Those Harper Women

by Stephen Birmingham

Twenty-One

  Once more it is Wednesday afternoon, and Alan Osborn is with her. The examination is over, and they are having their brandy in her room.

  “So now they’ve gone,” he says.

  “They left for the airport half an hour ago. And good riddance.”

  “Poor Edith.”

  “Don’t say ‘Poor Edith.’ I said good riddance, and I meant it. One thing’s certain. She goes out of my will entirely. I’m not going to help support her in her little flings. My mind’s made up. Everything I have goes to your hospital, Alan.”

  He is smiling at her with one of his white-rabbit smiles.

  “Of course there won’t be as much money now. But there’s this house, some leases on the old Sans Souci property, and I have a few good paintings, and some good pieces of jewelry. Despite what Diana keeps saying, we are not all going to be paupers as a result of this—though there’ll be some tough sledding for a while.”

  “Have they located your brother Harold yet?”

  Edith laughs. “One report has him in South America and another has him in Switzerland. Last night I had a dream that he was here, in St. Thomas, and that he came stalking me through the garden with a gun to get even with me for the things I said. But I’m sure I shall have no such luck as that.”

  He continues to smile at her.

  “Have you been following this thing in the papers, Alan, the way I have? Have you noticed how wonderfully Arthur has been emerging through all of this? To me, that’s the best thing that’s come out of it. Suddenly everyone can see how much of a man Arthur is.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” she says, “I’ve just told you I was leaving everything to your hospital, and you haven’t even said thank you. Isn’t this what you want? What do you think?”

  He twirls the brandy in his glass. “I think,” he says, “that you are your father’s daughter.”

  “Well!” she says. “That was a reasonably unpleasant crack, wasn’t it?” She sips her brandy. “You don’t seem to understand, Alan, there were a lot of things I could have told her, but she would never listen to me. I could have told her things that would have helped her—things about the past—”

  “The past can be a pretty chilly gift, if nothing else goes with it.”

  “Nothing else! I was going to leave her all my money!”

  “Ah,” he says, “you were, but now you’re not. When there was a lot of it, you were going to give her all of it. Now that there’s not so much of it, you’re not going to give her anything. Poor Edith. You’re stymied, aren’t you? Without any money, what have you got left to fight with? Yes, there is going to be some tough sledding—some very tough sledding for a while.”

  “Well,” she says after a moment. “I asked for this, didn’t I? I asked you what you thought. Now you’ve told me.”

  “At least Leona won’t be all alone.”

  “You mean she’s luckier than I am. She has someone. I have no one. Well, perhaps you’re right.” Then she says, “Very well. What shall I do?”

  “Do about what?”

  “Should I leave everything to Leona—or not?”

  With a wink, he says, “I thought you said your mind was made up.”

  “Money never did a damned thing for me, I’ll say that. It never gave me anything but misery. But in her case—”

  “Perhaps she should be allowed the chance to try it on her own,” he says. “It may not do anything for her either, but it might be worth it to her to have the chance.”

  “Yes. That’s what I meant,” she says. “So suppose I keep my will just as it is, leaving everything to her—except the car, which is for Sibbie—and add a codicil—just a little note. Asking her, if she doesn’t want the house, or any of the other things, to consider giving them to your hospital, or selling them to you for a nominal figure.”

  He smiles a particularly male smile, the smile men give you which means that their thoughts have been running several yards ahead of your own. “Whatever you think, my dear,” he says.

  A breeze stirs the heavy curtains of her big old room, and there is a chill in the air. “February,” she says, almost absently. And then, “Well, I’ll think about this.”

  “February—yes, and more tourists coming to get away from winter.”

  “I’ll be alone here for a while,” she says. “Now that Leona’s gone. Let’s see more of each other, Alan. I want to plan a series of little dinner parties, Alan, for people like you and Sibbie Sanderson, the old friends. We’ll pass the time. We’ll have fun. Let’s be kind to one another, Alan, as long as we’re all there is.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  She comes toward him and his pale eyes are sparkling behind his spectacles. “Drink to that,” Edith says.

