THE NEXT DAY being Sunday, we all had a leisurely breakfast together, consisting of eggs from the Woolworth frying pan, and toast made under the broiler, one piece lifted by fork every three minutes. I piled the chipped mismatched dishes and glasses in the dish drainer to dry cloudily, and thought about my old electric dishwasher at home. For years I had complained about machine civilization and life in the wasteland of materialism: now I felt a subtle change taking place in me. Henry James was being replaced by Buckminster Fuller.
I shoved twelve or thirteen of Mrs. Stackpole’s blanket and linen layers into place on our oversized bed and got dressed shortly before the doorbell rang. Descending, I found the eight-by-ten-foot sitting room bulging with people in t-shirts and blue jeans.
Jane was there with her friend Tom and several of her brothers, all with long bangs or fringes, and her mother Liz, a rather paunchy lady with orange hair and fingernails, who was wearing a green silk print blouse, a tight red wool skirt, and blue high-heeled shoes. After effusive greetings, we went down to the kitchen where we ate little sandwiches I had prepared, and drank tea. Mrs. Stackpole, incredibly, had left only a small teapot, and Jordan had had to buy a larger one. Jane stopped me when I was about to put the leftovers into the refrigerator. “Silly old cow,” she said to me affectionately. Liz wrapped them all carefully in aluminum foil, put them into two large tin cookie boxes and put the boxes in a drawer in the dresser. I had noticed this aversion to the refrigerator in Mrs. Grail, who unfailingly placed milk and butter on the hutch shelves and asked me whether I wanted to put unopened cans of soup in there, pointing with distaste to the refrigerator. This distrust of refrigeration probably explained the rich aroma of sour milk I had frequently encountered. Anyway, after Liz had disposed of the little sandwiches, we decided to walk to Hyde Park, because it was a lovely sunny day.
Liz and I sat primly on a bench while Jordan and the young things leapt gaily over the grass. Jane at one point dashed for a ball and fell heavily to the ground, where she remained, rubbing her leg.
“Oh, dear,” I said, “she’s hurt herself.”
“Yes,” Liz said. “She does try to do too much.”
Jane continued to sit rubbing her leg, while Jordan and Tom hung over her, looking concerned.
“We can’t all be athletes,” I said.
“Everybody loves Jane,” Liz said, responding instantly to something in my tone. “Everybody that knows her is just wild about her.”
“Eric loves her,” I said, after a moment.
“Everybody does,” Liz said firmly. “And Jane expects that. She expects that everyone will love her.”
I began to feel that I had failed Jane.
“She and Jordan are very close,” Liz said. “She wants to take care of Jordan.” An icy wind blew across the grassy plain of the park. I was wearing a coat over my sweater, but my ears began to tingle, and I noticed that Liz’s lips matched her shoes. “Shall we take a walk?” I asked. “It’s getting chilly.”
“It does get cold sometimes in the summer,” Liz said defensively.
We began to stroll slowly toward the sidewalk, or pavement.
“Jordan is so brave,” Liz said, “and so likeable. Coming all the way over here alone, to start a business the way he did.”
“Yes, he’s very brave; he—”
“And Bill,” Liz said, referring to Bill Dworkin. “Bill Dorking. He’s such a gentleman. He even sounds like a gentleman. He sounds English.”
“That’s the way they talk in New Jersey,” I said.
“Do they? Well, he sounds English to me. I think he speaks beautifully.”
We strolled a little farther, in silence. The London Hilton came into view.
“There’s the London Hilton,” Liz said. “Don’t you think it’s horrible?”
“Well,” I said.
“Everybody feels it spoils the park. American structure spoiling the park. You can see it, right from here.”
“Oh, you can see it all right,” I said.
“I’m so fond of Bill,” Liz said. “Jordan is lucky to have him. He’s so gentle. English people understand that, being quiet, you know, and a gentleman. Sometimes I would like to tell Jordan that one really needs to be a restrained sort of person to succeed here in business. One needs to be quiet to be accepted. More like Bill.”
“Oh, you really should tell Jordan that,” I said. “He’d be so grateful.”
“A lot of push doesn’t go here, you know,” Liz said gently. “You’ll find it’s different here from America.” I said that I had noticed that it was different. “Of course,” Liz went on, “that’s all right. You shouldn’t mind. We’re five hundred years ahead of you, you see. We’ve had more time to become civilized.”
I looked at her, speechless.
“You can’t catch up with us, you know,” Liz said. “But don’t worry, in five hundred years things will be different in America.” After the ensuing pause, she asked, “What do people think about us in America? What do American people think about the English?”
I said that everybody thought I was very fortunate to be able to come for the summer.
At this point the active members of our group signaled defeat in the face of the rising wind, and we went home, walking close to brick walls whenever we could, for shelter. We descended to the basement again, opened the drawers to get the little sandwiches out of the cookie tins and the aluminum foil, and brewed more tea. Everybody was animated, except me. I was thinking about what Liz had said, and wondering why she had said it. Finally our visitors departed, much to my relief.
We turned on the television, to relax for a few minutes. There was a thing on called Mystery Theatre. The camera circled constantly, up and down staircases, and people poured whiskey out of decanters while the camera crew kept clearing their throats and occasionally there was a loud crash; otherwise nothing much happened. We noticed it was over when credits began to travel down the screen.
At about ten-thirty, a clergyman appeared, in a very close close-up, and told a little story about an old lady who wrote to the bishop for groceries and then sat in the living room near the window and waited for him until she fell asleep. In the meantime, the bishop had come in through the back door and left the groceries on the kitchen table. The point of this story seemed to be that a lot of us sit in the front room when we should really be in the kitchen. Or something like that. We discussed the point of this parable until “God Save the Queen” was played while the screen showed us a portrait of the Queen in evening dress before it went blank and silent. We hauled ourselves up, feeling very tired indeed, and suddenly a jolly voice came out of the dead set. “You won’t forget to turn it off, will you?” it asked kindly. So we turned it off.