Talk hanging in the air among the long watches of supper Supper that evening had its discomforts, although Janet Westermark and her mother-in-law achieved an air of melan-choly gaiety by bringing two Scandinavian candelabra, relics of a Copenhagen holiday, onto the table and surprising the two men with a gay-looking hors d’oeuvre. But the conversation was mainly like the hors d’oeuvre, Janet thought: little tempting isolated bits of talk, not nourishing.
Mrs. Westermark senior had not yet got the hang of talking to her son, and confined her remarks to Janet, though she looked towards Jack often enough. “How are the children?”
he asked her. Flustered by the knowledge that he was waiting a long while for her answer, she replied rather incoherently and dropped her knife.
To relieve the tension, Janet was cooking up a remark on the character of the administrator at the Mental Research Hospital, when Westermark said, “Then he is at once thoughtful and literate. Commendable and rare in men of his type. I got the impression, as you evidently did, that he was as interested in his job as in advancement. J suppose one might say one even liked him. But you know him better, Stackpole; what do you think of him?”
Crumbling bread to cover his ignorance of whom they were supposed to be conversing, Stackpole said, “Oh, I don’t know; it’s hard to say really,” spinning out time, pretending not to squint at his watch.
“The administrator was quite a charmer, didn’t you think, Jack?” Janet remarkedperhaps helping Stackpole as much as Jack.
“He looks as if he might make a slow bowler,” Westermark said, with an intonation that suggested he was agreeing with something as yet unsaid.
“Oh, him”’ Stackpole said. “Yes, he seems a satisfactory sort of chap on the whole.”
“He quoted Shakespeare to me and thoughtfully told me where the quotation came from,” Janet said.
“No thank you, Mother,” Westermark said.
“I don’t have much to do with him,” Stackpole continued.
“Though I have played cricket with him a time or two. He makes quite a good slow bowler.”
“Are you really?” Westermark exclaimed.
That stopped them. Jack’s mother looked helplessly about, caught her son’s glazed eye, said, covering up, “Do have some more sauce, Jack, dear,” recalled she had already had her answer, almost let her knife slide again, gave up trying to eat.
“I’m a batsman, myself,” Stackpole said, as if bringing an old pneumatic drill to the new silence. When no answer came, he doggedly went on, expounding on the game, the pleasure of it. Janet sat and watched, a shade perplexed that she was admiring Stackpole’s performance and wondering at her slight perplexity; then she decided that she had made up her mind to dislike Stackpole, and immediately dissolved the resolution.
Was he not on their side? And even the strong hairy hands became a little more acceptable when you thought of them gripping the rubber of a bat handle; and the broad shoulders swinging…. She closed her eyes momentarily, and tried to concentrate on what he was saying.
A batsman himself
Later, she met Stackpole on the upper landing. He had a small cigar in his mouth, she had two pillows in her arms. He stood in her way.
“Can I help at all, Janet?”
“I’m only making up a bed, Mr. Stackpole.”
“Are you not sleeping in with your husband?”
“He would like to be on his own for a night or two, Mr.
Stackpole. I shall sleep in the children’s room for the time being.”
“Then please permit me to carry the pillows for you. And do please call me Clem. All my friends do.”
Trying to be pleasanter, to unfreeze, to recall that Jack was not moving her out of the bedroom permanently, she said, “I’m sorry. It’s just that we once had a terrier called Clem.”
But it did not sound as she had wished it to do.
He put the pillows on Peter’s blue bed, switched on the bedside lamp, and sat on the edge of the bed, clutching his cigar and puffing at it.
“This may be a bit embarrassing, but there’s something I feel I should say to you, Janet.” He did not look at her. She brought him an ashtray and stood by him.