“His mother didn’t like it much,” said Jeremy, “and I must say I don’t blame her.”
“What’s the matter with you?” asked Eddie. “It’s not your kid.”
“I know that but the boy thinks what Flo did is important. He hid it all these days.”
“Well, it was bound to be kind of swollen at first and that little scab had to come off,” said Flo. As he spoke there came into his brain the memory of working at his trade and of the pleasure of it: on arms stretched in bulges by muscle, on thighs twitching beneath the five needles, on hands to warn rogues of one another, on matted chests and on the smooth boy’s chest of Ronny. That skin with its olive tan, its pure sheen, appeared before his eyes again. He would have loved to tie the boy down and work for hours upon him, pricking out all those signs and images he had learned. Such symbols were Flo’s only learning. They represented religion and philosophy, romance and justice, poignancy and truth. Requested out of vanity, they were also records, as he well knew, of each emotional, each spiritual step in a man’s life. His own empty little bosom bowed before them. He was proud to be a tool of their recording.
“I wish I could have used colour,” he said.
“Any way I can’t figure out your feelings on the subject, Jeremy,” protested Eddie. “According to you, a skin don’t last long, tattooed or not.”
Jeremy had no reply so he swallowed several mouthfuls of Eddie’s liquor.
“That’s the spirit, Jeremy,” encouraged Eddie. “We were getting so we didn’t recognize you.”
Ruby had finished her sundae and was gazing towards the open door where a handful of flies turned restlessly in a sort of loose ball. They were excited no doubt by the growing stench of low tide and their constant murmur was like a conversation. From outside, shouts of boys could be heard as they climbed down the ladders into the water or boldly dived from the dock end. The ferry’s blast sounded wistfully out on the water.
Jeremy leaned back in his chair and lit his pipe. Eddie took a toothpick from his pocket and began to pick his teeth, carefully holding a napkin before his face. It, the napkin, was one of the few remnants of a mother’s teaching in a far land and Eddie never made this gesture without a virtuous glow. He paid particular attention to his golden teeth of which he was very proud. His eyes, which could be seen above the cheap, white square of paper, wore the ruminating expression of those concerned with important bodily rites.
Ruby sat on and gave great sighs from time to time as though to lift her heavy bosom from her heart.
As Jeremy climbed back into his car half an hour later, he felt quite pleased. He had come to chide Flo and perhaps to ask him if there were not an easy way to remove the tattooing. He had done neither really, but the fact that he had wanted to was something.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
On the afternoon of the following day June received an invitation to the boathouse. She happened to wander down into the front hall and there it was in an envelope on the round silver dish that always stood there. No one left cards at the Greys’ house so the invitation might have lain there for days unnoticed, but actually it had been left only that morning. After quitting his pupil, Stevens had dropped it quietly into the dish. On the envelope in a sprawling hand was written: “Miss Grey.”
June took it up and at once felt that chill which the unknown brings to skin and flesh, that lonely warning: ‘You are mortal, you are frail. In every future there is at least a death.’
The white, stampless envelope slid along her palm and at its contact she hesitated; yet the note inside was reassuring, almost gay.
“Dear Miss Grey,” it read, “Do not, please, stay away just because I am here. Ronny is quite lost without you. Why don’t you come for dinner tonight. No need to reply, just walk in as always, Grace Villars.”
All the words were run together so that June was puzzled by the “as always.” Did Mrs. Villars mean it to be the conventional ending of a letter? If so, how odd. Mrs. Villars was not, as always, anything to June. On the other hand she could have meant: “Walk in as you always do. Walk in without being asked.” June, at a most touchy age, felt that this ending spoiled the letter. She had been on her way out, but now went back upstairs to her room.
Heat, or else the violent cycle of puberty, was giving June today one of those headaches that put awry the very sutures of the skull. Her back ached below the waist and she felt as though she were about to get a cramp in the arch of her left foot. She sat on the edge of the bed and reread the invitation. It seemed to become a part of her discomforts. From the scrawling lines there emanated a female breath that put her out of ease.
The last days had been long and had brought back upon June all the heavy memory of her fever with its quality of languor and of boredom. Only now, to these ingredients was added the disturbing ardour of her dreams. Waking, she felt crushed by idleness. There was nothing for which her energy was enough, nothing for which it was worth while displacing her limbs or her entranced spirit. Then, when she lay down on the bed, a sort of half sleep overcame her in which her imagination and senses mingled. It was like being sucked down into a shallow whirlpool where, although helpless, she was not drowned. It was a sort of swoon.
