No More Meadows (32 page)

Another quaint old naval custom was the paying of social calls, which Vinson swore was a necessity, but which seemed to Christine an archaic irrelevance. She had protested at first, and said that in England all that nonsense had gone out with Queen Victoria, hoping that the American respect for the English social code would deter him, but to no avail. In the United States Navy one paid calls, and so she had to waste many a week-end afternoon putting on hat and gloves to go and visit someone she did not want to see, and she had to try and look pleased when she was fetched away from washing underclothes in the bathroom to open the door to somebody who had come to call on her in gloves and a hat.

They had not yet called on Admiral and Mrs Hamer. Having seen them at her wedding Christine dreaded this, and kept making excuses not to go, until it was too late and the Hamers had gone away. Their default had preyed on Vinson, and now that the Hamers were back in Washington it was now preying more strongly, and Christine knew that they would have to get it over some time.

All calls made her nervous. The conversation was apt to be strained, because the people you had disturbed at their gardening or woken from their Sunday afternoon sleep wanted to see you as little as you wanted to see them. With the Admiral and
his wife it would be even worse. The Admiral would grunt at them and blink his eyes, which were set in folds of rusty skin, like a tortoise, and Mrs Hamer would pass her eye up and down Christine, give her a mental percentage of acceptability and then sit back and expect homage.

She said all this to Vinson, but he was adamant. They must call on Admiral Hamer.

‘All right, dear. Some day soon.' Christine was suddenly acquiescent, because she had thought of a good idea. For several days she kept telephoning the Hamers' number. If anyone answered she put down the receiver without saying anything until on a Sunday afternoon she telephoned and there was no answer.

She ran out to the porch, where Vinson was playing solitaire with his shirt off. His chest always attracted her. It was not broad, but it stood out well like a box above his flat stomach.

‘Let's go and call on the Hamers now,' she urged him. ‘I've finished what I was doing, and if we go now straightway we'll be back in time for you to hear that “Stop the Music” programme.'

He was pleased that she had suggested it herself. They drove out to the Hamer's house, which had fake beams and a fake antique porch lantern and a self-conscious white fence round the tiny garden. No one answered their ring at the coy set of sleigh bells which hung outside the door, so they pushed their cards through the letter-box – and they had made their call. It was as easy as that.

It was a wonderful idea. Christine wished she had thought of it before. Some day she would write a book on naval etiquette to rival the one Vinson had given her, and earn the undying gratitude of naval wives for telling them her invention for painless call-paying.

She had not escaped as easily as she thought, however. Two days later the Admiral's wife telephoned to thank Christine for having left cards and to say how sorry she was that she and the Admiral – she always called him The Admiral – had not been at home. She did not sound as if she meant it, but no doubt she meant well.

No doubt she meant well, too, when she went on to say that
she would expect to see Christine at the next luncheon given by the Officers' Wives' Club. It was not an invitation. It was an order.

‘I shan't go,' Christine told Vinson. She had heard about these lunches from Nancy Lee.

‘You must go,' he said. ‘When the Admiral's wife herself invites you –'

‘She didn't invite me to go. She told me to go,' Christine muttered.

‘When Mrs Hamer herself invites you,' he continued, ‘it's obvious that you must go. You may even enjoy yourself,' he added without much hope. ‘I'll give you some money and you can buy a new dress for it. You will go, won't you, honey?' he said, suddenly nervous and almost boyish, like a child trying to persuade his mother to go to the school Speech Day.

‘Yes, dear,' Christine said. She had taken to saying ‘Yes, dear' lately. When she said it she felt that she sounded like a thousand middle-aged wives, but it made Vinson happy, and so she said it.

When she went into the lounge of the club where the luncheon was held, all she could see was women. Women everywhere, holding thick little glasses, and all talking. Women in white hats, women in black cartwheel hats, women in little pink hats with flowers on them. No women without hats, except Christine. She patted down her hair nervously and approached the table by the door, where three women in red, baby-blue and natural straw hats respectively sat with some notebooks and cardboard boxes and one of those little black tin money-boxes so beloved of treasurers of women's clubs.

