Summer Crossing Read Free Page A

femalephotographer who flashed Lucy in her rigidest rotogravure stance: “What are we planning to do abroad?” said Lucy, repeating the reporter’s query. “Why, I’m not sure. We have a home in Cannes that we haven’t seen since the war; I suppose we’ll stop by there. And shop; of course we’ll shop.” She hemmed embarrassedly. “But mostly it’s the boat ride. There’s nothing to change the spirit like a summer crossing.”
    Stealing the champagne, Peter Bell led Grady away and up through the saloons and onto an open deck where voyagers, parading with their well-wishers against the city skyline, had already proud ocean-roll walks. One lone child stood at the railing forlornly flying kites of confetti: Peter offered him a swallow of champagne, but the child’s mother, a giant of uncommon physique, advanced with thunderous steps and sent them fleeing to the dog-kennel deck. “Oh dear,” said Peter, “the dog house: isn’t that always our lot.” They huddled together in a spot of sun; it was as hidden as a stowaway’s retreat, a yearning bellow from the smokestacks poignantly baled away, and Peter said how wonderful it would be if they could fall asleep and awake with stars overhead and the ship far at sea. Together, running on Connecticut shores and looking over the Sound, they had, years before, spent whole days contriving elaborate and desperateplots: Peter had assumed always a serious enthusiasm, he’d seemed absolutely to believe a rubber raft would float them to Spain, and something of that old note shivered his voice now. “I suppose it’s just as well we’re not children anymore,” he said, dividing the last of the wine between them. “That really was too wretched. But I wish we were still children enough to stay on this boat.”
    Grady, stretching her brown naked legs, tossed her head. “I would swim ashore.”
    “Maybe I’m not up on you as I used to be. I’ve been away so much. But how could you turn down Europe, McNeil? Or is that rude? I mean, am I intruding on your secret?”
    “There isn’t a secret,” she said, partly aggravated, partly enlivened with the knowledge that perhaps there was. “Not a real one. It’s more, well, a privacy, a small privacy I should like to keep awhile longer, oh not always, but a week, a day, simply a few hours: you know, like a present you keep hidden in a drawer: it will be given away soon enough, but for a while you want it all to yourself.” Though she had expressed her feeling inexpertly, she glanced at Peter’s face, sure of seeing there a reflection of his inveterate understanding; but she found only an alarming absence of expression: he seemed faded out, as though the sudden exposure to sun had drained him of all color, and, aware presently that he’d heard nothingshe had said, she tapped him on the shoulder. “I was wondering,” he said, blinking his eyes, “I was wondering if there is, after all, a final reward in unpopularity?”
    It was a question with some history; but Grady, who had learned the answer from Peter’s own life, was surprised, even a little shocked to hear him ask it so wistfully and, indeed, ask it at all. Peter had never been popular, it was true, not at school or at the club, not with any of the people they were, as he put it, condemned to know; and yet it was this very condition which had so sworn them together, for Grady, who cared not one way or the other, loved Peter, and had joined him in his outside realm quite as though she belonged there for the same reason he did: Peter, to be sure, had taught her that she was no more liked than himself: they were too fine, it was not their moment, this era of the adolescent, their appreciation he said would come at a future time. Grady had never bothered about it; in that sense, she saw, thinking back over what seemed now a ridiculous problem, she’d never been unpopular: it was just that she’d never made an effort, not felt deeply that to be liked was of importance.