Collected Novels and Plays

by James Merrill

  “Marlborough,” said Mrs. McBride, entering the pantry, “where is Mr. Tanning?”

  “I surely don’t know, ma’am. I never did see him.”

  “He was right on that lawn five minutes ago. Where’s Louis?”

  “Mr. Leroy? He’s surely to be around somewhere,” said Marlborough and shifted his weight. He was a slender smiling man, no blacker than her thoughts about him just then. Mr. Tanning had called him Louis Leroy’s aide-de-camp.

  “What car just stopped at the back door?”

  “Man brought a telegram, I think, ma’am.”

  “A telegram? For whom?”

  “I surely don’t know.”

  From elsewhere a singsong of faint voices reached her:

  “… feeling poorly.”

  “Two shillings a week to support his child.”

  “… brand-new dress …”

  “Never you mind. How do he know it’s his?”

  “I said, ‘Man, you better take me someplace I can wear that gown!’”

  “… injection …”

  “What?”

  Following them, Mrs. McBride darted into the kitchen, where, by a window giving on a wealth of glowing leafage, she found Louis Leroy settled down for a few moments’ banter with his own—what word did Mr. Tanning use?—seraglio. Around him were grouped, languorously, Marlborough’s sister Vanessa, his cousins, two shiftless girls bursting out of their clothes, the cook Roxane and her daughter Mary Ann—a far cry, Mrs. McBride thought each time she saw the minx, from her daughter Mary Ann. A cloud of smoke wavered above the group. The five women were facing Louis Leroy expectantly for an observation never to be uttered, the nurse’s face having driven it from his mind.

  “Louis, have you seen Mr. Tanning?”

  “Oh yes, Miss McBride!” he said, rising and expertly concealing his cigarette somewhere in his clothing. “I took the telegram to him. He’s out on the lawn.” Louis Leroy was always glad to supply this kind of simple empirical fact.

  “No, no …” sighed the nurse, turning away and motioning him to save his breath. She took an irresolute step towards the door into the yard, and was trying not to notice six flying-fish on a drainboard, when far down the winding drive, so small as to have seemed at first a flower, she glimpsed a red beret. “There he is! Look!” Without caring whether they looked or not, she lunged into the sunlight. The ill-paved drive was crisscrossed with lizards that paled and froze at her approach. Walking, Mrs. McBride went on talking. “He can’t be let out of sight for One Minute. Why, if I hadn’t seen him he’d have gone right out onto the road! All by himself, too! He’s getting far too rambunctious to suit my taste!” By then she was close enough to see that the old man had a square of blue-and-white paper in his hand.

  Irene padded about in a wrapper from Hawaii. She found the kitchen empty and swore this time not to let it pass. Last night’s glasses were still in the sink. A roach hesitated before backing away from her bare foot. Ah, what did she care? Balancing a cup of cool coffee, she went out into the patio. A freakish wind, which hardly ever blew from that direction, wafted about her the sweet black stench of Sir Edward Good’s molasses factory, two miles inland. Irene sank onto one of a circle of white wooden chairs, then saw that it faced squarely the one from which she’d read aloud the letter.

  “Mrs. Cheek,” Lady Parrott had implored, casting rapid shocked glances at the others, “do not read us these letters!”

  “There’s no harm in it!” Irene recalled having laughed. “This one is dated last June twenty-fifth. Listen: ‘My dearest, it is already midnight here. Whilst you are winging your way to New York, I cannot sleep without sending you these few lines that do scant justice to the gratitude and tenderness I feel.’ Get that?” Irene chortled. “Here’s a dame who knows how to express herself!”

  On that Lady Parrott had abruptly quitted the circle. The others—among them Mrs. Widman, Coco Rappaport and old Aubrey Savage—had, if anything, drawn closer.

  “‘How could I have hesitated to say yes to your so flattering invitation for the summer? I still feel qualms’—whatever they are,” Irene shrugged—“‘when I realize the three of us will be together under one roof. But I know now that I am less concerned for myself or for dear Ned, than for your own peace of mind, Benjamin dear. I should never forgive myself were I to threaten it.’”

  “Perhaps you’d better not go on, Irene,” Coco had put in with her nervous titter.

