The boy and girl finished their shopping with much exacting deliberation. Charley stood off self-consciously to one side, smoking a cigarette and glancing around him.
Presently the three of them were walking toward the bikes, and then the car.
The boy’s name was Nat Anteil. His wife’s was Gwen. During the morning Nat worked for a small, modern real estate firm in Mill Valley and in the afternoon he drove back up here to Point Reyes and spent his time studying; he was in his second year of a college extension course mailed out by the University of Chicago. When he got finished, he explained, he would have a BA in history.
“What are you going to do with that?” Charley asked.
With some shyness, Nat said, “Maybe go on and teach.”
Gwen said, “It’s more for his own edification, not to make money from. We both want to be aware of what’s happening in the world.”
“I’m in the iron business,” Charley said. “But don’t let that fool you. My wife’s the one who brought culture to this area; she got all the cultural affairs going, here.”
“I see,” Gwen said, nodding.
“Such as the modern dance group,” Charley said. “And I’m a member of the Inverness Yacht Club. We own a hi-fl — mounted right in the wall. We had the house built ourselves; we got our own architect. God, it set me back almost forty thousand dollars. Wait’ll you see it; it’s only four years old. We’ve got ten acres.” As they drove he told them all about the sheep and the collie, pouring out his words faster and faster, unable to stop.
The Anteils listened raptly.
“We can play badminton out back,” Charley said, as they came within sight of the cypress trees. “Wait’ll you see my wife. She’s the best god damn good-looking woman up here. They’re all a bunch of dogs compared to her. Why hell, even after having two kids she’s still a size twelve.” That sounded right to him; or was it a size sixteen? “She really keeps her figure,” he said, as he turned from the road into the driveway.
“What lovely big trees,” Gwen said, staring out at the cypress. “Do they belong to you?” To her husband she said excitedly, “Nat — look at that collie. It’s blue.”
“That dog’s worth five hundred bucks,” Charley said, delighted at their response. He saw them straining to see the house, making out the sight of the horse as it cropped grass out in the field. “Come on,” he said, opening the door for them. “She’ll sure be pleased to see you.” As the three of them walked toward the house he explained, in disjointed phrases, how Fay had felt about them and how badly they both had wanted to meet them.
(six)
When I saw Charley coming up the path from the car with those two delightful apparitions I could hardly believe my eyes. It was the greatest present he could have given me, and I completely adored him for it. Putting down my book I ran into my bedroom and took a look at myself in the mirror. Why at this time had that little queer down in Fairfax chosen to cut my hair on one side shorter than on the other? From my closet I grabbed out my blue-striped shirt and began buttoning it over my halter and tucking it into my shorts.
“Honey!” Charley called from the living room. “Hey, look who I talked into coming home with me!”
At the mirror I put on lipstick, blotted it, brushed my hair in back, put away my dark glasses which I had worn into the house from outside, and then I hurried into the living room.
There they stood, shyly, peeking around at the bookcases and the record shelves, like a pair of children in a historic shrine — the way I had felt when we visited the mission over in Sonoma and I found myself standing in the old chapel, with the straw sticking out of the adobe where it had broken away. I was glad that Mrs. Mendini had seen fit to do a good job scrubbing the floor and dusting; at least the house looked good, even if I was a trifle messy.
I smiled at them and they smiled back. This is historic, I thought. Like Lewis and Clarke meeting. Or Gilbert and Sullivan. “Hi,” I said to them.
The girl said, “What a lovely house.”
“Thank you,” I said. Going toward the bar I said, “What would you like to drink?” I opened the liquor cabinet and got out the bottle of gin and the vermouth. Feeling nervous –for some reason– I found myself spilling the gin as I poured it into the mixer. “I’m Fay Hume,” I said. “What are your names? Are you married or are you brother and sister? I can’t wait to find out; I have to know.”
“This is my wife Gwen,” the boy said. “My name is Nathan Anteil.” They came a few steps into the kitchen and stood self-consciously, watching me fix martinis, as if they didn’t want to drink but did not know how to stop me. So I went on fixing the drinks. Married, I thought.
“You look like my brother,” I said to the boy. And with surprise I thought, He doesn’t look like Jack at all, not a bit. Jack is horrible-looking and this boy is stunning; what’s the matter with me? “Don’t you think he could be my brother?” I said to Charley.
“Well,” Charley said, “you’re both on the lanky side.” He, too, seemed ill-at-ease, but obviously pleased at having gotten them to come along with him. “I’ll have some of that Danish beer,” he said. To the Anteils, he said, “How about some imported dark beer?” Passing me, he opened the refrigerator door. “Try some,” he said, getting the opener.
Presently we were seated in the living room, Charley and I on chairs, the Anteils on the couch. Gwen and I drank martinis; they drank beer.
“Nat’s in the real estate game,” Charley said.
At that, the boy got a cross expression on his face. Both he and his wife seemed to fluff up. “That’s somewhat misleading,” Gwen said. “Nat is getting his degree in history,” she explained to me. “He just works down there so we can pay the bills.”
“There’s nothing wrong with real estate,” Charley said with uneasiness, apparently realizing that he had offended them.
“History,” I said, dazzled by our good fortune. “There’s a retired history professor from the University of California living up here — he raises peaches. We’ll have to introduce you to him. He and I play chess once a month. And there’s an archaeologist across the bay in Point Reyes Station. Where do you live?”
“In Point Reyes,” the boy said. “We’re renting a little house there, on the hill above the creamery.”
“And down in Olema,” Charley put in, “there’s a guy who used to write articles for Harper’s. And an old guy who still does illustrations for the Saturday Evening Post — he’s living in what used to be the Olema city hall. Picked it up for four thousand dollars.”
Talking to the Anteils, I found that they came from Berkeley. The girl’s parents owned a summer cabin in Inverness, and the two of them –Nat and she– had come up and stayed in the area, and had gotten to like it, naturally, as anyone does who sees it. They knew a few people in the area, mostly in Inverness, and they knew the public beaches and the park and what birds they could expect to see. But they hadn’t been to any of the private beaches; they didn’t know any of the big ranchers and had never even heard of Bear Valley Ranch.
“Good god,” I said. “Well, we’ll have to take you there. The road’s barred by three padlocked gates but I can get the key; we know them and they let us drive across the ridge to their beach. It’s so big it’s got something like six thousand wild deer on it.”
“It’s a huge place,” Charley said.
We talked for a while about the area, and then I told Nat about a paper I had written in college about the Roman general Stilicho.
“Oh yes,” Nat said, nodding. “That’s an interesting period.”
“We discussed Rome, he and I. Gwen wandered around the living room. I saw, now, after being closer to them for a time, that a difference between them existed, one that I hadn’t noticed originally. At the start, spying them from a distance, I had tended to lump them together in my mind, to find them equally attractive and desirable. But now I saw that there was with Gwen an absent-mindedness, almost a vapidness. She lacked the acuteness of her husband. And it seemed to me that much of the resemblance between them was not accidental; the girl had deliberately styled her manner of dress so that it matched his, and I saw, too, that the ideas –the intellectual material– common to the two of them originated in him. In discussions, Gwen took little or no part. She retired, like many wives.