The Joys of Love (6 page)

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Authors: Madeleine L'engle

BOOK: The Joys of Love
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Kurt did not answer it. “Your Aunt Harriet's an old maid, isn't she?”
“Yes. She was engaged once, but her fiancé died of typhoid fever before they were married.”
“I like being loved,” Kurt said, though his voice was light. “How about you?”
Elizabeth tried to match the lightness of her voice with his. “I think it's wonderful.”
Kurt stopped walking and turned her around so that she faced him. Then he bent toward her and touched her lips very lightly with his own. “You sweet child,” he whispered.
Elizabeth leaned against him, her heart beating wildly long after the kiss was over.
“It's getting chilly,” Kurt said. “There's a wind off the ocean tonight.”
“Yes. We'd better go back,” Elizabeth whispered regretfully.
“What are you whispering for, Liebchen?”
“I don't know.”
“Let's not go just yet. Let's walk and talk for a little longer.”
“Yes.” She slipped her hand into his.
Kurt's voice became easy and conversational; Elizabeth often wondered at his ability to make transitions from one mood to another. “You and Jane Gardiner are the only apprentices in this place with a scrap of talent. Acting is an important thing to you, isn't it, my darling?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said seriously. “The most important thing in the world.”
“The very most important?” Kurt asked.
Elizabeth nodded.
Kurt leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers again. Then he said, “We should head back.”
“All right.”
They walked hand in hand until they came to the Cottage. The light was now off in the living room and the night light glowed dimly in the hall, casting long shadows across the walls.
“Shall I come in with you and talk for a while longer?” Kurt asked.
She shook her head. “No. It's terribly late. I've got to go to bed now. Good night, Kurt.”
“Good night, Liebchen.” He did not kiss her again, but
squeezed her hand. Then he went out, and she could imagine him, a solitary figure, walking back up the boardwalk to the Ambassador Hotel.
Jane and her other two roommates were already asleep when Elizabeth went up, and she undressed quietly in the dark. Her alarm clock was set for the morning and she put it by her bed. The light in the boys' room over the garage was still on and she could see in her mind's eye Ben and John Peter and the others lying on their beds in the hot garage room, talking about the theatre, and life, and the theatre, and the world, and again the theatre …
She lay in her bed and stared at a patch of faded, peeling wallpaper, and happiness blew over her like the breeze from the sea. I am in love, a voice in her sang over and over again. I am in love.
She never once remembered that she had to call her Aunt Harriet in the morning.
ON SATURDAY most of the professional company slept through breakfast, since their rehearsal call was not until eleven. But the apprentices' classes began at nine thirty and the majority of them came down to eat, along with the professionals who taught their classes. Ben and Elizabeth, both in a haze of sleep, set the tables and filled the small glasses with canned orange juice.
When they went back in the kitchen, Mrs. Browden, the cook, said, “I've squeezed some fresh orange juice for you, my pets. Drink it quick before anyone else comes down and finds out.”
“Mrs. Browden, you're an angel,” Elizabeth cried.
Ben flung his arms about Mrs. Browden's solid body. “Light of my life! You know I can't abide that canned stuff!”
“And how will you have your eggs this morning?” she asked.
“Eggs, joy of my heart!” Ben exclaimed. “This is Saturday. We have puffed rice on Saturdays.”
“And so we do,” Mrs. Browden said, taking down a frying pan and setting it on the stove. “But you and Liz could both do with more flesh on your bones. How will you have them, Liz?”
“Scrambled would be wonderful, Mrs. Browden.”
“Ben?”
Ben pulled thoughtfully at one of his ears. Perhaps by nature and perhaps because of the fact that he pulled it whenever engaged in thought, that particular ear did not curl over in the usual fashion at the top, but was pointed, giving him a lopsidedly elfin look. “Now let me see, Mrs. Browden. Ah, I have it. Poached in sour cream with anchovies. And just a soupçon of Pernod.”
Mrs. Browden looked at him dotingly and set about scrambling four eggs. “Pour yourselves some coffee, my pets, and there's a wee bit of heavy cream left in the icebox from Mr. and Mrs. Price's breakfast. They'll never miss it. How they expect you to work all day on empty stomachs I do not know.”
“My joy,” Ben said, pouring cream into his cup, measuring it out carefully so that he left exactly half for Elizabeth, “you'd never let that happen. Thanks to you I shall put off going into a decline for at least another summer.”
“Here's your eggs. Get along in the dining room with you now. Mrs. Price doesn't approve of your being out in the kitchen with me so much.”
