House Party Read online

  Now he found himself sitting just opposite the pretty, dark-eyed girl with the wicker basket who'd bumped into him in the station. She was a cute little thing—typically Yankee and not at all like the belles down home. She had no feminine affectations and he expected her conversation to be peppery and probably funny.

  But he was disappointed. The girl was sitting next to a square, rawboned blond boy who looked as though he still had hayseeds in his ears. They had a lot of typewritten papers spread out on their laps but they weren't looking at them. They weren't even talking. They just sat there holding hands and looking straight ahead.

  I wonder just who I think I am, Elly said to herself, staring vaguely at the Chesterfield sign at the end of the car. Here I get a job as a secretary to a managing editor when I can't even take shorthand or type with all my fingers. There are a thousand other girls who are really literary who could do the job ten times better and not lose any manuscripts, either. I come in late. I never looked at a book until I got paid to.

  The job bores me and I don't know anything about denouements or the mise en scene or the tour de force or the deus ex machine or any of those other nine-dollar words, and now, just because some first novelist comes in—without even an agent—I play the big lady editor and have lunch with him to discuss his plot construction, whatever that is, and go to dinner with him and let him kiss me in a taxi—the subway, even—and ask him out here. And he's not really so special. It's just that he isn't like any of the other boys I ever met. He's mid-western. And it is a good book.

  Elly pressed Joe Sullivan's hand. "Here's King's Park. Now we only have to do the S's—Smithtown, St. James, Stony Brook and Setauket—before we get to Pruitt's Landing. My brother, Bryan, or my cousin Felicia, or somebody like that will meet us, I guess."

  Joe lifted Elly's hand to his lips. It was different from most of the New York hands he'd seen so far. It was a country hand. It was short and square and smelled of soap. Boy, New York sure is a funny place, Joe said to himself, a hell of a funny place. You come here fresh out of the Army and get shoved around and treated like a hick. You get a job as a correspondent in a sweat shop where they insist upon brains and a college degree and then don't let you use either. Correspondent! That must sound great back in Indiana, but it all boils down to "Dear Madam, Pay your bill or we'll come and take your plush furniture." Then you move into a cell at the Y.M.C.A. and beat the bejesus out of your typewriter every night while the weight-lifter next door pounds on the wall.

  Pretty soon you have a novel and you peddle it around town getting the fish-eye from every publisher's receptionist who was ever born, followed up by the standard rejection letter: ". . . we have read your manuscript with interest, but find that . . ." Then, zowie, one day you happen to walk into the right door and you see someone like Elly—someone's who's really different. A week later you've got a publisher and an advance against royalties and an editor and a girl and you're in love. New York sure is a hell of a place.

  The train stopped with clank and a jolt at Smithtown. Joe's Val-Pak swayed dangerously on the luggage rack above. "Whoa," he said, and reached a hand up to steady it. He had packed a bottle of bourbon as his contribution to the weekend's festivities. It wouldn't do to let it get broken.

  Now he wondered if he really should have brought liquor instead of candy or something. Elly's mother was a widow and a lot of older women were distressed by having booze in the house. Well, he decided, I'll look her over first and if the old girl seems kind of straitlaced, like some of the women back home, I won't say anything about the bottle. But if she's one of those big, jolly dames who doesn't mind taking a nip in the kitchen with the young folks, I'll bring it right out and say "Here you are, Mom. Happy Fourth of July."

  A few browbeaten passengers staggered off and the train started up once more. Joe lifted Elly's hand to his lips again and wondered what the going rate was in solitaire diamonds and how long it would take him to buy one for Elly.

  John Burgess rapped out his pipe and put it away. Here was Setauket. Next stop Pruitt's Landing. Burgess traveled a lot on business and he could read a time table in nothing flat. There were an awful lot of no-account little places on Long Island, and Indian names were surely the curse of America. He looked out of the open window. But it was getting a little prettier now. They were going through timber country.

