William Styron: The Collected Novels: Lie Down in Darkness, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice (29 page)

But the war had distracted everyone a little bit. Loftis was an air-raid warden, instead of a colonel. When Pearl Harbor came, red pails of sand and coils of fire hose flowered on each front porch; the housewives, among them Helen, made bandages and learned how to stanch the flow of blood from shattered limbs; while the children, enjoying the pervading air of confusion, heard the warnings sound at night and watched their fathers, among them Loftis, rolling importantly up and down the darkened streets, shouting orders, stumbling over ash cans, and lighting up the sky with their flashlights. In the midst of all this, in November of 1942, Helen had taken Maudie to the University hospital in Charlottesville; it was a routine checkup, although this time a little bit more, too: she seemed to be getting anemic, her leg was hurting her when she woke up in the morning, and Helen, obviously, was worried. Loftis had always noticed a barometric sort of relation between Maudie’s strength and Helen’s disposition, and whatever winds chanced to cloud the little girl’s health, chilling that small store of vitality—and
little,
he’d think,
little girl; my God, she’s twenty—
also made Helen more grim and nervous than usual. It was his idea, or perhaps it was both of theirs, arrived at at the same time: Maudie and Helen going to Charlottesville for a while—for Maudie therapy of some sort, for Helen a rest, a change of scene, getting inland from all this war business. He talked to her like a doctor prescribing medicine. “Stay a while there, why don’t you?” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. And she, with worried eyes on Maudie, said, “Yes, I will.”

The memory of Christmas, of the vacant summer without Peyton, was still in his mind, and he was glad to see Helen go. Glad to get shut of her. With elation he drove them to the railroad depot, wondering a little at his high spirits, and finally—when they were gone—not sure at all of just what emotion he felt: how he had really sensed a genuine release at seeing them depart, and had kissed them both—properly, as a good husband and father should—but feeling the old momentary nudge of recognition in the way Helen had returned the kiss by a small squeeze, shy and nervous, almost speculative, at his waist. Yes, and the sense of regret—was it that really? It had passed so quickly—he felt when the two of them, Helen and Maudie, passed somehow through a mob of soldiers and sailors and then clambered awkwardly onto the platform of the train, the porter’s voice above the babble to Maudie, “Come on, missy, that’s all right, we’ll get up here all right,” and the way she finally turned at Helen’s side and waved down at him through a blur of steam—“Good-by, Papadaddy”—smiling, looking homely and sweet and doomed.

At nine o’clock on Friday night a week later he was writing a letter to Peyton; a shorter note he had already written and sealed, telling Helen, in the standoffish, facetious tone which for the first time in his life he found himself using in a letter, that “everything is all right on the homefront.” The wail of a siren suddenly filled the night and with war-inspired zeal he snapped out all the lights, fitted the silly tin helmet over his skull and plunged out into the darkness. It was a mild cloudy evening, promising excitement, and he wandered through his precinct for nearly an hour, virtuously refraining from smoking. But nothing much happened, as usual: the lights in the houses were all extinguished, the siren kept moaning, a dozen fighter planes arose gallantly to chase off the enemy, and got lost somewhere in the fog, and a spaniel ran out and snapped at his heels. When the All Clear sounded, he returned home, weary. He paused for a minute at a field adjoining his property, where the Army had built an antiaircraft battery (to protect the shipyard, they had said) and a row of barracks to accommodate the men. Night and day for weeks the air had echoed to the noise of civilian workmen hammering up the barracks, and there had been an uneasy few days at first when Helen’s flower beds seemed dangerously close to ruin, while overalled figures hiked across the lawn to bother Ella and La Ruth for water. Now, with the floodlights blazing, the toadstool shape of the radar machine, humming, fanning the darkness, the field had a comfortable look of activity, and he turned toward the house with unabashed visions of glory: Colonel Loftis in Libya. It had begun to sprinkle, and when he rounded the corner he knew who had turned on the living-room lights.

She lay sprawled on the couch, smoking, reading a magazine, and she turned lazily and smiled at him when he entered the room. “Hello, honey. You been out working for Uncle Sam?”

“The word is volunteer, Dolly. When did you get here? When did you put the lights on?”

“I had the blinds closed. Until I heard the whistle blow just now.”

