Stranger At Home

by George Sanders

  He returned to the kitchen. The people in it had leaked out, little by little, to watch. They fell back before him. Only Bill’s nameless blonde didn’t care. Jennie Bryce said plaintively, “Won’t somebody for Chrissake tell me...” Saul slapped her bottom hard and said, “Be quiet, darling.”

  Vickers said, “Sit down, everybody. What’ll you have for breakfast?”

  Crandall said, “But Vick...!”

  “What will you have for breakfast?”

  “Bacon and eggs,” said Bill Saul. “That’s always easy.” He sat down. His eyes were very bright, amused and cruel. Vickers got bacon and eggs from the refrigerator and set the heavy skillet on the stove. Jennie Bryce sat on the corner of the table and drank coffee and looked hurt and sullen. Job Crandall was in the breakfast nook, leaning on his elbows, his face suddenly lined and very tired. Harriet sat opposite him, perched on the edge of the bench. Bill’s blonde was happy, curled in Bill’s lap.

  Vickers tied a heavy apron around him and put the bacon in the pan.

  Harriet rose behind his back and went quickly and quietly toward the door.

  Vickers said, not turning around, “Harriet.”

  She stopped. She looked over her shoulder at Vickers, who was not looking at her. She looked around the room, and then back at Vickers. Then she went back and sat down. Bill Saul smiled.

  Light quick footsteps came into the house.

  Vickers turned the bacon carefully. There was no sound in the kitchen but the hot sibilance of the fat. The vein lay like a knotted cord across his forehead, below the white scar.

  A voice called out from the hallway, “Hi! Who’s the good samaritan? That smells wonderful – and am I starved!”

  He could feel her behind him, a movement, an aliveness, even before she came into the doorway. He could feel the others, too. Silent, watching. He turned swiftly and looked at their faces, at the things caught naked behind their eyes, and the same thing was in all of them. Fear.

  They tried to hide it from him, all but Bill Saul, who was enjoying himself and who never hid things anyway. And then Angie came, and she was just as he remembered.

  He saw her walk into the kitchen. Black hair the color of smoke, without shininess, thick and tangled by the sea wind; her skin a glowing brown. He saw her stop, puzzled, and frown, and start to speak, half laughing, and he thought, Her mouth is just the same, her breasts are still lovely... Her eyes were golden, and as warm as the morning.

  She saw him.

  He watched her. He could not see clearly. It was very hot, and there was sweat in his eyes. He did not know whether the others were still there or not. The kitchen was long, very long, as long as four years, and Angie was walking toward him. She came slowly. He pulled off the apron because he couldn’t breathe, it was so tight around him. He watched her face as it came closer, and suddenly he could see it with a terrible clarity, and it had a quivering, defenseless look. It was like a small creature stricken suddenly, stunned, still not sure. He tried to look into her eyes, and could not.

  She put out her hand and touched his chest. She said. “Vick,” just once. He caught her as she fell.

  She was very light in his arms. He carried her out of the kitchen, and down the long hall, with the garden bright and fresh beyond the windows. He carried her into the big room on the corner and kicked the door shut behind them, and laid her gently on the bed. Her head moved restively. She whispered, “Vick! Vick!”, half whimpering, and he bent and kissed her on the mouth, with a great tenderness. Her lips parted under his, not with passion but a sigh, and then she was looking at him, herself, Angie, awake and curiously still.

  “Are you sorry, Angie? Sorry I came back?”

  “Vick, I...” She shook her head, because the words wouldn’t come. She lay and stared up at him. He sat on the edge of the bed, with one hand braced across her, close to her body, and he could feel the racing beat of her heart.

  She whispered, “I think I always knew you’d come.”

  She put her hands up, slowly, and brushed her finger­tips back along the sides of his jaw, back of his ears, into his hair. The palms of her hands folded in, cupping his head as though it were something infinitely precious and beautiful.

  “I’ve missed you. Oh God, how I’ve missed you!”

  Her eyes were wonderful. They had a light in them. Her fingers pressed his neck.

