She smoothed the folds of the skirt; it was a dark coffee colour with large black spots raised on it. ‘I think it’s nice,’ she said. ‘It’s almost too nice to associate with anything so politic as this evening’s gathering.’
‘But Phil Conrad …’ Steve was grinning. ‘He’s used to looking at the best and so’ ‒ he gestured towards her ‒ ‘we have the best!’
Harriet wrinkled her nose. ‘What I don’t like is the idea of it’s being a kind of Command Performance.’ She assumed an exaggerated imitation of Laura’s voice. ‘Harriet … we would like to bring Phil Conrad over to your house, and perhaps you would ask a few people to meet him.’ She gave an elegant snort. ‘And then told me exactly whom we should ask!’ She sighed. ‘It seems to me that ever since we had the house redecorated, Laura thinks it’s a quaint idea to invite her guests to come and see over the Dexters’ charming old relic of a house.’
‘Oh, hell!’ Steve shrugged. ‘It’s either here or the country club. The choice is obvious.’
‘I get your point,’ Harriet agreed. ‘But I still think this is a rather dull gathering to ask the distinguished and debonair Phil Conrad to. At least, I assume he’s debonair ‒ aren’t all men of the theatre supposed to be?’
‘No ‒ some of them are merely fat. But I hear Phil Conrad is all the things he’s supposed to be.’ He leaned against the door jamb, hands in pockets. ‘Perhaps this evening will be a pleasant change for him ‒ perhaps that’s why Ed Peters planned it. After all, you can always count on Ed not leaving much to chance.’
‘Well … the guest list was heavily stacked on the intellectual side … the Jenningses, the Armstrongs … No one who’s merely administrative gets a look in.’
‘My dear girl,’ Steve said mildly, ‘these are scientists, not intellectuals. You must learn to distinguish. None of us has opened a book that departs from our speciality for years. Perhaps Amtec wants to give Conrad the impression that a Nobel Prize is dangling over one of our heads, and that he’d be proud to be associated with the company. In any case, for whatever reason, Amtec is putting a good deal of trust in you to-night … trusting you to arrange a gathering that might be small town, but isn’t suburban, and to show Conrad that earnest men of science have beautiful wives.’
She smiled at him. ‘Sometimes, when you remember, you can say the nicest things.’
Abruptly the half-mocking look left his own face. He came towards her, and placed a kiss lightly on her lips. ‘I’ll remember too seldom, Harriet, it’s because I’m a fool who doesn’t deserve you … and because I’ve grown used to trusting you, and knowing that you’re here. A bad habit, and I wonder why I haven’t lost you because of it long before this.’ His grip tightened a little. ‘Stay with me?’
She nodded. ‘Yes.’ She drew back a little, before he could kiss her again. ‘I … I just want to check things once more before people start arriving.’
He released her reluctantly, and she was gone from him at the same instant. He turned and followed her towards the dining-room.
He said then, with a touch of irritation, ‘Wouldn’t it have been less fuss to have the whole thing catered? You and Nell have been on the go since six this morning …’
‘That would have been a mistake ‒ Laura stressed that Phil Conrad was just coming for a quiet country week-end, and I took the hint that I was to make this party look as impromptu as was compatible with giving them something decent to eat.’ She gave a little sigh. ‘Always so much more trouble to be casually informal, than to hire the whole works and be done with it. If I had my way there’d be three white-coated gentlemen doing the whole thing, instead of Nell and Selma rushing frantically in the kitchen and me trying to stay calm out here.’
She was a little ahead of him, as she opened back the double doors into the dining-room.
‘But it does look nice, doesn’t it?’
The scent of the roses met them first ‒ golden and red garden roses, fat and sensuous, in white Minton bowls. The long table was laid with the fine cloth, china and silver which Harriet had inherited from Claudia; the centre of it bare and waiting for the buffet dishes from the kitchen. This room, with the rest of the house, had been repainted in the spring, and for here Harriet had chosen dull gold curtains that were left open now to admit whatever breeze would enter. The simple spoke-backed chairs stood against the walls, their shapes reflected in the richly-waxed floor. It was a handsome room, with the tall windows facing the view of the town and the lake ‒ not an over-formal room, but not lax or indulgent.
