CHAPTER   16.

IN THE MORNING, AT THE BREAKFAST table, Ione said, “Toby, I’ve called the repair man to come fetch your car. It needs going over. It’ll only be a day or two, he says. Perhaps by Friday or Saturday … You’ll want to be with Thone, of course, just now, and there’s always mine.”

“Of course, my dear,” said Tobias mildly.

Of course, thought Mandy, of course. It clicked right down. It fitted in snugly. There is always my car! Ah, but what she meant to say was, There will be only mine. As before. As there had been only one car available to the household six years ago, and it down in the canyon!

“Do you take sugar, Mandy?” she heard Thone say politely.

“Yes, I do. Thank you.” The turn of her head was miraculously gracious and controlled.

“Shall we work today?” asked Tobias, “or are you too tired, child? I’m afraid I’m spoiling your visit.”

“Since she is getting roughly the equivalent of a four-year course for free,” drawled Thone, “I don’t think she’s complaining.”

Amanda swallowed hard. “Heavens, of course I’m not complaining!” She put her chin up, smiled at Tobias. Her thoughts were on this pattern of their own. She knew Thone was right to be cool or worse to her. She felt that Ione had noticed and would notice everything between them. Indeed, everything between Amanda and anyone. So she smiled, radiantly, at Tobias. But she didn’t see him. She wasn’t looking for the subtle reaction on the father’s face. She forgot, and Thone forgot, that Tobias was also a receiving instrument.

They played for Ione. Tobias, also, saw the show.

It was decided to get on with the portrait.

Ice-green satin! She could have ripped it off her shoulders and thrown it down and trampled on it. Someday she would. But for now she had to sit still, with her spine straight and yet easy, with her face turned to the light, with her hands quiet.

Thone, using his crutch, got nimbly to the sofa. She could not even look in his direction. He had to sit there with his foot up and pretend to drowse or read, while Wednesday went by. While Tobias worked along. While Ione kept the house.…

Mandy began to think about Belle, Belle in all her pretty costumes. What was the rose-and-gold ball gown made of? she wondered. Satin? “And a golden rose for her hair.” What had she worn to die? Mandy wrenched her mind from that. What had she worn on the islands? Something gay, no doubt. Color, of course. Coral, bright pinks, hibiscus shades. Thone would remember her in luscious color. His whole boyhood must have been soaked in brilliance and laughter. Mandy knew, because it was there in those paintings, in the laughing quality of the island paintings. That deep, bright happiness! She wondered dreamily how Thone could escape wanting to paint. Why was he, in a way, so somber, with his feeling for form, shape, mass, line. Had Belle been so? She puzzled and dreamed, forgetting.…

Tobias worked along. He was saying very little. He was working slowly. The first quick, sure, eager, plunging certainty of this work was over. The thrill was gone. He had not worked like that for years now. He would never reach it again, never touch it, the magic.

What had excited him so, if it had not been a brief revival of old magic? Now he felt heavy. He felt old again. Oh, he was skilled and disciplined. His hand would not fail. He would command it delicately and it would obey. An obedient hand! Ah, not the same thing as body and soul that flowed, all one substance, out at the finger tips!

He would teach this sweet girl all he knew, and it would amount to very little, after all. For who could teach magic? It was given, it arrived.… And when it was gone, one called for it in vain.

He was old, but not dull enough. Things hit on his naked nerve ends. He was battered and tossed. He was defenseless against so many intangible buffets. Thone, so remote and tense, so cautious and closed up against contact … Pale marks on this girl’s cheeks, barely preceptible new planes in this young face … Spiritual breezes that blew from he knew not what source, in which he swayed and staggered as they passed him by.

He was not strong any more. Not able to understand, not told, and yet, pitifully, not indifferent, either.

They were so young. He wished … He wished … In their new and complicated world, which they must understand, if he did not, he wished they were standing together. But he feared … he felt …

He did not know why he began to cry in his heart, to hunt back down the years for her. For Belle.

Ione had a letter in the afternoon mail.