  They touch glasses.

  “And—who knows?—someday we may become lovers after all,” she says.

  “It’s a great temptation.” He goes to the window. “Look, Edith—there’s your daughter,” Alan says.

  “Daughter …?”

  Half-understanding, forgetting really that Diana has not left yet, and thinking that he must have meant to say granddaughter, Edith steps to the window and looks out, and there is Diana, seated on the stone bench in the garden. The twin poodles, Marcel and Marceau, sit at her feet, their powderpuff tails wagging in the dust, their tongues hanging out happily as Diana scratches them, tenderly and absently, behind the ears, her fingers deep in the tops of their tufted heads.

  Looking out at Diana from the window, why is she suddenly reminded of another scene, one that she had all but forgotten? It is Dolly Harper sitting on the stone bench, Dolly Harper over twenty years ago. It was after Edith’s mother came home from Paris, returned to St. Thomas, just before the second war. She had bought herself a small house on Signal Hill and sometimes, in the afternoons, she would come to visit Edith. They would sit in the garden and talk of the old days, when St. Thomas was still a Danish colony. They would talk of the gay balls that used to be held in the colonial governor’s house and, though Dolly Harper had never been invited to any of them, they would pretend that she had been to every one. They would talk of the champagne, and what the women wore. The series of little strokes had affected Dolly Harper’s speech, and she spoke with halting pauses, her lips puckering and working, and her fingers tugging at that laboring mouth as though to pull the words out. “Let’s … sit with our backs to the sun,” she said one day. “I’ve always … hated the sun in my eyes. Sunburns are so … unbecoming, and I do believe they cause wrinkles.” They sat on the stone bench under the heaven tree.

  “I’ve always loved this … time of day best in the islands,” she said. Her hands roamed anxiously about, patting her silk skirts, pressing the soft spots of her knees, and then one hand covered Edith’s left hand, kneading Edith’s knuckles with her strong fingers. “Yes,” she said, “this is the best … time. Your father used to say it too. We’d sit in the garden of the old house at Sans Souci and … wait for the sun to go behind the wall. Then the stones of the terrace held their heat, and one’s … feet were warm, though the breeze was … cool. Yes. Oh, we must see a great deal of each … other, Edith, while I’m here. We’ll play cards. Do you … remember the card games we used to play? Piquet … Rubicon Piquet! I imagine I’ve forgotten how to play … Rubicon Piquet now, but as soon as I … play it I suppose it will come back. Oh, so much time has gone by, so many years. Sometimes I wonder what it all meant.”

  “What it all meant, Mama?”

  “Yes. Was it … necessary? Oh, I suppose it was. I suppose it had to be the way it … turned out. If only there were some way of knowing ahead of time how things will turn out. But of course there never is. It’s like a … war, isn’t it? No one ever knows how a war will turn out … all you can do is guess and hope. I thought it was going to be so … simple, but it got … complicated.” She laughed, and her eyes were clear and cool. “You and Charles.… and I thought he really liked you. I never knew he’d … go away like that, n
ever dreamed.”

  “I’ve had a good many years to think about it, Mama. And I think he loved me—for a while.”

  “But then he went … away! Who’d have thought it? I never did. I never dreamed that would be the … result of all my plans. Remember, dear, that it was I who got Mrs. Blakewell to ask us to tea at her … house. I and nobody else. I did that and you said it could never … be done. But I won the wager! I won the dollar!” And she laughed again.

  It seemed queer to be sitting there and talking, so dispassionately and almost gaily, about the dead, and the things the dead had done, and the plans that had been spun out for their future.

  “I never dreamt he’d … act that way,” Dolly Harper said.

  “Act what way? I don’t quite know what you’re talking about, Mama.”

  “Act the way he did, so … violently … and then running off when he was still not well after I told him about the threat of Bertin.”

  Edith sat very still. “You told him?” she said.

