"What Camus are you studying?"

"Oh, I can't remember all the titles," Nellie said. "We're studying all of Camus."

It was to Mrs. Hubbard's credit that she did not pursue the subject. Tony got her an ashtray and Nailles looked narrowly at his beloved son and this stray. His manner towards her was manly and gentle. He didn't at any point touch her but he looked at her in a way that was proprietory and intimate. He seemed contented. Nailles did not understand how, having debauched this youth, she had found the brass to confront his parents. Was she totally immoral? Did she think them totally, immoral? But his strongest and strangest feeling, observing the boy's air of mastery, was one of having been deposed, as if, in some ancient legend where men wore crowns and lived in round towers, the bastard prince, the usurper, was about to seize the throne. The sexual authority that Nailles imagined as springing from his marriage bed and flowing through all the rooms and halls of the house was challenged. There did not seem to be room for two men in this erotic kingdom. His feeling was not of a contest but of an inevitability. He wanted to take Nellie upstairs and prove to himself, like some old rooster, that the scepter was still his and that the young prince was busy with golden apples and other impuissant matters.

"How did you lose your husband, Mrs. Hubbard," Nellie asked.

"I really can't say," said Mrs. Hubbard. "They don't go in terribly much for detail. They simply announce that he was lost in action and that you are entitled to a pension. Oh, what a divine old dog," she exclaimed as Tessie came into the room. "I adore setters. Daddy used to breed and show them."

"Where was this," Nailles asked.

"On the island," said Mrs. Hubbard. "We had a largish place on the island until Daddy lost his pennies and I may say he lost them all."

"Where did he show his dogs?"

"Mostly on the island. He showed one dog in New York-Aylshire Lassie-but he didn't like the New York show."

"Shall we go in to lunch," asked Nellie.

"Could I use the amenities," asked Mrs. Hubbard.

"The what?" said Nellie.

"The john," said Mrs. Hubbard.

"Oh, of course," said Nellie. "I'm sorry…"

Nailles carved the meat and absolutely nothing of any interest or significance was said until about halfway through the meal when Mrs. Hubbard complimented Nellie on her roast. "It's so marvelous to have a joint for Sunday lunch," she said. "My flat is very small, as are my means, and I never tackle a roast. Poor Tony had to make do with a hamburger last night."

"Where was this," Nellie asked.

"Emma cooked my supper last night," Tony said.

"Then you didn't spend the night at the Crutchmans'?"

"No, Mother," Tony said.

Nellie saw it all; seemed to be looking at it. Would she rail at the stranger for having debauched her cleanly son? Bitch. Slut Whore. Degenerate. Would she cry and leave the table? Tony was the only one then who looked at his mother and he was afraid she would. What would happen then? He would follow her up the stairs calling: "Mother, Mother, Mother." Nailles would telephone for a taxi to take dirty Mrs. Hubbard away. Nellie, her lunch half finished, lighted a cigarette and said: "Let's play I packed my grandmother's trunk. We always used to play it when Tony was a boy and things weren't going well."

"Oh, lets," said Mrs. Hubbard.

"I packed my grandmother's trunk," said Nellie, "and into it I put a grand piano."

"I packed my grandmother's trunk," said Nailles, "and into it I put a grand piano and an ashtray."

"I packed my grandmother's trunk," said Mrs. Hubbard, "and into it I put a grand piano, an ashtray and a copy of Dylan Thomas."

"I packed my grandmother's trunk," said Tony, "and into it I put a grand piano, an ashtray, a copy of Dylan Thomas and a football."

"I packed my grandmother's trunk," said Nellie, "and into it I put a grand piano, an ashtray, a copy of Dylan Thomas, a football, and a handkerchief."

"I packed my grandmother's trunk," said Nailles, "and into it I put a grand piano, an ashtray, a copy of Dylan Thomas, a football, a handkerchief and a baseball bat…"

They got through lunch and when this was over Mrs. Hubbard asked to be taken to the station. She thanked Nailles and Nellie, got into her Chesterfield, went out the door and then returned saying: "Oops, I nearly forgot my bumbershoot." Then she was gone.

