The Man with Two Wives

by Patrick Quentin

  “If you ever need me…”

  “I won’t need you or anyone…”

  “But if you do, call me. Will you promise?”

  “All right,” she said. “I promise.”

  I leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth. I had intended it to be a token kiss, establishing once and for all a complete severance from our old passion, but her lips unexpectedly melted against mine. Their familiarity was like an electric shock. I put my arm around her waist, drew her to me and we clung together in a long bewildering embrace.

  We both broke away simultaneously. I knew it had meant nothing; it was just an accident, a slip-back in time. But my heart was pounding. My legs were weak as skimmed milk. And the realization came, profoundly shocking to me, that I had never, in the three years of my marriage to Betsy, felt this way with her.

  She stood looking at me, the gray eyes quite inscrutable. Even the hideous background of the shrimp-pink living-room wall couldn’t diminish her beauty. The physical exultation ebbed away and its place was taken by something that was almost hatred. I longed for her to invite me back into the apartment so that I could refuse with contempt. But she merely started to close the door.

  “Good-by, Bill.”

  “Good-by, Angelica,” I said.

  When I got home, Betsy was asleep.

  At the office next morning, around twelve-thirty, just when I was expecting Daphne, my secretary announced a Mr. James Lumb. I’d never heard of him, but he insisted on seeing me and, in a few seconds, Jaimie walked into the office. I recognized him at once.

  He was obviously sober. In fact, with his black hair slicked and a perfectly pressed, expensive suit, he looked immaculate, like the Coast’s latest and hottest starlet on a gracious personal appearance tour. At least, he would have if his smoky black eyes had been a little less intelligent and his exploitation of his sex-allure a little less smooth.

  To my annoyance, I noticed that there was no visible bruise where I had hit him.

  He had a briefcase under his arm. Without being asked, he sat down, called me by my first name, spoke with bantering amusement about our “duel” and then produced his novel from the briefcase, announcing that he was sure I was dying to read it. Angelica had told him all about me, he said. He’d even read Heat of Noon.

  “Noon’s pretty good. Too bad you gave up writing.” With incredible brashness, he put the manuscript down on my desk and glanced at a Dufy on the wall. “But, there again, maybe you did the smart thing. This setup’s a far cry from being the starving novelist.” A sudden, chummy smile exposed the whitest of white teeth. “Tell me about the Callinghams. The old man must be something. I hear his place at Oyster Bay’s fantastic.” That was the moment when Daphne burst into the office in a flurry of mink and high, infectious laughter.

  Ever since I’d known her, I’d watched Daphne grab. But, when I introduced her to Jaimie, the acquisitiveness in her eyes was more shameless than I had ever seen it. He might have been just the right bracelet in Cartier’s window. I glanced from her to Jaimie. The greed was there too, but far more cleverly concealed. I sat behind my desk watching while they charmed each other and ignored me. At length Daphne turned to me with a dazzling smile.

  “Bill, darling, you are a bore suddenly getting tied up in a conference when I came all the way into town to lunch with you.”

  Never was a more crudely baited hook more crudely snatched.

  “Oh, Miss Callingham, if you’re free for lunch, I would be delighted…”

  “Oh, Mr. Lumb, you are a positive angel.” Daphne pouted at me in insincere regret. “Now, Bill, darling, you won’t have me on your conscience.”

  “Take your time on the novel, Bill,” said Jaimie. “There’s no rush.”

  They were put of the office in a flash. I had watched the comedy with amusement and even a little malice. It wasn’t my job to supervise my sister-in-law. And certainly it wasn’t my job to regulate the fidelity of my ex-wife’s temperamental boy-friend.

  I had lunch with a colleague and contentedly discussed circulation figures.

  During the next two weeks, I forgot about Jaimie and Daphne and even about Angelica. Both Betsy and I were busy, Betsy with Paul over the Spring Drive and I at the office where C. J. was fiendishly spinning out his cat-and-mouse game between me and Dave Manners.

  It came as a complete surprise one evening when Betsy asked, “Who’s this Jaimie Lumb? Daphne was in the Fund office this morning, raving about him. She says he’s a friend of yours.”