‘Yes ‒ it is nice,’ Steve said.
It was more than nice, Harriet thought. It looked as good now as ever it had done in Joe’s heyday ‒ better perhaps, because the house had mellowed, the floors and furniture had acquired a deeper patina from age and constant waxing, and in spite of the redecorating, it still retained its look of usage. A new heating system had been installed, an extra bathroom carved out of the over-generous master bedroom, a big pantry downstairs turned into a cloakroom. There was a dishwater in the kitchen, and a new washer and dryer in the basement. Outside the house glistened with fresh white paint, and in two seasons of regular attendance Ted Talbot had brought the lawn back to something approaching the state Joe had liked to see it in. Yes, the house looked fine, Harriet thought, but restoring it had cost every penny of Steve’s salary ‒ and they were still paying on the mortgage Joe had left to them. The savings account at the First National didn’t look one bit better than it had at the moment Steve had gone to work for Amtec. There had been no choice ‒ Amtec expected Steve to represent them adequately, and they had complied. If they went into debt to do it, then they were no different from every other family in the same circumstances. Harriet had vague hopes that some day, perhaps after Gene and Tim were through college, it might be possible to put some money aside each year. But the time was not now. Once again she smoothed the folds of her skirt, remembering how she had skimped and saved the first eighteen months after Steve had joined Amtec in order to pay off their debts ‒ and Steve, busy on the West Coast, and in England, had almost forgotten her existence ‒ which was what mostly happened to the martyrs of the world, she thought, and quite often they deserved it. She remembered how she had gone to the Amtec opening here in Burnham Falls in a shabby, out-of-date suit; then in time she had learned that she helped neither Steve nor herself by these obvious kinds of economies, and she had had to learn to spend without feeling guilty. There wasn’t much place in Amtec for the existence of good old-fashioned Yankee thrift, because, after all, it was a form of mistrust of the pension plans and the sickness and accident benefits. All that mattered was to keep your job, and there would be no other problems. You had only to place your trust in unlimited productivity and prosperity of the whole country, and Amtec’s place in it ‒ and then you rode all the way with Amtec. That was the doctrine, and she and Steve had adhered to it when they redecorated the house, and bought the new furnishings. It looked now as Joe Carpenter would have been proud to see it look, but it was a little spoiled for them because it had been done more for other people than themselves. She looked at the room now and thought that it belonged more to Phil Conrad than to her, Harriet. She felt a little bit cheated.
‘You’ll have that dress worn out if you don’t stop rubbing it,’ Steve said gently beside her.
She almost started at the sound of his voice, and realised that she had been staring unseeingly at the empty room. ‘Oh! …’ Then she smiled. ‘I wasn’t rubbing ‒ I was stroking. I’m enjoying wearing it.’
‘You should,’ he said. ‘You look very lovely.’
She turned plucking at his sleeve. ‘Come on … I haven’t any more time to stand admiring. I’ll send Selma in with the ice. It’s almost time for people to start arriving.’
‘How did it go to-day at the cabin?’ he said, as she started towards the kitchen. He sounded as if he had grabbed at the question unthinkingly, looking for something that would pull her back to him.
She
stopped and turned round again. ‘Oh … fine ‒ I suppose. Jeff Anderson delivered the new fridge, which immediately made everything else in the kitchen look a hundred years old ‒ and I had him check over all the cords and light sockets. The place looks O.K. … all rather faded and shabby, though. The sofas are a bit rattly, and the beds not as soft as I seem to remember them. If it’s a rustic fishing cabin Phil Conrad wants, then he’s certainly got it.’
‘Oh, to hell with Phil Conrad! The Peterses are damn’ lucky to have the place to offer him. That’s one of the best fishing lakes in the whole district. What more does he want beside a lake stuffed with fish, and a cabin with electricity, running water and a clean bed? That’s doing it in style.’
