Love & Mrs. Sargent Page 19

  II.

  At the stop light Billy Kennedy dug into a pocket for his handkerchief and again wiped the sweat from his palms, then from his brow and then from the crease where his chin joined his neck. He told himself for the tenth time that he wasn’t nervous at all, that it was just a damned hot day—unseasonable. Actually, it wasn’t. Great clouds swept across the sun changing the day from bright to glum and then back again to clear. And, deny it though he would, Billy was nervous. Having decided last night that Allison meant what she said and that she was, finally and irrevocably, finished with him, he had been almost relieved. He had driven away with a smart quip, a sneer on his lips, his reputation as a rakehell intact. But this morning, when Allison had telephoned just after one of Billy’s sullen breakfast table scenes with his mother, Billy almost wished that he’d been nicer to Ma, had agreed to go down to De Paul this very afternoon to sign up for some evening courses in business administration. Instead he had, as usual, sent his mother off to her facial in tears, saying that she didn’t know What Was Going to Become of him. He had been considering going back to bed when the maid summoned him to the telephone. The message was short and it should have been sweet. But it wasn’t.

  “Billy,” the voice had said crisply, “it’s Allison. I can’t talk long, so listen carefully. You said last night that if I ever changed my mind to give you a ring. I’m calling now. . . .”

  “H-hey, Allison. . . .”

  “Mother and her. . . . Mother’s gone out for lunch. You can pick me up at two.”

  “But Allison, where c-could we. . . .”

  “I know the place. I’ll tell you where to meet me. . . .”

  Billy had been in a panic, but could a gentleman do anything less than accept? He had shaved twice, his hand trembling so violently that he nicked himself both times. He had clipped his toenails and taken a second shower, rolled Trig onto all the places where he thought he might perspire and splashed 4711—too much 4711?—onto his chest and stomach, his forehead and the back of his neck. He had dressed very carefully in tweeds, a button-down shirt and loafers, leaving off his underwear—an omission he now regretted. He had taken a restorative drink and then gargled; then another drink. He wished now that he had brought some mouth wash with him. He prayed, silently, to no specific Power that he’d do things right. Messing around in the back of a car was one thing; visiting a couple of dogs like Shirley and Almeda was another; but having a girl like Allison Sargent call up and order you like a . . . yes, like a chop suey dinner. . . . Well, that was something else again. Billy jammed on the brakes. Here was the place. No mistaking it. He turned the car carefully into the overgrown driveway.

  Allison waited tensely in a rotting rustic gazebo. Rustic in the worst sense of the word, built of multicolored stones, peeling birchbark and leaky thatch, the summerhouse was a splintery tribute to every arts-and-crafts movement since William Morris. It was but one of many hideous parts of the old estate adjoining the Sargent place.

  Allison had chosen the neighboring property as a meeting place because it was totally deserted. As three realtors’ signs announced to anyone who could read through the rust, this desirable property—riparian rights and all—was for sale, as it had been since Allison could toddle. The hideous old gothic villa with its verandas and turrets, its bays and dormers, its mansard roof, its ornamental ironwork, its fifty dark master rooms—plus twenty darker ones for servants—its overgrown gardens and mossy statuary couldn’t even be given away. The Trappists, the Carmelites, the Poor Clares, the Sisters of Charity, and a dozen other religious orders had been polite but firm in their refusals. And so it decayed, untended and unmourned by its owner who was finishing out her days in Reduced Circumstances, but at a favorable rate of exchange among other deposed rulers in Estoril.

  Allison looked at her watch and noticed that Billy was already four minutes late. She did not notice that she had picked off all of her nail enamel. She was glad that she had had neither breakfast nor luncheon because she felt that she might be sick. Her stomach rumbled slightly and she tried to will it to stop. Gas would not be glamorous at an assignation—especially one’s first. She had bathed carefully, put on a new wool dress, her new suede coat and too much make-up. She felt that there was something else that should have been done, but she didn’t know exactly what it was. Billy would take care of—well—that. At least Allison hoped he would. But right now she didn’t care very much. She didn’t care about anything.

