by Belva Plain
“Nobody?”
“No. Alex wouldn’t care and Jessie will never know.”
“And what about you and me? What is to become of us?”
Below them lay eternal blue, azure and turquoise, blue upon rippling blue. He stared out over the water.
And Mary repeated, “Tell me, what’s to become of us?”
“I don’t know … I’ll think … There must be something.”
“Oh God!” she cried.
“Dearest. Dearest. Don’t.”
She turned her face away.
The waitress came back with the tureen. “Careful, it’s hot! Shall I bring a salad?”
“Madame is not feeling well. This will be enough,” Martin said.
“So now we just get on the train and go back,” Mary cried. “Nothing more? And that’s all? I’m twenty-eight,” she said, and he understood that she meant “I’m too young to settle for ‘nothing more.’ ”
The wheels of daily living turn regardlessly. So he paid the bill and tipped the waitress, checked in his pocket for the train tickets and summoned a taxi.
The train clattered northward. At a rural stop, a couple with three children entered the compartment; the youngest was asleep on the father’s shoulder. The man’s face was tender; his hand cupped the small head.
When a rag doll dropped to the floor from the girl’s sleeping hand, Martin picked it up. And he remembered Claire, who slept with a doll in a tattered orange dress.
At the same moment Mary said, “Emmy and Isabel have dolls like that. Alex bought them in France.” Her lips trembled.
If Mary’s children were mine, Martin thought, and Claire belonged to Mary—
She laid her head on the back of the seat. He remembered that she had told him how she found escape in sleep. Rest then, he thought, drawing the shade to keep the light from flickering on her face. Her breasts rose and fell under the tan silk. He remembered their perfume. If they had been alone in the compartment, he would have put his head next to hers. But now these strangers were here, sitting like monoliths on Easter Island. Every time he looked up, he met the curious eyes of these innocent strangers, and he hated them.
All through the long trip to England, to the parting place, his thoughts went round and round like a poor blinded mule at the threshing floor. There must be a way … There is no way.… There must be a way …There is no way …
They were astonished to be met at the railroad station in London by Alex Lamb. Even before the train had come to a halt under the glass roof and the iron fretwork they saw him scanning the carriages, then running toward them.
“Nothing wrong with the children, it’s all right!” he called. When they came up to him he lowered his voice. “But you have damn well made a mess of things! All hell has broken loose.”
“What? What are you saying?” Mary cried.
“Good Lord, Fern, I don’t mind! But dammit, if you had only told me! Then I would have known what to say.”
On the platform, surrounded by luggage and hurrying feet, they heard the story.
“You see, Jessie got the idea that it would be jolly to call the hotel in Paris and let Claire talk to her father. And the concierge told her—” Alex turned to Martin. “He told her that you had left. Or rather, he said that Monsieur and Madame had left, that he himself had got them a reservation on the Blue Train for Nice.
“So then Jessie, having thought that over, telephoned my house and asked for Fern. And I said, quite naturally, that you’d gone to Nice for a week’s rest from the children and me. How could I have known? You really ought to have told me!” Alex repeated.
“Jesus Christ!” Martin cried.
“I hope you’re not upset about me,” Alex said. “You’ve been told that I’m not likely to play the role of outraged husband. Jessie, of course, is something else.”
“How is she now?” Martin asked.
“Now? I really couldn’t say. She was rather bad off when I saw her on Saturday. I went right up to town to talk to her, but it wasn’t any use. She and the child left Monday on the Leviathan for New York.”
Chapter 13
The double doors of the familiar library had been slammed and the curtains pulled tight, trapping Donald Meig’s anger in the shadowed room. His words beat the walls like fists.
“You Goddamned scum! Her own sister! I wouldn’t have cared if it had been anyone else! What the hell. I wouldn’t even have blamed you all that much. But to shame the family that took you in and—No, let me talk. If it weren’t for me, you’d be doling out aspirins and driving thirty miles in the middle of the night for two dollars—if and when you could collect.”