“Lulu and J. P. Price. What a pair,” Ben muttered, pushing through the swinging door into the still-empty dining room. “She was made from a tack and he was made from a nail.”
Elizabeth and Ben sat down at a table. Ben took a large mouthful of eggs and shouted into the kitchen, “These eggs are but divine, Mrs. Browden.”
Jane came in, yawning behind her small, delicate hand. “John Peter not here yet?”
“He was sleeping the sleep of the just and the unjust when I left,” Ben started, and then turned to the entrance of the dining room with the sudden quiver of anticipation that always betrayed him when he prepared to tease anyone. “Well, well, Soapie,” he said. “Good morning! And good morning, Bibi, my little Pekingese!”
Sophie and Bibi came into the dining room and sat down at the table, each wearing an expensive cotton dress. Jane had on knee-length blue denim shorts and a soft shirt, the color of pale corn, matching her hair. Elizabeth, since she had to work in the box office, had forsworn her usual uniform of blue jeans and a white shirt and wore a flowered dirndl skirt, tiny multicolored flowers on a black background, which she had made at college from a piece of material left over from the Dramatic Association's production of
Autumn Crocus
.
“Look at Liz all dressed up!” Bibi cried, ignoring Ben.
“And very nice she looks, too,” Jane said quickly.
“Well, anybody knows they look better in a dress or a skirt than they do in blue jeans. Why don't you get some more dresses, Liz? You look real cute in them.” The edge of maliciousness to Bibi's voice was so slight as to be almost undetectable, but Ditta, who had just entered the room, looked at her sharply.
“Oh, I like my jeans,” Elizabeth said casually. “Comfort first.”
Jane poured skim milk into her coffee, looked at it distastefully, and said, “Liz has the figure for blue jeans. Most females don't. Have some puffed rice, Bibi. How's tricks, Soapie?”
“Don't call me Soapie,” Sophie said automatically. “Ben Walton, is that egg on your plate?”
“Egg, certainly not,” Ben said, “nothing but a mirage.” He stood, picked up his plate, whisked Elizabeth's from in front of her, and disappeared into the kitchen.
“If Mrs. Browden's given you eggs and the rest of us have to eat puffed rice, I don't think it's fair; I think it's just mean,” Bibi complained.
“Eggs, eggs.” Ben came back from the kitchen with a pot of fresh coffee. “Who said anything about eggs?”
“Well, it's not fair and I've a good mind to speak to Mrs. Price.” Tempers were always shortest over the breakfast table, especially when there had not been enough sleep the night before.
“I wouldn't if I were you, honey bunch.” Ben stood behind Bibi, tilting the coffeepot dangerously.
“Watch out for that coffeepot!” Bibi screamed.
Ben stood very still; only the coffeepot leaned menacingly toward Bibi. “Then I'd just forget about Mrs. Price if I were you, angel foot,” he said.
Bibi shrugged petulantly. “Gee, couldn't you see I was just kidding?” she said.
Elizabeth stood up, took the coffeepot from Ben, filled Bibi's cup, and went around the table filling the rest. Other apprentices and a few members of the professional company were beginning to straggle in. Elizabeth took the coffeepot out
to Mrs. Browden, calling over her shoulder, “I've got to get to the box office, kids. See you later.”
The theatre was deserted. Aunt Harriet, she thought. I've got to call her first thing. She quickly unlocked Mr. Price's office and let herself in, pulling up the shades and opening the windows. Picking up the telephone, she asked for operator nineteen. Again she heard the phone ringing and ringing. Then there was a faint click. “Elizabeth.” She barely heard her aunt's voice, muffled as it always was when her aunt talked on the phone because Aunt Harriet never deigned to talk directly into the mouthpiece.
“Aunt Harriet,” Elizabeth shouted, “is there anything wrong?”
“There certainly is,” the thin-sounding voice said, “and you don't need to bellow, thank you. I am not deaf.”
“What's the matter?” Elizabeth asked, controlling her voice; it was difficult not to shout back to that faint tone on the other end of the wire.
“You are the matter,” Aunt Harriet said, and Elizabeth had to strain to hear. “You are to come home at once.”
“But what—why—” Elizabeth's voice rose.
“I never should have let you go to that place. If I'd known you were going to go out alone with strange men at all hours of the night—”
“But, Aunt Harriet, I used to go on dates when I was in college!”
“Don't bellow. You never had men in your bedroom.”
“Aunt Harriet,” Elizabeth tried to explain, “it's different here. Our bedroom's big and we use it as a living room. That
way we don't get under the professional company's feet in the Cottage living room.”
“Don't try to make excuses, Elizabeth. There is no way to condone men in your bedroom. In your last letter you actually said something about some Ben …” The voice trailed off.
