and nasty with no towel rails. Let’s go to one of my family’s modest little tax-saving apartments or a cabin in Arkansas. Let my family see I’m a failure. Let’s get rid of Manoel, who’s my only friend, and get a char smelling of boiled rag and with hair in her nose. I’ll do the buttling. Why not get a job as a butler? I’d make a good sleek sneak sipping the South African sherry in the outhouse. Let’s wear our shirts for a week and save on the laundry.’
‘You’re eating my heart out with your aristocratic tastes,’ she roared, beginning to cry too. ‘Moth and rust are nothing to what a refahned young genteel gentleman from Princeton can do to an Arkansas peasant girl, when a spot on the carpet to him is like pickles to a stomach-ulcer. Oh, Jee-hosaphat, what was the matter with me, marrying a scion? You’ve ruined my life, darn it. I want to be a writer. I don’t want to write cornmeal mush for full-bellied Bible belters. Did I leave my little Arkansas share-cropper’s shanty for that? I was going to be a great writer, Miss America, the prairie flower. Now I’m writing Hh-umour and Pp-athos for the commuters and hayseeds.’
She helped the children with their homework. Both parents went up to sing to Giles in his cot, a song invented by Stephen.
Oh G, oh I, oh L, oh E, oh S!
Sle-ep, sle-ep, sle-ep, sle-ep!
Oh, Gilesy, Gilesy, Gilesy, sleep!
Stephen ran a bath, while Emily went downstairs; and after writing out the menu for the next day and saying, ‘I will make the crêpes suzette,’ she went to the butler’s pantry where she mixed herself a strong highball. Just as she was carrying it into the living-room, Stephen came down in fresh clothes. He scolded her for taking a drink and for the expense of some new handmade shirts which had just come in for the three boys; Lennie, aged fourteen, Christopher, twelve, and Giles, four. Emily defended herself; what was he just saying about a char with hair on her eyeballs? She was in a good humour. ‘I’ve got an idea that will work for my script; it’s so cheap I blushed for shame.’
Stephen picked up the evening paper and glanced over the headlines. They began once more to tear at the great wound which had opened in their love, mutual admiration and understanding, and great need for each other. This was an equally fundamental thing, a disagreement about American exceptionalism; the belief widely held in the USA that what happened in Europe and the rest of the world belonged to other streams of history, never influencing that Mississippi which bears the USA. The flood of American energy could and perhaps would swallow those others: the watershed of European destiny was far back in time and drying up. To this belief, Stephen liked to adhere. Emily accused him of servility to a system which had made his grandparents and parents millionaires; and Stephen would not have been so tenacious, if the Government, and all the political parties right across to the extreme left, had not agreed that America’s reason for invading Europe, joining the conflict in 1941, was to spread America’s healthy and benevolent business democracy everywhere: the western answer to communism. Stephen had everyone at his back, but a few.
‘We’ll help them make the big leap: they won’t have to go through the secular agonies,’ screeched Stephen.
‘Daddy!’ called Giles from the stairs: ‘Dadd-ee!’
Emily found this ‘a pill too big for a horse to swallow’ to quote Michael Gold; and she declared that the local doctrine held even by the communists, was wrong.
‘The Oil’ (Earl Browder) ‘has adjusted Marxism to US Government Policy.’
‘Dadd-ee! Mumm-ee!’
Both went up to Giles, put him in his cot and sang the song again, upon request, several times. Emily kissed the boy and went downstairs to get herself another highball. Stephen came down and reproached her. She said ‘Let me live!’
They went on about the mistakes of policy.
‘The quiet man from
‘You’re eating my heart out with your aristocratic tastes,’ she roared, beginning to cry too. ‘Moth and rust are nothing to what a refahned young genteel gentleman from Princeton can do to an Arkansas peasant girl, when a spot on the carpet to him is like pickles to a stomach-ulcer. Oh, Jee-hosaphat, what was the matter with me, marrying a scion? You’ve ruined my life, darn it. I want to be a writer. I don’t want to write cornmeal mush for full-bellied Bible belters. Did I leave my little Arkansas share-cropper’s shanty for that? I was going to be a great writer, Miss America, the prairie flower. Now I’m writing Hh-umour and Pp-athos for the commuters and hayseeds.’
She helped the children with their homework. Both parents went up to sing to Giles in his cot, a song invented by Stephen.
Oh G, oh I, oh L, oh E, oh S!
Sle-ep, sle-ep, sle-ep, sle-ep!
Oh, Gilesy, Gilesy, Gilesy, sleep!
Stephen ran a bath, while Emily went downstairs; and after writing out the menu for the next day and saying, ‘I will make the crêpes suzette,’ she went to the butler’s pantry where she mixed herself a strong highball. Just as she was carrying it into the living-room, Stephen came down in fresh clothes. He scolded her for taking a drink and for the expense of some new handmade shirts which had just come in for the three boys; Lennie, aged fourteen, Christopher, twelve, and Giles, four. Emily defended herself; what was he just saying about a char with hair on her eyeballs? She was in a good humour. ‘I’ve got an idea that will work for my script; it’s so cheap I blushed for shame.’
Stephen picked up the evening paper and glanced over the headlines. They began once more to tear at the great wound which had opened in their love, mutual admiration and understanding, and great need for each other. This was an equally fundamental thing, a disagreement about American exceptionalism; the belief widely held in the USA that what happened in Europe and the rest of the world belonged to other streams of history, never influencing that Mississippi which bears the USA. The flood of American energy could and perhaps would swallow those others: the watershed of European destiny was far back in time and drying up. To this belief, Stephen liked to adhere. Emily accused him of servility to a system which had made his grandparents and parents millionaires; and Stephen would not have been so tenacious, if the Government, and all the political parties right across to the extreme left, had not agreed that America’s reason for invading Europe, joining the conflict in 1941, was to spread America’s healthy and benevolent business democracy everywhere: the western answer to communism. Stephen had everyone at his back, but a few.
‘We’ll help them make the big leap: they won’t have to go through the secular agonies,’ screeched Stephen.
‘Daddy!’ called Giles from the stairs: ‘Dadd-ee!’
Emily found this ‘a pill too big for a horse to swallow’ to quote Michael Gold; and she declared that the local doctrine held even by the communists, was wrong.
‘The Oil’ (Earl Browder) ‘has adjusted Marxism to US Government Policy.’
‘Dadd-ee! Mumm-ee!’
Both went up to Giles, put him in his cot and sang the song again, upon request, several times. Emily kissed the boy and went downstairs to get herself another highball. Stephen came down and reproached her. She said ‘Let me live!’
They went on about the mistakes of policy.
‘The quiet man from
Similar Books
