The House by the Sea (10 page)

What to do? I had slept badly and really was upset and bewildered, but I got up and found a box, set the soft dear creature in it (those perfect tiny ears!), put on rubber boots and a coat over my pajamas, and took the car. After driving a mile I put the rabbit out in a field. Will it be able to fend for itself?

Yesterday and the day before have been perfect June days, clear, cool, the greens still so alive. But until the iris comes out there is very little to pick in the garden. I stole a little honeysuckle from the edge of the road just to have something to make the porch more festive, as it was Nancy Woodson's eighteenth birthday and they were all coming for lobster salad and champagne. I enjoyed getting everything ready … and thinking about Nancy and her brother Tommy. It is good to know she is going to be able to do what she really wants to do after just barely graduating from high school. She is not a student, as Tommy is, but she is an artist and she has been accepted at Monserrat. So suddenly everything that must have felt closed against her and impossible to manage opens up.

They were an hour later than expected (Anne had had an unexpected caller) and it was a marvelous hour for me. The chairs are out on the terrace and for about half an hour I lay on the chaise longue, looking out over the field to a calm blue sea, listening to the birds … a purple finch even came down to drink out of Tamas' flat water dish on the terrace wall (he stands up to drink out of it; it was supposed to be for the birds, but this is the first time I have seen one come) … watching the tree swallows fly back and forth over the field (they are nesting in one of the birdhouses). Bramble came and curled up on the flagstone a few yards away. Tamas lay at my feet, and the whole atmosphere breathed peace. I basked.

But thin high clouds began to darken the sky just a little, and a small wind made it suddenly chilly. So I got up and did a lot of small jobs I have had in mind for ages. I sprayed Malathion on two Martha Washington geraniums I put out the other day because they had white fly. I potted some more of the tiny Achimenes bulbs I am experimenting with under lights, and then I did quite a bit of clipping on the terrace.

Friday, June 13th

T
HE WOODSONS
and Barbara Barton did finally arrive a little after four, Nancy ravishing in a wide straw hat, denim skirt, and simple short-sleeved white blouse, her long pale gold hair, the perfect oval of her face, the clear blue eyes, all making her look like a charming Impressionist painting. At last the braces have gone from Tommy's teeth! He looked a little wan, perhaps because he is working hard for a biology exam—later on he went up to my study to cram for an hour. Anne, Barbara, and I wrapped up in sweaters stayed out on the terrace till nearly seven, sipping scotch and drinking in the peaceful blue sea and green field. Nancy had decided to go in, so I lit the fire in the cozy room for her and she curled up with the
Illustrated London News
. Tommy upstairs, Nancy downstairs … I enjoyed the idea of the house with children in it, and of our communion as separate people. It felt more intimate than when they were sitting rather stiffly with us on the terrace. Finally we all gobbled up lobster salad, sitting around the fire, and talked a little about how one's view of people changes with time—I am experiencing this with
A World of Light
, of course.

Yesterday and today, dismal downpour all day long and all last night. I had hoped to do hours of peaceful gardening and catch up; instead, I feel dull and sleepy, and have not been able to overcome a reluctance, a holding back, before the portrait of Céline. The difficulty is, as usual, the complexity—and why not? I knew her for sixty years and in that time both she and I changed. The golden world she inhabited for me when I was a small child changed to a silver one in her middle age, when I began to be conscious of her terrible possessiveness and inability to see herself, and finally to a sad leaden one when she had to go on too long doing all the work, when the bitterness against her children grew painful to witness. Thank heavens, the very end, the last years, did have a warm sunset glow about them, after the house was sold and she moved into Brussels.

What is precious, the thread of gold through the whole portrait, is that our relationship remained so warm and loving through all that time. Perhaps that was possible because I came and went and was with her nearly every year, except during the war, for a few weeks, but only as a guest. The wear and tear of life did not touch us.

I have to note (as a warning to myself?) that yesterday while I was sitting here writing a letter I suddenly felt very queer, nauseated, then a cold sweat. Is that what a heart attack feels like? I was frightened and went down and drank a teaspoon of brandy. The greatest achievement of the day was shortening a pair of pants! I sew so rarely and so clumsily that it makes me laugh.

