The Young Lions

CHAPTER FIVE

THE radio dominated everything. Even though it was sunny outside and the Pennsylvania hills were green and crisp in the fair June weather, and even though they kept saying the same thing over and over again in the little static-tortured machine, Michael found himself sitting indoors all day in the wallpapered living-room with its spindly Colonial furniture. There were newspapers all around his chair. From time to time Laura came in and sighed in loud martyrdom as she bent and ostentatiously picked them up and arranged them in a neat pile. But Michael hardly paid any attention to her. He sat hunched over the machine, twisting the dial, hearing the variety of voices, mellow and ingratiating and theatrical, saying over and over again, "Buy Lifebuoy to avoid unpleasant body odours," and "Two teaspoonsful in a glass before breakfast will keep you regular," and "It is rumoured that Paris will not be defended. The German High Command is maintaining silence about the position of its spearheading columns against crumbling French resistance."

"We promised Tony," Laura was standing at the door, speaking in a patient voice, "that we'd have some badminton this afternoon."

Michael continued to sit silently hunched up, close to the radio.

"Michael!" Laura said loudly.

"Yes?" He didn't look round.

"Badminton," Laura said. "Tony."

"What about it?" Michael asked, his forehead wrinkled with the effort of trying to listen to her and the radio announcer at the same time.

"The net isn't up."

"I'll put it up later."

"How much later?"

"For God's sake, Laura!" Michael shouted. "I said I'd do it later."

"I'm getting tired," Laura said coldly, tears coming to her eyes, "of your doing everything later."

"Will you stop that?"

"Stop shouting at me." The tears started to roll down her cheeks and Michael felt sorry for her. They had planned this time in the country as a vacation during which, without telling each other, they had hoped to recapture some of the old friendship and affection they had lost in the disordered years since their marriage. Laura's contract had run out in Hollywood, and they hadn't taken up her option and, inexplicably, she couldn't get another job. She had been quite good about it, gay and uncomplaining, but Michael knew how defeated she felt and he resolved to be tender with her during the month in the country in the house that a friend had loaned them. They'd been there a week, but it had been a terrible week. Michael had sat listening to the radio all day and hadn't been able to sleep at night. He had paced the floor downstairs and sat up reading and had gloomily stalked around, red-eyed and weary, neglecting to shave, neglecting to help Laura with the work in keeping the pretty little house in order.

"Forgive me, darling," he said, and took her in his arms and kissed her. She smiled, although she was still crying.

"I hate to be a pest," Laura said, "but some things have to be done, you know."

"Of course," Michael said.

Laura laughed. "Now you're being noble. I love it when you're noble."

Michael laughed too, but he couldn't help feeling a little annoyed.

"Now you've got to pay up," Laura said, under his chin, "for being nice to me."

"What now?" Michael asked.

"Don't sound resigned," Laura said. "I hate it when you sound resigned."

Michael controlled himself purposefully and listened to his own voice being polite and pleasant as he spoke. "What do you want me to do?"

"First," Laura said, "turn off that damned radio." Michael started to protest, but thought better of it. The announcer was saying, "The situation here is still confused, but the British seem to have evacuated the greater portion of their Army safely, and it is expected that Weygand's counter-offensive will soon develop…"

"Michael, darling," Laura said warningly.

Michael turned the radio off.

"There," he said, "anything for you."

"Thanks," said Laura. Her eyes were dry and bright and smiling now. "Now, one more thing."

"What's that?"

"Shave."

Michael sighed and ran his hand over the little stubble on his jaw.

"Do I really need it?" he asked.

"You look as though you just came out of a Third Avenue flop-house."

"You've convinced me," Michael said.

"You'll feel better, too," Laura said, picking up the newspapers around Michael's chair.

"Sure," said Michael. Almost automatically, he sidled over towards the radio and put his hand down to the dials.

"Not for an hour," Laura pleaded, holding her hand over the dials. "One hour. It's driving me crazy. The same thing over and over."

"Laura, darling," Michael said, "it's the most important week of our lives."

"Still," she said, with crisp logic, "it doesn't help to drive ourselves out of our minds. That won't help the French, will it? And when you come down, darling, put up the badminton net."

Michael shrugged. "Okay," he said. Laura kissed his cheek lightly and ran her fingers through his hair. He started upstairs.

