Love & Mrs. Sargent Page 24

  Watching poor, foolish old Mrs. Flood, Sheila suddenly realized that she did have dignity. By God, somewhere under the purple frizz, the war paint, the junk jewelry, there was real, genuine dignity.

  “But, Floodie, where will you go?”

  “My dear old friend, Mrs. Stacy Por. . . .” Mrs. Flood began grandly from force of habit. Then she stopped and said very simply, “I’m moving in with a practical nurse down in Rogers

  Park. I’ve left notes for Dicky and Allison. I—I didn’t like to disturb them. Oh, and you’ll find a five dollar bill on top of the mail. It’s—it’s for some flowers I ordered. Your mink coat is

  hanging in my closet and so is the little broadtail jacket. I thought Allison could. . . .”

  “Floodie, I gave those things to you.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Sargent, I won’t be needing a mink coat in Rogers Park. It would be inappropriate. Pretentious. Allison can use it when she’s older. There’s years of wear in it.”

  “Things are all in your car, Miz Flood,” Taylor said.

  “But Floodie, can’t you ever forgive me?”

  “Forgive you? Oh, Mrs. Sargent. I’m grateful to you. That’s why I’m leaving. Now. Before it’s too late.”

  “But, Floodie, where can I reach you?” Sheila was becoming desperate. There was no getting at the old girl today. “Moving in with this . . . with this nurse may not work out at all. You may. . . .”

  “You can always find me in the Social Register, Mrs. Sargent—under Dilatory Domiciles. Now I must run. Good-by and thank you.”

  “Floodie!” Sheila cried.

  Mrs. Flood handed Taylor a folded bill and a small, wrinkled bag from Saks. “Good-by, Taylor, and thank you. This is for you and the little package is for Bertha. It’s a cocktail veil.”

  Sheila stood motionless until Taylor broke the silence.

  “Miz Flood leaving us?” Taylor said.

  “Obviously,” Sheila said testily. Then she gave Taylor a warm, sincere smile. “Yes, Taylor. Wonderful news. A distant relative died and left Mrs. Flood a very handsome bequest. She’s retiring. I’m so happy for you, aren’t you?”

  “That is nice. Mr. Malvern called. He called two, three times. He says for you please to call him soon as you get in.”

  “Thank you, Taylor,” she said. She marched into the office. “Oh, Taylor,” she called, “the ice bucket is empty. Will you please fill it right away?” Really, when she was out of the house for so much as a minute everything went wrong! “And do you know where Mr. Johnson is?”

  “I think he’s up in his room, Miz Sargent.”

  “Will you please ask him to come down?”

  All morning Peter had felt that he was living under a very comfortable sort of house arrest. The prospect of breakfast down in the dining room with Dicky looking like death and Mrs. Flood making him look worse and worse as she described in horrific detail the components of her late father’s daily breakfast had not been cheering. Allison, he imagined, in her role of Enchanted Princess, would undoubtedly be offstage—still locked away in her tower. If so, Allison had all the luck. And just what The Star would be doing, saying, wearing, would be anyone’s guess.

  “How did it all happen?” he had asked the man he saw tying a necktie in the big empire mirror. “How did I happen to come here to write an unimportant story about a fairly unimportant woman for an unimportant magazine and end up like this—wet nurse to the son, father confessor to the daughter, listening audience to the secretary and lover to the woman herself? Just four days and. . . . Damn it!” The new necktie—raw silk or Siamese silk or whatever the hell Sheila had said it was—just wouldn’t tie right. He had yanked it off and put on one of his old dollar ties from Cardinal’s. Then he had put on the new cashmere jacket and rejected that, too. It had seemed suddenly too lush, too soft, too rich for his tastes—something a woman might pick out for a new lover.

  Gritting his teeth, he had been about to set off for breakfast when Taylor had arrived with a tray and a large, vivid blue envelope. It had been like a temporary reprieve from the gas chamber. With a feeling of grim apprehension, Peter had plucked Sheila s note off the tray and begun reading it. A charming note, indeed, but Peter hadn’t been charmed. The expensive blue paper, the elaborate engraved monogram, the large, sloping, utterly fashionable writing, had rather revolted him.