The treasurer in the red hat took a five-dollar note from Christine and scrabbled delicately in the box for change with long mulberry-coloured nails which did not match her hat. The woman in the baby-blue hat ticked Christine's name off on a list and smiled at her with expert charm. No doubt she had risen to the exalted position of being allowed to sit behind the table and tick off lists on the strength of that smile. The woman in the natural straw hat, who looked like a carthorse dressed up for the summer, except that her ears did not stick out through holes in the top, searched in the cardboard boxes and gave Christine a
place number and a little red card with her name on it and a safety-pin at the back. Christine pinned the card to her bosom as directed, feeling like a man who took your money in the supermarket.

The woman in the baby-blue hat, all charm, told her to go to the receiving line. Christine approached timidly and recognized Mrs Hamer in tubular brown silk, flanked by three or four other notable ladies, one of whom was Mrs Fleischman, still wearing the dress made of bits left over from the loose covers at the bungalow. She was the only one of the outriders who seemed pleased to see Christine. The others smiled, but distractedly, looking beyond her at the people coming up behind. Mrs Hamer did not smile. Her face was not made that way. She was very tall, with long pointed feet encased in patent-leather shoes which looked like the halves of over-ripe bananas. She towered over you, austere and all-powerful. It was like shaking hands with the Statue of Liberty.

Christine managed to say: ‘Thank you so much for having invited me to come', although the invitation had meant that she had to fork out a dollar seventy-five for her lunch. Mrs Hamer murmured some regal blessing, and it was only after she had passed thankfully out of the receiving line that Christine realized that Mrs Hamer had no idea who she was.

About three hundred women were milling round the big lounge like hens in a barnyard. They were all drinking something out of the thick little glasses, but Christine could not see where they got it. With relief, she saw the black fringe and scarlet-lipped vivacity of Nancy Lee, and she edged through the crowd to her. Nancy pushed through the women who were clustered around the bar table like flies round a sore, and came back with something in a little glass for her. It was sherry, very sweet and oily and warm. Nancy and the two cheerful girls with her were wearing white name cards on their bosoms. Christine looked down at her own.

‘Why is it red?' she asked. ‘I feel like a pariah.'

‘You're worse than that.' One of the cheerful girls laughed. ‘You're a new girl. It's your first time here isn't it? You wait. After lunch you'll be made to stand up so that all the girls can look at you.'

‘Oh no,' Christine said. ‘I can't. I'm the only one here without a hat.'

‘We've all been through it,' the other girl said. ‘It's murder. You feel everyone's giving you the hee-haw; and if you're fairly newly married, all these hags take a good look to see if you're pregnant.'

‘I'm going home.' Christine put down her glass.

‘No, you're not.' Nancy grabbed her arm. ‘Everyone's going into lunch. Come on, let's get in quick and I'll juggle the numbers round so we can sit together.'

Several other people seemed to have done that, or else they had come with friends and been given consecutive numbers at the door. Nearly everyone was sitting next to someone they knew, which makes the lunch less of a bore, but defeated its object of bringing the girls together, because the girls just talk to their friends, and most ignored the strangers around them.

The woman next to Christine had a slim taut back with a zip fastener all the way down. That was all Christine saw of her, for she remained turned away throughout the lunch and talked to her friend on the other side about all the things she was going to cite against her husband for divorce.

The lunch was as unsuitable to the warm day as the sherry had been. It was some kind of meat served in lumps, with too little gravy and a mound of undercooked vegetables. The coloured waiters were the only men in the room, and it seemed to unhinge them. They were very slow, and they argued together a lot in corners, and by the time they reached Christine's end of the table with the ice-cream it was only a cupful of white liquid.

‘A dollar seventy-five for this,' Nancy said. ‘Plus paying a baby-sitter. I don't know why we do it.'

‘Vin made me come,' Christine said. ‘Does Art make you come too?'

‘He doesn't, but he
is
in the Navy, for his sins, and I feel that the least I can do is to keep in with the top brass.' She nodded towards the top table, where Mrs Hamer sat in the middle of a dozen rarefied women, who had had their ice-cream first, while it was still ice as well as cream.

‘Everyone talks as if the wives of senior officers did the promoting,'
Christine said. ‘I can't see how they run a Navy that way.'

‘It isn't exactly that, but it works the other way. If you get in wrong with one of those babies up there she'll see to it that she talks enough about you to make them think twice before they recommend your husband for promotion.'

‘Well, but–'

‘Hush. Something is going to occur.' Nancy sat back and closed her eyes, as the secretary of the club, a well-fed, florid woman who had given a sweaty handshake in the receiving line, rose to her feet and banged on the table with the back of a spoon.

It was just like all other meetings of women's clubs that Christine had ever attended. The minutes were read in a flat reciting voice, and no one listened to them. There was the usual to-do about who should propose that the minutes be signed and who should second the proposal. At first no one would get up, and then suddenly three women jumped up together and began: ‘I wish to propose –' and then looked at each other in some confusion, apologizing and saying: ‘No, no, not me', like guests at a tennis party when there is only one court for ten people.

Our sympathy was extended to an absent mother who was in hospital in Hawaii, regrets were expressed at the loss of our valued subscriptions secretary, Mrs Jowitt, whose husband was being ordered away, congratulations were offered to two ladies who had produced little future naval officers, and our sincere thanks went out to all those ladies who so wonderfully gave their services to make the wonderful Arthritis Ball such a wonderful success. Here followed a tedious list of who had helped with the tickets, the flowers, the decorations, who had lent this and that coffee urn, and who – this was a nasty one – who had promised beforehand to help and been ‘regretfully prevented'.

Other people besides Nancy had their eyes closed by this time. Christine herself was lulled into forgetting the ordeal that the red card on her bosom presaged, when the secretary sat down to about as much applause as a tap dripping, and Mrs Hamer rose majestically to her feet, with her large hands spread flat on the table and her gaze raking the roomful of tables as if
the rose on the front of her hat was a searchlight. Christine sat up. This was it.

‘Before we hear from our social secretary' – ah, that would be it – ‘I take pleasure in introducing to you Miss …' – she glanced down at the table – ‘Miss Mavis Harbright, who comes to us through the good offices of our member Mrs Westing' – a cold nod down the table – ‘to give us a little talk on how to acquire the art of charm and social poise.'

‘This ought to be good.' Nancy sat up. It was, but Christine, her ordeal only postponed, was still too nervous to enjoy fully the spectacle of an overweight and overhatted woman with a fistful of rings on her pudgy fingers telling the members of the club, who were mostly young and elegant, how they could be new women if only they would do as she did.

It was soon apparent that the good offices of our member Mrs Westing meant that the overhatted woman was a friend of Mrs Westing and had prevailed on her to get her into this
galère,
so that she could advertise the deportment school of which she was proud to be the principal.

Mavis Harbright worked hard. You had to give her that. She sat, she rose, she shook hands with imaginary guests, she stood at an imaginary cocktail party with the weight balanced just so to enable one to swivel round and chat lightly to all comers. She paced up and down the room with her gloves on her head. One of the naval wives called out: ‘Try that with a glass of water', but luckily, a bamboo screen by the kitchen door fell over at that moment, so no one heard her.

Miss Harbright then stood in the best position for health and beauty, telling the ladies to be sure to tilt the pelvis and lock the thighs when so doing, which brought a giggle from one of the coloured waiters, who was listening agape. Mrs Hamer's eye was still daring the screen not to fall down again. She shifted it slightly to the left and the waiter was withered out of the room like a piece of charred newspaper. Miss Harbright demonstrated how to get in and out of a car without loss of grace or poise, and one of the girls near Christine remarked audibly that if she did it like that she would knock off that darned mushroom hat. This brought the death-ray eye of Mrs Hamer round from the kitchen door and trained it down the table to where sat
the irreverent girl, whose husband now perhaps would never get that half-stripe.