by Unknown
Holding is best known for The Blank Wall (1947), in which a woman covers up a crime she believes to have been committed by her daughter, and which was made into the 1949 movie The Reckless Moment and remade in 2001 as The Deep End, with Tilda Swinton. Other notable novels included The Unfinished Crime (1935), The Old Battle Ax (1943), The Innocent Mrs. Duff (1946), and Widow’s Mite (1953), published after her husband’s retirement and their move back to New York City.
“The Stranger in the Car,” first published in The American magazine in July 1949, is a sly depiction of women protecting their own familial turf. The twist is that the narrator is male, a middle-aged husband and father content in an outwardly placid existence that’s thrown for a loop when his daughter is mixed up in the murder of a spurned suitor. Holding brilliantly describes the disconnect between the idea of the male provider and the seemingly passive, cared-for women who really hold all the power, and who operate according to their needs and wants, even in the face of a terrible crime.
THE STRANGER IN THE CAR
___________________
CARROL CHARLEROY leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes; a big, stout, handsome man, olive-skinned, with a black mustache; a flamboyant look about him, in spite of his correct and conservative clothes. Miss Ewing was playing the piano for him, and he tried to relax, to enjoy this music, but a peculiar restlessness filled him. He frowned, opened his eyes, and took out his cigar case.
He and his wife Helen never sat here in the drawing-room unless they had guests; then the room would be pleasantly lighted, there would be people moving about, the sound of voices. Now the only light came from the gold-shaded lamp beside the piano at the other end of the long room, and, in spite of Miss Ewing’s music, he was aware, as never before, of the sounds from the New York street outside, the rush of wind, a car streaking past, the frantic piping of a doorman’s whistle, a man’s voice, hoarse and furious. This made him feel vulnerable, not comfortably shut away from the world in his own home.
“I don’t like this sending Helen off to the hospital,” he thought. “The flu is a treacherous disease, I grant you that. But Helen and I, and the children, and the servants, too, have all had it, at one time or the other, right here in the house, and we did very well. Can’t say I care much for Dr. Marcher. Too quizzical . . .
“I’ve had enough of this music, too,” he thought. “Very nice of her, but I wish to heaven she’d stop. I’d like to read. I wish she’d go away.”
He thought she was coming to the end of a piece, but she went on and on; he lit his cigar and drew on it, and then, at last, she turned round on the piano bench to face him, a tallish woman of an age he had never tried to guess, bony and limber in her brown dress, her short, pale-brown hair curling up like dry petals from her weather-beaten face with a turned-up nose, a wide mouth, merry blue eyes.
“Very nice,” Charleroy said. “Very—” He sought for a word. “Very soothing,” he said.
“It tried to be nice!” said Miss Ewing. “It wanted to soothe you, Mr. Charleroy.”
“Ha!” he said, with a benevolent laugh.
• • •
Miss Ewing had been in and out of the house for a good ten years; she had given music lessons to all three children. Two or three times before this she had come, in an emergency, to look after the household. Charleroy had a great esteem for her, but he found it embarrassing, almost paralyzing to be left alone with her. He was glad to see her close the piano and rise, but it would be worse, he thought, if she should sit down and try to entertain him.
“If you don’t mind,” she said, “if you’re sure you’ll be all right, Mr. Charleroy, I think I’ll nip upstairs and write some letters. I’ve been naughty about my correspondence!”
“Certainly!” he said, with eagerness, and heaved himself out of his chair, to give her a polite bow.
He remained standing, listening to her light, quick steps running up the stairs. When he heard a door close overhead he went into the dining-room and got a bottle of whisky out of the cellarette. He brought this, with a glass and a carafe of water, into the room where he and Helen were accustomed to sit. The second parlor, this had been called in his boyhood; it was a narrow little room between the drawing-room and the queer little glassed-in room that overlooked the back yard. It had no windows, and the sounds from the street did not reach him here; he had thought he would like that, but he found it too quiet. He poured himself a drink, and took up the book he was reading.
He expected to be very comfortable, but he was not; the silence of the house disturbed him. Nobody upstairs but Miss Ewing, he thought. The room Jim and Young Carrol had shared was dark and empty; Jim in Japan, Young Carrol married and living in Philadelphia; dark and empty the room the girls had shared. Margaret had married, a month ago, and Julia had gone out dancing tonight.
“I’ll stay home and keep you company, Daddy,” she had said; but he had opposed that, with secret alarm. “No, no,” he had said; “go along and enjoy yourself, Julia.”
He had not wanted anyone to keep him company. When Helen was here he would read, she would read, or perhaps write letters; sometimes a whole evening would pass with scarcely a word, and it was very agreeable. No reason why it should not be agreeable now, to sit here and read and drink his nightcap.
The telephone rang. He dropped his book on the floor. “It’s the hospital,” he said to himself, and went out to the telephone in the hall.
“Charleroy speaking,” he said, with immense calm.
