Clemmie (34 page)

The airconditioning had been installed the previous week. Clemmie felt headachy and out of sorts. She described it as ‘grismal.’ She lay on the couch by the windows
in sheer nightgown and bed jacket, propped on pillows. In mid-morning he had gone out into the rain and found her the sort of novel she had requested. “Something full of bosoms and sword play and naval broadsides, honey.”

She would read for a time, and then watch the storms. He stood by the couch and looked out the window. She was watching a storm. He looked down at her. Her face was turned away. He could see the curve of her cheek, the long dark lashes, a tiny edge of the blue pigmentation of one eye. Ever since Friday evening when he had returned to her, ever since those first hours of reunion, she had seemed curiously remote and restless. She had been triumphantly happy when he had come back to her. And she had made him repeat, over and over, that he was going to divorce Maura.

She turned and looked up at him. “I would like more tea.”

“Coming up.”

“And see if you can keep it out of the saucer this time, dear.”

“Want an aspirin with it?”

“Not this time.”

She was reading again when he took the tea to her. She didn’t look up and he put it on the small table he had moved over near the couch.

“Book any good?”

“What? It’s all right. The heroine is a nympho and the hero obviously has satyriasis, so they’re beautifully matched.”

She moved her legs with obvious reluctance when he sat on the corner of the couch. He watched her read, watched the movements of the pupils of her eyes. They took three jumps across each line. She nibbled at the skin at the corners of her nails.

After ten minutes she slapped the book shut, dropped it onto the floor and looked at him with irritable impatience. “Are you just going to sit and stare? Can’t you think of anything to do?”

“I didn’t know I was bothering you.”

“The way you keep mousing around bothers me. When are you going to take your trip?”

“You’ve asked me that forty times.”

“Then that would make this the forty-first time, wouldn’t it?”

“The flight leaves New York on the twenty-sixth. That’s a week from today. I get back to New York on Saturday. And your father bought the ticket.”

“You didn’t have to say that.”

“I wanted to make sure you had all the information.”

She gnawed her thumb knuckle for a few moments while she watched him. The cool intensity of her stare made him uncomfortable. There was no friendliness in it.

“I’ve decided you shouldn’t go without warning, Craig.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your tactics are wrong. We’ll do it my way. You are going to cable her and tell her when you are going to arrive in London and tell her you want to speak to her on a matter of importance. Make it clear she isn’t to bring the children. You’re too soft-headed to handle this thing up there in that Long Melford place, with the children whimpering around and Maura beating her breast. You’ve got to meet her on neutral ground. I won’t have it any other way.”

He wanted to do it his way. But he thought ahead to the inevitable scene. It was easier to let her win the small victories.

“Whatever you say, dear.”

“Whatever you say, dear,” she said, mimicking him. “Then write the cable, will you?”

“Isn’t it a little soon?”

“
WRITE
THE
CABLE
! There is paper in the table drawer over there. And let me see it. Write it and send it and let her stew for a week. She’ll think too much. She’ll be off balance, and a hell of a lot easier for you to handle.”

He wrote the cable. She picked up her book again. She approved of the third draft, changing it in only one respect to make it read a ‘matter of great importance.’

“Phone it in, dear.”

“Now?”

“No, for God’s sake. Wait until midnight.”

“Why are you getting so upset?”

“I’m tired of waiting for this thing to be over.”

As he phoned it in he was looking toward her. She
watched him with a curious intentness. When he hung up she picked up her book again. He roamed the room, got himself a glass of water, wandered back to the couch.

“Heat up the tea?”

Again the book slapped shut. “I cannot stand you dithering around this way. You are really getting on my nerves. Why don’t you go to your house for a while?”

“You’re certainly in an ugly mood, Clemmie.”

“I feel lousy. You make me feel worse. Just get out.”

He shrugged. He was at the door when she said, “Craig?”

“Yes.”

“Come back here.”

He went back to the couch. She held her arms up to him. “You have to kiss me before you go. No, not like that. There! I’m sorry I’m cross. But, darling, please don’t let me get bored. Don’t ever let me get bored. Promise.”

“I won’t.”

“Come back tomorrow, dear. At noon. I’ll be in a better mood then.”

