She faced him directly across the kitchen table, her expression alert now, and a little angry. ‘Is there ever so very much to understand, Mal? Or are you one more man who chooses to think like that because it’s less trouble?’
He shrugged impatiently. ‘What are you talking about?’ He began to regret questioning her, because the words had obviously dug deeply into her, and she was moved and disturbed. An ever-ready fear of involvement and responsibility stirred in him; ever since his marriage he had viewed women with delight, but with no desire to possess exclusively any one of them. Each of his affairs had ended with a certain amiability on both sides because it had always been understood that they would end; he was not looking for bitter memories. Now as he sat here he remembered that once he had asked Harriet to marry him. It was something he would not let himself remember too often. Harriet was the exception to all the other women ‒ now, as she had been then. In his life he had asked only two women to marry him, and Harriet had been one of them. He looked at her troubled face, and some of her own confusion reached out and touched him ‒ he, Mal, who was never confused.
She replied slowly. ‘Women have less choice than you think, Mal. What plans could I have that aren’t Steve’s? … Most men are fighting for their lives in whatever they’re doing, and a wife can only be either with him or against him. The role is still a passive one ‒ unless a woman wants a kind of court jester, or a fool. Whatever Steve is, he’s neither of those things …’
‘You’re old-fashioned, Harriet. You’re still Joe Carpenter’s daughter, waiting for the orders, the commands. I wonder if you’ve done any single thing in your life that you really wanted to do … and not what you thought someone expected of you.’
She smiled warily, mockingly. ‘If you’re trying to get a rise out of me, Mal, you’d better forget it. You have your kind of life ‒ and I have mine. Let’s say we’re both satisfied.’
They were sitting on the porch, the tray with glasses, bottles and the ice bucket between them, when Steve drove up. They had been sitting there for nearly an hour, in a silence that was almost companionable, hearing from the back of the house the familiar kitchen noises as Nell prepared dinner. Harriet was at last at ease, glad that finally she and Mal had broken the polite spell that had lain over their meetings since he had come back to Burnham Falls. They had each edged a little into the territory of the other; they had looked at each other, and known that there was much more to say, and that perhaps they would choose never to say it. Harriet knew that she was not free of Mal, but she no longer felt humiliated and foolish in her bondage. She would no longer fight other people, including her own sons, for his attention. She had hit into Mal’s tough, imperturbable facade and made a small dent. It was good to know she wasn’t completely ineffectual.
Steve left the car in the driveway, and his worn, handsome face creased into a smile of pleasure as he saw Mal. He was wearing a crumpled sports shirt, open at the neck; as usual he was smoking. Harriet had a sudden vision of him as he would be at fifty ‒ weary-eyed in his distinguished untidiness, and a power in Amtec. She felt as if she had never really looked at Steve until this moment, never known this man. In his fashion he was just as tough as Mal, but his endurance was greater, and of a different kind. She studied him with a respectful, thoughtful gaze as he came up the steps towards them.
II
It was a relief to Laura when Ed finally excused himself and left for Downside. The Cadillac started up the dirt road from the cabin, Ed looking neat and fresh even after the day’s fishing with Phil Conrad, as if the wind and sun didn’t touch him. Laura was glad he was gone because his presence put a restraint on the kind of theatre gossip she wanted to hear from Conrad. She collected a fresh tray of ice and hurried back to the sofa where Phil sat, conscious of a rare excitement within herself, a hopefulness … though she could not honestly have said what it was she hoped for.
‘I didn’t know Ed was interested in Catholic affairs …’ Phil said with deliberate inquiry as she set the ice bucket down on the rickety table.
‘He’s not.’ She lit a cigarette, and paused to draw on it, knowing that this was one motion she performed with consummate grace, and that it had won the acclaim of an instant’s study from Phil. ‘You forget,’ she said, ‘that this is just about a company town. Ed has to be all things to all men ‒ just now he’s gone along to talk to Monseigneur Gregory, drink some of his good Scotch, and on leaving present him with a cheque from Amtec for the Diocesan Charity Fund. In a sense, Downside isn’t local ‒ being a seminary ‒ but it’s part of the whole picture here in Burnham Falls. Similarly, all the other denominations will get cheques, and Ed will either present them in person or send a letter, according to their importance …’
Conrad reached out and poured his own drink. ‘Somehow, Laura, I never fit you into a place like this ‒ doing this kind of a … job.’
