Mrs Saunders entered her daughter’s room and found her swiftly dressing. The sun broke suddenly through the rain and long lances of sunlight piercing the washed immaculate air struck sparks amid the dripping trees.
‘Where are you going, Cecily?’ she asked.
‘To see Donald,’ she replied, drawing on her stockings, twisting them skilfully and deftly at the knees.
9
Januarius Jones, lounging through the wet grass, circled the house and, peering through the kitchen window, saw Emmy’s back and one angled arm sawing across her body. He mounted the steps quietly and entered. Emmy’s stare above her poised iron was impersonally combative. Jones’s yellow eyes, unabashed, took her and the ironing board and the otherwise empty kitchen boldly.
Jones said:
‘Well, Cinderella.’
‘My name is Emmy,’ she told him icily.
‘That’s right,’ he agreed equably, ‘so it is. Emmy, Emmeline, Emmylune, Lune— “La lune en garde aucune rancune.” But does it? Or perhaps you prefer “Noir sur la lune”? Or do you make finer or less fine distinctions than this? It might be jazzed a bit, you know.
Aelia thought so, quite successfully, but then she had a casement in which to lean at dusk and harp her sorrow on her golden hair. You don’t seem to have any golden hair, but then you might jazz your hair up a little, too. Ah, this restless young generation! Wanting to jazz up everything, not only their complexes, but the shapes of their behinds as well.’
She turned her back on him indifferently, and again her arm sawed the iron steadily along a stretched fabric. He became so still that after a while she turned to see what had become of him. He was so close behind her that her hair brushed his face. Clutching her iron, she shrieked.
‘Hah, my proud beauty!’ hissed Jones in accepted style, putting his arms around her.
‘Let me go!’ she said, glaring at him.
‘Your speech is wrong,’ Jones informed her helpfully. ‘ ”Release me, villain, or it will be the worse for you,” is what you should say.’
‘Let me go,’ she repeated.
‘Not till you divulge them papers,’ he answered, fat and solemn, his yellow eyes expressionless as a dead man’s.
‘Lemme go, or I’ll burn you,’ she cried hotly, brandishing the iron. They stared at one another. Emmy’s eyes were fiercely implacable and Jones said at last:
‘Dam’f I don’t believe you would.’
‘See if I don’t,’ she said with anger. But releasing her, he sprang away in time. Her red hand brushed her hair from her hot face and her eyes blazed at him. ‘Get out, now,’ she ordered, and Jones, sauntering easily towards the door, remarked plaintively:
‘What’s the matter with you women here, anyway? Wildcats. Wildcats. By the way, how is the dying hero today?’
‘Go on now,’ she repeated, gesturing with the iron. He passed through the door and closed it behind him. Then he opened it again and making her a deep fattish bow from the threshold he withdrew.
In the dark hallway he halted, listening. Light from the front door fell directly in his face: he could see only the edged indication of sparse furniture. He paused, listening. No, she isn’t here, he decided. Not enough talk going on for her to be here. That femme hates silence like a cat does water.
Cecily and silence: oil and water. And she’ll be on top of it, too. Little bitch, wonder what she meant by that yesterday. And Georgie, too. She’s such a fast worker I guess it takes a whole string to keep her busy. Oh, well, there’s always tomorrow. Especially when today ain’t over yet. Go in and pull the Great Dane’s leg a while.
At the study door he met Gilligan. He didn’t recognize him at first.
‘Bless my soul’ he said at last. ‘Has the army disbanded already? What will Pershing do now, without any soldiers to salute him? We had scarcely enough men to fight a war with, but with a long peace ahead of us — man, we are helpless.’
Gilligan said coldly: ‘Whatcher want?’
‘Why, nothing, thank you. Thank you so much. I merely came to call upon our young friend in the kitchen and to incidentally inquire after Mercury’s brother.’
‘Whose brother?’
‘Young Mr Mahon, in a manner of speaking, then.’
‘Doctor’s with him,’ Gilligan replied curtly. ‘You can’t go in now.’ He turned on his heel.
‘Not at all,’ murmured Jones, after the other’s departing back. ‘Not at all, my dear fellow.’ Yawning, he strolled up the hall. He stood in the entrance, speculative, filling his pipe. He yawned again openly. At his right was an open door and he entered a stuffily formal room. Here was a convenient window ledge on which to put spent matches, and sitting beside it he elevated his feet to another chair.