Nellie cried. Nailles embraced her, saying: "Darling, darling, darling, darling." She went upstairs and when Tony returned Nailles said that his mother was resting. "For God's sake," said Nailles, "please don't ever do anything like that again."

"I won't, Daddy," said Tony.

VIII

On the night but one before Tony was stricken with what Nailles insisted was mononucleosis, Nailles and Nellie had gone to a dinner party at the Ridleys'.

The Ridleys were a couple who brought to the hallowed institution of holy matrimony a definitely commercial quality as if to marry and conceive, rear and educate children was like the manufacture and merchandising of some useful product produced in competition with other manufacturers. They were not George and Helen Ridley. They were "the Ridleys." One felt that they might have incorporated and sold shares in their destiny over the counter. "The Ridleys" was painted on the door of their station wagon. There was a sign saying "The Ridleys" at the foot of their driveway. In their house, matchbooks, coasters and napkins were all marked with their name. They presented their handsome children to their guests with the air of salesmen pointing out the merits of a new car in a showroom. The lusts, griefs, exaltations and shabby worries of a marriage never seemed to have marred the efficiency of their organization. One felt that they probably had branch offices and a staff of salesmen on the road. They were very stingy with their liquor and when they got home Nailles made a nightcap for Nellie and himself.

Nailles put on eyeglasses to measure the whiskey. Now and then his glasses flashed a double beam of light. He seemed, to Nellie, fussy that night as he measured out the ice and soda and she noticed a large lipstick stain along the side of his mouth. He would have exchanged an innocent kiss behind a pantry door and this did not worry her but the streak of crimson made him look ridiculous. His procreative usefulness was over-she thought-but his venereal itch was unabated-he scratched himself while she watched-and she wondered if there wasn't some massive obsolescence to the overly sensual man in his forties; some miscalculation in nature that left him able to populate a small city with his unwanted progenerative energies. Later, when Nailles lurched over to Nellie's side of the bed she didn't actually kick him but she made it clear that he was unwelcome.

Now Nailles had no use for men who were afraid of women. He had grown up with a man who suffered from this terrible infirmity. His name was Harry Pile and Pile had been afraid of women all his life. This had begun quite naturally with his mother-a large, big-breasted, impetuous woman who fired out contradictory commands, broke her husband's spirit and thrashed her only son with a thorny walking stick. When Pile was eight or nine years old he fell in love with a girl named Janet Forbes. She was intelligent and responsive and yet in some way formidable. Her shoulders were broad, her voice was a little gruff for a girl and her uncle, Wilbert Forbes, had discovered a mountain in Alaska that bore his name. That Harry's beloved shared her name with a mountain seemed to hint at some snowcapped massiveness, some inaccessibility that both pleased and frightened him. In school and college he invariably fell in love with women distinguished by their independence and intractability. He first married a high-spirited and beautiful young woman who gave him three daughters and then ran off with an Italian waiter. This deepened his fears. For his second wife he chose a woman so preternaturally demure, wistful and shy that it seemed he had outmaneuvered his fears but she turned out to be a heavy drinker and another source of anxiety. In the meantime the three daughters of his first marriage had grown up into argumentative, robust and determined young women and when he once tried to correct the eldest she picked up a china lamp and smashed it over the top of his head. It was Pile who swept up the pieces and retired in defeat. Pile was afraid of his secretary, afraid of his receptionist, afraid of strange women approaching him on the sidewalk. In his thirties he was taken ill and when Nailles went to visit him in the hospital he found, of course, that Pile was afraid of the nurses, afraid even of those kindly and maternal volunteers who sell cigarettes and newspapers. He failed rapidly and when Nailles last saw him he was emaciated and barely able to speak. When Nailles asked if there was anything he wanted he shook his head. When Nailles asked if there was any friend he would like to see he merely sighed. When he finally spoke it was in a hoarse whisper. "Do you think God will be a woman?" he asked. It was one of the last things or perhaps the last thing he said, since he died that night.