She looked at him cautiously, afraid to commit herself to a reply. ‘Oh …?’
His mouth suddenly split in a wide grin, an unusually relaxed expression for Phil Conrad. ‘I suppose you know what I almost said? I almost said “this kind of a role”.’
Now she smiled too, a little secretively, as if they were conspirators against the rest of Burnham Falls.
‘I know … I know. Most of the time it feels like a role, and the time I spend in New York is where the role ends and the living begins.’
‘Poor foolish Laura …’ he said softly. ‘That’s always been your trouble. You never knew when the role ended and real life began.’
She drew back a little. ‘Are you sure you know what you’re talking about?’
‘Sure I know. It stuck out a mile to anyone who knew you and Larry at that time. You went on playing the role Larry wrote for you, and the fact was that Larry, like most writers, outgrew that set of characters.’
Her hand hesitated just a second as she reached for her glass. ‘You didn’t know Larry well enough to be able to know something like that. It isn’t true … it’s just something you wanted to get off your chest to whatever actress it seemed to fit.’ She tried to frame the accusation lightly, but even in her own ears her voice sounded oddly high and excited.
‘You forget that Larry and I are fairly simpatico … nothing intense, but we’re always glad to have lunch together whenever we run into each other around town. Some day I hope he’ll give me one of his plays to do.’
She ignored his last words. She leaned towards him almost hungrily, and she spoke without prudence or caution.
‘Then if you know him so well, tell me something.’
He drew on his cigarette. ‘If I can.’
‘Tell me why Mary Blair? … Why that woman? She’s plain and thin, and quiet as a mouse. Larry liked beautiful women.’
‘Maybe “still as a mouse” would be a better description of her, Laura; there’s a difference. I don’t know what Mary Blair’s got. She doesn’t attract me, and yet I find her oddly relaxing. And Larry depends on her ‒ he depends on her every second of his day. And she’s always with him, always there.’
‘Oh, well … if that’s what she is. A mother … a nurse-maid …’
He gestured to silence her. ‘Hey, wait a minute! Maybe Larry was smart enough to know that. He doesn’t have a great talent, but he has a quite definite talent. And he husbands it. He pampers it, Laura, and looks after it. And the woman he’s married to must do the same.’
He went on, talking slowly now, as if recollecting. ‘You know … marriage to a beautiful woman is almost a career in itself. In this country beauty commands such a reward just for existing. Larry needed some homage himself. People went to the theatre to see his plays, but in restaurants heads turned to look at you, Laura. You’ve got to be a certain kind of man to be successfully married to a beautiful woman. It’s a game, and a gamble. Larry wasn’t that kind of man.’
‘He grew tired of me. That was all,’ she said.
‘He grew tired of the competition. Now some men would find the compe
tition a challenge …’
All of Laura’s senses sharpened then. For the first time in over a year she felt more than superficially desirable, she felt something more than the cardboard figure on the magazine spreads and the TV screen. Something in her came to life as it had never done before ‒ even for Larry. She knew the feeling now of having to woo a man with something more than just her beauty.
It was almost dark when Ed returned from Downside. The headlights flashed across the front of the cabin, and he was puzzled that there were no lights in the windows. He was hungry and tired, a condition he wouldn’t expose to Laura or Phil Conrad, and he was more than a little irritated to find no sign of a meal being prepared. Laura and Phil were still sitting on the sofa facing the window, apparently watching the last of the light vanish on the lake. But as always, Ed’s discipline was intact, and now he brought a smile to his face as they turned casually to greet him ‒ as if his return were of no importance to them.
III
‘Hi, Jeannie!’
