Barbara Greer (20 page)

He couldn't remember, really, what his precise ambition had been then. He supposed he had had one, but it must have been one that was vague and ill-defined. To get ahead was probably what it had been. But now that he had got, so to speak, ahead, it seemed as though he ought to have some more specific goal. And yet he really had none. And the thought of being thirty years old and goal-less was not a pleasant one. Barbara hated Locustville; she had said so often enough. He had tried to cheer her with general promises, telling her that the answer to the future lay in one of those seven cities where the company had sales offices. But he had not told her the truth about how he felt. Somehow, with the rules they tried to live by, a thing like telling her the truth about how he felt was hard to do; it seemed impolite to do. And it was a hard thing, besides, to put into words. But perhaps he should try.

With a start, he realised that he had been staring blindly at his image in the mirror, as though hypnotised with the view of Carson Vickers Greer. He straightened the knot of his tie, turned away, picked up his room key, and went to the door. He opened the door and stepped out into the narrow hall, closing the door behind him.

His room was on the third floor. Next to the single, wire-caged elevator shaft, a flight of stairs descended. He knew that in a hotel like this one the lift, as its name implied, was for upward trips, not downward. And yet, with a slight feeling of vindictiveness because he had not been wakened at nine o'clock as he had asked, he decided not to use the stairs, but to make the lift come up and get him. He pushed the call button hard and heard its bell ring out below.

Yes, he thought, perhaps he ought to talk to Barbara about the future, and himself, and his restlessness. Perhaps when he got home he would.

He waited.

But when a young man has come to that point in life where he does not know where he is going, where he is not sure who he is or whom he once wanted to be—when he is no longer sure why he first set out upon the course he has travelled or why he has continued for the distance that he has—at that point, much as he may love his wife, there are things that he cannot tell her. It is not only because there are rules of courtesy and kindness. It is because the admission of his uncertainty and unknowing might become, in a way, an admission of his lack of manhood. And there is only a shred of consolation in thinking that the questions, which he eventually must answer alone, are questions that a woman might not even understand.

So he waited for the lift to begin its creaking journey upward, feeling lost, though comforted again by knowing that Sunday is always a lost day in selling, but knowing that he was more lost, perhaps, this Sunday than other salesmen were.

Cables, visible behind the grillwork, began to tremble; the lift was coming up. At least he wasn't at the Dorchester. At least he was playing the game. At least he had found, stumbled upon, what was probably the cheapest hotel in London. When he ran into one of the other salesmen he would have something to talk about.

9

The bay window where her grandmother sat faced the garden; it was actually a five-windowed turret, and inside, below its sill, ran a narrow window seat covered with five green velvet cushions. The turret was on the sunny, southeast side, but the upper sash of each window was of stained glass—a random mosaic of amber, green, lavender and ruby pieces—so that the sunlight that came through seemed shifting and uncertain, a gaudy rainbow of oily colours. It was not a religious light even though in the centre window, in letters of twisting lead, the glazier had inscribed the motto:

The kiss of the sun for pardon

The song of the birds for mirth;

One is nearer God's heart in a garden

Than anywhere else on earth
.

Tall weeds and sunflowers overbore the garden now. God, or whatever mortal had tended it, had long since given up the chore. Lambs'-quarter and mustard-plant, wild morning glory and low fluffy clumps of chickweed hid a place where, once, even borders of perennials had run, where delphinium and peonies and lupins had bloomed, and where still could be seen a few abandoned clumps of purple iris. In this ruin there was a kind of rank, billowy beauty now—like a once-lovely woman who has lazily let herself go in middle age. There was visible a shape, or memory, of what had been an intricate design of paths, measuring the garden into a series of triangles and hexagons. But now the luxurious summer weeds, their leaves hanging wilted in the brilliant morning sunshine, blurred the original geometry and turned the formal garden into a tropical rain forest topped with huge, improbable sunflower faces. In the exact centre, almost hidden by tall grass, a silver gazing globe on a stone pedestal glittered in the sun. The sun moved now, slowly into the window where Barbara stood, fell upon the heavy twisted fringe of the velvet curtain. Her grandmother, as she often did these days, had dozed, her small head fallen forward on her bosom, gently breathing. Mrs. Zaretsky, the nurse, looked up from her knitting. ‘We get tired very easily,' she said to Barbara. ‘But we'll wake up before we know it.'

