Nothing That Meets the Eye
Page 39
Claud retaliated with an ill-meant peck at Maud’s eye, which missed her and got her in the head.
Then suddenly—it was impossible to tell whether Maud or Claud moved first—they attacked a passing perambulator. They went for the baby, pecking its cheeks, its eyes. The young woman pushing the pram let out a scream and hit at the pigeons, knocking the breath out of Maud, but she rejoined Claud in the pram in a matter of seconds. A couple of people ran toward the pram, and the pigeons took off. They flew over the heads of their would-be attackers and settled in a group of twenty-odd pigeons who were pecking around a litter basket.
When the two people, plus the woman with the pram, came close to the pigeons, Maud and Claud were not in the least afraid, though some of the other pigeons looked up, startled by the angry voices.
One of the people, a man, rushed among the pigeons, kicking, waving his arms and yelling. Most of the pigeons took lazy flight. Maud headed for home, the nook behind the low stone wall, and when she got there, Claud had already arrived. They settled themselves for sleep, too tired even to grumble to each other. But Maud was not too tired to recall the half peanut that Claud had snatched. Why did she live with him? Why did she, or they, live here, running the risk daily of being captured, as they’d been today, or kicked by people who objected even to their droppings? Why? Maud fell asleep, exhausted by her discontent.
The incident of the pecked baby, blinded in one eye, in Trafalgar Square, inspired a couple of letters to the Times. But nothing was done about it.
VARIATIONS ON A GAME
It was an impossible situation. Penn Knowlton had realized that as soon as he realized he was in love with Ginnie Ostrander—Mrs. David Ostrander. Penn couldn’t see himself in the role of a marriage-breaker, even though Ginnie said she had wanted to divorce David long before she met him. David wouldn’t give her a divorce, that was the point. The only decent thing to do, Penn had decided, was to clear out, leave before David suspected anything. Not that he considered himself noble, but there were some situations . . .
Penn went to Ginnie’s room on the second floor of the house and knocked.
Her rather high, cheerful voice called, “You, Penn? Come in!”
She was lying on the sunlit chaise longue, wearing black, close-fitting slacks and a yellow blouse, and she was sewing a button on one of David’s shirts.
“Don’t I look domestic?” she asked, pushing her yellow hair back from her forehead. “Need any buttons sewed on, darling?” Sometimes she called him darling when David was around, too.
“No,” he said, smiling, and sat down on a hassock.
She glanced at the door as if to make sure no one was about, then pursed her lips and kissed the empty air between them. “I’ll miss you this weekend. What time are you leaving tomorrow?”
“David wants to leave just after lunch. It’s my last assignment, Ginnie. David’s last book with me. I’m quitting.”
“Quitting?” She let her sewing fall into her lap. “You’ve told David, too?”
“No. I’ll tell him tomorrow. I don’t know why you’re surprised. You’re the reason, Ginnie. I don’t think I have to make any speeches.”
“I understand, Penn. You know I’ve asked for a divorce. But I’ll keep on asking. I’ll work something out and then—” She was on her knees suddenly in front of him, crying, her head down on her hands that gripped his hands.
He turned his eyes away and slowly stood up, drawing her up with him. “I’ll be around another two weeks, probably; long enough for David to finish this book, if he wants me around that long. And you needn’t worry. I won’t tell him why I’m quitting.” His voice had sunk to a whisper, though David was downstairs in his soundproofed study, and the maid, Penn thought, was in the basement.
“I wouldn’t care if you told him,” she said with quiet defiance.
“It’s a wonder he doesn’t know.”
“Will you be around, say in three months, if I can get a divorce?” she asked.
He nodded; then, feeling his own eyes start to burn, he smiled. “I’ll be around an awful long time. I’m just not so sure you want a divorce.”
Her eyebrows drew down, stubborn and serious. “You’ll see. I don’t want to make David angry. I’m afraid of his temper, I’ve told you that. But maybe I’ll have to stop being afraid.” Her blue eyes looked straight into his. “Remember that dream you told us, about the man you were walking with on the country road, who disappeared? And you kept calling him and you couldn’t find him?”
“Yes,” he said, smiling.
“I wish it would happen to you—with David. I wish David would just disappear suddenly, this weekend, and be out of my life forever, so I could be with you.”
Her words did strange and terrible things to him. He released her arm. “People don’t just disappear. There’re other ways.” He was going to add, “Such as divorce,” but he didn’t.
“Such as?”
“I’d better get back to my typewriter. I’ve got another half-hour tape to do.”
David and Penn left in the black convertible the next afternoon with a small suitcase apiece, one typewriter, the tape recorder, and an iced carton of steaks and beer and a few other items of food. David was in a good mood, talking about an idea that had come to him during the night for a new book. David Ostrander wrote science fiction so prolifically that he used half a dozen pen names. He seldom took longer than a month to write a book, and he worked every month of the year. More ideas came to him than he could use, and he was in the habit of passing them on to other writers at his Wednesday night Guild meetings.
David Ostrander was forty-three, lean and wiry, with a thin, dry-skinned face thatched with fine, intersecting wrinkles—the only part of him that showed his age at all and exaggerated it at that—wrinkles that looked as if he had spent all his forty-three years in the dry, sterile winds of the fantastic planets about which he wrote.
