From the distance came a hooting, coughing sound, like a railroad locomotive in a tunnel; a very weird and frightening sound it was.
“Well, that must be the tornado,” she said, listening attentively, but Mr. Bridge, who was eating the cornbread with great gusto, did not reply. She spread her napkin in her lap again although she had finished eating; she spread it because when she was a child her parents had taught her it was impolite to place her napkin on the table until everyone had finished, and the manners she had been taught she had, in her turn, passed on to her own children.
As the tornado approached the country club Mrs. Bridge remained seated across the table from her husband. She listened to the curious grunting and snuffling of the storm; although she had never been in the path of a tornado before, she knew this must be it, this must be the sound it made the hooting, sucking roar of the vacuum. Now that it was so close it reminded her of a pig rooting on the terrace.
It did not occur to Mrs. Bridge to leave her husband and run to the basement. She had been brought up to believe without question that when a woman married she was married for the rest of her life and was meant to remain with her husband wherever he was, and under all circumstances, unless he directed her otherwise. She wished he would not be so obstinate; she wished he would behave like everyone else, but she was not particularly frightened. For nearly a quarter of a century she had done as he told her, and what he had said would happen had indeed come to pass, and what he had said would not occur had not occurred Why, then, should she not believe him now?
The lights of the country club went out and she thought the breath was being drawn from her lungs. Short streaks of lightning flickered intermittently, illuminating a terrible cloud just outside rushing toward them like a kettle o black water and she caught the unmistakable odor of electricity. In darkness and silence she waited, uncertain whether the munching noise was made by her husband or the storm.
In a little while the lights came on again and the diners, led by the mayor, came up from the basement.
“There!” said Mr. Bridge, looking about for something else to eat. “I told you, didn’t I?”
The tornado, whether impressed by his intransigence or touched by her devotion, had drawn itself up into the sky and was never seen or heard of again.
69. Non Capisco
They left for Europe, as he said they would, three weeks later.
In New York they saw Ruth, who had gotten a job as an assistant to one of the editors of a women’s magazine, and who was living alone in a Greenwich Village garret. They went up four flights of steps to have a look at her apartment, though she seemed not overly anxious to show it, and Mrs. Bridge was relieved to find it was not quite so forbidding as it sounded. She was, however, surprised by the pictures on the walls original oil paintings by one of Ruth’s new friends and by the other furnishings. The apartment was so un-like her room in Kansas City. It was neither so tidy nor so comfortable. There was not even a rug; the black wood floor was partly covered by a pattern of Oriental mats. And there were so many phonograph records! Mrs, Bridge had forgotten that she was so fond of music. The apartment, though slightly bizarre, was neatly balanced, she thought, except for one area where something was disturbing. She finally realized that a nail had been driven into the wall above the bed but no picture hung from it. She could not help staring at the nail, knowing Ruth had hidden whatever belonged there. How strange! she thought. What was Ruth concealing? A moment later Mrs. Bridge became conscious that she herself was being studied. Turning, then, to her daughter, she was greeted with a look of implacable defiance.
The Atlantic voyage did not agree very well with Mrs. Bridge, though she tried not to show that the motion of the sea was nauseating. She took some tablets and felt better, but could not truly enjoy the meals, and she looked forward to landing in England.
“I guess I’m just not cut out to be a sailor/’ she remarked more than once, not only to her husband but to some very nice people they had met aboard ship, and those who were feeling a bit queasy themselves were the first to sympathize.
She often noticed an old Italian woman from the tourist deck who, somehow or other, managed to get up to the first-class deck in the afternoons. The old woman would drag a chair into a secluded, sunny corner and would sit motionless for hours. No one ever spoke to her or came to see if she wanted anything. She did not look well. She was raggedly dressed, all in black, with shoes broken open at the seams, and a black scarf bound over her head. Mrs. Bridge, feeling better as the voyage progressed, thought that never in her life had she seen anyone so alone and wretched as this elderly woman, and so, resolving to help her, went one afternoon to the corner and bent over and gently touched her on the shoulder*
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Lei parla Italiano?”
“Oh, don’t you speak English?”
“Non capisco/* the old woman replied, gazing up at her in vast despair.
“I’m awfully sorry,” Mrs. Bridge said helplessly. “I wish I knew what to do, but I just don’t understand/*
70. England
They landed at Southampton long before dawn and took the train to London. It was a rainy morning and most of the passengers dozed, but Mrs. Bridge stayed awake and stared out the train window, a trifle groggily, at the silent, stately, fogbound farmland. And as this train carried her across the English countryside, past cottages she had never seen and would never see again, where great birds nested in the chimney crook, and from the hedgerows smaller birds came fluttering in shrill desperation to circle twice, and then, finding nothing, to settle as before, and where the cattle in the mist grazed unperturbed by the train which rolled on and on beneath the somnolent English sky, as though there were no destination, past the rain-drenched, redolent fields, and the trees which cast no shadow, she thought to herself how familiar it was and that once this must have been her home. Yes, she said to herself slowly, yes, I was here before.
In London the hotel was just off Piccadilly Circus; they had some difficulty understanding the hall porter and the maid, and, in fact, at the desk or on the telephone they found it necessary to listen closely. Mrs. Bridge, unpinning her hat as she stood before the mirror in their room a black straw hat it was, with a shiny cluster of plastic cherries on the brim replied to her husband’s comment, “I agree with you, but don’t you suppose we sound funny to them, too?”
Next morning they hired a cab to the Tower of London, where Mrs. Bridge enjoyed the ravens and the colorful costumes of the Beef-eaters. Mr. Bridge spent a good deal of time investigating the instruments of torture and the chopping block, after which they got into the cab again and reached Buckingham Palace just in time for the changing of the guard. Mrs. Bridge used three rolls of color film on this but insisted it was worth every bit of it. After a very pleasant lunch they drove to Eton.