“Oh, Uncle Carrol?” said a little high voice. “It’s Sylvie. How is Aunt Helen?”
“Well enough,” he answered curtly. Half past ten was no hour to make such an inquiry.
“Uncle Carrol . . . Is Julia home?”
“What?” he said, seriously annoyed now. “I understood she’d gone out with you and Ivan.”
“Oh, yes! But the party split up, and I just wondered . . . Please give my love to Aunt Helen when you see her. Good night, Uncle Carrol!”
He sat by the telephone, frowning. “What was the girl wondering about,” he thought. “Why did she expect Julia to be home this early? Party split up, eh?”
“Well, why not?” he thought. “Julia knows what she’s doing. Very levelheaded girl. Never any need to worry about Julia. I’ll read for a while, and then I’ll go to bed and go to sleep.”
But his book did not interest him, and after a few moments he poured himself another drink. Helen wouldn’t like that, he thought, and sighed. He sipped the drink, leaning back in his chair; he picked up the book again and read a page; he yawned, and closed his eyes. “Too early for bed,” he thought. “But I might take a little nap . . .”
He waked with a start.
“What’s that?” he asked, aloud.
He was not sure whether he had dreamed it or whether he really had heard someone fall on the stairs. It had to be looked into, though, and he got up and went out into the dimly lit hall. Halfway up the stairs he saw his daughter Julia, on her knees, her pale satin dress trailing down behind her, her forehead resting on an upper step.
He went to her and touched her arm. “Julia?” he said, in a low voice.
She raised her head and smiled, vaguely.
He tried to help her, but she was stepping all over her long skirt. “Pick up your dress!” he said. “There!”
With his arm around her, he got her up the stairs and along the hall to her own room. He opened the door and switched on the light, and she was leaning against the wall, still with that dazed smile. There was a red mark on the bridge of her nose.
“Julia,” he said, “what’s the matter with you?”
“I’m—all right, Daddy,” she said mildly.
“Julia—are you able to get yourself to bed?” he asked.
“I’ll help her, Mr. Charleroy,” said Miss Ewing.
• • •
She stood there,
wearing a tweed coat over her nightdress, curlers in her hair; the one person, he thought, whom he could have wanted here now. For she had known Julia as a little girl; she would understand that this situation could not be what it appeared to be.
“Yes,” he said, and stepped back, closing the door.
He stood outside it, appalled. “She’s been drinking,” he thought. “Julia’s been drinking. Julia fell down!”
“Now, look here!” he told himself. “It could happen to anyone. Anyone could take one too many, without realizing.”
Anyone else, but not Julia, that girl of inflexible pride and composure, tall, handsome, superbly sure of herself. He glanced at his watch; nearly three o’clock.
“This won’t do,” he thought. “I’ve got to get my sleep, got to keep fit, look after my business. You’d think they’d realize that.”
He went to his own room then, undressed, and got into bed.
• • •
He was, by habit, a heavy sleeper, but he waked at once the next morning at the sound of a light tap at the door.
“Eight o’clock, sir,” said the housemaid.
He got up at once and put on his slippers and his purple brocade dressing gown; stopping before the mirror, he sighed, to see his portliness; he twisted his mustache a little, and went out into the hall.
There he paused, deeply apprehensive and troubled. “I don’t know how to talk to Julia,” he thought. “That’s her mother’s business. But just now Helen can’t be worried. She’s not to know.”
He decided that he would confine himself to that, in a tone of cold disapproval. He would simply tell Julia that her mother must be protected from any knowledge of last night’s disgraceful scene.
“Disgraceful scene,” he repeated to himself, as he knocked on Julia’s door.
There was no answer, and in the dim hall, in the silent and somehow lifeless house, that was bad. He knocked again; then he turned the knob and opened the door a little.
“Julia?” he said sternly.
“Oh . . . ! Father!” she said, sitting up in bed.
“Good heavens!” he said.
“What’s the matter, Father?”
“You have a black eye,” he said.
She raised her hand to the swollen and discolored eye that gave her handsome young face a look of forlorn debauchery; she reached for the dressing gown on the chair beside her and slipped her arms into it; she got up and went barefoot to the mirror over the chest of drawers.
“Heavens!” she said. “I didn’t know . . .”
“How did this happen, Julia?” he asked.
“Well, I tripped on the stairs, didn’t I?”
“Where had you been?”
“I went with Sylvie and Ivan to the Brocade Room at the St. Pol.”
“Sylvie telephoned,” he said. “Before eleven, that was. She asked me if you were home. She said the party had split up.”
Julia turned toward him, tall and straight in her dark flannel robe; and, in spite of the black eye, she was impressive. “I went out for a walk,” she said,
“Alone?”
“No. With a man.”
“What man?”
“A friend of theirs,” she said. “I don’t remember his name.”
“Then you went back to Sylvie and Ivan?”
“No,” she said, without hesitation. “I don’t know where I went.”
