The Group (52 page)

Mrs. Davison laid a restraining plump hand on Polly’s arm. “You may tell everyone you wish, Elizabeth. Indeed, I hope you will. She fell.” “Oh, I know that was the police verdict,” said Libby. Helena started to speak. “I have the floor, Helena,” said Mrs. Davison. “After all, I was the last to see her alive. Not an hour before. I invited her to have coffee with me in the lounge after dinner. I was always partial to Kay. And as I told the police, she was in excellent spirits. Her mind was perfectly clear. We discussed Mr. Churchill and the air raids and the necessity of a draft in this country. She spoke of an interview she expected to have for a position with Saks Fifth Avenue. Kay had no intention of taking her own life. If she had not ‘done time’ in a mental institution, the question would never have been raised.”

The young women nodded. That was what was so unfair about the whole thing. And if Kay had not been cleared by the police, she could not have had Christian burial. She would have had to lie in unhallowed ground.

“You might say, Elizabeth,” Mrs. Davison continued gravely, “that Kay was the first American war casualty.” “Oh, Mother!” protested Helena. “That’s a ridiculous way of putting it.” But in a ridiculous way it was true. Kay had been airplane-spotting, it seemed, from her window at the Vassar Club when somehow she lost her balance and fell. She had had two cocktails before dinner, which might have slightly affected her motor reactions. To those who had been seeing her regularly since she had come back this spring, the manner of her death was a shock but not a complete surprise. She had become very war conscious, like many single women. As her friends could testify, she talked a great deal about air raids and preparedness. Ever since the invasion of the Lowlands, she had been saying that it was just a matter of days before America would be in the war. She was convinced it would begin with a surprise enemy air attack; Hitler would not wait for Roosevelt to arm and declare war on him. He would send the
Luftwaffe
over one night to wipe out New York or Washington. If she were in Hitler’s place, that was exactly what she would do. It was the whole principle of the blitzkrieg. She knew an air force officer who said that the Nazis had long-range bombers—Hitler’s secret weapon—that were capable of making the flight. They would probably concert it with a submarine attack on the coast.

The fact that America was neutral did not mean anything. Norway and Denmark and the Lowlands had been neutral too. She was keen on the idea that Mayor La Guardia should start air-raid drills in New York and impose a blackout. She wanted to be an air-raid warden, like the ones they had in England, and she was urging the Vassar Club to get pails of sand and shovels and start a civilian defense unit. She bought a radio for her room, and someone had given her a deck of Air Force silhouette cards, which she was studying to familiarize herself with the various plane shapes. When she was not listening to the radio or arguing with isolationists, she was scanning the skies.

This new craze of Kay’s had amused her friends when it had not saddened them. Even Priss, who was active in several committees to get America into the war on the Allied side, did not believe Hitler would attack America. She almost wished he would, to goad the American people into action. Her fear was that the war would end this summer—how much longer could the English people hold out alone?—with Europe enslaved, while America sat and did nothing. Or sent too little and too late, as it had done with France. Priss had nearly lost her mind while France was falling; she too had been glued to the radio. She had made Sloan get a portable to take to the beach at Oyster Bay. And now every hour on the hour in the city she turned on the news, expecting to hear that Churchill had capitulated or fled with the government to Canada. This dread, in fact, was in everyone’s mind. All the while they were getting ready for the funeral, Helena had the radio turned on low, for fear they would miss a bulletin. For the rest of their lives, they thought, whenever they remembered Kay, they would remember the voice of the announcer recounting the night’s casualties. Only Mrs. Davison had hope. “Mark my words, the English people will never surrender. As I say to Davy Davison, it will be another Spanish Armada.” But Kay, with her positive character, had already left England behind and was planning the defense of America. What had saddened her friends was that her interest in what she called Hitler’s timetable was so obviously a rounding on Harald, who had become a fanatical America Firster and was getting quite a name for himself speaking at their rallies. If only Kay could have forgotten him, instead of enlisting in a rival campaign. Still, her zeal of preparedness had given her something to live for. What a cruel irony that it should have caused her death!

