Return to Peyton Place

by Grace Metalious

  It can't be. It can't be, Allison said over and over in her head. Wishes don't come true just like this. “Yes, Brad,” she said into the receiver, trying not to reveal her intense excitement.

  “Sit down, darling,” he said. “I've got wonderful news for you!”

  It can't be. It can't be. Please, God, let it be.

  “Allison? Allison, can you hear me?”

  “Yes, Brad, I can hear you. Don't shout.”

  “I've sold your book!” he shouted.

  Constance was making Allison's bed when she heard her daughter shout.

  “Mother! Come quick!”

  Dear God, thought Constance, and ran for the stairs. She's hurt herself.

  Allison was crying into the telephone. “Yes,” she was sobbing. “I can hear you, Brad. I can hear you.”

  “It can't be,” cried Constance, and grabbed for the phone.

  “This is Constance Rossi,” she said. “What happened?”

  “I sold Allison's book to Jackman,” said Brad. “She'll have to come to New York on Monday.”

  “Jackman,” repeated Constance stupidly. “Monday.”

  “Tell her to call me and let me know what train or plane she's coming on. I'll meet her. And tell her I'll make reservations for her at the Plaza. Jackman, I think, is going to put everything behind this book. I have the feeling Allison will soon be able to afford the best hotels and she ought to start getting used to them.”

  “Yes, Mr. Holmes. Good-by, Mr. Holmes,” said Constance.

  6

  CHESTNUT STREET WAS a wide, tree-shaded avenue which ran parallel to Elm Street, one block south of the main thoroughfare. Chestnut Street had always been, and still was, considered to be the “best” street in Peyton Place. Every town has its Chestnut Street. On the hottest summer day, the Chestnut Streets are cooler than all the others. The houses that line these streets always indicate, unmistakably, that they were built at a time when servants were cheap and plentiful, and that the owners could afford them. To the people who live on the other streets, those houses are always mysterious. One thinks of secret rooms and hidden staircases.

  There had never been any danger that anyone undesirable would find his way to Chestnut Street, for each great house was surrounded on all sides by the land of the individual owner. The land was “Old Land,” acres of ground that had belonged to the families who had come to live in the shadow of Samuel Peyton's castle when the castle was new.

  The men who lived on Chestnut Street were the life's blood of Peyton Place. They were the men with money and position and, therefore, the men who were in control.

  “Takes more than money to run a town,” said Dr. Matthew Swain to his friend Seth Buswell. “Folks'll take just so much of cottoning down to money and then they say to hell with it.”

  “Then the ungrateful bastards unionize,” said Leslie Harrington before Seth could answer. “I can't open.”

  The men of Chestnut Street were gathered at the home of Matthew Swain for one of their Friday night poker games. These games had become legend in Peyton Place.

  “Age cannot wither him, nor custom stay his lousy, two-edged tongue,” said Seth, looking at Harrington.

  “I can open,” said Charles Partridge. “And I will.”

  Charles Partridge still jumped into a conversation, as he had always done, when words between people threatened to become unfriendly; but he needn't have bothered to play the role of pacifist between Leslie and Seth, for those two hurled insults at each other only from habit now. The animosity that had motivated them in earlier years had been forgotten at last.

  After the death of Rodney Harrington, Leslie's only son, his friends on Chestnut Street had been worried about the wealthy millowner. Overnight, Leslie Harrington had changed from the hard, pushing businessman he had always been to a blurred imitation of himself. Even those who had always hated Leslie began to feel sorry for him.

  “He got his comeuppance at last,” said a great many people in Peyton Place. Some said it with complacent pride, as if Leslie Harrington's comeuppance had been the result of their efforts.

  “Yep. But it don't seem's though he should have got it so hard, all at once like that,” said others.

  If Leslie Harrington could have heard the voices, he would have felt that fate was words, that his life was nothing except as it was described by others. Gossip brought back to Peyton Place the dead and the missing. Rodney's and Betty's names were spoken more often now than when they had lived in Peyton Place. The rusty voices of old men and women were like a litany.

  “Mebbe. But I'll wager there's some that ain't as sorry as others that Leslie Harrington got his at last.”

