Ex-wifePart 29
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Part 29
She said: “Don’t blame me, Patricia . . . may I call you Patricia? I have always heard of you, as that. I held Noel back from Asia . . . but think of the things his careless driving of that automobile has held me from, through nine years. . . . And I’ll try to make it up to him by having a child.”
I said: “I am thinking.” And a most curious idea came . . . and warmed me who had felt for ten minutes, as if nothing in life could warm me again.
And I thought: “Yes—if I can manage it.” (And when in some speakeasy someone who dislikes me says, ‘By the way, Patricia, what happened to your beautiful red-headed boyfriend?’, I shall answer, ‘Oh, didn’t you hear? I gave him the air—and the continent of Asia.’ I shan’t make that answer, though. If I manage this, I shall never tell anyone, except perhaps Lucia . . . and Helena.)
I said: “Why don’t you pack up and go to Asia with Noel? Start life over, with your child?”
She said: “I will show you.” She took the black mask off her face. I looked. There was a sightless red blotch, where there had been contours that men—Noel, no doubt—had ten years ago found desirable to kiss. There was a congealed horror. . . . Whatever of hate, or resentment, I had had against that woman, died. Had I suffered that, what sort of woman would I have been, after?
She covered that twisted red scar that had been half a face. I heard her voice, saying “If you were I, would you travel among strangers, with this?”
I did not pity her, actually. One does not pity fate, when it intervenes between one’s self and what one wanted most of all in the world.
I said, “No” at first “I wouldn’t travel.” Then I thought of Noel . . . who loved the beauty of women, and the beauty of strange places, and I said, “No, but—there are things that you could do.”
“What?” she said. “After the war, I went to various facial surgeons. They could do nothing for me. . . . There was not enough left, on which to re-build.”
Then, suddenly, she began to cry, out of her one violet-blue eye. And I said: “Don’t cry. I am thinking about you—and Noel whom I loved so much. You don’t mind hearing me say that I loved Noel so much.”
She said: “No. He is, in a way, a good man. I don’t exactly remember loving him. I was only nineteen then, you see. But as much as he could be, he was good to me through these years. I have often been bitter—and blamed him. I suppose no one was to blame.”
I thought: “And there are no villains in the piece. I knew that before. If there is a God, among things so badly managed—if there is One, let Him please remember that, in this, I did the best I could. Because of a baby . . . a baby with long dark lashes that curled over his white skin . . . a baby who died long ago . . . and because of Noel who healed everything that had hurt me . . . and who thought me a generous woman, in this I shall do the best I can.”
I said to her: “Noel wants to go to Asia. You go with him. If you stay around here, I don’t promise to keep out of his life. I don’t know that I can. If you go, you have him for all time . . . and he has the work he wants.”
She began to speak. I said: “Wait a minute . . . I have a friend . . . a painter . . . a girl who paints masks . . . theatrical masks, mostly. But she did three for a girl who was going South—a girl with an especially delicate skin that couldn’t stand sunburn—and that girl wore them all the time, outdoors, during the daytime. I’ll get this painter to make some masks for you. They aren’t obvious masks, fifteen feet away. And you can tell people whom you meet travelling that you—hurt—your face recently, and are just wearing a mask until it gets better.”
It was dreadful, to watch what waked in that half of a white, cold face. “Do you mean it?” she said. “Do you mean that I could go and see the Coast, and go on a ship to Japan, and not be pointed out, and have people shudder and turn away? . . . My sister is so tiresome; it would be such relief to see new places. And you don’t think Noel would be ashamed of me?”
(I said to myself, “Since you have to do it, Patricia, do it in the grand manner. Hope that that may be some comfort to you—through all the years when nothing else will be much comfort.)
“Your name is Beatrice, isn’t it?” I said. “I am going to call you Beatrice—if you don’t stand in the way of Noel’s career, he will become very fond of you, I’m sure. And he will love the baby . . . I’m going to take you to see Helena, now. She is the girl who makes the masks. She should get them finished for you in a week or so. Then you could come to town again, to try them on—and if you like, I’ll take you about to various smart wholesale clothing houses—where you can buy quantities of things for travelling.
“You have a lovely figure—and, after the child is born, you can use these things in the East. . . . In a good many places you might find it intriguing to wear a veil, as if you were a Mohammedan woman. Let your yellow hair show, and everyone will find the effect piquant as can be.”
She was shaking with excitement. “You make it seem so real.” She said. “I like you. I thought I should hate you. I think I am sorry . . . that I am taking Noel away from you.”
Years of practice in flippancy were a wall against my back. “Oh, don’t mind that,” I said. “I shall get over it. I have got over a good many things, first and last.”
I telephoned Helena: “I have some rush work for you . . . client’s a friend of mine . . . it’s masks . . . I’ll explain in detail when I see you. . . . May I bring her up, now?”
She said: “Sure. Why does your voice sound so queer? Lucia’s here, visiting. Shall I tell her to wait?”
I said, “For God’s sake, do, Helena. I shan’t be more than fifteen minutes.”
“Come on,” I said to Noel’s wife.
In the taxi, on the way to Helena’s, she said: “Will she have to look at my face?”
“You won’t mind, Beatrice. It’s just as if she were a surgeon. She’ll just want to know the proportions.”
