‘Come here, Sis.’
‘Now, Robert,’ his wife interposed. ‘You promised to let her alone.’
‘Come here, Sis,’ he repeated, and her hand becoming lax, she allowed herself to be drawn to the arm of his chair. She sat nervously, impatiently, and he put his arm around her. ‘Why didn’t you go there?’
‘Now, Robert, you promised,’ his wife parroted futilely.
‘Let me go, daddy.’ She was rigid beneath her thin, pale dress. He held her and she said: ‘I did go there.’
‘Did you see Donald?’
‘Oh, yes. That black, ugly woman finally condescended to let me see him a few minutes. In her presence, of course.’
‘What black, ugly woman, darling?’ asked Mrs Saunders, with interest.
‘Black woman? Oh, you mean Mrs What’s-her-name. Why, Sis, I thought you and she would like each other. She has a good level head, I thought.’
‘I don’t doubt it. Only—’
‘What black woman, Cecily?’
‘ — only you’d better not let Donald see that you are smitten with her.’
‘Now, now, Sis. What are you talking about?’
‘Oh, it’s well enough to talk that way,’ she said, taut and passionate, ‘but haven’t I eyes of my own? Haven’t I seen? Why did she come all the way from Chicago or wherever it was with him? And yet you expect me—’
‘Who came from where? What woman, Cecily? What woman, Robert?’ They ignored her.
‘Now, Sis, you ain’t just to her. You’re just excited.’
His arm held her fragile rigidity.
‘I tell you, it isn’t that — just her. I had forgiven that, because he is sick and because of how he used to be about — about girls. You know, before the war. But he has humiliated me in public: this afternoon he — he — Let me go, daddy,’ she repeated, imploring, trying to thrust herself away from him.
‘But what woman, Cecily? What is all this about a woman?’ Her mother’s voice was fretted.
‘Sis, honey, remember he is sick. And I know more about Mrs — er — Mrs Powers than you do.’ He removed his arm, yet held her by the wrist ‘Now, you—’
‘Robert, who is this woman?’
‘ — think about it tonight and we’ll talk it over in the morning.’
‘No, I am through with him, I tell you. He has humiliated me before her.’ Her hand came free and she sprang towards the window.
‘Cecily?’ her mother called after the slim whirl of her vanishing dress, ‘are you going to call George Farr?’
‘No! Not if he was the last man in the world. I hate men.’ The swift staccato of her feet died away upon the stairs, and then a door slammed. Mrs Saunders sank creaking into her chair.
‘Now, Robert.’
So he told her.
11
Cecily did not appear at breakfast. Her father mounted to her room, and knocked this time.
‘Yes?’ her voice penetrated the wood, muffled thinly.
‘It’s me, Sis. Can I come in?’
There was no reply, so he entered. She had not even bathed her face, and upon the pillow she was flushed and childish with sleep. The room was permeated with her body’s intimate repose; it was in his nostrils like an odour and he felt ill at ease, cumbersome, and awkward. He sat on the edge of the bed and took her surrendered hand diffidently. It was unresponsive.
‘How do you feel this morning?’
She made no reply, lazily feeling her ascendency and he continued with assumed lightness: ‘Do you feel better about poor young Mahon this morning?’
‘I’ve put him out of my mind. He doesn’t need me any more.’
‘Course he does,’ heartily, ‘we expect you to be his best medicine.’
‘How can I?’
‘How? What do you mean?’
‘He brought his own medicine with him.’
Her calmness, her exasperating calmness. He must flog himself into yesterday’s rage. That was the only way to do anything with ’em, damn ’em.
‘Did it ever occur to you that I, in my limited way, may know more about this than you?’
She withdrew her hand and slid it beneath the covers, making no reply, not even looking at him.
He continued: ‘You are acting like a fool, Cecily. What did the man do to you yesterday?’
‘He simply insulted me before another woman. But I don’t care to discuss it.’
‘But listen, Sis. Are you refusing to even see him when seeing him means whether or not he will get well again?’
‘He’s got that black woman. If she can’t cure him with all her experience, I certainly can’t.’
Her father’s face slowly suffused. She glanced at him impersonally then turned her head on the pillow, staring out the window.
‘So you refuse to see him any more?’
‘What else can I do? He very evidently does not want me to bother him any longer. Do you want me to go where I am not wanted?’
