4
Mrs Burney’s black was neat and completely air-proof: she did not believe in air save as a necessary adjunct to breathing. Mr Burney, a morose, silent man, whose occupation was that of languidly sawing boards and then mildly nailing them together again, took all his ideas from his wife, so he believed this, too.
She toiled, neat as a pin, along the street, both fretted with and grateful to the heat because of her rheumatism, making a call. When she thought of her destination, of her changed status in the town, above her dull and quenchless sorrow she knew a faint pride: the stroke of Fate which robbed her likewise made of her an aristocrat.
The Mrs Worthingtons, the Mrs Saunderses, all spoke to her now as one of them, as if she, too, rode in a car and bought a half-dozen new dresses a year. Her boy had done this for her, his absence accomplishing that which his presence had never done, could never do.
Her black gown drank heat and held it in solution about her, her cotton umbrella became only a delusion. How hot for April, she thought, seeing cars containing pliant women’s bodies in cool, thin cloth passing her. Other women walking in delicate, gay shades nodded to her bent small rotundity, greeting her pleasantly. Her flat ‘common sense’ shoes carried her steadily and proudly on.
She turned a corner and the sun through maples was directly in her face. She lowered her umbrella to it, and remarking after a while a broken drain, and feeling an arching thrust of poorly laid concrete, she slanted her umbrella back.
Pigeons in the spire were coolly remote from the heat, unemphatic as sleep, and she passed through an iron gate, following a gravelled path. The rambling façade of the rectory dreamed in the afternoon above a lawn broken by geranium beds and a group of chairs beneath a tree. She crossed grass and the rector rose, huge as a rock, black and shapeless, greeting her.
(Oh, the poor man, how bad he looks. And so old, so old we are for this to happen to us. He was not any good, but he was my son. And now Mrs Worthington and Mrs Saunders and Mrs Wardle speak to me, stop in to chat about this and that while there is my Dewey dead. They hadn’t no sons and now his son come back and mine didn’t, and how grey his face, poor man.)
She panted with heat, like a dog, feeling pain in her bones, and she hobbled horribly across to the grouped figures. It was because the sun was in her eyes that she couldn’t see, sun going down beyond a lattice wall covered with wistaria.
Pigeons crooned liquid gutturals from the spire, slanting like smears of paint, and the rector was saying:
‘This is Mrs Powers, Mrs Barney, a friend of Donald’s. Donald, here is Mrs Burney. You remember Mrs Burney: she is Dewey’s mother, you remember.’
Mrs Burney took a proffered chair blindly. Her dress held heat, her umbrella tripped her bonelessly, then bonelessly avoided her. The rector closed it and Mrs Powers settled her in the chair. She rubbed at her eyes with a black-bordered cotton handkerchief.
Donald Mahon waked to voices. Mrs Powers was saying: ‘How good of you to come. All Donald’s old friends have been so nice to him. Especially the ones who had sons in the war. They know, don’t they?’
(Oh, the poor man, the poor man. And your scarred face! Madden didn’t tell me your face was scarred, Donald.)
Pigeons like sloe sleep, afternoon passing away, dying. Mrs Burney, in her tight, hot black, the rector, huge and black and shapeless, Mrs Burney with an unhealed sorrow, Mrs Powers — (Dick, Dick. How young, how terribly young: tomorrow must never come. Kiss me, kiss me through my hair. Dick, Dick. My body flowing away from me, dividing.
How ugly men are, naked. Don’t leave me, don’t leave me! No, no! we don’t love each other! we don’t! we don’t! Hold me close, close: my body’s intimacy is broken, unseeing: thank God my body cannot see. Your body is so ugly, Dick! Dear Dick. Your bones, your mouth hard and shaped as bone: rigid.
My bones, your mouth you cannot hold it. Why do you sleep, Dick? My body flows on and on. You cannot hold it, for yours is so ugly, dear Dick. . . . ‘You may not hear from me for some time. I will write when I can. . . .’)
Donald Mahon, hearing voices, moved in his chair. He felt substance he could not see, heard what did not move him at all. ‘Carry on, Joe.’
The afternoon dreamed on, unbroken. A Negro, informal in an undershirt, restrained his lawn mower, and stood beneath a tree, talking to a woman across the fence. Mrs Burney in her rigid unbearable black. Mrs Worthington speaks to me, but Dewey is dead.