  “Oh, yeah? Like who?”

  “Like John and Berit Anderson over on Ash Street.”

  “Yep. Run that girl of theirs right out of town, Leslie did. Can't blame the Andersons if they ain't sorry for Leslie now.”

  “Wonder what happened to Betty Anderson. John never says a word about her. Like she was dead.”

  “Well, I guess when she went and got herself knocked up by Rodney Harrington it was the same to John as if she was dead.”

  “Yep. Them Swedes got their pride just like anybody else.”

  “Mebbe she's livin’ over to Rutland. Didn't she have an aunt over there?”

  “Nah. Jared Clarke's been over to Rutland a million times, and you can trust Jared to know if Betty was living there and to tell everyone here about it.”

  There had been plenty of speculation in Peyton Place about what had happened to Betty Anderson, just as there always was about a girl who left town the way Betty had. But what no one in town knew, not even the men on Chestnut Street who usually knew everything that happened in Peyton Place, was that Leslie Harrington had made a quiet search of his own for the girl he had tried to destroy. He had not gone to Buck McCracken because Peyton Place's sheriff was a notoriously slow mover and, besides, he had a big mouth. If he contacted a nearby branch of the Missing Persons Bureau they would send people to town to ask questions, and this, above all, Leslie did not want. There were no private detectives in Peyton Place, nor in the whole state, for that matter, and they would have been impossible anyway. They, too, asked questions.

  And so it appeared that Leslie Harrington had failed, but failure was a luxury that Leslie had never permitted himself and he did not intend to start now. He'd find a way, he was sure. It might take time, but he'd find a way.

  “I raised, Leslie,” said Matthew Swain. “Are you playing cards or daydreaming about chorus girls?”

  “I'll see you, Matt,” said Leslie, and shoved coins into the middle of the table. “Straight as a string with a black queen high, Matt. Beat me.”

  “Can't,” said Matthew Swain disgustedly. “You always did have the goddamnedest luck, Leslie.”

  Not always, thought Leslie. Not quite always.

  “Saw Ted Carter today,” said Charles Partridge. “Had his wife with him. Nice-looking girl.”

  “Humph,” said the doctor.

  “Now hold on, Matt,” said Leslie. “You can't hold it against Carter forever just because he didn't stick by Selena Cross. After all.”

  “After all, my ass,” said Dr. Swain. “None of my business anyhow. Come on, deal.”

  “A young feller like that, trying to make something of himself and get ahead in the world. You can't blame him,” continued Leslie, as if Matt had not spoken. “It'd be all right if he was going to stay right here in Peyton Place, but it wouldn't do for him to have a wife like that anywhere else. People got long memories, most of ’em.”

  “Yes, they do,” said Seth Buswell. “And not only about murder. There's other things folks remember.”

  “What the hell are you trying to say, Seth?” demanded Leslie. “Come on, spit it out. Better to say it than sit there thinking it all evening.”

  Seth threw his cards down on the table. “About Betty Anderson and her kid, for one thing,” he said angrily.

  Leslie looked as if Seth
had slapped him across the mouth.

  “Now, now,” said Charles Partridge. “All that's over and done with. Water over the dam. Doesn't do any good at all to keep bringing it up. Let's play cards.”

  “Who brought anything up?” demanded Seth. “Did I start anything? It just seems to me that before Leslie starts in talking about anybody else in town, he ought to look after his own fences.”

  Leslie put his cards down very quietly and looked Seth straight in the eye.

  “I've been trying to find that girl for two years,” he said quietly.

  His three friends stared at him in disbelief, but there was no mistaking the truth etched in the suddenly obvious lines in Leslie's face.

  “Why?” asked Matthew Swain gently.

  “Goddamn it,” cried Leslie, “because of my grandson. That's why. He's the last of the Harringtons, and I don't know where he is.”

  “Why didn't you let us help you, Leslie?” asked Charles. “We didn't know.”

  “Well, I'd never lift a goddamned finger to help you, Leslie,” said Seth angrily. “What're you trying to pull anyway? You want to find the girl so that you can get her baby away from her, is that it?”

