FRIENDSHIP IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY

The house they have rented is on the grounds of a seventeenth-century chateau in Provence. The long, graveled driveway is lined with dappled sycamore trees, casting a dry, rustling shade and letting through careless patterns of light. The chateau is made of golden stone, and stands squarely at the end of the drive: handsome, symmetrical, grand. The approach at first is formal, but at the last minute the drive swerves sharply to the right, skirting the chateau and ending in a quiet, shady courtyard behind it. Their own small house—le Pigeonnier, the dovecote—lies beyond this, through iron gates.

The two women would be alone together until the weekend, four days. They had arrived in the evening, and now they both sleep into the deep heat of the next morning. The sun beats on the thick walls of the house, coming through the cracks between the heavy wooden shutters, sliding in bright streaks across the walls, lying in fiery lines across the floor.

Sophie lies motionless in her bedroom, nothing on, spread-eagled across the square, white bed. When she opens her eyes, her mouth is thick with heat and sleep. Her room is large and shadowy, with windows, now shuttered, on three of its sides. A pair of French doors opens onto a tiny balcon, a place to survey the day. Sophie pulls on an old caftan and pads in to the bathroom; the terra-cotta floors are cool against her feet. Out of the small window she can see the peak of the dovecote, where the birds stalk about on the tiles, nodding and purring, brilliant white in the sun. Beyond them is the dry, green presence of the vast fig tree, and beyond that is the vibrating blue sky of Provence.

Still barefoot, Sophie goes into the shadowy hall. The other bedroom door—Louisa’s—is still shut. Louisa’s husband, Mack, is not joining them at the weekend, as is Sophie’s husband, Peter. Louisa and Mack are getting a divorce. Louisa’s new state seems to be reflected by her bedroom: it is much smaller than Sophie’s, and it seems an admonition, a severe reminder of her new condition. The high, narrow window gives one point of view, the single bed has room for only one body, uncomforted. The admonition is not only social but economic: the closet is stingy, and the bureau has only two drawers.

Sophie knows very well how things are now for Louisa; she is barely scraping along. Her car insurance has expired, and she can’t afford to fix the dishwasher. Another friend is paying for the dishwasher, and Sophie is thinking about making a general offer of assistance. When Sophie had first asked Louisa to share the house, Louisa had hesitated, and Sophie knew she was thinking about money. In the past, the two couples had rented houses together, always splitting the cost. But Sophie and Peter have made it clear that Louisa is invited as a guest. Sophie would like to make up, somehow, for Louisa’s loss.

Sophie wishes that the inequity of things was not made quite so tangible, so explicit, by the two bedrooms. The master bedroom boasts two closets, a big bureau. The bed is broad enough for war as well as love, and the room suggests procreation, expansion, the churning up of air and emotion.

Sophie goes quietly past Louisa’s door and downstairs, past the dim, shuttered living room, and into the small white-tiled kitchen. She makes coffee, washes a furry peach, and goes outside under the grape arbor.

The sun is already fierce, but the vines make a bright patch of shade, a roof of vivid green. Sophie settles herself in one of the faded canvas chairs looking out over the terrace, past the dusty rosebushes. Beyond a stone wall are dry fields, and beyond those are the low sandy mountains that Van Gogh painted, thick with cypresses, hot and blue in the distance. Sophie looks out at them beneath the brim of her straw hat, her eyes half-closed against the glare, and wonders how the painter could have seen them so tumultuous, so wild. She wonders how he could have stayed awake long enough to paint them. She herself feels peaceful, dazed with sleep and heat, awash in the happiness of being there alone with her friend.

The two women have been friends for eight years, ever since they met in the Connecticut suburb where they both then lived, both married to Americans, both feeling foreign and awkward. Ever since, in fact, the morning when Louisa had called up Sophie and asked politely, “Could you tell me what a ‘scrambles paddles’ is? Or it may be a ‘paddle scrambles.’ We’ve been asked to one, but I don’t know if it’s a meal or a wife-swap.”