While he was shaving he heard some of the guests arrive. The voices floated up from the garden, lost from time to time in the sound of the water running in the basin. They were women's voices and they sounded musical and soft at this distance. Laura had invited two of the teachers from a near-by girls' school to which she had gone when she was fourteen. They both were Frenchwomen who had taught her and had been good to her. As Michael half-listened to the rising and falling voices, he couldn't help feeling how much more pleasant Frenchwomen sounded than most of the American women he knew. There was something modest and artful in the tone of the voices and the spacing of the words that fell much more agreeably on the ear than the self-assured clangour of American female speech. That, he thought, grinning, is an observation I will not dare make aloud.

He cut himself and felt annoyed and jangled again as he saw the small, persistent crimson seeping under his jaw.

From the large tree at the end of the garden came the cawing of crows. A colony of them had set up their nests there, and from time to time they clacked away, drowning the other and more gentle noises of the countryside.

He went downstairs and stole quietly into the living-room and turned the radio on, low. In a moment it warmed up, but for once there was only music. A woman's voice was singing, "I got plenty of nuthin' and nuthin's plenty for me," on one station. A military band was playing the overture from Tannhauser on the other station. It was a weak little radio and it was only possible to get two stations on it. Michael turned the radio off and went out into the garden to meet the guests.

Johnson was there, in a yellow tennis shirt with brown bars across it. He had brought along a tall, pretty girl, with a serious, intelligent face, and automatically, as Michael shook her hand, he wondered where Mrs Johnson was this summer afternoon.

"Miss Margaret Freemantle…" Laura was conducting the introductions. Miss Freemantle smiled slowly, and Michael felt himself thinking bitterly: How the hell does Johnson get a girl as pretty as that?

Michael shook hands with the two Frenchwomen. They were sisters, both of them frail, and dressed in black, quite smartly, in a style that you felt must have been very fashionable some years before, although you could not remember exactly when. They were both in their fifties, with upswept lacquered hair and soft, pale complexions and amazing legs, slender and finely shaped. They had delicate, perfect manners, and long years of teaching young girls had given them an air of remote patience with the world. They always seemed to Michael like exquisitely mannered visitors from the nineteenth century, polite, detached, but secretly disapproving of the time and the country in which they found themselves. Today, despite the disciplined evidences of preparation for the afternoon, the clever rouging and eye-shadow, there was a wan, drawn look on their faces, and their attention seemed to wander, even in the middle of a conversation.

Michael looked at them obliquely, suddenly realizing what it must be like to be French today, with the Germans near Paris, and the city hushed listening for the approaching rumble of the guns, and the radio announcers breaking into the jazz programmes and the domestic serials with bulletins from Europe, with the careful American pronunciation of names that were so familiar to them, Rheims, Soissons, the Marne, Compiegne…

If only I was more delicate, Michael thought, if only I had more sense, if I wasn't such a heavy, stupid ox, I would take them aside and talk to them and somehow say the right words that would comfort them. But he knew that if he tried he would be clumsy and would say the wrong thing and embarrass them and make everything worse than it had been. It was something nobody ever thought to teach you. They taught you everything else but tact, humanity, the healing touch.

"… I don't like to say this," Johnson was saying in his fine intelligent, reasonable voice, "but I think the whole thing is a gigantic fake."

"What?" Michael asked stupidly. Johnson was sitting gracefully on the grass, his knees drawn up boyishly, smiling at Miss Freemantle, making an impression on her. Michael could feel himself being annoyed because Johnson seemed to be succeeding in making an impression.

"Conspiracy," Johnson said. "You can't tell me the two greatest armies of the world just collapsed all of a sudden, just like that. It's been arranged."

"Do you mean," Michael asked, "they're handing over Paris to the Germans deliberately?"

"Of course," said Johnson.

"Have you heard anything recent?" the younger Frenchwoman, Miss Boullard, asked softly. "About Paris?"

"No," said Michael, as gently as he could manage. "No news yet."

The two ladies nodded and smiled at him as though he had just presented them with bouquets.

"It'll fall," Johnson said. "Take my word for it."

Why the hell, Michael thought irritably, do we have this man here?

