Steve cut him short, nodding, losing interest. ‘You’re quite right. It’s better not to ask questions. You make the hell for yourself if you do.’
Ignoring Tom, he turned back to talk with Sally, and Tom felt that he had made a poor showing, that he had disappointed Steve Dexter, who had somehow hoped for better from him ‒ or if not better, then different. The party, which should have been a good opportunity for him to talk with his superiors on more equal terms, suddenly went dead on him. He wasn’t interested any more. As soon as he decently could he extricated Sally, and suggested that they leave. She looked at him with some surprise, but she made no protest.
As he started the car he said. ‘Well ‒ let’s forget the Republican Party for a while, shall we? Let’s, go out to dinner. What about Guido’s, over on Route 40?’
Sally looked at him doubtfully. ‘That’s awfully expensive, Tom … and I left a meat loaf all ready at home.’
He started to pull out of the line of parked cars. ‘Oh, to hell with the meat loaf! Let’s live it up a little! If I try I might even be able to act like a rich Republican!’
‘Oh, Tom ‒’ Then Sally gave a gasp as Tom suddenly braked sharply. A light-coloured Cadillac swept by them, and up to the Humphries’ front door.
‘Well, well,’ Tom said. ‘And to think I just missed the honour of busting Ed Peters’ right headlight!’
II
When Sally left him, Steve Dexter drained his martini, and got another from the tray as it went by. A few minutes later, when it came round again, he replaced the empty glass, and took a full one. He wasn’t listening to Art Sommers, who was trying to talk to him, and he didn’t pay any attention to the small stir that went through the room when Ed and Laura Peters arrived. He just beckoned the waiter with the serving-tray.
Steve got drunk that night ‒ not loudly or too conspicuously, but enough so that those who talked to him knew it. No one had ever seen Steve Dexter drunk before. He started to tell rambling fishing stories that bored those around him. He was reluctant to leave the party, and he and Harriet were almost the last ones there.
He had driven from the Laboratories with Art Sommers, and Harriet was driving him home in the Rolls. It was sluggish in starting, and she murmured with impatience.
‘Well ‒ I suppose we’ve had more from this car than anyone can expect. It’s time to get rid of it.’
‘No!’ Steve laid his hand on her arm with some urgency, snapping out of the happy vagueness of his intoxication. ‘No ‒ don’t do that. Have it patched up. It’ll last a bit longer if you don’t let Gene and Tim fool with it.’
‘I thought you didn’t like it.’
He shrugged. ‘I’ve come to think of it as one of the nicest things in our life. I wouldn’t like to …’ His words came stumblingly, and slurred. ‘I woun’t like t’walk out t’ a parking lot one day an’ not know which car was ours.’
After that he was silent all the way home. Once he started to hum, and then stopped abruptly, as if he didn’t like the sound.
Only when Harriet had run the car into the garage did he speak again. ‘They’re all the same these days … y’ can’t tell the difference.’
‘What are you talking about… cars?’ Harriet was tired and impatient.
‘No ‒ kids! They’re all alike. None of them ever has to think any more. Scientists who don’t think.’ He opened the door and half-stumbled from the car. As they walked down the path he held on to her arm. ‘These kids think science is a job with a pension at the end of it. They never think of what they’re doing.’
Harriet opened the kitchen door, and Steve leaned against the jamb for a moment, blinking in the strong light, facing the rather startled expressions of his sons and Nell.
III
At Guido’s, Tom raised his glass to Sally. ‘Here’s to the big wheel in the Republican Party!’
Sally wrinkled her nose at him, but drank the toast good-humouredly. ‘I’m a very small wheel … but that doesn’t say I won’t get bigger.’
He broke a breadstick on the table, and crumbled it between his fingers. ‘Well … you’ve just about got Mrs. Humphries in your pocket, and that’s not a bad start.’ He suddenly looked up, cocking an eyebrow at her. ‘Have you told your father that you’ve gone over to the enemy?’
Surprisingly, she blushed, and sipped her drink quickly. ‘It isn’t his business.’
