Thunder on the Left (1925)/Chapter 2
DEAR MISS CLYDE," wrote Mrs. Granville, "it will be so nice to meet you again after all these years. You can imagine my surprise when I found that the house Mr. Granville has taken for the summer is the old Richmond place, which I remember so well from long ago. Twenty-one years, isn't it? It hasn't changed a bit, but everything seems so much smaller, even the ocean somehow. The house has been shut up a long time, since the summer the Richmonds went away. We want you to join our Family Picnic, which is always an amusing affair. Mr. Granville admires your work so much, I did not realize until recently that you must be the same person I knew as a child. There are other artists here too, the Island has become quite a summer camp for painters, the woods are full of them, painting away merrily. I am sorry this is so late, but just send us a wire saying you can come. . . ."
She paused to reread the letter, and changed "so nice," in the first line, to "nice." She changed "twenty-one" to "nearly twenty." She crossed out "painting away merrily." How do I know whether they're merry? she asked herself. Then she noticed that the word "summer" was used three times. She changed one of them to "year." No, that made three "years." Put "for the vacation" instead of "for the summer." Now the letter must be copied again.
Why on earth George wanted her to invite the Clyde creature when things were complicated enough already . . . she had never cared much for her even as a child . . . to have outsiders here for the Picnic when they had only just got the old house in running order, and Lizzie was overworked in the kitchen, and expenses terrific anyhow . . . George thought Miss Clyde might be the right person to do the pictures for the booklet he was writing for the railroad company. Always thinking of his business first and her convenience afterward. Business was something to be attended to in offices, not to be mixed up with your home life. Never try to make social friends of your business acquaintances, how many times had she told George that?
Damn the Picnic, damn the Picnic, damn the Picnic!
Of course she had only brought down one sheet of paper; now she must go up again for more. The dining table was the single place in the house she could write a letter. If she halted in the bedroom, in a moment Nounou was at the door with endless this that and the other about the children. If she sat down on the porch, Lizzie could see her from the pantry window and would come at once with stentorian palaver. Why couldn't a cook do what she was told, not argue about it? In the little sitting room George had spread out his business papers; anyhow, she couldn't bear him near her when she wanted to write. And in the garden it was too hot. A bumblebee was bumping and grumbling against the pane. If you took a cloth and held him, to put him outdoors, his deep warm hum would rise to a piercing scream of anger. She felt like that. If any one touched her . . .
The bee was fussing up and down the window, the one with red and blue and orange panes. She remembered that window from childhood visits to the Richmonds. When you looked through the orange glass, the purest sky turned a leaden green, dull with menace; the clear northern sunlight became a poisoned tropic glare. And the blue panes made everything a crazy cold moonscape, with strange grape-juice colours underneath the leaves. It reminded her of George's favourite remark, in moments of stress, that women's conduct is entirely physiological. Ponderous pedantry! Vulgar too. Physiology, a hateful word. Suddenly she felt an immense pity for all women . . . even Miss Clyde. She went up to the bedroom to get another sheet of paper.
George had actually moved the bureau at last, so that the light fell justly on the mirror. Yes, the pale green dress was pretty. Like lettuce and mayonnaise, George had said, admiring the frail yellow collar. It brought out the clear blue of the eyes, like sluiced pebbles. She was almost amazed (looking closely) to see how clear they were, after so many angers, so much—physiology. One can be candid in solitude. Thirty-four. What was that story she had read, which said that a woman is at her most irresistible at thirty-five? Mother had sent it to her, in a magazine, and had written in the margin True of my Phyllis. She laughed. What a merciless comedy life is. Ten years before, Mother would have marked in the same way any story that said twenty-five. Was there no such thing as truth? Blessed Mother, who knew that woman must be flattered. A pity that story hadn't been in a book instead of a magazine. Books carry more authority. . . . But books, pooh! Who had ever written a book that told the innermost truth? Thank God, in her secret heroic self she was aware of joy and disgust, but she kept them private. Truth is about other people, not about me. A woman doesn't bear and rear three children . . . bring them into the world, a comelier phrase . . . and cohabit with a queer fish like George without knowing what life amounts to. And how enviable she was: young, pretty, slender, with three such adorable kiddies.
"I don't care, there won't be any one at the Picnic prettier. I was made to be happy and I'm going to be."
