The Collected Stories

  “Oh.” And if Jane was nine years old today it meant she had been conceived and born in a time when tens of thousands of American Negro soldiers were quartered in England and said to be having their way with English girls, provoking white troops into fights and riots that ended only when everything went under in the vast upheaval of the Normandy Invasion. Alfred Arnold would still have been a prisoner in Burma then, with well over a year to wait for his release.

  “Oh, she’s never tried to deny it,” Christine said. “She’s never lied about it; give her credit for that. Alfred knew what he was getting, right from the start. She probably even told him that first night they met, because she would’ve known she couldn’t hide it—or maybe he knew already because maybe that whole party was Piccadilly girls; I don’t know. But I know he knew. He took her off the street and he married her, and he adopted her child. You don’t find very many men like that. And I mean Grace is my best friend and she’s done a lot for me, but sometimes she acts like she doesn’t even know how lucky she is. Sometimes—oh, not tonight; she was showing off for you tonight—but sometimes she treats Alfred like dirt. Can you imagine that? A man like Alfred? That really pisses me off.”

  She reached down to fill their glasses, and by the time she’d settled back to sip he knew what his own next move would have to be.

  “Well, so I guess you’re sort of looking for a husband too, aren’t you, baby,” he said. “That’s certainly understandable, and I’d like you to know I wish I could—you know—ask you to marry me, but the fact is I can’t. Just can’t.”

  “Sure,” she said quietly, looking down at an unlighted cigarette in her fingers. “That’s okay; forget it.”

  And he was pleased with the way this last exchange had turned out—even with the whopping lie of the “wish” in his part of it. His bewildering, hazardous advance into this strange girl’s life was over, and now he could prepare for an orderly withdrawal. “I know you’ll find the right guy, Christine,” he told her, warm in the kindness of his own voice, “and it’s bound to happen soon because you’re such a nice girl. In the meantime, I want you to know that I’ll always—”

  “Look, I said forget it, okay? Jesus Christ, do you think I care? You think I give a shit about you? Listen.” She was on her feet, naked and strong in the dim light, wagging one stiff forefinger an inch away from his wincing face. “Listen, skinny. I can get anybody I want, any time, and you better get that straight. You’re only here because I felt sorry for you, and you better get that straight too.”

  “Felt sorry for me?”

  “Well, sure, with all that sorrowful shit about your wife taking off, and your little girl. I felt sorry for you and I thought, Well, why not? That’s my trouble; I never learn. Sooner or later I always think, Why not? and then I’m shit outa luck. Listen: Do you have any idea how much money I could’ve made all this time? Huh? No, you never even thought about that part of it, didja. Oh, no, you were all hearts and flowers and sweet-talk and bullshit, weren’tcha. Well, you know what I think you are? I think you’re a ponce.”

  “What’s a ‘ponce’?”

  “I don’t know what it is where you come from,” she said, “but in this country it’s a man who lives off the earnings of a—ah, never mind. The hell with it. Fuck it. I’m tired. Move over, okay? Because I mean if all we’re gonna do is sleep, let’s sleep.”

  But instead of moving over he got up in the silent, trembling dignity of an insulted man and began to put his clothes on. She seemed either not to notice or not to care what he was doing as she went heavily back to bed, but before very long, when he was buttoning his shirt, he could tell she was watching him and ready to apologize.

  “Warren?” she said in a small, fearful voice. “Don’t go. I’m sorry I called you that, and I’ll never say it again. Just please come back and stay with me, okay?”

  That was enough to make his fingers pause in the fastening of shirt buttons; then, soon, it was enough to make him begin unfastening them again. Leaving now, with nothing settled, might easily be worse than staying. Besides, there was an undeniable advantage in being seen as a man big enough to be capable of forgiveness.

  “. . . Oh,” she said when he was back in bed. “Oh, this is better. This is better. Oh, come closer and let me—there. There. Oh. Oh, I don’t think anybody in the whole world ever wants to be alone at night. Do you?”

