Lemon in the Basket

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “It’s if they can wiggle things around so that it can be ‘politically wise’ to send him to America and an American. Of all the idiocy!” Maggie’s voice condemned politics. “Never mind,” she said, as if it had been the Judge who had mentioned politics. “Alice Foster is a very strong-minded character.”

  “I had heard that the King of Alalaf was an Absolute Monarch,” he teased her.

  “Oh, there’s always some woman modifying all that,” said Maggie airily.

  The house was one-story and, although newly painted, old-fashioned. It sat on an unhandy triangle of land, too near a commercial street. The most desirable thing about it was its postal address. It lay on the very fringe of Beverly Hills. Lurlene had been wild to have it, a year and a half ago.

  Rufus let her out at the front. She used her key and put up the light in what she still thought of as the “front room.” She stepped out of her shoes at once and padded through to open the back door for him. Then she took a can of beer out of the refrigerator, went back to the front room and sat down rather heavily in her upholstered rocking chair.

  The front room was furnished well enough. She kept it scupulously clean. None of the furniture was shabby. She usually felt the effect to be fine. But it’s another world, she thought, remembering the terrace scene. Yah, if you have money …

  She had her bra unhooked and was sitting there, with her stout legs apart, when Rufus came through, bearing a can of beer of his own. He sat down in his accustomed place, angled away from the cold fireplace toward the television set.

  “Um, boy,” said Lurlene, weary of trying to watch her speech all evening, “that Tamsen sure thinks she’s pretty cute. I see she had her hair up, at least. How come a grown woman goes around most of the time with her hair hanging down her back?”

  He didn’t speak, but Lurlene somehow knew it was perfectly safe, tonight, to attack Tamsen. “What kind of stuff does she get ‘hung’? Those fried-egg-looking messes, I suppose. I mean, who needs them? And listen,” she continued, “how come Phillida has to go around getting money out of other people? Why don’t she just give out some of her own? I guess your brother makes plenty, right?”

  Sometimes, when she got off like this on the subject of his family, he’d start laughing and tell her to just relax. Sometimes, he’d look a little bit sad and tell her she didn’t know them like he did. Tonight he didn’t say anything.

  “They sure are some bunch of high-flyers,” she muttered. “Pretty fancy.”

  Rufus got up and turned on the TV. It was a talk program. The M.C. was wrangling with some inarticulate volunteer, and cruelly, for entertainment values, preventing the poor soul from making his point.

  Lurlene didn’t bother to try to follow the argument. She surmised, with some shrewdness, that Rufus didn’t want to talk, and TV gave the sense of life and noise that relieved you of that responsibility whether you paid attention to the tube or not.

  Lurlene herself couldn’t help feeling low, or like gypped, or something. Every time they went to one of these family deals at Maggie’s, Maggie always put on all that dog. Lurlene always went to a lot of trouble to gussy herself up, and usually left her house feeling some self-confidence. And then ended up by coming home with this lousy feeling that she had been off-base again.

  What do I do? She was brooding, now. Didn’t do one damn thing I shouldn’t have. I was well-dressed. I was polite.

  The man on TV was shouting, “And the criminal, he not only gets off, but he’s the one who gets his name in the papers.”

  “What is your point, sir?” snapped the M.C. “If you’ve got a point, kindly come to it, unless it’s on the top of your head.”

  “I’m only saying—”

  “You’re not saying anything, pardon me. Next questioner, please.”

  “They talk so damn fast,” said Lurlene aloud. “Tamsen was right about that. You sure can’t catch on to what the hell they’re talking about. And I don’t think that’s very polite.”

  “Tamsen,” said Rufus, in a funny way.

  On the screen, the next questioner had begun to drone, entangling himself in so many clauses that all hope of a sentence was soon gone.

  Lurlene said, gloomily, “Even her name’s getting in the papers, I suppose. Um, boy, like I say … It don’t mean that much,” she added sourly. “So what is it, to get famous or something? So long as you lead a decent life and raise up some decent …” She stopped.

  “Who needs fame?” Rufus rolled his eyes.