Louisa—creamy, plumped-out, calm—is English. Sophie—thin, dark, uneasy—is half-French, half-American. There had been a third foreigner—another English girl, Anne, though she was more Louisa’s friend than Sophie’s. Friendship in a foreign country is a different sort. You are tender, more generous, more forgiving. There is a secret alliance among you, and your only luxury is trust.

Sophie had been a solitary child—her parents had divorced early, and her mother had been a rambler. She did not make friends easily. She had been embraced by Louisa’s warmth, entranced by her appreciation, her talent for celebration. She had fallen in love with Louisa. It seemed to Sophie that everything Louisa did was extraordinary. This was partly because of the way she looked: she was eccentrically beautiful, odd, amusing, with her long legs, her funny striped socks, her hats. But it was also her opinions, the books she read—everything about Louisa seemed original, to Sophie.

Sophie remembers her visits to Louisa’s as charmed: the wide front door opens inward, and in the big hall Louisa stands, glowing. It is winter, and the house is warm, and smells of apple wood and pomander.

Louisa clasps her hands together. “Oh, good! How are you?” she asks, delighted, as though they have not spoken for months. She takes Sophie tightly by the shoulders and hugs her, pressing her smooth cheek against Sophie’s, first one side, then the other.

“I’m so glad you’re here, I haven’t seen enough of you lately,” she says. Linking her arm in Sophie’s she leads her into the sitting room, where there is a fire, and a tea tray in front of it. When Sophie is settled on the rug, her teacup in her hands, Louisa leans toward her.

“Isn’t that a new sweater? It suits you. You’re very good at that. I never see you in something that doesn’t reflect yourself.”

“Thanks,” Sophie says, “it’s old, though.”

“But very nice,” says Louisa. “Now, tell. How was your trip to see your mother?”

This was, of course, the center of their friendship—the endless conversation about families, husbands, children, friends, clothes, books they were reading, how they felt. They told each other everything, and they agreed on everything: they found the same things shocking, the same things proper, the same things funny. It felt to Sophie that when she was with Louisa they were in a charmed and secret place, the two of them allied against the world.

When Louisa and Mack had moved, two years ago, to London, the conversations had continued, by echoing, expensive telephone calls, and through long, ruminative letters, but things are left out of letters and phone calls, and a great deal had happened that had not quite been explained, not entirely discussed. This visit was to knit them back into each other, to reestablish the connection, supplying the nuances, the things too intimate, too private, too difficult to write, or to trust to telephone cables.

Now Louisa appears in the doorway. She is, as always, impossibly white; she looks as though she had never seen the sun, as though her surroundings can have no effect on her. Her hair is thick and blond and very straight, chopped off flat at shoulder-level. Her narrow eyes are a brilliant blue, with long, pale, thick eyelashes. She is wearing a cotton pareo, tucked under her bare arms like a bath towel.

Sophie’s heart lifts at the sight of her. “Good morning,” she says, smiling at Louisa.

Louisa smiles back, beautifully, and gives a little wave, but does not speak. Sophie knows that Louisa doesn’t like to talk in the mornings, not even the latest possible kind, like this. This is one of her eccentricities which Sophie cherishes.

Louisa sits down in her own canvas chair, her cup in her hand. When she has finished half of her coffee she is at last ready for speech, and she sighs blissfully. “Isn’t this wonderful?” she says. “We have all week to talk.”

“It is,” agrees Sophie: she has felt starved for her friend.

“I can’t tell you how I’ve missed you. I talk to you so often, whether or not you know it. We have long conversations in my head. But now you can actually say things on your own. What a treat!”

Sophie smiles, stretching her thin brown arms out in front of her. “Well,” she says, “Here we are.” They smile at each other, and Sophie begins. “Now, tell. What’s it like being single again?” She feels sorry for Louisa, having to start all over, the indignities and misunderstandings.