He laughed at her. ‘So you haven’t told him! Well, the roof should fall when Mike Brennan hears you’ve deserted the Democratic cause.’
‘Why should the roof fall in? I’ve never belonged to the Democratic Party. Dad just supposed I did … as a matter of course.’
‘He’ll still be hurt.’
Resentment flared a little now. ‘I don’t care if he is! I’ve got the right to make my own decisions about politics. And about everything else!’
He looked at her carefully. ‘Are you sure you didn’t make that decision because most of Amtec is Republican? Are you sure you weren’t playing politics yourself?’
She set down her glass with great deliberation. ‘Listen to me, Tom Redmond! Has it hurt you even a little bit to have me working for the Republican Party? Would you have been where you were this evening if I hadn’t taken all the clerical work away from Jane Humphries?’
‘Sal, you sure are a talkin’ woman!’ He shook his head. ‘No, I certainly couldn’t have been there. But I wonder if it matters?’
‘What do you mean? Of course it matters! You’re not going to pretend you don’t know that!’
He sighed. ‘No, I can’t even pretend … I know I’ve got a working wife, even if she’s not on the payroll. But the boss is always there …’
‘Tom! …’ Suddenly she stretched her hand across the table and touched him, closing her fingers about his own.
‘Please don’t let’s fight! I didn’t mean this to be anything to fight about. After all, is it so wrong to want to help you if I can? We live here ‒ we’re part of this organisation. If there are easier ways to the top, why shouldn’t we take them?’
In return he squeezed her hand, and his face relaxed a little. ‘We’re not fighting, Sal. I just … just don’t want to see you get mown down by the Jane Humphries of this organisation.’
She shook her head. ‘Believe me, no one’s going to mow me down. I’m learning my way. As long as you stick by the rules you can’t lose.’
‘But after the baby’s born?’ he said. ‘You can’t go dashing about to meetings with the baby on your back.’
‘A good deal of it can be done on the telephone and typewriter. And I’ll be joining a baby-sitting pool.’ She picked up her glass again. ‘It can be managed,’ she said firmly.
He shrugged. ‘It’ll sure be a great Amtec baby.’
In silence then, and growing tenseness, they studied the menu. Around them the room was quiet, the conversation of the other diners muffled by the carpet and heavy drapes. Tom and Sally were subdued, very much aware of the isolation in which they had placed themselves by their quarrel. To dine out in a place like Guido’s was a rare occasion for them both, and they were resentful of each other because it had been spoiled.
Sally looked suddenly at Tom across the top of the menu. ‘It’s very expensive,’ she said. It sounded like a reproach.
‘So ‒ what of it? I’ve a right to celebrate, I suppose.’
‘Celebrate?’ she said, uncertainly. ‘What are you celebrating?’
‘A salary raise,’ he said. ‘Since George Leonard moved over to Humphries’ department, I’m Alan Taylor’s assistant.’
‘Tom!’ Her voice trembled a little. ‘Oh, Tom! And you let me make all those pompous remarks about helping you get on in the company, and all the time you’d got a promotion up your sleeve.’ She looked at him a moment, then gave a nervous little laugh. ‘I feel like a fool,’ she said.
And then she added. ‘But it’s wonderful ‒ it’s really wonderful!’
He grinned a little. ‘Yes … it’s O.K.�
�
‘O.K.? Is that all? It’s ‒’ She frowned, leaning towards him. ‘Tom ‒ what is it? What’s the matter? Aren’t you pleased?’
‘About the raise! Yes, I suppose so.’
‘Not just the raise! The promotion … that’s what counts!’
‘Well, Taylor owed it to me! He damn’ well owed it to me! That son-of-a-bitch knew he’d better come across with something.’
‘But why …?’
‘Because he let that paper I worked up from the side-data on fluids be published under his own name. Only his name! Do you get it? He told me that if I cared to work up a paper on the stuff we’d publish it jointly. That’s why I’ve been working late, and stewing over the figures on the week-ends. It would have been the first paper I ever got my name on!’