Ginnie was only twenty-four, Penn remembered, two years younger than himself. Her skin was pliant and smooth, her lips like a poppy’s petals. He stopped thinking about her. It irked him to think of David’s lips kissing hers. How could she have married him? Or why? Or was there something about David’s intellect, his bitter humor, his energy, that a woman would find attractive? Of course David had money, a comfortable income plus the profits of his writing, but what did Ginnie do with it? Nice clothes, yes, but did David ever take her out? They hardly ever entertained. As far as Penn had been able to learn, they had never traveled anywhere.
“Eh? What do you think of that, Penn? The poison gas emanating from the blue vegetation and conquering the green until the whole earth perishes! Say, where are you today?”
“I got it,” Penn said without taking his eyes from the road. “Shall I put it down in the notebook?”
“Yes. No. I’ll think about it a little more today.” David lit another cigarette. “Something’s on your mind, Penn, my boy. What is it?”
Penn’s hands tightened on the wheel. Well, no other moment was going to be any better, was it? A couple of scotches this evening wouldn’t help, just be a little more cowardly, Penn decided. “David, I think after this book is over, I’ll be leaving you.”
“Oh,” said David, not manifesting any surprise. He puffed on his cigarette. “Any particular reason?”
“Well, as I’ve told you, I have a book of my own to write. The Coast Guard thing.” Penn had spent the last four years in the Coast Guard, which was the main reason David had hired him as a secretary. David had advertised for a secretary “preferably with a firsthand knowledge of Navy life.” The first book he had worked on with David had a Navy background—Navy life in 2800 a.d., when the whole globe had been made radioactive. Penn’s book would have to do with real life, and it had an orthodox plot, ending on a note of hope. It seemed at that moment a frail and hopeless thing compared to a
book by the great David Ostrander.
“I’ll miss you,” David said finally. “So’ll Ginnie. She’s very fond of you, you know.”
From any other man it might have been a snide comment, but not from David, who positively encouraged him to spend time with Ginnie, to take walks in the woods around the estate with her, to play tennis on the clay court behind the summer house. “I’ll miss you both, too,” Penn said. “And who wouldn’t prefer the environment to an apartment in New York?”
“Don’t make any speeches, Penn. We know each other too well.” David rubbed the side of his nose with a nicotine-stained forefinger. “What if I put you on a part-time basis and gave you most of the day for your own work? You could have a whole wing of the house to yourself.”
Penn declined it politely. He wanted to get away by himself for a while.
“Ginnie’s going to sulk,” David said, as if to himself.
They reached the lodge at sundown. It was a substantial one-story affair made of unhewn logs, with a stone chimney at one end. White birches and huge pine trees swayed in the autumn breeze. By the time they unpacked and got a fire going for the steak, it was seven o’clock. David said little, but he seemed cheerful, as if their conversation about Penn’s quitting had never taken place. They had two drinks each before dinner, two being David’s limit for himself on the nights he worked and also those on which he did not work, which were rare.
David looked at him across the wooden table. “Did you tell Ginnie you were leaving?”
Penn nodded, and swallowed with an effort. “I told her yesterday.” Then he wished he hadn’t admitted it. Wasn’t it more logical to tell one’s employer first?
David’s eyes seemed to be asking the same question. “And how did she take it?”
“Said she’d be sorry to see me go,” Penn said casually, and cut another bite of steak.
“Oh. Like that. I’m sure she’ll be devastated.”
Penn jumped as if a knife had been stuck into him.
“I’m not blind, you know, Penn. I know you two think you’re in love with each other.”
“Now listen, David, just a minute. If you possibly imagine—”
“I know what I know, that’s all. I know what’s going on behind my back when I’m in my study or when I’m in town Wednesday nights at the Guild meeting!” David’s eyes shone with blue fire, like the cold lights of his lunar landscapes.
“David, there’s nothing going on behind your back,” Penn said evenly. “If you doubt me, ask Ginnie.”
“Hah!”
“But I think you’ll understand why it’s better that I leave. I should think you’d approve of it, in fact.”
“I do.” David lit a cigarette.
“I’m sorry this happened,” Penn added. “Ginnie’s very young. I also think she’s bored—with her life, not necessarily with you.”
“Thanks!” David said like a pistol shot.
Penn lit a cigarette, too. They were both on their feet now. The half-eaten meal was over. Penn watched David moving about as he might have watched an armed man who at any minute might pull a gun or a knife. He didn’t trust David, couldn’t predict him. The last thing he would have predicted was David’s burst of temper tonight, the first Penn had seen. “Okay, David. I’ll say again that I’m sorry. But you’ve no reason to hold a grudge against me.”
“That’s enough of your words! I know a heel when I see one!”
“If you were my weight, I’d break your jaw for that!” Penn yelled, advancing on him with his fists clenched. “I’ve had enough of your words tonight, too. I suppose you’ll go home and throw your bilge at Ginnie. Well, where do you get off, shoving a bored, good-looking girl at your male secretary, telling us to go off on picnic lunches together? Can you blame either of us?”