Now, still clutching the envelope, June twisted around and threw herself face downwards on the counterpane. In this position she felt relaxed. By pressing her arms tightly against her sides she managed to protect the tender contours of her bosom. She raised the locks of hair from her nape and left them to lie upwards on the pillow, all twisted and damp with the heat. At once she fell into a doze and began to dream. This was not the submerged dreaming of midnight which is difficult to remember and comes from the locked chambers of the mind. It was rather a fantasy made of her substance; of her body pressing against the bed; of the dark tide rising in her womb.
Half awake, still conscious of her throbbing head, June found herself at the brink of the bluffs. Often in childhood she had run down their steep, sandy slopes with her brothers and now the uncontrollable urge took her to do so once again. As she took the first leap, (a leap which by its ease and length retold her she was dreaming) the whole aspect of the bluffs changed. Huge flowers spurted from their sands, coming into bloom like those sea gardens that are half beast, unfolding restlessly and greedily their thick blossoms. The stalks were filled with an oily juice which forced its sweat onto the petals so that the colours glistened.
Rising high above the flowers in her bounding descent, June caught sight of the donkey whom she had seen carrying lovers at the fair. He was grazing among the blooms, chewing the living petals one by one, stubbornly and with a sly expression. Her next leap brought her almost above him and she saw his genital organ thrust itself out of his body like a long, black sword. Yet he did not look at her. His yellow teeth kept on tearing at the petals. His sly stubborn face looked down.
With a start June woke up completely. She rolled over and put her feet on the floor. At once a black dizziness from rising abruptly made her sight dark. The room when it reappeared had a ghostly look which gave place gradually to its ordinary aspect.
‘So that’s what happened at the fair,’ she thought. ‘I knew something happened that night, but when I tried to think it went away.’
June passed her hand over the back of her head, pressing gently to quiet its throb. Yes, that was it.
The little donkey at the fair must have done the same thing as her dream animal only she had not noticed it at the time. He had been weary and thin. He had not even bothered to look at her. With his donkey mind and donkey heart he had ignored the marvelous weapon aroused beneath his belly.
‘That’s what they do,’ she thought, ‘pretending not to, just like that!’
But who were they? What made her think of them? June started to laugh, or rather to giggle, as she sat on the bed and held her head in her hands. She stopped when the note, which had fallen beside her, caught her eye. Whatever was she to wear? Once thought of, this problem appeared almost insurmountable. The normal thing would be the flowered silk, but she had observed herself in it the other night and knew it to be childish and ill fitting to a degree. Aside from that, what? In despair June looked through her wardrobe. Most of the things were completely outgrown, relics besides of a period in which she had given no thought to clothes. Mrs. Villars, coming from real places, would be sure to know what girls wore when they were fifteen. It was hopeless. Yet the problem of dress only reinforced June’s determination to go.
“What if I were walking through the woods in my blue jeans,” she thought, “and it became dark so that I was afraid of being late and was near there anyway?”
This seemed a good, although daring plan. But to her horror June found that her jeans which she had not worn for some time, no longer fit her. She struggled to force them over her hips only to see in the mirror their absurd effect. Loose before, now her forms were compressed in them so that she could neither walk nor sit. Angrily she peeled them off and threw them on the floor. There remained only her shorts.
After dressing, June yanked the comb through her hair whose rich locks were tangled and moist. For an instant her face in the glass around which this troubled hair fell was like the reflection of a stranger. June struggled to find a true appraisal of it, but before she could do so it was once more her own.
Ready, she plunged down the back stairs. “Catherine!” she called, knowing at the same time that she would never be answered. It was against Catherine’s policy to answer shouts. June found the maid servant on the porch, accepting from McGreggor’s hands a basket of berries as though they were a personal and compromising gift.
“Catherine, I’m going out to dinner at the boathouse.”
“And what is there to shout about in that I’d like to know?”
“Well, we can’t all be perfect like you,” complained June, smiling at the same time to prove she was not embarrassed by Catherine’s sharp tongue.
“That we can’t,” said McGreggor, but as he said it to himself nobody heard or appreciated his ready wit. Inside his head McGreggor had a hundred such remarkable observations stored away unused. Enough, surely, to have urged Catherine churchward long ago.
“Is it going in those clothes you are?” Catherine asked conversationally.
“No, I’ll change later,” said June, thinking: ‘Well, I can if I feel like it.’ But she got the impression Catherine knew better. Unaccountably the woman’s eyes softened.
“Well have a good time for yourself,” she advised, and watched June walking away under the trees.
