Nine Stories Read online

  A dozen or so adults were among the pews, several of them bearing pairs of small-size rubbers, soles up, in their laps. I passed along and sat down in the front row. On the rostrum, seated in three compact rows of auditorium chairs, were about twenty children, mostly girls, ranging in age from about seven to thirteen. At the moment, their choir coach, an enormous woman in tweeds, was advising them to open their mouths wider when they sang. Had anyone, she asked, ever heard of a little dickeybird that dared to sing his charming song without first opening his little beak wide, wide, wide?

  Apparently nobody ever had. She was given a steady, opaque look. She went on to say that she wanted all her children to absorb the meaning of the words they sang, not just mouth them, like silly-billy parrots. She then blew a note on her pitch-pipe, and the children, like so many underage weightlifters, raised their hymnbooks.

  They sang without instrumental accompaniment--or, more accurately in their case, without any interference. Their voices were melodious and unsentimental, almost to the point where a somewhat more denominational man than myself might, without straining, have experienced levitation. A couple of the very youngest children dragged the tempo a trifle, but in a way that only the composer's mother could have found fault with. I had never heard the hymn, but I kept hoping it was one with a dozen or more verses. Listening, I scanned all the children's faces but watched one in particular, that of the child nearest me, on the end seat in the first row. She was about thirteen, with straight ash-blond hair of ear-lobe length, an exquisite forehead, and blase eyes that, I thought, might very possibly have counted the house. Her voice was distinctly separate from the other children's voices, and not just because she was seated nearest me. It had the best upper register, the sweetest-sounding, the surest, and it automatically led the way. The young lady, however, seemed slightly bored with her own singing ability, or perhaps just with the time and place; twice, between verses, I saw her yawn. It was a ladylike yawn, a closed-mouth yawn, but you couldn't miss it; her nostril wings gave her away.

  The instant the hymn ended, the choir coach began to give her lengthy opinion of people who can't keep their feet still and their lips sealed tight during the minister's sermon. I gathered that the singing part of the rehearsal was over, and before the coach's dissonant speaking voice could entirely break the spell the children's singing had cast, I got up and left the church.

  It was raining even harder. I walked down the street and looked through the window of the Red Cross recreation room, but soldiers were standing two and three deep at the coffee counter, and, even through the glass, I could hear ping-pong balls bouncing in another room. I crossed the street and entered a civilian tearoom, which was empty except for a middle-aged waitress, who looked as if she would have preferred a customer with a dry raincoat. I used a coat tree as delicately as possible, and then sat down at a table and ordered tea and cinnamon toast. It was the first time all day that I'd spoken to anyone. I then looked through all my pockets, including my raincoat, and finally found a couple of stale letters to reread, one from my wife, telling me how the service at Schrafft's Eighty-eighth Street had fallen off, and one from my mother-in-law, asking me to please send her some cashmere yarn first chance I got away from <<<camp.>>>

  While I was still on my first cup of tea, the young lady I had been watching and listening to in the choir came into the tearoom. Her hair was soaking wet, and the rims of both ears were showing. She was with a very small boy, unmistakably her brother, whose cap she removed by lifting it off his head with two fingers, as if it were a laboratory specimen. Bringing up the rear was an efficient-looking woman in a limp felt hat--presumably their governess. The choir member, taking off her coat as she walked across the floor, made the table selection--a good one, from my point of view, as it was just eight or ten feet directly in front of me. She and the governess sat down. The small boy, who was about five, wasn't ready to sit down yet. He slid out of and discarded his reefer; then, with the deadpan expression of a born heller, he methodically went about annoying his governess by pushing in and pulling out his chair several times, watching her face. The governess, keeping her voice down, gave him two or three orders to sit down and, in effect, stop the monkey business, but it was only when his sister spoke to him that he came around and applied the small of his back to his chair seat. He immediately picked up his napkin and put it on his head. His sister removed it, opened it, and spread it out on his lap.