  “Seth,” said Matt Swain. “Be quiet a minute.”

  “I never said I wanted to take the boy away from his mother,” said Leslie defensively. “If I found them, naturally I'd take them both in. If she wanted to come, I mean.”

  “Yeah, and you'd make damn sure she didn't want to, wouldn't you?” said Seth bitterly. “Christ, but you are a son-of-a-bitch, Harrington. You always were, but I was dumb enough to think you'd changed with age.”

  “Seth!” shouted Dr. Swain. “Shut up!” He turned back to Leslie Harrington.

  “Would you, Leslie?” he asked. “Take them both in, I mean?”

  Leslie looked at his hands. “Yes,” he said at last. “I would. I want to. But I've done everything I know how, and I still can't find her.”

  “What have you tried, Leslie?” asked Charles.

  “Christ, I even went to that goddamned family of hers. If they knew anything, they weren't telling, and, as for the girl, she never did have an aunt over to Rutland.”

  “Anything else?” asked Seth, still not convinced of Leslie's motives.

  “Well, what the hell else could I do?” demanded Leslie. “Listen, Seth, I know how it sounds. But, Jesus, I couldn't go to Buck McCracken. And as for that Missing Persons outfit, they'd have had cops all over town asking questions. I even thought of hiring a private detective, but they'd have been the same way. I tell you, I was afraid.”

  It was a word that Seth had never thought he'd hear from Leslie Harrington. Afraid. And he began to understand, a little, the emptiness that filled Leslie's life.

  “We could help you,” said Seth finally.

  “How? What can we do?” asked Leslie.

  “We can put advertisements in the personal columns of the newspapers,” said Seth.

  “Ah-h,” said Leslie disgustedly. “That was one of the first things I tried. I had ads in every paper in towns from the Canadian border clear down to Boston.”

  Seth leaned back in his chair. “Leslie,” he said, “go into any house on Ash Street, or into the home of any of your mill hands, for that matter, and look at the newspapers they read. They don't buy the Boston Herald or the Concord Monitor. They buy tabloids. Either the Boston Record or the New York Daily News or other newspapers like them. Those are the papers with all the stories about knife killings in Harlem and rapes in the Back Bay, the gossip columns about people in New York and Hollywood. I'll bet anything that wherever Betty Anderson is, if she buys a newspaper at all, she buys one of those.”

  “What if she doesn't read the personal columns?” said Dr. Swain. “I imagine that there are a lot of folks who don't.”

  “Maybe not,” said Seth. “But she reads Winchell, I'm sure of it. Leslie, you could buy an inch of space on the same page as Winchell's column in every newspaper in the country that publishes him.”

  “That'll cost you something, Leslie,” said Charles Partridge, who, some said, took better care of other people's money than he did of his own.

  “Can you fix it up, Seth?” asked Leslie.

  “Yes,” said Seth. “Not from here. I've got to go down to Manchester, day after tomorrow. I'll do it from there.”

  “Now we'll see,” said Leslie, and smiled at his friends. “Now we'll see.”

  When Leslie and Charles had left, Matthew Swain helped himself to another drink and then extended the bottle to Seth.

  “What do you think about Leslie, Seth?” he asked. “Do you think he means what he says?”

  Seth gazed at his friend. “Well, for Christ's sake, Matt, it was you telling me to shut up in the beginning when I didn't believe him. Now that he's got me convinced, you turn around and ask if I think he means what he says.”

  Dr. Swain smiled. “I guess what I really was wondering was whether I believe him.”

  “What is it, Matt?”

  Matt made a gesture of self annoyance with his hand. “Oh, hell,” he said. “I guess I've known Leslie Harrington for too many years and I'm cursed with one of those long memories I'm always yapping at other people about. Don't pay any attention to me, Seth.”

  “No, you don't,” cried Seth. “Don't pull that on me, you old bastard. Now what the hell are you driving at?”

  Matt Swain looked down into his drink. “I keep remembering,” he said. “I keep remembering how Leslie never could stand to be beaten at anything. Not even when he was a kid.”

  “But he did get beaten,” Seth said. “The worst beating a man could take, just about. He lost his son, Matt. His only son. It changed him, you know that. He's never been the same.”