Louisa puts her coffee cup on her lap, crosses her neat ankles, and considers. “It’s very odd,” she begins. “I suppose I do feel single, but not the way I did when I was a bachelor lady. I suppose you aren’t really single if you have two children. You can’t just chuck things and go off for the weekend with a devilish creature, and you can’t take up with someone who doesn’t like children. I feel very cautious, very measured—like an ocean liner—and I used to feel like a speedboat.”

“And how do Jake and Lucy deal with it?”

“They take turns. If Jake is being horrible, then Lucy is charming, and vice versa. But usually Jake is desperately jealous, and Lucy acts like a little sister. She loves hearing stories about how the evening went. Once she came in to say good night when I was in the sitting room before going out. She came in in her nightie, all pink and damp and adorable, and shook hands with him first, and then came over to me. I could tell she was up to something, she was much too polite. She kissed me like an actress, on the cheek, and gave this hideous photogenic smile, and said, ‘Good night, Mummy.’ I said good night, and then she leaned over and in the most tremendous stage whisper she asked, ‘Mummy, is this the one with the bad breath?’”

“And was it?”

“Of course it was,” says Louisa, sipping from her cup.

Sophie laughs. “You make it sound as though there are droves of them hanging around you, men I mean.”

Louisa puts her head on one side. “Not exactly droves. But there are one or two more than I know what to do with.”

“So there should be,” says Sophie decidedly. She has been married for twelve years, and she wonders how it would be to have more men around than you knew what to do with. “I can’t even imagine it.” It makes her feel odd and uncomfortable.

“Well, you have to remember all your old tricks,” says Louisa. “Like when you come back for a drink after dinner you sit in an armchair instead of on the sofa.”

“Why?”

“Because they can’t come and sit next to you in an armchair.”

“Oh,” says Sophie. “Mechanics.”

“They’re very useful,” says Louisa matter-of-factly.

Listening to her, Sophie hears no regrets, no second thoughts, no self-pity. Louisa seems to move through her days without doubts: this is a marvel to Sophie, whose days are lit with anxiety. It is also a surprise, for she had thought Louisa would be riddled with guilt. And Sophie feels faintly backward, not having droves of men around her, and not even knowing something as basic as chair-choice. All this is confusing, because she had planned to comfort her friend.

“Well, I think it all sounds like heaven,” Sophie says. She wonders, surprised, if there is a tiny curl of envy in her voice. “I’d love to have an affair.”

“Oh?” says Louisa. “Why do you want to have an affair?”

“Just for the thrill of it,” says Sophie ingenuously.

Louisa waves her hand generously. “Well, then do. Have an affair. But don’t get a divorce. Murder would be quicker and kinder.”

“Is that how you feel? Like a murderess?”

“A bit.”

This seems reassuring to Sophie—there is some cost involved, after all. They sit in silence.

“But you definitely can’t go back to him, absolutely not?” pursues Sophie. She still hopes this will happen, and has never really understood why they split up.

Louisa shakes her head, closing her eyes. “I couldn’t possibly. You have no idea.”

“I know, you’ve told me,” says Sophie carefully. “But you know, everyone is terrible to each other. Peter and I are beastly to each other, but it’s not important. I mean, we know each other’s beasts, and they’re similar. There are things I couldn’t forgive Peter for doing, or he me, but we have the same standards, so our beasts don’t do those particular things.”

“Well, that’s it, then,” says Louisa, “Our standards were different, Mack’s and mine.”

She has told Sophie the stories about herself and Mack. They shocked Sophie, not because of their content—everyone acts badly—but because of their implications: Sophie had thought that their marriage was perfect.

The first time Sophie and Peter had been invited to Louisa and Mack’s, the four of them had moved into the sitting room after dinner. It was summer, and the long evening was still light in the meadow beyond the windows. As Louisa moved past Mack he had reached out and pulled her to him, and they had stood in silhouette against the soft, fading light. They were nearly the same height, and in silhouette they seemed part of each other. He had said something into her ear, and she had laughed. Witnessing it—the gesture, the whisper, the laugh—Sophie thought respectfully, There. That’s how it should be.

