He was excited too, vivid and full of energy. He left work early, came back to the flat stomping and shouting: he wanted to tramp the streets with her, to take buses to distant parts of the city and sit on top and keep up a running sociological analysis. He wanted to walk through all the parks. He bought tickets to plays, concerts, the ballet. They would eat all their meals out, he said: “We’ll try every restaurant in London!” Her feet got cold walking, so he bought her warm boots. He bought her warm gloves, so she didn’t have to keep her hands in her pockets, and a money belt, so she didn’t have to carry a purse.
She had brought her work with her. She settled into his flat happily, preempted the desk, and there she sat each day during the hours Victor was at his office. She was writing the second chapter. She worked well but without haste, and wonders of wonders, she did not feel intruded upon when she heard Victor’s key in the lock, heard his footsteps coming down the hall. She looked up with joy as he entered, and his face glowed.
She wondered, sometimes, why he went on loving her, bristly and difficult as she was. When it was clear, given his attractiveness, his poise, his money, and his freedom, that he could easily have had fun with someone who was fun, someone young perhaps, light-hearted, not so weighed down with grief. It seemed he liked her bristliness: maybe he needed it, maybe he was suffering from guilt. In truth, he was pretty bristly himself. His voice shot off into yowls and yells at the slightest thing; his volatility might have frightened some women, intimidated them. But being, at least inwardly, volatile herself, she understood it. And after Anthony, rage never frightened her again. Direct rage, not like … Other people’s rage, at least.
And Victor seemed to know something about grief, as well. Perhaps he would have been bored with someone who hadn’t felt enough, seen enough, no matter how firm the body, how unlined the face. She herself had long since become bored with firm bodies and unlined faces that had not experienced enough.
That was it! That’s how her celibacy began! It wasn’t Marsh at all. It was all those young men, a series of them, yes, it was right after, yes, then, lots of men then, young and old, indiscriminate she’d been then, crazy really. The young men had been sweet as only the young can be sweet, but it was impossible to talk to them about anything without feeling old and tired. Which was a bore. Or ending up teacher/shrink/mother. And so self-absorbed they were! Obsessed with themselves, as young people frequently are. Understandable, but a bore too. Yes, little by little, she’d given them up. That’s how it happened. Strange, how she’d forgotten that.
Yes, things were very good. She could forget, for long stretches, to guard herself against the hurt she knew would come. And it was remarkable how she didn’t get angry with him. Just didn’t. Oh, at moments. But it never seemed important afterwards. Didn’t even need to express it half the time, it just vanished. That was love, must be.
Best of all, they could play together, be children together. They played games walking in the London streets, acting in accord with what they imagined was behavior proper to the characters they associated with Wimpole Street, Baker Street, Harley Street, Savile Row, Oxford Street, Regent’s Park, Hyde Park.
The Serpentine. Once before she’d looked at it and turned quickly away. Now, with Victor, she was able to point to it, to say: “That’s where Harriet Shelley drowned herself,” and to wonder that it was possible, the water looked so shallow, so calm. But if you didn’t know how to swim. Lots of people didn’t know how to swim….
They walked, they rode, they talked. When they got tired, they’d turn into a pub and have a pint. Then home, hand in hand, talking, always talking, for baths and cocktails and BBC music on the little radio Victor had bought, and out again “all dolled up” as Victor insisted on calling it, to the theater and dinner. Or to the ballet. Victor had compiled a list of restaurants from his gourmet British friends and they tried them at random: Wilton’s, the Connaught, the Etoile, Stones, the White Tower. Victor tried things he’d never eaten before and found them edible: artichokes, escargots, frog’s legs. He drew the line at liver, and would not even say aloud the word brains if it appeared on a menu. Dolores found it luxurious to eat at such rates, and had regular debates with herself, her conscience arguing that it was sinful to pay such prices for mere food, prices that could feed a family for a week; her senses did not argue at all, they merely enjoyed. And won.
