The Rose Garden. Maeve Brennan

Isn’t it disgusting?” Agnes said enviously.

      “This one may not have been married, Agnes, but she had the experience of being married, I’ll guarantee you that much. Oh, I think she thought he was going to marry her. She was all busy, making curtains and cushion covers and all, and cleaning up the weeds in the garden down there where the old one had let it go. She was a nice enough girl, too, I’ll say that much for her. All excited about the cottage. But she didn’t last long after the Madam got to work.”

      “Tell us, Bridie, what did she do to her?”

      “She didn’t have to do anything. Not that one. She was all nice to the girl. All advice on how this should go in the cottage, and how that should go, all over her, she was, sweet and nice as you please. But then one night he came up by himself, and the first thing you know, she was on the phone asking him over for a drink. ‘I love your girl,’ she says to him, ‘a dear girl. What does she do?’ she says—as if she didn’t know, I heard her questioning the girl myself. ‘She works in the advertising department in the store,’ he says. ‘Isn’t that interesting,’ she says. ‘But isn’t it a pity she’s not more at ease here,’ she says. ‘We’re such a select little group, you know. A lot of artists and writers, creative people. We see each other all the time,’ she says. ‘It’s so important to fit in, as you do,’ she says. ‘I want to give a little party for you, and introduce you to everybody. And there’s my friend Charles Runyon, the critic—you know his name, of course.’ That’s Mr. God. ‘You must meet him the minute he gets back from Europe. He’s so charming,’ she says. ‘I know you’ll adore him, as we all do.’ And then she invited him to a dinner party she was giving, not mentioning the girl, and he didn’t mention the girl, either, and he never brought her near the place again. Of course, he didn’t know what he was getting in for, with this one. He thought she was all interested in his cottage. And all she was thinking about was how fast she could get it out of the way so she could have her precious view.”

      “And now I suppose all she’s thinking about is how fast she can get him out of the way.”

      “Ah, no, she doesn’t mind him, as long as he behaves himself and doesn’t cause her any trouble. He’s not a bad-looking young fellow, you know. And now she has Mr. God coming around again, paying her compliments and inviting her in to New York to see the new plays, and all. You’ll see—he’ll be out here every weekend, just the way he used to be. He has his own room here, even. He told her the way he wanted it, and she had it all done up for him. He hasn’t even got his own car, but they fall over themselves around here to see which one of them will give him a lift out from the city. They think it’s an honor, having him around. He’s supposed to be very witty. A wit, he is. He never opens that narrow little mouth of his but they all collapse laughing.”

      “The way they carry on, it’s not decent.”

      “Oh, the things I could tell you about their carrying-on,” Bridie said ominously. “It would curl your hair.”

      “You mean her and Mr. God.”

      “No, no, nothing like that there. He’s the sort that just pays compliments. I heard him telling her she has a face on her that belongs to the ages. What do you make of that?”

      “Is that a compliment? What sort of a compliment is that? Isn’t that a queer thing to say to a woman!”

      “She liked it. She says she’s in love with his mind.”

      “In love with Mr. God’s mind?”

      “She’s in love with Mr. God’s mind.”

      “In love with his mind. Well, that’s a new one. I never heard that one before.”

      “Neither did Mr. Harkey, by the look of him.”

      “There he is now,” said Agnes, who had resumed her stand by the window. Bridie came to look over her shoulder.

      Flashlight in hand, George was making his way timorously over the darkened lawn. He passed the naked woman, at whom he did not glance. Passing the clown, he turned the light briefly on the painted face, and proceeded on. He walked slowly over the place where his cottage had raised its walls, and reached at last the edge of the river, where he stood stabbing convulsively with the flashlight out into the blackness. The path he lighted across and around and over and above the water was ragged and wavering. His hand seemed to be shaking.

      “What’s he up to now, I wonder,” said Bridie.

      “Maybe he’s looking for his view,” Agnes said, and grimaced nervously at her own smartness.

      “Well, he’s not going to find much down there,” Bridie said, and gave her a companionable nudge in the ribs.

      Emboldened, Agnes thumbed her nose at the window, and immediately collapsed on the table in a heap of shuddering, feeble giggles, with her hands covering her face. After a second, she moved one finger aside and peered up to see how Bridie was taking this demonstration.

      Bridie winked at her.

The Anachronism

      Tom and Liza Frye had an eighteenth-century brick house, painted white and filled with severely modern furniture, and two Jaguar cars, a white one for Liza and a black one for Tom. Both cars had governors on them so they could not do more than fifty-five miles an hour, for Tom and Liza did not believe in speed. They each had a flat gold cigarette case and a short gold holder, and their cigarettes were made specially for them. At night they slept in matching white silk pajamas. Their bed, wide and low, was as big as a small field. Actually, it wasn’t a double bed at all but twin beds locked together by the legs and made up with separate sets of sheets. The sheets, like the pajamas, were fresh every night. One of Liza’s favorite words was “immaculate.” The word she liked least in the language was “appetite.” Still, it was a word she often used. “I have no appetite for anything,” she would say, or sometimes, “I don’t believe in appetites. They’re so common.”

      Liza was tall and excessively thin, with long, beautiful legs. She was proud of her figure, and preserved it by eating almost nothing. During the day, she fasted, and at night she dined, with Tom, on cottage cheese and shredded carrot. Their dinner was served on a tray in their bedroom, which was immense and possessed of, and by, a tremendous picture window that allowed a magnificent view of the Hudson River. Their house was built on the edge of the river, and their living room, directly under the bedroom, also had a gigantic picture window and a handsome view. Liza disliked having the living room disturbed, and Tom didn’t mind dining in the bedroom. His real life was spent away from home anyway, and by evening he was usually too tired to want anything except sleep. Liza had pale-gold hair that she wore in a neat, caplike arrangement. Tom, a little shorter than she, was stout, and had a fat, glum face and large, suspicious blue eyes. He was suspicious because of his money, of which he had a great deal. Although it was safely stowed away in a trust fund, he lived in constant fear that someone would take it from him. Liza had had no money at all until she married Tom. She was thirty-nine, two years older than he. They had been married almost seven years.

      They lived at Herbert’s Retreat, an exclusive community of about forty houses on the east bank of the Hudson, thirty miles above New York City. It had been Liza’s decision to move to the Retreat. Tom had been inclined to stay on in his comfortable, velvet-hung apartment on Beekman Place, but Liza insisted on having her own way. Liza felt, and often said, that the only way to impress one’s personality on people is to deprive them of something they want. Shake them up. Make them see that what they have isn’t much. It was hard to do this in New York, where people had so many distractions, but at Herbert’s Retreat, that tightly locked, closely guarded little community, Liza made a strong impression. Right off, her modern furniture outraged all the other women, who had been concentrating on Early American. Liza called the furniture at the Retreat “country.” “Country furniture is sweet,” she said, “but it’s