When Louisa had told her that she and Mack were separating, it was that image—the two of them, joined—that had come to Sophie’s mind. It seems mysterious to Sophie now, that this image should be false. She feels sympathetic, but baffled. And she also feels deceived, in a way.

“Well, you two seemed perfect together,” she says now, flatly.

“Well, we weren’t,” says Louisa, just as flatly. “It was an act. We knew we looked perfect. It was part of what kept us together.”

“But why did you never tell me things were so awful at the time?”

“I didn’t dare,” says Louisa. “It was all or nothing.”

“Well, you fooled me. You seemed a lot more perfect than we did. I never even saw you have an argument. And God knows you’ve seen me and Peter have them often enough.”

At the dinner table, in front of Mack and Louisa, she and Peter have, more times than she has liked, turned angry at each other. One shared ski weekend Sophie had energetically smashed several plates in the kitchen, as a prelude to her and Peter spending the night slamming doors on each other.

Louisa smiles at her and shakes her head. “Oh—fights. They don’t matter. Just don’t get divorced.”

Sophie smiles back. “Oh, then I won’t. But, tell about you. Who’s the main man now? What about this Michael Pollen?”

“A thing of the past, I’m afraid. He’s too difficult for me.”

“A change.”

“It is. Mack’s American difficult. He just wants everything his own way. Michael is English, very tortured and convoluted. It was too much for me.”

“Well?”

Louisa settles down. “Well. The last time I saw him, we’d been planning a weekend, but it had been on-again, off-again. He kept changing his mind back and forth, very mysterious. He was full of apologies, very polite, but I had the feeling somehow that he liked changing back and forth. By Thursday we were on again, and we went out to dinner together. The children were already with Mack for the weekend, and I was supposed to be spending the night with Michael.

“We had a very nice dinner, very cozy, and we went back to his flat afterward. When we came in, he turned on the answering machine. At once a woman’s voice came on, rather loud, and chummy. ‘Hello darling, it’s me,’ she said. ‘Listen, the weekend’s on after all. I’m frightfully sorry about the muddle, but I couldn’t help it, as you know. I’ll meet you at the car on Friday at six.’ Then there was a pause, and then she said, ‘I don’t know what woke you up in the middle of the night like that, but I hope it happens again,’ and then there was another pause, and she hung up.”

Sophie takes a deep breath. “God,” she says. “What did Michael do?”

“He made a great show of banging the machine off, and shoving the table against the wall. But when he turned around, there was a tiny little smile at the corners of his mouth. And when I saw that, I realized that he’d heard the message earlier. This was deliberate.”

“A real sweetie,” says Sophie. “So what did you do?” She is full of anticipation.

“First I thought, ‘Right, I’m off.’”

“You just walked out without a word? Good for you.”

“No. I thought I would, and then I thought, Why should I let him be in charge? That’s what he wants me to do. I’ll leave when I’m ready. So I took off my coat and started up the stairs. He just stood there, so, halfway up, I turned like Mae West and said, ‘Coming up?’”

“You stayed?” Sophie asks. Now she is shocked again. “You spent the night with this bounder?”

Louisa nods with satisfaction. “I did. I spent the night with the bounder. I left the next morning and I never plan to see him again. But I wanted to leave on my terms.”

“God!” says Sophie, but not in admiration. The story is a revelation to her, and it doesn’t seem to be about the Louisa she knows. Part of what Sophie feels is admiration, for Louisa’s refusal to be victimized. But part of her is repelled. This feeling is contrary to the way she feels about Louisa, and Sophie wonders if she is being unkind, judgmental.

Louisa does not reply. She tilts her head back with abandon and looks directly overhead, into the ragged-edged grape leaves and the hanging bunches of grapes.

“These will be ripe before we leave,” she says, “and the figs are right on the verge. They’re going to fall into our mouths when we stand under the tree. It’s too good to be true, this place.” She turns and looks directly into Sophie’s eyes, inviting her to share in the delight. This is one of the things Sophie loves about her friend, but right then she finds it difficult to respond. She nods, without speaking.

