Guestward Ho! Read online

  Guestward Ho!

  By Barbara Hooton

  As indiscreetly confided to

  Patrick Dennis

  Author of

  Auntie Mame

  A Note About the Authors

  Patrick Dennis is the pseudonym of the famous creator of Auntie Mame who in his own words says: "I was born in Chicago—same hospital, same room, same bed as Cornelia Otis Skinner—different time."

  He served for two years in American Field Service as an ambulance driver in World War II. He married Louise Stickney in 1948 and they have two children and live in New York City. He likes beer, Scotch, gin, coffee, reading, writing, long-hair music and going to the barber.

  Barbara Hooton was also born in Chicago and was educated in Evanston. She is married to William Hooten, the "Bill" of Guestward Ho!

  Copyright Page

  POPULAR LIBRARY EDITION Published in February, 1958

  Copyright, 1956, by Patrick Dennis and Barbara C. Hooton

  Library of Congress-Catalogue Card Number: 56-5034

  Published by arrangement with The Vanguard Press

  The Vanguard Press edition published in April, 1956 Five printings

  Published simultaneously in Canada by

  The Copp Clark Company, Ltd., Toronto

  Italian edition published by Valentine Bompiani & C, Milan, Italy

  British edition published by Rich & Cowan, London, England

  German edition published by Verlag der Arche, Zurich, Switzerland

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  All Rights Reserved

  To Mikie Collins, my godchild, who loves New Mexico as I do. —B. H.

  1. Remembrance of things past

  Once upon a time I was young, frivolous, carefree, and relatively slim. That was way back in 1953 A.D. I had the longest, reddest nails of anyone who worked at Bergdorf Goodman and I used to stand elegantly in Bergdorf's marble rotunda from half-past nine until half-past five, five days each week, looking just as soignée as all get-out and being only moderately haughty to the cash customers. (Imagine, I can still recall the five-day, forty-hour week!) Every Friday they paid me fifty lovely dollars, less withholding, less social security, less retirement benefits, less hospitalization, and I could do just about anything I liked with the change.

  My husband, Bill, and I lived serenely and compactly in part of a house that once belonged to Winthrop Aldrich on East Seventy-third Street between Fifth and Madison, and I could walk stylishly down Fifth Avenue to work in thirteen minutes flat. If it rained, I took a taxi. Bill worked a little farther down Fifth—a thirty-five-hour week if you please—at a nice, dim, genteel, well-paid job dealing with facts and figures and budgets and things that. Except for an occasional ink stain, his hands never got dirty.

  Our apartment was a little dream of grace and efficiency. It practically took care of itself, and our two Siamese cats did take care of themselves. After a long, hard day of being haughty under the crystal chandeliers of Bergdorf Goodman, I had only to stroll home, kick off my pumps, mix drinks for Bill and me, sit down, and discuss the rigors of New York life.

  At seven I used to heave an icy block of frozen something into a pot of boiling water and ten minutes later dinner was ready. If that proved too onerous for the little working girl, there was always Bill to fall back on—and I’ve thanked my lucky stars more times than I care to count at the rare wisdom I showed in marrying a man who can cook—or we could simply dine out at one of many excellent and inexpensive restaurants nearby.

  Then it happened.

  We got a ranch.

  How often at night (when the heavens are bright, etc.) have I lain in bed in the ranch house—or, worse, out in the bunkhouse—and asked myself just how in the name of Tophet I ever got myself into such a fix. There wasn't one good reason in the world for us to leave Manhattan Island. We just adored it. Next to Paris we liked it better man anyplace else in the whole world. We didn't feel distressed or guilt-ridden about our rootless way of life, we didn't long for grass and trees and the wide open spaces—Central Park was right out the window—we had more friends than we could manage to see, and almost enough money (more than we have now, at any rate). We were perfectly ecstatic and not one bit interested in making any sort of change. Or at least we didn't think we were. This sounds awfully silly, but I suppose the only reason we took on Rancho del Monte and the whole state of New Mexico is that we did it all on a whim. That seems frivolous to the point of wickedness, but if you want a better explanation, you'll simply have to supply it yourself. I'll be grateful for any suggestions.

