Barbara Greer

by Stephen Birmingham

  But it was foolish to wonder. So many things had changed. Grandfather Woodcock had died, Barbara’s family had changed. He and Barbara themselves had changed. There were no more family picnics at the farm. The farm had changed. No one used the little guesthouse any more.

  They had used the guesthouse, though. They had gone there several times again that first summer, and the next one, and the summer after that. And they had gone to several other places as well. He couldn’t remember them all any more, or their sequence, or the details of each. But he could remember that they had been very happy in all those places, and for a long time. It was strange to have forgotten so much of that long time because it was really not so long ago, though it seemed to be. It was because of the way time hurried on It was funny, the way those days seemed to have flown away, and it was sad because he could not remember when they had begun to go or imagine where they had gone.

  14

  ‘Oh, please stay!’ Edith Woodcock said. They had gathered, the remnants of the family from the pool and the terrace, in the living room. The sky outside was growing darker and the wind was blowing in fierce gusts, punctuated by explosions of thunder. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘This storm will be over in a minute. We’ve had such a lovely family Sunday, with lunch and everything. Let’s continue it through dinner, shall we? Please?’

  But one after another, politely and regretfully—remembering convertible cars left open in driveways, open windows in their houses that irresponsible servants could not be counted upon to close—all the family insisted that they must, truly, hurry home before it rained. And there was a hurried, ill-organised search for the equipment—towels, bathing caps, sweaters, sandals and handbags—that they had brought with them, and then there were hurried, apologetic goodbyes with special attention paid to Barbara whom, they all protested, they should see more often. Would she be coming to the farm again soon? They hoped so. And the next time she came, would she give them a few days’ notice? They hoped she would because then they could plan a little dinner, or a little picnic, or a little luncheon, or a little group for cocktails, or a little something. And would she please, give all their love to Carson? And bring him with her the next time? And the boys—Dobie and Michael? There were so many friends who asked about Barbara and Carson and the little boys, and who would love to see them. So, when they came next time, let it be for a real visit, they said.

  And then they were all gone, dashing for their cars, as the wind blew leaves from the trees and stirred up whirlwinds of dust from the drive. Barbara, Edith and Barney stood at the window, watching them go. ‘Oh, I wish they had stayed!’ Edith said plaintively. She turned to Barney. ‘Where’s Peggy?’ she asked.

  ‘She went downtown,’ he said. ‘She had an errand to do.’

  ‘What sort of an errand would she have to do downtown on Sunday?’

  ‘I think there was something she wanted to pick up,’ he said.

  ‘What, for heaven’s sake? Oh, dear! I just hope she’s not out in the car in this storm.’

  ‘They say a car is the safest place to be in a thunderstorm,’ he said.

  ‘But the roads!’ Edith said. As they watched, the first heavy drops of rain fell. ‘Well,’ Edith said, ‘I just hope she has sense enough to pull off the road and let the storm pass.’ She turned into the living room and began turning on lamps. The sky broke, and with a sound that nearly drowned out the sound of thunder, rain lashed down against the windowpanes. The lawn outside was suddenly lit with a great flash of lightning.

  Barney counted, ‘One … two … three …’ And the clap of thunder came.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Barbara asked.

  ‘Just a mile away,’ he said. ‘They say you can tell how far away the storm is—by the number of seconds between the lightning and the thunderclap.’

  ‘I’ve never heard that!’ Barbara said.

  Edith Woodcock sat down in a chair and reached for the enamelled buzzer that rested on the table beside it. When John came, she said, ‘John, are you sure all the windows are closed?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  Then the lamps dimmed, flickered and came up again.

  ‘Oh, don’t tell me the power is going to go off!’ Edith said. ‘At times like this, I wish we didn’t live in the country.’

  Barbara crossed the room and sat down next to her mother; Barney still stood at the window, his hands deep in his trouser pockets, looking out. ‘Lord, look at it rain!’ he said.

  ‘What time is it?’ Edith asked.

  Barney withdrew one hand and glanced at his wrist watch. ‘Four-thirty,’ he said.

  ‘It would have been so nice if they all could have stayed,’ Edith said to Barbara. ‘We could have had a little family supper. Do you remember, dear, the little family picnics we used to have across the lake? Weren’t they fun?’

  ‘Yes, they were, Mother,’ Barbara said.

  Edith frowned, her chin resting on the curled finger of her hand. ‘I don’t know why we don’t have little picnics like that any more!’ Then she smiled. ‘I guess we’ve just got out of the habit,’ she said cheerfully. ‘And anyway, today was a lovely, lovely day, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Lovely,’ Barbara said.

  ‘Though I can’t understand Billy running off like that—without even stopping to say hello to the rest of us. It’s not like Billy to run off like that.’

  ‘I guess he had things to do,’ Barbara said.

  ‘Yes, I suppose. Poor Billy. He does work so hard. I suppose we should all be very grateful to Billy.’

  ‘Yes,’ Barbara said.

  ‘Barney, dear,’ Edith said. ‘Would you hand me one of my cigarettes from that little box there?’