  “Yes. You see, Bertin was a … threat, I knew it. It was dangerous to have him in the same town with you, much less coming … to call on you again! After all, your affair with Bertin was of … long standing. It had begun back in Morristown before you and Charles were even … married, and it was continuing here.”

  “And you told all this to Charles,” Edith said.

  “Oh, yes. I wanted him to take you … away, to New York. I wanted him to keep a closer … watch on you, away from the unhealthy influences. Love is like a … disease, you know. If you … catch the wrong kind it can kill you and ruin everything and everything around you.”

  “A disease—”

  “It was I who suggested to your … father that he turn over the money to you, that he set you up … independently, so you and Charles could afford to go anywhere you wanted. If you and Charles had … money of your own, you wouldn’t have to depend on Papa and … me. You’d be free and independent and able to go away.”

  “You told Papa all this too.”

  “It was my … plan! I worked it out so carefully. I didn’t know Charles would act so … outraged. He’d accepted our money once, when we made the marriage agreement, when we’d struck our original … bargain with him. He was not supposed to kick up a fuss! I couldn’t believe he wouldn’t accept money … again, after all we’d done for him, taking care of him and his … mother, especially when the second time the money was so much … more.”

  “Oh, Mama. Mama.”

  “But there … must have been a stubborn streak in Charles, a stubborn streak I never knew about or … bargained on. Or else—”

  “Or else what?”

  “Or else he … cared about you more than I thought he did.”

  “Which seems odd to you, doesn’t it?” she said.

  “Well, a … little. After the … negotiations there, when you became engaged. After all, Edith, you were never … I don’t want to sound unkind … you were never what one would call a pretty girl. It seemed … hard to believe—”

  “That anyone would ever love me? Yes, I guess it did.” Suddenly Edith laughed. “You know, this is fantastic! All these years I’ve blamed Papa for telling Charles about Louis Bertin. I never thought about blaming you.”

  “Blame? Why should I be blamed for anything? My … job was to try to keep there from being any scandal that would … hurt the family. And I wanted you to have a … happy life. It was you who’d made the initial mistake. You had that … tendency. It was in the blood. It was Harper … blood in you. It had to be … controlled.”

  “And so you controlled it! Just tell me one thing, Mama. What was Charles’ first reaction when you told him what a naughty woman I was?”

  “Oh … horrified. Furious with … me. Said it wasn’t … true. He accused me of … telling a lie, or being drunk. He didn’t know you as I did. And when I told him how in Morristown you had spent day after day with Bertin, how I used to … watch you, the two of you. I said to Charles, ‘Why she … admitted the whole thing to her father … everything.’ And then I said, ‘If you … don’t believe me, Charles, just ask her … ask her who’s taken to … calling on her again while you’re out of the house,’ and I said …”

  “You told him! Just the way you told Papa about Andreas!”

  Dolly Harper paused, her lips working. “Andreas?” she repeated. “Who?—Oh, do you … mean the boy … that boy who was half … nigger, or something? Oh … that had to be stopped. You … know that. I mean he wasn’t white. I used to watch you with him from my … window. I knew that had to be stopped. The thing with the Frenchman was … similar.”

  “Mama,” Edith said, “tell me one more thing. Did you ever know about Papa and Monique?”

  Her eyes closed briefly, her mouth trembling. One nervous hand still clutched at Edith’s own in relentless little attentions that seemed intended to reassure Edith of her mother’s love for her, and the other hand pinched at the fighting mouth. “Oh … yes,” she said at last. “I … knew about that. But you see your father was … the kind of man who needed a thing like that because he was … a man who had strong … appetites. She could give him something I couldn’t. But then I knew that I … could give him things that she could not. Things … like purity and honesty and … decency and devotion. And … children. I had … treasures for him that she could never have, and he knew it because he said that to me … once. I was his … wife, you see.” Her eyes flashed at Edith. “But if you’re trying to … say that your father did the same sort of things you did, and that if it was a … mistake for you then it must have been a mistake for him too, that … argument means nothing at all to me. Promiscuity or … unfaithfulness in a woman is unthinkable, Edith. Unfaithfulness in a man is … thinkable. The standard is not the same. And a man like your father deserved special … rules, anyway. You … did not know this man. He was a man bigger … than life. Magnificent. People called him … cruel, and a slave-driver, and … lots of things, but they didn’t know him! Not as … I did! I knew him. Magnificent … and splendid … beyond comparing with any other human being. You never knew your father, Edith. But he was the … sun and the moon to me.”