At the end of the evening, they would curl up on the huge bed at Victor’s place, drinking Cointreau or Drambuie or cognac or whatever Victor had chosen for that night, and discuss subjects of momentous importance: their dinner, their weight, and what they should do the next day.
On rainy days, and over the weekend, they went to museums. They turned their noses up at eighteenth-century fluff (as they both saw it) at the Wallace Collection. At the Tate, Victor could not budge Dolores from the Blake engravings and the Turners and finally went outside and sat there smoking. They went several times to the British Museum, where Victor mused for an hour over the Rosetta stone, and (as Dolores had predicted) found himself unable to move from the Egyptian and Greek and Mesopotamian halls. Dolores would leave him there and go back to the main hall, to the cases of holographs, a handwritten poem by John Donne, Shakespeare’s signature. She pored over these as she had many times before: she tried to drink them in, not sure what it was she wanted to imbibe.
After even the slightest separation, they came together tremulously, yearning after each other. They took hands, tender, as if there had been some reason to doubt they would find each other again.
Yes. Bliss. Not since Jack had she stayed this long with anyone. Wouldn’t. Wouldn’t permit them to stay with her either, longer than three days. But this was bliss.
Be sensible, she told herself. It wouldn’t be like this if we were together all the time, if we didn’t have foreknowledge of the ending. Death is the mother of beauty. You mustn’t let yourself slide into romantic delusion. If we could hold on to this, all marriages made for love would stay glorious. It’s the artificiality of the situation, she told herself, holding up her leg in the bath. Not a bad leg for an old lady. She lathered sandalwood soap on her shoulders: nice to be able to afford such luxuries.
No, if we were together all the time, I’d get to resent quitting my work whenever he decided to come home. And he’d get to resent my resenting quitting my work. And besides, if we lived together all the time, he wouldn’t quit early. And I’d get to resent that he worked late. And then, if we were together all the time, it wouldn’t be a holiday and he’d expect me to cook him dinner. And I’d resent cooking dinner every night, and he wouldn’t be happy with a cheese sandwich, as I am. And of course, he’d expect me to do the marketing. He’d want, yes, he would: a wife.
She heard the phone ring in the bedroom, but remembered Victor was there. Anyway, she wasn’t supposed to answer the phone here. So she soaped more, trying to figure out if there weren’t any way out of this dilemma—not for her and Victor, necessarily (since they knew that had to end), but just in general.
Bliss, except for the telephone. Victor was afraid that if she answered, people who called would wonder who she was. Or it might be Edith. So if he was at the office and wanted to call her, he let the phone ring twice, then hung up and immediately dialed again. If there were a slip, if she picked up the phone without thinking, she was to pretend to be the cleaning woman. She imitated Julie Andrews’ accent in My Fair Lady when she teased him about this, saying, “Aoh, HI’m just the char, guv’nor.”
Yes, but that was really a small thing. Considering. Not a thing worth making a fuss about.
She came out of the bath pink, her hair piled up, her body wrapped in a towel. Hit the cold bedroom air and started to shiver, ran over and turned on the electric fire—Victor’s flat had them in every room. Then turned and saw Victor’s face.
“What is it?”
He was sitting on the bed, the phone on the table beside him. He looked tense, frowning. “My daughter Vickie. She’s in London. Sh
e’s on her way over.”
A sudden decision: she’d been given a week off from work, Laker flights were available. And besides, she felt sorry for “poor old Dad spending Christmas all alone.” And anyway, she’d wanted to see London for years, and here she’d have free room and board. She’d be there as fast as the airport bus could bring her.
Dolores let herself down into a chair. She’d let herself forget, in the luxury of tramping streets together, the other side of things, the furtiveness which was somehow all her responsibility. Only the telephone arrangements reminded her. They had dinner together, out in public, every night; and breakfast together privately, in their own kitchen, every morning.