  It was a fragile, pleasant truce that lasted well into the morning, when he made an agreeable if nervous departure.

  But all the way home on the Underground he regretted having made no final statement to her. He went over the openings of several final statements in his mind as he rode—“Look, Christine, I don’t think this is working out at all. . . .” or “Baby, if you’re going to think of me as a ponce, and stuff like that, I think it’s about time we . . .”— until he realized, from the uneasy, quickly averted glances of other passengers on the train, that he was moving his lips and making small, reasonable gestures with his hands.

  “Warren?” said Judith’s old, melodious voice on the telephone that afternoon, calling from Sussex. “I thought I might run up to town on Tuesday and stay for a week or two. Would that be a terrible nuisance for you?”

  He told her not to be silly and said he’d be looking forward to it, but he’d scarcely hung up the phone before it rang again and Christine said, “Hi, honey.”

  “Oh, hi. How are you?”

  “Well, okay, except I wasn’t very nice to you last night. I get that way sometimes. I know it’s awful, but I do. Can I make it up to you, though? Can you come over Tuesday night?”

  “Well, I don’t know, Christine, I’ve been thinking. Maybe we’d better sort of—”

  Her voice changed. “You coming or not?”

  He let her wait through a second or two of silence before he agreed to go—and he agreed then only because he knew it would be better to make his final statement in person than on the phone.

  He wouldn’t spend the night. He would stay only as long as it took to make himself clear to her; if the house was crowded he would take her around to the pub, where they could talk privately. And he resolved not to rehearse any more speeches: he would find the right words when the time came, and the right tone.

  But apart from its having to be final, the most important thing about his statement—the dizzyingly difficult thing—was that it would have to be nice. If it wasn’t, if it left her resentful, there might be any amount of trouble later on the phone—a risk that could no longer be taken, with Judith home—and there might be worse events even than that. He could picture Christine and himself as Judith’s guests at afternoon tea in her sitting room (“Do bring your young friend along, Warren”), just as Carol and he had often been in the past. He could see Christine waiting for a conversational lull, then setting down her cup and saucer firmly, for emphasis, and saying, “Listen, lady. I got news for you. You know what this big sweet nephew of yours is? Huh? Well, I’ll tell you. He’s a ponce.”

  He had planned to arrive well after supper, but they must have gotten a late start tonight because they were all still at the table, and Grace Arnold offered him a plate.

  “No thanks,” he said, but he sat down beside Christine anyway, with a drink, because it would have seemed rude not to.

  “Christine?” he said. “When you’ve finished eating, want to come around to the pub with me for a while?”

  “What for?” she asked with her mouth full.

  “Because I want to talk to you.”

  “We can talk here.”

  “No we can’t.”

  “So what’s the big deal? We’ll talk later, then.”

  And Warren felt his plans begin to slide away like sand.

  Amy seemed to be in a wonderful mood that night. She laughed generously at everything Alfred and Warren said; she sang a chorus of “Unforgettable” with at least as much feeling as Christine had brought to it; she backed away into the middle of the room, stepped out of her shoes, and favored her a
udience with a neat, slow little hip-switching dance to the theme music of the movie Moulin Rouge.

  “How come you’re not going out tonight, Amy?” Christine inquired.

  “Oh, I don’t know; I don’t feel like it. Sometimes all I want to do is stay home and be quiet.”

  “Alfred?” Grace called. “See if there’s any lime juice, because if there’s lime juice we can have gin and lime.”

  They found dance music on the radio and Grace melted into Alfred’s arms for an old-fashioned waltz. “I love a waltz,” she explained. “I’ve always loved a waltz”—but it stopped abruptly when they waltzed into the ironing board and knocked it over, which struck everyone as the funniest thing they had ever seen.

  Christine wanted to prove she could jitterbug, perhaps in rivalry with Amy’s dance, but Warren made a clumsy partner for her: he hopped and shuffled and worked up a sweat and didn’t really know how to send her whirling out to their arms’ length and bring her whirling back, the way it was supposed to be done, so their performance too dissolved into awkwardness and laughter.