  “Wait! Listen to what she says down here: ‘Now, back from the airport, I have spoken to him. The idea seemed to please him. He likes you, you know, and admires you tremendously. So, we shall come, if you still will have us. Ah, I may be selfish, do you think I am? Yet my life is so empty without you!’ Can you bear it!” Irene shrieked. “Why, I’d no more lower myself to write a letter like that than live in one of those native shacks along the beach!”

  “Can you write, Irene?” old Aubrey had murmured at that point.

  “I had thought,” Mrs. Widman said coldly, “you were such great friends with Mr. Tanning.”

  “Oh, I am!” she had cried, perceiving how little they understood her motives. Why, they imagined she was trying to hurt him by reading the letter! “You’ve got me completely wrong,” she went on, striking her breast. “I don’t know anybody I love more than Benji Tanning. He’s not only my cousin by marriage and a charming man, but terribly generous, what’s more. I’m sure Prudy Good really means it about her gratitude. Not that I ever accepted anything from him, nuh-uh! my favorite fella wouldn’t go for that ….”

  Irene had taken care not to mention the small trust fund that Mr. Tanning had set up in her name, unknown to Charlie.

  “… But I’ve had some first-rate tips on the market from him and Orson Bishop. I guess I realized about twenty-five grand last year on their oil wells in Canada. So, what I mean, Benji’s my fwiend! It’s just that Good woman—ha-ha, get the joke?—who needs putting in her place. He’s not strong enough to hold her off. Now I, if I do say so, have consideration for Benji. It’d never cross my mind to ask him to a brawl like this—he wouldn’t come if I did.” It happened that Irene had invited Mr. Tanning, who had declined. “A guy like that’s at his best in a cozy intimate atmosphere. Many’s the hour I’ve spent just sitting and talking with him,” she finished on a serious, intent note, as if the truth, now that she was speaking it, was too bizarre for her hearers readily to believe.

  Mrs. Widman showed her upper teeth. “Tell me, Mrs. Cheek, how did you come by these letters?”

  After a brief stare over the rim of her glass—the naïveté of the woman!—Irene had broken into incredulous laughter. “Why, how do you think? I found them in his desk one day last summer, and took them home to read. I’ve every intention of returning them, if that’s what’s eating you—though personally I say they ought to be burned!” Her voice had been so easy and gay, her affection for Benji so clear to anyone who really listened, her whole figure so appealing—a woman expressing her deepest convictions—that Irene just couldn’t figure out what had made them keep on taking it amiss.

  “Not going already!” Charlie Cheek had boomed jovially, weaving up to Aubrey Savage and Mrs. Widman in time to receive the brunt of their dry adieux. Was it, Irene wondered now, because they were all British and felt some kind of funny loyalty in the matter? “I just bet that’s it!” she whispered, nodding, narrow-eyed, as she reached for a cigarette. A flake of soft coal dust settled on her wrist. Wouldn’t it be just like that troublemaker Mrs. Widman to hustle over to Weathersome today, in one of her dowdy sharkskin suits, not even a scatter pin on the lapel, with the whole story?

  She had dismissed the premonition when the butler called her to the telephone. “Uh-oh,” she said under her breath.

  It was Bridie. “Mrs. Cheek? Mrs. Cheek?” she kept screaming, the connection frightful as usual. “Hold the line—here’s Mr. Tanning.”

  “Hello!” came the extra-cheerful voice that meant trouble.

  “Hi, Lover
, how’s the kid?” replied Irene, blowing smoke at her face in the mirror. She’d decided to brazen it out. “Missed you last night.”

  “I’ll bet you did.” She held her tongue. “I didn’t mean to say that, Irene,” he said then. “You know how I am about those big parties. Last time I went to one of yours the flying-fish pie poisoned me.”

  “That was nearly a year ago.”

  “My, my!” Now he came to the point. “I’ve heard something I can’t understand, Irene, and wondered if you had any explanation for it.”

  She made the face of a burning witch. “What’s that, Benji?”

  “I just had a cable from Larry Buchanan. Orson Bishop has resigned as President of Bishop Petroleum.”