  She heard the sound of tires on the weedy gravel. She stepped out of the gazebo and tried to smile. Billy stopped the car and got out. He wondered what the exact etiquette was for such an occasion. Should he kiss Allison passionately? He supposed so and made an attempt. Somehow their four arms, their two mouths and noses just hadn’t fitted.

  “Not now,” Allison said.

  “Gee, Allison,” Billy said, “are . . . are we going to do it here?”

  “No. I have the place. I just didn’t want Mother to see your car in our driveway,” Allison said. “Not that she’d be likely to notice it,” she added bitterly. “We’re going to the beach house. Nobody ever goes near it at this time of year.”

  “Oh,” Billy said. He felt his heart sink, his stomach churn. He was sweating again.

  “Well, come on.”

  The beach house wasn’t exactly a house and then it wasn’t exactly not a house. With its peaked roof and outer walls painted with jaunty stripes, it looked like an outsize sentry box or like a gay pavilion set up for a tournament of jousting when knighthood was in flower. (The architect had rather wanted to go Japanese, but Sheila had turned thumbs down on that.) It contained dressing rooms for males and females; showers and toilets for each (now turned off); a fireplace (never once lighted) where marshmallows could be incinerated and expensive cuts of meat quite badly charred; a large refrigerator (also turned off); two sailcloth divans and quite a lot of assorted beach furniture stacked in the center of the room. The screened front of the structure had been boarded up for the winter with siding that wasn’t in the least jaunty or gay. Allison went purposefully to the door, undid the padlock and removed it. “Well, come in,” she said.

  “Are . . . are you sure nobody will come down here?” Billy said. He was cold now.

  “Why would they? I’d say the bathing season was just about over. It’s nearly November.”

  The inside was dark and musty, smelling faintly of damp towels and bathing suits. Allison went in, removed her coat and sat primly on the edge of one of the divans. “Sit down,” she said.

  “Uh, mind if I, uh, take a leak?” Billy quavered.

  “Help yourself,” Allison said. “Gentlemen to the right, ladies to the left. Not that it makes much difference.”

  “Th-thanks,” Billy said. The door of the men’s dressing room had warped and wouldn’t quite close. Allison tried not to listen. She undid the top three buttons of her dress. As she did so, a shaft of furtive sunlight burst through one of the side windows and focused on a small gray mouse frantically trying to move her litter of four pink babies to cover. Allison gave a little shriek.

  “Wh-what?” Billy called.

  “Nothing,” Allison said, shuddering.

  There was a strangulated, choking sound from the toilet. “Damn!” Billy said. Allison remembered now that the water had been turned off for the winter. Gritting her teeth, she kicked off her shoes, tucked her feet up under her and leaned back uncomfortably. She wondered tensely if Billy would bound through the not-entirely-closed door stark naked and ready for action. She felt rather foggy about the exact protocol of illicit affairs. But she hoped that at least he’d be quick about it.

  With a ferocious tugging at the warped door, Billy burst out of the bathroom. He was fully clad. Assiduously not looking at Allison, he lighted a cigarette and succumbed to a pitiable coughing spasm. Then he took off his jacket, loosened his tie and sat down on the divan quite far from Allison, carefully studying the tip of his cigarette.

  “Aren’t—aren’t y
ou supposed to make love to me or something:1” Allison asked. “You know, seduce me?”

  “Well, here we are! Home at last,” Sheila said brightly, stopping her car at the door. Peter said nothing. “Not a frightfully good lunch, I’m afraid. In fact, it was downright dreadful,” Sheila continued.

  Luncheon had been dreadful in more ways than one. They had driven, rather too fast, through not very attractive country out toward Libertyville. Sheila had smoked a lot and talked even more. He had said almost nothing. Without any definite idea as to where they were going, Sheila had come upon a low rambling gray building with bright yellow shutters situated on a pretty pond. It had looked as though it ought to be a charming wayside inn. It wasn’t. The place was deserted by all but the quarrelsome Italian family who owned it and they had seemed gloweringly resentful of the two customers who had arrived to put money into the till and to interrupt—even if only intermittently and ineffectually—a furious argument which, in two languages, was shouted through swinging doors, hissed across the bar and bellowed through the hatch. The place stocked none of the brands of scotch Sheila liked and she had sent two glasses back; one because of a jagged rim, the second because it was smeared with lipstick. None of the specialties on the menu had been available and finally Sheila had wound up with a plate of glutinous canned ravioli deep in tepid water while Peter had settled for a rubbery ham sandwich between two unbuttered slices of thick, spongy store bread. Peter fell deeper and deeper into a moody silence while Sheila—accompanied by dark latinate curses, clatterings of trays and crockery, crashings of pots and pans and a staccato rainfall of silverware from the pantry-talked enough for two, growing a little louder and shriller against the uproar issuing through the service door. They had run out of cigarettes simultaneously and, after they had pooled sufficient small change, found the vending machine to be out of order. The coffee, when it finally arrived, had been cold and it had taken nearly half an hour to get the check from the slatternly daughter of the house.