‘Do you think I should leave?' Barbara asked.

‘Oh, we love having visitors!' Mrs. Zaretsky said cheerfully.

‘I hope I'm not tiring her.'

Mrs. Zaretsky smiled a knowing nurse's smile behind her steel rimmed glasses. ‘It's just as well,' she said. ‘After one of these little snoozes we'll just forget to wake up, and that will be that.'

‘Yes,' Barbara said quietly.

‘It's simply remarkable,' Mrs. Zaretsky said. ‘Doctor McDonald says that what she really is is sort of a freak. Her heart is fine, her hearing's perfect, she has all her own teeth! Imagine! Of course her eyesight's failed and—upstairs—' she tapped her head significantly with her finger, ‘she's got terribly fuzzy. But still and all, it's just remarkable. She's a remarkable old lady, she really is.'

Barbara nodded silently. She turned to the window again.

‘The blood doesn't get up to the brain fast enough,' Mrs. Zaretsky said, dropping her voice to a loud whisper. ‘That's why she can't think straight. But sometimes she's just as clear as a bell! It's remarkable! Why, just the other day she all of a sudden started telling me about Burketown—the old Burketown she knew as a girl, and how it's changed and all. And believe it or not, I thought: Why she's really a very remarkable person! She remembered when they had trolley cars on High Street—everything. Now what I wish is that when she gets that way, you know, lucid, that somebody would come with one of those watchamacallits, those things they take things down on, a recording machine. I thought that to have those remarks of hers down on a recording machine would be worth something, as a historical document, I really did. I mentioned it to Mr. deWinter when he was here on Wednesday and he said he thought it was a very good idea.'

To change the subject, Barbara said, ‘Does she have someone to take care of the garden?'

‘The garden? Oh, you mean
that
garden? Well, old Joe Martino comes to cut the grass, but goodness me, there isn't much point in trying to fix up that old garden, is there? I mean when she's gone they'll probably tear this house down, won't they? Or sell it to someone who could really use it for something?'

Barbara turned to her grandmother again, and with a little start, the old lady lifted her head and opened her eyes. ‘Oh!' she said.

Loudly, Mrs. Zaretsky said, ‘Your granddaughter's here to see you, Mrs. Woodcock. Remember?'

‘Did you have a nice nap, Nana?' Barbara asked.

‘Yes, dear. Thank you. I'm sorry. What time is it, dear?'

‘Ten-thirty, Nana.'

Mrs. Zaretsky consulted the heavy chronograph on her wrist. ‘Just ten thirty-four, Mrs. Woodcock,' she said. ‘Would you like a nice, hot cup of broth?'

‘No, thank you, not yet,' Mrs. Woodcock said. ‘It's a lovely day, isn't it.'

‘It certainly is,' Barbara said. She sat down on the little footstool by the chair and patted her grandmother's hand. ‘But it's going to be hot I'm afraid.'

‘The house is always cool, even on the hottest days,' her grandmother said.

‘It's wonderful to see you again, Nana,' Barbara said. ‘You look so well.'

‘Thank you, dear.'

If there had been any change, Barbara thought, in her grandmother's appearance since she had seen her last, it was only that she seemed to have grown, imperceptibly, smaller. She had always been a tiny, doll-like woman, barely five feet tall, with a pale and fragile face. She had always been proud of her size, of her small feet which wore a size-four shoe. A difficulty, in her old age, had been finding dresses that looked mature enough for a very old lady and yet were small enough to fit her delicate frame. Her dress size was seven, a size that in most department stores was reserved for teen-age girls. But she sat now in a black silk dress that had been made specially for her, and became her, turned her into a simple composition of black and white. Her eyes were so pale they seemed to have no colour to them, her carefully curled hair was pure white, and the flesh of her face and tiny hands seemed to be composed of soft, chalky powder. About her neck she wore a silver and onyx lavaliere. Her only other jewellery was the wide gold wedding band that she had never removed. She sat, hands folded, in the wheelchair and across her knees was a white knitted afghan. She had been a picture-book child—posed, in a daguerreotype, holding a fluffy white kitten to her cheek; she had been a picture-book young woman, much admired for her graceful performance of cotillion figures, and, in a later photograph, a white lace fan had replaced the kitten at her cheek. And now, at ninety-three, sitting in her panelled library, beginning her day, which consisted of a series of little journeys between sunny windows, she still had much of the artificiality and perfection of a cameo, the picture of a little old lady that might have been used to decorate a box of candy.

