walked?” Sara asked. “Do you mean to tell me, Joseph Kelly, that you made Sue hitchhike? That tiny dainty little thing? No wonder you’re late. It’s a wonder you didn’t kill her.”
“Nothing of the kind! She actually loved it. It was the first time in her life she’d ever done anything so daring. And anyway, her size has nothing to do with it—that girl is as strong as a horse.
“But, Sara,” Joe asked, “is it because you’re sore that I didn’t tell you when we’d land?”
“Of course not. As a matter of fact, we just got in last night ourselves from a jaunt up to Dijon. But the truth is the place is more full than it’s ever been, but wait, here she is!”
Susan Harper stood for a moment on the edge of the terrace looking at Joe and his friend. If she didn’t feel so awful, she thought, she’d be hurt at the free and easy expression in her lover’s dark and undeveloped face, the new relaxation in his huge shoulders. But she did happen to feel so sick. Her head felt as if it were full of old feathers and she knew with a chill and a dreadful certainty that somewhere between Munich and Veytaux she had caught a prize cold. She sniffed angrily.
Then, as if it had been held at bay by space alone, shyness swept over her. She began to tremble inside and pray to God that her head and her voice would not quake and betray how her stomach was shaking as she began to totter across the miles of terrace that separated her from them.
She was wondering as she went along how this woman managed to scare her so thoroughly. The several times she’d seen Sara before, in America, she’d been quiet and kind and—in her own detached way—seemed honestly interested in what Susan was doing and what and where she was studying. Sue and Joe had gone to her house twice for dinner and had eaten and drunk and talked well into the night; rather Joe had. Sue still remembered the agonies of her own shyness that had almost conquered her before each visit and the awkwardness that conspired to make her clumsily drop glasses and trip over rugs and stutter as she never had since grammar school.
Was all that to start again? she wondered. She was grown up now, no longer the foolish virgin. In fact, Susan was only a few years younger than Sara was herself. And Sara hadn’t needed these four years of living in Europe to make her polished, as she’d already been so smart and so cool.
Sue surreptitiously wiped a little tear of perspiration from the hollow of her upper lip, then stretched to make the most of her fifty-nine inches, pulled her skirt smoother over her tight little buttocks, and walked as haughtily as she could manage across the terrace.
“Good morning, Mrs. Porter,” she said without smiling. “It’s wonderful to see you again after so long. I hope you will excuse my being late.”
Oh dear God, Sue thought as she sat down and remained stiffly posed on the hard café chair. She was wondering what had happened to her. At home she was one of those who had social poise, as it was called, one of the more valuable helps during rushing at the sorority house, necessary to impress the timid freshwomen with her sophistication.
Where, she thought, was all that now?
Sue frowned, suddenly hating Joe for bringing her here, all the while trying not to sniff. Sara’s voice came to her as if through a dense fog.
“I’m glad to see you here, Susan. And Tim will be too. He’s anxious to meet you. And of course it’s all right about being late. I did a lot of marketing and then came back here because I didn’t know which hotel you were staying at. I’m so terribly sorry not to have been able to put you up last night—we’d just got in from Dijon. You want some beer, don’t you? Jean, three beers. And then . . .” Sara looked at her watch and smiled at Sue and Joe before she turned to the waiter, “. . . and then in exactly seven minutes, three more, please.”
Susan stirred herself to protest, permitting herself a quiet, rather unsatisfactory sniff, the sound covered, she hoped, by Joe’s laughter.
“We haven’t seen anyone order beers in such a lordly way for weeks, have we, Sue?”
“Maybe the beer in Munich tasted thin because of your politics, Joe, you don’t suppose?”
“Well, no,” he said. “Not even the political rape and treason that we’ve witnessed there could spoil my fine appreciative taste for beer. I swear, Sara, even French beer tastes better than that stuff in Germany now! And the food? Do you know that if you order butter in a restaurant . . .”
Susan listened to their voices flowing on wordlessly. She raised her glass as they did theirs, then sat sipping at it, wishing it was water. How could a thin woman like Sara hold her liquor so well? Wasn’t beer bad for your figure? Maybe Sue should drink more of it before Joe began to think she was too skinny. But now there were only a few days more. Or would she be going home?
She looked with sudden spectulation in her enormous dark eyes at Sara Porter’s face. Would Sara be able to help her? Why was it that in spite of her inexplicable shyness, Sue felt that this older woman—almost unknown to her—could tell her what was good and right to do? Maybe it was because Joe liked Sara so well—Joe, who had never really had a home or parents and few real friends like Sara and herself.
Sue sat watching Sara talk with him. They leaned back in their chairs, their voices murmurred. Sara had a light, soft way of saying words, her tone faintly pedantic, perhaps because of her crisp enunciation. Sara sounded all her rs. She didn’t have a typical Western accent.
Sara was thirty but her face looked very young to Sue, perhaps because it was round in shape, the skin very smooth beneath the severely drawn-back hair. Sara wore a rather crumpled green linen dress and white cotton gloves obviously darned. How in hell was it that Sara—with her rumpled dress and her holey white cotton gloves—always succeeded in making other women feel dowdy?
Sue started, surprised to realize that Sara was now speaking to her. She flushed painfully when she understood that she had no idea of what had gone before. She gulped her beer, wiped one splashed drop off her cheek with unhurried dignity.
“Sorry! I’m really terribly sorry, Mrs. Porter, but I was looking at the lake through the trees and wasn’t paying close attention.”
“Poor Sue,” she said. “I don’t blame you. You must be absolutely worn out. Joe told me you’ve walked here from Munich.”
“Oh no, I’m not a bit tired from that,” Sue hurried to defend her beloved from what might be criticism. “It’s the sun, I think. But what were you saying, please?”
She looked calmly from Sara to Joe, then was horrified to hear herself erupt in a loud sneeze that pounced on her with snarling suddenness. She sneezed so violently it rocked the little table upon which a beer glass spilled. She reached wildly for the handkerchief Joe was now offering her. Through her stinging eyes she saw Sara move away from the flooding path of beer before looking at Sue compassionately.
“God bless you,” she said. “Gesundheit! Poor child, I think you’re catching cold. Here, Jean, mop up a bit, will you? And tell me what I owe you. We’ll have more beer at La Prairie—it’s time I get there and start lunch.”
By the time the bill was paid and Sue had given her nose a thorough—and delightful—blow, she felt almost human again. She stood watching Sara pull on her disreputable gloves.
“I’m sorry, Sue, I’ve forgotten to finish what I was saying. I’ve told Joe that I couldn’t put you up, much as I might wish to, and then you came along and I forgot to explain.”
Sara stopped and then looked abstractedly off toward an old man outside the terrace who stood in the garden of the casino delicately pricking his fingers on the sharp needles of a giant cactus.
“The house is full,” she then went on, “but even if I had a room for you, I’d ask you to go up to the village inn this time.”
For a moment there was silence, then Joe spoke. “Because Sue and I aren’t married?” he asked, incredulously.
Sue