  “Imperial House it ain’t,” Sheila had said with desperate gaiety, getting back into the car. Peter had said nothing. Then Sheila had snagged a stocking.

  She had been even more voluble starting home, Peter less and less. The autumn colors, the racing clouds, the sky’s quick changes from mole gray to cobalt blue had done nothing to lighten his mood. He became grimmer by the minute, answering only direct questions and then with little more than a grunt. Finally Sheila had given up. She had a frivolous froth of chitchat. She could argue either side of any question calmly, intelligently and wittily. She could combat the most belligerent opponent, draw out the most pathetically shy, deal patiently and kindly with the most unintelligible accents and speech impediments. But she could not battle silence. By the time they returned home she was spring-tense and it showed in her driving, the set of her mouth, the slight puckering of her brow.

  “Ready for our hike, darling?” she asked, smiling brightly.

  “Don’t you think you might inquire about Dicky first?” She sensed a certain disapproval.

  “Oh. Well, of course! I just meant if you wanted to powder your nose or something like that before we set off.” Sheila opened the door of the house and strode toward her office. Passing the mirror at the foot of the stairs, she cast a quick surreptitious glance at her reflection and hated what she saw. She had been of two minds about this expensive, heavy fall suit in the first place. Now she was certain. It was a harsh, debilitating color that made her complexion look sallow. Fuzzy to begin with, gored and padded, it made her look thick through the middle-shapeless. As for the hat, it was downright matronly. She pulled it off and tossed it onto the hall table, from which it slid and fell to the polished floor with a pathetic little splat.

  Mrs. Flood was in the office poring over the new issue of Vogue. “Oh! Back so soon? I just wish you’d look at some of the things they expect us poor women to do to our faces this year. I may be wrong, but I don’t believe these ec-centric colors will ev-er catch on. It reminds me of the. . . .”

  “You look busy,” Sheila said pointedly.

  “Everything you dictated this morning is done, Mrs. Sargent,” Mrs. Flood said with an air of wounded righteousness. “There’s plenty more any time you want to. . . .”

  “It can wait. Any calls?”

  “The production department from Famous Features telephoned. They say you’re nearly a week behind with your column and. . . .”

  “To hell with them. Anything else?”

  “Well, the oddest woman. She wouldn’t give her name but she had a very common accent. She’s called several times and insisted on speaking with you.”

  “How did she get the number?”

  “Well, that’s the odd part. She didn’t. She called on the service phone and she was so very insistent each time that Bertha came in to get me. I tried to convince her that you were out to lunch but. . . .”

  “Just some crank. Anything else?”

  “No. That’s all.”

  “Aren’t you going to ask about Dicky?” Peter said.

  “Oh, yes. Is Dicky back yet?” Sheila asked guiltily.

  “Why, no-o-o-o-o,” Mrs. Flood said.

  “Don’t you think you might call the police again, Sheila?”

  “Why? They know the number. I’ve lived here for twenty years. If anything had happened, they’d call me. Don’t worry so.”

  “I see,” Peter said.

  “Oh, don’t think I’m not going to have some fairly forceful things to say to him when he does get back. I mean really, a big boy almost twenty-one years old drinking on the job, out all night like a torn cat, worrying me half to death, never so much as a by your leave or a ten-cent telephone call. Oh, I’ll have plenty to say. Not that I want to be too hard on him just now. Well, Peter, we might as well take our little walk before it blows up a storm or something dire like that.”

  “I guess we might as well,” he said listlessly.