  About the time their tea was brought, the choir member caught me staring over at her party. She stared back at me, with those house-counting eyes of hers, then, abruptly, gave me a small, qualified smile. It was oddly radiant, as certain small, qualified smiles sometimes are. I smiled back, much less radiantly, keeping my upper lip down over a coal-black G. I. temporary filling showing between two of my front teeth. The next thing I knew, the young lady was standing, with enviable poise, beside my table. She was wearing a tartan dress--a Campbell tartan, I believe. It seemed to me to be a wonderful dress for a very young girl to be wearing on a rainy, rainy day. <<<I thought Americans despised tea," she said.

  It wasn't the observation of a smart aleck but that of a truth-lover or a statistics-lover.

  I replied that some of us never drank anything but tea. I asked her if she'd care to join me.

  <<<Thank you," she said. <<<Perhaps for just a fraction of a moment.>>>

  I got up and drew a chair for her, the one opposite me, and she sat down on the forward quarter of it, keeping her spine easily and beautifully straight. I went back--almost hurried back--to my own chair, more than willing to hold up my end of a conversation. When I was seated, I couldn't think of anything to say, though. I smiled again, still keeping my coal-black filling under concealment. I remarked that it was certainly a terrible day out.

  <<<Yes; quite," said my guest, in the clear, unmistakable voice of a small-talk detester.

  She placed her fingers flat on the table edge, like someone at a seance, then, almost instantly, closed her hands--her nails were bitten down to the quick. She was wearing a wristwatch, a military-looking one that looked rather like a navigator's chronograph. Its face was much too large for her slender wrist. <<<You were at choir practice," she said matter-of-factly. <<<I saw you.>>>

  I said I certainly had been, and that I had heard her voice singing separately from the others. I said I thought she had a very fine voice.

  She nodded. <<<I know. I'm going to be a professional singer.>>>

  <<<Really? Opera?>>>

  <<<Heavens, no. I'm going to sing jazz on the radio and make heaps of money. Then, when I'm thirty, I shall retire and live on a ranch in Ohio.>>> She touched the top of her soaking-wet head with the flat of her hand. <<<Do you know Ohio?>>> she asked.

  I said I'd been through it on the train a few times but that I didn't really know it. I offered her a piece of cinnamon toast.

  <<<No, thank you," she said. <<<I eat like a bird, actually.>>>

  I bit into a piece of toast myself, and commented that there's some mighty rough country around Ohio. <<<I know. An American I met told me. You're the eleventh American I've met.>>>

  Her governess was now urgently signalling her to return to her own table--in effect, to stop bothering the man. My guest, however, calmly moved her chair an inch or two so that her back broke all possible further communication with the home table. <<<You go to that secret Intelligence school on the hill, don't you?>>> she inquired coolly.

  As security-minded as the next one, I replied that I was visiting Devonshire for my health.

  <<<Really," she said, <<<I wasn't quite bom yesterday, you know.>>>

  I said I'd bet she hadn't been, at that. I drank my tea for a moment. I was getting a trifle posture-conscious and I sat up somewhat straighter in my seat.

  <<<You seem quite intelligent for an American," my guest mused.

  I told her that was a pretty snobbish thing to say, if you thought about it at all, and that I hoped it was unworthy of her.

  She blushed
-automatically conferring on me the social poise I'd been missing. <<<Well.

  Most of the Americans I've seen act like animals. They're forever punching one another about, and insulting everyone, and--You know what one of them did?>>>

  I shook my haad.

  <<<One of them threw an empty whiskey bottle through my aunt's window. Fortunately, the window was open. But does that sound very intelligent to you?>>>

  It didn't especially, but I didn't say so. I said that many soldiers, all over the world, were a long way from home, and that few of them had had many real advantages in life.

  I said I'd thought that most people could figure that out for themselves.

  <<<Possibly," said my guest, without conviction. She raised her hand to her wet head again, picked at a few limp filaments of blond hair, trying to cover her exposed ear rims.

  <<<My hair is soaking wet," she said. <<<I look a fright.>>> She looked over at me. <<<I have quite wavy hair when it's dry.>>>

  <<<I can see that, I can see you have.>>>

  <<<Not actually curly, but quite wavy," she said. <<<Are you married?>>>

  I said I was.

  She nodded. <<<Are you very deeply in love with your wife? Or am I being too personal?>>>

  I said that when she was, I'd speak up.