  “Huh?” For an instant Irene found nothing else to say. At length she let out a whoop of delight that must surely have baffled her listener. “Oh, is that all? No, Benji, I haven’t the slightest idea. How funny! Why’d he want to do a thing like that?” She babbled on giddily, then, inspired: “Just a minute! He’s a Mormon, isn’t he? They’re said to be very straitlaced.”

  “Now what in hell do you mean by that, Irene?”

  “Temper, temper! I only wondered if something mightn’t have reached him.”

  “Such as what?”

  “Oh, some gossip or something—don’t ask me!”

  “One thing I know about Mormons,” replied Mr. Tanning, made cynical by rage, “is that they don’t give a damn who sleeps with whom or with how many. Besides, Orson’s your friend as well as mine, and too nice a fellow—”

  What did that have to do with the price of beans? Irene was nice, too, yet it had never kept her from gossiping about friends.

  “—to pay attention to rumors about you and me.”

  “I don’t mean you and me, Lover-cousin. Don’t you know who I mean? P.G.—that ring a bell? And I must say,” Irene couldn’t resist adding, convinced that he would never hear about the letter if he hadn’t by now, “I must say I’ve heard a certain amount of talk, myself.”

  “Ouch!” exclaimed Mr. Tanning. “That’s the size needle they give penicillin with!”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Forget it. Whether you know it or not,” he wound up, “it’s very serious news from my point of view. From yours also, as a stockholder, I might add.”

  “Is it? Oh, Benji, then I’m certainly very upset—”

  But he had hung up.

  Mrs. McBride watched him from over her knitting. His face was round and tanned, his silver hair freshly washed. He groomed himself more beautifully than any man or woman she had known. Each morning a slow solemn ritual took place. Louis Leroy worshipfully selected shoes, ties, the shirt, the suit, one of twenty very light sweaters in different shades—at which Mr. Tanning would hardly cast an eye, sitting like an old Cardinal who lets a sprightlier priest perform the service his presence dignifies. “Look at you now,” she told him silently, “dressed so fine!” But she didn’t like the way his mouth kept crumpling up over whatever he was thinking. Dr. Samuels had said for him by all means to take an interest in his firm. If you asked her, however, it was a grave mistake. He oughtn’t to have a care in the world. Mrs. McBride found it in her heart to curse Mr. Buchanan for sending that cable; just as in Boston she had felt real, though passing, revulsion towards Francis for having caused the good kind man all that suffering. His Reserves of Strength were her chief concern. Let them become depleted and he’d have another stroke, sure as she was sitting there.

  Louis Leroy tiptoed in from the gallery. He carried a bottle of pills on a salver.

  “Now what do I have to do?”

  “That’s your new thyroid dosage, Mr. Tanning,” said the nurse. “It came yesterday from Boston, by air mail.”

  “Oh I see.”

  Louis took heart. “Lunch is served,” he said.

  “Ask Roxane to boil me two four-minute eggs,” said Mr. Tanning in a gravelly voice. “I’ll have them out here with a piece of toast.”

  “Yes, Sir.” The valet turned to go.

  “And a double shot of bourbon on the rocks.”

  “Now what’s this!” cried Mrs. McBride, pursing her lips. “I think I ought to have some say in this matter!”

  “Kindly go to hell,” said the old man. Then, as she fumed, he broke into his enchanting grin. “But first go and eat your lunch.”

  An hour later she found him still at his desk, pencil in hand, the eggs tasted, the toast half eaten, the drink drained. “Go away,” he told her without looking up.

  At three o’clock he sent for her. She was shocked by his face. He said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve spent two and a half hours phrasing these cables. I could have done them in ten minutes before my first attack.”

  “Will you go lie down now?” asked Mrs. McBride, her finger on his pulse. It was very slow.

  He nodded consent. “Send these two cables first, if you please.”

  “I’ll send them when you’re lying down.”

  “I asked you please to send them first. I don’t have the strength to shout at you. I can lie down without your help.”

  She watched him shuffle across the hall into his bedroom. The white door floated shut at a nudge of his elbow. While dialing the cable office Mrs. McBride heard a voice below her, singing:

  “All the boys love Mary Ann.

  Why do the boys love Mary Ann?

