‘My luggage …’ said Mr Smith.
Then they all went inside.
‘More wine, Miss Hillgood? Ain’t had wine on the table in years.’
‘Just a touch, if you please.’
They sat by the light of a single candle which made the room an oven and struck fire from the good silverware and the un-cracked plates as they talked and drank warm wine and ate.
‘Miss Hillgood, get on with your life.’
‘All my life,’ she said, ‘I’ve been so busy running from Beethoven to Bach to Brahms, I never noticed I was twenty-nine. Next time I looked up I was forty. Yesterday, seventy-one. Oh, there were men; but they’d given up singing at ten and given up flying when they were twelve. I always figured we were born to fly, one way or other, so I couldn’t stand most men shuffling along with all the iron in the earth in their blood. I never met a man who weighed less than nine hundred pounds. In their black business suits, you could hear them roll by like funeral wagons.’
‘So you flew away?’
‘Just in my mind, Mr Terle. It’s taken sixty years to make the final break. All that time I grabbed on to piccolos and flutes and violins because they make streams in the air, you know, like streams and rivers on the ground. I rode every tributa
ry and tried every fresh-water wind from Handel on down to a whole slew of Strausses. It’s been the far way around that’s brought me here.’
‘How’d you finally make up your mind to leave?’ asked Mr Smith.
‘I looked around last week and said, “Why, look, you’ve been flying alone ! No one in all Green City really cares if you fly or how high you go. It’s always, ‘Fine, Blanche,’ or ‘Thanks for the recital at the PTA tea, Miss H.’ But no one really listening.” And when I talked a long time ago about Chicago or New York, folks swatted me and laughed. “Why be a little frog in a big pond when you can be the biggest frog in all Green City!” So I stayed on, while the folks who gave me advice moved away or died or both. The rest had wax in their ears. Just last week I shook myself and said, “Hold on! Since when do frogs have wings?”’
‘So now you’re headin’ west?’ said Mr Terle.
‘Maybe to play in pictures or in that orchestra under the stars. But somewhere I just must play at last for someone who’ll hear and really listen …’
They sat there in the warm dark. She was finished, she had said it all now, foolish or not – and she moved back quietly in her chair.
Upstairs someone coughed.
Miss Hillgood heard, and rose.
It took Mr Fremley a moment to ungum his eyelids and make out the shape of the woman bending down to place the tray by his rumpled bed.
‘What you all talking about down there just now?’
‘I’ll come back later and tell you word for word,’ said Miss Hillgood. ‘Eat now. The salad’s fine.’ She moved to leave the room.
He said, quickly, ‘You goin’ to stay?’
She stopped half out of the door and tried to trace the expression on his sweating face in the dark. He, in turn, could not see her mouth or eyes. She stood a moment longer, silently, then went on down the stairs.
‘She must not’ve heard me,’ said Mr Fremley.
But he knew she had heard.
Miss Hillgood crossed the downstairs lobby to fumble with the locks on the upright leather case.
‘I must pay you for my supper.’
‘On the house,’ said Mr Terle.
‘I must pay,’ she said, and opened the case.
There was a sudden flash of gold.
The two men quickened in their chairs. They squinted at the little old woman standing beside the tremendous heart-shaped object which towered above her with its shining columbined pedestal atop which a calm Grecian face with antelope eyes looked serenely at them even as Miss Hillgood looked now.