  However, my husband Bill—or the starry-eyed member of the family—is a great one for whims. Take the time we spent the summer in Europe, for example. One day Bill calmly said, "Let's go to Europe."

  "Fine," I said. "When?"

  "Friday," Bill said.

  A week later I was in London trying to explain to my mother in a few well-chosen words just why I happened to be writing her on the back of a picture of Westminster Abbey.

  Well, that's how things work in the Hooton household. Don't ask me why.

  And how did we wind up at Santa Fe, New Mexico? Just about the same way. We took a little trip. "I think we'll go West," Bill said.

  West sounded incredibly dreary to me, but I started packing.

  So we went West and, to my surprise, we loved it, We did all the usual things and looked up at all the usual redwoods and mountains and bridges and looked down into the usual canyons. All very pretty, but I was getting a trifle fed up on scenery by the time Bill suggested a little side trip to Santa Fe.

  "Santa Fey!" I said. "Who wants it? What's there? Sand, dust, heat, and a lot of pseudo intellectuals from New York who've come out to be arty. We'll undoubtedly meet some old phony we wish we didn't know and . . ."

  "Get in," Bill said. He started the motor and I was on my way—seething—to Santa Fe.

  Well, we just loved that, too. We spent four days at a dude ranch and we were mad about it. In fact, one day while we were out riding, Bill said casually, "Wouldn’t this be a lovely way to make a living?"

  I was rather busy remembering to keep my heels down, elbows in, grip with the knees, and so on. So I said, "Wouldn't what be a lovely way to make a living, dear?"

  "Running a dude ranch, naturally," he said.

  "Naturally, dear," I said. You know how we have to humor them. Then I went right on remembering the rudiments of riding and forgot that he'd ever said it.

  But back in New York, whenever I bothered to look, I noticed certain subtle changes going on in my spouse. In the first place, he was becoming an absolute bore at parties because he did nothing but rave about the glories of New Mexico and its unique way of life. (People hate to hear about other people's trips.) And alone at home Bill was different, too. No longer his gay, helter-skelter self, he spent a good deal of time pecking out things on me typewriter and totting up figures and reading rather thick books. Just a sign that he's settling down, I thought. Improving himself.

  I'd always wanted Bill to supplement his Northwestern University education with a few of those fun courses available to adults, but Comparative Civilizations of the XX Century or Folk Music of the Balkan Peoples was more what I had in mind. I don't have to tell you what he was up to.

  The blow fell on Washington's Birthday, 1953. Bill gave me that wide, blue stare of a rather clever and deceitful child who's been caught en route to the cookie jar. "Sit down," he said.

  "Thank you, dear." I sat.

  "The lease here runs out on March first, doesn't it?" Bill asked.

  "Yes, it does," I said. "And I want you to tell Brett, Wycoff, Potter and Hamilton that unless they promise to redecorate throughout and do something about that stove, we're not going to .
. ."

  "Good," Bill said. "We're going to New Mexico—permanently. I've taken a dude ranch for five years with an option to buy."

  "William Jay Hooton," I said levelly, "I am divorcing you."

  "Well, one of the nice things about New Mexico is its convenience to Reno. You can drive out with me. Or, if you reside in New Mexico for one year, the divorce laws are such that. . ."

  "Live there for one year?" I shouted. "I wouldn't live there for one minute! It's nice for a visit, but . . ."

  "That's what people always say about New York," Bill said.

  Mother always told me that it was a woman's duty to follow her husband—"to the ends of the earth, if necessary, Barbara," Mother said. However, my mother only had to follow my father from an apartment in Chicago to a sweet house in Evanston, a distance of almost ten miles, and that, was that.