  She put her hands and wrists farther forward on the table, and I remember wanting to do something about that enormousfaced wristwatch she was wearing--perhaps suggest that she try wearing it around her waist.

  <<<Usually, I'm not terribly gregarious," she said, and looked over at me to see if I knew the meaning of the word. I didn't give her a sign, though, one way or the other. <<<I purely came over because I thought you looked extremely lonely. You have an extremely sensitive face.>>>

  I said she was right, that I had been feeling lonely, and that I was very glad she'd come over.

  <<<I'm training myself to be more compassionate. My aunt says I'm a terribly cold person," she said and felt the top of her head again. <<<I live with my aunt. She's an extremely kind person. Since the death of my mother, she's done everything within her power to make Charles and me feel adjusted.>>>

  <<<I'm glad.>>>

  <<<Mother was an extremely intelligent person. Quite sensuous, in many ways.>>> She looked at me with a kind of fresh acuteness. <<<Do you find me terribly cold?>>>

  I told her absolutely not--very much to the contrary, in fact. I told her my name and asked for hers. She hesitated. <<<My first name is Esme. I don't think I shall tell you my full name, for the moment. I have a title and you may just be impressed by titles.

  Americans are, you know.>>>

  I said I didn't think I would be, but that it might be a good idea, at that, to hold on to the title for a while.

  Just then, I felt someone's warm breath on the back of my neck. I turned around and just missed brushing noses with Esme's small brother. Ignoring me, he addressed his sister in a piercing treble: <<<Miss Megley said you must come and finish your tea!>>> His message delivered, he retired to the chair between his sister and me, on my right. I regarded him with high interest. He was looking very splendid in brown Shetland shorts, a navy-blue jersey, white shirt, and striped necktie. He gazed back at me with immense green eyes. <<<Why do people in films kiss sideways?>>> he demanded.

  <<<Sideways?>>> I said. It was a problem that had baffled me in my childhood. I said I guessed it was because actors' noses are too big for kissing anyone head on.

  <<<His name is Charles," Esme said. <<<He's extremely brilliant for his age.>>>

  <<<He certainly has green eyes. Haven't you, Charles?>>> Charles gave me the fishy look my question deserved, then wriggled downward and forward in his chair till all of his body was under the table except his head, which he left, wrestler's-bridge style, on the chair seat. <<<They're orange," he said in a strained voice, addressing the ceiling. He picked up a comer of the tablecloth and put it over his handsome, deadpan little face.

  <<<Sometimes he's brilliant and sometimes he's not," Esme said. <<<Charles, do sit up!>>>

  Charles stayed right where he was. He seemed to be holding his breath.

  <<<He misses our father very much. He was s-l-a-i-n in North Africa.>>>

  I expressed regret to hear it.

  Esme nodded. <<<Father adored him.>>> She bit reflectively at the cuticle of her thumb.

  <<<He looks very much like my mother--Charles, I mean. I look exactly like my father.>>>

  She went on biting at her cuticle. <<<My mother was quite a passionate woman. She was an extrovert. Father was an introvert. They were quite well mated, though, in a superficial way. To be quite candid, Father really needed more of an intellectual companion than Mother was. He was an extremely gifted genius.>>>

  I waited, receptively, for further information, but none came. I looked down at Charles, who was now resting the side of his face on his chair seat. When he saw that I was looking at him, he closed his eyes, sleepily, angelically, then stuck out his tongue--an appendage of startling length--and gave out what in my country would have been a glorious tribute to a myopic baseball umpire. It fairly shook the tearoom.

  <<<Stop that," Esme said, clearly unshaken. <<<He saw an American do it in a fish-andchips queue, and now he does it whenever he's bored. Just stop it, now, or I shall send you directly to Miss Megley.>>>

  Charles opened his enormous eyes, as sign that he'd heard his sister's threat, but otherwise didn't look especially alerted. He closed his eyes again, and continued to rest the side of his face on the chair seat.

  I mentioned that maybe he ought to save it--meaning the Bronx cheer--till he started using his title regularly. That is, if he had a title, too.

  Esme gave me a long, faintly clinical look. <<<You have a dry sense of humor, haven't you?>>> she said--wistfully. <<<Father said I have no sense of humor at all. He said I was unequipped to meet life because I have no sense of humor.>>>

  Watching her, I lit a cigarette and said I didn't think a sense of humor was of any use in a real pinch.

  <<<Father said it was.>>>

  This was a statement of faith, not a contradiction, and I quickly switched horses. I nodded and said her father had probably taken the long view, while I was taking the short (whatever that meant).

  <<<Charles misses him exceedingly," Esme said, after a moment. <<<He was an exceedingly lovable man. He was extremely handsome, too. Not that one's appearance matters greatly, but he was. He had terribly penetrating eyes, for a man who was intransically kind.>>>

  I nodded. I said I imagined her father had had quite an extraordinary vocabulary.

  <<<Oh, yes; quite," said Esme. <<<He was an archivist--amateur, of course.>>>

  At that point, I felt an importunate tap, almost a punch, on my upper arm, from Charles' direction. I turned to him. He was sitting in a fairly normal position in his chair now, except that he had one knee tucked under him. <<<What did one wall say to the other wall?>>> he asked shrilly. <<<It's a riddle!>>>

  I rolled my eyes reflectively ceilingward and repeated the question aloud. Then I looked at Charles with a stumped expression and said I gave up.

  <<<Meet you at the corner!>>> came the punch line, at top volume.

  It went over biggest with Charles himself. It struck him as unbearably funny. In fact, Esme had to come around and pound him on the back, as if treating him for a coughing spell. <<<Now, stop that," she said. She went back to her own seat. <<<He tells that same riddle to everyone he meets and has a fit every single time. Usually he drools when he laughs. Now, just stop, please.>>>

  <<<It's one of the best riddles I've heard, though," I said, watching Charles, who was very gradually coming out of it. In response to this compliment, he sank considerably lower in his chair and again masked his face up to the eyes with a corner of the tablecloth. He then looked at me with his exposed eyes, which were full of slowly subsiding mirth and the pride of someone who knows a really good riddle or two.

  <<<May I inquire how you were employed before entering the Army?>

  I said I hadn't been employed at all, that I'd only been out of college a year but that I like to think of myself as a professional short-story writer.

  She nodded politely. <<<Published?>>> she asked.

  It was a familiar but always touchy question, and one that I didn't answer just one, two, three. I started to explain how most editors in America were a bunch-- <<<My father wrote beautifully," Esme interrupted. <<<I'm saving a number of his letters for posterity.>>>

  I said that sounded like a very good idea. I happened to be looking at her enormousfaced, chronographic-looking wristwatch again. I asked if it had belonged to her father.

  She looked down at her wrist solemnly. <<<Yes, it did," she said. <<<He gave it to me just before Charles and I were evacuated.>>> Self-consciously, she took her hands off the table, saying, <<<Purely as a momento, of course.>>> She guided the conversation in a different direction. <<<I'd be extremely flattered if you'd write a story exclusively for me sometime.

  I'm an avid reader.>>>

  I told her I certainly would, if I could. I said that I wasn't terribly prolific.

  <<<It doesn't have to be terribly prolific! Just so that it isn't childish and silly.>>> She reflected. <<<I prefer stories about squalor.>>>

  <<<About what?>>> I said, leaning forward. <<<Squalor. I'm extremely interested in squalor.>>>

  I was about to press her for more details, but I felt Charles pinching me, hard, on my arm. I turned to him, wincing slightly. He was standing right next to me. <<<What did one wall say to the other wall?>>> he asked, not unfamiliarly.

  <<<You asked him that," Esme said. <<<Now, stop it.>>>

  Ignoring his sister, and stepping up on one of my feet, Charles repeated the key question. I noticed that his necktie knot wasn't adjusted properly. I slid it up into place, then, looking him straight in the eye, suggested, <<<Meetcha at the corner?>>>

  The instant I'd said it, I wished I hadn't. Charles' mouth fell open. I felt as if I'd struck it open. He stepped down off my foot and, with white-hot dignity, walked over to his own table, without looking back.

  <<<He's furious," Esme said. <<<He has a violent temper. My mother had a propensity to spoil him. My father was the only one who didn't spoil him.>