“I'm sorry,” Elizabeth said. “I couldn't hear you.”
“Of course you could hear me. There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to hear me. I said that some Ben admired your pajamas.”
“But, Aunt Harriet, I'm far more covered up in pajamas than I am in a cotton dress, even.”
“Elizabeth, don't argue with me. How do I know you don't undress in front of these men?”
Elizabeth's voice was icy. “You ought to have more faith in me than that.”
Aunt Harriet's voice, through its dimness, was also icy. “Perhaps you have forgotten your background. I expect you home on the train tomorrow evening.”
Elizabeth's jaw set. “I'm sorry, Aunt Harriet, but I am not coming.”
“I haven't yet sent you next week's money, which makes it impossible for you to stay. I knew I had made a mistake in allowing you to go to a theatre in the first place. After what happened with your mother, I should have learned my lesson.”
“You promised me I could have this summer.”
“I'm sorry, Elizabeth, but I have to act according to my own lights. And please realize that I am making this decision for your own good.”
“Please, Aunt Harriet,” Elizabeth begged. “Please let me
stay—even just one more week. I'll come home without a word if you'll just let me stay one more week. Valborg Andersen is playing here and I want so terribly to see her. She's a great actress and she's doing a great play and if I could just watch it all week I'd learn so terribly much.”
“I'm sorry, Elizabeth. Believe me, I'm sorry. But I've made up my mind.”
“But—”
“Elizabeth, I will not argue with you over long distance. I would not have spent this much time discussing a closed matter except that I realize your disappointment. Goodbye.”
At the other end of the line the phone was hung up abruptly. Elizabeth held the receiver numbly before replacing it in its cradle. Just then, Mr. Price came in. “Time to get to work, Elizabeth,” he said.
Without a word, Elizabeth opened the ticket window and sat down on the high stool in front of it. She startled as the phone rang. Aunt Harriet? She picked the receiver up. “Hello? …Yes, I can give you six tickets for tonight … I could give you better locations if I have you three and three … They'd be right behind each other … Good, I'll reserve them for you. In whose name, please? … They'll be at the box office. They should be picked up by seven forty-five … Thank you very much.”
Ditta came up to the window and leaned in toward Elizabeth. “Listen, Liz, do me a favor, will you? Seven of my kids from school are here on vacation and they want to see the show tonight. Can you give me some tickets?”
Elizabeth jerked her head slightly to indicate J. P. Price sitting
at his desk behind her in the office. “What do you mean, give?”
“Oh, they'll pay for them. I mean, I know this is Saturday night and everything. Can you squeeze them in?”
“If they don't mind being divided up.”
“Oh, sure, anything'll be fine. Leave the tickets in my name, okay?”
“Okay,” Elizabeth said. “Will do.” She bent over the seating chart.
Ditta was looking at her probingly, in a way in which she might look at one of her students. “What's the matter?”
Elizabeth's voice was strained. “Nothing.”
“You aren't your usual radiant self. I can tell something's wrong.”
Again Elizabeth indicated Mr. Price. “I can't talk about it now,” she whispered. “Are classes over?” she asked in her regular voice.
“All but voice. I reneged on that. No use trying to do anything with my voice. I'm tone-deaf. Rehearsal this afternoon?”
“Three till six. Will you be there?”
“Well, my students are here, so I'll have to miss it today. But actually I think I'm learning more from those rehearsals you kids thought up than I am from Huntley Haskell's classes. He's good when he bothers to be, but most of the time it seems to me he doesn't bother. Are you liking it here this summer?”
“I adore it,” Elizabeth said, and tears welled up in her eyes.
Ditta looked at her sharply again, saying, “I don't think I picked such a hot place to sink my money in this summer. Most of what I am learning I wouldn't dare to teach my kids at
school. I was at a marvelous theatre last summer but I thought it would do me good to try a different place this year. Next year I'd like to try a place that doesn't use the star system. It isn't enough to have the stars rehearse only one day with the professional company. I swear my high school kids have given more creditable performances than some of the stars I've seen here this summer.”
“Valborg Andersen's been here all week rehearsing,” Elizabeth reminded Ditta, her tears now under control.
Ditta nodded. “Well, she's the exception so far. Maybe we'll be given a great show Monday night,” she said. “You've got some more customers. I'd better get going. See you at lunch.”
“Right.”
 
Elizabeth was leaning her head rather wearily against her hand when Ben came up to the window.
“Hi, Liz,” he said. “What's wrong?”
She looked up at him in surprise. “How do you know anything's wrong? Not getting psychic, are you?”

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