  Nevertheless, Burgess was suddenly sick of looking out of train windows, tired of eating in restaurants and living in hotels. Ever since he'd left Aunt Katie's big old house in Natchez twenty-some years ago, life had been strictly stag. There had been the Reverend Moultrie Pepperwood's Academy for the Male Descendants of Confederate Officers, where gravel-voiced southern boys re-fought the War Between the States every day. Then there were four years of being straight-backed at The Citadel in Charleston, with an all-male cast. Then the University of Virginia Law School. Then the Army for five years. Then a law firm with four male partners and a secretary so tailored that she hardly counted. John was sick of the whole business.

  Never having had a family, he wanted one terribly. His idea of the biggest treat in the world was to be asked out to some young lawyer's house in the suburbs where damp children screamed and ran and fell down and threw things and finally got tossed into the tub by their harassed mother and put to bed. He liked Felicia's children, even if they did seem a little repressed by that old German nurse. He'd like to take them out of that too perfect house on Gracie Square and turn them loose in a big place in, say, Connecticut, where they could roughhouse with other kids. He'd like . . .

  "Puh-rew-witt's Lan-dinggg," the conductor shouted.

  John Burgess looked out of the window to admire the quaint charm of the Pruitt's Landing station.

  "John," Felicia called, "John! Here I am! No, over here. Hurry, darling, you'll be late for cocktails."

  7: Cocktails

  Joe waited until the old Negro had put down his bag, switched on the light and closed the door behind him. Then he sat down on the bed and heaved a sigh of agony. He had known that Elly Ames was different, all right, but not this different. When Elly had asked him to come out to her family's place on Long Island for the Fourth he'd expected—well, he didn't know quite what he had expected—maybe a plain, four-square house on a couple of acres of land; maybe a sagging old summer cottage on the waterfront with creaking porch furniture and a queue lined up at the only bathroom, like the summer places at Michiana Shores. But he hadn't expected this.

  Now as he sat there on the bed, he realized that he should have guessed from the fancy car Elly's brother was driving and from that high-toned, British-talking Felicia babe that he was out over his depth, but oh no! Not the Hoosier Hot Shot, not Indiana's gift to arts and letters. He'd been a real clown—oh, a card! Driving along by the endless stone wall that surrounded this place he'd said: "What kind of an institution is this?" Just like that he'd said it!

  "It's an asylum for the criminally insane," Elly had giggled.

  Just then her brother Bryan had turned in at a pair of fancy gates and said: "Well, here we are." It wasn't for two miles, when they finally pulled up in front of the house that Joe caught on—really caught on.

  Then he saw a couple of old dames, dressed to kill, sitting in basket chairs on the lawn. One looked sort of like an old chorus girl and she was covered with diamonds. That was Elly's aunt. The other had gray hair and pearls and emeralds and a rich-bitch voice. That was Elly's mother—the lovable, roly-poly old Mom he'd expected to find fluting a piecrust at the kitchen range. And between them sat two silver coolers of champagne.

  "Sure, kid," Joe said aloud, getting up and pacing the floor, "you did the big thing. Treat the poor little widder-woman to a fifth of Old Crow! You should have brought her a box of Cracker Jack, too." Then he rushed over, ripped open the zipper of his Val-Pak and yanked the whiskey bottle out viciously. "For two cents I'd guzzle the whole thing right now." He set the bottle down on his dresser with a thump.

  Bachelors' wing, how about t
hat! Well, he was in for it now. He was glad he'd decided to bring along his old tux—just in case. Now, as he flung his sparse collection of ready-made clothes into the vast rosewood armoire, he wondered if these were people who dressed for dinner. They probably were. Looking out of the window to the lawn below, he saw that Bryan had rejoined his mother. He was still in street clothes. Nor had Elly bothered to change.

  The sight of Elly made him almost ill. "Boy, I sure can pick 'em. So that's the simple little working girl I was going to put in a vine-covered cottage. That's rich! Well, at least she can wow the girls at the Junior League when she tells 'em about me."

  Elly looked up from the terrace and waved. "Joe! Joseph Sullivan. You come down right away and have a drink. Hurry!"

  "Sure," Joe called with a sick smile. "Sure, I'll be . . ." His voice died in his throat.

