Those Harper Women

by Stephen Birmingham

  She steps into the bedroom and rings for John.

  “Take the car and find Miss Leona at the beach.”

  His cap in his hand, John says, “Which beach, Miss Edith?”

  “How do I know which beach?” Edith cries. “Try all the beaches! Just find her and bring her home right away.”

  “Oh, dear God,” she whispers when he has gone. “Dear God.…”

  But Edith cannot lie down with a cold cloth over her head and worry—not with Diana on her way. There is the problem, now, of where to put Diana. And Poo, and Poo’s nurse. Diana is so particular. Diana must have a nice room, with plenty of closet space and of course its own bath, and here in the islands Edith knows that Diana likes cross-ventilation when she sleeps. Then she remembers the room Wallace Townsend used for his papers and specimens. The walls are lined with bookcases and cupboards, and she is sure the room needs a thorough dusting, but there are two largish windows—one with a sliver of a view of the sea—and it is on the side of the house, over the library, which means it is shaded and cool and away from the noise of the street. Diana has always been such a light sleeper (sleeping with a black domino over her eyes and plugs in her ears), and that room of Wallace’s is one of the quietest in the house. It has a bathroom (which, she suddenly remembers, is missing a toilet seat, but someone can run into town for one of those or, if necessary, borrow one from one of the other bathrooms). A bed will have to be moved in and, yes, a dresser, and surely there are some pictures around the house that could be hung on the walls to brighten things up (the Inness, of course, which Sibbie’s picture made homeless), and she will tell her girls to pick some flowers, and isn’t it nice to have so many things to do to keep one’s mind from worrying?

  A rosebud in a bud vase beside Diana’s bed. And a bowl of cigarettes, and an ashtray. The windows themselves could probably stand a washing, if there’s time. Diana notices everything that’s out of place. If only Jimmy and Gordon weren’t here, it would all be so simple. It will be Wallace’s room, and the result may be a little makeshift but perhaps, just possibly, Diana will understand. Edith thinks isn’t it odd that this big house, which was built for so much large-scale entertaining, will never have had such a large crowd under its roof before? Edith sits at her desk making furious lists of things to be done. Then she rings for Nellie to summon her staff into emergency session. In the middle of everything, she remembers that Diana asked to be met at the airport. But John has been dispatched with the car to look for Leona, and now there is no one to meet Diana!

  Less than two hours later, Diana’s Vuitton trunks and suitcases and hatboxes form a small pyramid in the front hall. “Why wasn’t I met?” were her first words. “I had to take a taxi.”

  Now Diana, still in the suit and gloves and hat she arrived in, is on the hall telephone, talking to the Long Distance operator. “I don’t care how many calls he has stacked up!” she says. “This is urgent. This is his niece, Diana Gardiner, and I must speak to Mr. Arthur Harper immediately.… Yes, it’s an emergency!”

  Diana neglected to mention that, in addition to her son Poo, and Poo’s Scotch nanny, Mrs. McCutcheon, she was also arriving with her two white standard poodles. The excited dogs leap and bound about the hall, bejeweled with rhinestone-crusted collars, dash into the drawing room, and come careening out again, barking, and the even more excited Poo runs after them, screaming with mad glee, while Mrs. McCutcheon in her gray uniform runs after Poo, saying, “Now, sonny.… Now, sonny.…” Edith stands in the center of the hall, trying to read the magazine article that Diana has flung into her hand.

  “No! I tell you this call must have priority,” Diana says. “Put him on at once. Operator, tell them that this is his niece calling, Diana Gardiner. If he knows it’s me he’ll talk to me, you idiot woman! Yes it is essential.… No, I can’t wait!” Covering the telephone mouthpiece with her gloved hand, she says, “Poo, sweet, can’t you see that Mummy’s on the phone?” And then, “What? What did you say, Operator?”

  “Now, sonny …” says Mrs. McCutcheon in pursuit of Poo.

