Where the whiskey had made her giddy and then randy, now it made her angry. “What did you go outside for?” she said for the third time. “I want you to tell me the truth.”
George sighed. When Sylvia breathed in as he breathed out, she could smell and taste that they’d been drinking together. Sober, he might have found a lie she would believe, or else might have been able to keep his mouth shut till she got sick of asking questions. He’d managed that, every now and then.
He sighed again. “There was another place, next to this saloon or tavern or whatever you call it. I was going over there, but I never made it. I hadn’t taken more than a couple of steps that way when the shelling started.”
“Another place?” she echoed. George nodded, a gesture she felt instead of seeing. “Well, why didn’t you say so?” she demanded. “What kind of place was…?” All at once, she wanted to push him away from her as hard as she could. “You were going to a-” Her hiss might have been more deadly than a shout.
“Yeah, I was.” He sounded ashamed. That was something, a small something, but not nearly enough. He went on, “I didn’t get there. Sylvia, I swear to you it’s the only time I was gone that I was going that way. I’d been away so long, and I didn’t know when I’d be back or if I’d ever be back.” He laughed, which enraged her till he went on, “I guess God was telling me I shouldn’t do things like that even once.”
“And I let you-” Her voice was cold as the ice in the hold of a steam trawler. She hadn’t just let him touch her, she’d wanted him to touch her, she’d wanted to touch him. She couldn’t say that; her body had fewer inhibitions than her tongue did. Her tongue…She’d had that part of him in her mouth, and she thought she’d throw up. She gulped, as if fighting back seasickness.
“Nothing happened,” George said.
She believed him. She wanted, or part of her wanted, to think he was lying; that would have given her all the more reason to force him away from her. Had he been telling the truth when he said that was the only time he’d gone to-or toward-such a place? Again, she thought so, but she wondered if it mattered when you got down to the bottom of things. Still in that frozen voice, she said, “Something would have happened, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, I guess it would,” he answered dully.
He wasn’t trying to pretend. That was something, too. Try as she would, she had trouble keeping the flame of her fury hot. Being apart from him had been hard on her, too, and she’d known he wasn’t a saint before she married him. “You were pretty stupid, do you know that?” she said.
“I thought so myself,” he answered, quickly, eagerly, a man splashing in the sea grabbing for a floating spar. “If I hadn’t had that second glass of whiskey, I never would have done it.”
“Whiskey gets you into all sorts of trouble, doesn’t it?” she said, not quite so frosty now. “Makes you go after women you shouldn’t, makes you talk too much when you’re with the woman you should-”
He laughed in relief, feeling himself slide off the hook. His thumb and forefinger closed on her nipple; even in the dark, he found it unerringly. Sylvia twisted away: he wasn’t that forgiven yet.
“I was plenty stupid,” he said, which not only agreed with what she’d just said but had the added virtue of likely being truer than I’m sorry.
“I hope to heaven this terrible war ends soon, so you can come home and spend the rest of your days with me,” Sylvia said. And, she added to herself, so I can keep an eye on you. She’d never thought she’d need another reason for wishing the war over, but George had given her one.
He understood that, too. “I hope they’ll really send me out to sea this time,” he said. “Then I’ll be away from everything”-everything in a dress, he meant-“for months at a time.”
Sylvia nodded. George didn’t mention what happened when sailors came into a port after months at a time at sea. Maybe he was trying not to think about it. Maybe he was hoping she wouldn’t think about it. If so, it was a forlorn hope. Boston was a Navy town. More than one sailor had accosted Sylvia on the street. She did not imagine her husband was a great deal different from the common lot of men. Had she so imagined, he would have taught her better.
He clutched her to him. “I don’t want anybody but you,” he said.
Now you don’t, she thought. He gave proof with more than words that he did want her. With a small sigh, she let him take her. He was her husband, he had come home alive out of danger, he hadn’t (quite) (she didn’t think) been unfaithful to her. So she told herself. But, where only the speed of his explosion the first time had kept her from joining him in joy, where she had done just that the second time, and been as eager, even as wanton, then as ever in her life, now, though she tried, though she strained, though she concentrated, pleasure eluded her.
George didn’t notice. Somehow that hurt almost worse than anything he’d told her. In a while, she supposed, he’d want a fourth round, too. “Have we got any more whiskey?” she asked.
XVI
Arthur McGregor tramped through the snow toward the barn. The harvest was in, and just in time; freezing weather had come early this year. But the livestock still needed tending. He shook his head. Alexander should have been out here helping him. But Alexander still languished in the Rosenfeld gaol. If he ever got out-
Sometimes, now, hours at a time would go by when McGregor didn’t think of his son’s being freed. Every fiber of him still hoped it would happen. (How could it not happen? he thought. The only thing the boy did was hang about with a few of the wrong people and let his tongue flap loose. Not one in a hundred would be left free if you locked up everybody who did that.) He didn’t count on it or expect it as he had right after Alexander’s arrest, though. Scar tissue was growing over the hole the extraction of his son from the family had left.
He fed the horses, the cows, the pigs, the chickens. He forked dung out of the stalls. He gathered eggs, storing them inside his hat. The hens pecked at his hands, the way they always did when he robbed their nests. The rooster couldn’t have cared less. All he had eyes for was his harem, as splendid to him as the Ottoman sultan’s bevy of veiled beauties.
McGregor’s breath smoked as if he’d just lighted a cigarette when he left the barn. The first inhalation of cold outside air burned in his lungs like cigarette smoke, too. After a couple of breaths, though, he felt all right. Once winter really came down, he’d feel as if he were breathing razors whenever he stuck his head out of any door.
Off to the north, artillery coughed and grumbled. It was farther away than it had been halfway through the summer, when Canadian troops and those from the mother country had pushed the Yankees south from Winnipeg. “But not south to Rosenfeld,” McGregor said sadly. Winnipeg still held, though. So long as Winnipeg held, and Toronto, and Montreal, and Quebec City, Canada lived. The Americans had claimed Toronto’s fall a good many times. Lies, all lies. “What they’re good for,” McGregor told the air, and started back toward the farmhouse with the eggs.
As usual, the north-south road that ran by the farm was full of soldiers and guns and horses and trucks on the move, most of the traffic heading north toward the front. What went south was what didn’t work any more: ambulances full of broken men, trucks and horses glumly pulling broken machines. The more of those McGregor saw, the better he reckoned his country’s chances.
And here came an automobile, jouncing along the path toward the farmhouse. The motorcar was painted green-gray. Even had it not been, he would have known it for an American vehicle. Who but the Americans had gasoline these days?