‘Oh!’ said Peter, who was gripping a smallish beer bottle just then between his knees. ‘Sunday!’
‘He was awfully old – ninety or more,’ Edith went on. ‘He died in his sleep. The service was only today, matter of fact – this morning. Brett was there – in Doylestown.’
‘Goodness!’ said Sarah.
Yet in the next minutes, George faded away like a wisp of cigarette smoke – or something, and Edith was delighted that they began to talk about other things, happy things. Sarah had been ‘given the task’ as Sarah put it, by her mother, of seeing to Melanie’s bequeathals, silver, furniture, books. Sarah told Edith that Melanie had given Edith a choice of rugs and of books, and of two settees with accompanying chairs. That was nice. Edith knew the settees, and knew her preference. But it was the atmosphere of this moment that Edith enjoyed, the ease of it, the frankness of Sarah as well as her tone of respect for Melanie.
‘Of course we brought a copy, didn’t we, Peter?’ Sarah asked her husband, then said something else in a tongue Edith couldn’t understand – Swiss dialect.
‘Of course, of course!’ Peter said, smiling.
‘Peter thinks I forget the most important things and remember the least important,’ Sarah said. ‘We had photostats of the will made. You may see it, if you like.’
On her last words, there were quick steps down the staircase, not the steps of Bertha.
‘Ah, Geoff!’ Sarah said. ‘Geoff, this is my cousin Edith – Edith Howland.’
‘How do you do?’ A tall man in light gray trousers and gray sweater advanced toward Edith and bowed a little. ‘You’ve just arrived?’
‘Yes,’ Edith said, feeling surprised and somehow shocked that a strange man had been upstairs here. But he looked charming, polite – a crease across his forehead, two down his cheeks, like an outdoor man, or a man who worried a little too much. He had sent a whiff of after-shave lotion – or could it be pipe tobacco – toward Edith as he bowed. Edith admired his pale gray cashmere sweater. Was she falling in love – at first sight? She wasn’t listening to what the others were saying, and it seemed that Sarah repeated:
‘… Geoffrey Vrieland. He is a lawyer, but not ours! I say this so you – I mean we haven’t any – what do you call it?’ Sarah was smiling.
‘Professional clout, maybe?’ Peter put in. He had a slight accent.
Geoffrey Vrieland laughed and tossed popcorn into his mouth.
Edith was happy. She forced her thoughts away from the attractiveness of Geoffrey Vrieland, who probably had a wife – maybe even upstairs – or in Basel, where Sarah said he lived. Edith daydreamed about her settee-and-two-chairs to come. She would choose the beige satin with the tiny rosebud pattern, and get rid of the worn-out green armchair in the corner that Cliffie was always flinging himself into. Brett had said, ‘The upstairs needs a paint job,’ and Edith had agreed, saying rather sharply, The whole house needs a lot,’ because how did Brett think she could make vast improvements with the small amount of money that was coming in?
Bertha announced supper.
‘Late supper!’ Sarah said to all. ‘I hope everybody’s hungry.’
Melanie’s Georgian silver, old pulled-thread napkins adorned the polished table. Cold fried chicken, Bertha’s hot biscuits tucked into linen napkins, salad. Edith could not quite finish the hot apple pie dessert. It was only a little after 11, Sarah said, and would Edith like to have a look at some of the things upstairs?
‘Or maybe you’re tired,’ Sarah said. ‘There’s tomorrow morning. You said you didn’t have to leave till eleven-thirty. Is that right?’
Edith felt not only tired but sad, and deliberately sat up straighter and said she’d like to look at things upstairs. They went.
‘Aunt Melanie was very fond of you,’ Sarah said softly, and folded her hands between her knees, her hands almost lost in her full skirt.
They were both sitting on the floor on either side of a bottom drawer which Sarah had taken quite out, because the bedspreads, the hand towels were easier to look at if the drawer was out in the light.
‘This last week must have been hard for you. I’m so sorry, Edith.’