  Darling Peter—

  Surprise! Breakfast in bed!

  It’s just midnight and I’m almost asleep. I’ll be up and out long before you see this on an errand too mysterious to put into writing. . . .

  He had stopped reading right there. The note had struck him as the work of a willful child. He had suddenly discovered that he was glad she was away—overjoyed—and that he couldn’t manage to care where she was or why or when she would be back. He had drunk the coffee on his breakfast tray, ignoring the muffins, the bacon, the eggs, the grapefruit. Using the back of Sheila’s “masterpiece” as scratch paper, he had telephoned the airline to see how soon he could get a flight for New York. Then he had placed a long distance call to Worldwide Weekly.

  While he was packing, Dicky—looking exactly a corpse—had tapped on his door and come in. Peter had answered, as well as he could, all of Dicky’s questions. Then they had driven off together, lunching on beer and hamburgers on the way back. To leave while Sheila was still away from the house was a coward’s way out. Had she been there, he would have told her that he was going, thanked her for everything and left. But, as long as she had vanished theatrically into thin air, he felt relieved that he could simply write a polite note, call a taxi and then wait around Midway Airport for a few comparatively placid hours. He was halfway into his letter of farewell when Taylor appeared at the open door.

  “Oh, here you are, darling!” Sheila said. “Just in time to have a drink with me. Not a very drinkish time—only half past three—but after the morning I’ve put in, fraught with adventure, I certainly need one. Scotch?”

  “Nothing, thanks, Sheila.”

  “Nothing? Well, I don’t ordinarily like to drink alone, but after this morning. . . .” She plopped some ice cubes into her glass and poured in a frightening amount of whiskey. “Heavens, it’s all been so exciting and so unsettling I haven’t even thought about taking my coat off. It’s new. Like it?” She sat down on the sofa spreading her leopard opulently. She patted the seat next to her. Peter did not sit down. He crossed to the desk and leaned on it, watching her carefully,

  “Well, aren’t you going to ask where I’ve been? What I’ve been doing?” She looked at him seductively over the rim of her glass.

  “All right, Sheila, where have you been? What have you been doing?” He asked the question as one would ask a naughty little girl who was wheedling for just one more chance to show off.

  She looked at him teasingly over her glass again. “I won’t tell.” What she meant was that she wouldn’t tell just yet. She didn’t like his attitude, the way he was receiving her when she was being so very, very charming. She knew that eventually she was going to tell him something—perhaps that she’d gone out to buy him some wonderful surprise like a new car; perhaps that she’d been to a doctor and learned that she was going blind, that she had cancer, that she was pregnant. It would all depend on how things went and she wasn’t pleased with the way they were going just now. Peter could be so damned moody. She redoubled her efforts at charming him. “You tell first. Have a good time with your friend last night? I didn’t hear you come in.”

  “Very nice, thanks.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “I don’t know. Some steak joint down in the Loop.” He looked away because he was lying and because he was doing it as badly as ever. Actually he had driven her car down Sheridan Road in the general direction of nowhere. And nowhere was the place he had ended up. He had come to a sort of widening in the road. It had been a Spanishy little place of fairly expensive looking shops, all tile and plaster. He had had dinner in a restaurant called San Somebody’s where no liq
uor was sold. Then he had gone across the street to the Teatro del Something and sat through two complete showings of two of the worst movies he’d ever seen. He had sat there until the theater closed and then he had driven very, very slowly back.

  “All the way into Chicago?” There was a dangerous edge to her voice. “You must tell me your shortcut. When I looked at the speedometer today I saw that you hadn’t gone thirty miles.”

  “I drove to the station and took a train. I don’t like to drive other people’s cars. I told you that.”

  “It’s not thirty miles to the Lake Forest station and back—although sometimes it seems that long. What station was it?”

  “Sheila, I don’t know what station it was. Does it really matter?”

  “Of course not, Peter. You get so cross. Just like a little boy. And what did you do all morning?”

  “I had breakfast on a tray. . . .”

  “Yes?” Sheila said hopefully. He knew that she would want him to make some comment about her note. And he did not.