"The deal is on," said Johnson. "This is camouflage for the sake of the people of England and France. The Germans'll move into London in two weeks and a month later they'll all attack the Soviet Union." He said this triumphantly and angrily.

"I think you're wrong," Michael said doggedly. "I don't think it's going to happen. Somehow it's going to work out differently."

"How?" Johnson asked.

"I don't know how." Michael felt he must seem silly in Miss Freemantle's eyes and the thought annoyed him, but he persisted. "Somehow."

"A mystic faith," Johnson said derisively, "that Father will take care of everything. The bogy man won't be allowed into the nursery."

"Please," said Laura, "do we have to talk about it? Don't we want to play badminton? Miss Freemantle, do you play badminton?"

"Yes," said Miss Freemantle. Her voice is low and husky, Michael thought, automatically.

"When are people going to wake up?" Johnson demanded.

"When are they going to face the hard facts? There's a deal on to deliver the world. Ethiopia, China, Spain, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland…"

Those names, Michael thought, those grey names. They had been used so often that almost all emotional significance had been drained from them.

"Please," Laura said. "I'm dying to play badminton. Darling…" She touched Michael's arm. "The poles and the net and stuff are on the back porch."

Michael sighed and pushed himself heavily up from the ground. Still, Laura was probably right; it would be better than talking this afternoon.

"I'll help," Miss Freemantle said, standing up and starting after Michael.

"Johnson…" Michael couldn't resist a parting defiant shot.

"Johnson, has the possibility ever occurred to you that you might be wrong?"

"Of course," Johnson said with dignity. "But I'm not wrong now."

"Somewhere," Michael said, "there's got to be a little hope."

Johnson laughed. "Where do you shop for your hope these days?" he asked. "Have you got any to spare?"

"Yes," Michael said.

"What do you hope for?"

"I hope," Michael said, "that America gets into the war and…" He saw the two Frenchwomen staring at him, seriously, tremulously.

"The rackets," Laura said nervously, "are in that green wooden box, Michael…"

"You want Americans to get killed, too, in this swindle," Johnson said derisively. "Is that it?"

"If necessary," Michael said.

"That something new for you," Johnson said. "War-mongering."

"It's the first time I've thought of it," said Michael, coldly, standing over Johnson. "This minute."

"I get it," said Johnson. "A reader of the New York Times. Crazy to save civilization as we know it, and all that."

"Yes," said Michael. "I'm crazy to save civilization as we know it and all that."

"Come on, now," Laura pleaded. "Don't be ugly."

"If you're so, eager," Johnson said, "why don't you just go over and join the British Army? Why wait?"

"Maybe I will," said Michael, "maybe I will."

"Oh, no." Michael turned, surprised. It was Miss Freemantle who had said it, and she was standing now, with her hand over her mouth, as though the words had been surprised out of her.

"Did you want to say something?" Michael asked.

"I… I shouldn't have," the girl said. "I didn't want to interfere, but…" She spoke very earnestly. "You mustn't keep saying we should fight." A female member of the Party, Michael thought heavily; that's where Johnson picked her up. You'd never guess it, though, she was so pretty.

"I suppose," Michael said, "if Russia got into it, you'd change your mind."

"Oh, no," said Miss Freemantle. "It doesn't make any difference." Wrong again, Michael thought, I'm going to stop making these brilliant one-second judgments.

"It doesn't do any good," the girl went on hesitantly. "It never does. And all the young men go off and get killed. All my friends, my cousins… Maybe I'm selfish, but… I hate to hear people talking the way you do. I was in Europe, and that's the way they were talking there. Now, probably, a lot of the boys I knew then, that I used to go dancing with, and on skiing trips… They're probably dead. What for? They just talked and talked, until finally they'd got themselves to a point where the only thing they could do was kill each other. Forgive me," she said, very seriously. "I hadn't meant to shoot my mouth off. It's probably a silly female way of looking at the world…"

"Miss Boullard…" Michael turned to the two Frenchwomen. "As women, what's your position?"

"Oh, Michael!" Laura sounded very irritated.

"Our position…" The younger one spoke, softly, her voice controlled and polite. "I'm afraid we do not have the luxury of choosing our position."

"Michael," Laura said, "for God's sake, go get that stuff."

"Sure." Michael shook his head.

" Roy," Laura said to Johnson, "you shut up, too."