  “And the rest of the dictation?” Mrs. Flood asked.

  “Didn’t I say it could wait? Come along, Peter.”

  The sylvan stroll hadn’t been going well at all. Sheila sensed that Peter was never quite at her side but, like a page boy or duenna, just a pace or so behind her. The copper beeches, the silver birches, the oaks and elms and maples had all been doing their best, but somehow things just hadn’t gone right. Made uneasy again by the loud silences from Peter, Sheila had begun to chatter once more. To brighten things, she gave her burlesque Learned Lecture on the fall flowers, employing their scientific names in the purest Latin—Callistephus chinensis, Aster novae-angliae, Matricaria japonica maxima, Chrysanthemum leucanthemum and azaleamum. She made up impossible genuses like Prophylaxis rosicrucian and Gaseous ad nauseum. She tried the flower show and seed catalogue names: the Major Bonaffon, the Miss Ruth C. Twombly, the Mrs. H. S. Firestone, And then she invented some of those—the Off-key Margaret Truman, the Ailing Mary Baker Eddy, the Blushing Virginia McManus, the Gilded Lady Docker. Notoriously bad with flowers, Sheila had done this routine before and had never failed to have her guests weak with laughter. But today her act was being played to a dead audience. Peter rewarded her efforts with little more than a mirthless half-smile. Agony in the Garden, Sheila thought. She began to feel old and misunderstood and unloved and she wanted terribly to be loved.

  After what seemed an interminable time, they reached the stand of trees that marked the southern boundary of the Sargent Place. “Well, this is the end of my stately estate,” Sheila said.

  “Oh,” he said absently, “then shall we start back?”

  “If you like,” she said. Then she added, “Do you realize that you haven’t kissed me once today?”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yes. Really.”

  “I hadn’t thought about it very much one way or the other.”

  “Well, you can start thinking about it right now and make up for lost time.” She put her arms around his neck and kissed him. And then she wished she hadn’t. Except for h
is embrace, the kiss packed all the passion of a merry Christmas greeting from her great-grandmother. It made Howard Malvern look like Casanova. “Thank you very much,” she said. She was hurt and mystified and angry but she was determined not to show it. “Shall we go back by way of the beach?” she asked brightly.

  “Yes, if you want to,” he said. “Here, I’ll help you down the bank.”

  “How very gallant of you,” Sheila said pointedly. Then she stopped herself from saying more. Peter was moody, that was it. He hadn’t been getting enough sleep for one thing. He was a little out of his class, that was another thing. And then all this mess that Dicky had created had undoubtedly unnerved him. Idealistic young men were so easily disturbed. Instead, she’d go right on talking—casually—as though nothing had happened and gradually she’d bring him out of his depression.

  “I love the lake at this time of year,” Sheila said briskly. “I love it always, of course, but especially now when it’s no longer summer and not quite yet winter and the water looks ominous and angry.” Peter looked a bit of each, too, but she went right on. “Here are some nice flat stones. Can you skip stones?”

  “No.”

  “Go on! Do you mean to tell me that when you were a little boy you never stood at the edge of a great big lake and skipped stones?”

  “There wasn’t a great big lake in Purviance, Kansas. Only a kind of a river—a creek, really.”

  “Well? Didn’t you skip stones in that?”

  “I didn’t have much time to. There wasn’t much water, either. Purviance was in the Dust Bowl.”

  “Oh, yes. Those awful dust storms. I remember. Even in Evanston it was terrible.”

  “Evanston must have suffered severely,” he said.

  “Well, of course nothing like the real dust bowl states but. . . .” Sheila decided that she’d better stop while the stopping was good. “Oh, but I do love the lake, anyhow. The children used to have a Labrador retriever, the biggest, blackest, dumbest creature you ever saw. Naturally after the novelty of owning a dog wore off they didn’t pay any attention to him. But I’d bring him down here sometimes and toss sticks into the water for him to fetch. You know they have webbed toes? And this brute was so stupid that if ever a dead fish was washed ashore he’d roll in it! Oh! The way that dog smelled after a good storm on the lake!” She realized that she was beginning to sound just like Mrs. Flood and that he was paying no attention. Still she would not give up, “Darling, you’ve never seen my folly, have you?”