Part 54 (1/2)

I burst in insistently: ”What do you mean Enoch's in Was.h.i.+ngton?”

”They've started those hearings.” But this was a surrender to despair: William's son, I saw, did not care to speak to me. Astonishment victimized him as it did not victimize his fiancee. She readily adapted to perplexities and surprises. Like Tilbeck (how quick and strange the parallel!), she took them for natural forces, and took herself for the same. She appeared to love to be confounded, and to confound. But William's son was a disillusioned moralizer. It had not yet settled in him that I was there. He had expected n.o.body. He dealt badly with chimeras, wrong turnings, breakages. Abruptly he threw out at me: ”They got them going extra early.”

”The hearings? Why?” I demanded.

”Oh don't start talking politics, it's such a bother.” Stefanie allowed herself to slip into a shadowed hollow in the sand. Her stretching rubescent arm found a ledge of motor and she leaned deliciously, rubbing a powder of rust into the pocket crease of her elbow; henna glowed on henna; the curve of her wrist yearned downward like a rosy swan. ”Look, I didn't come all this way in that d.a.m.n s.h.i.+p just to listen to politics.”

But Mrs. Purse was fascinated. She was fascinated by Stefanie, who seemed stuffed with vindications. ”That's a handsome little craft you've got there,” she said placatingly. *Twenty-footer?”

”I don't know.”

”You measure fore to aft on a straight line parallel to the center line, excluding sheer. Don't count bowsprits or b.u.mpkins. Looks to me like a twenty-footer. I see you don't have any sidelights on 'er. Not required to, probably, under twenty-six.” A joyous cordiality lit her.

”That's man's talk,” Stefanie said disgustedly, ”and if you ask me it's just a bother. That s.h.i.+p's an engagement present from my father and that's all I have to know about it. He didn't say I'd have to join the d.a.m.n Navy to ride in it. I hate boat-talk like that even worse than politics.”

Mrs. Purse reflected on the collapse of her comradeliness. ”That's your loss, dear, if you don't want to gain something out of a Purse. From the way she sounded coming in I'd say she needs a bit of a tune-up.”

”That s.h.i.+p's brand new,” Stefanie said, miffed.

”Is it monogrammed?” I asked.

”Monogrammed? Well for Pete's sake you don't monogram a s.h.i.+p.”

”Boat!” Mrs. Purse cried. ”Boat, not s.h.i.+p.”

”You don't monogram a broom either. Engagement present, is he that rich?” I said, mimicking a memory.

”Who?”

”Your father.”

”Oh-” A bruise of recognition swelled her mouth. ”You mean about that business at your bon voyage thing. What I said that time? You still mad about that? I always have to ask how rich people are. My fiance”-untypically she mocked the word-”doesn't think it's polite. William thinks I get it from my mother, it's all because my mother didn't go to Miss Lamb's or Miss Jewett's. Well for goodness' sake she couldn't, she was in California. I mean-even William says Miss Jewett's is full of nouveaus nowadays anyhow, and he doesn't send his kids there, so how come he blames my mother for never having gone? I mean if he wouldn't send his own kids? I mean look at Nanette-”

”Oh G.o.d. Stef,” William's son groaned. ”Cut it out, will you?”

”She's mad because I once asked her how rich she was. Well I know your father's always telling me I have this tendency to a.s.sess money-value, not that it's so bad if I do. If you ask me so does he. The only difference is I do it out loud.”

The pods of Mrs. Purse's eyelids split wide. ”Obviously no one here's ever been in want of a fat purse,” and punched the jolly flesh of her padded jowl ”I'd say three thousand, thirty-five-hundred for that little job?” she guessed, gliding her tongue toward the gold-brown of the cabin. ”Though no one can match Mr. T. for generosity-” Did she hope someone would make her a gift of the boat then and there? She had a humorous afterthought: ”A terrible lot of fathers in this conversation-I wish I had a penny in my purse for every one of 'em! Including,” she added, ”your stepfather. I didn't know you had a stepfather, what with your mother pa.s.sed away-”

”Her mother?” Stefanie said.

”She's dead.”

”Her mother's not dead.”