"Yes, Ma'am," said Johnson, smiling. "Should I tell you the latest gossip?"

"Can't wait," said Laura, in a good approximation of a completely light, untroubled, garden-party voice. Michael and Miss Freemantle started out towards the back of the house.

"Josephine's got a new one," Johnson said. "That tall blond boy with the Expression. The movie actor. Moran." Michael stopped when he heard the name and Miss Freemantle nearly bumped into him. "Picked him up at an art gallery, according to her. Weren't you in a picture with him last year, Laura?"

"Yes," Laura said. Michael looked at her appraisingly, trying to see if the expression on her face changed as she talked about Moran. Laura's expression hadn't changed. "He's quite a promising actor," she said. "A little light, but quite intelligent."

You never knew with women, Michael thought, they would lie their way into heaven without the flicker of an eyelash.

"He's coming over here," Johnson said. "Moran. He's up here for the first production of the summer theatre and I invited him over. I hope you don't mind."

"No," said Laura, "of course not." But Michael was watching her closely and he could see, for a fleeting instant, a swift tremor cross her face. Then she turned her head and Michael couldn't tell any more.

Marriage, he thought.

"Mr. John Moran," the younger Miss Boullard said. Her voice was lively and pleased. "Oh, I'm so excited! I think he's so wonderful. So masculine," she said, "such an important thing for an actor."

"Come on, Miss Freemantle, before my wife nags me again," Michael said. "We have work to do."

They walked side by side towards the back of the house. The girl was wearing a fresh perfume, and she walked in an easy, unaffected way that made Michael feel suddenly how young she was.

"When were you in Europe?" he asked. He didn't really care, but he wanted to hear her talk.

"A year ago," she said. "A little more than a year ago."

"How was it?"

"Beautiful," she said. "And terrible. We'll never be able to help them. No matter what we do."

"You agree with Johnson," Michael said. "Is that it?"

"No," she said. "Johnson just repeats what people tell him to say. He hasn't got a thought in his head."

Michael couldn't help smiling to himself, maliciously.

"He's very nice," her voice was rushed a little now and apologetic. Michael thought: Europe has done her a lot of good, she talks so much more softly and agreeably than most American women. "He's very decent and generous and deep down he means so well… But everything's so simple for him. If you've seen Europe at all, it doesn't seem that simple. It's like a person suffering from two diseases. The treatment for one is poison for the other." She spoke modestly and a little hesitantly. "Johnson thinks all you have to do is prescribe fresh air and public nurseries and strong labour unions and the patient will automatically recover," Miss Freemantle went on. "He says I'm confused."

"Everybody who doesn't agree with the Communists," Michael said, "is confused. That's their great strength. They're so sure of themselves. They always know what they want to do. They may be all wrong, but they act."

"I'm not so fond of action," Miss Freemantle said. "I saw a little of it in Austria."

"You're living in the wrong year, lady," Michael said, "you and me, both." They were at the back of the house now and Miss Freemantle picked up the net and rackets while Michael hoisted the two poles to his shoulders. They started back to the garden. They walked slowly. Michael felt a tingle of intimacy alone there on the shady side of the house, screened by the rustling tall maples from the rest of the world.

"I have an idea," he said, "for a new political party, to cure all the ills of the world."

"I can't wait to hear," Miss Freemantle said gravely.

"The Party of the Absolute Truth," said Michael. "Every time a question comes up… any question… Munich, what to do with left-handed children, the freedom of Madagascar, the price of theatre tickets in New York… the leaders of the party say exactly what they think on that subject. Instead of the way it is now, when everybody knows that nobody ever says what he means on any subject."

"How big is the membership?"

"One," Michael said. "Me."

"Make it two."

"Joining up?"

"If I may." Margaret grinned at him.

"Delighted," Michael said. "Do you think the party'd work?"

"Not for a minute," she said.

"That's what I think, too," Michael said. "Maybe I'll wait a couple of years."

They were almost at the corner of the house now, and Michael suddenly hated the thought of going out among all those people, turning the girl over to the distant world of guests and hosts and polite conversation.

"Margaret," he said.

"Yes?" She stopped and looked at him.

She knows what I'm going to say, Michael thought. Good.

"Margaret," he said, "may I see you in New York?"

They looked at each other in silence for a moment. She has freckles on her nose, Michael thought.