  “What I mean!” Lurlene settled down to souring the grapes, pleased to think that he was with her. “You want your name in the papers, what the heck, all you got to do is go ahead, be a criminal, like the man just said.”

  “Steal a million dollars?” Rufus said, with a saucy quirk of his lips. “Blow off the Statue of Liberty’s head?” He seemed to be pleased and relaxed by this fancy.

  “Hey!” Lurlene admired his imagination. “Or you take a big gangster,” she continued.

  “Sell top secrets to the enemy?”

  “Or even you get in death row,” said Lurlene cheerily, “like who was this killer? In the headlines for twelve years, already? Some world.” She sighed luxuriously over the sins of everybody else. “No place to raise a kid, I’m telling you. I’m just as glad.”

  Rufus got up and went into the bedroom. Lurlene pricked up her ears. In a moment, she heard the water running in the bathroom and she sagged.

  But when he came back and threw himself down into his chair, she recognized a certain sulky sly look.

  “Say, uh …” she began, “when you seen the doctor Friday, did he think it was so smart to keep on taking that stuff?”

  “He doesn’t think I’m smart,” said Rufus. “He doesn’t think I’m stupid.” He spoke with a strange cheer.

  Lurlene began to think it was time to butter him up a little. “Well, how can I blame you?” She sighed. “Tonight was pretty hard to take. Pretty tough.”

  “What was?” He was already going off into that limp state? Lurlene didn’t like it too much and that was the truth.

  “Oh, I mean the whole pack of them, boasting how smart they were. And not one of them willing to give you any ‘in’ on their rackets. Their own brother. They could give you a break, once in a while.” She often complained for him. Sometimes, he listened.

  This time he said, “No, no, I’m lucky.”

  “Huh?”

  “Just to belong. Tamsen said so.”

  Lurlene snorted. “Maybe Tamsen will give you lessons, how to mess around with some gobs of paint. So you can be immortal, too.”

  “Get my name into the pages of history?” he said, dreamily.

  Sometimes he lost her. Sometimes, he took on a voice just like the rest of them, and Lurlene got lost.

  “Yah,” she said. “Well,” she got up, “you coming to bed?”

  “No, no,” said Rufus. “I’m going to sit here and contemplate immortal fame.”

  “Yah,” she cried, suddenly furious with him. “You do that, why don’t you?” Lurlene walked toward their bedroom on her aching feet. “Um, boy,” she said viciously, “I thought I was smart, glomming on to a Tyler. But I sure got the lemon in the basket.”

  3

  “Maggie, dear,” said Maggie, on Wednesday morning.

  She was reading her mail, aloud, as usual. The Judge always enjoyed hearing Maggie take on the personality of the writer. It tickled him, now, when her voice became slightly nasal and began to tumble over itself with dips and swoops of energy. He didn’t have to be told that the letter was from Alice Foster.

  “I’m about to tip you off to all the trouble you have let yourself in for. Our small package is being shipped, at last. Hooray!”

  “Hooray!” piped Maggie on her own, for punctuation.

  (The Judge put in no “hooray” but began a quiet bracing toward the immediate future.)

  “It must come undercover,” she continued to read. “Please ask William whether he knows ways-and-me
ans to keep eager snoopers from noticing anything odd at your end? At this end, it is just going to be easier, all around, if nothing is known about what’s going on until it has gone on and is successfully over.”

  (The Judge let notions of ways-and-means to keep the American press from noticing the arrival of a small foreign prince, and retinue, ripple across his mind.)

  “It may be awkward,” said Alice Foster in her letter. “We have had ‘unrest’ in Alalaf, you realize. These are fierce people. With less luck, more blood might have been shed in the University riots recently. Just to give you some idea of the prevailing sentiments, you, my dear Maggie, by virtue of your citizenship alone, are not only an evil-minded infidel, but a fiendishly clever barbarian, with all modern improvements at your nasty fingertips. Your folks are quite capable of having used a racing course as a murder weapon. Oh, yes!”

  “Oh, no!” said Maggie, as Maggie.

