Thunder on the Left (1925)/Chapter 7
GEORGE was fixing the beds, and making an extra-special crashing and clanging about it for Phyllis's benefit, so she would realize how irritating a job it was. I wonder (he was thinking) if any other man ever had to move furniture about so much? Phyllis has a passion for shifting beds. These springs don't fit the frames. The result is that every time any one turns over there's a loud bang, the corner of the spring comes down clank on the iron side-bar. I fixed it—not perfectly, but well enough—with a pad of newspaper and a length of clothesline, when we moved in. Good enough for the children. But of course for Ben and Ruth. . . .
These can't be the right springs for these beds. It stands to reason no manufacturer would be fool enough to send out a bed that couldn't possibly be put together. There must be some trick of arrangement. Human reason can figure out anything, if concentrated on the problem. Now, let's see. This goes here, and this here. Think of having to fiddle over these picayune trifles when the whole of life and destiny is thrilling in the balance. He was lying under the bed now, among curly grey rolls of dust, holding up the spring with one hand while the other reached for the hammer.
Phyllis came in, to empty some of the bureau drawers for Ben and Ruth. She was taking away neat armfuls of the children's crisp clean garments. The whole room was full of their innocent little affairs. There, in the corner, was the collapsible doll house he had made last Christmas, and which had to go everywhere with them. Sitting against the door of the doll house was a tiny china puppet with a face of perpetual simper and that attitude of pelvic dislocation peculiar to small china dolls. Around the house was a careful pattern of shells, diligently brought from the beach. Why did all this make his heart ache? He remembered one evening when he had been working late, he passed gently by the children's door about midnight and heard a quiet little cough. Janet was awake. That small sound had suddenly, appallingly, reminded him that these poor creatures too were human. She must be lying there, thinking. What does a child think, alone at night? He went in, in the darkness, put his arms round the surprised child, and whispered encouragements to her. Jay, he said, Daddy's own smallest duckling frog, Daddy loves you, don't ever forget Daddy loves you. The little figure sat up in bed, threw her arms round his neck and gripped him wildly in furious affection. "I won't forget, Daddy," cried her soft voice in the warm dark room. Though she was only eight years old her accent was strangely mature: the eternal voice of woman calling man back from agonies and follies to her savage and pitying breast.
Mother love? Pooh (he thought, in a glow of bitterness), what was mother love! A form of selfishness, most of the time. Of course they love their children, having borne them, suffered for them. Children are their biological passport, their excuse for not having minds. And if they're girls, how mothers hurry to drill and denature those bright dreaming wits. They love them chiefly because they make so pretty a vignette in the margin of their own self-portrait—like a remarque in an engraving. But for fathers to love their children—the poor accidental urchins that come between them and the work they love—that really means something!
He gave the bed frame several resounding bangs with the hammer: quite uselessly, merely to express his sense of irritation at seeing Phyllis's pretty ankles and the hem of her green dress moving so purposefully about the room. Then, looking out angrily from under the bed, he saw her picking up the shells. Instead of bending over from the hips, as a man would, she was crouching on her heels, deliciously folded down upon her haunches. This annoyed him. And how heartless to clear away the shells that had been laboriously arranged in a border round the doll house.
"Why don't you leave them there?" he shouted. Then he realized how impossible it would be to explain his feeling about the shells. They represented innocence, poetry, the hopeful imaginings of childhood.
Phyllis scooped them up relentlessly.
"Don't be a fool," she said. "You wanted these people here for the Picnic, didn't you? All right, we have to make the room decent."
He felt that, as usual, he had picked up the argument by the wrong end. Arguments are like cats: if you take them up by the tail they twist and scratch you.
"And another thing," she added. "You simply must mend that broken railing on the sleeping porch. If the children are going to be out there it isn't safe."
"I can't fix both these beds," he growled. "There's a bolt missing. Tell me which one Ben will sleep in, I'll fix that. Ruth's won't matter, she's a skinny little thing, doesn't weigh much more than Janet."