But now here it was again: scarlet woman. She sat utterly still, waiting to see how he would ask her. Her feelings retreated to another place, her mind became cold and rational and watchful, prepared to grade his performance. Dolores, I hate to ask this, but … She waited. Victor was pacing. He left the room, she could hear him fixing drinks. Well, she could pack rather quickly, get out of there, and maybe get a hotel room somewhere if she weren’t too choosy. But how? No travel agents open at this hour. She’d have to tramp streets with a suitcase. Or maybe find a place with a phone where she could sit with her suitcases, dialing, feeling like a waif. A hotel lobby, maybe.
Trouble was it was two days before Christmas, and London was overflowing with American tourists here for the theater. Maybe her dingy old hotel near Russell Square would have room—the place where she’d made a promise to José that she had not kept, not having gone back there since she met Victor.
So, say I find a hotel, then what? Maybe he can sneak over to see me sometimes, take some time away from Vickie, claim business … He would have to eat dinner with Vickie, of course, spend Christmas with Vickie. Spend all night in his own bed, with Vickie on the living-room couch.
No. No. She’d leave, but she’d go back to Oxford. Leave his Christmas presents on his closet shelf, a nice martyred touch, that. Go back and spend Christmas with the Carriers, they’d invited her, or with Mary, who’d invited her also. And try not to feel too resentful. No, she would not stay in London and be buried in some corner, waiting.
Victor came back in with two drinks. She looked at him and broke into a wail.
“No, I can’t bear it!”
He came to her and crouched down and took her hands. “Can’t bear what?”
“No, it’s been too wonderful. I just don’t feel like doing the right thing.”
“What’s the right thing?”
“Leaving.”
“Well, I’m glad you couldn’t bear leaving,” he smiled, and kissed her hands. He stood up. “The right thing for who, anyway?” he said, pulling his trousers on.
She shrugged. “The usual right thing.”
He put on his shirt and glanced at her. “Aren’t you going to get dressed?” He tied the knot in his tie. “I’m really sorry, Lorie” (her heart slowed) “that we probably won’t be able to get to the play tonight. I called about getting another ticket, but now I realize she won’t get here in time. We’ll go another night, okay?”
She stood up and dropped her towel and he looked at her with eyes suddenly lusty, and came and grabbed her, holding her very close. She put her head on his shoulder and her arms around him and stood there. When she pulled back her head, liquid-eyed, she gazed at his face.
What a face it was! It had everything in it: pain and pity, determination and fear, love and sadness. It answered her. She smiled. “I’ll get dressed.” She turned away and began to dress and felt something falling inside her, somewhere between her heart and her stomach, a hard thing, a kind of shield, like a sliding door covering a raw soft vulnerable place, unsealed and vulnerable as the center of a newborn baby’s skull.
Then he said: “One thing …” and the door slid up again. She turned to face him, her face a mask. Yes? Would he, like Tom Harney, warn her not to say fuck or shit in front of his dinner guests? Or like Marsh, the day she drove him to Princeton, order her to stay properly out of the way? Was he going to pass her off as someone else, would he now tell her her cover story, a spy in the house of love?
He came to her and took her hands. She was stiff.
“Vickie’s very much her mother’s girl. They’re close, and she’s very protective of Edith. Vickie’s twenty-three, but in some ways she’s still a baby.” (Twenty-three. Elspeth would have been …) “Anyway, if she should say anything … unkind … I hope you won’t be hurt. It won’t be personal, she doesn’t even know you, it will be directed at the situation. At me, really. But it may spatter you. I’ll try to deflect it,” he smiled, but there were grim lines around his mouth, “but my deflector may not be as fast as her spitball.”
He kissed her eyes and she clutched him, felt the shield falling, falling, thinking, oh god if it falls all the way how will I ever be able to let him go?
