious when she danced with him and he hated it.

“Dance with me, Dan,” Sara told him.

“What'll I do with this bottle?” Dan looked quickly at Timothy who stood with his head down listening intently to the music.

Sara laughed at him then lifted her arms swaying in her filmy gray dress looking like smoke before him. He put the bottle on the table and folded his left arm against her back. He could feel sweat clammy on his palms.

vii

It was late. Lucy, watching from the big chair in the corner, wished she were upstairs quietly reading in bed. But Nan had said, so long ago in the morning, that she felt Lucy should stay with the others and feel herself a part of things. Very well! Lucy wriggled, hid a yawn. She would show Nan how undeserved a criticism she had made.

She wondered how human beings could dance as hard and as wildly as the people who were whirling there before her. It was not age that made her know when enough was enough and to refuse any more of the men's urgings. She felt as young as any of them and was surely fresher looking than some she could mention. Honor's face was frankly gaunt and her magnificent dark eyes flowed feverishly far back in her head. She looked excited and a little crazy as she danced. Little Susan's freshness had grown bright and brittle over the evening so she now looked more the tart she really was under all her seeming decency and even Dan, the youngest of them, was pale and tired in spite of his obvious gaiety.

Sara . . . it was hard to tell about her, except that she moved ever more dreamily and looked paler and more remote as she danced on and on.

Nan Garton was the only one who seemed much less than exhausted. Lucy twisted her mouth bitterly as she watched her friend. Had Nan forgotten all the behavior of a well-bred woman that she could hang this girlishly on the arm of a stranger, such an unprincipled stranger as Joe Kelly? What would Nan's mother
think if she could see her? What was her loving brother Timothy doing to allow his sister to make such a fool of herself?

It was liquor that was making fools of all of them. That was the truth of it. They were all drunk, drunk! Lucy felt sick with self-righteous horror, as one who has newly renounced alcohol can feel. She shuddered with profound disgust to watch other less abstemious people dance and laugh around her.

She felt terribly lonely. Suddenly it became plain to her that she was almost certainly dying of some mysterious disease. Memories of whispered conversations between old women when she was a child thronged into her aching head. Cancer. Madness. The bloody flux. Madness. Oh, how the poor dearie suffered before God whisked her off. The agony. Lucy's eyes dazzled with hot tears. Nan would miss her but then it would be too late.

Lucy stood up and went into the kitchen, miserably sure that nobody would even notice. She was hungry. Poor Sara's sad attempt at a feast had been almost laughable, Lucy thought triumphantly, not at all the kind of meal to give to healthy growing youngsters like the Tennants. Things had been well cooked and well served by François in spite of Sara's shiftlessness in letting him appear practically undressed. But the affectation of it all! Cold pigeons! What they all needed was a good roast of beef with plenty of creamy hot mashed potatoes and gravy. It may not be Continental and sophisticated and precious, she thought savagely, but . . .

Empty champagne bottles lay in the sink. Dirty dishes were piled there. Lucy's lip curled.

Softly she opened the cooling cupboard. There was a bowl of mayonnaise with a glass plate set over it. She tiptoed to the breadbox, took out a handful of rather leathery toast sticks, and carried them to the cupboard where she stood ravenously dipping them into the thick rich yellow sauce and eating them in big untidy bites.