  Edith sat quietly beside her mother. There was a wind in the branches of the heaven tree, rustling its spiky leaves, and the sun at their backs was warm.

  “But what’s the … use of talking about it?” Dolly Harper said. “Talking … doesn’t change anything, I suppose. Though … remembering is pleasant.”

  “Yes,” Edith said. “Remembering is pleasant, and talking doesn’t change a single thing.”

  “But I’ve never … understood why Charles turned his back on all that money,” her mother said. “The … Blakewells, were a distinguished family, but they were never that … well off.” She paused, shaking her head back and forth, puzzling the unfathomable quirks of human nature. “Let’s … play some Rubicon Piquet,” she said. “I’ve forgotten how to play, but I’m … sure I’ll remember, once the cards are in my hands.”

  Edith sighed. “Yes,” she said finally. “The rules are fairly simple. I’ll get the cards.”

  And so she had gone into the house for the cards, she remembers now, not angry at her mother, not angry at anybody, but filled with him. She moved, Charles-filled, through every room of her life, not as though he had been taken from her but driven into her, like a long bright nail.

  She turns away from her window now and back into the room, and she discovers that Alan Osborn has picked up his bag and quietly departed.

  “I am going to have that pool fenced,” Edith says, coming down the steps. “It isn’t safe. You were quite right. I’ll call Mr. Barbus in the morning and have him take care of it.”

  Diana looks up and smiles at her briefly, and the white poodles look up and wag their tails. Poo is running about in his blue-and-white Breton sailor suit, playing hide-and-seek with himself under the trees.

  Edith sits down on one end of the stone bench. “I thought she looked very pretty when
they left.”

  Diana nods, scratching the dogs’ ears. “Yes.”

  “She seemed happy.”

  “Yes.” Diana runs her slim white hands under the dogs’ jeweled collars. “My bad boys,” she says. “Do you know what I found my two bad boys doing? Digging in your rose beds, Mother.”

  “I only wish it could have been someone else—anybody else but him. And not on these—terms.”

  “I don’t,” Diana says quietly. “He’ll do. So will the terms.”

  “But Diana, don’t you see—”

  “Most people don’t understand loneliness,” she says. “It can make people do some curious things.”

  “I’ve had plenty of loneliness,” Edith says. “Don’t forget that.”

  Diana looks at her mother thoughtfully, then her eyes move away. “You’ve experienced loneliness, Mother. But it’s possible to experience it without understanding it. Just as it’s possible to experience love, and not understand it. I was just thinking of how, when I was a little girl, in this house, and you were never there, I got to know loneliness very well. We became dear friends.” She smiles absently. “We trusted each other, loneliness and I.”

  Edith hesitates. “What do you mean—when I was never here?”

  She looks at Edith again, her eyes wide. “Were you? Were you ever here, Mother? It always seemed to me that you were so busy hating Grandfather, or missing Daddy—whatever it was, there wasn’t much of you left over for me.”

  “Diana—was that it?”

  “And this thing with Perry, for example. When he told me he’d fallen in love with this other girl, I didn’t like it much, but I understood. She’s younger than I, and prettier. Loneliness. And in Leona’s case—well, one solution is to try to go back to where you started.”

  They sit very still, on opposite ends of the stone bench, Diana’s hands hooked in the dogs’ collars, and Edith’s hands in her lap.

  “But I’m tired, Mother,” she says. “Tired. This fall I’ll be fifty years old; think of that. I guess it’s time for me to be tired. I’m too tired to go anywhere, not even back to the beginning.”