  “In his efforts to gain stock control of the juicy Luxitron Corp.,” Edith reads, “the senior Harper brother began, some six months ago, a carefully devised campaign …”

  The dogs return from another whirling tour of her house, with Poo and Mrs. McCutcheon behind them, and Diana is saying, “Give me the Chief Operator.… Give me the Supervisor …”

  “… Instead of staging a proxy battle, Mr. Harold Harper chose …”

  Poo comes running into his grandmother’s knees and nearly overturns her, and the two white dogs dance around them in a circle. Then one of the dogs stops, stands still, and then begins to sit in such a fashion that it is quite apparent what is going to happen next.

  Diana, seeing it, points and screams, “Oh—look, look!” too late. “Oh, Marcel, you naughty boy!”

  “Mrs. McCutcheon, please get these animals out of here!” Edith says. “Take the dogs, and Poo, out into the garden.”

  “Is this the Chief Operator?” Diana says. “I must get through to Mr. Harper. It is an emergency.… yes … I’ll hold on …”

  “… Availing himself of every scrap of Harper Industries stock he could lay his hands upon” (Including mine, Edith thinks. Including mine) “Harper went to the banks, the big boys. To the money men of Wall Street, it came as a surprise …”

  “I’m holding, Operator. I’m holding.…”

  “Meanwhile, the SEC, long suspicious of illegal ‘insider’ activity in connection with the rapidly rising Harper stock, moved quietly in to investigate. Was Harper himself forcing the price of his stock upward? Why? To increase its borrowing power so that he could wrest control of giant Luxitron? To the Street at large” (Oh why do journalists have to write like this? Edith thinks) “it looked as if Harry Harper was a genius, he had the Midas touch. The SEC was not so sure.”

  “Operator, can’t you just cut in on whoever it is he’s talking to?… Why not? Why can’t you just …”

  “When Luxitron officials first got wind of Harper’s scheme is not yet known, but simultaneously they learned of the SEC’s peculiar interest in him. One thing was clear immediately: Luxitron wished no part of Harry Harper. As the Market rose, with heavy trading in both Luxitron and Harper …”

  “Why can’t you just unplug one of those little plugs and plug me in …?”

  “… and with 24% of Harper Industries stock still family-owned, and personally controlled by Harry Harper” (But you don’t control mine, Harold—not mine!) “and, with considerable charm and what appears to have been a good amount of plain old-fashioned gall, wangling smaller shareholders into letting him be ‘custodian’ of their shares … with promises of fat gains, supplemented by an organized whisper-campaign that Harper was ‘hot’ …”

  “Operator? Operator? I’ve been disconnected! Operator.…” Diana Jiggles the bar on the telephone rapidly up and down.

  “Borrowing furiously … forcing the price of his stock upward, and then borrowing more …”

  “Oh, what the hell’s the matter now? Operator? Hello?”

  “Meanwhile, in St. Thomas, V.I., where the original Harper fortune was amassed (Harper-West Indies Sugar Products, Ltd.), the only member of the Harper family willing to discuss brother Harry’s curious juggling act is his older sister, plumpish, peckish Mrs. Edith Harper Blakewell, also an important Harper stockholder. If her stock has played a role in Harry’s adventure, Edith Blakewell seems unaware of it. Concerning her brother’s activities, she has only this to say: ‘As long as my checks come once a month, I don’t ask questions.’ When informed that Harper stock had doubled in the last six months, Edith Blakewell replied, ‘Gracious! Is that good or bad?’ The answer to her question will come from the Securities and Exchange Commission.…” (This is all your fault, Leona, Edith thinks. You made me see that Mr. Winslow.) “At this point, a glimpse at the family’s business history is more than a little revealing.…” Turned, twisted, her words to hi
m that afternoon about her father fly back at her like knives.

  “‘Where you find sugar, you will also find flies.…’”

  “Uncle Arthur? Uncle Arthur, it’s Diana—” Edith hears, and puts down the magazine.

  “Yes … yes … but where is he? Obviously the first thing to do is find where he is. Yes … but what do they mean ‘illegal’? Is borrowing illegal? Couldn’t we just say—listen to me, Uncle Arthur, I know a little bit about money, don’t forget. I’m not Mother. Is my stock involved in this?” She puts her head in her free hand, and her voice becomes soft and small. “Yes. Oh, good God! How much? Good God. But look, couldn’t we say we knew about it, we approved—? Oh, good God.… No, no I’m here at Mother’s.… Yes, she’s here. Just a minute.” With her face absolutely blank, Diana holds out the telephone to her mother. “He wants to talk to you,” she says.