”Hm,” said Mrs. Purse, unfazed by resurrection. ”I'm glad to hear it.”

I burnt my s.h.i.+ps. (s.h.i.+ps, not boats.) ”And Tilbeck lives off her,” I told her for no reason other than danger.

She did not grasp this.

”He doesn't have any money of his own. It's all hers. If he gets Harriet Beecher a new dress, she's the one who's bought it.”

”Who's this Tilbeck?” William's son asked finally.

”The caretaker,” I offered, presenting Mrs. Purse with Vindication Number Three.

But it was less welcome than the others. She said heavily, ”That makes sense. Someone employs him to live here? Your mother employs him? That makes sense.” She sighed like a falling tree. ”We were never taken in. Though it'll be a shock to poor Purse. Promises made and so forth. He had hopes. Well, I have to see to my hungover baby,” and made a little distance between us.

”Hopes!” Stefanie said, uncomprehending but only briefly bitter. ”Everybody has hopes some time or other. We had hopes until we got here.” She turned up a pleading palm to William's son. ”Come on, p.u.s.s.yhead, sit with me. Right here. The sand's so nice and warm under my f.a.n.n.y. Quit looking mean, you couldn't know the Marines'd landed.”

But he did not respond. His legs spread with deliberation. I saw the bluish globes of sweat on the breast of his s.h.i.+rt, extending meridians down from his armpits and up from his navel and groin. ”Exactly what're you doing here?” he put it to me.

”Vacationing.”

”Cut it out. You gave up Europe.”

”That's right,” Stefanie accused. ”She gave up Europe.”

He persisted: ”Last time we met you swore you didn't know this place existed. You didn't give up Europe just to come here.”

”Why not?” Mrs. Purse intervened, showing a glint of vengeful little tooth below a fatness of gums. ”Could be she's here for the same reason you are.”

”Oh, not her! n.o.body even dates her! She never looks at anybody! Ovum and Virgin-dead Latins, that's all she likes,” Stefanie blew out; her nape yielded to flatness and she spread her hair among seash.e.l.ls, laughing.

”You haven't seen her look at the caretaker,” Mrs. Purse called back-she had begun to climb away from us. Her words dissolved: ”Wait'll you've seen”-the gossamer tail of the dirigible came sailing out, and it might have been ”Mr. Implausibility” that she smeared across the sky; or might not Perhaps it was only ”Nicholas T.,” with the orphan Gustave unthreaded in air.

”Mr. Generosity!” I yelled up the hill to Circe, spitting malice for malice. ”He gives himself, like so few of us!” She thought me her dark rival in covetousness, not of cash but flesh. Ponderously she gained the earlobe of the slope, then its mound. The sun spattered her out of sight; little by little she faded off.

”Horrible thing, talks like a garage,” Stefanie said. ”What were all those horrible kids before? Bunch of ghosts.”

”Tilbeck salvaged them out of the Automat.”

She t.i.ttered. ”What happens if you put a nickel in that woman?”

”She brings forth,” I said, ”a child, a machine, or a pun on pocketbooks. They're practising Urdu for digging fossils in Pakistan. I've only known them”-this was melancholy- ”one day.”

”What a day!” But she had already given up thinking of my acquaintance with Purses, or its length; she was rejoicing in life and weather. A sudden mood sat her up. ”Did she mean you're in love?” she asked in awe. ”With that what's-his-name-”

”Nick,” I said. ”Nick's his name. The source,” I told William's son, ”of Mrs. Vand's miscellaneous expenditures.”

He took this meditatively. ”You really do know everything,” he said. ”You did right along. That's quite an act you've been putting on.”

”No act. He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”

”For Pete's sake, if it isn't politics it's got to be poetry. I just can't be bothered with that eth stuff,” Stefanie said. ”When even somebody like Euphoria Karp puts in an eth, I tell you they lose me. I go as far as a wilt, but believe me I draw the line at eths.” But she screwed her face to cultural duty, as though all at once reminded that her fiance's tastes required it of her. ”Who wrote that anyway? That eth business you just did?”

”Oh, just some Preacher.” To William's son I said: ”I got it all from your father.”

”What do you mean all?”