  “Prejudice is prejudice,” murmured the Judge, “whether pro or con, to or fro.” (This affair was going to be awkward, all right, he thought, as had been said before.)

  “So anxiety will be high, in high places,” Maggie read, “without added tension of a populace in an uproar. So it may be impossible, but it is important, so please don’t, if you can help it, let the newsmen in on this.”

  (If we can help it, thought the Judge soberly.)

  “The mother has already written the Doctor and they will set the date. The plan is to get our party off so quietly that it won’t be known, in the marketplace, that they have gone away at all. They will transfer to a commercial flight, traveling tourist. We hope that will make it possible for them to arrive without any bugles blowing there, either.

  “I’ll list for you who is coming. Six, in all. Mother and child, who will try to be inconspicuous. Inga, who looks after him, you know, is of Scandinavian descent and might as well have come from South Dakota. She’s no problem and she’ll be in the hospital with the patient. But there will be, alas, three of these Alalafian hawk-profiles along, as Western garb cannot disguise. At least two of them will be flashing their dark eyes suspiciously at all times. J’s maid (her name is Zora) will come to you with J, and be useful, I hope. But the pair of young men, faithful watchdogs who were insisted upon by you-know-who, propose, I fear, to sleep at their master’s feet, and heaven knows how they are to be coped with. The best I could do was to see that the chosen two understand and speak English.

  “I beg of you, please try? If the hospital has a suite of some kind, that might be part of the answer. Perhaps William knows what else might be done, or whom to tell.

  “Now, if it does get out, and I know it may, the difficulty will be … you know … difficult.

  “But if the worst should happen, difficulty isn’t the word. I think you will have to know” … uncannily, Maggie’s voice gained speed and agitation with the handwriting … “that certain jailbirds, here, will find their ‘trial’ postponed until such time as the package comes home as good or better than new. This is in the bargain. No, I don’t mean that. It is related.

  “All right, I’ll lay it on the line. I am afraid that, if the worst should happen … and oh, Maggie, pray it won’t!… then these streets will be running with ravening wolves, and tidbits of the proper flavor may have to be thrown.”

  (The Judge interpreted, with a shock. She meant the twenty-eight poor-but-honest American professors!)

  “I say may have to be. I say I am afraid. I may have become, unbeknownst to myself, a foolish old woman. But passions in the blood of the people, that some cool hand or other has been using for a handle, may get out of hand. As William, I think, would agree.

  “Well, fear is fear, and no point living by that, do you think? What I believe in, of course, is the happy ending. Or I wouldn’t be having anything to do with the plot, now would I?

  “I am not coming. You understand. I stay where I am, in my apartment in the city, which, I daresay, has modern improvements, as for instance bugging. But I have my methods. So I’ll spider it up and keep an eye on, from here. While there …

  “Oh, Maggie, I know how much this puts on you and yours. I wish it needn’t. I wish it were simpler. All devious and calculating and undercover as it has to try to be, it is still the shortest distance to our dearest hope. May he live! Toward which hope I trust your devotion, and thank God for it. As ever, your devoted, Alice.”

  Maggie read the last lines sharply and let the paper fall. She was not weeping, but the Judge patted her anyway. (It was a habit he had. He enjoyed it, and Maggie never seemed to mind.)

  “Secrecy is very desirable,” he said soothingly. “We can manage, or have a good try, eh? Let me see. No entertaining, or acquiring debt by being entertained, while Jaylia is with us. Humph. As soon as we know the day, I think I must come down with some ailment that keeps me close indoors, at home. You, of course, will refuse to leave my side.”

  “Why, I wouldn’t think of it!” she said at once. “I’ll cancel everything. People will simply have to understand.”

  “Meanwhile, I’ll make a little list.”

  “Oh?”

  “Alice is right about that. Sometimes the best way to keep a secret is to tell the right people, at the right time, all about it.”

  “You take care of that, then,” said Maggie, becoming the executive. “Duncan must meet them at the plane, I think. Jaylia knows him, and he is so civilian.”

  “Yes.”

  “Jaylia and her maid will have the west wing. We can trust Sam and Hilde, of course.”