  I hedged. “Oh, he’s a writer. I hardly know him. He was in my office one day and Daphne met him.”

  “Well, it seems to be quite a thing. Last week-end she took him to Oyster Bay and he made a big hit with Father. She’s mad for me to meet him. So I asked them for Thursday. I asked the Fowlers, too. That’s all right, isn’t it?”

  “Sure. I guess so.”

  Betsy was watching me with a little questioning furrow between her eyes. “You don’t have anything against him, do you?”

  I thought of Jaimie, drunk and homicidal, staggering in the hallway at West 10th Street, and then, suddenly, I remembered the exact sensation of Angelica’s lips against mine.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t know anything in particular.”

  On Thursday, Paul and the Prop arrived first. By the time Jaimie and Daphne showed up, everything was going fine and it went on going fine, too. Jaimie was even smoother than I’d thought he would be. He’d grown up in the same small California town with the Prop and his bantering reminiscences with her made her feel important and, automatically, endeared him to Paul. Even Betsy, who was compassionate but shrewd about people, was charmed by him, while Daphne was walking on air.

  It was only after dinner that I was jolted out of my false equanimity. Daphne got me alone.

  “Isn’t he divine? Bill, dear, I’m going to marry him.”

  “Marry him!”

  “He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s hooked, poor darling. Dearest, sweetest Bill, you’ve always been my ally. He doesn’t have a cent. Daddy and Betsy are going to be appallingly grim about it. You will help, won’t you?”

  Later in the evening Jaimie got me alone, too. He was smiling that intimate “old pal” smile.

  “Bill, feller, wonder if you’d do me a favor. I guess Angelica doesn’t come here much. I mean there’s none of that first and second wife chumminess, is there? In fact—” the smile dimpled at the corners—“you probably don’t talk about Angelica to Betsy.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Then, as a favor to me, don’t tell Angelica about Daphne. I mean—I don’t want to hurt her. I want to ease this thing over on her at the right moment. You understand?”

  It was all so bland, such a nice little neutrality pact. I wanted to push his face in.

  After everyone had left, Betsy said, “I may be a dope, darling, but I thought he was charming. I asked them to come again whenever they want to.”

  They came twice during the next week. The second time we were just about to give an after-the-theater party for Helen Reed, a well-known actress who was going to help Betsy launch the Drive in Philadelphia. That was the evening on which they formally announced their engagement. They hadn’t told C. J. yet. They had come to us, they said, to gain our moral support first.

  I had, of course, been warned. But I had also, as much through bad luck as bad management, given my tacit support to them both and now it would have been very tricky for me to raise the first objection. I had been depending on Betsy’s level-headedness to apply the brakes. But I had banked without Jaimie’s charm for women and without Betsy’s reluctance to appear the spoil-sport older sister. She gave them her blessing.

  They left just as the guests were arriving and it wasn’t until two, after Helen Reed and her entourage finally called it a day, that Betsy and I had a moment alone.

  “Father will hate it,” Betsy said. “As far as he’s concerned, only a Duke would be good enough for Daphne.”

&n
bsp; “I wasn’t a Duke,” I said.

  “But I wasn’t Daphne. He hated having me around. He couldn’t wait to get rid of me.”

  It was months since I’d heard that particular tone, that vestige of the old “I’m-the-unwanted-one” insecurity which used to torment her so much. “You know that’s only half true, at most, darling.”

  “Of course it’s true. I reminded him of Mother and he loathed Mother. He married her before he was rich. He thought she was a drag on him. But she loved him. Mother believed in love.” She turned to me almost fiercely. “Bill, we married because we loved each other, didn’t we?”

  I took her in my arms and kissed her on the mouth. “Baby, what a crazy thing to have to ask.”

  She clung to me for a moment; soon she was perfectly assured again.

  “Well, Daphne loves this boy. It’s transformed her. Anyone can see that, just as anyone can see that she’ll be ruined if she stays around Father much longer. That’s why we’ve got to help them.” She paused. “And it’s you who’ll have to bear the brunt of it. They met through you and it’s you Father will hold responsible.”