The room was depressingly hung with glum portraits of someone’s forebears, between which the principal strain of kinship appeared to be some sort of stomach trouble. Or perhaps they were portraits of the Ancient Mariner at different ages before he wore out his albatross. (Not even a dead fish could make a man look like that, thought Jones, refusing the dyspeptic gambit of their fretful painted eyes. No wonder the parson believes in hell.)
A piano had not been opened in years, and opened would probably sound like the faces looked. Jones rose and from a bookcase he got a copy of Paradise Lost (cheerful thing to face a sinner with, he thought) and returned to his chair. The chair was hard, but Jones was not. He elevated his feet again.
The rector and a stranger came into his vision, pausing at the front door in conversation. The stranger departed and that black woman appeared. She and the rector exchanged a few words. Jones remarked with slow, lustful approval her firm, free carriage, and —
And here came Miss Cecily Saunders in pale lilac with a green ribbon at her waist, tapping her delicate way up the fast-drying gravel path between the fresh-sparkled grass.
‘Uncle Joe!’ she called, but the rector had already withdrawn to his study. Mrs Powers met her and she said: ‘Oh. How do you do? May I see Donald?’
She entered the hall beneath the dim lovely fanlight, and her roving glance remarked one sitting with his back to a window. She said ‘Donald!’ and sailed into the room like a bird. One hand covered her eyes and the other was outstretched as she ran with quick tapping steps and sank before him at his feet, burying her face in his lap.
‘Donald, Donald! I will try to get used to it, I will try! Oh, Donald, Donald! Your poor face! But I will, I will,’ she repeated hysterically. Her fumbling hand touched his sleeve and slipping down his arm she drew his hand under her cheek, clasping it. ‘I didn’t mean to, yesterday. I wouldn’t hurt you for anything, Donald. I couldn’t help it, but I love you, Donald, my precious, my own.’ She burrowed deeper into his lap.
‘Put your arms around me, Donald,’ she said, ‘until I get used to you again.’
He complied, drawing her upward. Suddenly, struck with something familiar about the coat, she raised her head. It was Januarius Jones.
She sprang to her feet. ‘You beast, why didn’t you tell me?’
‘My dear ma’am, who am I to refuse what the gods send?’
But she did not wait to hear him. At the door Mrs Powers stood watching with interest. Now she’s laughing at me! Cecily thought furiously. Her glance was a blue dagger and her voice was like dripped honey.
‘How silly of me, not to have looked,’ she said sweetly. ‘Seeing you, I thought at once that Donald would be near by. I am sure if I were a man I’d always be as near you as possible. But I didn’t know you and Mr — Mr Smith were such good friends. Though they say that fat men are awfully attractive. May I see Donald — do you mind?’
Her anger lent her fortitude. When she entered the study she looked at Mahon without a qualm, scar and all. She greeted the rector, kissing him, then she turned swift and graceful to Mahon, averting her eyes from his brow. He watched her quietly, without emotion.
You have caused me to look foolish, she told him with whispered smooth fury, sweetly kissing his mouth.
Jones, ignored, followed down the hall and stood without the closed door to the study, listening, hearing her throaty, rapid speech beyond the bland panel. Then, stooping, he peered through the keyhole.
But he could see nothing and feeling his creased waistline constricting his breathing, feeling his braces cutting into his stooped fleshy shoulders, he rose under Gilligan’s detached, contemplative stare. Jones’s own yellow eyes became quietly empty and he walked around Gilligan’s immovable belligerence and on towards the front door, whistling casually.
10
Cecily Saunders returned home nursing the yet uncooled embers of her anger. From beyond the turning angle of the veranda her mother called her name and she found her parents sitting together.
‘How is Donald?’ her mother asked, and not waiting for a reply, she said: ‘George Farr phoned again after you left. I wish you’d leave a message for him. It keeps Tobe forever stopping whatever he is doing to answer the phone.’
Cecily, making no reply, would have passed on to a french window opening upon the porch, but her father caught her hand, stopping her.
‘How is Donald looking today?’ he asked, repeating his wife.
Her unrelaxed hand tried to withdraw from his. ‘I don’t know and I don’t care,’ she said harshly.
‘Why, didn’t you go there?’ Her mother’s voice was faintly laced with surprise. ‘I thought you were going there.’
‘Let me go,
