Page 60 - tender-is-the-night

Rosemary had been brought up with the idea of work.
Mrs. Speers had spent the slim leavings of the men who
had widowed her on her daughter’s education, and when
she blossomed out at sixteen with that extraordinary hair,
rushed her to Aix-les-Bains and marched her unannounced
into the suite of an American producer who was recuperat-
ing there. When the producer went to New York they went
too. Thus Rosemary had passed her entrance examinations.
With the ensuing success and the promise of comparative
stability that followed, Mrs. Speers had felt free to tacitly
imply tonight:
‘You were brought up to work—not especially to mar-
ry. Now you’ve found your first nut to crack and it’s a good
nut—go ahead and put whatever happens down to experi-
ence. Wound yourself or him— whatever happens it can’t
spoil you because economically you’re a boy, not a girl.’
Rosemary had never done much thinking, save about the
illimitability of her mother’s perfections, so this final sever-
ance of the umbilical cord disturbed her sleep. A false dawn
sent the sky pressing through the tall French windows, and
getting up she walked out on the terrace, warm to her bare
feet. There were secret noises in the air, an insistent bird
achieved an ill-natured triumph with regularity in the trees
above the tennis court; footfalls followed a round drive in
the rear of the hotel, taking their tone in turn from the dust
road, the crushed-stone walk, the cement steps, and then
reversing the process in going away. Beyond the inky sea
and far up that high, black shadow of a hill lived the Divers.
She thought of them both together, heard them still singing

60 Tender is the Night