“They look marvelous,” he said over his shoulder, “but Terence says no blossom till spring after next.”
Spring after next. The dream came like a fog between himself and the shining table, the poured coffee, the silver cream pitcher; it filled the morning-bright, fog-bright room, seemed to set everything at a distance. If Enid had allowed him to kiss her — that would perhaps have broken through the strange dull weight of it, the richly haunting burden — perhaps she too would then have shared in it! Or did she anyway? And did all things, even Buzzer? Perhaps. As it was, it was also as if she had somehow divined his infidelity, and as if her hostility were by a miraculous instinct directed precisely to that. And a hard morning ahead of her, and Binney coming, and himself probably delegated to look after Buzzer — instead of working on his picture—
“Can I go waving this morning, daddy?”
“Not waving, wading!”
“No, waving!”
“Well, you’ll have to ask your mummy about that. Maybe it’s too cold.”
“Well then, we can go and look at the fiddler crabs.”
“We’ll see. Perhaps it’s too cold for the fiddler crabs, too. How could they dance if their feet were cold? And come to think of it, young woman, what do you mean by walking round in your sleep the way you did last night? What about that?”
“I didn’t either!”
“Didn’t you, though! I heard a bang on the floor, a thump like an elephant jumping, or an elephantelope, or a rhinocerostrich, or a camelephant—”
“How silly! There aren’t any such animals!”
“—and when I went up to see what it was, there were you, standing in the middle of the floor, fast asleep, with your eyes tight shut.”
“Mummy, isn’t daddy silly, he says I was standing up in my sleep! Was I really?”
“Cross my heart and hope I die! And all you would say was mmm. I asked you what you were doing there, and you said mmm; and I asked you if you were asleep, and you said mmm; and I asked you if you wanted to go back to bed, and you said mmm. That’s all you could say, mmm. You must have thought you were a humming bird.”
“Ho ho! I was a humming bird! But did I really, mummy?”
“Yes, I guess you really did. Now have you finished, my pet? I’ll untie your bib. And you’d better run along to the bathroom. And when you’re ready, you can call me.”
“No, I don’t want you to come — I can wipe myself.”
“All right, darling. Aren’t you clever! But call me if you need me.”
“Yes.”
The bib untied, she ran quickly, on tiptoe, from the room, flapping her hands like fins against her thighs. A humming bird. Or a goldfish. Enid, her arms folded across her breast, one foot swinging, had perched herself on a corner of the piano bench, watching him eat his egg — the attitude was temporary and provocative.
“I suppose,” she said, “you haven’t thought any more about the bills. But hadn’t we better discuss them?”
“What is there to discuss, Ee? I thought we had decided—”
“We’re very much behind with them. We owe Mr. Paradise for two months.”
“Ah! The whistling butcher!”
“And he’ll be coming this morning. We ought to pay him.”
“Damn the butcher. All right. Why don’t you make him out a check? How much is it?”
“Twenty-nine dollars.”
“Holy mackerel. That won’t leave much.”
“No, it won’t. And there’s the milk bill, and we still owe Homer for the last ton of coal we had in the spring, and we’ll be needing some more in a week or two—”
“My god. All right, pay Homer, too. Or I will.”
“I’m afraid something will have to be done. I shall need some winter clothes, and so will Buzzer, and now there’s this new cesspool — just how are you planning to manage, may I ask? We can’t go on like this, always getting more and more behind. It’s really getting to be too much of a strain. It really is!”
“Damnit, as if I didn’t know it! Well, I’ll see. I’ll ask old stick-in-the-mud for some extra work. Or maybe I could get an afternoon’s work at the new women’s school in St. Botolph Street—”
“I see! An extra day in town every week. I knew there’d be a catch in it somewhere! As if it wasn’t bad enough already.”
“Good heaven, Ee, you can’t have it both ways! You might at least try to be reasonable! If you want more money, I’ll have to do more work — money doesn’t grow out of the ground, you know.”
“No, and it doesn’t grow out of part-time teaching at second-rate art schools either! The whole arrangement is bad. I should have thought—”
“Second-rate! Perhaps you should have thought before you married me!”
“Indeed, yes! Perhaps I should!”
“Now, Endor, darling, listen—”
“I should have thought, if you don’t mind my saying so for the hundredth time—”
“Make it the thousandth, why not—?”
“Will you please listen to me? — that a whole-time job in town was the only possible solution.”
“Oh, my god. Must we go into that again? You seem to be forgetting that I’ve got my own work to do. Or to try to do!”
“Your own work. Of course! I suppose you still think that must come first. It doesn’t matter if we have to go without proper clothing, does it, or have all the shopkeepers dunning us month after month—”
“You needn’t exaggerate — and there’s no point in being melodramatic about it either.”
“I’m afraid it’s the facts that are melodramatic, since you choose the word, and not me. Oh, no! But this is where discussion always ends with you, isn’t it? In an accusation. I’m in the wrong, as usual! But I think we’ve reached the limit, and I think you’d better consider what you’ll do.”
“Ee darling, you know I’ll do anything I can, but you can’t expect me just to give up my own work, offhand, like that! You can’t!”
“If you’d wanted to do portraits—”
“I don’t want to do no portraits, no, ma’am!”
“The upshot seems to be that I do a great deal of your work for you.”
“That’s a new view of it!”
“It’s true. You’d better think it over. And if you don’t mind too much, will you take Buzzer out this morning? I’ve got all the ironing to do.”
“I thought Mrs. Kimpton was coming to do it.”
“We can’t afford it. And besides, as I’ve told you before, she’s not clean.”
“Not clean! How can that possibly affect ironing!”
“I won’t have her in the house with that dreadful feather boa round her neck.”
“Very well. When I’ve laid the studio fire, and carpet-swept this room, and made my little bed, my little solitary bed, and carried in the wood—”
She was just rising, just saying her ironic “thanks!”, her eyes widening and brightening as if to let him see better the intensity of her unspoken anger, when the sound of bird-note whistling came cheerfully from the garden, the bird-fluting of Mr. Paradise, the butcher — Paradise, absurd name for a butcher! — and the white-coated figure went quickly past the dining room windows to knock at the kitchen door.
“All right, Endor. And there goes our twenty-nine dollars. And if Ratio Binney comes about the cesspool while I’m out, you’ll have to deal with it yourself. That’s all I can say!”