  Far down the drive he saw an ancient, high-rumped foreign car chugging and puffing up the incline. It was piled high with baggage and heads and arms and legs seemed to be sticking out of every window. It reminded him of an excursion bus he had once seen in Korea. But the oddest thing of all was that the roof—no, there were two roofs—seemed to flap up and down and back and forth and an invisible dog was barking wildly. "Hélas, darlings," a sort of sissy old voice screamed, "we're here, darlings. Safe and sound!"

  "Christ," Joe breathed, "sweet, suffering Christ.”

  The terrace was filling up. The first drinks were taking hold and the house party was beginning to find its animation. Champagne flowed, Scotch flowed, so did gin, rye and bourbon. Jonas was moving reverently about with drinks and canapés and Mrs. Ames made a note to tell him, for the tenth time, to stop acting like Uncle Tom.

  Mrs. Ames was feeling a little better now. She was wearing a dress which had been the rage of the Paris openings in the spring of 1935 and still, with only minor takings up and lettings down over the years, had great style. Although she rarely drank, she sipped gratefully at champagne from the case Bryan had ordered. Now that the whole party was assembled, it didn't seem to be going too terribly badly—not so far.

  Paul had been the first of the new arrivals to appear, then Kathy's Mr. Stone, then Claire Devine, and then Kathy.

  Claire could change from the skin out faster than a fireman. Odd jobs as a fashion model had taught her the knack. On her arrival, Claire had spotted Felicia's little green voile as coming from the Custom Floor at two hundred and forty-five dollars; she knew that Violet's ruffled organdy was being shown in the Debutante Shop at a hundred and ninety-five. Claire hadn't quite been able to place Mrs. Ames's dress, but she knew it was damned good—probably from one of those upper Madison Avenue shops. where all the work goes inside of a dress. Three hundred, I'd say, Claire thought. Straightaway she went upstairs and slipped into her good white silk jersey. She put on a single strand of her best fake pearls and stopped right there. Claire knew when to play down. There was an audible ripple of appreciation when she appeared again on the terrace.

  Terribly thin arms, Mrs. Ames thought, but really elegant. Smart. She took another sip of her champagne and wondered what a boy like Paul had to offer a girl like Claire. Kathy appeared, a little too loudly, a little too highly made up. She turned her ankle crossing the flagstones. "Those heels!" Mrs. Ames said aloud. Noise welled up around her and she sipped again.

  "But of course," Mrs. Ames was saying to Claire, "I know the store very well. I sometimes see things there that I'd like to own and my sister buys almost every stitch there." The babbling surrounded her once more.

  ". . . quite fun working there, really " Claire was saying, "and I should go mad without something to do." Claire smiled at Mrs. Ames. She approved of Mrs. Ames. Mrs. Ames was a lady. Claire liked the house, too—not that she'd have wanted it, but it had a certain air of plenty. Little details such as the engraved letter paper, the silver-backed brushes, the linen she'd found in her room had not been lost on Claire.

  ". . . interesting, selling pretty dresses all day," Mrs. Ames was saying. "A lot of our friends—women my age—did it during the depression," She wondered if that hadn't sounded lofty. "I think I’d like it." Then she said quietly: "And I may end up doing it yet.”

  No, Mrs. Ames didn't see the connection with Paul. True, poor Paul needed a forceful woman behind him, but this Miss Devine seemed so . . . Mrs. Ames wondered if Paul could be having an affair with her and tried to picture Paul as an illicit lover. Against her will she giggled.

  But the giggle came at precisely the right time, for Claire had just said: "Well, if you ever do, you just apply to my department. I’ll put you to work." Claire laughed prettily and smiled at Paul. It was going so well.

  There was a general uproar when Uncle Ned appeared, tightly corseted, slightly rouged, and resplendent in a fawn silk dinner suit, which just matched the color of Fang's leash. "Zut!" he cried, "l’heure bleue. Is there anything more exquisite than the cocktail hour? Ah, Felicia, my most beautiful niece, I see that you've become fast friends with this attractive Mr. Stone."

  Mrs. Ames looked across the terrace at Kathy and winced as she saw her take a large gulp of what Mrs. Ames assumed to be straight rye. Poor, poor Kathy, Mrs. Ames thought, hunched up in that chair so she won't look like an Amazon and so self-conscious that she's got to drink herself into being sociable. It's that Felicia; that mean Felicia. Why does she always do this to my Kathy?