‘But – quite frankly George – I can’t say he was close to me. An uncle of Brett’s, you know.’
Sarah nodded. ‘Yes, Melanie told me – about that. Edith, this can wait. Anyway the choice is all yours – here. We can talk about it tomorrow. Some of her things come in dozens, some in half dozens. Isn’t it amazing how she kept all this, and in such good condition? It really is like a glimpse into – a hundred years ago!’ Sarah smiled merrily.
Sarah was barely forty, Edith realized. And with two children already in college, and doing well, probably. Sarah had the complexion of a girl of twenty.
Edith took a hot bath. Sarah had recommended it, saying that she looked a bit tense. Edith did not feel in the least tense. She lifted the hot water in the palm of her hand and let it run down from her knees. The moonlight came strong into the bedroom, almost like an artificial light of some kind. Edith blinked, enjoying the changed atmosphere, the curved armchair wings, the fuzzy pattern of the rug that she could almost make out. She got out of bed and went to the window.
The gazebo looked enchanting, like a Japanese dream. Or should she consider it simply Victorian English?
Edith put on her slippers, a sweater over her pajama top, and went downstairs. The whole house was dark now, though a little moonlight penetrated through the hall windows. She took a coat – somebody’s raincoat – from the front closet, and went out, closed the door softly, and went round to the back lawn. She had had an impulse to see Melanie’s little brook – and here it was, busy, murmuring over pebbles, sleepless. She could see silvery ripples in the moonlight. Many a time Edith had waded here, when she had been four years old, maybe even smaller. In the hot summertime, after romping on the lawn, it had been bliss to cool her feet in the brook. Edith stepped out of her slippers, and cautiously set a foot in a part of the brook where she remembered there was sand. There was even the old peach tree (which had never produced well) to steady herself by.
The water was cold, numbing. She released the peach tree branch and stood up straight, would have closed her eyes completely, except that she was not sure she could have kept her balance. Her feet lost even their sensation of numbness, she looked toward her great-aunt’s slumbering house – what had Goethe said, ‘Kennst du das Haus? Auf Säulen ruht sein Dach.’ – and she enjoyed a sense of order, of sanity. Gert Johnson, she supposed, would call Melanie’s house ‘snob,’ out-of-date, even immoral. Edith giggled a little – maybe from chill. She climbed out of the water onto dew-damp grass, found her slippers. No use catching her death. She had almost solved the mystery of existence. Almost. How often had she been on the brink of it? Maybe twenty times in her life. It had always the same elements (even on land now, she grasped them clearly, as she had in the water), and they had to do with consciousness and truth. Had it anything to do with what people should do, from moral… Her thoughts were lost again, as she struggled to tighten the raincoat belt. How many individuals, or countries, did what they should do? No, what she meant was individual, depended on an individual honesty, on admitting facts.
Numb to the calves now, Edith trudged toward the house, looked up again at the dark windows faintly bordered by lighter curtains. In an upstairs narrow window, third from right, where the hall was, Edith saw a ghostly figure. Sarah, watching her? Edith impulsively lifted an arm and waved, and when she looked again, the pale vertical shape had gone. Had she seen it? Yes, Edith thought.
So Edith expected to find Sarah waiting, maybe, at the top of the stairs, when she came in. Edith was silent, hanging the raincoat back where she had found it. She climbed the stairs softly, looking for Sarah. There was no one, not even in the hall upstairs, and Edith went back to bed. She wrapped her sweater around her feet, and tired now, fell asleep quickly.
Breakfast was a staggered affair, Peter having had his very early, becaus
e he had to write letters, Sarah said. Geoffrey Vrieland looked more handsome even than last evening, captured in a patch of sunlight at the table. Could it have been Geoff watching her last night? Hardly, unless he wore a night-shirt! Edith said to Sarah:
‘I went out to see the brook last night. I thought I saw you at an upstairs window – watching me and probably thinking I was a bit dotty.’
‘Me?’ Sarah seemed baffled by both statements, that Edith had gone out, and that she might have been at a window. ‘No, Edith.’