  He bent again and lifted her into his arms, and they lay without moving for a long while. They did not kiss. Her cheek against his was wet, and finally, when he straightened and looked down at her and touched her hair, she said wonderingly, “I never saw you cry.”

  He got up then, and turned away from her. There was a pressure in his temples. She said, “Darling, what happened? Tell me what happened!”

  Vickers said slowly, “What did they say had happened? My friends – Job Crandall and Bill Saul and Harry Bryce?”

  “They didn’t know. They wired me from Mexico that you had disappeared. They did everything, and they couldn’t find you-not even any trace of you. Job and Harry flew back, and Bill got some men and brought the boat back himself.” She sat up on the bed. “They didn’t know, Vick. You were with them, and then suddenly you weren’t. That’s all.” His back was toward her. He said nothing. She burst out, “Where have you been all this time? Why didn’t you send word?”

  He faced her. He took hold of the footboard and leaned over it.

  “Are you sorry I came back?”

  She did not try to evade. After a time she said quietly, “I don’t know.”

  He nodded and turned away again. He lighted a cigarette, moving as he did so to the wide corner windows. He leaned his shoulder against the frame and looked out at the sea, and began to talk in a noncommittal way, as though none of it were very important.

  “We had chartered the Lady B, remember? Job and Harry and Bill and I. A stag cruise down the coast. It was a good cruise, as far as it went. We had a lot of fun, caught a lot of fish. We went ashore one night at a little port, way down the coast. I’ve forgotten the name of it now, if I ever knew it. And I was drunk.

  “That’s odd, if you’ll remember, Angie. I never drank much, and I was never drunk. But that night I had one highball aboard the Lady B, and I got drunk. Very drunk. You know Bill and Job and Harry. We all went ashore very high and happy. I remember how funny everything looked. There was no shape nor size nor distance. The town was like something painted on water, and the streets were very dark. I don’t know where we went, or what we did, or who was with me. I mean, whether it was all three or only one of them, at the end. A man’s voice – it sounded like the voice of God – spoke to me out of a singing mist, my head was full of it, and it said, ‘Turn around, Vickers. I’ve waited a long time for this – I want to watch your face as you go down.’

  “I suppose I remember the words, because even when you’re drugged you remember a sentence of death. By that time I was blind, I could hardly stand. I don’t know what hit me. I don’t know how long it was before I came to. When I did I was aboard a Portuguese tramp, headed south, nothing in my pockets to tell me who I was, and nothing in my head, either. Only a damn big hole. They told me they’d found me in an alley off at the edge of town, and they thought I was drunk. They’d had pox aboard the ship, and they needed men. After they found I was really hurt, they were sorry they’d bothered, and by Jesus they made me work! After that – well, it doesn’t matter. Only it was three years before I could remember my name.”

  He turned to Angie, his eyes hooded and dark. “You see why I didn’t write. A corpse doesn’t write to the executioner and say, ‘Hullo, old boy – I’m coming back.’”

  He waited for Angie to speak. She sat quite still, her face intent, somehow withdrawn, as though busy with her own thoughts.

  “You don’t seem very surprised,” he said.

  ‘I’m not. It’s what I’ve been afraid of.”

  He smiled, with a certain gentle irony. “My friends.”

  Angie said, �
�You were never a man who could make friends, Vick.”

  “Even of you.”

  “No.”

  “You hated me, really.”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes – yes.”

  “So you were afraid one of them had killed me. Afraid – or glad?”

  Her eyes flashed yellow like an angry cat’s. “That’s rotten even from you, Vick!”

  “They’re here. You drink with them. From what I hear, you sleep with them. You can’t have been too much afraid.”

  She said levelly, “I’ve been trying to find out. For four years I’ve been trying to find out.” After a moment she said, “And I don’t owe you any apologies.”

  He stood watching her. His face took on a still, half sleeping look. He said softly, “You owe me something, after four years.” He waited, and saw the small movement of herself toward him, and then he went to the foot of the bed, and stopped. “Not unless you want it, Angie. I won’t touch you, unless you want it.”

  Again the wondering question in her voice. “You’d never have said that four years ago.”

  “No.”

  “Oh Vick, if you’d ever let me love you as I could!”