The maid who did her room at the Vassar Club told the police that she had often see Kay craning out the window and warned her against doing it. “Yes, Elizabeth,” said Mrs. Davison. “I questioned the maid myself. And I measured the window. A girl of Kay’s height could easily have lost her balance and gone out. As I pointed out to the police, her radio was on, and she had left a cigarette burning in the ashtray by her bedside. A very dangerous habit. But no young woman who was going to kill herself would do it in the middle of a cigarette. Evidently, while she was smoking, she heard a plane’s motor or several motors and got up to lean out the window. I believe I heard the motors myself as I was glancing through a magazine in the lounge. But everything was driven from my mind by the sound of that crash. I can hear it now.” She took out a handkerchief and wiped her eyes.

As the group took their seats in the church, they looked around in surprise at the number of people who were already there. It was almost a crowd and more were still arriving. There was Kay’s former supervisor at Macy’s and a whole delegation of her fellow-workers. Mrs. Renfrew had come from Gloucester, to represent Dottie. Mr. Andrews was there, with his sister, the famous Aunt Julia, and Ross. Libby and her husband. Lakey and the titled friend who had come back with her from Europe—the Baroness d’Estienne. Pokey and her husband were there, and in the pew just ahead, Polly and Helena were astonished to see Hatton, the Prothero butler. “Hello, Hatton,” whispered Polly. “Good afternoon, madam. Good afternoon, miss. I’m here to represent the family. The Madam sends her condolences. And Forbes begs to be remembered.” It was quite a society funeral, which would have delighted Kay.

Connie Storey ambled down the aisle and took a seat next to Putnam Blake and his third wife. “Quite a turnout, Mother,” said Mr. Davison approvingly. “Kind of a vote of confidence.” Polly picked out Dick Brown, that old friend of Harald’s, whom time had not been kind to. Jim Ridgeley slipped into the pew beside Polly. “Do you know all these people?” he asked Polly. “No,” she whispered back. “I’ll be damned!” he said and pointed out the psychiatrist who had treated Kay at Payne Whitney. “Those look to me like some of the old patients,” he said, indicating three women together. Mrs. Davison nodded to the secretary of the Vassar Club. Priss recognized Mrs. Sisson, whom she had sat next to at Kay’s wedding. Other classmates appeared. An army officer with wings over his pocket took his seat. “I believe Kay was quite thick with him,” Mrs. Davison confided to her husband. Helena nudged Polly. There came Norine, dressed in complete black with a veil; she appeared to be pregnant, and in a sort of sling that was suspended from her shoulder to her hip and joggled as she walked, there hung a small child; his bare legs and feet protruded from this species of pouch or pocket as if from a pair of rompers. “My smelling salts!” exclaimed Pokey in audible tones. “What is that, a kangaroo?” said Mr. Davison coarsely. “Hush, Father,” reproved Mrs. Davison. “It’s Ic-chabod,” said Priss. “But what in the world—?” whispered Polly. “It’s the latest thing,” muttered Priss. “I read about them in a government pamphlet. They’re meant for busy mothers who’ve nobody to leave their babies with. And the child’s supposed to get reassurance from the warmth of the mother’s b-body.” Norine took a seat next to Dick Brown. She placed Ichabod on her lap by shifting the sling. “What’s the idea of the papoose?” he said. “You squaw woman?” Norine nodded. “I want to give him the experience of death.” “I see,” he said gravely. “Early. Like mumps.”

The ripple of astonishment that had gone through the church at the apparition of Ichabod subsided as new arrivals came in. Polly recognized Kay’s former maid, old Clara, who ran a funeral parlor in Harlem. Mrs. Flanagan, Kay’s pet teacher, who had been head of the Federal Theatre, came in with her former assistant. “I never thought she’d come!” exclaimed Helena. The altar was completely banked with flowers.