  Barney turned, went to the table and picked up the silver cigarette box. He opened it and carried it to her.

  ‘Thank you, dear,’ Edith said.

  Barney flipped his lighter and held the flame to her cigarette.

  ‘Thank you, darling,’ she murmured again, through smoke. She raised one hand, and with a series of slow little waves, cut through the smoke with her fingers, dispersing it. ‘Now tell me,’ she said brightly ‘What did we all think of Sally’s young man?’

  ‘Very nice,’ Barney said.

  ‘Oh, Barney!’ Mrs. Woodcock said gaily. ‘Really, you are the limit! You’re so polite, dear—almost to a fault.’ She turned to Barbara. ‘Have you discovered how polite Barney is? Don’t you think he’s really polite to a fault? Honestly, I think that even if I introduced Barney to—to—well, to Nikita Khrushchev!—and asked him later what he thought of him, Barney would say, very politely, “Very nice”!’ She laughed, and Barbara and Barney both laughed softly with her. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I did not think he was very nice. I mean, actually. I thought he was a little bit weird, wearing that funny little pointed beard!’ She laughed again. ‘Goodness, I’m writing poetry—dear me! Weird, beard.’ Beyond the curtained windows a particularly brilliant flash of lightning outlined the trees and, simultaneously, the telephone jangled discordantly in the distance.

  In the silence that followed, Edith said, ‘Well, children, what shall we do? Oh, I know! Let’s play Towie … Barney, dear, get the cards, will you? In that little drawer there …’

  Barney smiled. ‘You always forget, Mrs. Woodcock,’ he said, ‘that I don’t know how to play Towie.’

  ‘Nonsense, I haven’t forgotten,’ she said. ‘But this afternoon, Barbara and I are going to teach you. Goodness, we have to do something, don’t we, to sit out the storm? And Towie is really the simplest game in the world. There’s absolutely nothing to it. It’s nothing but three-handed bridge, really, with a slightly different—’

  Preston Woodcock appeared in the doorway and stood, one hand on the side of the door. Barbara looked up at him and Edith too, looked up.

  ‘—scoring,’ she finished.

  ‘I thought,’ Preston said slowly, ‘that I heard the telephone ring.’

  ‘You did, darling,’ Edith said brightly. ‘Just
lightning hitting the wires. It’s forever happening, but it won’t affect the service, I’m sure. Preston? We’re just talking about playing Towie, but now that you’re here why don’t we make it bridge instead? Come, darling, and be our fourth. Peggy’s out somewhere, and—’

  He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m still busy.’

  ‘But it’s Sunday, dear!’ Edith said. ‘You’ve been holed up in that study of yours most of the day! Come, now, and join us.’

  ‘In a little while,’ he said. ‘Not right now.’ He turned and walked back toward his study.

  ‘Oh, dear!’ Edith said. ‘He’s been working so hard!’ She stood up. ‘Excuse me a moment,’ she said. ‘I’m just going to see if he won’t—’ She left the sentence unfinished and went out of the room after him.

  Barney walked back to the window and rested his palms on the sill, looking out. Barbara sat quietly in her chair and for several minutes only the sounds of the storm filled the room. Then Barney said softly, ‘It won’t work.’

  ‘What won’t work?’ she asked him.

  ‘She won’t get him to come out.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘She’ll be in there for quite a while, talking to him. But it won’t be any use. He’s too busy being alone.’

  She said nothing.

  Still looking out the window, he said, ‘Are you angry with me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You seem very quiet.’

  ‘I’m—thinking,’ she said.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m a little confused.’

  He turned quickly and faced her, leaning back against the window sill. ‘Are you?’ he asked. ‘Why?’

  For several minutes she had been debating in her mind whether or not to tell him what Cousin Billy had said. She had thought first of speaking to Peggy or perhaps to her father, about it. And she had also thought that perhaps it would be better to speak to no one; tomorrow, she would be leaving, and perhaps it would be better to escape that way and leave the controversy behind. It was a controversy, she felt weakly, that she did not completely understand. She had never understood or cared about—as Peggy had said—the corporate intricacies of the paper business. Problems of the family, of course, concerned her, but not problems of the business. And yet the family was the business, as Billy had said, and she had begun to wonder whether Peggy and Barney were planning to betray them both. So she said, ‘I don’t quite understand what you and Peggy are trying to do to the rest of us.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Woody said something to me last night,’ she said. ‘And this morning Peggy said she wanted to buy my stock. Just now Cousin Billy said—’

  He nodded slowly. ‘So that’s what he wanted to see you about. He knows, then.’

  ‘It’s a small business and a small family,’ she said. ‘It isn’t easy to keep secrets.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said.

  ‘What is it, exactly, that she wants to do?’

  ‘It’s very simple,’ he said. ‘I think you know all there is to know. She wants to get a controlling interest in the company.’

  ‘But why?’

  He shrugged. ‘She thinks she deserves to have it,’ he said. ‘And she thinks I could run the company better than it’s being run now.’

  ‘Could you?’

  ‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem from what Billy told me—to be a very practical thing to do.’

