He took off his field jacket, forgetting that the gun was in one of the pockets, and spread it out on the ground.
“What’s that for?” she asked, her voice rising plaintively. “That won’t keep my dress from being squooshed, will it?”
“You’ll be careful,” he said. “You’re a very careful person.”
His remark creased her face like a shadow or a slap. He sat down first, then she sat.
“It’s not comfortable,” she said, getting to her feet. She brushed the offending touch of his jacket from the back of her skirt.
He remembered the gun, made certain it was still in his pocket before getting up.
“What time do you have?” she asked.
“Don’t worry about the time, okay? This is actually the first opportunity we’ve had to talk without your father in the next room.”
She lifted his wrist to look at his watch, studied it a moment with vacant intensity. “It’s not going, is it? How am I supposed to know when to get back.”
He shook his arm with clownish fervor until the watch took heart. After they had walked another five minutes he took a silk scarf from his jacket pocket and slipped it into her hand.
She held it without looking at it. “It’s a Liberty’s, isn’t it?”
“Whatever,” he said. “Liberty’s. Tyranny’s. It’s for you if you want it.”
She seemed burdened by the gift, though also mildly exhilarated. She kissed him on both cheeks. “That’s the way they show their appreciation in France,” she said.
“How do they do it in England?” he asked.
Once they were out of the park she became fidgety again. “I should get back to work, shouldn’t I?”
He walked her past Buckingham Palace toward Trafalgar Square then over to Haymarket to the American Express building. She was silent and he played the clown, told her jokes and anecdotes, desperate to amuse her. The more he insisted on his presence the less real it seemed to either of them.
He asked her if he could pick her up when she got off and she said she thought they might be seeing too much of each other as it was. They shook hands.
A moment after she went into the building she came out again and returned the scarf. “I can’t take this from you,” she said. “It’s beautiful and all that but I have no right to take anything from you.”
He wasn’t looking at her, was looking everywhere but directly at her. “If you’re going with someone, that’s okay,” he said. “I’m not asking for anything.” He stuffed the scarf in her shoulder purse.
“I’m off at six thirty,” she said in her plaintive voice.
He said he would come back for her, though when she kissed him on the mouth — her lipstick had a faint cherry taste — it left him oddly frightened.
5
When Marjorie Kirstner came into the workroom she was wearing a gray silk blouse over her topless bikini. Only a moment ago (in sensed time), he had spied her from the window sunbathing in the back garden and her sudden presence — those large pointed breasts stretching the silk — had the quality of an illusionist’s trick. “Would a cold beer interest you?” she asked him. He had been lying on the couch, pages of manuscript strewn across his lap, working and sleeping, the two at once. Marjorie repeated the question, modified it. She was standing over him, legs apart, hands on hips, sucking on the fruit of her impatience.
Terman raised himself into a sitting position, felt put upon by her intrusion.
“Why are you the only one required to work?” she asked, leaving without his answer, angry at something. He stood up to meet her when she returned with two cans of Heinekens on a small tray.
“Where’s your young lady friend?” she asked, giving him a beer he hadn’t asked for.
“I’m not her keeper,” he said.
“I’d have been most surprised if you were,” she said. “She seems a very independent young person from what I can tell. I thought your young friend might like to join us in the garden.”
Terman said he didn’t think his young friend was on the grounds, though he could see that Marjorie was indifferent to the news, had been making idle conversation. She hung on and, wanting her gone, he invited her to take a seat.
“I have no intention of standing in the way of progress,” she said. “As soon as I finish my beer, I’m returning to the garden.” She looked out the window, studied the view with pointed amusement. “This room comes equipped with picture window, does it? I hope you enjoyed the view.”
He pretended not to know what she meant.
She straddled a chair for a moment or two and then suggested, as if the suggestion made itself, that they take a walk around the grounds. “There’s a body of water I’d like you to see.”
“Is there?”
“It’s a particularly lovely spot, very bucolic, very unspoiled, very relaxing.”
“Is it a long walk?”
“I promise I won’t tire you out,” she said, “though of course I have no way of knowing what your capacities are, do I?”
He felt uneasy walking in the fields with her, suspicious and uncertain of what she wanted, wary of missing the point.
Her chatter was compulsive and he tended to listen intermittently, feeding on the odd and interesting word.
“How would you make me out in a novel?” she asked, the question addressed to herself more than to him. “You wouldn’t, would you?” she answered for him. “Not bloody likely…Terman, don’t you think it’s smashing here?” They could see the stream now through the arch of trees.
“I never draw characters from life,” he said, “unless at wit’s end.”
“You don’t? I never heard a real writer confess that before. What you’re really saying, isn’t it, is that I’m not interesting enough to be in one of your precious books. Not enough one way or another, I suppose.”
“Too much both ways,” he said.
“Yes? What does that mean exactly? Do you think I have an undeservedly low opinion of myself. It might be, after all, that I have a low opinion of what American writers find grist for their mill.”
“It could be that,” he said.
She took his arm and gave it back, nothing bought ever worth the price. “I talk too much out of school. You’ll forgive me if I overstated my case.”
“Isn’t it better to be a character of your own creation,” he said, “than some shadow of yourself falsely and insufficiently imagined?”
“I’ll take everything I can get, thank you,” said Marjorie. “And I’ll not forgive you for finding me insufficiently imaginable.”
Her self-deprecation tired him and he walked along with her without further comment. She too was silent briefly, complainingly silent.
“With a view like this,” Terman said, “I’m surprised you ever stay indoors.”
“Max hates nature,” she whispered. “He’s supposed to be so visual and all that but I don’t believe he ever actuallly looks outside himself.”
“That’s my story too,” he said. “The only things I ever look at are inside my head.”
“I don’t believe a word of it,” she said. “I think you’ll say anything to make an effect if you don’t mind my saying so. Are you uncomfortable being alone with me? You’ve been unnaturally quiet, haven’t you?” She had an abrupt tentative walk as if not all the parts of her body were agreed on the same destination.
“I’m looking at the sights,” he said, avoiding her eyes. “I try not to disappoint.”
“The sights, is that it?” She laughed loudly, too loudly. He could feel her unacknowledged complaint rising to the surface, making ready to join them in the open air, could feel it in the edginess she generated, could feel it in the novelistic view of her his imagination allowed.