  ’Cause she can cook like no one can—”

  “Hush!” she hissed, having first caught the gardener’s attention by rapping on the windowpane. Though knowing the song was aimed at Roxane’s daughter, Mrs. McBride took it as a personal affront to hers. A decent, obedient girl. “I’m telephoning,” she mouthed. “Can’t you be quiet?” The handsome black man grinned.

  Mr. Tanning’s first cable was for Mr. Buchanan in New York:

  WHEN WILL YOU LEARN NEVER TO WIRE ME NEWS OF SUCH VITAL IMPORTANCE WITHOUT GIVING FULL PARTICULARS REPEAT FULL PARTICULARS STOP BY TOMORROW NOON I EXPECT TO BE IN POSSESSION OF ALL THE FACTS

  THE MONSTER

  The second went to that Mr. Bishop in Alberta:

  DEAR ORSON I AM PROFOUNDLY DISTRESSED BY NEWS FROM BUCHANAN STOP I PRAY THAT YOU WILL IN THE LIGHT OF OUR GRAVE JOINT RESPONSIBILITIES TO SHAREHOLDERS CONTINUE TO SERVE THE COMPANY IN SOME CAPACITY EITHER DIRECTOR OR CHAIRMAN OF BOARD LEST WE FIND OURSELVES OPERATING A YOUNG COMPANY IN YOUR COUNTRY WITHOUT THE NAME OF SO RESPECTED A CANADIAN AS YOURSELF TO REASSURE BOTH THE PUBLIC AND YOUR ADMIRING FRIEND

  BENJAMIN TANNING

  It took some time to relay these messages. When at last Mrs. McBride put down the receiver and tiptoed into her patient’s room, she found him stretched on the bed, dressed but for shoes and jacket. His breathing was calm, his pulse regular. She covered his legs with a thin white blanket, then left him to sleep. Care, tempered by her own sense of when to let well enough alone, had Averted the Crisis.

  He needed now, she was thinking at half past four, some distraction from the whole business. At the Cottage you reeled beneath a steady onslaught of guests; it could be equally depressing, here on the Island, to have several days go by without more than a telephone call. Lady Good lived twenty miles to the south; even if a car were sent she couldn’t come every day. Not that she cared—fine upright woman!—what people thought, but the distance was too great, she had her house to run. She and Sir Edward had dined at Weathersome last night; she was expected, alone, for lunch tomorrow. Mrs. McBride, nevertheless, had nearly resolved to call up Lady Good, tell her a bit of what had happened, and ask if she couldn’t run over casually for a cup of tea, when she heard the distant honk of a horn. Soon a small gray old-fashioned car swung into the drive. It looked familiar, but the nurse couldn’t call to mind its owner’s name. She saw her clearly in her imagination, an older woman gray and decorous as the car she drove. Mr. Tanning was fond of her, but in the right way for a change. Smiling, Mrs. McBride headed downstairs. This visitor, though paying her first call of the year, wouldn’t stand on c
eremony, could be led right up to Mr. Tanning’s bedroom. She was trustworthy, safe; she would sit by his bed and tell him all the Island gossip. Now, what was her name? Not till she threw open the front door did the nurse find it on her lips. “Why, Mrs. Widman, this is a treat! Come right on up! It’s past time he was awake!”

  Irene had a secret terror of water. She could sit watching it for hours, and did, loud in praise of its beauties, but in swimming would never venture beyond her depth. This was curious, because she swam well; but she had always insisted upon seeing as far as she could into the sparkling element that upheld her. She refused to swim where the bottom was invisible, or near rocks behind which creatures might be lurking. Even now, leaning over the side of the sailboat, she peered anxiously at threads of darkness, of light, plunging downward and backward as they moved, her head and shoulders the merest transparency overlaid upon the purplish depths. Her fear was of what might rise up from them and devour her. She had known herself to panic even in swimming pools, to race for the steps kicking, thrashing, while a huge imaginary mouth opened to swallow her up. Certain representations of sea creatures had so terrified her as a child that Irene would never again open the Book of Knowledge, lest she choose the wrong volume and happen on them. In later life this fear didn’t keep her from lying lazy and insolent and gold-brown on a white-hot beach or immersed in pale shallows, or from joining her husband for a sail when she had nothing better to do.