  “Then I had a chat with Dicky.”

  “How is Dicky?”

  “Fine, thanks.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then I went with him—as sort of moral support—while he enlisted in the army.”

  “You what?”

  “I said I went. . . .” There was no need to continue. Sheila was out of the room and shouting up the staircase for her son.

  Dicky had never looked better, “Yes, Mother?”

  “Is this some sort of preposterous practical joke—and if it is, let me say that it’s un-funny in the extreme—or have you actually done what Peter says you’ve done?”

  “Joined up? Yes. Just this morning. While you were out.”

  “You realize, of course, Dicky, that you’re still a minor. And my consent is necessary. . . .”

  “It isn’t necessary. Anyway I said that I was twenty-one.”

  “You mean you lied? Well, in that case a simple telephone call from me will. . . .”

  “Will postpone things by six days. I’ll be twenty-one next week, Mother. You’d look pretty foolish, don’t you think, making a big, public stink for a matter of six days. My mind’s made up. It was yesterday.”

  “You were drunk.”

  “Today I’m sober.”

  “But, Dicky darling, your career? Your new novel?”

  “It’s not my career, Mother. It’s yours. It’s your novel, too. I left it in my room. You can finish it if you like. I promise to give it a rave review.”

  “Dicky, darling, I’m sorry about—about all the things I did that didn’t seem . . . well, didn’t seem quite honest. But you can understand that I only did them because I love you, because I wanted you to feel confident and successful.”

  “I’m not angry, Mother. I’m even pretty confident. At least I’ll never have to spend another day out in the tool shed trying to do something I can’t do and don’t want to do.”

  “And just how confident are you going to feel when you’re shoved into a barracks with a lot of shipping clerks and farm boys? Where there won’t be a Taylor and a Bertha to call you Mr. Dicky, Where you get up at six in the morning and. . . .”

  “I’ve described the army routine to him pretty thoroughly, Sheila,” Peter said. “It’s one thing I know more about than you do.”

  “Be still!” Sheila said. “I blame you for this.”

  “Please don’t,” Dicky said. “It was all my idea. He just came along.”

  “I see,” Sheila said. “That was too thoughtful of you, Peter. I suppose you’re going to tell me that the army will Make a Man of Dicky.”

  “I think it might do a better job than you have, Mother.”

  Sheila looked as though she had been struck. She stopped, took a deep breath and then started in again, this time smiling as she spoke. “But, Dicky, darling, if you really wanted to go into the army, why didn’t you consult me? I mean, with my connections there would have been no trouble in getting you a commission.”

  “That’s just what I mean, Mother. It’s time I did something without consulting you—without having you do all the groundwork, outline the chapters, charm the publisher, write the reviews.”

  Sheila didn’t even hear him. She was racing on with plans of her own. “As a matter of fact, Dicky, perhaps this little technicality about your not being quite yet twenty-one may work to our advantage. At least it gives me a week to get things straightened out.” She was even now reaching for the telephone. “Now let’s see, I could call General Kissner at the Pentagon and tell him that you did this thing on impulse and now you’re sorry, but that I think the military experience would do you good and could he arrange some sort of quick commission. I know he’d do it for me; he’s dined here dozens of times and he worshiped your father. . . .”

  “Mother!”

  “You could start out as a shavetail and then Frank would see to it that you were put in something like the Information Service or Press Corps—someplace where you could use your writing experience—around Washington.”

  “Sheila, for God’s sake. . . .”

  “Maybe we could close up this great big house and take a little place in Georgetown. It’s charming. Really it is. Of course we’d have to wait until after Allison comes out, but I know tons of people around. . . .”

  “But Allison isn’t coming out, Mother.”

  Sheila wheeled and saw Allison standing in the doorway.

  “Allison,” she said, “I think you’ve forgotten that I asked you to stay in your room until. . . . Oh, well, it doesn’t really matter. Allison, darling, where did you find that dowdy old suit?” All of her lights were blazing now, she was all charm and vivacity, the center of everything, running the whole show. “Honestly, Peter, Allison did the maddest thing when she was about sixteen. She saved her allowance for I don’t know how long and then went off to some unheard-of dress shop in Evanston and bought that suit. It never did fit. Well, no matter, we all have to change before dinner. Big doings tonight. Never mind what, but big!”

