House Party Page 8

  Padding back into the bedroom, he stood in front of the window and took a deep breath to see what the Long Island air smelled like. He was only faintly disappointed to discover that it didn't smell like anything at all. Below him Felicia's children were playing quietly, for once, on the lawn, while Fraulein smoked a clandestine cigarette beneath a willow tree. Mrs. Ames was involved with a cup of coffee and the New York Herald Tribune on the terrace. John whistled a bob white call down to the children. They looked up and waved ecstatically calling "Unca John, Unca John!” Mrs. Ames looked up and looked away immediately. Then realizing that he hadn't a stitch on, John jumped aside, dressed quickly, rolled his bathing trunks into a towel and tiptoed down to breakfast.

  "Kathy! Kathy, wake up! Kathy, it's me—Elly." Kathy's eyes flew open and she saw her younger sister standing over her still in her pajamas.

  “Wh . . . ?”

  "Golly, Kathy," Elly said, I never heard such screaming. I thought you were being murdered in here."

  "Did . . . did I say anything, Elly?"

  "Nearly yelled the house down, that's all. Must have been something that didn't agree with you. I didn't much like the look of that fish last night."

  "Yes, I guess that's what it must have been. But I didn't say anything, did I, Elly? I wasn't talking in my sleep or anything?"

  "Search me," Elly said. She ran her hands through her tousled hair, plucked a crumpled cigarette out of the crumpled package in her pajama pocket and pranced over to the window. "Gosh it's a nice day. Oooof! These things taste nasty before you brush your teeth. What a swish room you have, Kath. It looks like the model house at Sloane's or something." Elly blew a great cloud of smoke into the room and scratched her bottom tentatively. "Well, now that I'm up guess I'll stay up. Maybe I'll take a dip or horse around with Bryan. Or maybe Joe'll feel like doing some work. And don't you go back to sleep again, either. I couldn't stand another of those air-raid warnings."

  "No, I'll get up, Elly. By the way, who is this Joe?"

  "Oh, nobody. Just a guy. He's written a book."

  "I see."

  "And who's this Manning Stone?"

  "Just . . . just a man I know."

  "I see. Well, so long Kathy. Be seeing you." Elly marched into the bathroom connecting their bedrooms and closed the door.

  Kathy bounded out of her bed and smoothed down her sheer white nightgown. This night dress was white trimmed with blue ribbons. It looked very bridal. All of Kathy's lingerie was either white, to make her feel like a bride, or black, to make her feel like a floozy. She would never understand what perverse whim would allow her sister Elly to traipse around in a pair of patched old pajamas—and not even women's pajamas, but a pair which Paul had outgrown at prep school years ago.

  Stepping into her slippers, Kathy went to her dressing table and sat down in front of it. She hated the sight of herself this way—her hair all tight to her head like that tough old gym teacher at school. But it was an ordeal she made herself undergo every morning. It was a good idea, she told herself, for any woman to see just what she was like without soft lights and make-up. Bending forward she looked for little lines around her eyes. There were none. Now she bent closer and scrutinized her pores. They were blameless. She felt under her chin for flabbiness. Thank God, that was all right.

  Heaving a sigh of relief, Kathy began taking down her hair. She removed each pin carefully and laid it neatly in a tray on her dressing table. Her hair hung in two dozen wriggling snakes around her head. Kathy winced at her reflection and began rapidly combing out the curls. There now, her hair fell softly around her head and she was thankful, again, that she hadn't let Mr. Amadeo talk her into one of those short haircuts. She put on some lipstick and felt a lot better.

  Now she tried to remember what that terrible dream had been, but she couldn't. Elly's chatter had driven it from her mind. All she could remember was running. Running someplace with Paul. Manning was in the dream. So were Felicia and Claire. "Funny things, dreams," she said aloud. "The one good thing about Freud is that he's got everybody scared to bore other people with their dreams."

  She could hear the sound of water thundering into the tub in the bathroom. "Elly," she called. "Are you taking a bath?"

  "What?"

  "I said are you taking a bath?”

  "Yes. I feel mouldy."

  "Well, don’t be all day."

  "Why? Do you want to do something?"

  "Just brush my teeth."

  "Well, do it now—while the tub's filling. I'll leave."