  ‘She’ll have some trouble doing it, I admit,’ he said. ‘But don’t underestimate Peggy. She’s got all sorts of angles. I wouldn’t be surprised, actually, if she brought it off.’

  ‘I’d be surprised,’ she said. ‘But most of all I’d be very upset if she did.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she doesn’t deserve it. She doesn’t deserve to control the company. If anyone deserves it, Daddy does.’

  ‘Oh, I know,’ he said. ‘But I think Peggy has lost faith in your father.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He raised his hands in an open gesture. ‘Just—just lost faith in him, that’s all. As an administrator.’

  ‘I want you to ask her to stop it,’ Barbara said.

  ‘Why? Why do you care?’

  ‘I care,’ she said quickly, ‘because of Daddy. Peggy forgets. Maybe she was too young to remember what I remember. But I remember very well. It nearly killed Daddy when they took the control of the company away from him and gave it to Billy. He’s really never been the same. What do you think would happen to him now if even more was taken away—and given to you? It’s been bad enough for him, taking orders from a thirty-six-year-old man. Do you think he could work for a man who’s still in his twenties?’

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he said simply.

  ‘Then will you please tell Peggy not to go any further with this? I’ll tell her, too, but I want you to help me.’

  ‘All right’, he said. ‘But I don’t know what good it will do.’

  ‘Barney,’ she said, ‘I’m confused about another thing. Where do you stand in all this?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean—suddenly I don’t know. This morning, when you met me at Nana’s—and on the rock, was it all part of a scheme of yours and Peggy’s? To get me to sell my stock?’

  He came toward her. ‘Do you really think that?’ He stood over her, his dark eyes gazing deeply at her. ‘Do you really mean that?’ he asked her.

  She looked away. ‘I don’t know. I asked you,’ she said.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, and his voice was a harsh whisper. ‘Don’t ever say that. Do you want to know where I stand? I thought you knew where I stood. Remember me? I’m the family’s pet Persian cat! I don’t stand anywhere. This is Peggy’s scheme, not mine. Of course she consulted me. No. Consulted is the wrong word. She told me, that’s all, what she planned to do. A year ago, or even six months ago, I might have cared about what she wanted to do. But I don’t now. I simply don’t give a damn now. As far as I’m concerned she can try whatever she wants to try. I don’t care, because it doesn’t involve me any more. I’m going to leave her, Barbara. I’ve made up my mind. I’m not going to be engulfed in it—in the business, and the family—the way everyone else is. I’m going to escape, somehow—I don’t know yet quite how. But I’m not going to let this family and this company—because they’re the same thing, as everybody keeps saying—submerge me and destroy me the way they’ve destroyed everybody else. Do you understand what I’m saying, Barbara? Do you?’

  ‘Oh, Barney—’

  ‘Quiet. Listen to me,’ he said. ‘Listen! It’s destroying you, too—it will, if you let it. It will destroy you, just the way it’s destroyed your father, and destroyed Woody, and destroyed Peggy. You’ve got to escape, too. You asked me where I stood, and I’ll tell you—there’s only one thing I care about, Barbara. You know what it is. I want the two of us to go away together.’

  ‘But we can’t.’

  ‘So you said this morning.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it?’

  ‘Not yet. Not quite,’ he said.

  ‘How can two people run away from their responsibilities?’ she asked, but the words which she had intended to sound sensible sounded foolish.

  He smiled. ‘That’s for the two people to discover,’ he said.

  ‘We couldn’t. Even if we wanted to.’

  ‘You mean you don’t want to?’ he asked her.

  ‘I’m—well, I’m very flattered, of course, and—’

  ‘Flattered? Is that all you feel? We’re in love with each other.’

  ‘That’s the point,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t think we are.’

  He looked momentarily stunned; his eyes closed. ‘But I love you,’ he said finally. ‘And you love me.’

  ‘No. I don’t think I do.’

  ‘You told me you did.’

  ‘Did I?’ she asked a little wil
dly. ‘I don’t remember saying that, Barney, and if I did—’

  ‘What about that night? That night in your room?’

  ‘Did I say that then?’

  ‘What else did it mean?’ he asked her.

  ‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘Please sit down.’

  He didn’t move. Another of his small half-smiles crossed his face, then disappeared. ‘I want to stand up,’ he said. ‘I lost the argument on the rock this morning because I lay down. I let you gain the upper hand. This time, I want to keep my head higher than yours.’

  ‘You’re such a funny boy!’

  ‘Tell me what it meant,’ he said. ‘Please.’

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘there were a number of things wrong with that night. Carson and I had had a quarrel for one thing. I was feeling sorry for myself. And I was younger then. It was only two years ago, but a person can grow up a great deal in two years. I’ve thought about that night often. I was immature then, I must have been. It was a very selfish thing for me to do, or think of doing. It was a very greedy thing. I thought you were attractive. I still do. I was playing a very silly little game. I flirted with you. I thought—how pretty to have this handsome young man like me! I thought, what fun! I thought, all right, why not? What difference does it make? I’ll have an affair with him.’

  ‘An affair?’ he said quietly. ‘Is that all it was going to be?’