“Is the car ready?” she said, unable to keep the irritation out of her voice because the memory of the kidney-smell was so vivid to her, and because she just now recalled that the cook’s couch had a brand-new slipcover on it. She wondered if Brown took his shoes off when he lay down. Probably not.
He was watching her warily, ready to ingratiate himself in case she noticed anything.
“The steps and banister need dusting,” she said.
“Well, Lily was going to do it but she...”
“I think we have enough servants in this place to see that things are tidy.”
“Yes, Mrs. Pearson.”
“I told you last week.”
“Well, it slipped my mind, Mrs. Pearson.” He yawned again, keeping his mouth closed and contorting his face so that he seemed for a moment to be in acute anguish.
“Do you take your shoes off when you lie down on the couch?” Once the question was out she felt humiliated, as if Brown had somehow got the better of her by forcing her to ask it.
He made the situation worse by replying, “No, Mrs. Pearson. I just hang my feet over the edge.”
She felt utterly defeated and without dignity. Feet were something so intimate and private she didn’t discuss them or even think about them. She would as soon have been seen without any clothes at all as without proper shoes and stockings. Yet here she was, talking about not just feet, but what was far more revolting, Brown’s feet. She couldn’t stop herself from picturing them — long and bony and grey at the back of the heel, with coarse black hair on the big toe — dirty, personal, obscene feet...
“The car,” she said.
“Forbes will bring it right around.”
“And tell my mother Mr. Pearson would like to see her.”
She walked away, her spine rigid. She always walked rather awkwardly because she held herself too straight, as if she had just finished reading an article on posture. Her feet, in low-heeled black suede oxfords, struck the floor heel and toe together, like a mechanical tin soldier’s.
Before she left she paused to brush off some lint from her black suit and to adjust the brim of her black felt hat. As an afterthought she extracted from her purse a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. She had had the glasses for years and the lenses no longer fitted her eyes and invariably caused a headache. But she thought the glasses suited her; they made her look more intelligent, yet at the same time naive, like a college girl who knew a great deal about books but had a lot to learn about the world.
She ran her hand lightly over the knot of straw-colored hair at the nape of her neck. When she was Laura’s age her hair had been wavy and as bright and garish as brass. But with the years the color had become more and more indeterminate, and since she had let her hair grow long, the wave had disappeared. She was not displeased with this result. There were too many artificial blondes and artificial waves and curls; she preferred to appear natural and simple, and to give the impression that while she was a beautiful woman, she had none of the little airs and vanities of beautiful women. She had given up make-up and perfume, her clothes were unobtrusive, and, as a privilege of wealth, the faintest bit dowdy. Her skirts were always a bit longer than was fashionable and her hats were as sensible and durable as her shoes.
She glanced into the hall mirror. She was looking very nice, she thought. Black suited her and, no matter what Charles said, she intended to go on wearing it, because, like the glasses, it was an integral part of her disguise. Only the most discerning people would stop on the street to look at her twice and notice the beautiful modeling of her mouth and forehead and the dark grey eyes.
The only real fault she had to find with her appearance was her size. She was too big, both tall and, in spite of rigorous and agonizing dieting, a trifle overblown. She felt it wasn’t quite nice to have so obviously female a figure.
A long time ago, when her breasts were just beginning to be noticeable, she was terrified of this new responsibility, but she was also secretly a little proud. It meant she was becoming a woman, and she resented her father’s jokes: “Gosh almighty, Martha’s getting a shape. Can you beat it, the kid’s getting a shape.”
Well, her father was dead now, and she had her shape, and she was a woman — oh, God...
She turned quickly from the mirror and went outside.
Forbes was waiting for her, a dark-skinned, neat little wizard who sat behind the wheel of the car with careless ease as if he’d grown out of the upholstery like a polyp.
She put on her gloves, making a quick inspection of the veranda. It was quite clean, but someone had killed a spider on one of the pillars. Its pulpy corpse clung to the white wood and oozed yellow.
She drew back, shaken and disgusted. She hated dead things. She wondered if Charles would look like that. It was funny that she’d never before thought of Charles having any insides.
Forbes leaped nimbly out of the car and opened the door for her. All the way downtown, while her soft grey eyes gazed blurrily out of the window, she thought of Charles’s insides.
Chapter 2
Charles lay with his hands behind his head, staring toward the windows. When the sun reaches the left curtain, he thought, I will do something. I will make some decision.
The curtains fluttered coyly like ladies’ skirts. They were dark yellow silk (like Martha’s hair, Charles thought; she probably chose them to match), and when the sun hit them they seemed to blaze up as if someone had touched a match to them.
The sun was making the room uncomfortably hot. Charles would have liked the shades drawn but he felt too inert to do it himself and he didn’t want to ring for Brown and thus throw away practically his first opportunity to be alone and think out the problem. It seemed that for weeks now he hadn’t been alone. Whenever he opened his eyes there was Martha. Sometimes she’d be sitting in a chair, reading, her knees together and her feet flat against the floor. She held the book too close to her eyes, and whenever she turned a page she sighed gently. It was a tragic little sound and it affected Charles because he couldn’t think of any reason why Martha, or anyone else for that matter, should sigh when turning a page.
“Is it a sad story?” he asked.
“Sad? Oh, no.”
“Well, you sighed.”
“I was just breathing.”
Perhaps that was the explanation for a great many things — Martha was just breathing.
Or sometimes when he woke up Martha would be giving him fresh water or straightening his blankets or putting the windows up or down, briskly and with a certain impatience that suggested the windows should be putting themselves up or down.
Usually, however, she just sat beside his bed with her hands folded on her lap. When she thought no one was watching her, her face had a dazed, slightly stupid expression. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking. Once he asked her, and her eyebrows flew up in surprise.
“Why should I be thinking anything?”
“I don’t know.”
“I thought you were sleeping,” she said coldly. Her tone added: You should have told me you were awake instead of lying there spying on me.
“Next time I’ll ring a bell,” he said.
“What?”
“Nothing. I was joking.”
Though she pretended otherwise, she was perfectly conscious of her beauty and she didn’t mind being watched. It was simply that she had to give the signal, like a child playing a game: “All right, I’m ready. You can look now.”
The sun passed behind a cloud. The curtains turned somber, and the cold wind that swept suddenly across the room was a warning that summer hadn’t arrived yet and you couldn’t trust the spring.