"Yes," she said.

"I won't say anything else," Michael said softly, "now."

"The telephone book," the girl said. "My name's in the telephone book."

She turned and walked round the corner of the house, in that precise, straight, graceful walk, carrying the net and the rackets, her legs brown and slender under the swaying full skirt. Michael stood there for a moment, trying to make sure his face had fallen back into repose. Then he walked out into the garden after her.

The other guests had come, Tony and Moran and a girl who wore red slacks and a straw hat with a brim nearly two feet wide.

Moran was tall and willowy and had on a dark blue shirt, open at the collar. He was a glowing brown from the sun and his hair fell boyishly over his eye when he smiled and shook hands with Michael. Why the hell can't I look like that? Michael thought dully as he felt the firm, manly grip. Actors, he thought.

"Yes," he heard himself saying, "we've met before. I remember. New Year's Eve. The night Arney did his window act."

Tony looked strange. When Michael introduced him to Miss Freemantle he barely smiled, and he sat all hunched up, as though he were in pain, his face pale and troubled, his lank, dark hair tumbled uneasily on his high forehead. Tony taught French literature at Rutgers. He was an Italian, although his face was paler and more austere than one expects of Italian faces. Michael had gone to school with him and had grown increasingly fond of him through the years. He spoke in a shy, delicate voice, hushed and bookish, as though he were always whispering in a library. He was a good friend of the Boullard sisters, and had tea with them two or three times a week, formal and bilingual, but today they didn't even look at each other.

Michael started to put up one of the poles. He pushed it into the lawn as the girl in the red slacks was saying in her high, fashionable voice, "That hotel is just ghastly. One bathroom to the floor and beds you could use for ship-planking and a lot of idiotic cretonne with hordes, really hordes of bugs. And the prices!"

Michael looked at Margaret and shook his head in a loose, mocking movement, and Margaret smiled briefly at him, then dropped her eyes. Michael glanced at Laura. Laura was staring stonily at him. How the hell does she manage it? Michael thought. Never misses anything. If that talent were only put to some useful purpose.

"You're not doing it right," Laura said; "the tree'll interfere."

"Please," said Michael, "I'm doing this."

"All wrong," said Laura stubbornly.

Michael ignored her and continued working on the pole.

Suddenly the two Misses Boullard stood up, pulling at their gloves, with crisp, identical movements.

"We have had a lovely time," the younger one said. "Thank you very much. We regret, but we have to leave now."

Michael stopped work in surprise. "But you just came," he said.

"It is unfortunate," the younger Miss Boullard said crisply, "but my sister is suffering from a disastrous headache."

The two sisters went from person to person, shaking hands. They didn't shake hands with Tony. They didn't even look at him, but passed him as though he were not there. Tony looked at them with a strange, quivering expression, incongruous and somehow naked.

"Never mind," he said, picking up the old-fashioned straw hat he had carried into the garden with him. "Never mind. You don't have to go. I'll leave."

There was a moment of nervous silence and nobody looked at Tony or the two sisters.

"We have enjoyed meeting you so much," the younger Miss Boullard said coolly to Moran. "We have admired your pictures again and again."

"Thank you," Moran said, boyish and charming. "It's kind of you…"

Actors, Michael thought.

"Stop it!" Tony shouted. His face was white. "For the love of God, Helene, don't behave this way!"

"There is no need," the younger Miss Boullard said, "to see us to the gate. We know the way."

"An explanation is necessary," Tony said, his voice trembling.

"We can't treat our friends this way." He turned to Michael, standing embarrassedly next to the flimsy pole for the badminton net. "It's inconceivable," Tony said. "Two women I've known for ten years. Two supposedly sensible, intelligent women…" The two sisters finally turned and faced Tony, their eyes and mouths frozen in contempt and hatred. "It's the war, this damned war," Tony said. "Helene. Rochelle. Please. Be reasonable. Don't do this to me. I am not entering Paris. I am not killing Frenchmen. I am an American and I love France and I hate Mussolini and I'm your friend…"

"We do not wish to talk to you," the younger Miss Boullard said, "or to any Italians." She took her sister's hand. The two of them bowed slightly to the rest of them, and walked, rustling and elegant in their gloves and garden hats and stiff black dresses, towards the gate at the end of the garden.

