AN EXPENSE OF SPIRIT
was aware at first only of something indefinably anomalous in the
impact of his nearness, something that suggested the gentle presence
of clean old ladies and that sorted oddly with the series of bitter
curves that composed his face. He smiled at me briefly.
"Smells pretty, don't he?" Noel remarked in his enormous un–
dertone. His wife did not respond, or even seem to look at
him,
but,
I do not know quite how to say it, the distance between them sensibly
increased.
"Ann,"
Cargill said, apparently unruffled, "your blouse, that
color! With your hair, your eyes, it's
a-discovery!
You're another
Columbus. Don't you think so, Noel?"
Even the obviously inappropriate name seemed in his mouth a
precise insult, and the mocking question hung in our midst, un–
answered. Before Timothy's ambiguity of sex, Noel's masculinity
seemed somehow shameful, an inexcusable crudity. No one knew
how to begin again, until Timothy, more bored certainly than em–
barrassed, fumbled for a moment in his pockets. "Mr. Brandler,
we're fellow-criminals. Do you have a cigarette?"
As
I shook my head regretfully (it would have bolstered my
self-esteem to have been able to make some real response to anything
in
that situation), Mrs. Johnson held out a full silver case, offering
it first to Cargill, and then, with an odd little bow of ironic sym–
pathy, to me. In a strange day, it was not the strangest thing that
occurred, but remembering now in tranquillity the whole adventure,
I am most dismayed at the small folly that followed; when routine
collapses, it seems to warn me, anything can happen. I took a ciga–
rette, a light proffered by Timothy, and had the lit cigarette between
my lips before I remembered that I do not smoke!
Mrs. Johnson, whom I have never seen since (and indeed, what
occasion could ever draw us together), I will always remember at
that moment, watching me, casual yet somehow uneasy, though she
could not possibly have suspected my plight, for I smoked that
cigarette down to a stub, even inhaling, lest I expose myself, with
some fortitude until my eyes watered and I feared for a while that
I
would be sick. It seemed the least I could do for her, and I feel
it
in
my somewhat uneventful life as a chivalric, almost
a
courtly,
instant.
"Timothy, you were good," Mrs. Johnson was saying when I
15