Martin trembled. It had been a hard voyage through ferocious seas, with the ropes up in the corridors and the passengers vomiting in their cabins. After disembarking, he had rushed at once to the train. Now, tense with a poisonous mixture of humiliation and foreboding, he stood before a man who appeared to have gone mad with rage. Meig’s eyes glittered like the glass lumps in the deerhead on the wall.
“All right, Mr. Meig. You’ve said it a dozen times and I’ve answered you. I’ll answer just once more: It was terribly wrong. I have no excuse.” He threw out his hand. “Still, I ask you again: I want to go upstairs and see Jessie. After all, this concerns her more than anyone.”
“Jessie doesn’t want to see you. Jessie wants a divorce. And you”—Meig leveled a forefinger as though it were a pistol—“you are going to give it to her. You are going to make no problems. Do you understand?”
“That’s between Jessie and me. We have a child.”
“A child? Yes, you damn well have! And my English society daughter might have remembered that she’s got a house full of children herself. Oh, a wonderful pair, the two of you! My God, I’ve seen degrading things in my time, but nothing lower than this! His wife’s sister—”
A door in the hall above closed with a thud. Running feet, a child’s feet, crossed the floor.
“At least I want to see Claire,” Martin said.
“No. No. You’ve seen all you’re ever going to see of Claire. Listen to me! I’ve consulted lawyers, all last week I spent with lawyers, and do you know I have it in my legal power to keep you away from that child forever on grounds of moral turpitude? Do you? And I suppose you think Dr. Eastman would take you on as an associate when the tabloids got through with you! A doctor and his sister-in-law! Juicy reading! The public would drink it up! And I’ll do it, make no mistake. I’ll do it if you throw one obstacle in my way. I’ll ruin you and I’ll ruin Fern, too. I want nothing more to do with her. No, you’ve seen the last you’re ever going to see of Claire.”
Martin’s stomach churned. He hadn’t eaten all day, and his head throbbed. Feeling sick, he stared at the glass lumps in the deerhead.
“You’re an unforgiving man, Mr. Meig. Haven’t you ever heard of a second chance?”
“An ax murderer doesn’t get a second chance, and that’s what you are: an ax murderer. You’ve axed my family. You’ve driven two sisters apart and robbed me of Fern and her children. Yes, I know it took two of you, but you’re older. You’re a man and a doctor. You had the greater responsibility. And when I think that you owe me everything you are!”
“As far as that goes, you needn’t worry.” Martin spoke quietly. “You’ll get back every cent with interest.”
“Oh, interest, is it? Make it five percent. It’s the going rate. That’s all the more reason, then, why you’ll get out of here without any fuss. Go to New York and pay me what you owe. After that, we want no more to do with you.”
The train was full. He rode back to the city, smothered by a haze of cigar smoke and the roaring jollity of a crowd celebrating Repeal. Bracing his head in the corner between the seat and the windowglass, he closed his eyes.
His child. His Claire. He thought he would lose his mind if he couldn’t see her.
Her curls, finger-wound, lie on the collar of her yellow coat. “Allosaurus eats vegetables,” she informs him s
eriously.
Surely, if he wrote to Jessie, she would feel some compassion!
“You couldn’t get my sister,” Jessie says, “so you took me.” Her face is swollen with tears.
She would be most unlikely to feel compassion.
Suppose he were, somehow, to contest the divorce?
It wouldn’t work and he’d have been destroyed for nothing.
What did that mean—“destroyed”? And why should he care? He only wanted his daughter. His child.
Jessie’s child. She’d come full circle, Jessie had. Out of that house of gloom he had taken her, and back to it he had sent her. Oh, not wanting to! Wanting truly—and he examined himself, for the hundredth time turning a searchlight into the darkest corners of his spirit—truly to cherish her as he had so carefully done until that night on the balcony at the Lambs’ house.
Oh, wasn’t it strange, that if he had had some common affair of the streets, the world would have shrugged and pretended not to see?