I wouldn't mind so much fixing Ruth's bed, he was thinking; there'd be a kind of vague satisfaction in that. I rather like to think of her lying there, she's rather attractive even if she is such a numbskull. But Ben, that solid meaty citizen . . . he probably snores . . . I'll tell Ben to take this one; this is the one most likely to come down.
"How do I know which will take which?" she said. "They'll arrange that to suit themselves, no matter what we say."
He had carefully lashed the spring to the frame with a piece of rope six weeks before. But it had worked loose and now must be done all over again. The deuce of a job: the spring was precariously balanced at one end only; he was holding the loose end with one hand, trying to rewind the cord with the other. The thought of doing all this for Ben was too silly. No, let Ruth have this one and he would try to make a good job of it. Perspiration rolled from him. He supported the spring with his left elbow, so that he could take the end of the cord with his left hand while tightening it with his right. A fuzz of dust was sticking to his moist cheek. This was too insanely comic: grunting under a bed on a hot electrical afternoon. He could see Phyl's feet standing motionless by the window. How lovely she was, how he wanted her, wanted to slough away all these senseless tensions and stupidities. . . . She was always right because she merely acted on instinct; he, usually wrong, because he tried to think things out and act reasonably . . . if she knew how heroic he really was, would she understand? He must get her to understand before it was too late. For this—this crisis that was hanging over them, was his deliberately desired trial of strength. And now, if they weren't careful, they would fritter away all their stamina in preliminary scuffle and nonsense; and when the moment came . . . soon, appallingly soon . . . there would be no vitality left to meet it.
He was terrified. He had planned all this, grimly; now things were moving too fast for him. A long soft murmur of thunder jarred across the sky. Would the storm pass over without breaking? No, by God, it must break, if they were ever to find peace. He must send up a kite, like old Ben Franklin (that first of modern advertising men) to bring down a sample of lightning. He must find out whether lightning was the kind of thing you can live with. He must tell her why he was terrified. He must tell her quickly. These were the last moments they would have together before . . . already the colour of the light had changed. Here, on the side of the house away from the water, there was a darkening sparkle in the air.
Her feet were ominously still. She must be thinking, and this always worried him. Suppose she too became aware of this secret insolubility of life? It was only her divine certainty about little things that kept him going. What business have biological units thinking about things? Let them obey their laws and not question.
Shifting the weight of the spring to his shoulder he turned over and put his head out from under the foot of the bed.
"Phyl," he said, "why don't you go and lie down a bit, have a rest before the folks get here."
She looked down at him. Even in the warm listless dream that seemed to have mastered her, she was touched by the foolish appeal in his red, dust-streaked face. Where the light caught the turn of his jaw shone a coppery stubble.
"You need a shave," she said; and then regretted her insistent tidying instinct. She was holding three large shabby dolls, unconsciously pressing them against her like an armful of real babies. One flopped forward over her arm, uttering an absurd bleating squawk. Maaa-maa!
"The children," she exclaimed breathlessly. "The storm's coming. Hurry up with those beds; get the children back from the beach."
"They're all right," he said sulkily. "Mr. Martin'll take care of 'em."
His large flushed face, mouth open, gazed up from the floor. He looked pitiably silly, like a frightened dog. He was thinking, all I want to tell her is that I love her; no matter what happens I love her. But how can I say it? If she weren't my wife I suppose it would be so much easier. Why do we always show our worst side to the people we love?
She was thinking: The absurd idiot, writhing about under that bed like a roach, telling me to go and lie down when there are a hundred things to be done, beds to be made, towels and linen got out, silver counted, instructions to Lizzie. . . . Certainly she had tried to warn him. . . .
"Damn Mr. Martin!" she cried. "Don't trust him. You fool, you fool. Can't you see he's crazy? We're all crazy. Stop sprawling there like a mud turtle, do something."
"Listen, Phyl," he said heavily. "I want to tell you something. Now, listen, you've got to help me."
With a pang of alarm he knew that now it was too late to go back. He had begun to speak. Now he must try to explain the pillar of smoke and fire that had moved so long before the lonely track of his mind. Greatly as he feared her rigid spirit, he must divide the weight of this heavy fragile burden, like a crystal globe that might contain either ecstasy or horror. He could not know which until it lay broken about him in shining scraps and curves. But oh, why was she so difficult to tell things to?