‘Apparently that’s how they plan to do it,’ Harriet said dryly. ‘At least judging from the kind of canned and frozen stuff Laura sent over to stock the larder ‒ Nova Scotia salmon, caviare, smoked oysters ‒ a case of liquor ‒ canned ham and Swedish meat balls. Elizabeth brought it all over, and explained to me earnestly that Laura and Ed would bring the real food with them to-morrow morning when they went there with Mr. Conrad. Somehow I’ve never imagined Laura slaving over the stove ‒ except in those commercials ‒ but this is one time she’ll have to play the rustic gal or the whole effect will be spoiled. It would hardly do if they brought the cook with them.’
‘I thought they were supposed to live off the fish they caught!’ Steve said. He jerked at his tie, meaning to straighten it, but instead he pulled it more out of place. Harriet stood half-turned ready to go. He said, ‘You don’t sound too friendly towards Laura.’
‘I’m not,’ Harriet said shortly. ‘Not after she sent Elizabeth on her errands because she was spending the day in New York.’
‘Did Elizabeth go with you to the cabin?’
‘Yes ‒ she spent the whole day with us. I think she enjoyed it ‒ she scrubbed the kitchen floor, and helped me sweep the bedrooms and dust. Quite a change for Ed Peters’ daughter. Gene and Tim were with us ‒ they swept up outside, after a fashion, and had one of their raging quarrels. Gene took off into the woods. By the way … there’s a couple of planks missing from the jetty. I hope Mr. Conrad doesn’t fall through.’
Steve shrugged. ‘Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.’
She took a step away and then looked back. ‘Oh! … And I broke the sacred guest list. After all, this is our house and our fishing cabin. I asked Clif to come along. I thought Phil Conrad should meet at least one person who was here before Amtec … sort of prehistoric, you know. One of the natives.’
‘Well, I asked another native … I forgot to tell you.’
‘Who?’
‘Mal Hamilton … he turned up to-day with a new set of drawings for us to look at. He’s on his way up North, and I persuaded him to take a room at the motel, and to come along here. I thought he might liven things up ‒ a little less like one of the faculty.’
‘Yes,’ she smiled weakly. ‘Yes … fine. Good idea.’ She fingered her skirt again. ‘I’ll tell Selma to bring in the ice.’
The tap of her heels on the polished wood sounded unnaturally loud as she walked down the hall.
The kitchen door was behind the stairs, and she paused there, listening. For a second she thought Steve was about to follow her, but he moved instead into the living-room, and she could hear the clink of glasses and bottles on the table where the drinks were set out. He was whistling again ‒ the thin, tuneless whistle that meant he was preoccupied. It had a lonely sound, that whistle. He should not have been there alone, rearranging glasses that did not need it; he should have been part of the nervous, last-minute flurry before the party, part of the noise and voices here on the other side of the door ‒ Gene’s and Tim’s voices, and Nell’s deeper tones cutting across them, and a gentler response from Selma. Harriet knew it was her fault that he was out there alone ‒ she had rebuffed him, and he had retreated. With her hand on the door, ready to push it open, she paused.
‘Oh, Mal … Mal … What am I doing?’
For three weeks, since that day on the train, he had scarcely been absent from her thoughts ‒ the feeling of him being there was like a haunting little obbligato that accompanied her every waking moment, but which grew even more real as she slept. In every humdrum circumstance of her day, in every part of the town life, she was picturing Mal; she searched for his face among the shoppers on Main Street, and watched for the familiar red hair and gaunt face among the crowds. She kept waiting to hear his voice, the shock and surprise of it as it had happened on the train ‒ waiting for a random mention of his name. It was a madness she had carried with her for three weeks, and she couldn’t put it away.
Twice Steve had brought him to the house for dinner ‒ that first time he had come with Clif, but the second time Steve hadn’t even called to warn her. They had arrived together in Steve’s car from the Laboratories, and the first warning she had had was the sound of their voices in the hall. They had sat on the porch and had a drink together, and she had joined them and once again had been unnaturally silent; but when she had gone to wash before dinner she had seen that her face was flushed and excited, like a schoolgirl’s, and her hand went immediately to the perfume on the dressing-table, and she was dabbing it on before she realised the implication of her action. Guiltily she had put it down, and gone quickly to help Nell serve the meal. Then several times during the evening she had caught herself staring at Mal without restraint or caution, and she felt wretched because Steve might have seen it too.