Mary Fern. The night wind rises, rattling the palms, and we go inside together. She comes through a door at noon with an armful of marguerites; she drops them on a table. She laughs—
The train jolted toward the city and Martin dozed. He dreamed that he was walking on some great avenue, Fifth or Park, that he went to call on Dr. Eastman and found the doctor staring at him in horror and dismay because he had no trousers on.
In fact, Dr. Eastman welcomed him. “I’ve been looking forward to this ever since we met in London,” he said graciously. “I’m forty-eight and overworked. It will be good to have you share the burdens.”
He was a tall man, looking younger than his years, with the long, handsome face that seemed indigenous to old American wealth. Did the wealthy breed handsome children through a process of selection, or did handsome people find it easier to grow wealthy? More importantly, though, one could sense good nature in Eastman, which was fortunate, because people who looked like him were often frosty and stood on their authority.
So he emerged from the meeting with some tentative confidence in one area, at least. He began to walk fast, striking hard at the pavement. Early in life the patterns are set so that, mechanically, one follows in their grooves. When Martin Farrell is distressed he walks, or else sits down somewhere to listen to music. He flexed his hands. They were his capital, all he owned, they and the new knowledge in his head, gain of the years since he had last walked in this city.
Gains and losses …
“Loss,” he said aloud, without meaning to, so that a child trundling a toy on the walk looked up at him. And the word sounded in the air like the sorrowful whistle of a train going past in the country night.
Through shreds of moving clouds, a needle spire appeared and hid again. It was the great building of the Empire State. When he had left for England, only a few years before, it had been an enormous wound in the earth, and he had had a new young wife who believed in him. And no child. And no broken love on the other side of the Atlantic. No ache of longing. No remorse.
Change. Much change.
Often he wondered how they would appear to him, those first few years, after they had passed and he could look back on them. There had been such a piercing in his vitals that he had sometimes been certain he could not survive it. He had sat with his wretched head in his hands, thinking, always thinking.…
The wrongs he had done, not wanting to! The lives touched by his life and damaged by the touch!
Alex wrote twice to him. A large-minded man, Alex was realistic enough and selfish enough to look after his own interests first, yet decent enough to include others in the scheme of things.
He wanted Martin to know that Fern was enduring. She was most terribly distressed about Jessie: all her life she had been so careful of Jessie! Alex was doing his best to hearten her; she must paint again and go to classes; must see friends and go riding; fortunately, the children were demanding and could fill her days.
It would not be necessary, he wrote at last, perhaps it would even be unwise to write again. He trusted that Martin would understand.
Martin understood.
And he wrote to Jessie. He thought of her, sitting in the old familiar chair in the old shadowed room while their child slept upstairs. The tone of her reply was calm enough, but the denial of all requests was firm and final.
“We will leave things the way they are. You have many possibilities ahead of you. I have only Claire.”
And that, too, Martin understood.
In the end it was work that saved him. Purposely, now he exhausted himself. In the office, thanks to Martin’s long hours, they were seeing far more than the doubled number that would have been expected by the addition of one other man. Eastman remarked that Martin worked like a demon.
As the months increased, inevitably and mercifully the memories blurred; they always do. Now and then he had an unexpected vision of Lamb House in soft fog; or a vision of blue Mediterranean glitter; or of steam puffing from the locomotive at the railway terminal in London. The last thing he had seen was her back in the tan traveling dress hurrying away, leaning on Alex’s arm. We never got to say good-bye, he thought.
And sometimes still, a woman with a swaying walk would pass on the street; foolishly, knowing quite well it was not she, he would turn around and stare.
Sometimes a child passed, a girl who would be—and he would estimate the time—about the age of Claire. And if the child happened to have dark curls he would wonder whether Claire still wore hers long and how tall she was and whether she remembered him at all or ever spoke of him or missed him.
So, close the chapter, Martin. Close the book. It stands on the shelf and you can reach it anytime and read it over if you wish. But it is better not to.