"Don't laugh," he mumbled. "It's terribly"
He wriggled forward earnestly. The other end of the metal spring slid from its joist, the head and foot of the bed toppled inward. With a clanking brassy crash the whole thing collapsed about him.
He lay there, covered with bed, in a furious silence which was merely the final expression of his disgust. For an instant, in the stillness following that ridiculous clamour, she thought he was hurt. She bent down, dropping the dolls, and one of these again shrilled its whining protest. His angry face reassured her, and she burst into a peal of laughter.
He crawled out from under the wreck. He was thinking savagely, yet with relief also, how close he had been to telling her. But that was his fate. Even noble tragedy, if it came near him, would be marred by titters. He didn't blame her for laughing. Even in an agony he could never be more than grotesque.
"I was just thinking," she said, "how awful if the bed did that when Ben's in it."
"Don't worry. It probably will."
Sultry blue air pressed close about the house, air heavy with uncertain energies. He knew now how frail are carpentered walls and doors, how brittle a box to guard and fortify weak things he held dear. A poor cardboard doll house, and his own schemes just a ring of shells about it. Here, in a home not even his own, among alien furnitures, he must meet the sorceries of life, treacheries both without and within. Strong walls, strong walls, defend this rebel heart! he whispered to himself—startled and shamed to find himself so poetical. Strange, he thought (hastily reëdifying the bed), that people spend such anguish on decisions that don't really matter. But in this house he was at a disadvantage. He had no memories in it. For Phyllis it had old associations and meanings. It went back into her childhood, into that strange time when he had never known her; when she must have been so cunningly caught unawares and machined into rigidity. So even the house was against him. In that charged air, one spark surely would sheet all heaven with flame. It would be queer to split open the world's old shingled roofs and rusty-screened windows, scatter the million people with little pig-eyes of suspicion, explode love and merriment over the land. God help us, he thought, people can't even sin without finding dusty little moral justifications for it. This is what civilization has brought us to!—But what a way for a man to be thinking, with a half-written booklet on Summer Tranquillity lying on his desk.
He stepped onto the sleeping porch, where two cots had been put for Janet and Sylvia, to look at the broken railing. Projecting above the veranda, it overlooked the garden and the pale sickle of beach, distinct in glassy light. He could see Martin and the children, tiny figures frolicking on the sand. The sky was piled steeply with swollen bales of storm, scrolls of gentian-coloured vapour. But it looked now as though the gust would pass overhead. Phyllis was busy at the linen closet by the corner of the passage, getting out clean towels and napkins. He envied her the sedative trifles that keep wives sane. And after all, perhaps the well-drilled discipline of human beings would get them past this eddy. People—and especially guests—know so well what can be done and what can't. They know how to "behave." The world, brave prudent old world, is so sagely adjusted to avert or ignore any casual expression of what men really feel: terror and mockery, pity and desire. Oh, surely, by careful management, they could all shuffle through a couple of days without committing themselves and then safely relapse into the customary drugged routine. Ben and Ruth, accomplished students of petty demeanour, would be a great help. Even Joyce, poor bewitched rebel with frightened eyes, even Joyce must have some powers of concealment. But he would not think of Joyce for a little while.
"I think maybe the storm'll blow over," he called. He felt he must speak to Phyllis again, to calm his own nervousness.
There was no answer. Going to the end of the passage he saw her standing at the big bay window in the spare room. She was looking down toward the beach, one hand nervously plucking at a strip of wallpaper that had come loose along the frame of the window. He crossed the room quietly and kissed the back of her neck, with a vague idea that this would help to keep her from thinking. It was so enormously important that she should be calm and humorous just now.
He was prepared for silent indifference, or even an outburst of anger; but not for what happened. She turned silently and flung her arms madly about his neck. "Love me, love me, love me," she cried. "Love me, before it's too late."
He was horrified. "There, there," he said, embarrassed. "Go and rest a while, little frog."