  “Like I said, Seth. Don't pay any attention to me. It's been a big day and I'm tired to the point of imagining things.”

  But when Matthew Swain went to bed, he was wondering. Does the leopard change his spots, or does he merely camouflage himself by hiding behind something? Behind something that would fool even the most observant eye. Matt groaned aloud. Like Leslie, he was alone. Whether he groaned or roared with laughter, no one would be disturbed. Matt was haunted by nothing but loneliness, and he had decided he was too old to take the cure.

  7

  ROBERTA CARTER SAT up in her bed so silently that the top sheet barely rustled against her nightgown. She looked across the narrow aisle that separated her bed from Harmon's and saw that he was well covered and sleeping soundly. In the dark, she stood up and fixed her pillows under her blankets so that if Harmon awoke and looked across to her bed it would appear that she was there, asleep. She left her slippers on the rug, just as they had been when she had taken them off, and she was very careful not to disturb the folds of her robe at the foot of the bed. Then she tiptoed across the room and out the door. The rest of her plans had been carefully made earlier in the evening and she had smiled to herself as she carried them out right under the very noses of the people concerned.

  It had been a very good dinner that evening, she congratulated herself. Heavy enough to make Harmon feel full and rather logy afterward, but not heavy enough to make Ted and Jennifer feel anything but contented and well fed. Then there had been the sedative in Harmon's coffee, not enough to hurt him, of course, but just enough to make him say that he couldn't keep his eyes open a minute longer by nine o'clock.

  “Well, now, dear,” Roberta had told him. “You just sit still one more minute and I'll go up and turn down the beds.”

  “Oh, please let me help you, Mother,” said Jennifer, jumping up.

  Roberta put a restraining hand on her shoulder. “Now, you just sit down and finish your coffee, dear,” she said. “I won't be a minute.”

  “But I'd like to help you,” protested Jennifer.

  Roberta was hard put to keep annoyance from showing on her face and in her voice. That was just one more thing about Jennifer, she thought. Always arguing over the simplest things. Ted had never been like
that. The only time her boy had ever been pigheaded about anything was when he was younger and had a crush on Selena Cross. But he'd got over that and he'd never dug his heels in about anything since. Now it appeared that Jennifer, who had seemed so sweet and tractable when Ted had been courting her, had a little stubborn streak that could prove to be very annoying if it weren't curbed. But right now was not the time to be annoyed.

  “All right, then.” Roberta smiled. “Why don't you and Ted go into the kitchen and make a pot of coffee? I'd love a fresh cup when I come down.”

  Roberta went upstairs, humming to herself, and turned down the beds in her room. Then she went down the long hall to the room that had always been Ted's and which he now shared with Jennifer whenever the two of them came to Peyton Place for the weekend. That had been another of Jennifer's ideas. Roberta had wanted “the children,” as she called Ted and Jennifer, to use the large guest room next to her room, but Jennifer had turned stubborn again.

  “But, dear,” Roberta had said, “that old room of Ted's is way down at the end of the hall, and the bathroom is at this end. It just won't do, dear. You'll be much more comfortable right here next to me.”

  “That's sweet of you, Mother,” said Jennifer, “but really, we'd rather use Ted's old room. Wouldn't we, Ted?”

  “Doesn't matter to me,” said Ted.

  He did not see the sudden glare that his wife gave him, but Roberta did.

  “Well, it matters to me,” said Jennifer with a pretty pout. “I like your old room. It has so much of you in it, and I like to think of you as a little boy, sleeping there.”

  Ted put his arm around her. “Anything you say, darling.” He smiled.

  Roberta had made up the bed in Ted's old room, but right then she had begun to wonder just what it was that Jennifer had to hide that she wanted to be stuck off in a corner somewhere in a house with her own inlaws.

  She's talking about me! The thought had come to Roberta in a flash, like a divine sign from Heaven. She's talking about me! Trying to turn my boy against me!

  Well, as Roberta put it to herself, she'd never been one to let herself be undermined without fighting back. But she couldn't begin to fight until she knew what she was up against. And it did not take her long to find a way.