He shrugged. ‘Of course he’s well within his rights. He is the director, and everything that comes out of his department is technically his. He kept looking over my shoulder and making suggestions, but some of it was mine, Sal. There were some angles in it he never thought of. The least he could have done was put my name under his.’
She looked at him miserably. ‘What can you do?’ she said softly. ‘Is there anything you can do? Any way to make him give you some credit?’
He drained his glass, and angrily motioned the waiter to have it refilled. Then he turned back to her.
‘If there ever was a way to make him share the credit, I’ve lost it now. I’ve accepted his lousy job, and from now on I’d better keep quiet.’
‘But that’s bribery.’
‘No, it isn’t! He’s perfectly within his rights, I tell you. He needn’t have done a damn’ thing for me. I could have made loud noises if I thought I’d got a case, but I don’t really. Just a few ideas I put on paper mixed up with data from his own project. But if it came to a showdown I don’t know half as much about the whole project as he does, and in the end I’d look plain silly!’ Beneath his hand, the breadstick snapped loudly. ‘Who am I to run and tell my story to? Dexter? Or Ed Peters? A lot of good that would do. No, it was either a choice of keeping quiet or resigning.’
He sloshed the whisky round against the ice in his glass. ‘Well, supposing I’d decided to resign? What about the mortgage on the house and the instalments on the car? What about the baby and the hospital bills? It could have taken me six months to get a job at the salary I’m getting and doing the kind of work I’m used to. I’m nearly a specialist, and specialists don’t mix too easily … and the field gets narrower as you get farther on. In fact, Sal, I need Amtec much more than Amtec needs me. That’s where the shoe pinches.’
Suddenly he was aware of her distraught face across the table. ‘Sal, I’m sorry! I’m sorry I said that about the baby … and the house and everything. I led you into this, and it isn’t your doing. It’s my own! It’s been my own doing ever since the moment Amtec recruited me straight off the campus. I didn’t even have to look for my first job ‒ it was handed to me right on a plate, complete with pension plans and insurance. I took the easy way, right there in the beginning, and I’ve got no business to cry over it now.
‘Sal, try to forget what I’ve said …’
The waiter bent close to him, pad in hand. ‘Would you care to order now, sir?’
Tom didn’t even glance at the menu again or refer to Sally. ‘Yes ‒ we’ll have two prime sirloin steaks ‒ rare. And a bottle of champagne.’
IV
On the strength of the salary raise Tom applied next day at the First National Bank for a loan. It depressed him a little to realise how easily it was granted. George Keston simply evaluated the information he offered ‒ his salary, his position with Amtec, his house in Amtec Park, the length of his employment with the company. Then he gave instructions for the loan to go through immediately.
As he shook hands with Tom he beamed at him paternally. ‘Always glad to do business with any of the Amtec people. It’s been wonderful to see all these young people coming into our community ‒ I hope you’ll be with us a long time in Burnham Falls.’
Tom went away with the uneasy knowledge of having committed himself even further, and yet knowing that there was no other way for him. All over the country he would find a duplication of his own pattern, and the pretty houses and the bounding, healthy children of Amtec Park were ample proof that the pattern was not necessarily a bad one. He had no alternative to run to; he didn’t know where to go to be free.
He felt better when he went to spend the money from the loan. It was good to deliberate in the used-car lot, with the cheque hot in his pocket. He chose a light-blue convertible. Then he parked his own car at the garage and drove back to the house. He gave three loud, childish blasts of the horn as he turned in the drive-way.
Sally came to the kitchen door. She looked cool in her pink checked smock, with the radiant serene beauty of a pregnant woman about her. Her eyes opened in wonderment at the sight of the car.
‘For you, Sal,’ he said as he kissed her. He smiled teasingly. ‘If you’re going to run this community you’ll need transportation.’ He kissed her again, on the ear. ‘I’m sorry there isn’t a chauffeur ‒ but that’ll come later.’
