Sunlight flickered through the leaves of the twisted old fruit trees that bent over the tables at the end of the terrace as if benevolently. The sound of voices was soft as the people sitting there talked vaguely, easily, after their lunch. The little fountain murmured and chuckled. Below, upon the white lake a whiter paddleboat churned almost gaily toward Chillon.
Daniel tipped back his head sleepily and let the last warming swallow of beer in his glass pour down his throat. He opened his eyes wider than they had been for several minutes looking about. What was everyone doing? By God, he had almost fallen asleep!
Little Susan lay curled up on the deck chair, one hand reached out automatically toward the dark somnolent bulk of Joe Kelly, and she looked sleepy too. Daniel wished she would stop sniffling. She was cute, though, with the hayfever or whatever it was she had. Her eyes were as big as a puzzled kitten’s. She was terribly polite, in a solemn drunken way.
He wished Lucy would stop talking. She was a boring old bag. What did Nan see in her to bring her over here as her apparently chosen friend. Was it charity? Women were queer. Honor said that Lucy was a good foil for Nan, that this was probably the long and short of it.
Daniel smirked slightly as he looked at the two mismatched women sitting side-by-side across from him. Nan lay easily in the deck chair that made her seem smaller and more exquisite than she was. Her yellow dress curved roundly over her girlish breasts; her hair was a golden cloud. One hand, as relaxed and delicate as a skeleton of some sea bird, lifted a cigarette dreamily to her mouth then fell away again, while beside her Lucy smoked nervously.
Daniel looked at Lucy with impatient dislike, noting with the impervious cruelty of a very young man her fat strong fingers with their bitten nails, the brownish spots across the backs of her hands and wrists. He saw with disgust her shapeless mouth awkwardly smeared with lipstick, the monstrous tangle of her dank wadded-up hair. He speculated coldly on the probable shape of her large body without all the braces of whalebone and cloth. She undoubtedly had a strong smell, he’d already decided.
She and Nan Garton were the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of womanhood. He recognized an apt criticism when he saw it and felt pleased with himself.
Honor would appreciate this if he felt like telling her. Honor hated Lucy Pendleton, he knew, though she had never said anything cruel about the old woman. Instead, the few times they had just spoken of her, Honor had been kindly and had smiled in that remote way that women can, smiling meaningfully. Why the hell couldn’t women just say what they thought? he wondered.
Honor looked at him suddenly, as intently as if she’d heard him thinking. She held a crust of bread in one hand and lay back looking . . . No, she was not looking at him at all but at something in the apple boughs above him. He stretched one foot out in order to gently nudge her chair. Her brown eyes dropped their gaze—how large and somber they were. She stared unsmilingly at him for a strange moment and bit into her bread, looking displeased as if she loathed the taste of it.
Honor was a queer one. What she needed was some fun, he decided. When they got back to America, he’d try to take her out dancing occasionally if he wasn’t too booked up during Christmas vacation and show her a good time. Or did she have a good time without him, with men he had never met? He felt a little ashamed of himself—why should Daniel feel patronizing toward Honor when he knew so little about her?
But then what did he know about anyone? He sighed and picked up his empty glass aimlessly and was suddenly filled with depression. What was the use of thinking about them, when they were all of them so secret? Was he a secret to them as well? He hoped so, and yet at the same time he felt almost unbearably lonesome. Through his head floated a tune that had been lurking there ever since his morning dreams. Now it was clear and strong and he knew it was Sibelius’s “Valse Triste.” It was corny, all right, but it haunted him now as it had done ever since he first heard it weeks before in a little record shop in Paris.
The song crept through his dreams with its sad and haunting rhythm so that nothing could clear it away. Playing it on the gramophone only made it worse and made him long intolerably to say things he could and should never say. It pressed him toward madness and made him feel Nan in his arms very close to his heart.
Daniel looked at her, suddenly sure that she, too, would be looking at him, but she was smiling at Timothy. Daniel shrugged his shoulders and shook his head to free it of the dangling melody that tricked him.