In the late afternoon they take the little rented car into St. Rémy. They park under one of the huge trees, and loaf along the sidewalks. The streets are narrow and shady, though the heat is fierce. Sophie and Louisa pause to look at glass canisters of lavender and thyme, at sweet-smelling soap and sachets. Louisa puts her nose all the way into the jar of lavender, closing her eyes and sniffing. “Heaven,” she says peacefully.

Sophie is glad to have Louisa tuck an arm inside her elbow, pressing it against her side. Sophie is having a harder time than she had expected in bringing their friendship into sharp focus: it still seems blurry and undefined. She had assumed that they would fall at once into that deep twinhood they had shared in America, but they seem to be in some different place. She thought she had understood Louisa thoroughly, as well as you do understand people. She thought she knew how Louisa would behave, or feel. But now she was hearing things that seemed to alter, or even deny, her own knowledge of her friend. Certainly she had been wrong about the marriage, which had seemed so superior to her own. And she was beginning to feel that she hardly knew the woman who could turn on the stairs and ask, “Coming up?”

They push open the leather-padded door to the big church on the main square. Sophie likes churches, especially small-town ones. Inside, it is dusky and cool, with the lingering pungency of incense. They split up, wandering separately through the scented darkness. Alone in one of the dim chapels, staring up at an age-blackened painting, Sophie wonders what it is exactly that you can expect from friends. Surely the same standards as your own? And if someone doesn’t share your standards, but loves you, what then? Are you allowed to judge a friend? How much, and how often?

Louisa, approaching, shakes her head firmly. “Dreadful,” she whispers. “The most boring church I’ve ever seen.” Sophie is again caught off guard: she would have said something nice about the peace here, the silence, the sweet-smelling dark.

“The real life is out here,” says Louisa, pushing open the door and stepping back into the heat and sunlight.

They amble again along the sidewalk, stopping outside the Souleiado store, where they lean against the window and admire the stacks of rich-patterned cottons. The woman behind the counter, with her square face and shining short brown hair, reminds Sophie of Anne. “How is Anne? Have you heard from her?” she asks. Anne had moved into New York shortly after Louisa and Mack had left.

“No,” says Louisa, “we’ve lost touch, actually.”

“You have?” Sophie is again surprised.

It was Louisa who was Anne’s friend, Sophie had known her only at second-hand. It had been Louisa who had told her how unhappy Anne was, and how, that last summer, Anne had waked up each morning already in tears, her pillow soaked before the day began. Sophie had assumed that Anne’s misery was connected to her husband, Tug, who wasn’t kind to her. Tug was dark-haired, sleek, and fancied himself irresistible to women. Sophie and Louisa called him Smug.

“Yes,” says Louisa, “it’s too bad.” Sophie looks at her—there is something odd about her voice—but Louisa is wearing dark glasses, and looking straight ahead. It is difficult to read her expression.

“Well, I haven’t seen much of her since they moved back to New York,” Sophie says. “The last time I saw her was awful. We were at a charity dinner in town, and we were all sitting at the same table. Smug was drunk, and trying to look down poor Carolyn Howard’s dress, who was sitting next to him. Anne was being very dignified and sitting up very straight, her head very high and regal. She was ignoring what Smug was doing, but she began to send him let’s-gohome signals. He kept ignoring them, and finally she leaned across the table and said his name. He looked up at her and said loudly—and contemptuously—‘Look, if you want to go home, why don’t you just get up and go the fuck home? I’m staying. I happen to be having a good time.’ And he turned back to Carolyn’s cleavage. Anne stood up instantly, as though she hadn’t heard him. Her face never changed, she looked very dignified, and she left. Mack went and got her a cab. And Smug kept after poor Carolyn.”

“How awful,” says Louisa.

“It was awful,” says Sophie, “only something even worse happened next, so poor Anne was sort of hidden by another layer of awfulness.”

“Which was?”