  "Never mind. I can wait. Just don't stay in there forever."

  Kathy wriggled out of her nightgown and stood naked in front of the mirror. She pulled her stomach in a little and said "No more mayonnaise" aloud. But she was, on the whole, rather pleased. For such a tall girl she was well proportioned. She might have wished, perhaps, for a bit more bosom—like Cousin Felicia. But hadn't Mother said that Felicia's front would be a sight in another twenty years? Well, Kathy told herself, mine's a lot bigger than Elly's and it's all real, which is more than that Claire Devine can say.

  Ashamed of her wantonness, she wrapped her robe around herself and studied the room. I really ought to change the slipcovers and spreads and curtains," she announced. It was just possible that Manning might find reason to see this room. "But on the other hand . . ." Kathy was least fond of this decorating experiment with orange. The color was hot. It crowded in on her. She really liked her room best when it was a soft pink or blue or yellow. Paul said it looked like a Lautrec bordello. But orange was smart. All of her most fashionable friends said orange was smart. And Manning liked things to be smart.

  Methodically, Kathy set about putting the room in order, plumping pillows, adjusting the folds of curtains, moving this object forward, this one back. In a moment the place looked—as Elly had said it looked—like a model room.

  Really, this is too silly, she thought. Why do I act like such an ass? Manning loves me. I know he does. If he didn't, why would he take me out to the summer house last night and tell me frankly—so wonderfully honestly—that he had almost nothing? Why would he even bother? You only get frank with a person when you're serious, don't you? He could find a lot of girls who are really rich—like Felicia—if he wanted to. He wouldn't waste time telling me about the play he was writing or ask me how I felt about the future if he didn't have something definite in mind, would he?

  "No," Kathy said aloud. "This is going to be all right." She opened the closet door again and snatched out her new bathing suit. It was a creation—that was the only word for it—which she had bought at a totally strange and fabulously expensive shop near her office. The bathing suit was made of saffron chiffon strewn with tiny rhinestones. With it came a matching skirt, a stole, and an immense coolie hat. Kathy had never seen anything like it in her whole life! Even Felicia would sit up and take notice.

  And the shoes! No more flat heels with a man as tall as Manning! These were thick blocks of ebony, held to the foot by a single jet-black strap.

  "I'll wear it!" Kathy said aloud. "I'll put it on right now." She dropped her robe and began wriggling into the suit. There was silence from the adjoining bathroom. That was odd. Elly was given to singing operatic arias in the tub, inserting the names of Italian dishes for whatever lyrics she didn't know. "Elly!" Kathy shouted. "Elly Ames, are you in there?"

  A bellow came from the bathroom:

  Che gellida manina

  Antipasto, zabaglione,

  Shrimp marinara,

  Lasagna, spaghettini.

  "You've been in there long enough! Get out of that tub right now. I'm coming in." Kathy wound the stole around her shoulders and clumped into the bathroom in her new shoes.

  "My God " Elly screamed. "It's Theda Bara!”

  The bathroom door slammed indignantly after Elly and she pattered across the rug of her bedroom leaving a trail of wet footprints behind her. She gave her hair a final brisk toweling and tossed the damp towel into her unmade bed. She scratche
d her stomach luxuriously and burrowed into her wicker hamper for some clean underwear. She emerged with a pair of blue rayon Suspants with a hole in the seat and a white brassiere, which she anchored on precariously by its one remaining hook.

  "Men!" She said aloud and crammed her feet into a pair of dirty tennis shoes.

  Elly was glad she'd never taken the trouble to try to understand men before because it was certainly a hopeless and thankless job. Just take that insufferable Joe Sullivan, for example. There was a strange one—really odd. When I think, Elly fumed, that I was even going to look around for some minty little apartment uptown and start having my hair done every week, I could kick myself. If I've ever seen a real, genuine louse, Joe Sullivan is it.

  Yes, he'd been perfectly impossible. He'd drunk much too much wine at dinner last night and said nastily what a presumptuous little Alsatian upstart the vintage was, when everybody knew it was only old Christian Brothers. He made up a table of bridge with Elly and Bryan and Felicia and insisted on playing with Felicia. Bridge bored Elly to distraction and Joe had been a vicious opponent.