The organ stopped. The rector came in and took his place behind the casket. The congregation stood up. “I am the Resurrection and the Life, said the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” Lakey felt a tear fall. She was surprised by her grief. The sole emotion she had willed herself to feel was the cold fierce passion that this funeral should be perfect, a flawless mirror of what Kay would find admirable. For herself, she hoped that when she died some stranger would tie a stone around her neck and throw her in the sea. She loathed insincere mourning and, rather than mourn insincerely, she would have preferred to have her eyes put out. Another weak tear dropped. Then she noticed that heads were turning. Furious with the others, she quickly looked too. Harald, wearing a dark suit, had entered and taken a seat at the back of the church. How like him, she said to herself icily, to make us turn around to see him. Polly and Helena peeked too. They had feared he would come. And of course he had a right to be here, though they had not invited him, just as he had a right to kneel down, while the rest of the congregation was standing, and bury his skull-like head in his hand, seeming to pray. Yet they too were incensed.

In the slight pause that preceded the reading of the first psalm, everyone in the church, even those who did not know him, became aware of the presence of Harald. It was as if a biased shadow had fallen on the assembly. If you could have an evil sprite at a funeral, reflected Helena, like a bad fairy at a christening, that was Mr. Harald Handfast. She set her small jaw. She did not understand why his sour mana made her milk of human kindness curdle. There was no further harm he could do Kay. A strange phrase crossed her drawling mind. Harald was “taking the joy out of Kay’s funeral.”

With a slight uneasy appraisal of the congregation, as though his practiced eye had taken cognizance of Ichabod and Harald as possible centers of disturbance, the rector started the first psalm. “Lord, let me know mine end, and the number of my days. …” There was a rustle and creaking. Some of the mourners remained standing; others sat down; others knelt; still others compromised between sitting and kneeling, crouching forward on the pews. Polly decided to follow Hatton, who had seated himself. He was one of the few persons in the church, she mused, who would know how to comport himself at a funeral. She thought of Kay’s wedding and how young and superstitious they had all been that day and how little they had changed. She herself again had the crazy fear that some hitch might develop in the proceedings, which now would cause the rector to decide that he could not bury Kay after all. But there
had
been some peculiar features about the wedding, and there was nothing peculiar about the funeral, or was there? The peculiarity was only Harald’s presence. He ought not to have come. But by coming he had made everything they had arranged—Kay’s dress, the old Roman coins, the music and flowers, the liturgy itself—seem silly and girlish. “He is Death at her funeral,” she said to herself.

The second psalm began. Polly bent her head and concentrated on Kay. The fondness and pity that had flooded her while dressing her inert body came welling back. She considered Kay’s life, which had not been a life but only a sort of greeting, a Hello There. The girl who lay in the casket was finally the heroine of the hour. The rest had been nothing, a vain presumptuous shadow. “In the morning it is green and groweth up; but in the evening it is cut down, dried up, and withered,” intoned the rector.
That
was appropriate and not just to her poor, shattered end. Polly was certain that Kay had not killed herself, though she had been very unhappy in the hospital when the psychiatrists had made her face the advisability of a separation from Harald. She had all but had a real nervous breakdown at the thought of having to be “nobody” instead of the wife of a genius. But if, like a suicide, she had imagined everybody grieving over her, she would be satisfied now. “I love you, Kay,” Polly whispered contritely.

When the rector launched into the
De Profundis
, Priss felt Helena and Mrs. Davison had overdone it; three psalms were too many. And they had chosen the longest epistle for the lesson: St. Paul to the Corinthians, 1:15, The words were beautiful, but she was worried for Ichabod. Knowing what she did about Norine’s views of toilet training, she feared he would have an accident. With all the flowers the church was very close; it was surely her imagination, but she would have sworn that either he
had
or else Kay—. It was useless to look at Pokey; she had no sense of smell. The congregation was getting restless, nodding and whispering to each other as they recognized familiar quotations in the lesson. “Thou foolish one, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die.” “
Si le grain ne meurt
,” Priss heard Lakey murmur to her companion. “…For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” “Handel,” Mrs. Davison reminded her husband. “
The Messiah
.” Priss noticed that Polly was crying hard, and Jim was squeezing her hand. Lakey was crying too—tears, Priss thought, like crystal drops, ran down her rigid face; her teeth were set. Priss wished the lesson would stop talking about “corruptible.” “O Death, where is thy sting?” Pokey gave her husband a big nudge. “I never knew that was where that came from!” Suddenly Priss found herself thinking of the worms in the graveyard; a sob shook her.