“I told you that Tim Perkins got married again? To some poor young woman? Well, he was there, with his new wife. He was drunk, and after dinner he went up to Dick Connelly and said, ‘Dick, I want you to meet Linda. She has the best tits in New York City. Linda, show him your tits.’ And his wife had the good sense to pick up an empty wine bottle and hit him over the head with it.”

“No!” says Louisa, “That can’t be true!”

“It does sound implausible,” agrees Sophie, and they both begin to laugh. This reassures Sophie: they do, after all, find the same things terrible, the same things funny.

Farther along the street they pause at the window of a small dress shop. A neat black silk dress, quite chic, is on display.

“Let’s go look,” says Louisa. Inside, they move along the racks idly, holding things up, considering. The prices are surprisingly high. The woman shopkeeper watches them. She is trim and dark-skinned, a Provençal with a lined, energetic face and tired bronze hair. Sophie finds something to try on, and steps behind the curtain strung across the back of the shop.

It is the black dress in the window, short and tight. Sophie comes out to use the big mirror. She stands in front of it and piles her dark hair on top of her head, which gives her sharp face an aristocratic lift. She eyes herself coolly, her bright dark eyes, her brown shoulders and long legs. She twirls, consideringly. She likes herself in the dress. It is astonishingly expensive. The shopkeeper nods at her, affable, encouraging.

“Very nice,” she tells Sophie.

“You think?” Sophie asks, still looking at the mirror.

“Oh, yes,” says the woman, “very chic.” She folds her arms tightly across her chest and nods again.

Sophie cocks her head, considering. She is really only wasting time, but the fact that the dress is so expensive piques her interest. It is, in fact, much more than she likes to spend on clothes. Anyway, she thinks, it would be tactless to buy it in front of Louisa, who couldn’t afford it herself.

Louisa appears behind her: she is in the same dress, and has found a broad-brimmed black hat. She poses for them, her hands on her hips, her head thrown back. She cocks an ankle, smiling, showing off, teasing.

“Oh-la-la,” says the shop woman, coming to life. “Voila!” She claps her hands together.

Sophie makes room for her friend, in fact she steps aside, relinquishing the mirror altogether. Louisa sweeps in front of her and takes another pose, one hand at the brim of the hat. She is laughing at herself; at the same time, she looks wonderful, and knows it. Sophie sees at once that this is how the dress should look: filled out, fulfilled. Against Louisa’s moony, pale skin the silk is voluptuous, with mystery in its blackness. Louisa’s milky shoulders are irresistible. Behind them, Sophie catches a glimpse of herself, her small, brown, heart-shaped face, her pointed chin and ragged hair, loose and stringy from being piled up. She looks like an orphan. Louisa smiles engagingly at herself in the mirror, the deep brim of the hat shadowing her face. She catches Sophie’s eye and smiles. Sophie has a base thought: she can’t afford it. She takes some ignoble pleasure at this. She is quite sure, now, that it is envy coloring her thoughts.

“It looks wonderful on you,” Sophie says bravely. “I’m not sure it’s quite right for me.” She hopes for contradiction.

Louisa turns and inspects her carefully, putting her head on one side and frowning. “No,” she says kindly, judiciously, “I think you’re right. It’s not your style.” She turns back to her own image and shrugs her shoulders charmingly. “But I’m afraid I have to have it for myself.”

Sophie is dumbstruck. “Really? You saw the price?” The car insurance, she thinks, the furnace? The price of the dress is nearly half the house rent.

Louisa smiles. “You know me! Hopeless about money. Don’t have it, must spend it. Hopeless, but there you are.” She shakes her head and shrugs her shoulders again. The shop woman begins fussing, smoothing the folds over Louisa’s shape, loving the dress on Louisa. She looks up.

“The price, Madame?” she says, “I could give you some reduction on the price, if you would like.”

“Oh, could you? That would be so kind,” Louisa beams at her. She speaks very good French, for an Englishwoman. Her accent is charming, and the cadences are right. The shop woman has fallen in love with her, and she clucks, nodding.

“Oh, yes,” she says, and hesitates. “Madame,” she asks, “are you—well known?”