Jeannie stopped and looked around as she heard her name. It was after nine-thirty, and she was on her way out of Carter’s. Only one booth along the wall was occupied, and the woman who had called was sitting there smiling at her moistly. Seated opposite her in the booth were two men.
Quickly Jeannie searched her memory for the woman’s name. ‘Oh … hi, Mrs … Mrs. Reitch. How are you?’ She was a construction worker’s wife who frequently appeared in Carter’s in the middle of the afternoon to eat an ice-cream soda and a pastry, and almost always stopped by Jeannie’s counter to make a purchase. She spent her husband’s money wildly on anything that caught her fancy, and she seemed pleased when she won a few minutes’ notice and conversation with Jeannie or Ben, the counter man. She was childless, and desperately bored with Burnham Falls. She was handsome, in a big-boned fashion. She laughed now, showing her gums. ‘None of this Mrs. Reitch stuff, Jeannie,’ she said. ‘My name’s Val. And this is my husband, Carl … and Tony Patrino, who works with him.’
‘Hi,’ Carl Reitch said, staring at her but not moving. Tony Patrino half got to his feet. ‘Nice to know you.’
Val Reitch patted the empty seat beside her. ‘You finished now, Jeannie? Come and take the weight of your feet. Have a sundae, or some coffee …’
Jeannie hesitated a second before she accepted the suggestion, but she did accept it finally. ‘Thanks … I’ll have a Coke.’ She knew she didn’t particularly want to sit with Val and the two men, nor did she very much want to go home, either. After the argument at breakfast that morning there would be her father’s hurt silence to face, and her mother’s gentle attempts to heal the breach. Jeannie wasn’t yet prepared to make humble approaches to her father, because she knew she couldn’t go all the way in doing what he wanted her to do. Even to sit here with two workers from the construction camp was like a further act of defiance towards him. She looked at the roughened, calloused hands across the table from her, with the dirt rim under the nails, and she thought that she might have been looking at her father’s own hands. At the same time she knew the difference, the difference between familiar and alien hands.
Carl Reitch had called for an order of Coke, and Ben brought it and set it down before her. She started to drink it quickly, aware of Ben’s curious glance around the group, and aware now that Carl and the other man had been drinking. The smell of whisky reached her across the table. There was an awkward silence which Val finally brought to an end.
‘You’re workin’ late, aren’t you, Jeannie? Do you always have to stay this late?’
‘Well … no. Not after seven. But we were busy this evening, and I just stayed on. Nothing else to do.’
‘I don’t believe it.’ This came from Tony Patrino, who leaned back in the booth and looked at her boldly. ‘I don’t believe a girl like you hasn’t got a date on a Saturday night. What’s wrong with the guys in this town?’ He was young, in his twenties, and darkly handsome, his head seemed to be set with surprising grace and delicacy on his powerful body. He wore a clean sports shirt, open at the neck, under a fawn linen jacket; she noticed the massive gold watch and band on his wrist. He had started to smile mockingly, and she was angry with herself because she felt the hot colour mount in her cheeks.
Val nudged her, laughingly. ‘Jeannie could have her pick, couldn’t you, hon?’ Then she looked across at her husband. ‘But she’s got her head screwed on right … no wastin’ time on construction workers for Jeannie. She’s datin’ steady with the bank president’s son … a college boy, he is.’
Carl laid down his cup. ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ he said to his wife. ‘I didn’t see no college boys hanging around you in Meadville, Colorado. As I recall it a construction worker looked pretty good to you then, just so long as you got outa the place …’
‘Aw shut up!’ she said, her good humour vanishing. ‘Listen, any time I want …’
Tony Patrino broke in. ‘Hell, this is Saturday night! You two going to spend the whole time fighting? Let’s get the hell out of here and go get a steak at Barney’s, and take in a movie at the drive-in. There’s Jeannie here all on her lonesome, just pining for a steak and a movie …’
Jeannie pushed the Coke away from her. She took her handbag and got to her feet. ‘Thanks … but they’re expecting me at home.’
‘I’ll drive you home.’
‘It’s no distance. I always walk.’