“All right, dear.”

He went back the next day at noon. Her mood was worse. She was like something caged. She was obviously avid for a quarrel. He delayed it as long as he could. They made up after the first quarrel, and then she grew sullen and the second quarrel was worse. At its peak she walked out, slamming the door behind her. She didn’t come back until ten at night. She was quite simply and helplessly drunk. Her lipstick was smeared and her blouse was torn, and he could get no coherent information out of her. He slept on the couch. She had a bad hangover on Wednesday morning, but she seemed contrite and more agreeable. She claimed to have blacked out the previous evening. She said she had no idea how she had torn her blouse or smeared her lipstick, but he was almost certain she was lying. And he did not care to press the point. It was easier to accept the lie than to precipitate the quarrel.

On Wednesday afternoon they went for a ride in the Austin-Healey. She drove. The further she drove the more erratic and reckless her driving became. He knew she was trying to make him object, and he swore that he wouldn’t. But when she lost control on a curve at ninety, and barely regained it in time, he became angry.

“What the hell are you trying to prove? For God’s sake, take it easy!”

And from then on she drove the little car at thirty-five miles an hour, refusing to speak to him.

On Thursday morning he went in to see Harvey Tolle. They discussed the draft of the contract Tolle had prepared. A few minor changes were made. Craig said he would come in and sign it on Friday. Tolle was precise and not friendly. He saw Chet Burney in the hall as he left. Burney looked startled, seemed about to speak and then turned away.

When he returned to the studio apartment at noon, Clemmie was out. She had not said anything about going out. He felt a dulled annoyance with her, not vital enough to be classified as anger. He made himself a sandwich, drank a bottle of beer, put on some records and tried to read. The rasp of the atonal music annoyed him, and he could not lose himself in what he was trying to read.

He wandered restlessly and aimlessly around the silent apartment. Everything was going to be fine after his trip, after the remarriage. He’d managed to land on his feet. Clemmie was being sulky and difficult because of the strain they were both under. When it was over she would be gay and loving again.

He went into her room and looked at her racked clothes and tried to remember what she had worn at this time and that. There was a fragrant pathos about her empty clothing, a small-girl arrogance and vulnerability.

It was after four in the afternoon when he heard her slow step on the steel stairs. He opened the door for her. She gave him a remote look which he could not understand, and said, “Are you still here?” as she brushed by him.

“Where did you think I’d go? You didn’t say you were going out.”

She went over and sat on the couch in front of the big window. “How do I know where you’d go? And I didn’t say I was going out. Do I have to? Why don’t you get some little slips made out? Then I can have them signed when I want to go out. And you can file them or something.”

“Where did you go?”

She looked at him without special interest. She yawned, making no effort to cover her mouth. He saw the even teeth, the up-curl of pink tongue. “Out,” she said. She kicked her shoes off.

He looked at her and wondered why he had not identified her expression and her manner more quickly. He had seen her look that way too many times to be mistaken. He had caused her to look that way too many times. It was her sated look, a heaviness that came over her after a prolonged act of love. When he recognized it, unmistakably, he felt his heart twist in a cruel and sudden way.

“Don’t I deserve more than that?”

“Just what do you deserve, dear Craig? Maybe you could stop looking like a male Joan of Arc. If you tried hard. Somebody called up. I went out. I went out to lunch. I came back.”

“Who were you with?”

She yawned again, and it squeezed her eyes shut and made her shudder. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Craig! Will you please drop it?”

“I don’t like this. I don’t like what’s happening.”

She looked at him in mock surprise, arch and ironic. “You don’t like what’s happening! Gracious!” Her eyes hardened. “Maybe you need a guide book. Maybe you can memorize the instructions in the back. You don’t own me and you never will own me. And I refuse, at any time, to permit you to bore me. So stop being so incredibly middle-class, and possessive.”

“Who were you with?”

“An old friend. Go to hell, Fitz. Kindly go to hell.”

“What are you trying to do to us, Clemmie?”

“I’m getting very bored with that question. My God, it will be a relief to have you gone for a few days. Why don’t you go today instead of Monday. Daddy can fix the reservations. He’s very matey with some kind of wheel at BOAC.”

