Friend of My Youth

to be very quiet, possessed herself of a tiny brass ashtray, got her cigarettes out of her bag, and began to smoke. (She said she allowed herself three cigarettes a day.)
    “And first gaed by the black black steed
,
    And then gaed by the brown;
    But fast she gript the milk-white steed
,
    And pu’d the rider down!”
    Hazel thought that there was no use asking anymore about Jack. Somebody around here probably remembered him—somebody who had seen him go down the road on the motorbike or talked to him one night in the pub. But how was she to find that person? It was probably true that Antoinette had forgotten him. Antoinette had enough on her mind, with what was going on now. As for what was on Miss Dobie’s mind, that seemed to be picked out of the air, all willfulness and caprice. An elf-man in her yammering poem took precedence now.
    “They shaped him in Fair Jennet’s arms
,
    An esk, but and an adder;
    She held him fast in every shape
,
    To be her bairn’s father!”
    A note of gloomy satisfaction in Miss Dobie’s voice indicated that the end might be in sight. What was an eskbut? Never mind, Jennet was wrapping her lover up in her mantle green, a “mother-naked man,” and the Queen of the Fairies was lamenting his loss, and just about at the point where the audience might be afraid that some new development was under way—for Miss Dobie’s voice had gone resigned again, and speeded up a bit as if for a long march—the recitation was over.
    “Good Lord,” Antoinette said when she was sure. “How ever do you keep all that in your head? Dudley does it, too. You and Dudley, you are a pair!”
    Judy began a clattering, distributing cups and saucers. She started to pour out the tea. Antoinette let her get that far before stopping her.
    “That’s going to be a bit strong by now, isn’t it, dear?” Antoinette said. “I’m afraid too strong for me. We have to be getting back anyway, really. Miss Dobie’ll be wanting her rest, after all that.”
    Judy picked up the tray without protest and headed for the kitchen. Hazel went after her, carrying the cake plate.
    “I think Mr. Brown meant to come,” she said to Judy quietly. “I don’t think he knew that we were leaving as early as we did.”
    “Oh, aye,” said that bitter, rosy girl, as she splashed the poured tea down the sink.
    “If you wouldn’t mind opening my bag,” Antoinette said, “and getting me out another cigarette? I have to have another cigarette. If I look down to do it myself, I’ll feel sick. I’ve got a headache coming, from that moaning and droning.”
    The sky had darkened again, and they were driving through a light rain.
    “It must be a lonely life for her,” Hazel said. “For Judy.”
    “She’s got Tania.”
    The last thing that Antoinette had done, as they were leaving, was to press some coins into Judy’s hand.
    “For Tania,” she’d said.
    “She might like to get married,” Hazel said. “But would she meet anybody out there to marry?”
    “I don’t know how easy it’d be for her to meet anybody anywhere,” Antoinette said. “Being in the position she is in.”
    “It doesn’t matter so much nowadays,” Hazel said. “Girls have children first and get married later. Movie stars, ordinary girls, too. All the time. It doesn’t matter.”
    “I would say it matters around here,” Antoinette said. “Wearen’t movie stars around here. A man would have to think twice. He’d have to think about his family. It’d be an insult to his mother. It would be even if she was past knowing anything about it. And if you make your living dealing with the public, you have to think about that, too.”
    She was pulling the car off the road. She said, “Excuse me,” and got out and walked over to the stone wall. She bent forward. Was she weeping? No. She was vomiting. Her shoulders were hunched and quivering. She vomited neatly over the wall into the fallen leaves of the oak forest. Hazel opened the car door and started toward her, but Antoinette waved her back with one hand.
    The helpless and intimate sound of vomiting, in the stillness of the country, the misty rain.
    Antoinette leaned down and held on to the wall for a moment. Then she straightened up and came back to the car and wiped herself off with tissues, shakily but thoroughly.
    “I get that,” she said, “with the kind of headaches I get.”
    Hazel said, “Do you want me to drive?”
    “You aren’t used to this side of the road.”
    “I’ll go