“Let us have some fun with June Grey,” Grace Villars had said when last they met, looking at him like a wicked little girl. “I’ll ask her to dinner and you must come along afterwards.”
Stevens woke up early that morning. Standing barefoot in front of the kitchen stove, he brought a pan of water to the boil. He always drank tea in the mornings and the pot stood on the hob waiting to be scalded. Through the screened kitchen window the morning air poured into the room and refreshed his eyes. Stevens, because he slept without a pillow, had a temporarily congested look to his face when he woke up. It made him appear more full and virile. Yet there was no one there to see it. He always drank his morning tea alone. As alone, he reflected, as an old maid. Indeed, the other day he had heard himself called that by one of his scouts, repeated no doubt from the conversation of the child’s elders.
Stevens prepared a tray and carried it into the living room where he sat down on the sofa. ‘After all,’ he thought, ‘I am a desirable bachelor. Why do I think of myself as forlorn? I have only to crook my finger and Lucy would be at my side for life.’ He pictured Lucy in her sweater and skirt, with her body that seemed to go in slightly everywhere, save at the elbows. How would she be as a companion, as the mistress of his house and of his bed? The idea was unwelcome and brought into his cold eyes a flicker of distaste. Yet he had found comfort in her admiration, and she had been the only one in town who appeared to appreciate his qualities and his taste.
Grace Villars had no taste at all. She had gone through it, so to speak, and come out triumphantly on the other side. It was only when one was struggling to become something that taste was needed. After that, perhaps, it could be cast aside, like a disguise.
Stevens ran his hand through his thin, tousled hair and looked ruefully around the room. ‘Mother was right,’ he thought. ‘They would have loved this house just the way it was. It would have been an honest atrocity.’ It was remarkable what a difference Grace Villars’ coming had made and he hated to think how soon she would go away again. ‘But after all,’ he reflected ‘she is probably no older than I am or very little. We could even marry and then I would be Ronny’s father.’
This thought which had come boldly and clearly into Stevens’ mind took him aback. A sharp sensation pierced his blood, whether of pleasure or pain he could not tell. He rose and began to walk up and down the room repeating to himself aloud:
“Yes, we could marry!”
Then, from the recesses of his brain, the rest of the sentence sent its echo to his heart. ‘Then Ronny would belong to me—’ The boy’s face came before his eyes; that face at once too suave, too wild, too fair, too dearly loved.
It was night time when Stevens drove his car along the peninsula road with its deep, sandy ruts. Rabbits flew in front of his lights, unable in their terror to get out of the way, and a great moth came softly to die against the windshield. Above, the falling stars shot across the atmosphere to vanish in unknown skies. Stevens did not look up. He did not like the sky at night with its mocking blaze of planets and stars. Anyway, he had to concentrate and drive slowly because of the rabbits for he was tender-hearted.
The gate was open at the boathouse, with Jeremy leaning against it, smoking his pipe and gazing over the reeds at the glimmer of the bay.
“Well, Mr. Stevens,” he called, “coming courting?”
Stevens flushed at the man’s impertinence. Why did menials all imply the carnal urge, he wondered irritably. Catherine, at the Greys, had had the same banter in her voice. Jeremy, standing in his path, forced him to slow his car to a standstill. “Move aside, Jeremy,” he said in his coldest and most authoritative tone. “And please don’t forget your place.”
“My place and yours will be the same one day, Mr. Stevens,” said Jeremy.
“I doubt we’ll be buried in the same grave,” said Stevens, and was pleased with himself for this quick answer.
“The whole earth is a grave,” retorted Jeremy, but he moved aside nonetheless and wandered off into the woods, with his pipe glowing among the fireflies.
Stevens felt victorious as he drove around the shell-paved yard. He was greeted at the door by the still unhappy Mary.
“They’re in the front room,” she said, and seemed relieved to see Stevens.
“Your husband is certainly a gloomy fellow, Mary,” remarked Stevens.