Fourteen
Laura didn’t acknowledge fully that she had intended to walk in the direction of the Music Hall that Tuesday in October. She knew, of course, that the film based on Larry’s The Leaven was playing there. She could remember too well the sickening lurch of her heart, the bitter pang of envy when she had opened the New York Times and seen the advance advertising ‒ the bigger-than-life profile of the Hollywood star who was playing the role which Larry had written for her, Laura. She had read the reviews, all of them, and they were good. She thought that she couldn’t bring herself to see the film, that even if she went only to criticise what the other woman did with her, Laura’s, role, the experience would still be too painful.
‘Treat yourself gently for once, Laura,’ she told herself. ‘Don’t be a fool.’
The day had been of interminable length and emptiness. It was empty because it contained no promise of seeing Phil. Two days ago he had flown to London unexpectedly to see a play with the possibility of bringing it to Broadway. Laura had had a telephone message from his secretary.
She had gone to New York, maintaining the fiction that it was necessary, but still knowing she hadn’t a thing to do. Goodman had come back from Europe, and had been immediately taken ill. He had put himself in hospital, and enjoyed a procession of his friends and students coming to visit him. Laura had dutifully gone, with flowers and a book, and spent an hour listening to him tell her what was wrong with the theatre. He had refused to discuss the part in The Other Kind.
‘I’m too weary to think about it now,’ he said. ‘Next week I’ll be hobbling about at home and we’ll go through it then. After all, Laura, it’s only television.’
After she left him she lunched alone, and halted for a few minutes to admire the flowers in Rockefeller Plaza, and watch the crowds. She had perched, rather self-consciously, on a bench, knowing that this was only a moment’s pause, and that she had nothing to do but go back to the hotel. She left the bench soon; it would be unbearable if someone she knew should walk through the Plaza and see her. No successful New Yorker had time to sit on a bench in the October sunshine and watch the crowds and the pigeons. She couldn’t place herself so obviously in the role of having to kill an idle afternoon.
So she got up and walked through the Plaza at the same brisk pace of the people about her. Once out of the sun, the ceaseless wind that blew among the skyscrapers was chill; the flags about the skating rink snapped and danced. She wouldn’t let herself pause to watch the skaters, even though that had always been a legitimate occupation for a New Yorker. She hurried past, and then found herself outside the Music Hall, still without acknowledging that she had meant to go there in the first place.
She stood in line for a few minutes to buy her ticket, miserably aware that she must have seemed like all the other women about her, in
from the suburbs for the day and sporting their new fall hats ‒ a morning’s shopping, lunch at Schrafft’s, and then the afternoon matinée at the Music Hall, with the stage show always more important that whatever film happened to be playing. Laura hurried into the dimness of the vast lobby with relief. Then she sat and smoked one cigarette after another until the feature was due to start again.
The film was over, and Laura was walking back through the lobby when she saw Larry. He was pushing open a door into the outer lobby, and she had almost to run to catch up with him.
‘Larry!’
Still with his hand on the door he glanced around. Behind his glasses he blinked for a moment in the dimness. Then his hand dropped off the door.
‘Why, Laura …’
She began to speak rapidly, afraid he might move on. ‘Isn’t it strange? It’s an odd kind of chance, isn’t it ‒ seeing each other here?’ She rushed on, ‘I just had a few hours this afternoon … I was afraid I might miss it if I waited for Ed to have an evening free.’
Larry grinned. ‘It’s no chance at all seeing me like this. I get such a kick out of seeing The Leaven up on the big screen that I’m willing to drop in any time I’m passing. I guess I’m a real hick at heart.’
‘But it is strange,’ she insisted. ‘We haven’t run into each other for so long … and now here, of all places.’
As he didn’t respond she added, ‘Well … I mean. The Leaven was both of us, wasn’t it?’
For a second he looked absolutely blank; he covered it quickly, as a polite man always covers a social gaff, but she had time to realise with great finality that he had completely missed her meaning. He had failed to remember, even when she prompted him, that The Leaven had been written as a vehicle for herself. He had forgotten why the woman moved a certain way, and spoke certain lines ‒ because he hadn’t remembered that the lines had been tailored to her, Laura.
Corporation Wife Page 32