He watched Timothy smile back at his sister and then when the older man turned and looked solemnly at him he felt quite jolly all of a sudden and young again. To hell with feeling sad, Daniel thought. Women complicate things. Men, real men like Tim, are the answer.
Daniel looked back at his friend nonchalantly with his heart full of gratitude and affection. Tim Garton was a real man, that was it. That was why Tim was probably the most important person in the world for Daniel, as important as love and duty and so on, much more important even than romantic love and so much more important than . . .
Daniel sat up, startled. What was it he almost said? Was Timothy more important than Sara? Sara? Why, he’d known her since being born! She taught him how to walk and talk and speak. He got away from her, had pushed himself away from her, freed himself from being her little brother by a thousand acts of deliberate maturity. Why should it startle him now to find himself thinking of someone more important than she was when he had proved to himself for years now that she was unimportant? He could get along without her. Then why did he compare everything to her? Even after all these years? Why should his mind drag her into relevant things like his liking for Tim Garton? Damn Sara! Why couldn’t she leave him alone?
Daniel looked at her, his face blank over his seething resentment, and was furious to see Sara’s blank face looking back at him, mirrorlike. Then he grew even more furious to recognize the stab of almost womanly concern that surged in him, to notice once again the new thin line of her cheek, and the strange set to her mouth. Was she too tired with all of them living there with her and Tim? Was she pushing herself to work too hard to make things smooth and comfortable for all of them and to keep them peaceful and well fed? Why did she drive herself so? Was she some kind of martyr?
He looked anxiously at her, now full of worry. This summer had grown tighter as time passed with only occasional hours of laziness and gaiety such as last night, after Nan and her strange friend had gone upstairs. Then Sara had been like the girl he remembered from childhood but even more fun, full of laughing foolish talk and sudden exciting flashes of dark wisdom. Daniel had felt happy sitting there beside the cold fire in the night, with his brandy, and Honor a little tight in the big chair and Tim sitting beside Sara on the floor with his white head shining. Daniel felt it was fine to grow up and find that your sister was a real person instead of a conscientious nursemaid. And now she was gone again, turned back into a remote efficient woman who could make him feel uncomfortable and ill at ease with one look, could flatter him with glib subtlety and make him a fool altogether. Why did she hide? Was it his fault? Was it just that she was tired? Why didn’t she stop worrying him?
Daniel pulled himself slowly to his feet and took the empty glass from Tim’s hand. Lucy was bustling toward the kitchen pretending to be gay, lilting like a Salvation Army lassie. Perhaps she was getting on Sara’s nerves? Dan followed Lucy with beer bottles in his fingers and went down into the cellar.
It was cold and quiet down there. He stood for a few moments looking intently at the green glass wine bottles lying on their sides.
“Hold, men, hold,” he hummed thoughtlessly:
“We are very cold.
Inside and outside
We are very cold . . .”
He stuck the fingers and thumb of one hand into five little glasses left from the drink before lunch with Tim and Honor and the new people and finished the old song more loudly:
“If you don’t give a silver,
Then give us gold!
Hold men . . .
Hold!”
“Damn right,” Daniel said. “Damn right! That’s the way!”
He walked upstairs carefully holding the fragile glasses before him like five thimbles and put them gently on the sideboard.
Honor looked at him impersonally and raised one eyebrow at Lucy Pendleton’s broad soft back and Daniel nodded slightly. The old bag was a bore with her lilting chitter chatter chatter. Tomorrow would be his turn with lunch dishes, oh, fabulous day!
He was permitting himself one full look at Lucy as he strode toward the steps into the living room. Her eyes—wide, pale, blue, the strangest size he’d ever seen—now looked straight into his but she did not see him. Was she thinking of a fine phrase or of her demon lover?
Daniel shivered—what was he, a ghost? That everyone looked through him today? Were all of them ghosts?