David muttered something unintelligible in the direction of the fireplace. Then he turned and said, “I’m going for a walk.” He went out and slammed the thick door so hard that the floor shook.
Automatically, Penn began clearing the dishes away, the untouched salad. They had started the refrigerator, and Penn carefully put the butter away on a shelf. The thought of spending the night here with David was ghastly, yet where else could he go? They were six miles from the nearest town, and there was only one car.
The door suddenly opened, and Penn nearly dropped the coffeepot.
“Come out for a walk with me,” David said. “Maybe it’ll do us both good.” He was not smiling.
Penn set the coffeepot back on the stove. A walk with David was the last thing he wanted, but he was afraid to refuse. “Have you got the flashlight?”
“No, but we don’t need it. There’s moonlight.”
They walked from the lodge door to the car, then turned left onto the dirt road that went on for two miles through the woods to the highway.
“This is a half moon,” David said. “Mind if I try a little experiment? Walk on ahead of me, here where it’s pretty clear, and let me see how much of you I can make out at thirty yards. Take big strides and count off thirty. You know, it’s for that business about Faro.”
Penn nodded. He knew. They were back on the book again, and they’d probably work a couple of hours tonight when they went back to the lodge. Penn started counting, taking big strides.
“Fine, keep going!” David called.
Twenty-eight . . . twenty-nine . . . thirty. Penn stopped and stood still. He turned around. He couldn’t see David. “Hey! Where are you?”
No answer.
Penn smiled wryly, and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Can you see me, David?”
Silence. Penn started slowly back to where he had left David. A little joke, he supposed, a mildly insulting joke, but he resolved to take no offense.
He walked on toward the lodge, where he was sure he would find David thoughtfully pacing the floor as he pondered his work, perhaps dictating already into the tape recorder; but the main room was empty. There was no sound from the corner room where they worked, nor from the closed room where David slept. Penn lit a cigarette, picked up the newspaper and sat down in the single armchair. He read with deliberate concentration, finished his cigarette and lit another. The second cigarette was gone when he got up, and he felt angry and a little scared at the same time.
He went to the lodge door and called, “David!” a couple of times, loudly. He walked toward the car, got close enough to see that there was no one sitting in it. Then he returned to the lodge and methodically searched it, looking even under the bunks.
What was David going to do, come back in the middle of the night and kill him in his sleep? No, that was crazy, as crazy as one of David’s story ideas. Penn suddenly thought of his dream, remembered David’s brief but intense interest in it the night he had told it at the dinner table. “Who was the man with you?” David had asked. But in the dream, Penn hadn’t been able to identify him. He was just a shadowy companion on a walk. “Maybe it was me,” David had said, his blue eyes shining. “Maybe you’d like me to disappear, Penn.” Neither Ginnie nor he had made a comment, Penn recalled, nor had they discussed David’s remark when they were alone. It had been so long ago, over two months ago.
Penn put that out of his mind. David had probably wandered down to the lake to be alone for a while, and hadn’t been courteous enough to tell him. Penn did the dishes, took a shower and crawled into his bunk. It was twelve-ten. He had thought he wouldn’t be able to sleep, but he was asleep in less than two minutes.
The raucous cries of ducks on the wing awakened him at six-thirty. He put on his robe and went into the bathroom, noting that David’s towel, which he had stuck hastily over the rack last night, had not been touched. Penn went to David’s room and knocked. Then he opened the door a crack. The two bunks, one above the other, were still made up. Penn washed hurriedly, dressed, and went out.
He yelled David’s name, three times, and gave it up.
By seven-thirty A.M. Penn was in the town of Croydon. He saw a small rectangular sign between a barber’s shop and a paint store that said police. He parked the car, went into the station, and told his story. As Penn had thought, the police wanted to look over the lodge. Penn led them back in David’s car.
The two policemen had heard of David Ostrander, not as a writer, apparently, but as one of the few people who had a lodge in the area. Penn showed them where he had last seen David, and told them that Mr. Ostrander had been experimenting to see how well he could see him at thirty yards.
“How long have you been working for Mr. Ostrander?”
“Four months. Three months and three weeks to be exact.”
“Had he been drinking?”
“Two scotches. His usual amount. I had the same.”
Then they walked to the lake and looked around.
“Mr. Ostrander have a wife?” one of the men asked.
“Yes. She’s at the house in Stonebridge, New York.”
“We’d better notify her.”
There was no telephone at the lodge. Penn wanted to stay on in case David turned up, but the police asked him to come with them back to the station, and Penn did not argue. At least he would be there when they talked with Ginnie, and he’d be able to speak with her himself. Maybe David had decided to go back to Stonebridge and was already home. The highway was only two miles from the lodge, and David could have flagged a bus or picked up a ride from someone, but Penn couldn’t really imagine David Ostrander doing anything that simple or obvious.
“Listen,” Penn said to the policemen before he got into David’s convertible, “I think I ought to tell you that Mr. Ostrander is kind of an odd one. He writes science fiction. I don’t know what his objective is, but I think he deliberately disappeared last night. I don’t think he was kidnapped or attacked by a bear or anything like that.”