Without the slightest hesitation he leaned over and ripped the page from my typewriter and dropped it in a wastebasket.
“Nobody tells me no. Come along.”
That was his first outrage and my first warning. But what else could I do when a tidal wave swept me off my feet—what else but go along paddling? Besides, hadn’t I heard Saxon Scott say those very words once in a movie?
If he was a novelty to me and a glimpse of another world, so was I a novelty for him. Even as I paddled, I tried to swim against the wave. In those beginning months of our relationship, he actually enjoyed this, and I was tremendously flattered and excited by his attentions. He told me frankly that he preferred blondes to brunettes—as though I were a sort of commodity that could be ordered in sizes and colors—but that he rather liked my dark brown hair, and he was always mussing it with a careless hand. I refused to listen to my own faint stirring of resentment at his appropriation of my person. No one had ever cared enough to appropriate me until now, and when he called me “Carol” in a way that caressed my name, I was lost in an agony of love. What I thought was love. The young have very little equipment for good judgment in that area, and a great deal of heedless emotion to expend.
I learned a lot about what wasn’t love in the first years of my marriage. When Owen took off his velvet gloves, the fists were steel. I learned quickly that there were outside matters that I must close my eyes to—the world of politics, gambling, business affairs—all a little shady, if examined too carefully, so that it became safer not to look. Sometimes strange men came and went in our apartment without explanation, and there were often bodyguards around. I wasn’t without blame, but I had to close my eyes or live in perpetual terror. While he told me nothing, I sensed quickly that Owen Barclay sailed very close to the edge of the law in some of his dealings, and I’d better not learn how close, if I valued my peace of mind. In any case, by that time I was pregnant and trapped.
Owen didn’t know. He’d been away for a month—I wasn’t sure where—leaving me alone in New York. I hadn’t reached the point where I’d give anything to be alone, and I was eager for his return. I knew he would be excited about my pregnancy. He’d had three children by other wives—all daughters, in whom he took no interest. He wanted a son. So when he came home late one night and closeted himself in a room I’d been forbidden to enter, I couldn’t wait. I burst in to tell him the wonderful news.
There was a man in the room whose picture I’d seen in the papers—a man wanted by the law. Owen had ordered me angrily from the room, but he hadn’t let it go at that. Later, when his visitor left, there was an explosion of rage. I’d been slapped before, but this was a beating. In fact, he hurt me so badly that he finally took me to the hospital himself, telling them that I’d fallen down a flight of stairs. I was too frightened and sick to contradict him, and more than anything else, worried about my baby.
The next day when Owen came to see me—he could often be contrite after the fact—I told him between swollen lips that I was going to have a child, and that what he’d done might have lost it for us. Owen broke down and cried—an amazing, disturbing man, who still fascinated me, even while he frightened. There was no Keith then to make the difference. Only the beginning of Keith.
For a year after Keith’s birth my husband was almost a changed man. Not until the baby began to walk and talk did I see the direction Owen meant to take with his son. Keith must grow up strong and tough and hard. Never mind if he hurt others. Sympathy with another viewpoint was a weakness. There was only one viewpoint allowed—Owen’s. From the first, Keith was not to be permitted a childhood—as Owen had never been permitted one of his own.
The way Keith began to look even before the divorce had broken my heart. Owen hated cringing, yet he knew very well how to make a small boy cringe. No one realized better than I how smilingly cruel Owen could be—I’d suffered that myself—and the time came when I knew I must get Keith away. The divorce had been ugly, with Owen using every possible trick to defeat me and gain custody of Keith. It was my good fortune to have an uncorruptible judge, to whom Owen revealed himself more than he knew. The decision was in my favor.
A few months ago Owen had managed to snatch Keith outside his school. He’d hidden him from me and from the world for sixty-five days. I’d counted every one of them in my own blood!