  “I think so,” said the Judge, with his mind full of forebodings.

  “If there was no such thing as trustworthy devotion in this ridiculous world,” burst Maggie, speaking to his thoughts, “it couldn’t operate at all!”

  “No, of course it couldn’t, Maggie darling,” he agreed. “Still, since it does, in a fashion, there must be such a thing.” On all sides, alas, he was thinking.

  Maggie was often a mind-reader. “O.K. We’ll gamble there is enough, on our side.”

  The Judge had seen through the ever-changing masks to the hardcore Maggie before. “Yes, sir-ma’am,” he said.

  So Maggie became, perversely, as totally female as could be, putting everything upside down and backwards. “It will be suitable,” she decreed, “for you to have the gout, just like some old millionaire in a comic strip. Nobody will dare come near us, because you shall be so mean and cross and moody, and uncooperative, and stupid and selfish …”

  The Judge blushed under these crude compliments, but there was no denying that he did enjoy them.

  When he left her, finally, counting his blessings on one hand and his worries on the other, he went into his study, ticking off on his toes a name or two that, from the top, might cut publicity close to the root if that danger arose.

  He did not care for Alice Foster’s notion that there were hostages. Or rather, morsels kept on hand to appease. In the event a doctor lost a patient? (As if he willingly would!) Yet sillier things than this had happened in the world.

  Say the boy died in the United States of America, as had his father before him. Say the people of Alalaf went into riot, blaming the King for having put their darling secretly into the power of the dog, which is to say, the hands of the evil and untrustworthy barbarian infidels. Say the King tossed them twenty-eight American “spies.”

  Would Ibn-Ibrahim-Abd-er-Rahman, the Servant of the Merciful One (otherwise known as Al Asad) do such a thing?

  The Judge wondered why, since the possibility of this surgery had appeared when Duncan was in Alalaf a year ago, the old King had not in the meantime influenced his people toward a softer attitude, just in case. But who could know why not? Perhaps he could not.

  Al Asad, fierce in independence, played on his small scale the east against the west, and on this balance kept his tiny state aloof from the pressures toward and from the U.A.R., as well. Which wasn’t easy. Nor could it possibly last forever.

  The Judge realized that he did
not and could not know how that mind worked. Supposing that the King did do such a thing? Say he fed the professors to the wolves. Or, supposing his people took, or were allowed to take (and who could ever say which?), those prisoners by force? As in lynch? In either case, must not this country do somewhat more than frown?

  The Judge winced. He knew very well that no sequence of events was totally predictable, but he thought it not a bad idea to nip the possibility of this particular sequence as early as possible. But not, he mused sadly, quite at the root. Mitch could not possibly refuse to try to patch that poor little heart, if nonpolitical factors gave him hope of success. No, not any more than he could possibly will to fail.

  None of us will do either, he said to himself.

  Meanwhile, the Judge, lest Maggie read his mind one day, kept himself from verbalizing his strong suspicion that Alice Foster herself was (or believed that she was) to be held hostage in a foreign capital.

  4

  On the following Tuesday, a little after noon, Lurlene finally found the house number, parked her car, inspected her makeup in the rear-view mirror, drew on her gloves virtuously, and then found herself mincing across the short dooryard on redwood rounds, inspecting everything she saw with a sharp assessing eye. For heaven’s sakes! The house was just an old shack covered with rusty-looking brown shingles, and it didn’t have any property, either, practically jammed in down here at the bottom of the canyon, with a steep hill behind it.

  She couldn’t find the button for the bell, but before she could make up her mind to knock, which might not be ladylike, Tamsen opened the door and said, “Oh, Lurlene! Hello. Come in. It’s so hot, isn’t it?”

  Lurlene had to admit the dark interior seemed a little cooler than the car. Sure was a hot day—too hot to drive in traffic while encased in a new girdle, to have on nylons and heels, and a synthetic silk dress, when everybody knows cotton is cooler. She had sacrificed. But here stood Tamsen, in a plain white cotton shift, her bare feet in sandals, and wearing her hair hanging down her back in that childish way. Lurlene thought she looked as if she were just off to the beach.