  The idea! Forcing me up to a little slam and then doubling. Eighteen hundred we went down and all he did was laugh!

  Elly had been downright wounded. Only the example of Bryan's good manners kept her from tipping over the table. And then Cousin Felicia reaching her long, red-clawed hand across the table to shake with him. That wasn't really so bad, but did Joe have to kiss the palm of her hand and practically make a pass at her?

  "And then when the whole lousy evening was over," Elly said aloud, "and I asked him if he'd like to take a little walk, then that big heel yawns and stretches and says ‘Oh, no thanks, I think I'll turn in.' Elly Ames, prize chump. Well, it serves me damned good and right, Elly thought, yanking the comb through her hair. Here he just wants to see that his book gets published and I go thinking it's a big romance. All authors are ego-whatever-it-is, anyway. 'Never mix business with pleasure.' Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I suppose he doesn't think I'm intellectual enough for him. Well, I'm not, and what's more I don't intend to be. He can just go and let old Felicia tell him about having tea with Somerset Maugham. He can take his old book and . . . Maybe I'll call up Pinky or somebody like that. As for that Joe Sullivan . . ."

  Elly yanked up the zipper on her old plaid gingham, threw her bathing suit into the wet towel and slammed out of the room. She marched across the hall and burst into Bryan's room. "Bernarr MacFadden, I presume," she said and giggled. A radio was playing softly and Bryan Ames, clad in his pajama bottoms, was supine on the floor executing, more or less in time to Straus's "Southern Roses," an ingenious exercise guaranteed to hit excess fat at the seat, stomach, waistline, calves and thighs where it lived. It had been prescribed by the instructor at the gymnasium where Bryan went thrice weekly to combat the insidious softening that accompanies sedentary jobs.

  Bryan leaped up and grinned self-consciously. "Don't you ever knock on doors?" he asked.

  "If I did, I'd never get to see sights like this. What are you messing around with this Du Barry Success School stuff for? I think you're a very fine figger of a man, sir." She tweaked a white hair out of his chest. "Not getting any younger, though, are we?"

  "Ouch! Go on, beat it, now. I've got some more exercises to do."

  "Goodie. I'll watch."

  "You will not!”

  "Oh, come on, Bryan. Get dressed and take me down to breakfast. You can carry me and that'll do wonders for your biceps."

  "Take you down to breakfast? My God, Elly, don't you know the way after twenty-one years?"

  "Twenty-two. Oh, come on. Come downstairs with me. I just don't feel like going alone. Mother's there and Felicia's beau and Kathy all gussied up like Mata Hari and . . . Bryan, do you think I'm a slob?"

  "How do you mean, Elly?"

  "Well, you know. Kind of careless and not well-groomed and . . . Well, here we all are with that Claire being so fashionable you can't stand it. And Felicia all done up as usual. And even old Kath out-doing Felicia. Really, you should see what she has on this morning, it's a kind of bathing suit. Very pretty, I guess, but I'd hate to swim a stroke in it. And shoes that look as though she had a club foot on both feet and . . ."

  The radio interrupted them: "When the Marquis de Lafayette sought a safe repository for his priceless French heirlooms, he chose The Knickerbocker Trust Company, America's oldest . . ." Bryan snapped off the radio.

  "Elly," he said, putting an arm around her, "I think you're wonderful. I like you the best of all."

  "Then will you go down to breakfast with me and go swimming with me after? I'll race you to the raft and even let you win."

  "What about your boy friend?"

  "What boy friend?"

  "Young Sullivan."

  "Joseph Sullivan happens to be an author whose work I am occupied in encouraging him in. And I happen to hold a position of some responsibility in a leading publishing . . "

  "Come off it, Elly," Bryan said, slapping her across the rear. "You haven't read a book since Raggedy Ann. And when it comes to helping somebody write one—why you can't even speak English."

  "Well it just so happens to be true. I don't care that—" she tried to snap her fingers and failed, "—for Joe Sullivan or any other male."

  "Not even me?"

  "Except you. Oh, Bryan come on. Be nice to me. You're the only person in the whole family who ever understands me or doesn't tell me my slip's showing or . . ."

  "It isn't showing now."