  Edith takes the phone from Diana who sits, huddled and still, in the chair beside her.

  “Edie,” his distant voice says, “Edie, this is terrible … it’s godawful, Edie.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “The banks are calling for more collateral. I don’t know where I’m going to get it. We’re trying—”

  “Where is my stock?”

  “The banks have it all.”

  “He stole it …”

  “There are more people involved in this than just us. I’m just beginning to find out. It looks as if—Jesus, it looks as if he’s been borrowing on thousands of shares that were never his. I had no idea what he was up to—honestly I didn’t. If I’d known—”

  “Of course … of course.”

  “The extent of it.… We’re just beginning to find out. There are company funds we suddenly can’t locate, Edie. Do you understand?”

  “Where is Harold?”

  “He left at noon yesterday, and we can’t locate him. There’s nobody at the house. We can’t locate Barbara. It looks as if—”

  “He’s run away.”

  Beside her, Diana stiffens in her chair. “Run away. Oh, the dirty, yellow, chicken-livered coward! Of course he’s run away.”

  “All because of what this magazine says, Arthur?”

  “The magazine just brought it before the public. Apparently there was a letter from you, asking for your certificates. I think that’s what scared him, Edie, because he didn’t have them. By noon yesterday, the stock was off two points. He must have known then that the jig was up. And today, when this story hit—Edie, you can’t imagine what it’s been like. You’ll be getting calls, I’m sure, from reporters. But none of us is talking to the papers at the moment, do you understand? If I were you, I’d take my phone off the hook and leave it there for the next three days. And don’t see anybody who comes to the house. We don’t want to make any announcements till we know exactly where we stand.”

  “I understand.”

  “And frankly, Edie, where we stand looks pretty bad. It looks godawful.”

  “Oh, Arthur … oh, Boots …”

  “And don’t blame yourself about the magazine story, Edie. It was bound to come out sooner or later. The SEC’s had its eye on him for months, as it turns out. If this story hadn’t come out this morning, the SEC would have published its findings next week. So don’t blame yourself.”

  “Yes.”

  He chuckles softly. “But I must admit you had some colorful things to say about Papa,” he says.

  “Arthur, believe me, I had no idea—”

  “But they were all true, weren’t they? All true. Well, goodby, Edie. I’ll be in touch as soon as I know more.”

  Edith hangs up the telephone. Diana is on her feet now, and has lighted a cigarette. She moves slowly and absently about the hall, the cigarette trailing from one hand, and for several minutes the only sound is the clicking of her thin heels on the polished floor.

  “I still don’t understand it,” Edith says at last.

  “Don’t you?” Diana says in a dead voice. “It’s simple. He’s broken every SEC regulation in the book that’s all. Borrowed money on stock he didn’t own. Taken company money without authorization. We could say we gave him our permission to mortgage our share, but they’d just charge us with complicity. It’s against the law, you see, to try to force the price of your own stock upward. He could go to jail for this—and may. And now our stock is dropping, and Luxitron is dropping because of his connection with it, the banks are calling for collateral—and where’s Uncle Harold? He’s—just—run away. Robbed us and run away!”

  “At least Arthur’s doing his best—”

  “Arthur! He’s such a sad sack!” All at once she turns to Edith and cries, “Mother! This is all your fault! You did this!”

  “I did not do it. Harold did it. I broke no laws. Harold broke laws.”

  “So what? If you’d kept your trap shut, he might have gotten away with it, and we’d have all been rich. Now we’re paupers! Paupers! Oh!” And leaping over what the dog has done in the center of the floor, Diana Gardiner comes running at her mother, her gloved hands upraised, as though to tear her mother limb from limb.

  Edith is saved from Diana’s flying hands only by sudden, terrible shrieks from the direction of the garden, shrieks that seem to come from several people at once, and that are accompanied by the sound of running footsteps. Edith and Diana stop, then run to the front door. On the veranda they are met by Mrs. McCutcheon, dripping wet, her straw-colored hair down across her face, her gray uniform clinging to her adhesively. She has a wailing and equally dripping Poo in her arms.