“That doesn’t make any difference, Dolly,” he said peevishly, heading for the secretary. “You can see the lights through these blinds. What kind of impression do you think that’ll give—the warden with his lights on?” He poured himself a drink. “Do you want a drink? And dammit if you don’t mind my saying so I think it’s fairly injudicious for you to come here, anyway. Not only that, but I asked you not to come. Do you want a drink?”

She pouted professionally. No, she didn’t want a drink. She had been caught in a taxi during the blackout, on her way home from the bus terminal. The taxi driver wouldn’t drive her any farther, but he agreed to bring her this far. That was all. My heavens.

“O.K. Now have a drink.”

“O.K.”

“That’s better.”

She drew up her legs and he sat down beside her, rubbing her ankle while he tried to form some sort of pithy maxim to brandish over her indiscretion. But he found himself rather pleased that she was here, and when she said abruptly, “Honey, do you want me to go?” he replied without hesitation, “No.”

Then he paused. “But——”

“But what?”

“Oh, nothing. It’s just that—well, what the hell. I told you over and over about this thing, not having to, either, because you should know anyway, about coming here, about the fact that even if Helen is away, she might come in any old time. … How did you know she wasn’t here tonight, anyway?”

“Why, she’s in Charlottesville, silly! Naturally——”

“You’ve been in Washington for three days,” he put in calmly. “How would you know she hadn’t come back?”

“Well,” she hedged, “I just thought from what you told me Tuesday that from what she wrote you last week, it was pretty clear she wouldn’t be coming back for at least two weeks more.” And, as if she knew as well as he the illogic of this excuse—for he had told her no such thing at all—she added a postscript quickly, piously: “How’s Maudie?”

“I don’t know. Helen doesn’t say much except that the doctors are running tests and so on.” He paused. “Honey, why did you come here?”

She pulled her legs away from him and stood erect. “Well!” she sniffed. “I reckon it’s fairly evident that it’s bedtime. And
solus,
as you put it. Can I call a taxi?”

He sank back into the sofa. “Sit down, sit down, kitten.”

Blinking her eyes at him, pursing her lips, she gazed down with painstaking reproach. And then she sat down again beside him and took his hand. “I guess I understand,” she began apologetically. “I really should have known better. If you didn’t want me to come——”

He kissed her cheek. “Hush,” he said softly. “You know it’s not that at all.”

But it was that, precisely that, and her presence here made him feel uneasy and discontented. Not just because she had disobeyed him and had come anyway, or because (although even now it was comfortable seeing her again) he had
really
wanted an evening alone, so that he could finish his letter to Peyton. Not just these. There was something else which he had carefully considered for the past three years, worked out in his mind with a conscious moral apprehension which surprised him, and which even made him feel a little self-righteous: that, by God, for your children’s sake, or just for the sake of some ingrained gentlemanly ideal, you didn’t go around making love to a woman you weren’t married to, in your own house.
Your wife’s house.
Yes.
Wife’s house.
That was the loophole, the imponderable, the paradox—a trinity of troubles. For if it was your
wife’s
house, and not strictly your own, if the greatest single burden of your life was not merely the loss of love for your wife, but the constant guilty knowledge of your debt to her—and your dependence—wouldn’t the secret love-making here at home be a setting right of the score, a triumphant redemption? Frantic often, full of wild, witless indecision and mystified by the unreasonableness of a life which seemed to offer happiness only at the sacrifice of one’s self-respect—thoughts like that would occur to him. And Dolly’s apartment was cramped, tiny, smelling always of some invisible seepage behind the refrigerator, and it commanded a wide depressing view of the shipyard. Because of the war she could get no other place to live, and the passion that blossomed there seemed to Loftis degrading and unsatisfactory; whenever Helen was away with Maudie at the beach or in the mountains, he considered installing Dolly here at home. But—and this he knew was to his credit—such an idea he had always dismissed as cheap and vengeful, and the product of his weaker self; besides, the neighbors would see. The house would remain inviolate, not because of him, and now angrily again he began to form the words, turning to Dolly—
sweet kitten, goddamit now, you’d better go
—but here: she wound an arm around his waist, saying, “Darling, let’s don’t argue any.”

He got up and refilled his glass. I’ll ease her out nicely in a little while, he thought.

“How did everything go in Washington?” he asked. “You didn’t pick up some hot young sailor for the night?”

She giggled. “I don’t like youths much anymore,” she said. “I like clean old men. Like you.”