The crows were making a lot of noise in the big tree fifty yards away and their cawing struck the ear, harsh and clamorous.

"Come on, Tony," Michael said, "I'm going to give you a drink."

Without a word, with his mouth set in a sunken line, Tony followed Michael into the house. He was still clutching the straw hat with the gaily striped band.

Michael got out two glasses and poured two big shots of whisky. Silently he gave Tony one of the glasses. Outside, the conversation was starting again, and, over the noise of the crows, Michael heard Moran saying, earnestly, "Aren't they wonderful types? Right out of a 1925 French movie." Tony sipped slowly at his drink, holding on to his stiff, oldfashioned straw hat, his eyes far away and sorrowful. Michael wanted to go over to him and embrace him, the way he had seen Tony's brothers embrace each other in times of trouble, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. He turned the radio on and took a long sip of his whisky as the machine warmed up, with a high, irritating crackle.

"You, too, can have lovely white hands," a soft, persuasive voice was saying. Then there was a click on the radio and a sudden dead silence and a new voice spoke, slightly hoarse, trembling a little. "We have just received a special bulletin," the voice said. "It has been announced that the Germans have entered Paris. There has been no resistance and the city has not been harmed. Keep tuned to this station for further news."

An organ, swelling and almost tuneless, took over, playing the sort of music that is described as "light-classical".

Tony sat down and placed his glass on a table. Michael stared at the radio. He had never been to Paris. He had never seemed to find the time or the money to go abroad, but as he squinted at the little veneered box shaking now with the music of the organ and the echo of the hoarse troubled voice, he pictured what it must be like in the French city this afternoon. The broad sunny streets, so familiar to the whole world, the cafes, empty now, he supposed, the flashy, rhetorical monuments of old victories shining in the summer light, the Germans marching rigidly in formation, with the noise of their boots clanging against the closed shutters. The picture was probably wrong, he thought. It was silly, but you never thought of German soldiers in twos or threes, or in anything but stiff, marching phalanxes, like rectangular animals. Maybe they were stealing along the streets timidly, their guns ready, peering at the shut windows, dropping to the sidewalks at every noise.

He looked at Tony. Tony was sitting with his head up, crying. Tony had lived in Paris for two years and again and again he had outlined to Michael what they would do together on vacations there, the little restaurants, the beach on the Marne, the place where they had a superior light wine in carafes on scrubbed wooden tables…

Michael felt the wetness in his own eyes and fought it savagely. Sentimental, he thought, cheap, easy and sentimental. I was never there. It's just another city.

"Michael…" It was Laura's voice. "Michael!" Her voice was insistent and irritating. "Michael!"

Michael finished his drink. He looked at Tony, nearly said something to him, then thought better of it, and left him sitting there. Michael walked slowly out into the garden. Johnson and Moran and Moran's girl and Miss Freemantle were sitting around stiffly, and you could tell the conversation was all uphill. Michael wished they would go home.

"Michael, darling," Laura came over to him and held his arms lightly, "are we going to play badminton this summer or wait till 1950?" Then, under her breath, privately and harshly for him, "Come on. Act civilized. You have guests. Don't leave the whole thing up to me."

Before Michael could say anything she had turned and was smiling at Johnson.

Michael walked slowly over to the second pole that was lying on the ground. "I don't know if any of you are interested," he said, "but Paris has fallen."

"No!" Moran said. "Incredible!"

Miss Freemantle didn't say anything. Michael saw her clasp her hands and look down on them.

"Inevitable," Johnson said gravely. "Anybody could see it coming."

Michael picked up the second pole and started pushing the sharp end into the ground.

"You're putting it in the wrong place!" Laura's voice was high and irritated. "How many times must I tell you it won't do any good there?" She rushed over to where Michael was standing with the pole and grabbed it from his hands. She had a racket in her hand and it slapped sharply against his arm. He looked at her stupidly, his hands still out, curved as they were when he was holding the pole. She's crying, he thought, surprised; what the hell is she crying about?

"Here! It belongs here!" She was shouting now, and banging the sharp end of the pole hysterically into the ground.

Michael strode over to where she was standing and grabbed the pole. He didn't know why he was doing it. He just knew he couldn't bear the sight of his wife crazily yelling and slamming the pole into the grass.