  Another thing Mother always told me was, "Men are just like children, Barbara—willful, naughty, headstrong, never satisfied to be in one place at one time—and we have to be very firm with them. Always put your foot down, Barbara."

  You can see that I was confused, not to say torn. So I decided to try a little of each of Mother's maxims—that is, put one foot down and then follow Bill with the other foot if the first one didn't work.

  "Now you just listen to me, Bill," I fumed. "It's all very well to go fluttering out to Santa Fe on a vacation, but you can't decide on the strength of a four-day visit to throw over your job, my job, our life here, all of our friends, everything we're accustomed to, in order to move out there and . . ."

  "But I've worked it all out on paper," Bill said. "It's really very simple . . ."

  "You're very simple," I roared. "What do we know about ranch life? What do we know about running a great big house and making beds and cooking meals for a dozen guests . . ."

  "Two dozen guests," Bill said. "Twenty-five, actually. That's the capacity of Rancho del Monte."

  I paid little heed. At that point he might just as well have said two thousand guests, it all seemed so impossible to me. I went right on raging. "What do we know about entertaining people and taking them out on rides and pack trips and keeping the horses from getting pregnant? You can't even ride one—not properly."

  vBut don't you see," Bill said with maddening calm, "I've reached the age when . . ."

  "You've reached the age of thirty and you're acting more like three. You've reached the age when you're supposed to be settling down in the world, forging ahead in your job, socking away some money for your old age—and mine, when . . ."

  "But that’s just what I'm doing," Bill said calmly. "I want to settle down and I want to settle down as a rancher in Santa Fe. Besides," he reminded me, “you said yourself that running a dude ranch would be a wonderful way to make a living."

  "I've said, from time to time, that being a ballerina or an actress or a taxidermist or a toll gate keeper or any of a hundred other professions sounded like fun, but I never meant a word of it—not really—and I didn't mean it when I said that running a ranch would be fun," I shouted.

  "Well," Bill said, "this ranch is going to be different."

  "You bet your boots it's going to be different," I said. "Sloppy, run-down, empty of guests, debt-ridden. Why, in one year . . ."

  "Will you give me one year?" Bill asked eagerly.

  I could feel him wriggling out from under the foot I'd put down, so I decided that the best thing I could do in order to save my face and still maintain the upper hand—or foot—was to heed Mother's other word of advice and start following to the ends of the earth, but on a strictly short-term tour.

  "Very well," I said, "I’ll give you one year, and no more, Bill Hooton. But if that doesn't work, I'll, I'll. . ."

  "Maybe you'll give me another," he said.

  A week later we were on our way to Rancho del Monte, which sounded unpleasantly like a fruit cannery to me. We'd given up our perfectly good jobs, our perfectly lovely apartment, our perfectly divine life in New York to go west and make a new life in a place about which we knew only from a four-day visit and at a career about which we knew from nothing.

  It's amazing how fast you can act when you have to. It had taken me three months to get our apartment the way we wanted it. Should that sweet little French clock that I bought at the Flea Market in Paris (and that sounded like a bomb to the customs man who inspected our luggage) hang above the sofa, above the table, above the chest? Which yellow should those wonderful tweed curtains be dyed—mustard, canary, lemon, champagne? Well, in three days flat that sweet little French clock was ticking away in an antique shop. Those yellow curtains—they were saffron, by the way—were being dyed brown for the rather hearty bachelor who bought them. And most of the rest of my treasures were on their way to Bill's sister in Connecticut. The girls at Bergdorf's had given me a corsagey little luncheon and I was trying to compose a letter to my mother that would be light, bright, newsy—newsy indeed—and at the same time convey the impression that the man of my choice wasn't insane, but only nervous, and that I loved him anyway.

  After a number of attempts at such a letter, I gave up the whole idea and decided simply to drop in on Mother as we were driving through Chicago and surprise her. And she certainly was surprised; shocked you might even say.

  And so on March 1 we were off, just Bill and I and our miserable possessions in a neurotic secondhand Ford station wagon with The Girls scratching and clawing and yowling in their lucite cat carriers.

