Free The Unpossessed by Tess Slesinger Page B

mean, let me be the first to know.”
    The ice-cubes clinked; the liquid thrashed—and Margaret’s spirits rose. Why of course! (she opened the door of Norah’s cupboard); she had reckoned, on that lonely walk with Miles, altogether without Jeffrey, without the world outside of Miles that Jeffrey stood for. She had fallen (loosening her hold experimentally on Miles’ unwitting arm, vainly seeking company from Mr. Papenmeyer’s passing store) into a state of injured apathy she now could hardly credit; creeping beside him in the tempo of some demoded world (but not the middle-ages; her mother’s world perhaps) where drinks and men beside one’s husband had no place. Now Jeffrey and his cocktail rite, Jeffrey and his warming words, lifted the curtains again on the world of faster rhythms; in Jeffrey’s eyes and Jeffrey’s admiration she could feel Margaret recreated, Margaret standing for herself again, no longer Mrs. Salvemini’s shivering Missis Flinders. She faltered, facing Jeffrey’s gayer world, for what she left behind was far more dear. But one must compromise! one must evade; fatuity got one nowhere. She searched through Norah’s cupboard for Norah’s store of sugar; and found it in the crock marked GINGER.
    She held it out with the faintest suspicion that she gave him more than sugar. He turned and meeting her eye, swiftly kissed her hand and held it quietly in his. She strained for a sound from the other room, some perceptive signal (but God knew what she wanted!) from Miles perhaps; but there was silence. She was frightened; and drawing back her hand she spoke in the high artificial voice of an actress stressing the cue.
    â€œThe reviews, Jeffrey, tell me what they did to you.”
    â€œThe reviews,” he said obediently; and taking the sugar returned with characteristic absorption to his task. “Idiotic as usual,” his hands moved competently opening bottles; “all that economic drivel, you know—well, Miles subscribes to it, and Bruno too—about my not dealing with ‘social distinctions’ —when I’m concerned with life transcending class-lines . . . will you hand me the lemons now Maggie? and anyway (thanks darling) I’m something of a mystic.” He poured with an expert narrowing of the eye from a brown bottle into the cocktail shaker. “They did speak of me, though—two of them,” he numbered modestly, and fastidiously pushed the lemon peels back off the cocktail altar, “as America’s D. H. Lawrence.” More ice-cubes tumbled in. “I’m terribly fed up with grenadine, aren’t you? to hell with it. And of course, they missed my most symbolic meanings. . . .”
    â€œI thought you were a communist,” she murmured—and thought how Miles would add ‘ this week .’ (She wished that Miles’ ghost would stay outside with Miles, arguing Marx to Norah.)
    â€œOf course, I am; a Marxist intellectual, I should say.” He stirred and tasted; added another spoon of sugar. She wondered if his Revolution existed just as cocktails did, something for Jeffrey to enjoy. “And as a matter of fact, I have it on good authority that certain members of the Left Wing, you know I’m pretty close to them . . .” He paused and thought; his fine brow wrinkled. “Oh yes! I’m ready for the bitters, Maggie.”
    It struck her how from her earliest days it had been dinned into her that a woman’s life was completed by her husband; and now (taking the sugar, handing him the bitters, in short building with Jeffrey toward something, the ingredients the lightest symbols if she wished them so) how utterly false that might be. The bond, for instance, that she plainly felt with Jeffrey—it was surely more than friendship? strengthened and put to the test by Margaret’s long denial of it, it certainly existed in itself and was extraneous to