He raised his glass to her and smiled. “I’m the dirtiest old man you ever saw. Mentally, that is. All I thought about when you were gone was the incredible soft skin way up on the inside of your—thighs, is it? Upper limbs, my aunt used to say. They have goose-pimples on them, most of them.”

“Whose? Your aunt’s?”

“No, a lot of women. They have little tiny goose-pimples all along the inside of their upper legs.”

“You should know, honey. Who did
you
pick up when I was away?”

“I picked up three little girls and took them down on the beach and played Round-the-Rosy.”

“Oh, hush, Milton.”

He yawned. “I told you I was a dirty old man.”

“No,” she said with sudden brightness. “You’re clean and youthful and I love you. And you’ve got a heart and a soul and you’ve got my heart and soul, too. So there.”

It was very old stuff, but he was genuinely charmed. “Thank you, sweetie,” he said. “Now tell me about the Grand Convention of the Apparel Buyers’ Association of the Southeast or Seaboard or whatever the hell it is.”

A flicker of disappointment crossed her face. “The Atlantic,” she said touchily. “Goodness, I don’t believe you care what I do at all.”

“It bores me.”

“I’m interested in your work. You tell me about your cases——”

“I don’t have many cases,” he interrupted, sitting down across from her; “they even bore me. I wish I had been a poet.”

“Oh, you could do it, Milton,” she burst out, forgetful of his slight. “You keep saying that. Why don’t you do it? What would you start writing now?”

“Pornography. As befits a dirty old man. The way we make love, that’s what I’d write about. The way I love it. The way——”

“Hush!” She got up and flopped down on the ottoman beside him. Grabbing his hand, she laughed and said, “You’re a low, awful cynic but I love you. Kiss me.” He leaned over and kissed her; fumes of whisky—his own, echoing back from her mouth, her cheeks, her hair—stung his eyes, and he drew away. He ran his hand across her shoulder. “I know it,” he said finally with a sigh. “I
really
shouldn’t be crude. I’m
really,
you know, a very sensitive person. Poetic. I’m sorry.” The whisky was taking effect. “Now tell me, what did you do in D.C.?”

“I was a real puritan.”

“Yes, I know that. But what else?”

“Well I had Thanksgiving dinner at my sister’s in Alexandria and—— Oh!” She looked up at him. “Pookie’s living in Richmond now. I wrote Melvin what hotel I’d be at in Washington and he wrote me there from school that Pookie came up to see him last week end. Isn’t that funny, wondering all this time whatever became of the fat slob and then find that he’s in Richmond after all! And—oh! the craziest thing—Melvin said that Pookie’s
dating
the mother of one of his classmates, some woman who’s divorced, too, I guess, and they rode down to Richmond all four of them like one big happy family. Isn’t that the limit! Melvin might have a brother soon. All I can say is I hope the fat slob treats her better than he treated some people I know.”

“Old Pookie isn’t so bad,” Loftis said leniently, “just kind of stupid.”

There was a knock at the door. Dolly swooped up from the floor, eyes rolling white with surprise, and her dress made a panicky swishing as she fled, with umbrella, bag and hatbox, into the dining room. Loftis went to the door and opened it. An unshaven young man in workclothes stood there and asked him, in the slurred tones of Carolina, whether “they” might rip up a section of his fence.

“Who is they?” Loftis asked.

“Us.”

“You?”

“Yep. Right over in that field.” He thrust a hand out toward the darkness.

“Oh, you’re from that construction crew. I thought you all had finished. When is the Army moving in? Did you ever sink that pump?”

“Naw. We connected.”

“Connected with what?”

“The waterworks.”

“Oh.” He called over his shoulder, “It’s all right, honey!”

“Can they rip up that section I was telling you about? Major Gresham says to tell you he’s got orders. …” It was finally arranged; for some obscure reason the government wanted to remove part of his fence, which was all right with Loftis, since Major Gresham also wished to report that he would be paid—besides, anything to help the national security. In a surge of patriotism he offered the young man a drink and immediately regretted it, for the boy was completely uncommunicative, and dirty, and why wasn’t he in the Army anyway? Glumly they drank together, standing in the hall while Dolly looked on curiously from the living room, and then the boy drifted off into the moist autumn night, saying, “Mighty fine,” and with a lonesome wave of his hand.