She hummed a little tune. "Jesus lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly." George was vulgar, but he was amusing. When the beetle buzzed down inside her blouse at the beach supper, tickling and crawling so far that she had to go into the bushes to take him out, George said "That must have been the bosom-fly you're always singing about." Sometimes it seemed as though the world was made for the vulgar people, there are always so many ridiculous embarrassments lying in wait for the sensitive. When the wind blew, her skirts always went higher than any one else's. She would wear the new pink camisole at the Picnic, that fitted very snugly . . . still, a thing like that bosom-fly would hardly happen twice. George always wanted to take jam and sardines on a picnic; sticky stuff that attracts the bees and ants. Fortunately we're all wearing knickers nowadays. . . . Poor old blundering, affectionate, and maddening George. Still it was something to have married a man with brains. There were so many, so much more attractive, she could have had, as Mother (dear loyal Mother) often reminded her. It's a good thing people don't know what mothers and married daughters talk about. That is the rock that life is founded upon: an alliance against the rest of the world. Away off in the future, when her own daughters were married, she would have them to confide in. You must have someone to whom you can say what you think. But which of the three? You can't confide in more than one. Three little girls, three darling little girls, like dolls. Thank goodness there wasn't a boy to grow up like George: obstinate, greedy, always wanting to do the wrong thing . . . it was enough to break any woman's spirit, trying to teach a man to do things the way nice people do them. If George wanted to lead an unconventional life, he ought to have been an artist, not gone in for business. . . . And such a crazy kind of business, Publicity, now working for one company, now for another, here there and everywhere, neither flesh nor fowl nor good red income. A man ought to have a settled job, with an office in some fixed place, so you always know where he is. A country club is a good thing for a husband, too, where he can meet the right sort of men (how handsome they are in those baggy breeches and golf stockings), lawyers and a banker or two, influential men with nice manners. You can always 'phone to the clubhouse and leave word; or drive up in the coupé (it ought to be a coupé) and bring him home to dinner. She could hear voices, voices of young pretty wives (not too young, not quite as pretty): "Who is that in the green dress, with the three little girls all dressed alike, aren't they cunning!—Oh, that's Mrs. Granville, Mrs. George Granville, her husband's in the advertising business, he adores her."
Where was the box of notepaper? The children must have been at it, the top had been jammed on carelessly, split at one corner. Of all annoying things, the worst is to have people pawing in your bureau; there isn't any key, of course. How can a woman be happy if she can't even have any privacy in her own bureau drawer? If George ever wants anything he always comes rummaging here first of all. The other day it was the little prayer book.—Why, George, what do you want with a prayer book? I thought you were an atheist.—So I am, but I want to strengthen my disbelief. I was beginning to weaken.—What a way to talk. George is an atheist, but he believes in religion for other people: because it makes them more unselfish, I dare say. Yet, in a queer way, George has a pious streak. Perhaps he's really more religious than I am.—The only thing I have against God is that He's a man . . . not a man, but . . . well, Masculine. How can He understand about the special troubles of women? That must be the advantage of being a Catholic, you pray to the Virgin. She can understand. But can She? After all, a Virgin . . . I mustn't let my mind run on like this, it's revolting the things you find yourself thinking.
From the bay window at the head of the stairs, over the garden and the sweep of grassy hill, she could see the water. Along the curve of shore, a thin crisp of foam edging the tawny sand. If she didn't get off that letter to Miss Clyde it would be too late for her to come to the Picnic. The Brooks were coming this afternoon. It was Nounou's evening off, too. What perfect weather. This lovely world, this lovely world. Oh, well, if George wanted the Picnic now, she might as well go through with it.
As she went down, George was in the hall, lighting his pipe. He looked very tall and ruddy and cheerful: almost handsome in his blue linen shirt and flannel trousers. An eddy of smoke rose about his head. She halted on the stairs.
"George! Don't puff so much smoke. I want to see the top of your head . . . I do believe it's getting thin."
"How pretty you look," he said. "I like the green shift."
He enjoyed calling things by wrong names, and the word shift always amused him. He found words entertaining, a habit that often annoyed her. But this time she did not stop to correct him.
"You ought to wear a rubber cap when you go bathing. The salt water gets your hair all sticky, and then the comb tears it out. I don't mind your being an atheist, but I'd hate you to be bald."
He blew a spout of tobacco smoke up at her. It was extraordinarily fragrant. Oh, well, she thought, he's not a bad old thing. He's endurable.
"George." She intended to say, "I love you." But of their own accord the words changed themselves before they escaped into voice.
"George, do you love me?"
He made his usual unsatisfactory reply. "Well, what do you think?" Of course the proper answer is, "I adore you." She knew, by now, that he never would make it; probably because he was aware she craved it.
"I'm writing Miss Clyde to come to the Picnic."
He looked a little awkward.
"Needn't do that, I wrote to her yesterday. I said you were busy and wanted me to ask her."
"Well, of all things"
She curbed herself savagely. She wouldn't lose her temper. Damn, damn, damn . . . his damned impudence.
"When is she coming?"
"I don't know yet. To-morrow morning, I dare say."
"Well, then, we'll have the Picnic to-morrow, get it over with."
He began to say something, put out his hand, but she brushed fiercely past him and ran into the dining room. She tore her letter into shreds, together with the clean sheet she had brought down. The room was full of a warm irritating buzz.
"George!" she cried angrily, with undeniable command. "Come here and put out this damned bee!"