The Light in the Piazza and Other Italian Tales:

Wisteria

Wisteria Charles Webley rather liked his hostess, though he imagined a lot of people didn't. She talked too much, for one thing, but then you didn't have to listen. Her voice was pleasing and made a soothing ripple of sound which broke in occasional laughter. At the moment she didn't mean to be taken seriously. She was hefty, to put it mildly, way too big by English standards. But, he thought, lazily tolerant, she was not overbearing, no Briinnehilde she, and one could always be reminded of the jolly Dutch women, in popular conception at least, with their butter-colored hair cut short and their rotund, softly elephantine , white limbs. But Evaline's hair, in the years since they had met, must have gone from blond to gray, or why would she have got it stiffly done up in what she probably thought of as silver gilt, but which looked to him like new aluminum?How, charitably, was he to picture her in Dutch clogs and a peaked cap now that her waistline had vanished? She was at present all baled up in Roman silks. He gave a short explosive laugh. "Thought you'd like that, Charles." She had just wound up a little story, no word of which had reached him. He wandered out into the garden. The apartment was on the ground floor, unusual in Rome, with a wisteria vine thickly roofing ioo ELIZABETH SPENCER the terrace. Blooms like bunches of pale grapes hung down and grazed his tall head. One cluster, so disturbed, suddenly shed all its blossoms upon him. Lavender flowers fell from his head to his shoulders and scattered on the paving about his feet; and one final petal, letting go like the rest, landed in his martini. He stood regarding it, trying to grasp, hold on to, the surprising moment, generous and fragrant, which had created a sharp start in his breast, resembling love. He looked up for someone to share it with. "Do you prefer flowers to lemon peel?" The woman—not young, not old, thin, rather sallow, with large brown eyes, nondescript dark hair, a plain navy dress—was not the right one for that moment, nor had she said the right thing. She did not in any way amplify that tender instant, the heart of it, when the wisteria petal had actually touched the chill surface of the gin. "I don't think that ever happened to me before," he said. "I never saw it happen to anybody before." "At my age you have to be careful about saying what's never happened . At your age you don't have to." Her eyes acknowledged his compliment. "How long have you known Evaline?" Wrong again, he thought, but saw the reason: she was shy, and knowing that, he had to answer, no matter how much questions like this bored him. "Ages. I knew her first husband; the only one, I mean. We were in school together, kept crossing paths." "What's he like?" "Good sort. Pleasant." He got impatient. "Hell, what's anyone like?" One of the doors opening out on the garden filled up to two thirds of its height and all its breadth, as Evaline herself emerged upon them. "So glad you met Dorothy, Charles. She paints, you know. Would never tell you, so how could you know? I've one of her things in the guest room. You'vegot to see it before you go." WISTERIA ioi "Indeed I must." The girl averted her face. There was a kind of subdued distaste in it, an aversion to being patronized, he supposed. If the painting had been put in the salon, instead of stuck away out of sight... As it was, why mention it at all? He experienced a sudden, genuine feeling for this girl after all. He could read her, as clear as anything. The maid was elsewhere, so Evaline herself was taking their glasses. "So grand to see Charles again. Such a surprisewhen you rang. It really did give me a lift; you've no idea." He agreed, and in a way really meant it. Whatever mix-ups and misunderstandings there had been in the past, back when she lived in London, why remember them now? Why give any importance, at this late date, to the ins and outs of it all? Old friends were best because they didn't matter so much...