From the first, Keith had been a symbol to Owen—never a real boy. He was Owen Barclay’s Only Son—and therefore priceless beyond measure. He must be turned into exactly what his father wanted him to be—a replica of himself. I’d had six years of marriage in which to discover to my horror just what that self was like and I would not have it for Keith. Kidnapping his own son had been a way in which Owen could punish me—with a total disregard for the harm he was doing to the boy.
On this occasion, I was once more lucky. I hired detectives, and since it was hard for Owen to be inconspicuous, Keith was found and returned to me. But I knew very well that next time Owen would never make the same mistakes. Next time might be for good.
By the time I got Keith back he had stopped being a joyous, bubbling child who never stopped talking, and had slipped into a grave, silent state—a child who jumped nervously at nothing, and who had grown suddenly older than his years. It wouldn’t be easy to turn him again into the happy little boy he had a right to be. Certainly, this could never be accomplished while the threat of his father hung over his life.
There had been no close friends to whom I could turn in New York, since Owen had been suspicious of my few younger friends, and had insulted them when they came to our home. I hadn’t minded this a great deal in the beginning, being wholly preoccupied with him. And too ready to accept judgments that I came to realize later were terribly wrong. So, when I needed such friends, I found they’d drifted away, and I had no one but myself to blame. There were only cool acquaintances and casual business relationships left.
Beside me in the car, Keith was awake now, and questioning. “Mom? Will he take me away from you?”
“No!” I said. “I promise you that’s not going to happen. He can’t come after us. He doesn’t know where we’ve gone, and he won’t even know right away that we’ve left.” I wasn’t sure how true this might be, but I had to offer reassurance, and then make certain it was justified by keeping him safe.
“He always knows,” Keith said flatly with a terrible wisdom that had come to him too young.
This last encounter, when his father had struck him, had shown him the danger. He knew the threat. He had heard the words that still burned in my memory: “I’ll see you in hell, my dear Carol, before I’ll let you keep my son.” There had been murder in Owen at that moment, and only the arrival of someone who had heard him shouting and come to the door had checked his violence. He’d stormed out in a fury.
Now that we’d fled, this need to destroy me would rise in him more strongly than ever.
The rage that I mustn’t show was like a festering inside me. I carried physical wounds of my own from that last explosion, though Owen had taken care they wouldn’t show on my face. These hurts were less than the pain I felt for my son. I glanced at him sitting still and tense beside me, and was once more glad that he didn’t resemble Owen. Looking at my son was like looking into a mirror. He had gray eyes like mine, and brown hair that we both wore across our foreheads in a drift of sidelong bangs. Keith’s five years hadn’t yet determined the shape of his nose, but his mouth was as wide in proportion as mine. We both had what people called “a generous smile.” Lately neither of us had done much smiling.
When we’d left New York I’d begun a game to distract Keith, and I offered it to him now. “This is an exciting adventure, darling. We’ve never been to Palm Springs before, and we’ve never had a chance to meet a real movie star.”
Keith had met a number of famous television and theater personalities close to Owen, and he wasn’t especially impressed, but it was the best I could do. I only hoped that Monica Arlen wouldn’t mind havin
g a small boy thrust suddenly into her household, along with a great-niece whom she didn’t really know at all. But she had sent me through college, so that was something to build on. Wasn’t it?
As we neared what had been a tiny oasis in the desert, overlooked by the Spaniards and known only to the Indians, I tried to put Owen from my mind and think ahead.
Our car was rounding the base of Mt. San Jacinto—the great peak that stood as a barrier between Palm Springs and the mountains along the Pacific.
“We’re nearly there, darling,” I told Keith, and he sat up more alertly.
Anticipation and hope quickened in me. When I reached out to squeeze Keith’s hand, he must have sensed the lifting of my spirits, because he squeezed back, though he still wore the grave expression that had become habitual, and broke my heart.
More than anything else in the coming days, I wanted to see my son happy and laughing again. To that end I must give all my efforts—which meant keeping us both out of Owen’s hands.