Monday, June 16th

“I
OBSERVE
others, but I experience myself,” Florida Scott-Maxwell.

Tuesday, June 17th

M
Y THROAT
is again very sore. Yesterday I called Dr. Cummings in Boston to try to get help fast, but he is at a meeting for three days. Raymond came yesterday, looking somber, and told me he had already spoken to Mary-Leigh and that he could no longer cut the grass. We have known for some time that he simply was not doing the work, and I'm sure this is the right decision for him. It is a nightmare to be always a little behind, to be badgered by everyone to get this or that done, and not have the strength—and the rainy spring is no help.

My hope is that he will still help me with the hedge clipping and gardening. He is a really expert gardener and when I first came here that seemed almost incredible luck. He has taught me a great deal in these two years, especially about clipping. I have learned by watching him, how thorough he is, what deep holes he digs when he plants a rosebush, for instance. I'm afraid it will be expensive to get the grass cut, but I can't do it myself, or I would find time to do nothing else.

Anyway, despite all, I did a good piece of work yesterday on the portrait of Céline and feel much better about it. In looking up something I thought I could use in Florida Scott-Maxwell I came on this marvelous passage about mothers and children that applies equally to Céline and Rosalind (
The Measure of My Days
, pp. 16,17):

“A mother's love for her children, even her inability to let them be, is because she is under a painful law that the life that passed through her must be brought to fruition. Even when she swallows it whole she is only acting like any frightened mother cat eating its young to keep it safe. It is not easy to give closeness and freedom, safety plus danger.

“No matter how old a mother is she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement. It could not be otherwise for she is impelled to know that the seeds of value sown in her have been winnowed. She never outgrows the burden of love, and to the end she carries the weight of hope for those she bore. Oddly, very oddly, she is forever surprised and even faintly wronged that her sons and daughters are just people, for many mothers hope and half expect that their newborn child will make the world better, will somehow be a redeemer.”

Tuesday, June 24th

A
HEAT WAVE
… dismal, because everything in the garden is burning up just as it was at its most glorious. The peonies explode in the heat, their petals turned backward. The clematis along the fence has never been so beautiful, starry hosts, white, purple, a strange pale pink; one is almost true blue, one very dark purple, almost black. There have been great tall iris, one a deep blue, one pink with purple falls, just right beside pink peonies and a huge pink lupine. I'm amazed, considering how cold May was, that everything is flourishing.

I rather like heat; it forces a kind of holiday. Even with the fan going on my desk my fingers stick to the keys. Yesterday I just lay around. At four when a light breeze stirred the stifling air, I did go out for a big weed in the annual garden. I think I'll have wonderful flowers this year. I'm trying some new kinds, an annual lupine, scabiosa, among them. Of course, they are only an inch high now, encroached upon by seas of grass and weeds. June is the month when everything happens—guests
and
garden.

Last week Polly Starr came here overnight. She was so moved by the landscape, the dreamlike path through the field, curving a little (why is it so like a fairy tale, a child's dream?) that she went out on the porch outside her bedroom and sketched immediately after she arrived! She is an exceedingly appreciative guest. Yet after she left I simply collapsed. Next day a recurrence of the old virus.

This morning I looked out the stairwell window and saw a wood phoebe and his mate on the telephone wire. What an event!

Wednesday, June 25th

W
HAT A TANGLE
I'm in of flowers and people and letters and life in general! How shall I ever get sorted out and back to work again? But I was vastly cheered by Elizabeth McGreal who said when she was here the other day with Nicky, Tamas' sister, that she did not try to work in the summer. I do try because writing is the thread of continuity under the tumultuous days.

The cool came in the night. Tamas, after a supine day yesterday, panting in his nest under the hedge, was so full of beans he insisted on going out at five when Bramble came in. I should have gotten up then and watered the garden, but went back to sleep. Now I have two hoses going in different places, and will move them when I go for the mail. I picked off dead heads of peonies and lupine, and redid the bunches in the house. The roses are just beginning.

