The Cost of Living by Mavis Gallant Read Free Book Online Page B

what Menton had been. It was the young people’s first bond of sympathy, and Barbara tried not to giggle; before the war was a time she didn’t remember at all. “In those days, you knew where you were
at
,” her aunt said, summing up the thirties. She picked up her knitting, and Mike went on with his painting of sea, sky, and tilted sailboat. Away from Mr. Chitterley and the teacher who had excelled in mobiles, he found that he worked with the speed and method of Barbara’s aunt producing a pair of Argyle socks. Menton, for all its drawbacks, was considerably easier to paint than Paris, and he rendered with fidelity the blue of the sea, the pink and white of the crumbling villas, and the red of the geraniums. One of his recent pictures, flushed and accurate as a Technicolor still, he had given to Barbara, who had written a touched and eager letter of thanks, and then had torn the letter up.
    Mike had brought his painting things along on the picnic, for, as Barbara’s aunt had observed with approbation, he didn’t waste an hour of his day. Barbara carried the picnic basket, which had been packed by the cook at Pension Bit o’ Heather and contained twice as much bread as one would want. Around her shoulders was an unnecessary sweater that she had snatched up in a moment of compulsive modesty just before leaving her room. She carried her camera, slung on a strap, and she felt that she and Mike formed, together, a picture of art, pleasure, and industry which, unhappily, there was no one to remark but a fat man taking his dog for a run; the man gave them scarcely a glance.
    Rounding a bend between dwarfed ornamental orange trees, they saw the big hotel Barbara’s aunt had told them about. From its open windows came the hum of vacuum cleaners and the sound of a hiccuping tango streaked with static. The gardens spread out before them, with marked and orderly paths and beds of brilliant flowers. Barbara’s aunt had assured them that this place was ideal for a picnic lunch, and that no one would disturb them. There was, on Cap Martin, a public picnic ground, which Barbara was not permitted to visit. “You wouldn’t like it,” her aunt had explained. “It is nothing but tents, and diapers, and hairy people in shorts. Whenever possible in France, one prefers private property.” Still, the two were unconvinced, and after staring at the gardens and then at each other they turned and walked in the other direction, to a clearing around a small monument overlooking the bay.
    They sat down on the grass in the shade and Mike unpacked his paints. Barbara watched him, working over in her mind phrases that, properly used, would give them a subject in common; none came, and she pulled grass and played with her wristwatch. “We’re leaving tomorrow,” she said at last.
    â€œI know.” After some peering and indecision he had decided to face the hotel gardens instead of the sea. “I may not stay much longer, either. I don’t know.”
    Barbara, bound to her aunt’s unyielding cycle of city, sea, and mountains, marveled at his freedom. She fancied him stepping out of his hotel one morning and suddenly asking himself, “Shall I go back to Paris now, or another day?” and taking off at once for Paris, or Rome, or Lisbon, or, having decided he had had enough of this, his parents’ house.
    â€œMy father thinks I should go to Venice and Florence, now that I’m south.” He spoke with neither enthusiasm nor resentment; had his father ordered him home, he would have set off with the same equable temper.
    â€œThen you might go to Italy soon,” Barbara said. He nodded. “I’m going home in September,” she said. “My mother’s coming for the summer, and we’re going back together. I guess I’ll go back to school. I have to do something—learn something, I mean.”
    â€œWhat for?”
    â€œWell, it’s