She was even jealous of Gene and Tim because they took to Mal immediately, and monopolised his attention through the meal. She was shamed by the feeling, but her shame did not lessen it.
After those first few moments in the train they had never spoken together alone for a single minute ‒ but from her need grew the game of searching for him, and waiting for him.
She knew now, as she stood with her hand on the kitchen door, that, consciously or unconsciously, she had been waiting all day to hear that he would be coming to-night. No one had been certain that he would be in Burnham Falls to-day because his schedule was irregular and unpredictable. All she knew was that Mal had promised Steve some drawings by the end of the week, and there was a good chance that if he was in Burnham Falls to-day, he might also be in their house this evening. Ever since Steve had come home, she had been wanting to ask, and had not been able to; with every passing moment her sense of disappointment had grown deeper, and she had had the feeling of a child about to cry ‒ unreasonably and bitterly. It didn’t do any good either, to tell herself that she was behaving like a fool.
And then Steve had said he was coming, and she felt weak with relief and pleasure.
She looked down at her dress, and the new shoes, that were frivolous and flattering. The dress and the shoes and the hair style from one of the exclusive New York hairdressers ‒ after which she had inwardly apologised to Laura ‒ were not so much for Phil Conrad’s party, as for the unvoiced hope that perhaps Mal would see her wearing them. As stupid and shaming as it was, she had to admit it. And to-night she had looked more attractive than she had done in a long time, and Steve had been aware of it, and had reached out to her. She had rebuffed him, and he was alone now.
‘Why … you’re about to make a fool of yourself over Mal Hamilton,’ she said silently. As she mouthed the words, a terrible awareness of her situation came to her. Once before, on the night that Josh had left Burnham Falls, she had thrown herself into Mal’s arms ‒ and in the next room she could hear the voices of her children, reminding her that it had all happened a very long time ago.
She raised her head, and pushed open the door.
Jeannie Talbot was standing by the kitchen table when she went in, wrapped in one of Nell’s big white aprons. She was stooped over the chopping-board, chopping parsley with nice precision, and listening to something Tim was saying. ‘Jeannie! I didn’t expect to see you here!’
She looked up. ‘Oh, hi, Mrs. Dexter ‒ I didn’t think
you’d mind. I thought I’d come along and give Mom and Aunt Nell a hand with the washing up.’ Then she smiled. ‘That wasn’t the real reason ‒ I haven’t been here since it was redecorated and I wanted to look at it. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’
Harriet returned her smile. She always felt unaccountably drawn towards Jeannie; there was a rich warmth about her that somehow made the women about her seem meagre and pale ‒ all women except her own mother. In the past year she had matured rapidly; she looked slender because she was tall, but Harriet noted the full breasts and the hips that curved voluptuously. She was unaffectedly sensuous, in a way that Harriet thought many men would find irresistible.
‘Glad to have you, Jeannie ‒ any time.’ Then she added, ‘But what about Jerry? … I thought he monopolised any spare time you had.’
She shrugged. ‘He’s pretty busy himself ‒ Mr. Keston thinks it’s good for his soul ‒ or something ‒ to work late at the bank a few nights a week. Then … Jerry and I don’t exactly see eye to eye about a few things, and so he’s been giving me the aloof treatment lately.’ Then she smiled and inclined her head towards the boy beside her. ‘But I haven’t been lonely ‒ Tim has been entertaining me nicely.’
Tim flushed a little, and was unable to keep the grin of pleasure off his face. ‘Stop teasing, Jeannie,’ he said. He turned to his mother. ‘You look real pretty, Mom.’ And then he rushed on. ‘How do I look?’
He straightened himself for Harriet’s inspection. He was wearing his best grey flannel suit, and a dark blue tie. His hair was carefully slicked back.
‘Aw ‒ listen to little Lord Fauntleroy, will you?’ Gene looked at his younger brother scornfully, and then turned back to a tray of canapés, from which he selected one, inspected it, and then returned it in favour of another one.
Harriet gave a little squawk. ‘Gene! … Don’t do that. Eat one, if you like, but don’t paw them all. They’ll all look so grubby!’
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