  "It's so good to see you again, Uncle Ned!" Kathy cried inanely.

  "Please, child. I am not totally deaf and not too many minutes have elapsed since our parting. As I said to dear Freddy McAvoy just before he . . ."

  Kathy writhed in agony. Now she'd been rude to Uncle Ned. She'd looked forward so much to this weekend with Manning, but first there'd been Claire, and now Felicia had snatched him away and was twisting him around her little finger. Why couldn't Felicia be fair? She'd already had one husband and she had a perfectly good man out here this weekend, but no, Felicia had to . . . Kathy took a final slug of her drink and started as one of the ice cubes slid up and struck her gently on the nose. Manning, she cried silently, for God's sake just look at me! Aloud she said: "Manning, would you ask Jonas to fill this up—darling." Then she hated herself for being cheap and feline, and Felicia-like, and also for drinking too much.

  "Righto, darling," Manning said. "Well, so theh we all were in this grubby little pension aoutside Raome—the aonly thing we could get, mind you—when laow and behaold, who should come along but your aold Nicky." Manning was enjoying himself. He was proud of being able to size up people and things and situations quickly. He congratulated himself on seeing beyond Kathy when they first met. Naturally he had known the Ames name and the banking connection, but Uncle Ned, this soignée cousin Felicia, this party of distinctively attractive people had come as a dividend. This was the sort of crowd Manning had never quite been able to get into—genteel without being stuffy, worldly without being depraved. Manning could travel comfortably with them in second gear without straining in low or racing in high, just as he was being comfortably semi-British with Felicia now. Bending low to hand Kathy her drink, Manning smiled his tender appreciation into her dark eyes.

  Kathy's heart soared. Yes, the weekend was going to be perfect. "Oh Uncle Ned," she cried, "please tell me that screamingly funny story about being with King Edward in Marienbad!" Uncle Ned beamed.

  Mrs. Ames looked at Joe Sullivan. He'd been so surly when Elly introduced him. He scowled at her. She scowled right back. Then she winked. His jaw dropped. Mrs. Ames smiled. Joe scowled again. Mrs. Ames wondered if she hadn't had just a drop too much to drink. Really, Elly was an original; always bringing home some stray dog or cat and now this attractive, belligerent young man. Mrs. Ames wondered what ailed him. In fact, she wondered what ailed all young people. This Joe Sullivan was so brooding and intense. Mrs. Ames wondered if he might not be a young Communist. She'd never met one of any age. No. She dismissed the notion and then wondered if Mr. Sullivan would be terribly surprised if she were to cross the terrace, bru
sh the cowlick off his forehead and give him a motherly kiss. Goodness, she said to herself, I have drunk too much.

  Turning to her sister, Mrs. Ames said urbanely: "Violet, I won't let you monopolize Mr. Burgess any longer. You must let me talk to him. Mr. Burgess, I understand you're in law . . ."

  At this precise moment, according to Felicia's instructions, Fraulein led Robin and Emily, rosy in their night clothes, out to the terrace for a public maternal kiss. Their arrival created a minor sensation.

  "Why, here are my babies!" Violet screamed. "Come kiss your granny!"

  And now Fang, awakened from his slumber at Uncle Ned's feet, leaped up, barked and made a beeline for Violet's lap.

  "Oh! Get down!" Violet screamed. "Get down! You'll ruin my dress!"

  Fang licked her face and the children squealed ecstatically.

  "Fang!" Uncle Ned called. "Down boy. Down, sir. Down, I say!"

  ". . . lawyers must know so very, very much, Mr. Burgess, I always . . ."

  ". . . but just half a drink, please, Paul."

  "Get this horrid beast off!”

  "But then if you knaow Sonny and Cecily, you must knaow Baba and . . ."

  "Fang! Heel! Heel, sir! Oh, where's that Sturgis!”

  "Fraulein, will you take them in!"

  "But gnädige frau told me . . ."

  "Oh, Uncle Ned, that nasty black tongue! Stop him!"

  "Down, I say!" Uncle Ned whacked ineffectually at Fang's pompom of a tail.