“What do you mean?” he cried.
“I mean I just don’t remember,” she said. “We got into a taxi, and I think I fell asleep. Then I don’t remember anything until I was going down in an elevator with him somewhere.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Then we got into another taxi, and he brought me home.”
“What time did you leave Sylvie and Ivan?” he asked.
“I don’t know. But if she telephoned before eleven. I must have been gone then.”
“And you got home at three,” he thought.
“You must try to remember more,” he said.
“I can’t,” she said. “Only that I began to feel sick and—queer, and when Sylvia and Ivan got up to dance, I asked this man to take me out in the fresh air for a while. I must have had too much to drink. I don’t know how that happened. It never happened to me before. It was an accident.”
“It’s never an accident,” said Charleroy.
“It was, this time.” said Julia. “I’m not like that. You know it.”
He did know it. Let her stand there in front of him, with a black eye, and tell him that she had been drinking too much. He still knew she was not like that.
“We’ll have to keep this from your mother,” he said.
“Yes. I’ll say I hit my head against a taxi door, or something.”
“No,” said Charleroy. “She mustn’t see you like this.”
“Good lord!” said Julia. “It’s no disgrace to have a black eye!”
He did not answer that; only looked at her. She looked straight back at him.
“I’m sorry I worried you, Father,” she said. “But I don’t feel disgraced. I don’t feel ashamed. The whole thing was an accident.”
• • •
It was her magnificent innocence that disarmed him. He could not ask her anything more about that man, about those missing hours; he would not, by a single word, shake her confidence in life, and in herself. If she was not worried, not frightened, so much the better.
He looked away from her and frowned, deciding what was to be done. He was an excellent man of business, accustomed to making decisions, to accepting responsibility, and he was, above everything, a notable improviser. “No,” he said. “You’d better go away for a week or so.”
“Be sent away—in disgrace?”
“Nonsense!” he said curtly. “The chief thing to be considered is your mother’s health. She mustn’t see you like this. And nobody else must, either. You certainly can’t go out anywhere—any parties, that sort of thing.”
“How long will it last?”
“I don’t know. We’ll get a doctor to look at it. But in the meantime the best thing will be for you to go out to Meadowsweet.”
“I shouldn’t mind that so much,” said Julia.
“And I’ll send Miss Ewing with you.”
“But why?”
“Because I don’t want you to go alone, and she’s a very fine woman.”
“You and Mother always have had such a thing about Ewing—”
“Miss Ewing,” he said.
The door of Julia’s bathroom opened and Miss Ewing came out. She still wore the tweed coat over her nightdress, the curlers in her hair, but she had an air of dignity. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I was trapped. You see, I sat up here with Julia last night—”
“Oh, I didn’t know that!” said Julia.
“No, dear, of course you didn’t. But I thought it was wiser. And I think—but I don’t want to be a busybody. Does anyone want to hear what I think?”
“If you please,” said Charleroy, with the great courtesy he always had for Miss Ewing.
“I think Mr. Charleroy’s idea is excellent,” she said. “Because, Jewel, my dear, if you go to see your mother and tell her you hit your head on a taxi door, she’ll ask a very great many questions, and—” She laughed a little. “I’m sure mothers have a sixth sense,” she said. “She’d know something was wrong.”
“Nothing is wrong,” said Julia.
“I think,” said Miss Ewing, “that if you tell Mrs. Charleroy that I’ve had a little tiny breakdown—fatigue, you know—and that dear Jewel has carried me off to Meadowsweet, to look after me for a few days . . .”
“Excellent!” said Charleroy. “You can call up your mother as soon as you get there, Julia.”
“And now,” said Miss Ewing, “I’ll creep downst
airs and get some breakfast for you, Jewel. And then I’ll just dart up to my hotel, to pick up a few things I’ll need in the country.”
“I’ll take you there, Miss Ewing,” said Charleroy.
“Thank you, Mr. Charleroy!” she said.
He turned back to his daughter. He wanted to say something to her, but he did not know what it was; he could find no words. They looked steadily at each other for a moment, and then he went out of the room.
• • •
After breakfast together in the dining-room, Charleroy and Miss Ewing left the house together. He went first, descending the steps to the street with his rolling gait, his overcoat open, his soft hat at a debonair angle. The taxi was waiting, his taxi.
“Good morning, Mr. Charleroy!”
“Morning, Leon. Uptown, this morning. Park Vista Hotel.”
“That’s a change,” said Leon. “That’s certainly a change.”
Charleroy helped Miss Ewing into the cab, and settled back in a corner. Leon was a bore, Helen said. Very well; he, himself, was often greatly bored by Leon. But Leon belonged to him; he had for Leon the feudal loyalty that was in his nature. An old clerk, an old servant, a tradesman who had served him faithfully could be sure of his bounty.
“Now, about cutting these taxes,” Leon said. “I wouldn’t know. I simply would not know. How’s about it, Mr. Charleroy?”