  Mrs. McCutcheon glares at Edith accusingly. “He fell in your pool!”

  “Oh, Poo—Poo! How did it happen?” Diana cries, accepting the damp, sobbing burden of her child.

  “He was running and he ran right in! I had to jump in after him, and I’m no swimmer, either!” Mrs. McCutcheon says, continuing to look at Edith as though it, too, were all her fault.

  “Well, I can see that neither of you is drowned,” Edith says, as Poo coughs and spits and sobs.

  “Really, Mother! You should be more careful of that place with tiny children around! It’s not safe! That pool should be fenced! And Poo hates salt water!”

  Edith is about to make a retort to this, but changes her mind. She would say to Diana that if Diana spent less time trotting Poo around with her to Paris dress collections, and more time teaching him how to be a little boy, and how to swim … but she doesn’t say any of these things. She goes to the wet and howling grandson in her daughter’s arms. “Poor little Poo!” she says.

  But Poo takes one terrified look at Edith and screams, “Mum-ma-a!” and throws his arms around Diana’s neck and buries his face against her shoulder, and the destruction of the afternoon seems complete.

  But Diana says, “Oh, Poo—don’t you remember your own dear Granny? It’s your own dear darling Granny, Poo.…” There are tears in Diana’s eyes now, and then both women are weeping over the weeping child. And Mrs. McCutcheon, sensing that a family crisis has arisen which excludes her from its significance, withdraws.

  The little Negro chauffeur, in his dark green uniform and polished boots, walks slowly along the crowded beach, the sun flashing on his bright brass buttons. He nods, smiling, at old friends, for he is a well-known figure on the island, and he stops to make occasional polite inquiries. Then he continues, peering at groups of reclining bodies, scanning the swimmers in the sea. Curious faces turn upward and follow his zigzagging progress.

  Leona, Gordon, and Jimmy are discussing the newspaper clipping she has shown them. Gordon, the lawyer, and Jimmy, the broker, have different opinions.

  “This is simply from a gossip column,” Gordon says. “I wouldn’t make too much of it if I were you. Besides, these so-called exposes are never quite as startling as the magazines make them sound as though they’re going to be. There are such things as libel laws.”

  “Still, there’s been an awful lot of talk along the Street,” Jimmy says.

  Leona is the first to
see the approaching John. She jumps up from the sand and says, “Oh, dear. Something’s happened.”

  Twenty

  “You!” Diana Gardiner is screaming at Leona. “You did this! This man was a friend of yours, it seems! You let him come here, let him talk to Mother!”

  Leona sits huddled in a velvet chair, a cigarette between her shaking fingers.

  “Now wait a minute, Diana,” Edith says, “Leona honestly didn’t know—not in the beginning—that this was the kind of story he was going to write. Be fair. It was a mistake on Leona’s part, but it was an honest one.”

  “Read it!” Diana says, waving the magazine at Leona. “Just read what he says!”

  “I’ve already read it,” Leona says quietly. “He showed it to me.”

  “You see?” Diana cries to Edith. “She knew! She knew it all along! He showed it to her. And she did nothing! Just sat here like a silly goose, going to the beach! Didn’t you comprehend what he had written? Did you just sit, doing nothing at all while he went right ahead ruining us?”

  “I tried,” she says. “I tried to stop him.”

  “How? In what way? By saying please? Uh!” she snorts and hurls the magazine, pages fluttering, to the floor. “Did it even occur to you that the only sensible thing to do would have been to call Uncle Harold immediately and tell him what this man was planning to say about him? It seems to me that any halfway intelligent human being, with an ounce of family loyalty, would at least have thought of that. But no. You didn’t do anything. With a little advance warning, Harold might have been able to stop it. Now it’s too late. Because you sat on your fanny in the sun.”

  Gordon Paine, a few minutes earlier, mumbling something about getting dressed for dinner, has managed to escape the scene and the women’s voices. But Jimmy Breed has remained. He sits in the corner of the room, saying nothing, his face grave, his eyes intently on Leona.

  Diana picks up her highball glass and rattles the ice cubes. She extends the glass in Jimmy’s direction. “Fix this for me, darling, Scotch and water,” she says, not looking at him. He stands up slowly and takes Diana’s glass.