  “Why didn’t you leave me?”

  “You wouldn’t have let me, even if I’d wanted to. And...”

  “And what?”

  “I kept thinking, something will change him.”

  “Have you wanted me back?”

  “Oh, darling...” She had no more voice. Her eyes were huge and gentle and shining with the soft brilliance of tears. She lay back on the pillow and held out her arms.

  The knocking on the door was very loud. Bill Saul was calling, “Vicki God damn it, Vick, get up! Harry Bryce...” He stopped, then went on in a different tone. “Well, he’s come back, Vick. I think you’d better see him.”

  Chapter Four

  Harry Bryce had come back, all right. He had come from the sea, and he had been in no hurry. He was never going to be in a hurry any more. He had all the time there was. He lay waiting, quite patient and relaxed, his feet still in the shadows, his body still a part of the lazy rhythm of the sea.

  Job Crandall stood beside him. He was not doing anything. There was nothing in particular to do. Vickers knelt in the wet sand.

  Crandall said jerkily, “We went out on the terrace, the five of us. We were talking about Harry, wondering where he was. I was leaning on the wall, looking at the water, thinking about going for a swim, and I saw something. It seemed to float out from under the landing. I thought it was driftwood at first, and then – I called Bill, and we watched it...”

  Bill Saul said, “He must have been caught under the landing, Vick. Look at his face.”

  Vickers nodded. “Barnacles.” Bryce was lying partly on his right side, his head tipped comfortably over.

  Vickers pointed at the back of it. “The description of that has nothing to do with barnacles. The phrase, I believe, is ‘crushed like an eggshell.’”

  Crandall said, “I wonder how it happened?”

  Vickers glanced up, from Crandall to Bill Saul. He ran his fingers along the side of his face where the scar was and said pleasantly, “Yes. I wonder.”

  For a long moment there was no sound, no motion on the beach, nothing but the whispered underscoring of the sea. Harry Bryce watched the tiny movement of a pebble on the very edge of macrocosmic force, and thought about it, whatever thoughts a dead man thinks. Michael Vickers looked up, half smiling, and Saul and Crandall looked down, and the sea wind went by and was not interested.

  Bill Saul said dryly, “If I know Harry, he was making passes at a mermaid and she slapped him with her tail. We’d better go call the police.”

  “Police,” said Vickers. He got up. “Oh, yes, the police. I’d forgotten there were such things.” He leaned over and caught Harry Bryce by the sodden collar of his white dinner coat and dragged him without effort above the water line. “Poor old Harry.”

  “It must have been accidental,” Crandall said.

  “Why?”

  “Well, it... He was drunk the last I saw of him. Really drunk. He walked out there and fell and hit his head...”

  “Possibly.”

  “Well, Christ! He was our friend, Vick! Why...?”

  Vickers said, “There were a million people here last night, more or less. They weren’t all his friends. Besides, Job,” he went on, “we were all friends in Mexico, the four of us...”

  “What’s Mexico got to do with it?” Crandall’s face flushed. He was abruptly shaken with anger. “God damn it, Vick, you’re just spoiling for trouble, aren’t you? Coming back like that, scaring the bloody hell out of the lot of us, and then going around acting like something out of Macbeth, practically accusing us of...”

  “Go on, Job,” said Vickers softly. “Accusing you of what?”

  “Christ knows! And now this has to happen. We’ll be up to our necks in policemen and notebooks and newspaper reporters... Oh, Lord, what a mess!”

  Vickers smiled. “You’re right, Job. Fun and games for all.” He looked over at Bill Saul and laughed. “You said this was going to be fun.”

  “Uh huh.” Bill Saul narrowed his eyes in speculative appraisal of Vickers’ face. “But I’m beginning to wonder about that sense of humor I mentioned. I think I like yours even less than mine.”

  “Wait and see.” Vickers started to turn away, then paused and looked down at Harry Bryce. “D’you realize that nobody has said a word about being sorry?”

  Saul turned to Crandall. “Are you sorry?”

  “Oh, for Chrissake!”

  “I don’t think he’s sorry, Vick. I’m not sorry. Are you sorry?”