  “. . . Oh, isn’t it nice that we’re all such good friends,” Grace Arnold said, earnestly breaking the seal on a new bottle of gin. “We can just be here and enjoy ourselves tonight and nothing else matters in the world as long as we’re together, right?”

  Right. Sometime later, Alfred and Warren sat together on the sofa discussing points of difference and similarity in the British and American armies, a couple of old soldiers at peace; then Alfred excused himself to get another drink, and Amy sank smiling into the place he had left, lightly touching Warren’s thigh with her fingertips to establish the opening of a new conversation.

  “Amy,” Christine said from across the room. “Take your hands off Warren or I’ll kill you.”

  And everything went bad after that. Amy sprang to her feet in heated denial of any wrongdoing, Christine’s rebuttal was loud and foul, Grace and Alfred stood with the weak smiles of spectators at a street accident, and Warren wanted to evaporate.

  “You’re always doing that,” Christine shouted. “Ever since I got you into this house you’ve been waving it around and rubbing it up against every man I bring home. You’re cheap; you’re a tart; you’re a little slut.”

  “And you’re a whore,” Amy cried, just before bursting into tears. She lurched for the door then, but didn’t make it: she was obliged to turn back with her fist in her mouth, her eyes bright with terror, in order to witness what Christine was saying to Grace Arnold.

  “All right, Grace, listen.” Christine’s voice was high and perilously steady. “You’re my best friend and you always will be, but you’ve got to make a choice. It’s her or me. I mean it. Because I swear on that baby’s life”—and one arm made a theatrical sweep in the direction of her bedroom—“I swear on that baby’s life I’m not staying in this house another day if she stays too.”

  “Oh,” Amy said, advancing on her. “Oh, that was a rotten thing to do. Oh, you’re a filthy—”

  And the two girls were suddenly locked in combat, wrestling and punching, or trying to punch, tearing clothes and pulling hair. Grace tried to separate them, a shrill, quivering referee, but she only got pummeled and pushed around herself until she fell down, and that was when Alfred Arnold moved in.

  “Shit,” he said. “Break it up. Break it up.” He managed to pull Christine away from Amy’s throat and shove her roughly aside, then he prevented Amy from any further action by throwing her down full-length on the sofa, where she covered her face and wept.

  “Cows,” Alfred said as he stumbled and righted himself. “Fucking cows.”

  “Put some coffee on,” Grace suggested from the chair she had crawled to, and Alfred blundered to the stove and set a pan of water on the gas. He fumbled around for a bottle of instant-coffee syrup and put a spoonful of the stuff into each of five clean cups, breathing hard; then he began stalking the room with the wide and glittering eyes of a man who never thought his life would turn out like this.

  “Fucking cows,” he said again. “Cows.” And with all his strength he smashed his right fist against the wall.

  “Well, I knew Alfred was upset,” Christine said later, when she and Warren were in bed, “but I didn’t think he’d go and hurt his hand that way. That was awful.”

  “Can I come in?” Grace asked with a timid knock on the door, and she came in looking happy and disheveled. She was still wearing her dress but had evidently removed her garter belt, for her black nylon stockings had fallen into wrinkles around her ankles and her shoes. Her naked legs were pale and faintly hairy.

  “How’s Alfred’s hand?” Christine inquired.

  “Well, he’s got it soaking in hot water,” Grace said, “but he keeps taking it out and trying to put it in his mouth. He’ll be all right. Anyway, listen, though, Christine. You’re right about Amy. She’s no good. I’ve known that ever since you brought her here. I didn’t want to say anything because she was your friend, but that’s the God’s truth. And I just want you to know you’re my favorite, Christine. You’ll always be my favorite.”

  Lying and listening, with the bedclothes pulled up to his chin, Warren longed for the silence of home.

  “. . . Remember the time she lost all the dry-cleaning tickets and lied about it?”

