“You don’t have to be a clown.”
“The best clowns don’t talk,” he said.
“Nobody accused you of being the best of clowns,” she said. “Yes. I’d like a drink if it isn’t too much work for you to make it.”
He made three martinis, measuring them each out separately and pouring them into the pitcher where there was a big chunk of ice and then stirring.
“Who is the third drink for?”
“Marita.”
“Your paramour?”
“My what?”
“Your paramour.
“You really said it,” David told her. “I’d never heard that word pronounced and I had absolutely no hope of ever hearing it in this life. You’re really wonderful.”
“It’s a perfectly common word.”
“It is at that,” David said. “But to have the sheer, naked courage to use it in conversation. Devil, be good now. Couldn’t you say ‘your dusky paramour’?”
Catherine looked away as she raised her glass.
“And I used to find this type of banter amusing,” she said. “Do you want to try to be decent?” David asked. “Both of us decent?”
“No,” she said. “Here comes your whatever you call her looking sweet and innocent as ever. I must say I’m glad I had her before you did. Dear Marita—tell me, did David work before he started drinking today?”
“Did you David?” Marita asked.
“I finished a story,” David said.
“And I suppose Marita’s already read it?”
“Yes, I did.”
.
“You know, I’ve never read a story of David’s. I never interfere. I’ve only tried to make it economically possible for him to do the best work of which he is capable.”
David took a sip of his drink and looked at her. She was the same wonderful dark and beautiful girl as ever and the ivory white hair was like a scar across her forehead. Only her eyes had changed and her lips that were saying things they were incapable of saying.
“I thought it was a very good story,” Marita said. “It was strange and how do you say pastorale. Then it became terrible in a way I could not explain. I thought it was magnifique.”
“Well—,” Catherine said. “We all speak French you know. You might have made the whole emotional outburst in French.”
“I was deeply moved by the story,” Marita said.
“Because David wrote it or because it really is first rate?”
“Both,” the girl said.
“Well,” Catherine said, “is there any reason then why I can’t read this extraordinary story? I did put up the money for it.”
“You did what?” David asked.
“Perhaps not exactly. You did have fifteen hundred dollars when you married me and that book about all the mad fliers has sold, hasn’t it? You never tell me how much. But I did put up a substantial sum and you must admit you’ve lived more com fortably than you did before you married me.”
The girl did not say anything and David watched the waiter setting the table on the terrace. He looked at his watch. It was about twenty minutes before the time they usually had lunch. “I’d like to go in and clean up if I may,” he said.
“Don’t be so bloody false polite,” Catherine said. “Why can’t I read the story?”
“It’s just written in pencil. It hasn’t even been copied. You wouldn’t want to read it that way.”
“Marita read it that way.
“Read it after lunch then.”
“I want to read it now, David.”
“I really wouldn’t read it before lunch.”
“Is it disgusting?”
“It’s a story about Africa back before the 1914 War. In the time of the Maji-Maji War. The native rebellion of 1905 in Tanganyika.”
“I didn’t know you wrote historical novels.”
“I wish you’d leave it alone,” David said. “It’s a story that happens in Africa when I was about eight years old.”
“I want to read it.”
David had gone to the far end of the bar and was shaking dice out of a leather cup. The girl sat on a stool next to Catherine. He watched her watching Catherine as she read.
“It starts very well,” she said. “Though your handwriting is atrocious. The country is superb. The passage. What Marita miscalled the pastorale part.”