  Vickers said slowly, “I don’t know yet.” He scowled at Harry Bryce a moment, then looked up again at Bill Saul. “But when you come right down to it, Bill – isn’t friendship a wonderful thing?”

  “Perhaps. I suppose a lot depends on the friends.”

  “Yes. And we were none of us men who made friends, were we?” Vickers’ eyes were somber, far away. “There was really only one thing that held the four of us together. One person.”

  Bill Saul said, “You’ve learned a lot in four years, Vick.”

  Vickers shrugged and walked back toward the steps. Bill Saul followed. Job Crandall stopped on the way and was sick.

  The women were clustered around the top of the steps. Angie was with them, keeping them under control. Harriet screamed, “What is it? Who is it?”

  At the foot of the steps Bill Saul said quietly, “Vick.”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you see Harry last night?”

  “D’you think I did?”

  “I just wondered, after what you said at the boathouse.”

  “What did I say?”

  “I asked you where Harry’d got to, and you said. ‘I don’t know, only that he’s gone from here.’ “

  Vickers’ eyes were cold, quite empty of anything but a certain amusement. Saul tried to probe them, and gave it up.

  Vickers said, “That’s a fascinating thought, Bill. I can see that people are going to be duly fascinated.” He went up the steps. The women closed in on him, shrilly vocal. Only Angie was pale and huge-eyed and quiet. He put his arm around her.

  “It’s Harry Bryce,” he said. “Somehow he’s got himself killed.”

  Angie looked up at him, quickly, and then away. He felt her tighten in the circle of his arm.

  Harriet said loudly, “Oh my God. Oh, poor Harry!” She ran to the wall and stared down at the mortal driftwood that was Harry Bryce. Bill Saul’s blonde echoed, “Poor Harry,” and yawned.

  The fourth Mrs. Harry Bryce, now Jennie Bryce, widow, sat down. She said, “You mean Harry’s dead?”

  “Quite,” said Vickers.

  “You mean now I don’t have to get a divorce?”

  “I shouldn’t think that would be necessary.”

  “Jesus Christ,” said Jennie reverently. ‘I’m worth nearly a million bucks.”

  Bi
ll Saul had come up. Crandall was with him, looking green and shaky. Harriet turned away from the wall and rushed back.

  “Aren’t you going to do something for him? I mean, you can’t just leave him there, sort of – well, thrown away!”

  Vickers said, “I believe the police prefer not to have their corpses messed with, and I don’t imagine Harry minds at all. Suppose you all go and get a drink...”

  “Police!” cried Harriet. “Police!”

  “Harriet. Go get a drink. Bill, take over, will you?” Vickers leaned over briefly and patted Jennie’s bare brown shoulder. “Bear up, old girl. I know it’s a shock.”

  “Yeah.” Her face was blank and rather dazed. “It sure is.” As Vickers went away, taking Angie with him, he heard her murmur, “A million bucks!”

  In the living room Vickers paused long enough to telephone the police. Angie stood perfectly still beside him, waiting. When he was through she went with him to the bedroom and closed the door, shutting out the tense babble of voices from the terrace.

  Vickers said, “You were with Harry last night, down at the boathouse.”

  “Yes. Not for long. He was very drunk and unpleasant, and I told him to go away. He did.”

  “Just before you took the boat out.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “No. Some time before that.”

  “How long before?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t keeping any track of time.” She studied Vickers. Her face was bloodless under the tan, drawn tight. “Were you down there, Vick?”

  “I saw you going aboard the cruiser. It was too late to call you back. There was no sign of Harry then, except his cigarette case on the lounge.” He paused. “Why did you take the boat out, Angie?”

  “Because I wanted to. It’s the only way I can sleep, sometimes. I anchored off the point and stayed there.”

  “Strange,” said Vickers. “The hostess running out on her own party.”

  She made a gesture of disgust. “That wasn’t a party.”

  “Quite. But it was in your house. You must have invited the people. And you evidently didn’t want the servants around.”

  “Do you blame me?” Angie went over to the table and picked up a cigarette. “That was some of Harry’s crowd. He inherited them along with Jennie.”