  Of course C. J. would hold me responsible, and I was responsible. I saw then just how precarious the false position into which I’d drifted had become. I realized that, since I had left it so late, my absurd little interlude with Angelica would sound far guiltier than it had been and that it would hurt Betsy much more than if I’d blurted it all out at the beginning. But it had to be done.

  I was just about to speak when I was saved by the bell—literally. It was the front doorbell. I answered it and Daphne was standing there.

  For the first moment, I hardly recognized her. Her right eye was swollen; her skin was the color of dough; and her evening dress under the mink wrap was ripped down the front. When she saw me, she broke into hysterical sobs and fell into my arms. Her breath reeked of liquor.

  Betsy and I got her into the guest-room bed and extracted some sort of story from her. After they’d left us, Jaimie had taken her to a dive. They’d done a lot of heavy drinking and then gone back to his apartment where, in a sudden drunken fury, he’d jumped on her like a homicidal maniac and tried to strangle her. She had somehow managed to escape; she’d run out of the apartment; someone she’d met on the stairs had got her a taxi. C. J. had a penthouse apartment in town; but she’d been afraid of the servants and come straight to us.

  She was in a pitiful state of panic, and most of all she was terrified of C. J. She couldn’t possibly have driven back to Oyster Bay, anyway, but she’d promised to be home by one.

  “If Daddy knew, he’d kill me. Betsy, you’ve got to do something about Daddy.”

  Betsy was seething with anger. However much Daphne exasperated her on occasion, the integrity of the Callingham clan was sacred to her and trouble in the family turned her into a lioness. She called C. J. who was still up and raging, and managed to invent some convincing excuse about Daphne staying with us.

  It was after three when we got to bed.

  “What a mercy it happened when it did,” said Betsy. “Now, at least, we know what he is. And to think I was all dewy eyed about a marriage! Well, that’s the end of Jaimie Lumb at any rate.”

  “Yes,” I said and breathed a sigh of relief.

  Betsy wangled it for Daphne to stay three days with us. Once she was sure we’d covered up for her, Daphne decided it had all been a “mad, exciting episode.” When she left, she patted the still puffy eye and giggled.

  “I’ll tell Daddy I ran into a door. He’ll swallow anything from me.”

  That seemed to be that…

  Three days after, I saw Daphne and Jaimie chattering and laughing together at a corner table at Twenty-One. When I got back to the office, I called Betsy. She could hardly believe it, but she said she’d take care of it. That evening she told me she’d had a big scene with Daphne who’d been defiant and childishly infatuated with Jaimie again. According to Daphne, it had been Jaimie’s passion for her which had driven him mad. Betsy assured me this was a direct quote. She had cowed Daphne into a promise of dropping him only by threatening to tell C. J.

  Next day Betsy went off with Helen Reed for the Drive in Philadelphia and I was left alone with Rickie and his nurse. The nurse, Ellen, a brisk, snobbish blonde imported from England, had always been a thorn in my flesh. It was Betsy who paid her salary and she was enormously conscious of the fact, adoring all Callinghams and treating me like an incompetent footman. Betsy didn’t really like her any more than I did, but she was extremely efficient and Betsy, with rather touching stepmother insecurity, preferred a nurse who wouldn’t compete in Rickie’s affections.

  The apartment with Ellen at the helm was a very different place. On the second night of Betsy’s absence, I was at home alone. Rickie had had a tooth pulled and I’d made a special occasion out of reading him to sleep. It had been the cook’s night off and Ellen had made me some supper. Earlier, Paul had called and asked me over to spend the evening with him and the Prop, but I hadn’t felt like going out. After dinner, I read for a while and then went to bed at midnight.

  I was just undressing when the phone rang. I recognized Angelica instantly and I was quite off my guard. My heart started to race.

  “Bill, I’m sorry. It’s late to call. But you’re alone, aren’t you? I mean, I saw in the paper that Betsy had gone to Philadelphia.”

  I thought: You’d be crazy to make anything out of this. She’s nothing to you. She’s worse than nothing. She’s poison.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m alone.”

