VII, these unsuccessfully veiled by trees. The road ran on beside the water in a gentle curve.
Joe smiled at Sue’s cry of delight.
“Yes, but look up,” he said. “The lake’s nothing.”
She turned her head obediently to the right and tipped it back, trying to see to the top of the steep hill that rose almost straight out of the water. For a moment she said nothing. It was all too strange.
The whole great slope that seemed to stretch on ahead as far as the lake itself was wrinkled and ridged by ten thousand crooked walls of stone, gray-brown and as beautiful as the skin of an ancient elephant. And in each uneven wrinkle—brimming and looping over every wall and filling, like caught emerald water, the little terraces—were grapevines. Their leaves gleamed mysteriously, like verdigris on a copper roof.
Not so fast! Sue almost cried out. She had never seen a countryside like this, rising so strangely from the road walls to the right and sinking on the left straight downward toward the flat blue lake. She asked, stupidly, “Where are all the trees?”
“Trees make shade and take food from the soil,” Sara said as she shifted, sending the little car speeding along even faster. “Trees aren’t good for the vines.”
“It’s as bare as the moon,” Sue said with sudden seriousness, feeling Joe moving under her and knowing he was laughing. “Well, no trees and all these queer walls and funny color on the leaves . . .”
Sara laughed too. “But you’re right! It is very queer, all of it. It’s almost frightening to look at these million walls and know that every stone in them was carried on some man’s back. They’ve never stopped working, ever since . . .? Well, for hundreds and hundreds of years.”
“The color’s copper sulfate spray,” Joe added. He felt as full of knowledge as a vineyeard keeper.
They passed a yellow building, tall and gaily shuttered, with painted red roofs. Sara tooted the horn and waved to some men who sat eating on a wall. Their bare necks, as brown and polished as wood, their faces looking strangely pale as they lifted their chins to gesture in a jovial way toward the car.
“They look nice,” Sue murmurred. The men’s paleness, she thought, probably came from how they were bent over working all the time. She timidly waved at a solitary vigneron who wore a foolish-looking woman’s floppy hat of faded cretonne. When he waved back at her she was suddenly filled with a creamy contentment, like a kitten’s.
“Now, Sue, now!” Joe pressed his arms tightly around her tiny waist and she could feel his proud excitement. “Now! Around this curve . . . and there! You see those big old trees? And the roofs? That’s . . .”
“La Prairie?”
“No, that’s an old monastery, a farm now, that’s just across the road. And now, to the left, Sue! That’s it!”
Sue felt a shyness flood into her body again as she looked where Joe pointed clumsily with his one unhindered arm. She was almost overcome with dread at the thought of meeting more people. Sara Porter’s little speech about “sin,” which surprised Sue more than she realized, sounded again in memory. She felt a wave of shock to have learned that Sara and Tim Garton were not married—she’d always assumed his name was Porter. That she herself was not married to Joe Kelly seemed natural to her and didn’t trouble her except when she remembered that she was deceiving her father. It was a shock to remember this was not acceptable for certain people. But to find that the people at La Prairie, that almost mythical couple, Tim-and-Sara, were like Joe and herself! This was such startling news as to seem improbable. Older people should be married, shouldn’t they? Wasn’t it unfair for them to be acting with the unconventionality of college lovers?
And all those strangers! Even Sara Porter had looked uncomfortable, in her remote way, as she had swiftly mentioned them. Sue wondered desperately if there would be anybody at La Prairie who was more or less her own age.
She drew in her stomach and tilted her head proudly. They’ll all probably be horribly smart and clever—Joe was always quoting what had been said or done or eaten at La Prairie. The only thing she could think of was to try not to sniff and to pretend that her green tweed skirt had just been whisked out of an enormous wardrobe trunk, after much pondering by her of what to wear. If she held herself well she’d look taller and more unwrinkled and it was—as she remembered—always wiser not to talk.
“Look, Sue!” Joe tried to jiggle her on his cramped knees. “Do you see? There! You can see the roof now.”
Sue nodded silently.
To their left, a little past the tree and hidden by the bulk of the old monestery, a driveway forked from the road and sank rapidly out of sight between two plain and heavy gateposts. Sara flicked the car expertly through them, cut off the engine, then coasted slowly down a short steep incline to the open garage.
On the right and above their heads was the road wall. The ground sloped downward so abruptly that on their left they looked into the tops of aged apple trees heavy with green fruit and the feathery empurpled bows of prune and plum. Under them wound a steep path past an old square basin-like watering trough. Sue could hear the steady trickle of its spout.
Susan sighed. Joe was right. It was lovely, lovely. She felt that this might really be the place where all her turmoil would be calmed, where she could find help for her every present need and trouble and worry.
“Hey! Where is everyone? Isn’t anybody hungry?” Sue listened to Sara’s calling out to the others, then lay back in Joe’s strong arms looking at the house as avidly as if she might never see it again.
The garage was attached to the house, then it dropped with the slope of the land so that the front was almost two stories below, facing a terrace where there was a steadily flowing fountain. There were only two windows, one on either level, each filled with a luxuriant splash of tumbling, flickering petunias, white and deep purple. The walls were almost dust-colored, the shutters a muted green, above was the soft clay-red of the tiles of the roof. Sue felt a fastidious pleasure that the tones were right, as right as her own intuitive selections of greens and whites to blend with her gray eyes and her brown skin and her wild and sun-bleached hair.
Which room would I have, she wondered, if I were a good woman and could stay here? Joe says the house is long, stretched out facing the lake. Where is the lake? It must be very far below. What about this horrid woman who was making life difficult, making Sara Porter and me into whores? That’s too funny. I wonder if she really means it?
Sara banged on the auto’s horn, almost crossly, then sat back. Nothing happened. The fountain sounded clearly in the silent air and a little puffing breeze filled their nostrils with the scent of bees and rotting fruit.
“I don’t know where everybody is. I thought they’d be out in the road looking starved . . .”
“How about my carrying all this in anyway, Sara?” Joe asked and flicked open the door with his elbow, shoving Sue off his lap and out gently, then unfolding himself rather stiffly from the small, low car. He looked with exaggerated amazement at the piles of paper bags and the heaped bundles in the back.
“My God! Well, at least we’ll eat!”
“Don’t rub it in,” Sara told him mildly. “I can’t help it if the house is full. Or if you and Sue are shameless. Or if one of my guests . . .?”
“Hell,