“Why have you changed?”

“I haven’t changed. I haven’t changed a bit. This is Clemmie, remember? Clemmie never changes. Damn it, stop picking at me. You’ve fallen into a feather bed, haven’t you? You’ve been suitably and quite extravagantly purchased, darling, because it has been decided that Clemmie needs a husband. I’m going along with the gag.
But I will
not
be nagged and questioned and chained to the bed post.”

He looked at her for a long time. “Clemmie never changes,” he said. “I should have understood that.”

“Are you getting a little brighter, possibly?”

“Possibly. I was something you couldn’t have. So that was your motivation. Not love. A sort of emotional voracity. I had to be devoured. You despise men. You’ve been faking all along, faking all of it. You had to win. You had to turn me into something entirely gutless, and as soon as you’d won on every last count, then you lost interest.”

She stretched and leaned back and smiled at him. “Parlor psychiatry is such a pretentious game, honey. You see, I’ve heard this song before. Always with the same kind of indignation. But usually they bring up the analogy of the spider that eats her mate. You didn’t happen to think of that, did you?”

“I would have.”

“Of course, because your thinking is trite. But you make it all so dramatic. It isn’t that earth-shaking. It’s time I was married. And you’ll do nicely. You can have a lovely time being Clemmie’s husband. But you won’t own me. If I want to go out, I’ll go out. And if I want to go on a trip, I’ll go on a trip alone. You’ll have no complaint coming, and no complaint to make. And you’re going to try in every way you can to keep me from being bored, because you are going to learn that when I’m bored, I’m not pleasant to you. That will be a very simple conditioned reflex for you to acquire. And we will live precisely the way
I
want us to live, and there will never be any complaints because you never had it so good. And if, from time to time, you happen to feel any cute little horns sprouting, it’s because you’ve been boring and stuffy and tiresome. As you have the last few days.”

“Are you trying to admit what you did this afternoon?”

She got up quickly and walked over to him and stood with her hands on her hips, her face tilted up. “Now, you see, you’ve made me angry, dear, and that’s another thing. That’s a thing to be especially avoided. You’ll have to learn that. Now I want you to think very very carefully. Think of all the aspects of it before you answer. Decide if you want to ask me any more questions about this afternoon.
Because, if you do, I will give you the most God-damned detailed report you ever heard. And, if you don’t ask me, I will tell you nothing, and you will feel a lot better about the whole thing, I guarantee. Well?”

He looked down at her, into pale eyes. Looked at a cold and ruthless strength. He moistened his lips and looked away and said, “No more questions.”

She patted his cheek lightly and went back to the couch. “That’s a good sensible man, darling. You learn very quickly, don’t you?”

“I guess so,” he said dully. He felt as though he had been beaten with clubs.

She took her nylon stockings off, peeling them down her slim muscular legs. “Gome here, dear,” she said.

He went over to the couch. He thought she was looking at him most oddly. She handed him the stockings and he took them and looked at her, confused.

“Be a dear and rinse them out, will you?”

“What?”

“Rinse them out. It’s very easy. There’s a bottle of liquid detergent on the second shelf in the bathroom closet. Use a couple of drops in warm water. Squeeze them gently. Then rinse in clear warm water and hang them over the edge of the shower stall. Then you can make us a lovely drink.”

He looked into the implacable eyes, and turned and went into the bathroom. He washed the nylons. He ran more water into the sink and started to rinse them.

And quite suddenly, and without warning, he saw himself. He looked down upon himself from a great height, and saw a worn and baffled man doing the work of a personal maid for a dark and handsome and vicious girl. He saw his bowed and obedient back. Captive creature. All the routes of escape had been so carefully nailed shut.

All routes but one.

He straightened slowly until he stood tall, his shoulders square. Tears of anger filled his eyes, rolled down his cheeks. He went out into the big room, the soaked ball of stockings in his hand. As she turned toward him, he hurled them at her with all his strength. It was a silly and petty gesture, but the stockings, heavy with water, struck her face with an oddly satisfying whacking sound and clung
there for a moment and fell into her lap, and he wanted to laugh at how wide her eyes were, how wide and how shocked.