  My God, Peter thought, this woman is stark, staring mad, or the next thing to it.

  “Well, Allison,” Sheila said, “I’ve got news for you. Your big brother Dicky is going to put off his new novel for a little while. He wants to go into the army—get a little more experience. As a matter of fact, Dicky, there’s never been a really good novel written about the peacetime army. So I thought that after you came out we might all take a sweet little house in Georgetown and. . . .”

  “I heard you, Mother,” Allison said. “But you weren’t listening when I said that I am not going to come out!”

  “What?”

  “That’s right, Mother. I came down to say good-by. I’m taking the train to New York tonight.”

  “You’re doing no such thing.”

  “Yes, I am, Mother. I suppose the real way to run off is to tie a lot of sheets together and go out the bedroom window. I’m not doing that. I’m here to say good-by because. . . .”

  “Oh, New York, are you? And just how long do you think you’re going to last in the most expensive city in the world?”

  “Quite a long time, I think. I’ve already got a job. It’s not much of a job—it’s in an art studio. It starts Monday. I’ll be at the Barbizon for Women until I. . . .”

  “You will be exactly where I tell you to be, Allison,” Sheila said. “You seem to forget that you are eighteen years old and that I am your mother. Until you reach your majority, you will do what I want you to do even if I have to take you to court and. . . .”

  “Somehow, Mother, in the light of things that have happened this week, I don’t think you’d look very good in the courtroom. The publicity would be most unfavorable and if you ever try anything like that, Mother, I’ll talk. I swear to God I will.”

  “Allison! How could you!”

  “I could do it easily, Mother. And I would. This is my chance to be on my own and doing what I want to do. . . .”

  “Yo
u mean daubing away in some commercial art studio?”

  “I mean exactly that. It’s what I intend to do. I called Mr. Gustave and he’s promised me the job. And no one—not even Sheila Sargent—is going to stop me.”

  “Allison, answer this honestly. Have I ever once tried to stop you from doing anything you wanted to do? Haven’t I always encouraged you to. . . .”

  “Yes, Mother. Yes, you have.”

  “Well, then?”

  “You’ve not only encouraged us, you’ve driven us. You’re a natural bully, Mother. Oh, you’re clever at it, but you are a bully. Dicky has no talent for writing. You know it, I know it, he knows it. Now everybody knows it because you bullied him into writing that book and bullied your publisher into printing it. I hate going to these silly coming out parties. I don’t like to dance, I’m not very good at it, and I despise having to stand around and talk to a lot of sappy boys who haven’t got anything interesting to say. I’m not very popular and I don’t want to be. You’re the one who’s hell bent on making me the belle of the ball. You. . . .”

  “Oh, yes, that’s right. How very Child of the Century you are, Allison. Both of you. It’s very smart and psychoanalytical to be a mess and then blame poor old Mother—all very Freudian and fashionable. But what would the two of you be today if your villainous old Mother hadn’t beaten her brains out trying to turn you into vital, interesting, unusual people? I can tell you what you’d be—both of you—you’d be two drab, feckless little blah personalities!”

  There was a silence. Then Dicky spoke. “Mother, we are two blah personalities, as you call us. What else could we be? We’ve always had to live in the shadow of your personality. Oh, it was fine when we were little. You were the star and we were the audience. But now you’re not satisfied with that. Now we’ve all got to be stars.”

  “That isn’t true!”

  “It is true, Mother,” Allison said.

  “I can’t write a book,” Dicky said. “I couldn’t even write an interesting letter home. But you’re going to turn me into a duplicate of my father if it kills you—and if it kills me. Allie’s got some talent. You know that. But you don’t care about it. She’s got to be the image of you as a girl or she’s nothing. It’s a beautiful idea and we’ve got wonderful patterns to follow but they just don’t fit. Allison at least knows what she wants to do. I don’t. Maybe I’ll end up as an old bookkeeper some place. . . .”