Oh, the poor man, his grey face. My boy is dead, but his boy has come home, come home . . . with a woman. What is she doing here? Mrs Mitchell says . . . Mrs Mitchell says . . . that Saunders girl is engaged to him. She is downtown yesterday almost nekkid. With the sun on her. . . . She wiped her eyes again under inevitable spring.
Donald Mahon, heating voices: ‘Carry on, Joe.’
‘I come to see how your boy is getting along, what with everything.’ (Dewey, my boy.)
(I miss you like the devil, Dick. Someone to sleep with? I don’t know. Oh, Dick, Dick. You left no mark on me, nothing. Kiss me through my hair, Dick, with all your ugly body, and let’s don’t ever see each other again, ever. . . . No, we won’t, dear, ugly Dick.)
(Yes, that was Donald. He is dead.) ‘He is much better, thank you. Give him a few weeks’ rest and he will be well again.’
‘I am so glad, so glad,’ she answered, pitying him, envying him. (My son died, a hero: Mrs Worthington, Mrs Saunders, chat with me about nothing at all.) ‘Poor boy, don’t he remember his friends at all?’
‘Yes, yes.’ (This was Donald, my son.) ‘Donald, don’t you remember Mrs Burney? She is Dewey’s mother, you know.’
(. . . but not forever. I wish you all the luck and love in the world. Wish me luck, dear Dick. . . .)
Donald Mahon, hearing voices: ‘Carry on, Joe.’
The way that girl goes on with men! she thought exultantly. Dewey may be dead, but thank God he ain’t engaged to her. ‘Your boy is home, he’ll be married soon and everything. So nice for you, so nice. . . .’
‘There, there,’ the rector said, touching her shoulder kindly, ‘you must come often to see him.’
‘Yes, I will come often,’ she replied through her black-bordered cotton handkerchief. ‘It’s so nice he come home safe and well. Some didn’t.’ (Dewey, Dewey.)
The sun flamed slowly across the wistaria, seeking interstices. She would see Mrs Worthington downtown now, probably. Mrs Worthington would ask her how she was, how her husband was. (My rheumatism, but I am old. Yes, yes. When we get old. . . .
You are old, too, she would think with comfortable malice, older than me. Old, old, too old for things like this to happen to us. He was so good to me, so big and strong: brave. . . .) She rose and someone handed her the cotton umbrella.
‘Yes, yes. I will come again to see him.’ (Poor boy. Poor man, his face: so grey.)
The lawn mower chattered slowly, reluctantly breaking the evening. Mrs Burney, disturbing bees, crossed grass blindly. Someone passed her at the gate and, remarking an arching thrust of poorly laid concrete and a broken drain, she slanted her umbrella backward, shielding her neat, black-clad, airproof back.
Sucking silver sound of pigeons slanting to and from the spire like smears of soft paint on a cloudless sky. The sun lengthened the shadow of the wistaria-covered wall, immersing the grouped chairs in cool shadow. Waiting for sunset.
(Dick, my love, that I did not love, Dick, your ugly body breaking into mine like a burglar, my body flowing away, washing away all trace of yours. . . . Kiss and forget me: remember me only to wish me luck, dear, ugly, dead Dick. . . .)
(This was my son, Donald. He is dead.)
Gilligan, crossing the lawn, said: ‘Who was that?’
‘Mrs Burney,’ the rector told him. ‘Her son was killed. You’ve probably heard of him downtown.’
‘Yeh, I’ve heard of him. He was the one under indictment for stealing fifty pounds of sugar and they let him go to enlist, wasn’t he?’
‘There were stories. . . .’ The rector’s voice died away.
Donald Mahon, hearing silence: ‘You stopped, Joe.’
Gilligan stood near him settling the coloured glasses over his eyes. ‘Sure, Loot. More Rome?’
The shadow of the wall took them completely and at last he said:
‘Carry on, Joe.’
5
She missed Mrs Worthington. She saw the old woman drive smoothly away from Price’s in her car, alone in the back seat. The Negro driver’s head was round as a cannon-ball and Mrs Burney watched it draw away, smelling gasoline.
The shadow of the courthouse was like thinned tobacco smoke filling one side of the square, and standing in the door of a store she saw an acquaintance, a friend of her son’s. He had been in Dewey’s company, an officer or something, but he hadn’t got killed, not him! Trust them generals and things.
(No, no! I won’t feel like this! He done the best he could. It ain’t his fault if he wasn’t