“Oh it’s only talk,” said Mary. Her voice was wifely and Stevens wondered if she were right.
Grace was sitting in a big chair, her feet tucked childishly beneath her and her sharp little bare knees pointing out over the edge of the cushion. She was balancing a cup of coffee on her thigh, and held in her hand a glass of brandy. Ronny was crouched upon the floor, occupied with a sharpened nail and a small ring. As for June, she was sitting in the middle of the room perfectly erect and looking in front of her with a smile on her lips. A slight movement as of a wind made the young girl’s torso and head sway as she sat there. Stevens experienced that momentary sense of unreality felt by sober people on seeing drunken ones.
He greeted Grace. “Good evening, Mrs. Villars.” And then: “Good evening, Ronny.” June he did not acknowledge.
Grace smiled and held out her left hand in an intimate way. Ronny looked up briefly through his roughened hair.
“You never came before in the night,” he said.
“Oh Roddy, is that nice?” cried Grace, smiling and pouting as though Ronny had paid her a risqué compliment, which perhaps he had.
Stevens had still not said a word to June, who was lifting a glass of brandy to her lips. His schoolmaster’s instinct made him wish to demand: “Haven’t you had enough to drink, June?” The words tried to force themselves out, but the presence of his hostess closed his mouth. He saw that she was enjoying the situation. Her frivolous little body was full of malice. In her posture, the movements of her head, and in the sharp twinkle of her eyes were the purest mischief. Stevens knew that to utter a chiding word would put him at outs with Grace forever.
Always before this, whatever colour had been given his words and actions by his secret being, Stevens had done and said what he conceived to be his duty. Now his silence seemed like a whisper in the depths of his soul, whether of relief or of regret he could not tell. In any case, he looked at Grace and smiled back and their two blond glances mingled, full of worldliness.
Then Ronny said shrilly without looking up: “June is drunk. Mother did it on purpose.”
Grace laughed. “My little lovebirds haven’t spoken together once all evening.”
June held her glass by its stem and now a little of the liquor splashed on her legs. “Speaking isn’t so important,” she said. She spoke slowly, trying to control her thickened tongue and half frowning with the effort. Her tawny, uneven hair fell forward over her cheeks and big drops of sweat were forced out on her forehead by the brandy and the fever it had reawakened. Her skin glistened and was marred by red patches.
“If you’re going to be a woman of the world, my dear, you must learn the importance of conversation.”
“I’m not going to be a woman of the world,” replied June, still in the same thick, slow tones.
“Oh? What are you going to be?” Grace winked at Stevens as she rose to get him brandy and coffee. June did not reply at once and Stevens, watching his hostess, reflected that he had never before seen a female who looked well in shorts. Those muscular, hairless little legs seemed to dance as they crossed the room and as Grace passed her son she brushed them against his shoulders. At the touch Ronny lifted his head and a sudden smile came on his face, full of masculine understanding. Stevens showed his own boyish smile to Grace as she handed him the drinks.
“So I wasn’t mistaken!” she said at once. Her airy voice with its frank inflections made a meaning clear to him; the gate, waiting to be opened between a woman and a man, was ajar.
“Mistaken?” He raised his brows whimsically.
“Yes,” she said, moving away from him and speaking over her shoulder. “I thought I had found someone amusing in this hermitage and then I was afraid you might be stuffy after all.”
“And now?”
“Now I think you needn’t be stuffy,” she said, laughing at him and curling up in her chair like a cat. Then deliberately she turned a great, blue, mocking gaze full on June.
June rose as at a signal and crouched beside Ronny. Her movements were full of a clumsy, soft, drunken grace which wrung the older woman’s heart. Stevens could see this by the way Grace’s eyes narrowed and a chord responded in his own breast.
“Ronny,” asked June, “can I help you fix Shalimar’s chain?”
“How did you know it was his?” Ronny looked at her with keen attention. His animosity towards her vanished in an instant. “You can’t touch it,” he explained, “but you can sit right here and watch.”