‘Oh. A trick of the moonlight then. I wanted to see the old brook. And the moon was so bright and lovely!’
Sarah was pleasant, didn’t say much of anything, but a few minutes later (when Sarah and Geoff were talking about something quite different) Edith had the feeling Sarah had looked at her suspiciously, as if Sarah might think she was off her rocker for walking out in the moonlight.
‘We’ve got two good hours!’ Sarah said cheerfully.
She meant hours in which to look at the furniture and the other things.
Edith drove home with a bundle wrapped in a mohair steamer rug and gently tied. It contained napkins, hand towels, linen sheets, and a silver stamp box Edith had always been fond of. Sarah had said, ‘Take the stamp box! I can see you like it.’ It was nice to have relatives like that. The settee and armchair and two smaller chairs would come later, but within a week, Sarah said, when she could arrange a delivery.
She also had Geoffrey Vrieland’s card with Zurich and Basel addresses. He had said she must come to dinner at his house, if she ever came to Zurich to visit the Belleters. He liked to cook.
Edith was home by 1:10 p.m., just time to unpack a bit and have a bite before going to the Thatchery. Cliffie’s transistor was on. Edith went up the hall to say hello to him, and was surprised to see blankets and a couple of cartons outside his room door. Cliffie lay on the floor, apparently rearranging the books in his bookcase. The vacuum cleaner was also on the floor.
‘What’re you doing?’
‘Oh – straightening up a little. Nothing much.’ Cliffie looked embarrassed.
Edith was speechless, turned away stunned. She had seen at a glance that the two cartons in the hall contained cruddy old magazines, newspapers, even old tennis shoes. What had happened? Well, George was gone. Yes, that was what had happened.
Nelson came into the kitchen, tail high, and gave out a happy, prolonged cry.
‘Hello, Nelson!’ Edith picked him up, and the cat relaxed completely, nearly slipping through her hands, purring as if she had been away for days.
Edith put the kettle on. She wanted tea now. ‘Help you with anything, Cliffie?’ she called.
‘I’m doing all right, thanks.’
‘Hungry?’
‘Yep!’
Edith made tea, toast, opened a can of tuna and made sandwiches. Cliffie’s transistor played ‘Old Buttermilk Sky.’ Edith was aware that she enjoyed it, and remembered the many times she had cursed to herself, nearly screamed at Cliffie to turn his radio off, turn anything off. ‘Ready!’ Edith called.
‘Wow, that’s fast.’ Cliffie strolled in with a smudge of dust straight up the bridge of his nose, and a yellow dustrag hanging out of a back pocket.
‘Your room’s going to look nice!’ Edith said cheerfully.
‘Yeah.’ Cliffie dove into a sandwich. ‘Nice time down in Delaware?’
Edith smiled. ‘Lovely. You should’ve been there. I went wading in the brook at midnight.’
‘In this weather?’
‘And your cousin Sarah asked about you. She’s so nice, Cliffie. So’s her husband.’ And Edith talked on. Was Cliffie really listening or not? As usual, she felt he was taking in half of it. As soon as he had downed his sandwiches and milk, he went back to his room. Edith had no intention of interrupting his unprecedented effort, so she shouted a ‘Bye-bye’ and departed.
‘Hey, Mom!’ Cliffie was running down the hall. ‘Just that I’m – Just that a girl is coming for a drink tonight at seven thirty. Okay? Are you home?’
‘Well – do you want me to be?’
‘Oh – doesn’t matter.’
‘I’ve got work to do in my room. I won’t be in your way. Got to run, Cliffie.’ She went on. A girl! What girl, Edith wondered. Coming to the house. Well, no reason why Cliffie should fetch her, she supposed. Edith was smiling.
Cliffie continued his tidying all afternoon, imbibing meanwhile two beers, in a dreamy way, as from time to time he surveyed his progress. Never before had he thrown things out, just said good-bye to them. It was like swimming for the first time, or like the time he had jumped off the bridge when he was a kid. Yet he felt like throwing things out. And it was a damned good thing, he thought. He carried two cartons of rubbish out to the back and put them beside the garbage bin for Saturday morning’s collection.
