Locked rooms

disguised as a five-pound box of Swiss chocolates. Have you read it?”

“Not yet.”

“They say it's hot stuff.”

“It had better be, considering the size of it. And what's that you have, Donny?”

“Cross-word puzzles,” he replied, holding up a peculiar book that had come with a pencil attached to it. “Just hit the shops, and a friend said it was going to be all the thing. Can't see them catching on, myself. They're tough.”

The more ordinary-looking book on the grass underneath his chair said The Plastic Age, by someone named Marks. “I presume that's a novel?” I asked.

“You bet,” he said. “Everyone's talking about it—nearly got itself banned for the hot bits. The story of a fellow's undergraduate years. What about you?”

“A book on feng shui. It's a kind of Chinese philosophy.” I saw their faces go blank, and thought I should perhaps redeem myself a little. “I did read a book on the boat out that had been banned for years. Have you read Jurgen?”

They'd heard of it, wanted to know how “hot” it was, but I had to admit that the moral outrage of the censors probably had less to do with the petting scenes than with the fact that it was gods who were doing the petting. Donny trumped my bid of Jurgen by saying casually that he'd met Scott Fitzgerald at a week-end in France the previous summer, but as I'd found Fitzgerald's stories a somewhat tedious glorification of childishness—and American East Coast aristocratic childishness at that—I had little to say. Eventually I returned to my Orientalia, they to their stories, and the sun continued its complacent way across the sky.

We ate lunch, and then Donny wanted to try the canoes. Flo protested that the sun was too hot, but he offered her one of his long shirts, and that (along with a wide straw hat from the house) mollified her. They paddled, they swam, I joined them and sat out, and then it was somehow evening, and the happy melancholy of physical repletion coupled with too much sun settled over us. We had a drink, and dinner, and played billiards in the front room until the worst of the mosquitoes had been driven off by the citronella.

Around ten o'clock Donny proposed another swim. Flo and I begged off, but he was set on it, and strode down the lawn into the darkness. After a minute, we heard a splash, then the rhythmic sounds of arm strokes.

“Do you suppose he went in fully dressed?” I asked Flo. He was by no means drunk, so I wasn't worried about his safety, but I was curious.

“No, there'll be a line of clothing down the lawn come morning,” she told me.

The sound of his strokes faded and grew dim, then nonexistent. “He seems a strong swimmer,” I said dubiously.

“Gosh, you don't need to worry about Donny—for two bits he'd swim across the Golden Gate. You'd never know he had scarlet fever when he was a kid, would you?”

“It doesn't seem to have affected him.”

“It did, though. He tried to join up in '17, but they wouldn't have him. A dicky heart. That's when he came out here—he was too wild about it to stay at home where all his friends had joined up, had to get away. Bit sensitive about it, you know?”

“I won't say anything.”

“Crazy, really, he's strong as an ox. Hell, they even took my father, who was old.”

“Yes, your mother told me he'd been killed in the war.”

“Bet she said he was her husband, too.” I heard her chair creak and protest as she sat up suddenly, then heard the sound of her cigarette case opening. In a minute, the flare of a match lit her face.

“Do you mean to say they weren't married?” I asked tentatively.

“Oh, they were married, just not by then. They divorced when I was tiny, maybe five, but she never tells anyone that, like it's something shameful. He used to come around and ask Mummy for money, after she inherited Granddad's packet, but we never saw much of him in between. You know, once upon a time he was great friends with your father.”

“He was?”

“I think they went to school together, or maybe university, I don't know. In fact, I was thinking today that my daddy probably helped yours build this place. I remember him telling me stories about living in the woods, building a log cabin and fighting off the bears.”

“More likely raccoons,” I murmured, considerably distracted by the revelation.

“I always thought it was just talk, but looking back, I have to say that most of his stories had some kind of truth behind them. More illustrations than inventions, you know? And I know the two of them were pals, 'way back when, long before our mothers were.”

“But what happened? Or have I just forgotten him?” Yet another gaping hole in my memories?

“You probably never knew him. Your father didn't see much of him after they both got married. Things change, I guess. And I know your mother didn't like Dad—I haven't a clue why, but Mummy let it slip one time, when she was mad at him. ‘Judith was right,' she said. ‘He's not to be trusted.'”

“My mother didn't trust him?”

“Maybe because he was part of your old man's wild youth. That's what happens, isn't it, when people tie the knot? They put nooses around each other's neck and pull them tight? Tell them they can't see their old friends, can't go out and be wild, have to have babies and a white picket fence?”

“Not always,” I said distractedly. “But what—”

But Flo had worked the conversation around to the question that bothered her, and would not be set aside. “Tell me, Mary. What's it like, being married?”

“In what way? The restrictions, you mean? I haven't found—”

“Not just that. The whole thing. I haven't . . . Donny and I haven't . . . you know—done it. We've come pretty close, but even when I've been pie-eyed I think about how he'd look at me, after. It wouldn't be the same, would it?”

That rather answered the question of whether or not they were sharing a room. I cleared my throat. “Er.”

“Oh, I don't want the birds-and-bees stuff; I know all that. It's just, I can't decide if I should wait.”

“What stands in the way of your getting married?”

“Just . . . everything!” she cried, her glowing cigarette-end making a great sweep through the air.

“Picket fences and nappies?”

“Exactly!”

“Have you talked it over with Donny?”

“He says he's glad to wait, that he wants what I want. If I knew what I wanted.”

“But you're afraid he'll change his mind and become a tyrant once you're married?”

“Men do, don't they? Once you're pinned down they go off and there you are, raising the babies and getting fat and bored to tears.”

“Flo, look—sure, some men do that. But from what I've seen of Donny, he honestly loves you, and if something bothered you, and he knew it, he wouldn't force it down your throat.” I hesitated, then said, “Just because your father was irresponsible, doesn't mean Donny will be.”

“Dad wasn't irresponsible,” she retorted instantly. “Just a little . . . childish. He was great fun—I always loved it when he visited; it was like having another play-mate. But Mummy got so absolutely grim whenever he came around, it made me wild to see, and I would look at her face and think, I never want to feel that way, never want to be forced to, I don't know, grow up I guess, if that's how it makes me look.”

I began to see why my own mother wanted nothing to do with Flo's father, although I couldn't see why she would have banned him outright.

“So you think he wouldn't, look at me differently, I mean?” she asked hopefully.

But I was not about to take that degree of responsibility. “He probably would, Flo. How could he not? And you would look at him differently. The question is more, would it lessen how he looks at you, and I can't answer that one.”

She gave a little sigh, and the glowing ember sagged to the ground. “No, I suppose not.”

“Flo?” I said, hesitant about offering advice. “You know, one thing I have found, that it helps a lot to have some kind of interests outside of the marriage itself.”