that came off the Vineyard and off Nantucket and off a sunny ocean disturbed only by gulls and the sails of small boats and the plash of flying fish playing in the water.
Then the two weeks were up and they went back to the city. The people there seemed pallid and wilted, defeated by the summer, and they felt healthy and powerful in comparison.
The final morning, Hope made coffee for them at six o'clock. They sat opposite each other, sipping the hot, bitter liquid out of the huge cups that were their first joint domestic investment. Hope walked with Noah down the quiet, shining streets, still cool with the memory of night, to the drab unpainted shop that had been taken over by the draft board.
They kissed, thoughtfully, already remote from each other, and Noah went in to join the quiet group of boys and men who were gathered around the desk of the middle-aged man who was serving his country in its hour of need by waking early twice a month to give the last civilian instructions and the tickets for the free subway ride to the groups of men departing from the draft board for the war.
Noah went out in the shuffling, self-conscious line, with fifty others, and walked with them the three blocks to the subway station. The people in the street, going about their morning business, on their way to their shops and offices, on their way to the day's marketing and the day's cooking and moneymaking, looked at them with curiosity and a little awe, as the natives of a town might look at a group of pilgrims from another country who happened to pass through their streets, on their journey to an obscure and fascinating religious festival. Noah saw Hope across the street from the entrance to the subway station. She was standing in front of a florist's shop. The florist was an old man slowly putting out pots of geraniums and large blue vases of gladioli in the window behind her. She had on a blue dress dotted with white flowers. The morning wind brushed it softly against her body in front of the blossoms shining through the glass behind her. Because of the sun reflecting from the glass, Noah could not tell what her face was like. He started to cross the street to her, but the leader that the man at the draft board had assigned to the group called anxiously, 'Please, boys, stick together, please,' and Noah thought, what could I tell her, what could she tell me? He waved to her. She waved back, a single, lifting gesture of the bare brown arm. Noah could see she wasn't crying.
What do you know, he said to himself, she isn't crying. And he went down into the subway, between a boy named Tempesta and a thirty-five-year-old Spaniard whose name was Nuncio Aguilar.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE red-headed woman he hadn't kissed four years ago leaned over, smiling, in Michael's last dream and kissed him. He awoke, warmly remembering the dream and the red-headed woman.
The morning sun angled past the sides of the closed Venetian blinds, framing the windows in a golden dust. Michael stretched.
Outside the room he heard the murmur of the seven million people walking through the streets and corridors of the city. Michael got up. He padded over on the carpeted floor to the window and pulled up the blinds.
The sun filled the back gardens with an early summer wealth, soft and buttery on the faded brick of the old buildings, on the dusty ivy, on the bleached, striped awnings of the small terraces filled with rattan furniture and potted plants. A little round woman, in a wide orange hat and old wide slacks that clung cheerfully to her round behind, was standing over a potted geranium on the terrace directly opposite Michael. She reached thoughtfully down and snipped off a blossom. Her hat shook sorrowfully as she looked at the mortal flower in her hand. Then she turned, middle-aged and healthy, in her city garden and walked through curtained french windows into her house, her cheerful behind shaking.
Michael grinned, pleased that it was sunny, and that the redheaded woman had finally kissed him, and that there was a fat little woman with an absurd sweet behind mourning over faded geraniums on the other side of the sunny back gardens.
He washed, dousing himself with cold water, then walked barefoot, in his pyjamas, across the carpeted floor through the living-room, to the front door. He opened it and picked up the Times.
In the polite print of the Times, which always reminded Michael of the speeches of elderly and successful corporation lawyers, the Russians were dying but holding on the front page, there were new fires along the French coast from English bombs, Egypt was reeling, somebody had discovered a new way to make rubber in seven minutes, three ships had sunk quietly into the Atlantic Ocean, the Mayor had come out against meat, married men could be expected to be called up into the Army, the Japanese were in a slight lull.
Michael closed the door. He sank on to the couch and turned away from the blood on the Volga, the drowned men of the Atlantic, the sand-blinded troops of Egypt, from the rumours of rubber and the flames in France and the restrictions on roast beef, to the sporting page. The Dodgers, steadfast – though weary and full of error – had passed through another day of war and thousandedged death, and despite some nervousness down the middle of the diamond and an attack of wildness in the eighth, had won in Pittsburgh.
The phone rang and he went into the bedroom and picked it up.
'There's a glass of orange juice in the icebox.' Peggy's voice came over the wire. 'I thought you'd like to know.'
'Thanks,' Michael said. 'I noticed some dust on the books on the right-hand shelves, though, Miss Freemantle…'
'Nuts,' Peggy said.
'There's a lot in what you say,' Michael said, delighted with Peggy's voice, familiar and full of pleasure over the phone.
'Are they working you hard?'
'The flesh off the bones. You were taking it mighty easy when I left. Flat on your back, with all the clothes thrown off. I kissed you goodbye.'
'What a nice girl you are. What did I do?'
There was a little pause and then, for a moment, Peggy's voice was sober and a little troubled. 'You put your hands over your face and you mumbled, 'I won't, I won't.'…'
The little half-smile that had been playing about Michael's face died. He rubbed his ear thoughtfully. 'The sleeping man betrays us unashamed morning after morning.'
'You sounded frightened,' Peggy said. 'It frightened me.'
''I won't, I won't,'' Michael said reflectively. 'I don't know what it was I wouldn't… Anyway, I'm not frightened now. The morning's bright, the Dodgers won, my girl prepared orange juice'for me…'
'What're you going to do today?' Peggy asked.
'Nothing much. Wander around. Look at the sky. Look at the girls. Drink a little. Make my will…'
'Oh, shut up!' Peggy's voice was serious.
'Sorry,' Michael said.
'Are you glad I called you?' Peggy's voice was consciously a little coquettish now.
'Well, I suppose there was no way of avoiding it,' Michael said languidly.
'You know what you can do.'
'Peggy!'
She laughed. 'Do I get dinner tonight?'
'What do you think?'
'I think I get dinner. Wear your grey suit.'
'It's practically worn through at the elbows.'
'Wear your grey suit. I like it.'
'O.K.'
'What'll I wear?' For the first moment in the conversation Peggy's voice became uncertain, little-girlish, worried. Michael laughed softly.
'What're you laughing at?' Peggy asked harshly.
'Say it again. Say 'What'll I wear?' again for me.'
'Why?'
