She never wrote any more if it, and wondered sometimes if she had meant headless. She never tried to rub it out, either.
PATRICK SHARED AN apartment with two other graduate students. He lived plainly, did not own a car or belong to a fraternity. His clothes had an ordinary academic shabbiness. His friends were the sons of teachers and ministers. He said his father had all but disowned him for becoming an intellectual. He said he would never go into business.
They came back to the apartment in the early afternoon when they knew both the other students would be out. The apartment was cold. They undressed quickly and got into Patrick’s bed. Now was the time. They clung together, shivering and giggling. Rose was doing the giggling. She felt a need to be continually playful. She was terrified that they would not manage it, that there was a great humiliation in store, a great exposure of their poor deceits and stratagems. But the deceits and stratagems were only hers. Patrick was never a fraud; he managed, in spite of gigantic embarrassment, apologies; he passed through some amazed pantings and flounderings, to peace. Rose was no help, presenting instead of an honest passivity much twisting and fluttering eagerness, unpracticed counterfeit of passion. She was pleased when it was accomplished; she did not have to counterfeit that. They had done what others did, they had done what lovers did. She thought of celebration. What occurred to her was something delicious to eat, a sundae at Boomers, apple pie with hot cinnamon sauce. She was not at all prepared for Patrick’s idea, which was to stay where they were and try again.
When pleasure presented itself, the fifth or sixth time they were together, she was thrown out of gear entirely, her passionate carrying-on was silenced.
Patrick said, “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing!” Rose said, turning herself radiant and attentive once more. But she kept forgetting, the new developments interfered, and she had finally to give in to that struggle, more or less ignoring Patrick. When she could take note of him again she overwhelmed him with gratitude; she was really grateful now, and she wanted to be forgiven, though she could not say so, for all her pretended gratitude, her patronizing, her doubts.
Why should she doubt so much, she thought, lying comfortably in the bed while Patrick went to make some instant coffee. Might it not be possible, to feel as she pretended? If this sexual surprise was possible, wasn’t anything? Patrick was not much help; his chivalry and self-abasement, next door to his scoldings, did discourage her. But wasn’t the real fault hers? Her conviction that anyone who could fall in love with her must be hopelessly lacking, must finally be revealed as a fool? So she took note of anything that was foolish about Patrick, even though she thought she was looking for things that were masterful, admirable. At this moment, in his bed, in his room, surrounded by his books and clothes, his shoe brushes and typewriter, some tacked-up cartoons — she sat up in bed to look at them, and they really were quite funny, he must allow things to be funny when she was not here — she could see him as a likable, intelligent, even humorous person; no hero; no fool. Perhaps they could be ordinary. If only, when he came back in, he would not start thanking and fondling and worshipping her. She didn’t like worship, really; it was only the idea of it she liked. On the other hand, she didn’t like it when he started to correct and criticize her. There was much he planned to change.
Patrick loved her. What did he love? Not her accent, which he was trying hard to alter, though she was often mutinous and unreasonable, declaring in the face of all evidence that she did not have a country accent, everybody talked the way she did. Not her jittery sexual boldness (his relief at her virginity matched hers at his competence). She could make him flinch at a vulgar word, a drawling tone. All the time, moving and speaking, she was destroying herself for him, yet he looked right through her, through all the distractions she was creating, and loved some obedient image that she herself could not see. And his hopes were high. Her accent could be eliminated, her friends could be discredited and removed, her vulgarity could be discouraged.
What about all the rest of her? Energy, laziness, vanity, discontent, ambition? She concealed all that. He had no idea. For all her doubts about him, she never wanted him to fall out of love with her.
They made two trips.
They went to British Columbia, on the train, during the Easter holidays. His parents sent Patrick money for his ticket. He paid for Rose, using up what he had in the bank and borrowing from one of his roommates. He told her not to reveal to his parents that she had not paid for her own ticket. She saw that he meant to conceal that she was poor. He knew nothing about women’s clothes, or he would not have thought that possible. Though she had done the best she could. She had borrowed Dr. Henshawe’s raincoat for the coastal weather. It was a bit long, but otherwise all right, due to Dr. Henshawe’s classically youthful tastes. She had sold more blood and bought a fuzzy angora sweater, peach-colored, which was extremely messy and looked like a small-town girl’s idea of dressing up. She always realized things like that as soon as a purchase was made, not before.
Patrick’s parents lived on Vancouver Island, near Sidney. About half an acre of clipped green lawn — green in the middle of winter; March seemed like the middle of winter to Rose — sloped down to a stone wall and a narrow pebbly beach and salt water. The house was half stone, half stucco-and-timber. It was built in the Tudor style, and others. The windows of the living room, the dining room, the den, all faced the sea, and because of the strong winds that sometimes blew onshore, they were made of thick glass, plate glass Rose supposed, like the windows of the automobile showroom in Hanratty. The seaward wall of the dining room was all windows, curving out in a gentle bay; you looked through the thick curved glass as through the bottom of a bottle. The sideboard too had a curving, gleaming belly, and seemed as big as a boat. Size was noticeable everywhere and particularly thickness. Thickness of towels and rugs and handles of knives and forks, and silences. There was a terrible amount of luxury and unease. After a day or so there Rose became so discouraged that her wrists and ankles felt weak. Picking up her knife and fork was a chore; cutting and chewing the perfect roast beef was almost beyond her; she got short of breath climbing the stairs. She had never known before how some places could choke you off, choke off your very life. She had not known this in spite of a number of very unfriendly places she had been in.
The first morning, Patrick’s mother took her for a walk on the grounds, pointing out the greenhouse, the cottage where “the couple” lived: a charming, ivied, shuttered cottage, bigger than Dr. Henshawe’s house. The couple, the servants, were more gentle-spoken, more discreet and dignified, than anyone Rose could think of in Hanratty, and indeed they were superior in these ways to Patrick’s family.
Patrick’s mother showed her the rose garden, the kitchen garden. There were many low stone walls.
“Patrick built them,” said his mother. She explained anything with an indifference that bordered on distaste. “He built all these walls.”
Rose’s voice came out full of false assurance, eager and inappropriately enthusiastic.
“He must be a true Scot,” she said. Patrick was a Scot, in spite of his name. The Blatchfords had come from Glasgow. “Weren’t the best stonemasons always Scotsmen?” (She had learned quite recently not to say “Scotch.”) “Maybe he had stonemason ancestors.”
She cringed afterward, thinking of these efforts, the pretense of ease and gaiety, as cheap and imitative as her clothes.
“No,” said Patrick’s mother. “No. I don’t think they were stonemasons.” Something like fog went out from her: affront, disapproval, dismay. Rose thought that perhaps she had been offended by the suggestion that her husband’s family might have worked with their hands. When she got to know her better — or had observed her longer; it was impossible to get to know her — she understood that Patrick’s mother disliked anything fanciful, speculative, abstract, in conversation. She would also, of course, dislike Rose’s chatty tone. Any interest beyond the factual consideration of the matter at hand — food, weather, invitations, furniture, servants — seemed to her sloppy, ill-bred, and dangerous. It was all right to say, “This is a warm day,” but not, “This day reminds me of when we used to–” She hated people being
She was the only child of one of the early lumber barons of Vancouver Island. She had been born in a vanished northern settlement. But whenever Patrick tried to get her to talk about the past, whenever he asked her for the simplest sort of information — what steamers went up the coast, what year was the settlement abandoned, what was the route of the first logging railway — she would say irritably, “I don’t know. How would I
