CV

27

His first meeting with Julie and her parents after their recovery was a subdued occasion. They had lunch in the Prescotts' suite—ham sandwiches and tea. Prescott went out for supplies every other day; except for that, they did not venture out of their room, and Mrs. Prescott, although she tried to seem gay, was obviously in a state bordering on hysteria.

When Stevens suggested a walk on the Promenade Deck with Julie, Mrs. Prescott was horrified. “You mustn’t go out there!” she said. “I forbid it, Julie.”

“Mother, I’ve had the disease already,” she said wearily.

“That doesn’t matter! There are people roaming around, doing terrible things. Lionel, tell her she mustn’t!”

Prescott looked embarrassed. “Julie, I really think it might be better—”

“I have something to talk over with John,” she said. “We won’t be long.”

“I’ll bring her back safely, Mrs. Prescott.”

The Promenade Deck was almost deserted. Scraps of paper littered the carpet; the trash cans and ash receivers were overflowing. Outside, the sky was brilliant over a glittering sea.

“Let’s sit down here,” said Julie. Her face looked drawn. “Do you want to see me again?” she asked after a moment.

“How can you ask?” Stevens bent toward her, put a hand on her arm.

“Please.” She moved away slightly. “I just want the answer. If it’s yes, that’s all right, and if it’s no, that’s all right too.”

Stevens studied her curiously. There was a change in her; she was less vulnerable and somehow more interesting. He had not stopped to consider whether he really wanted her; now he discovered that he did. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Let’s go to my room.”

Afterward she said, “It isn’t the same, is it?”

“No.”

“I don't love you, you know. It’s better with love.”

“And when did you realize that?”

“After I was sick. I didn’t love you before, but I thought I did. What were you after, my parents’ money? They haven’t got much.”

Stevens got a cigarette out of his pack and lit it. “Julie, I am not a fortune hunter.”

“You’re not a member of Gallard Frères in New York, either. I called a friend of Dad’s.”

“Did you say Gallard? It’s Ballard, dear, with a B.”

“Don’t lie,” she said. “What's the point of lying?”

And indeed, he could see that it was only a habit, a part of the game he had been playing so long that he had forgotten there was any other way to live.

“You know,” he said, “I really wish I could tell you all the truth about myself.”

She looked at him. “Do you know it all?”

“Does anyone?” He turned and put his hand on her shoulder. “Do you want us to go on meeting?”

She smiled faintly. “Yes. Why not?”

After she got well, Malcolm insisted on their leading as normal a life as possible; he could not bear the thought, he said, of keeping her cooped up in a stateroom after what she had already been through. “It’s foolish to take the chance,” she said. “I’ve had the disease, but you haven’t.”

“That doesn’t matter,” said Malcolm.

He had been frantic with worry, especially after she was found in another man’s stateroom. When she explained why she had done it, he wept warm tears on her cheek. Never, he said, had any man had such a companion.

They ate in the restaurants that were still open, walked on the Promenade Deck, lounged beside the open-air pool. He was tender and solicitous, because, he said, she still hadn’t got her strength back; but that was not the reason.

One day at lunch Norman Yeager came up to their table, smiling, diffident, in his worn blue jeans and his funny little hat. When she introduced them, she could tell that Malcolm, in an excess of magnanimity, was about to invite him to sit down. She warned him under the table, and after a few moments of shifting from foot to foot, Yeager went away.

“He seems perfectly harmless,” Malcolm said afterward. “We could have been a little more cordial, don’t you think? After all, he did you a tremendous favor. And he’s probably smitten with you—why not?”

“All the more reason,” she said. “Honestly, Malcolm, did you ever really think—?”

He smiled and took her hand across the table. “Only because I was out of my mind,” he said.

They had met at a party in the Village. After a few words, Malcolm had gone away and come back with a bunch of grapes, which he handed to her. “I wish they were emeralds,” he said.

She smiled. “That’s Charles MacArthur’s line.”

“I know, but I mean it as much as he did. More.”

Then it had all been so quick, so natural and easy. Malcolm was a lawyer, not a Perry Mason type but a sweet, gentle man. Others had told her how pretty she was, but he was the first who made her believe it. She had loved him with a pure devotion, loved him more than her life. She remembered, as if it had happened to someone else, how she had left him the moment she knew she was infected. That was reasonable, because she believed she was going to die anyway, but she had not done it because it was reasonable. If she had been able to choose between her death and his, she would have chosen unhesitatingly. That was what seemed so extraordinary to her. She still loved him, because he was dear and familiar, and loved her, but would she give up her life for his? Probably not.

That was what she had to conceal from him, the change in her, and it was more and more difficult because he knew something was wrong and would not ask.