About the fuchsias [it ran], if you insist, my dear, of course. Although it’s a hell of a way from where you are to the airport. Our flight leaves, as I think I told you, at ten-five P.M. I’d run them out to you, gladly, but I’m crazy with packing, you can imagine. However, I could easily do it in a week or so, after we’ve come home. So for pity’s sake, if you can’t get down there Thursday, don’t worry. I’ll stick the cuttings in the checkroom with your name on them, and remember, if they die, we can always take more.

Ione folded the sheet of pale blue paper over the backhanded scrawl. “Barbara McPhail! Why, the dear girl!” she exclaimed, her eyes round with pleasure. “Toby, what do you think! She’s going to give me a mess of green cuttings from her wonderful fuchsias!”

“Very nice,” said Tobias, squinting at his palette.

“She and Charles are flying to Seattle tomorrow. She’ll bring them as far as the airport. Isn’t that dear of her?”

Thone’s sleepy lids lifted.

“I shall have to just run down,” said Ione. “I hope Burt and I can root them. She has such a clever man who comes in once a week. He’ll pack them moist, I hope.”

“Airport?” said Thone. His voice was almost empty of significance, barely even curious. Mandy’s fingers in her lap curled suddenly.

“Inglewood. Oh, dear, it is a drive,” Ione lamented. “Let’s see, if their plane goes at ten, they’ll plan to be there in good time—by nine-thirty, I should think.”

“How long will they be in Seattle?” asked Tobias absently.

“My dear, she doesn’t say,” lied Ione. “It’s so sweet of her to think of me before they go away. I must tell Burt.”

“Burt can fetch them,” murmured Tobias. Ione didn’t answer. She didn’t remind him that tomorrow night Burt would be out. She went trotting on her little feet as if to arrange, to see about it, to give her happy orders.

“Lovely things, fuchsias,” said Tobias. “Barbara’s, especially.”

On the girl’s face, in the light, there was a strange tightening of the skin on the bones, as if the softly rounded young flesh were thinning and failing before his eyes.

“God damn this foot!” Thone’s sudden violence was a shock. “Excuse me, Dad—Amanda.” Amanda caught her breath. The shock shook and relaxed her.

Tobias put his brush down and looked curiously at his hand. “We’ll stop. Amanda is tired and so am I. And Thone is bored.” He hoped it was so. He looked at their faces pleadingly. At their suddenly bland young faces, their blank, though smiling, eyes.

Not once did Ione leave the house that day. That Wednesday. Burt ran the errands. The day dragged on as if Time itself had open jaws and they were narrowing, slowly, slowly, as the clock ticked.

After dinner Tobias had his dose, reached for it eagerly, for the sleep it promised, for some integrating rest, however found. Amanda had her Herbsaint. It was already the tradition of the house. It was a matter of course.

Thone said in that lazy voice, so emptied of meaning, “I say, Ione, how about me?”

“Whisky, dear?”

“No, I think I’ll try the same.” He stretched and grinned, playing bored.

“Ah, but I shall have whisky,” trilled Ione. “Amanda, dear, will you come, take these?”

So Amanda went to fetch the pretty little glasses, the dainty stemmed glasses from the bar. “I think I was stingy,” said Ione sharply. So Amanda smiled and touched the bottle that looked so much like a wine bottle but that held Belle’s firewater. She put a little more Herbsaint in each glass. Ione’s hands were both busy. Jigger in one, ice tongs in the other. “Look out for the …” She pointed with her elbow. Amanda’s hand touched the box that held the chloral.

“This?”

“Thanks, dear. Just push it away from the edge—there.”

I am very obliging, thought Amanda. Very obliging am I. If she wanted me to touch it, now I’ve touched it. I shall do everything she seems to suggest, quite willingly. Although I will be taking notes. I must go along with her … to a point, to a point. It must run smoothly, as far as she knows. And how smoothly it does go! How easy it must seem! Nothing has happened at all. And yet so much. All bits and pieces, each so innocent. Bits and pieces of a pattern. So we really see a pattern? Are the jaws of Wednesday closing down? Will it be Thursday, tomorrow?

She felt strange, as if she were drifting. She brought Thone his glass. “Nice night out,” he muttered, with a dark restless look.

“Poor Thone, poor boy,” crooned Ione. “So uncomfortable. So confined. Never mind. It’ll soon be healed. I’m so glad it’s no worse.” She sighed. She beamed around her, at the family, the cozy end of Wednesday.