Chapter 14
The picnic had been cleared away, the remains of watermelon and potato salad stowed in the kitchen and the last of the children put to bed. Now, in the pleasant somnolence that comes when one has overeaten, they sat on Tom’s narrow porch, watching the slow approach of summer night. Across the street a garage door rumbled and shut with a thud. A girl’s voice rang out once and ceased.
Perry spoke out of the darkness in the corner. “If I didn’t know New York was just across the George Washington Bridge I’d think I was back in Kansas.”
“I’ve come to love small-town life,” Flo said. “I never thought I would.”
“I’m not surprised. I should say you and Tom were made for it, both of you,” Martin observed.
Flo had been born middle-aged, predictable and kind. He could feel the warmth of her, as if she had reached out and touched him. As for himself, he had easily assumed the role of bachelor uncle, coming out here on holidays and Sunday afternoon with toys for the children and pastry from the French bakery near his apartment. Bachelor uncle! Well, there were worse things to be.
“I wish you’d stay for the rest of the weekend,” Flo said. “You’ll miss the fireworks tomorrow.”
“Can’t. Eastman’s leaving tonight to join his family in Maine and I’m on call.”
“You surely don’t have many emergencies!” She meant, it can’t be like Tom’s life; people call him out any old time.
“You’d be surprised. We get gunshot wounds, all kinds of nerve damage. And car accidents, of course, especially on holiday weekends. Tell her, Perry.”
“It’s a fact,” Perry said. He mused: “I was thinking, we go back a long time, don’t we? Ten years since med school! It doesn’t seem possible.”
“Say, Martin,” Tom added, “do you ever see anything of your first hero—what was his name?”
“Albeniz, you mean?”
“Yes. Albeniz.”
“Not much. He still works at Grantham Memorial and I’m at Fisk. My first hero, did you say? My only one, on this side of the Atlantic.”
“Why? What’s the matter with Eastman? Not a hero?”
“No. I suppose that sounds strange, though.”
“He’s a great surgeon,” Perry sai
d quickly. “You’ve got to admit that, Martin.”
“I do admit it! He could operate on me anytime, but—”
“But what?” When Tom got hold of something, he held on doggedly.
“I don’t know, really. Something subtle. Oh, maybe I’m being entirely unfair. Maybe it takes the edge off heroism to be so damn rich!”
“I read in a society column,” Flo said, “his wife comes from the Harmon Motors family.”
“A lot of us were invited to their place in Greenwich over Decoration Day,” Martin said. “It looked like a movie set—butlers serving drinks around the pool. Didn’t seem like a doctor’s house at all.” And he added somewhat sheepishly, “I had a good time, though.”
“That’s a helluva long way from Emergency Relief!” Tom said. “We only get a dollar a call, you know, but at least you’re sure of the fee. Only thing, I wish patients wouldn’t get scared in the middle of the night and call three doctors at once. We usually meet on the stairs and have to toss to see who gets the call, and then the losers have lost sleep for nothing. Oh well, we keep our heads above water and that’s something!”
“Speaking of Albeniz,” Martin began. He hadn’t talked about him in a long time, and suddenly for some reason he wanted to. “Albeniz was a prime mover in my life. He made a difference in it. And the thing that bothers me is that, outside of his own hospital, you don’t hear much of him. He doesn’t get his just due at all.”
“And why would that be?”
“I don’t know, really.”
“Yes, you do!” Perry said. “It’s simple; he doesn’t write enough or travel to meetings to blow his own horn. He doesn’t play the social game, either. There’s an awful lot of that in a big medical center, you know.” He spoke earnestly, explaining to Tom. “I never realized how much! Hospital committees, racket and tennis clubs, golf—that’s how you build a constituency.”
“Sounds like a bunch of stockbrokers, not doctors!” Tom’s old indignation flared. “If you want to become rich, you don’t belong in medicine. You can always go in for real estate or wholesale plumbing fixtures, for God’s sake.”