  “I’m just down the block. There’s something… Bill, could I come up and see you for a minute?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Come right up. It’s the fourth floor. ”The moment I’d said that I knew I’d betrayed myself and Betsy, but in the same instant I started to rationalize. How could I turn down my ex-wife if she was in trouble? It wasn’t even indiscreet. Ellen was asleep at the back of the apartment; the night elevator man was professionally uninquisitive.

  The excitement in me made me feel drunk. I was in pajamas. I put on a robe and went back to the living room. As I was poking the fire, I noticed Betsy’s reading glasses on a table by the sofa. She must have forgotten them. She’d only started to use them a few months ago and she was still rather shy of having me see her wearing them.

  At the sight of them, all the excitement was gone and I saw myself as I actually was, a shoddy philanderer, hoping to cheat on the woman I loved with a woman who didn’t give a damn whether I lived or died.

  The buzzer sounded. I went to the door and let Angelica in.

  chapter 4

  She was wearing an old black coat and no hat, and was carrying a suitcase. She looked pale, haggard and exhausted. I could tell that something bad had happened.

  “I walked up,” she said. “I thought it was best to keep the elevator man out of this.”

  I took the suitcase and her coat and led her into the living room. She sat down in front of the fire, opened her pocketbook and started to search for a cigarette. I brought her one. My hand with the lighter touched hers. It was cold and unsteady.

  In her clipped, brittle voice, she said, “I’m sorry about all this, but at least it won’t take long. I was wondering if you could lend me some money. I don’t need much. Twenty dollars would do. But I’ve got to have some money—for a hotel room.” She smiled, trying to show how amusing everything was. “Jaimie came around tonight and threw me out of the apartment. His friend’s coming back unexpectedly from Mexico, he says, and needs it.”

  “At midnight?”

  “Presumably.”

  By that time I shouldn’t have been surprised at anything Jaimie did to her. But I was surprised and angry that she was taking this latest humiliation so submissively.

  I said, “You mean you don’t have any money at all?”

  “I had the dime to call you. I walked uptown. I was hoarding my capital. It’s the end of the month and my check from Grandfather’s estate doesn�
�t come in till Wednesday.”

  “And Jaimie knows that’s all you’ve got?”

  “Jaimie knows how much everyone’s got, down to the last cent. That’s one of his many talents. But why should he care? There’s no longer any relationship between us, beautiful or otherwise. It was all finished three days ago in a glorious blaze of something or other.”

  “Finished?”

  “Really, Bill, you don’t have to act surprised. I hear you and Betsy had a charming dinner party for him and Daphne the other night.”

  There was no accusation in her voice. Behind the strained facetiousness there was nothing except a kind of dull desperation. But I was terribly conscious of the fact that I, in a way, was responsible for what had happened to her.

  Feebly, knowing it wouldn’t help anyone, I said, “They’ll never let him marry Daphne.”

  “He’ll marry Daphne. When Jaimie wants something, he gets it. He wanted an heiress; he’s found one. And my occupation’s gone. I would have left New York right after he told me the great news. I was only hanging on until my check came and I could buy a ticket home.”

  She stubbed her cigarette. “Probably he invented the friend tonight as an excuse for throwing me out. It’s the sort of joke that amuses him. But what difference does it make?” She got up abruptly. “If you’ll be nice enough to give me the money, I can be on my way.”

  She was going home. There was no relationship between us. There never could have been any intelligible relationship. In fact, it was much better for me that she should be out of New York. As I looked at her, standing by the mantel, trying to be jaunty, I felt pity and then, unexpectedly, a wrenching sense of loss.

  “So you’re going back to Claxton?” Saying the name brought a host of memories.

  “Last week I got a letter from Father. His housekeeper just died. He’s in total chaos. At least I can scrub floors for him.”

  “For how long?”

  “Forever. Why not?” Her mouth started to twitch at the corners. “There’s nothing else I’m good for, is there? I loused up my life. I almost loused up yours. Now even the lowest little heel in New York has no use for me.” She laughed. “Maybe I shouldn’t go back to Claxton. Maybe I’ll louse up the entire English Department too.”