She was a woman, Barbara had often heard, who had not been built for child-bearing, and yet she had managed to have two children—though the first, a baby girl, had lived only nineteen hours and a tiny headstone in the Burketown cemetery marked the grave of Cecilia Mary Woodcock, born January 7, 1894, died January, 8, 1894. Beneath the dates the inscription read, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me.' Seven years later she had her second child, Preston, and the ordeal, it was understood, had nearly killed her. Though she had never been an invalid, she had, when she recovered, been given an invalid's care and attention. ‘Your grandmother,' Barbara could remember her grandfather saying proudly, ‘is a woman who needs a man's arm to take her wherever she goes.' And Barbara could remember her grandmother being guided and steered, helped and directed, through the rooms and passageways of life. She remembered that whenever a guide was not immediately there to offer Grandmother his arm she got lost; there had been many fond and indulgent searches for a little white-haired lady who, stepping from a hotel elevator, had turned as if by instinct the wrong way, or who had stepped out on to the sidewalk in front of Penrose's store after an afternoon of shopping and—not seeing her car—had decided to walk home along Maple Street which led, of course, toward Hanscomb Corners. Unwilling to ask directions, she would forge on resolutely away from her destination as if determined to escape her goal. Even in her own house, Barbara could remember her grandmother moving from the living room into the hall, then hesitating, uncertain as to where she was bound. ‘Preston?' she would call to her husband and he would answer ‘Just a minute, Mary,' and when he appeared he would offer her his arm and set her on her course again. The wheelchair, then, possibly answered more than a physical need after her most trusted guide had gone; in its arms she felt confident, sure that whoever was pushing her would know better than she did where she wanted to go. It was curious that, just lately, she had made several attempts to get out of the chair.

Barbara sat silently, letting time pass; in the background, Mrs. Zaretsky's knitting needles clicked efficiently. Making conversation with the aged is always difficult but it was especially difficult with her grandmother. Nothing much had ever interested Mary Owens Woodcock, even as a young woman, outside of shoes and hats and dresses. These interests now had long vanished from her mind. She had never seemed, despite what Mrs. Zaretsky had said, to be concerned with changes or events in the world. To observe that there had once been trolley cars on High Street did not seem to Barbara to be a significant revelation. She had, at one time in her life, dipped her toe daintily into several fashionable religious cults—Couéism, Moral Rearmament, Christian Science, Spiritualism—but none of her experiences here seemed to have left any profound effect upon her soul. Mrs. Zaretsky sometimes read to her, but her enjoyment in this had never seemed to go beyond the lulling pleasure of hearing another human voice. So it was hard, as Barbara sat there, allowing a decent interval to elapse before leaving, to think of anything to say. At last she said, ‘Would you like me to read to you, Nana?'

‘No, thank you, dear. Not right now,' her grandmother said.

Mrs. Zaretsky glanced at her oversized wristwatch. ‘Quarter to eleven,' she said. ‘Almost time for our medicine.'

‘Which medicine is it?' Mrs. Woodcock asked.

‘The kind you like,' Mrs. Zaretsky said.

Mrs. Woodcock turned suddenly to Barbara. ‘Did you find the papers you wanted, dear?'

‘What papers, Nana?'

Mrs. Zaretsky looked quickly at Barbara and gave her a humorous wink. ‘That was your
other
granddaughter, Mrs. Woodcock,' Mrs. Zaretsky said. ‘That was Peggy. This is Barbara.'

‘Oh of course,' her grandmother said. ‘Of course, Barbara. Well, ask Peggy if she still wants those papers, if she's found them. I haven't had a chance to look for them. I don't know quite where to lay my hands on them.'