‘What’s the hurry?’ Carl Reitch looked at her sulkily. ‘Don’t you like the company?’
Jeannie looked down at him. ‘It isn’t that at all. I told you they’re expecting me at home.’
‘Oh, lay off her, Carl!’ Val snapped. ‘If she wants to go, let her.’ She looked up at Jeannie with some hostility. ‘I’m sure we don’t want to keep her if her folks don’t know where she is.’
Carl glared back at his wife. ‘What is she … a baby or something? Can’t take care of herself?’
‘Oh, forget it, Carl … and shut up!’
Tony Patrino said nothing.
Jeannie nodded to Val. ‘Thanks for the Coke, Mrs. Reitch. See you around.’
Ben had gone to the back of the store, and there was momentarily no one at the counter as she left. As the door swung closed behind her she could hear Val Reitch’s voice rising again and Carl’s sullen interruption. And outside on the sidewalk, Main Street was dotted with the usual crowd of people who drifted into town on a warm Saturday evening, and across the road the early movie was breaking at the Astor. Suddenly Jeannie felt unutterably lonely. She wanted to feel Jerry’s hand resting in hers, to have the familiar, comforting presence at her side. Behind her was the petty drunken quarrelling of the Reitch marriage, and ahead she faced a house where she was not at ease with her father. She knew what he would think if he could have witnessed her encounter with the Reitches and Tony Patrino, and it almost seemed that Ted Talbot’s violently prejudiced dislike of all the construction camp people was justified. She felt shamed in some way, because her father would have been shamed to see her there; she felt also slightly soiled and dirtied because her dating with Jerry was a subject for Val Reitch’s gossip. It was all right for Burnham Falls to speculate on whether she and Jerry would marry, but she suddenly found herself viewing the construction camp people with her father’s eyes ‒ as total outsiders, who would one day pack up and be gone, and leave nothing but the scarred ground where they had been. It took more than Val Reitch’s paying for lipstick and perfume to give her the right to gossip in Burnham Falls. Jeannie began to think that she might almost be ready to apologise to her father when she got home.
She was within sight of the shellac factory when she sensed the car slowing behind her ‒ not passing straight on with a swift stirring of the warm air as they always did. Nor did it turn, and go back towards the town. Puzzled, she turned to look at it, but she could see nothing beyond the powerful beam of the headlights, which outlined her fully, and seemed to pin her against the dark background of the trees.
/> IV
It was a little before eleven and Mal refused a lift from Steve back to where he had left his car. Instead he borrowed a flashlight and started to walk. A dew had settled on the grass, but it was still warm, and a pale three-quarter moon was starting to swing up above the line of hills. He held the flashlight low by his side as he walked. Only two cars passed him, both of them coming from the country club, and he enjoyed the feeling of isolation and being alone in the darkness. After dinner Steve had brought out a fine brandy, and its mellowness was still with him.
It was farther to where the dirt road turned off than he remembered. When he came to it finally he had to walk with more care because the ruts were deep and filled with loose stones. The trees and brush closed in about the road now; only the faintest light from the moon filtered down through them. He had left his car pulled in so tight to the side of the road that he was almost upon it before he saw it.
He heard the first sound just as he pressed the starter, and he thought he was mistaken. Then, when the motor settled down, he heard it again.
‘Wait … please wait!’ It was a woman’s voice, and it came from farther back on the road, away from the highway.
He gripped the flashlight, feeling its weight in his hand reassuringly. Then he opened the door cautiously.
‘Hallo! … Hallo!’ he called.
‘Wait!’ Now he knew the voice, and he switched on the flashlight. She was still some way from the car, limping, and without shoes. Her hair hung over her face wildly. He started to run towards her. She flinched in the strong beam of the flashlamp as he drew near, and for a second she strained to see past it, to identify him in the darkness. Then he stopped short, staring at her, and feeling a little sick as he looked.
Her shirtmaker dress had been ripped open down the front. Her bra hung about her waist, and her half-slip was bloodstained and torn. Her lips were bloody, and one eye was puffed and closed. There was blood on her bare breasts also. She was shivering.
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