2
VICKIE WAS NEARLY AS tall as her father, but strikingly blond, with a frizz of fashionable curls ringing her head. She wore large round pink-tinted eyeglasses that cast a pink light on her cheeks. And she giggled a lot. Beyond the giggle and the bland expression, Dolores thought she saw something watchful, thoughtful. But it was hard to be sure, since Vickie barely looked her way.
She hugged her father, jabbering with excitement at her adventurousness. She was wearing jeans and a heavy fur-lined jacket and she carried a backpack. Victor introduced Dolores as Dr. Durer.
“Dolores,” she said. “Please.” She stood and held out her hand. Vickie placed a limp cool young hand momentarily in hers, giggled, recited some pleased-to-meet-you formula.
Victor took over. Heartily. Not quite the Businessman, but the heartiness was borrowed from him. He was hearty about Vickie’s bag, her clothes, her hairdo, her flight, the damp London weather, a drink, his rather swish flat. He got things into their proper places as far as he could. He could not prevent the girl from sitting on the very edge of her chair, at a right angle to Dolores, which allowed her to speak to him without looking at his lover. But when he brought her a drink—a vodka and tonic—he sat down beside Dolores, so she had to look that way. She managed however to look at him at such an angle that Dolores was relegated to Vickie’s peripheral vision.
Dolores in her turn tried hard not to stare at the girl’s backpack, which was resting on the floor near the door. She tried to look interested, tried to smile, wondering how many women had sat like her trying to look properly motherly and concerned. Who had decided on that proper, anyway.
He was asking about her job now, and she talked more easily, giggled less. He turned frequently to Dolores, trying to bring her into the conversation.
“Vickie’s a microbiologist,” he said.
“Yes. That’s really impressive.”
“Oh, I’m really just a lab assistant,” she said to her father.
The job was fine, interesting, but after a year of it, she felt she’d learned all she could. She was thinking of going on for a Ph.D. “I could learn more there they’d promote me, assign me to some of the zingier special projects. But I don’t think they will. They don’t take me seriously, I’m too young….”
“Too pretty,” Victor put in.
“Female,” Dolores added.
Thinking: and you giggle a lot. But so what? Was that any worse than the mute shyness of young men? It was simply another form of shyness.
The girl’s head swung around to Dolores. “Yes, that’s it! There are a few women there in their forties, they’re still lab assistants! The only way a woman can force them to look at her seriously is if she has a Ph.D. And even then there’s no assurance. Unless you were ten times more brilliant than any of the guys. And I’m not. I’m as good as any of them, better than some, but not out-and-out superior. Yet three of the five guys I started with have been requested by the VIPs to work on special projects with them. The only special project I’ve been invited to participate in is midnight supper at the pad of the administrative assistant.”
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Dolores smiled. “Did you go?”
“No.”
“Good!” Victor said emphatically.
“Oh, Daddy.” She turned back to Dolores. “I didn’t go because I knew we’d end shacking up—he’s really cute. And I know that would hurt me at the lab. There’s one older woman there, she has a degree but not a doctorate. She’s been there for years, she’s never gotten anywhere, she makes less money than the new guys, even. She smokes a lot, and she drawls, and says: ‘Don’t follow my example, my dear. I slept my way to the bottom.’
“But he is cute, Maury, so it’s hard.” She turned back to her father: “I hope I’m not shocking you, Daddy.” And turned back to Dolores: “My parents are so … old-fashioned. Moral, you know.” Then realized what she’d said as Dolores and Victor both gave her the kind of smirks that are really attempts to control laughter, and she looked from one to the other and giggled and all three of them were able to laugh then, a long hard laugh of relief.
There were no problems after that. Vickie claimed to be in need of advice from her father. “I want to get an advanced degree, partly because I’m ambitious, but partly because I really want to get into DNA research and I don’t know enough. There are still fellowships available in the sciences. What do you think?”
The two played family-style ring-around-the-rosy:
But of course I want you to do whatever you want to do.
I want to do it but I’m scared. Maybe I’m not good enough.
Of course you’re good enough. You got straight A’s in …