TWO
Keith and I stood on the gallery outside our hotel room and stared in astonishment at Mt. San Jacinto. Its rocky base started only a few blocks away and the precipitous rise of that bare brown mountain was awesome. Its peak touched the western sky, rising nearly eleven thousand feet, almost straight up.
There were higher mountains on the American continent, but this was the steepest escarpment, and it gave the oasis setting of Palm Springs much of its dramatic force. No matter where you turned, the mountain was there at the end of every street that ran west. The surrounding desert and the rest of the San Jacinto range bowed to its dominance. To some extent it held the elements back when storms surged out of the Pacific, and its shadow cast an early twilight over Palm Springs.
“Are we going up there?” Keith whispered, as though the stern brown mass were a giant to be placated.
“Not all the way,” I said. “There seems to be only one house that we can see, so that must be Aunt Monica’s.”
Smoke Tree House had been built, not so much on, as into a high rocky shoulder. It looked rather like a Spanish hacienda, with its white walls and red-tiled roofs—a wide, two-story structure that stretched along the narrow ledge. From where we stood, the house seemed close above the town, yet it must be as secure as Linda had claimed. A low stone wall edged the steep drop from the front terrace, and its balconies and arched windows would command a tremendous view. Steep above the house, and set back as the mountain’s contour was followed, terraced gardens flourished, filled with tropical vegetation that topped the roof. All this seemed to be shut in with chain link fences, and occupied no great acreage. The most had been made of every inch of available space. I noted the high gardens with special interest. If we had to stay for weeks, perhaps even months, these would offer a place where Keith might play outdoors safely.
On the lower level, and to the right of the house, a long, narrow road slanted to the base of the mountain. I knew that a steel gate guarded the road at the lower end, though it was hidden from our view by a grove of palm trees. A complex electrical alarm system further protected the house itself. Yes, this would be the right place for us—a fortress indeed. I felt impatient to be up there and safe at last. If I hadn’t turned my car in, I might have ventured up on my own.
“Shouldn’t that lady be coming soon?” Keith demanded, tiring of the view.
I nodded toward the street, where a car had pulled into the curb. “Perhaps that’s Linda Trevor now.”
I’d phoned Linda as soon as we reached our room, and eager as I was for us to be friends, I had been relieved to hear a welcoming warmth in her greeting. Nevertheless, I’d sensed that she held something back, and I wondered if Monica was still too upset to be told about our coming. Linda would be down to see us in an hour, she said, and took my room number before she hung up. However anxious I was, my questions would have to wait until she was here.
In the East I’d have called this place a rather luxurious motel, but I knew that word had long been banned in Palm Springs, which had only “hotels.” No high rises were allowed and only a tower or two stood above the low level of the roofs. Happily, no neon signs were permitted, and holding their shaggy heads above all else were hundreds of Washingtonia filifera palm trees, which belonged to this region and gave a special character to the streets. It was a town unlike any other I’d visited—utterly clean and orderly and well kept in itself, yet with the harsher reality of mountain and desert pressing in all around. It was easy to see why Hollywood’s most glittering stars had always come here to play and rest, and why so many had built fabulous homes in the area. Yet in its perfection, its very isolation from a crasser Los Angeles, the place had a certain unreality. The real world could easily cease to exist in a town like this.
Down on the street the woman was getting out of her car, and she stood looking up at us, her beige pants and green pullover blending with sand and palm colors. I recognized Linda from snapshots she’d sent. She waved enthusiastically and came running up the outside stairs to our stretch of gallery.
Linda Trevor’s dark hair was short and fluffy, her brown eyes huge, with quite spectacular lashes, yet at first glance the face she turned toward us so eagerly seemed plain. Only as they flashed into excitement did her features seem to light in an illusion of prettiness.
From her letters I knew that she had grown up in the desert and had once gone the Hollywood route, playing bit parts when she was younger. Lacking any special talent, she’d wound up working in secretarial posts at the studios. Of course Monica Arlen had been long gone from Hollywood by the time Linda arrived, but eventually someone had suggested her to Monica and Linda had come to Palm Springs to work for the woman she’d admired for so long.
Now that she stood beside us, I saw how small she was—not nearly as tall as my own five-five, though she made up for any lack of size by being constantly, enthusiastically, in motion—her hands, her eyes, even her feet, as she whirled into our big room. Not until later did I understand that this air of constant motion that took over when she was anxious and excited wasn’t particularly characteristic of Linda Trevor. Clearly, she was uncomfortable about our being here, and my hope of rescue dropped a notch or two.
“I’m glad you’ve come,” she said, not convincing me, and touched Keith on the shoulder with a light pat. Then she went to look out the far side of the room, where glass doors opened on a private balcony overlooking the inevitable swimming pool. Here endless sunbathers, who seemed to have nothing else in the world to do, were a permanent decoration around the pool. This was November in Palm Springs!
“You seem comfortable here.” Linda turned back and dropped into one of the two big chairs.
Her slightly explosive movements, her obvious uneasiness, were making me more uncertain by the moment. I sat down opposite her.
“You still haven’t told Monica, have you?” I asked.
Keith came to lean against me, watching Linda solemnly, as though he saw right through to something that frightened him.
She shook her head and her brown hair bounced above her ears. “Carol, of course I’d have told her if she’d been feeling better. She’s still upset and cross, and it’s better to wait for the right moment. She’s really very generous and kind.”
Linda’s eyes were bright with sincerity, but I felt not at all reassured. I’d hurled us here—into Monica’s arms, so to speak—and I was beginning to realize that they might not open to receive us. So much for all my secret fantasies!
“What are we to do?” I asked.
Linda caught the desperation in my voice. “It will be all right, Carol. Really it will. It’s just that we’d better smuggle you in at first and tell her later.”
My heart dropped to my toes. Being “smuggled” in seemed especially humiliating. Alarming, too, that it should be thought necessary.
“I don’t know …” I began. “How can we go into her house if we’re unwelcome?”
“Nonsense!” Linda spoke with a little too much a
ssurance, her fingers lacing and unlacing—more evidence of a tension she was now trying to hide. “Of course you’ll come up to the house the first thing tomorrow morning. Even if I haven’t told her.”
“How will you keep her from seeing us arrive?”
“That won’t be hard. She has her own apartment at the southern end of the house because she dotes on the sun. But when she goes into one of these retreats, she pulls the draperies across the windows, turns on the stereo, and lives in a cave. She won’t hear the car come up the mountain. She doesn’t even realize I’m away now. Ralph can call for you around nine, and he’ll drive you up.”
“Who is Ralph?”
“Ralph Reese.” Linda flung up her hands expressively and made a derisive face. “He’s part of the present trouble. I’d like to see him out altogether, and he’d like to be rid of me. He’s not my favorite character, but he’s useful to Monica. I suppose you’d call him a chauffeur-gardener-handyman. He doubles as guard and escort as well. Not that she goes out very often, and then only under those big hats she wears, and behind dark glasses. Though I doubt that anyone would recognize her anymore. I guess you’d say Ralph is a necessary evil at the moment.”
This sounded worse and worse. “Won’t he tell her about us?”
“I’ve twisted his arm,” Linda said dryly. “I found out ages ago that it’s a good idea to have something on Ralph at all times. Useful.”
Her words left me feeling even more desolate. I’d just fled from a world of intrigue and arm-twisting, and here I seemed to be confronted with it again.
“Never mind,” Linda said. “Ralph doesn’t matter. If it wasn’t him, it would be someone else. Monica has to have a man around to amuse and flatter her. He’ll keep still for a while—though only because he’s a little afraid of me.”
Even though she smiled as she spoke the words, I could guess that she might make Ralph nervous. She was certainly making me nervous, and I drew my fingers across my cheek in an absent gesture.
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