He swallowed his anger, trying to speak calmly, trying to match her calm. ‘Don’t you see that I’m not trying to make you do anything? that I am only trying to help that boy get on his feet again? Suppose he was Bob, suppose Bob was lying there like he is.’
‘Then you’d better get engaged to him yourself. I’m not.’
‘Look at me,’ he said with such quiet, such repression, that she lay motionless, holding her breath. He put a rough hand on her shoulder.
‘You don’t have to man-handle me,’ she told him calmly, turning her head.
‘Listen to me. You are not to see that Farr boy, any more. Understand?’
Her eyes were unfathomable as sea-water.
‘Do you understand me?’ he repeated.
‘Yes, I hear you.’
He rose. They were amazingly alike. He turned at the door meeting her stubborn, impersonal gaze. ‘I meant it, Sis.’
Her eyes clouded suddenly. ‘I am sick and tired of men. Do you think I care?’
The door closed behind him and she lay staring at its inscrutable, painted surface, running her fingers lightly over her breasts, across her belly, drawing concentric circles upon her body beneath the covers, wondering how it would feel to have a baby, hating that inevitable time when she’d have to have one, blurring her slim epicenity, blurring her body with pain. . . .
12
Miss Cecily Saunders, in pale blue linen, entered a neighbour’s house, gushing, paying a morning call. Women did not like her, and she knew it. Yet she had a way with them, a way of charming them temporarily with her conventional perfection, insincere though she might be.
Her tact and her graceful deference were such that they discussed her disparagingly only behind her back. None of them could long resist her. She always seemed to enjoy other people’s gossip. It was not until later you found that she had gossiped none herself. And this, indeed, requires tact.
She chattered briefly while her hostess pottered among tubbed flowers, then asking and receiving permission, she entered the house to use the telephone.
13
Mr George Farr, lurking casually within the courthouse portals, saw her unmistakable approaching figure far down the shady street, remarking her quick, nervous stride. He gloated, fondling her in his eyes with a slow sensuality.
That’s the way to treat ’em: make ’em come to you. Forgetting that he had phoned her vainly five times in thirty hours. But her surprise was so perfect, her greeting so impersonal, that he began to doubt his own ears.
‘My God,’ he said, ‘I thought I’d never get you on the phone.’
‘Yes?’ She paused, creating an unpleasant illusion of arrested haste.
‘Been sick?’
‘Yes, sort of. Well,’ moving on, ‘I’m awfully glad to have seen you. Call me again sometime, when I’m in, won’t you?’
‘But say, Cecily—’
She paused again and looked at him over her shoulder with courteous patience. ‘Yes?’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Oh, I’m running errands today. Buying some things for mamma. Good-bye.’ She moved again, her blue linen shaping delicate and crisp to her stride. A Negro driving a wagon passed between them, interminable as Time: he thought the wagon would never pass, so he darted around it to overtake her.
‘Be careful,’ she said quickly, ‘Daddy’s downtown today. I am not supposed to see you any more. My folks are down on you.’
‘Why?’ he asked in startled vacuity.
‘I don’t know. Perhaps they have heard of your running around with women, and they think you will ruin me. That’s it, probably.’
Flattered, he said: ‘Aw, come on.’
They walked beneath awnings. Wagons tethered to slumbering mules and horses were motionless in the square. They were lapped, surrounded, submerged by the frank odour of unwashed Negroes, most of whom wore at least one ex-garment of the army O.D.; and their slow, unemphatic voices and careless, ready laughter, which has also somehow beneath it something elemental and sorrowful and unresisting, lay drowsily upon the noon.
At the corner was a drugstore in each window of which was an identical globe, containing liquids, once red and green, respectively, but faded now to a weak similar brown by the suns of many summers. She stayed him with her hand.
‘You mustn’t come any further, George, please.’
‘Oh, come on, Cecily.’
‘No, no. Good-bye.’ Her slim hand stopped him dead in his tracks.
‘Come in and have a Coca-Cola.’
‘No, I can’t. I have so many things to do. I’m sorry.’
‘Well, after you get through, then,’ he suggested as a last resort.
‘I can’t tell. But if you want to, you can wait here for me and I’ll come back if I have time. If you want to, you know.’
‘All right, I’ll wait here for you. Please come, Cecily.’
‘I can’t promise. Good-bye.’
He was forced to watch her retreating from him, mincing and graceful, diminishing. Hell, she won’t come, he told himself. But he daren’t leave for fear she might. He watched her as long as he could see her, watching her