“I don’t think so,” Louisa says, laughing. “How do you mean?”

“You are not a movie star, someone famous?”

Louisa shakes her head, radiant. “Not yet,” she says.

“You have something,” says the shop woman, smiling at her, “a certain air:”

Invisible, Sophie goes back behind the curtain to take off the dress. Alone beneath the shimmering black folds she wishes suddenly that Peter were coming before Friday.

Back in the street Louisa begins to hum, her step jaunty and ebullient. She takes Sophie’s arm again, but now it seems awkward, and, anyway, Sophie thinks, it is too hot. She holds her arm aloof from her body.

They pause before a real estate window to look at the photographs: regional farmhouses, either grand, with cypresses and swimming pools, or more modest, with only a grape arbor over the doorway as an amenity.

“No,” Louisa says finally, with great certainty. “They’re all either too tarted up or too austere. The French aren’t good at cozy. Except for you,” she adds, hugging Sophie’s arm. Sophie smiles but says nothing. She is in distress.

“Let’s stop in at a cafe,” Louisa says. “I need a drink to get my nerve up.” She steers them along the main circular street, lined with sycamore trees and cafes.

Sophie is feeling peculiar. She is feeling something very close to rage. She is afraid that she is resentful and envious of her best friend. She doesn’t want to feel this way at all, but she does.

They sit down at a sidewalk cafe, and Sophie looks at the people at the next table. She does this to keep from thinking about Louisa, this person who, it seems, is someone she hardly knows at all. Next to them is a family: a blackhaired, hatchet-faced man, Italian-looking, and his short-haired, fair-skinned wife, English-looking. Their two restless daughters, in long ruffled skirts, kick their legs under the table. All of them look grumpy: clearly this is not how they envisioned their holiday. None of them speaks. The parents watch the steady stream of small cars in the street, the girls stare sullenly straight ahead, kicking resentfully.

It is five o’clock; Louisa orders a Campari soda. Sophie stirs her citron pressé, and watches the sugar cloud up in a slow swirl. “Why do you need to get your nerve up?” she asks. She does not want to look at her friend.

Louisa shakes her head. She gets out her cigarettes: the polished ebony case, the silver art deco lighter. This is one of the things Sophie has always admired about Louisa—the things she uses every day are old, treasured, beautiful. Now, the lighter and case seem pretentious, and the habit vile. Louisa flicks the lighter against her cigarette and draws a long breath through the tobacco. It is an elegant gesture, and Sophie is reminded, against her will, of what it had been like to smoke—the pleasure of it, the voluptuous, irresponsible pleasure. But she is suddenly furious at Louisa for smoking.

“You must stop,” she says coldly.

Louisa nods agreeably. “I must.” There is a pause.

“Well?” Sophie says finally. She is feeling more and more distant from Louisa. They live, after all, on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. There are, between them, thousands of miles of cold, shifting tides.

“It’s something you don’t want to hear,” says Louisa, diffidently. She is not smiling. Sophie wants to shrug her shoulders, turn away. She almost says, “Then don’t say it.” She imagines herself explaining to someone, offhand, “Oh, we just lost touch.”

At the next table the two little girls begin kicking at each other under the table, their ruffled skirts swinging with their efforts, their eyes still fixed in front of them.

“Well?” Sophie makes herself say again.

“I’ve often wondered if you knew. I thought you did,” Louisa says, speaking slowly. “I always wanted to tell you, but it didn’t seem to be something I could say over the telephone, or in a letter.”

Sophie waits.

“All right, then,” Louisa says, but instead of going on she takes a sip of her Campari soda. Sophie is surprised: whatever it is, it is difficult for Louisa.

“Tug Simmonds,” Louisa says finally, looking first down at her glass, then bravely up at Sophie.

Sophie stares at her, blank. Anne Simmonds’s dreadful husband? “Tug Simmonds?” she repeats, stupidly. Louisa nods, and from her expression—embarrassed and pleading—Sophie suddenly realizes what Louisa is announcing.