  “Oh, and remember when you and me were getting ready to go to the pictures that day?” Grace said. “And there wasn’t time to fix sandwiches so we had egg on toast instead because it was quicker? And she kept hanging around saying, ‘What’re you making eggs for?’ She was so mad and jealous because we hadn’t asked her to come along to the pictures she was acting like a little kid.”

  “Well, she is a little kid. She doesn’t have any—doesn’t have any maturity at all.”

  “Right. You’re absolutely right about that, Christine. And I’ll tell you what I’ve decided to do: I’ll tell her first thing in the morning. I’ll simply say, ‘I’m sorry, Amy, but you’re no longer welcome in my home. . . .’”

  Warren got out of the house before dawn and tried to sleep in his own place, though he couldn’t hope for more than an hour or two because he had to be up and dressed and smiling when Judith came down for her bath.

  “I must say you’re certainly looking well, Warren,” Judith told him. “You look as calm and fit as a man thoroughly in charge of his life. There isn’t a trace of that haggard quality that used to worry me about you sometimes.”

  “Oh?” he said. “Well, thanks, Judith. You’re looking very well too, but then of course you always do.”

  He knew the phone was going to ring, and he could only hope it would be silent until noon. That was when Judith went out to lunch—or, on days when she’d decided to economize, it was the time she went out to do her modest grocery shopping. She would carry a string bag around the neighborhood to be filled by deferential, admiring shopkeepers—Englishmen and women schooled for generations to know a lady when they saw one.

  At noon, from the front windows, he watched her stately old figure descend the steps and move slowly down the street. And it seemed no more than a minute after that when the phone burst into ringing, his nerves making it sound much louder than it was.

  “You sure took off in a hurry,” Christine said.

  “Yeah. Well, I couldn’t sleep. How’d it go with Amy this morning?”

  “Oh, that’s okay now. That’s all over. The three of us had a long talk, and in the end I talked Grace into letting her stay.”

  “Well, good. Still, I’m surprised she’d want to stay.”

  “Are you kidding? Amy? You think she has anywhere else to go? Jesus, if you think Amy has anywhere else to go you’re outa your mind. And I mean you know me, Warren: I get all upset sometimes, but I couldn’t ever just turn somebody out on the street.” She paused, and he could hear the faint rhythmic click of her chewing gum. He hadn’t known, until then, that she ever chewed gum.

  For a moment it occurred to him that having her in this placid, rational, gum-c
hewing frame of mind might be his best opportunity yet for breaking off with her, over the telephone or not, but he hadn’t quite organized his opening remarks before she was talking again.

  “So listen, honey, I don’t think I’ll be able to see you for a while. Tonight’s out, and tomorrow night too, and all through the weekend.” And she gave a quietly harsh little laugh. “I’ve got to make some money, don’t I?”

  “Well, sure,” he said. “Sure you do; I know that.” And not until those agreeable words were out of his mouth did he realize they were exactly the kind of thing a ponce might say.

  “I might be able to come around to your place some afternoon, though,” Christine suggested.

  “No, don’t do that,” he said quickly. “I’m—I’m almost always out at the library in the afternoons.”

  They settled on an evening in the following week, at her place, at five; but something in her voice made him suspect even then that she wouldn’t be there—that intentionally failing to keep this appointment would be her inarticulate way of getting rid of him, or at least of making a start at it: nobody’s ponce could expect to last forever. And so, when the day and the hour came, he wasn’t surprised to find her gone.

  “Christine’s not here, Warren,” Grace Arnold explained, backing politely away from the door to let him come in. “She said to tell you she’d call. She had to go up to Scotland for a few days.”

  “Oh? Is there—trouble at home, then?”

  “How do you mean ‘trouble’?”

  “Well, I just mean is there an—” And Warren found himself mouthing the same lame alibi that Carol and he had once agreed would be good enough for Judith, in what now seemed another life. “Is there an illness in her family, or something like that?”

  “That’s right, yes.” Grace was visibly grateful for his help. “There’s an illness in her family.”

  And he said he was sorry to hear it.

  “Can I get you something, Warren?”