"I'm doing this," he said idiotically. "You keep quiet!"

Laura looked at him, her pretty, soft face churned with hatred. She drew back her arm and threw the badminton racket at Michael's head. Michael stared heavily at it as it sailed through the air at him. It seemed to take a long time, arching and flashing against the background of trees and hedge at the end of the garden. He heard a dull, whipping crack, and he saw it drop to his feet before he realized it had hit him over his right eye. The eye began to ache and he could feel blood coming out on his forehead, sticking in his eyebrows. After a moment, some of it dripped down over the eye, warm and opaque. Laura was still standing in the same place, weeping, staring at him, her face still violent and full of hate.

Michael carefully laid the pole down on the grass and turned and walked away. Tony passed him, coming out of the house, but they didn't say anything to each other.

Michael walked into the living-room. The radio was still sending forth the doughy music of the organ. Michael stood against the mantelpiece, staring at his face in the little convex mirror in a gold, heavily worked frame. It distorted his face, making his nose look very long and his forehead and chin receding and pointed. The red splash over his eye seemed small and far away in the mirror. He heard the door open and Laura's footsteps behind him as she came into the room. She went over to the radio and turned it off.

"You know I can't stand organ music!" she said. Her voice was trembling and bitter.

He turned to face her. She stood there in her gay cotton print, pale orange and white, with her midriff showing brown and smooth in the space between the skirt and the halter. She looked very pretty, slender and soft in her fashionable summer dress, like an advertisement for misses' frocks in Vogue magazine. The bitter, hard-set face, streaked with tears, was incongruous and shocking.

"That's all," Michael said. "We're finished. You know that."

"Good. Delightful! I couldn't be more pleased."

"While we're at it," Michael said, "let me tell you that I'm pretty sure about you and Moran, too. I was watching you."

"Good," said Laura. "I'm glad you know. Let me put your mind at rest. You're absolutely right. Anything else?"

"No," said Michael. "I'll get the five o'clock train."

"And don't be so goddamn holy!" Laura said. "I know a couple of things about you, too! All those letters telling me how lonely you were in New York without me! You weren't so damned lonely. I was getting pretty tired of coming back and having all those women look at me, pityingly. And when did you arrange to meet Miss Freemantle? Lunch Tuesday? Shall I go out and tell her your plans are changed? You can meet her tomorrow…" Her voice was sharp and rushed and the thin childish face was contorted with misery and anger.

"That's enough," Michael said, feeling guilty and hopeless.

"I don't want to hear any more."

"Any more questions?" Laura shouted. "No other men you want to ask me about? No other suspects? Shall I write out a list for you?"

Suddenly she broke. She fell on the couch. A little too gracefully, Michael noted coldly, like an ingenue. She dug her head into the pillow and wept. She looked spent and racked, sobbing on the couch, with her pretty hair spread in a soft fan around her head, like a frail child in a party dress. Michael had a powerful impulse to go over and take her in his arms and say, "Baby, Baby," softly, and comfort her.

He turned and went into the garden. The guests had moved discreetly to the other end of the garden, away from the house. They were standing in a stiff, uncomfortable group, their bright clothes shining against the deep green background. Michael walked over to them, brushing the back of his hand against the cut over his eye.

"No badminton today," he said. "I think you'd better leave. The garden party has not been the success of the Pennsylvania summer season."

"We were just going," Johnson said, stiffly.

Michael didn't shake hands with any of them. He stood there, staring past the blurred succession of heads. Miss Freemantle looked at him once, then kept her eyes on the ground as she went past. Michael did not say anything to her. He heard the gate close behind them.

He stood there, on the fresh grass, feeling the sun make the cut over his eye sticky. Overhead the crows were making a metallic racket in the branches. He hated the crows. He walked over to the wall, bent down and carefully selected some smooth, heavy stones. Then he stood up and squinted at the tree, spotting the crows among the foliage. He drew back and threw a stone at three of the birds sitting in a black, loud row. His arm felt limber and powerful, and the stone sang through the branches. He threw another stone, and another, hard and swift, and the birds scrambled off the branches and flapped away, cawing in alarm. Michael threw a stone in a savage arc at the flying birds. They disappeared into the woods. For a while there was silence in the garden, drowsy and sunny in the late summer afternoon.