“You and Smug?” she asks, horrified.

“I don’t, actually, call him that,” says Louisa gently.

“Louisa,” says Sophie. She can think of nothing else to say. She sees Smug’s confident smile, his bold, possessive stare. She thinks of fragile Anne, waking up in tears. She seizes on a straw.

“But they moved to New York,” she protests, as though this would make Louisa take back what she said.

Louisa nods. “That’s when it started.”

Sophie definitely does not want to hear how it started, the first looks, the first touch, the rapturous yielding. She feels like throwing up.

“Does Anne know?” she asks.

Louisa nods again. “I’m afraid so,” she says. “It was awful. Talk about a murderess.”

Sophie looks at her, then away. At the next table, the littler girl aims a tremendous kick at her sister’s thigh. Her sister twists agilely away. The littler girl misses, and the momentum carries her off her seat, and she slides under the table and onto the floor. Her mother turns at once and speaks sharply; the father glares. Sophie listens, automatically, to hear what language the family speaks, to find out who they are, but in fact she feels sickened, and does not want to know, right then, about other people’s lives. She stirs her citron pressé some more. She does not want to look at Louisa.

“Does Mack know?” she asks, wanting to remind Louisa of things: trust, promises, responsibilities, commitments. Sophie’s heart goes out to Mack.

Louisa nods meekly. “It’s all over now,” she offers, and Sophie, looking at her for the first time, sees now that it was Smug, not Louisa, who had ended it. She sees that Louisa hopes she will sympathize with her, but Sophie finds it difficult.

“What was it between you?” Sophie asks finally. Perhaps she had missed something about Tug Simmonds. Perhaps he was, really, terribly kind, brilliant, and shy.

“It was mostly physical, I’m afraid,” says Louisa apologetically. She has stopped being charming, and has become subdued. Her head is down over her drink: she is waiting for her friend’s judgment. In her voice there is pain and humility. Louisa is waiting for her friend to forgive her; Sophie feels unequal to the task.

She stares into her drink, rucking up the sugar, putting things off. At the next table, the mother and the father speak angrily to the younger girl, and the older girl, who has been trading vicious kicks with her sister, suddenly defends her. Talking back defiantly, she first takes her sister by the hand, then puts her arm around the younger girl’s shoulders. The child leans against her sister’s chest, watching the angry grown-ups, safe.

Now Sophie remembers the morning after the fight on the ski weekend. She and Louisa had gone off to buy groceries in Louisa’s little Volkswagen through the glittering landscape. Sophie, humiliated by her own behavior, had finally brought it up. She apologized for the broken plates, the slamming doors, the fury, all the broken shards of civilization she had been responsible for. Louisa had been cheerful and reassuring. “You mustn’t worry about it once it’s over,” she kept saying, shaking her head, smiling. “Don’t go on thinking about it.”

But Sophie could not help but think about it. She felt she had done some terrible, irretrievable damage, losing control, screaming. She felt disgraced, that what she had done could never be forgiven.

“I thought,” she said finally and painfully, “that when we came downstairs this morning that we’d just find a note from you and Mack, and that would be the last we’d see of you.” She stared miserably ahead at the snowy road.

Louisa’s response had been instantaneous. She had braked the car so quickly that it skidded, and they slid gracefully, giddily, on and on along the dazzling white surface, safe between the high banks of snow on either side. Louisa had paid no attention to the car or the road. She was looking at Sophie, and her hand was locked around Sophie’s wrist.

“Never,” she said gently, and it was the surest sound Sophie had ever heard.

So Sophie, stirring her citron pressé under the great sycamore tree, waits. It is up to her, she can see that. Louisa has given her the compliment of her trust—she need not have told her at all. And Sophie reminds herself that everyone is beastly now and then—passion makes sure of that. There are things we do even against our wills—falling in love, feeling envy. There are things that have no place in friendship, and judging is one of them.

So Sophie waits, stirring her drink slowly, until she can find the tone she wants for her voice. When she has found it, she will look up again at Louisa, who is her friend.