  "That's because I'm not wearing one. Aren't I a chippy! You're the only one who's ever any fun."

  "All right. Beat it while I get dressed."

  "Can't I stay? I'll bet you haven't got anything I couldn't find in Gray's Anatomy."

  "Well, go read Gray's Anatomy. Or go look at Paul." Bryan opened Paul's door and shoved her through.

  Elly was back in a minute.

  "Oh Bryan, he's in one of his moods. Why, Bry-an Ames! What darling undies! I think that little checkerboard pattern is too cunning!"

  "What's the matter with Paul?"

  "Oh, he's just sitting there at that old drawing board in that empty room scratching down a lot of figures. He's wearing that dirty old kind of monk's robe and he hasn't shaved and when I just asked him—and quite pleasantly—what he was doing (not that I really cared) he practically bit me. Oh, Bryan, why do he and Kathy have to be so moody and complicated when you and I aren't one bit complicated at all?"

  "Aren't we? Well, come on. Let's go,"

  "No trousers this morning, Bryan?"

  "Oh. Damn you. Wait a minute."

  9: Athletics

  The beach at the old Pruitt Place was three miles long and considered one of the finest on the Sound. It was remarkably free of stones and seaweed and the sand was as fine and as white as snow. From the lawn a rustic staircase—somewhat insecure—led to an even more rustic structure built vaguely in the style of a Swiss chalet. Violet referred to this building as a cabana. Lily, more realistically, called it a bath house. It had been put up by dear Papa in a day when no gentleman and no lady would be seen walking the hundred yards from the main house to the beach in bathing dress. Tradition had clung and now the chalet still housed a number of dressing cubicles, some incredibly complicated folding furniture, two Deauville umbrellas, sand, a few damp bathing suits and quite a lot of wasps.

  "Now me on your shoulders, Unca John. Me. Emily's been up for a hun'red, million, billion, trillion, zillion, billion, thousand, schmillion, willion years."

  "I have not, Robin. I haven't, I haven't, I haven't!”

  "All right," John Burgess shouted. "There's room for you both. Try to swim out here, Bob."

  "I can't. You come get me."

  "Try, Bob."

  "Robin is a scaredy-cat! Robin is a scaredy-cat! Robin is a . . ."

  "I am not. Fraulein, make Emily stop teasing me and . . ."

  "Come on, Bob. Just try to swim out this far. I won't let anything happen to you . . ."r />
  "Robin is a . . ."

  "Fraulein," Mrs. Ames said, looking up from beneath her sunshade, "don't you think it would be nice if you took the children for a little walk in the woods, or possibly up to see their mother?"

  "Oh, no, madam," Fraulein said. "The sunshine on the beach is very good for them. On the other side, when I was with the Grafins boys, every summer to the beach at Ostend we went and . . ."

  "I see," Mrs. Ames said, and tried to close her ears to the shrieks of the children.

  Kathy made her unsteady way down the rustic stairs. She felt terribly self-conscious in this new outfit and more than a little disgruntled. She'd sat alone at the breakfast table for a full hour, nursing cold, unwanted cups of coffee just waiting for Manning! He'd never come. The approach of Elly and Bryan had forced her down here. Now she felt all dressed up with no place to go.

  "Good morning, Mother," she said.

  "Good morning, dear. Did you . . . Good heavens, Kathy, what are you got up as?"

  "It's just a bathing suit, Mother. Why? Don't you like it?"

  "Well, it's awfully extreme and I don't think it's quite as appropriate as that sweet little white pique you . . . Look out, dear, you'll fall! And I don't wonder, with those shoes. If you don't get some sensible shoes on your feet, Kathy, you'll be going to the dance in a cast. I noticed last night that you were wearing heels as high as . . ."

  "Oh, Mother!” Kathy sank in the sand near her mother, fighting back the tears.

  Mrs. Ames was immediately contrite. She didn't know what had got into her older daughter—usually such a level-headed girl—Kathy seemed quite upset enough without being made any more upset. "Well, it's a very pretty suit, darling. Lovely material. But it just doesn't look like the sort of thing you'd swim the English Channel in. Mr. Burgess says the water's lovely this morning. Why don't you go in with him before those children of Felicia's drown him."