  I knew next to nothing about the whole deal except that by dint of hundreds of dollars' worth of long distance calls to Mrs. Wheaton Augur, the Santa Fe real estate agent, Bill had saddled me with 2,400 acres, a fifteen-room house, two guest cottages, a bunkhouse, a swimming pool, a tennis court, eight horses, a couple of smallish private mountains, some gardens, and more out-buildings than I've been able to count. We also had no money what so ever.

  2. Santa Fe trial

  The station wagon Bill bought (you'll be pleased to know it doesn't have a cute name, or any name at all) just cost eighteen hundred dollars secondhand. This was exactly the marked-down, end-of-the-season, employee's-discount price of a perfectly gorgeous mink coat at Bergdorf's fur department that I'd tried on so many times it felt like my own skin. And don't think I didn't remind my husband of that a good many times. Today he still has the station wagon and I don't have so much as a Davy Crockett hat. And you know, I don't even care.

  We started out in typical style, several hours late. This was because Bill's driver's license had lapsed some little time before and he had to take all the tests over again, along with some nervous old women and a gaggle of giggling teenagers. I got a certain sadistic pleasure out of watching him have to start and stop and park and turn around for a mean-eyed inspector after having driven an American Field Service ambulance some fifty thousand miles during the war. But I'm proud to say that my boy passed with flying colors and we were off in a cloud of dust and Siamese cat hair. That station wagon!

  Our first brush with death occurred on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, where the speed limit is seventy miles an hour. Bill, being very law-abiding, drove at exactly seventy and that was just how fast we were going when he lost complete control of the car. We managed to come to a stop without killing anybody and piled out to inspect the wretched thing. I know absolutely nothing about engines and mechanics and axles and things like that, while Bill believes that you just give a car a kick to show it who's boss. He kicked, but nothing happened.

  "Well, as long as we're stopped," I said, "I may as well give The Girls a little airing—sort of get them used to the great out-of-doors."

  "Go ahead," Bill said from under the car. Believe me, there's no sight like a man in a Chesterfield coat sprawled under a station wagon unless it's a woman in French heels chasing two Siamese cats over hill and dale.

  The Girls had never been out in the wide-open spaces before in their lives, but they took to nature like ducks to water. And I use that well-worn old cliche advisedly, because no
sooner had they ventured suspiciously out of the car and shot across a field of mud, thistles, and rusty beer cans than the heavens opened and we were caught in a real old-fashioned cloudburst.

  And so what did I do? I did just what any other woman would do. I had a little cloudburst of my own, screaming at the cats with tears and rain running down my face and cursing Bill for being warm and dry under the station wagon.

  I don't drive, myself. That is to say, I have driven, but that one occasion the only way the car could be brought to a halt was by means of a head-on collision with a gasoline pump. The experience did not encourage me to man the wheel ever again. That meant that poor Bill had to drive every inch of the way, and what a lot of horrible inches that trip was.

  We went through a blizzard in Indiana, heavy snow in Illinois, torrential rains in Missouri, a dust storm in Oklahoma, and a blowout near Ponca City that nearly caused a six-car pile-up and was the occasion for Bill's buying five brand-new tires with almost the last of our ready cash. Engine, wheel, or tire trouble was an almost hourly occurrence and our progress through a number of little towns I had never heard of before and never wish to hear of again left a dozen garage mechanics financially fixed for life. But except for the sheer agony of it all, our trip was unmemorable. There was no nice weather, no pretty scenery. The cats were miserable, cooped up in the back of the car; Bill must have been a physical and nervous wreck at the end of each long day's driving. As for me, I felt more lost, more depressed, and more unsure of myself with every mile.

  I was so mad at Bill for getting me into this Godforsaken place, and he was so mad at me for being mad at him, that our conversation was limited to an icy but chillingly polite series of exchanges, each leading exactly nowhere.

  Around mealtimes, when we were both ravenous, our gay banter would go something like this: