Read Online Voices of a Summer Day by Irwin Shaw - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Irwin Shaw
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and filled their bags and gunny sacks and cardboard cartons with the bottles.
“Tonight,” Benjamin said, thinking of Pat, “we’re going to have ourselves a real New Year’s Eve party.”
It was six-thirty in the morning when they tiptoed out of the building to where the three cars were parked under a shed behind the kitchen. It was pitch-dark, but they didn’t put on any lights as they loaded the cars. In five minutes they were ready to go. The engines coughed in the pre-dawn cold, caught, and they rolled down the driveway, catching the huge Pennsylvania-Tudor pile of the club building momentarily in the glare of the headlights as they took a curve. England, my England, Benjamin thought sardonically, as the car lights picked out the dark beams. Then the building disappeared in the darkness and they sped toward home.
Most of the boys, when they weren’t spelling the drivers, slept. But Benjamin couldn’t sleep. He had never stolen anything in his life. Now I am a thief, he thought. He knew that later he would have to come to terms with this idea, as he would with the idea of the girl who had used his bed and the girl who had made him blush. But for the moment he was too tired, too inflamed by a hatred he had never known he could feel for anyone, to make any judgment on himself.
They held the party that night, but it was an anti-climax. They were all too exhausted to enjoy it, although there was a moment of laughter when they drew straws to see who would beat up Dyer when he came back to school after the holidays and a boy called Swinton, who was the best student in school, but was blind without his glasses and twenty-five pounds lighter than Dyer, came up with the short straw. So the problem of what to do with Dyer was postponed for more sober discussion.
Pat looked beautiful and happy, and Benjamin tried to match her mood. “Isn’t it nice,” she said, “to have our own private New Year.” Benjamin danced with her and went into the kitchen with her to kiss her a true and sensual Happy New Year. But he knew he had already betrayed her, even if the actual act of betrayal was years in the future.
The night had put its mark on Benjamin and he knew it. He was ashamed of himself. Filthy people had behaved filthily to him and he had become filthy himself.
Nobody ever hit Dyer and he didn’t say anything about what had happened at the country club, and in his junior year he was elected president of his class.
Eighteen months after the New Year’s party, Pat’s family moved to Oregon and she had to go along with them. She and Benjamin wrote to each other for a while, but it was no good, and by that time Benjamin had taken up with any number of other girls, none of them as good of heart or as brave and honest as Pat, but with whom he could go to bed without love or the pretense of love. In his imagination at that period, he thought of himself as mounting a curving ornate staircase over and over and over again.
After he got out of school and had moved to New York, Benjamin had an affair with a girl named Prentiss, who, it turned out, had been at the New Year’s Eve party in Pennsylvania. Neither of them remembered having seen each other that night and, from Benjamin’s description, the girl could not identify either the blond who had used his bed or the pretty dark bitch at the bar.
Miss Prentiss, it turned out, had her own peculiarities. She was the daughter of a Methodist minister from a small town near Scranton, with a face and manner of speaking that Benjamin’s mother would have called “refined.” But after the affair, which had lasted nearly three months and had been conducted in a fashion that Mrs. Federov would have never called refined, Miss Prentiss, naked and sipping straight bourbon on the edge of her wide double bed, asked Benjamin to marry her. He was making twenty-three dollars a week and going to night school to study drafting and, while he enjoyed seeing Miss Prentiss from time to time
“Tonight,” Benjamin said, thinking of Pat, “we’re going to have ourselves a real New Year’s Eve party.”
It was six-thirty in the morning when they tiptoed out of the building to where the three cars were parked under a shed behind the kitchen. It was pitch-dark, but they didn’t put on any lights as they loaded the cars. In five minutes they were ready to go. The engines coughed in the pre-dawn cold, caught, and they rolled down the driveway, catching the huge Pennsylvania-Tudor pile of the club building momentarily in the glare of the headlights as they took a curve. England, my England, Benjamin thought sardonically, as the car lights picked out the dark beams. Then the building disappeared in the darkness and they sped toward home.
Most of the boys, when they weren’t spelling the drivers, slept. But Benjamin couldn’t sleep. He had never stolen anything in his life. Now I am a thief, he thought. He knew that later he would have to come to terms with this idea, as he would with the idea of the girl who had used his bed and the girl who had made him blush. But for the moment he was too tired, too inflamed by a hatred he had never known he could feel for anyone, to make any judgment on himself.
They held the party that night, but it was an anti-climax. They were all too exhausted to enjoy it, although there was a moment of laughter when they drew straws to see who would beat up Dyer when he came back to school after the holidays and a boy called Swinton, who was the best student in school, but was blind without his glasses and twenty-five pounds lighter than Dyer, came up with the short straw. So the problem of what to do with Dyer was postponed for more sober discussion.
Pat looked beautiful and happy, and Benjamin tried to match her mood. “Isn’t it nice,” she said, “to have our own private New Year.” Benjamin danced with her and went into the kitchen with her to kiss her a true and sensual Happy New Year. But he knew he had already betrayed her, even if the actual act of betrayal was years in the future.
The night had put its mark on Benjamin and he knew it. He was ashamed of himself. Filthy people had behaved filthily to him and he had become filthy himself.
Nobody ever hit Dyer and he didn’t say anything about what had happened at the country club, and in his junior year he was elected president of his class.
Eighteen months after the New Year’s party, Pat’s family moved to Oregon and she had to go along with them. She and Benjamin wrote to each other for a while, but it was no good, and by that time Benjamin had taken up with any number of other girls, none of them as good of heart or as brave and honest as Pat, but with whom he could go to bed without love or the pretense of love. In his imagination at that period, he thought of himself as mounting a curving ornate staircase over and over and over again.
After he got out of school and had moved to New York, Benjamin had an affair with a girl named Prentiss, who, it turned out, had been at the New Year’s Eve party in Pennsylvania. Neither of them remembered having seen each other that night and, from Benjamin’s description, the girl could not identify either the blond who had used his bed or the pretty dark bitch at the bar.
Miss Prentiss, it turned out, had her own peculiarities. She was the daughter of a Methodist minister from a small town near Scranton, with a face and manner of speaking that Benjamin’s mother would have called “refined.” But after the affair, which had lasted nearly three months and had been conducted in a fashion that Mrs. Federov would have never called refined, Miss Prentiss, naked and sipping straight bourbon on the edge of her wide double bed, asked Benjamin to marry her. He was making twenty-three dollars a week and going to night school to study drafting and, while he enjoyed seeing Miss Prentiss from time to time
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