When we climbed the stairs to Helena’s apartment I thought of divers other times I had climbed them—feeling happy, feeling sad, feeling tired. Now, for the moment at least, I felt—nothing.
Lucia was sitting, being very decorative, in a warm brown frock and furs, on the little couch. Helena was finishing a fashion drawing. They both looked at me sharply. I said: “This is Noel’s wife . . . you both have met Noel. . . . He is going to take the Yokohama job I mentioned to you, and Beatrice is going with him. . . . She had an accident, long time ago. . . . And she wants Helena to make her some masks, so that she won’t be embarrassed travelling.”
Lucia said: “Why, that’s a marvellous idea. Helena’s masks are so decorative.”
Helena said: “I should love to make her half a dozen masks . . . blend the skin tones with her gorgeous hair. She has the most beautiful hair I have seen in years.”
Beatrice hesitated a moment, and then took off her hat. Her hair was lovely. She arranged it badly, but I could take her to a hair-dresser next time she came to town.
I walked across the room, and dropped my coat and hat on Helena’s daybed.
“That’s a lovely violet frock you have, Pat,” Lucia said from across the room.
Helena followed me, without being obvious about it. “There’s a bottle of Scotch under the washstand in the bath,” she said, in an undertone. “For God’s sake go pour yourself a couple of drinks. You look as if you were going to faint.”
“What’s Noel’s wife’s first name, Pat?” she asked aloud. “I always call my models by their first names.”
I said, “Beatrice.”
“Beatrice,” said Helena, “I want to make a mould of your face . . . it won’t take long. . . . Have you time?”
“Yes. . . . My train doesn’t leave until eight-thirty.”
“I’ll leave you for five minutes,” I said.
Lucia followed me into the bath. My hands shook, when I began to pour the Scotch. Lucia took the bottle away from me, and poured me a large drink.
She lighted two cigarettes; gave one to me, and said nothing, until I had finished the Scotch.
Then, “You are behaving damn well, Pat, but what is it all about?”
“Noel’s wife is going to present him with a child,” I said. “He has always wanted one. Isn’t it an extraordinary world?”
Lucia put her arms around my shoulders, and for a dreadful instant I clung to her . . . trying not to sob, lest the sobs be heard in the room outside.
“Steady,” Lucia said. I remembered that she, or someone else, had said that to me long ago.
“It’s quite all right,” I said. “Noel and I did manage a year.”
“God,” said Lucia, to the shower bath and Helena’s array of face lotions. “There are certain women, under the present system who should take up professional card playing for a living. They certainly have no luck in love.”
I laughed.
Lucia said: “You are wiser than you were . . . you could hold on, this time, and he’d love you a while and then hate you . . . because you would stand between him and his concept of himself as a decent person . . . I repeat, that you are behaving well.”
I had cold creamed my face. Now I was putting rouge on. I said: “Well, I doubt that it’ll be much satisfaction to me in the years when Noel has Asia to console him . . . I don’t know though. I never tried it before . . . but maybe the only satisfaction in anything, in the end, is the consciousness of having behaved well.”
Lucia said, “The Victorians expressed that as ‘doing one’s duty as one saw it.’”
I said: “Some of the duties we see would just make a Victorian cock-eyed.” I arranged my lipstick, as if I felt the effect important.
“By the way, does Noel know how you’ve settled his destiny between you?”
“Hell, no. Beatrice plans to tell him over the week-end—but I shall tell him, at dinner, tonight.”
Lucia put a little unnecessary powder on her lovely nose.
“Better spend the week-end with Sam and me, Pat.”
“All right,” I said. “Thank you.”
“I must go outside,” she said. “Noel’s wife will begin to suspect a conference. I see why you are doing it, Patricia. Whatever minor hells you and I have visited—that girl’s lived in a major one.”
“I know,” I said.
Lucia kissed me, for perhaps the second time since we had known each other. “Is there anything I can do for you, child, before I go?” she asked.
“Yes, stop at a drug store and telephone Noel. Tell him I’ll meet him at Dante’s at ten for dinner, and that he is not to call for me. I’ll have just time to dress, after I put her on her train.”
Lucia put her hand on the door, and then turned back to me. “Patricia, I mean this seriously. . . . Most things have to come to an end. You know that, by now, as well as I. My candid opinion is that you and Noel might have come to a much worse end than this . . .”
I said: “Thank you, Lucia. I’ll see you for the week-end.” And I wiped powder off my eyebrows.
Helena had been managing Beatrice dextrously. . . . It was an excited, an almost happy, woman that I put on the train.
She chattered. She said: “That Helena girl says she’ll make me masks to wear in sunlight, and rain, and electric light—and moonlight, even. She is most kind . . . I haven’t been so interested in anything in years. . . . And you don’t mind about Noel, do you? I mean, you’ll find a successor to him . . . you are so pretty. Did anyone ever tell you you had a spiritual face?”
I thought: “It’s got spiritual by traversing a good many beds, first and last. . . . No, Noel did that for it, if it is spiritual.”
I said: “There are men for whom one finds substitutes, but not successors. But don’t you worry about that. . . . You think of seeing Fujiyama, you know, the always snow-capped mountain of Japan?”
She said, “I hope you see it one day, yourself.” I didn’t mind—I was the first woman whom she had had a chance to patronize in ten years, probably.
I went home, and dressed, and dined with Noel.
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