The Theoretical Foot - M. F. K. Fisher

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dear,” Sara said. “Now don’t you two make me feel embarrassed. It’s not me, nor is it Tim. You ought to know that, Joe.”

      “Of course,” he said.

      “It’s because we have a rather queer household just now. There’s Tim’s sister Nan and my young brother and sister—they’re all right—but there’s also a friend of Nan’s, Lucy Pendleton. She’s the trouble, through no fault of her own, really. It’s bad enough to have one illicit affair, as I am afraid Lucy does describe it, without flaunting another.”

      “What illicit affair?” Joe asked, before exclaiming, “My God! Do you mean you and Tim?”

      “What?” Sue asked in a small husky voice. She looked blankly from the flush of Joe’s face back to the smooth oval of Sara Porter’s. She felt completely bewildered.

      “Haven’t you ever told her?” Sara asked.

      “I forgot!” Joe said. “It’s always seemed so natural to me and it’s been going on so long—I’ve forgotten all about it, I swear!”

      “That’s an awfully nice thing to tell me, Joe,” Sara said as she lightly touched his arm, then turned. “The thing is, Susan, Tim Garton and I have never married,” she said. “It’s one reason we live here, though it is one of the less important ones. And so poor Lucy Pendleton is over here this summer to guard Nan from our evil influence and she’s rather a nervous type and not well, and I knew you’d understand if I decided not to add fuel to her fire by bringing two more sinners in under our roof. So, I’ve arranged a room for you up in the village.”

      Sara then began to laugh with relief at having finished what was a difficult speech. Now Sue felt herself to be smiling, too, for the first time since she’d seen Sara sitting so easily beside Joe in the dappled morning sunshine.

      “All right?” she asked Sue.

      “Of course!” Sue said, feeling happy suddenly. “But we’ll be at your house a lot, won’t we? Joe says it’s not just heavenly, but heavenly!”

      “It is. And you’ll be there as much as we can keep you,” she said, adding, “except for sleeping.” And now Sara listened expertly to the sound of a half-dozen bells striking twelve thirty all over the little town. “We’ll all be there if we can just manage to get there. Come on! We’ll come down after lunch and get your bags.”

      Sue laughed and ran after Sara Porter with one hand clutching at the corner of Joe’s coat.

      “I do think she’s swell!” Sue whispered as they hurried toward the little black Fiat parked at the curb.

      “Sure,” he said. “She’s fine. But what about all those other people?” Joe hated to think of anyone in the world enjoying La Prairie with the familiarity that he had more than once enjoyed it. It had honestly never occurred to him that Sara ever had other guests. A whole summer’s dreams of showing the place to his sweet Sue, of being there with her and with Sara and Tim tumbled into the hard sunlight before his squinting eyes, and he sighed.

      “Sue,” Sara directed, “you’ll sit on Joe’s lap in front, as the whole backseat is full of food, as you see?” An unnecessary observation, Sue thought as the three eased themselves into the tiny car.

       iii

      The streets of Veytaux were almost empty. An occasional worker on a bicycle pedalled home to his late lunch, not even the close heat of lake level slowing his hungry speed.

      The little car went fast. Susan, sitting high on Joe’s knees, felt the moving air curve around her head, behind her brown and naked ears, even under her beribboned bun of hair.

      They were out of town suddenly. To their left the glitter of Lac Léman lay smooth and uninterrupted. Along the shore lay some ugly villas with windows that looked as if their shutters had been closed since the last visit of Edward 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

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