The girl’s name was Luce, for Lucy. Cliffie had picked her up last night at the Cartwheel Inn, in the bar part. She had short straight blond hair, streaked with brown, with bangs – not the type that usually turned him on or turned anybody on, Cliffie supposed, but she had an interesting smile, rather shy and at the same time friendly, even sexy. She had said she was eighteen, when Cliffie had asked her how old she was. She had been alone, and Cliffie had bought her a gin and tonic and sat down at the little table with her. She was from Philadelphia. Stranger to these parts, Cliffie had said, not a brilliant line, maybe, but it seemed to have done wonders last night. Luce had promised to come to his house at 7:30, and to go out to dinner with him afterward. Cliffie had made a trip to the bank and withdrawn forty dollars, which meant he had sixty-two on him now.
Around 5 he had a nap, exhausted by his efforts which had included going to the local grocery for fritos and potato chips. The house had gin and tonic. When he woke up, his heart gave a leap when he saw it was just after 6, and at once he thought that Luce might stand him up. That was quite possible, so he braced himself. If she did stand him up (and he would know by 8 or 8:15), and his mother said anything, he would say casually that Luce had called up and told him she couldn’t make it.
His room looked rather okay, even nice, he thought. He had left one of the best pop group posters up, and there were lighter patches on the white wall where the others had been, but what the hell? No use being an old maid about a room! The funny thing was, he wasn’t sure he would invite Luce even to have a look at his room. On the other hand, he could have the cocktail hour in his room. He pondered this.
When Edith came home a little after 7, she found Cliffie in the hall, looking anxious, as if she might have been his girl friend barging in. Edith was mildly surprised to see three-quarters of his beard off again, and now merely a thick hedge along his jaw-line. His hair looked as if he had just had a bath, and he had on his blue blazer which Edith thought he was a bit too plump to button now.
‘Everything all right?’
‘Just fine, Mom.’
Edith went upstairs, and had her second bath of the day. She felt especially well, and wanted to write something in her diary. Her last entry had been about George passing away in his sleep. She wasn’t going to say anything about the cremation, which in fact she hadn’t witnessed, nor had Brett, but that service – brief, perfunctory beyond belief! And Brett had not taken the trouble to alert George’s kin, if any, nor had Edith for that matter troubled to ask Gert or the Quickmans to come, which they probably would have done. Sad it had been, sad, sad. And she had sensed Brett gently smouldering throughout. For the first time in a long time, Edith had felt sympathy for poor old George, for his isolated spirit, George who had grown too deaf to enjoy radio, and had maintained to the last his contempt for television.
And now Cliffie – in a dither. It pleased Edith that he had a girl friend. Surely he’d asked a girl or two to the house before. Hadn’t he? Of course she couldn’t write about that in her diary, because Cliffie was married – in her diary.
Edith put on her blue corduroys, suddenly remembered the bundle on the livi
ng room floor, and went down. Cliffie was in the living room, strolling about with a scotch, and the bundle was exactly where she had left it, in front of the sofa. ‘Pardon me, Cliff! I’ll get this out of your way.’
‘Oh. That. Yeah. Yes. Is it heavy?’
‘Oh, no.’ Edith carried the bundle up the stairs, and opened it on the double bed in the bedroom. Beautiful crisp linen, and some other linen or cotton items quite limp with age. And the silver! And a daguerreotype that Edith had admired and Sarah had put in without Edith’s knowing. Melanie’s mother, Edith remembered. The picture was framed, and Sarah had remarked that the name and dates were written on the back of the picture.
She heard Cliffie opening the front door, heard voices. Edith was glad the girl hadn’t stood him up. She put the linens in the bottom drawer of the big chest of drawers in her room, and laid the steamer rug over a chair to hang out. Then she went into her workroom and closed the door.