I got up here to my desk at nine and it is now half past ten. I have written a blurb for a rather charming first novel Eric sent me, Harriet Hahn's
The Plantain Season
. She does what has seemed to me nearly impossible—write convincingly and touchingly as well as humorously about a young woman's first sexual experiences.

Yesterday I achieved nothing except to order iris and tulips—the start of the fall orders. It is a perfect hot-weather occupation, as I get so excited I forget everything and am in bliss. Mary Tozer is here at Dockside and came for a drink before we had dinner over there, and I'll see her again tonight. A friend who stays near by, but not here, is a good friend indeed! With
any
guest in the house I cannot feel myself and am constantly on the qui vive. I hope I am thoughtful about people's needs and comfort, but it is often at the price of composure, and in a short time I begin to feel irritable, as if all my energy were drained out in nonproductive channels. What guests actually want of me is just the real person, not the cook, chauffeur, provider of drinks, and so on.

Polly seemed quite surprised that I have so little time for work, even at best, and have to battle for it every day. She told me that Molly Howe entertains a lot and still gets a lot of work done and my spirits sank, until she let fall that Molly now has (in Ireland) a cook, chauffeur, and gardener! I lead a multiple life because I like it and I wouldn't want a cook even if I could afford one. But in summer it means I am on my feet for five or six hours a day because of the garden and maintaining everything—laundry has to be done, food brought in, the everlasting letters answered. I run all day except when I have a long rest in the afternoon. That quiets me down.

I have learned in these last years to forget the desk and everything on it as soon as I leave this room. The key to being centered seems to be for me to do each thing with absolute concentration, to garden as though that were the essential, then to write in the same way, to meet my friends, perfectly open to what they bring. And most of the time that is how it is.

Lately I have ended the day with half an hour on the terrace, when the light is beautiful, and the birds fly past, one at a time, always from north to south—robins, the catbird, kingbirds, finches. Why do they all take the same route in the evening? I lie there tremendously awake, and watch it all, and it is heaven.

Monday, June 30th

I
T IS COOL
and windy after an indecisive muggy day yesterday with clouds blowing up; so a storm seemed certain. But it was blown out to sea before a drop of rain fell. Eleanor Blair was here over Friday night and luckily we had splendid clear warm weather. I enjoyed her visit very much. She is eighty-one, or will be in August, and still gardens furiously, drives her car, even washes the sheets at her little house in Wellesley, and cooks for friends! She is an exemplar for me of how a life can be realized to its utmost without a consuming talent. She has been a teacher, the head of a school, then worked for years at Ginn and Company as a copy editor, and when she was seventy began to take photography seriously (years before, she had partially earned her way through Wellesley taking photographs of her classmates). When she was eighty, she published a book about Wellesley, photographs and text, all her own work. How many people have ever accomplished that at eighty? I felt proud to call her my friend. It was a tonic to see her also because so many of my friends are losing ground mentally, so many that my dream of a happy and fruitful old age seemed an illusion. But here is proof that it need not be so. In many ways Eleanor is more herself than she has ever been.

This afternoon Morgan Mead, that dear boy, is coming for a talk. And tomorrow Judy for a week.

Saturday, July 5th

M
ARVELOUS DAYS
… cool, blue water, the roses out in profusion, the clematis still a glory. But we need rain badly, so I spend an unholy amount of time and energy hauling the hoses around. Judy has been here for five days now, and is a good deal more disoriented; so each day is a multiple lesson for me in handling frustration. It is the repeated little things that get on my nerves … she goes to bed in her underwear unless I am there to be sure she really undresses; in the morning she is very bewildered trying to dress and, if I put out clothes for her,
never
puts them on, but wanders around digging out something else, packs her suitcase over and over again. The little walks down to the sea with Tamas cannot be allowed any longer, as she has been wandering up onto the Firths' porch and even to the back door early one morning just as they were letting their huge police dog out. This could be dangerous, although Jud, the big black dog, is gentle and obedient. But, after all, if Tamas is right there practically
in
his house, it would not be surprising if Jud bit him.