A Fox Inside

by David Stacton

“Oh, I don’t care,” said Foster. “I’m just an old woman. But watch out, anyhow.”

  Luke left. He nodded to the receptionist on the way out, and went into the corridor. It impressed him, looking at the lettering on the door, that of the partners only Foster was left. He called a cab and went back to the house.

  VII

  HE THOUGHT THE STREET SEEMED deceptively quiet. Or else it was only beginning to get on his nerves. There was something anonymous about those large houses. There was something too clean and self-conscious about them. The Barnes-Shannon house may not exactly have been pleasant, but at least it had a little character of its own.

  The door was on the latch, and not wanting to attract the attention of the maid, he stepped into the hall without ringing the bell. Lily’s bags had been removed, no doubt to whatever room she had chosen. He did not want to see her, and neither did he want to disturb Maggie. He was therefore relieved to find no one about.

  Experimenting with the doors, he found the library, slipped inside, closed the doors behind him, and went over to the windows to draw the venetian blinds. If Charles had left any trace of himself anywhere, surely it must be here. He glanced curiously round the room.

  Like Charles’s bedroom, it was monastic and barren. No doubt it had been cleared out to create that clinical atmosphere of which Charles had so obviously been fond, but it could never have been a cheerful room. As it was, it had a deliberate, contrived gloominess.

  Luke sat down at the desk and tried the drawers. They gave easily. He took out all the papers, heaped them on the desk, and began to go through them. He had not expected to find much, but that he could find nothing upset him. In all that assemblage of household accounts and old letters there was nothing that bore so much as a personal name, unless you included the notebook in which he kept a check on the servants.

  Luke looked at these for some time, surprised and faintly disgusted. There was a row of names, a series of zeros and checks, and under some names an emphatic line. It took him a moment to realize that Charles must have allowed them so many demerits and then sacked them. At the rear of the book, in a neat, square hand, was a list of minor things to be done about the house. It included the precise alignment of linen on various shelves of the linen cabinet. It was his check list for efficiency.

  It occurred to him, with some repugnance, that if one of these notebooks had been kept, then the habit indicated that there should be others. He rummaged down in the drawers again and found wedged at the back another notebook. It contained lists of people with the same notation of checks and noughts. There were more checks than noughts. His first impulse was to burn the book, for he knew some of the names. Then, at the end of it, he found Maggie listed, and even his own name, with a question mark after it. There was a chart of her wardrobe, of the people she knew, of restaurants and clubs she had once gone to, of what trips she had taken and why. The word “Napa” recurred several times. The ink here was angrier and he wondered why Napa should bother Charles. It was a pleasant enough place in the middle of the wine country. These entries were recent. Apart from them, he found only a map of names in rotation, with dates, some for dinner, some for lunch. It was arranged to run to the end of the year.

  Thoughtfully he stacked the books in front of him. They were uniform, bound in black leather, with small binder rings holding the sheets. The ink was blue and the handwriting done with a broad-nibbed pen. He did not know what to do with the booklets, but they upset him. He pulled them to him again, searching for Lily’s name, but it was not in them. Perhaps she had merited a separate notebook of her own. Carefully he detached the pages dealing with Maggie and slipped them into his pocket. He saw no reason why she should ever see the proof of how closely she had been watched; and there were a good many reasons why nobody else should see it.

  There had been nothing in any of the books that had anything to do with Charles. They had all dealt with other people. Faintly nauseated, Luke turned over the other papers on the desk. They were mostly receipts for bills paid. No doubt Charles had had the habit of tearing up letters as soon as they were answered. He could see from the bills that he had lived frugally, but had spent a lot on alcohol and on clothes. The alcohol was divided into two accounts, one for Bolinas, the other for town. The Bolinas account was limited to Scotch. That for town ran to gin, vermouth, and bourbon. The combined liquor bills came to slightly more than did the household accounts. The Bolinas bill was marked to Charles’s personal account.

  It was clear that Charles had run the house. Maggie’s personal bills were included, which surprised him. He had always believed that Maggie had money of her own. He rammed the papers back into the drawers of the desk, but he still did not know what to do with the black leather booklets. For the time being he left them on the edge of the desk.

  The door clicked and Lily came into the room. He took off his glasses and looked up, which was one of his standard defensive manœuvres. She had changed into a light dress with vertical stripes that made her seem younger. She did not look surprised to see him there, but she did look displeased. She glanced at the top of the desk.

  “I didn’t know you were back,” she said quietly. “Did you go to the lawyer’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “And found out nothing, I suppose.” She was still leisurely examining the top of the desk.

  “I was looking for the will,” he said. “I thought it might prove something. Surely he made one.”

  “Oh, yes. He made one.”

  He swivelled round in the chair, watching her. “Do you know where it is?”

  She sat down in a chair facing him and lit a cigarette before she spoke again. She looked oddly self-satisfied and amused. “Yes,” she said after a while. “I have it.”

  He was astonished and he showed it. She smiled at him, and caught sight of the booklets which were now at her eye level. She picked one up, saw what it was, and sniffed. “I’d forgotten about these,” she said. “It was very like him, that habit. You went through them, I suppose.”

  “I did.”

  “No doubt you felt you had to.” She shrugged her shoulders and placed the booklet carefully back on top of the stack. “It wasn’t a form of spying, really. He just had to know everything. It wasn’t one of his better traits, but as long as you understood it, it didn’t do any real harm. But some people might not understand. Perhaps we should burn them.”

  “We can’t burn everything,” said Luke. He wondered why she was so confident, unless she had got to the booklets first. Her manner towards him was guardedly indulgent. Also, she was trying to give the impression that she was comfortable in this room, which he did not think she really was. He lolled backwards, not liking particularly to sit in Charles’s chair, but damned if he was going to look any less relaxed than she did. “Tell me about the will,” he said.

  “I’m not altogether sure I should.”

  “It will have to be probated, you know.”

  She folded her hands in her lap. “Very well.” She leaned forward, like a croupier who has a full table and a magnet under it, with a look of slightly foxy pleasure. “It’s two years old. I had him make it the day after his marriage. It’s correctly drawn and virtually unbreakable.”

  “He could have made one since, you know.”

  “No, I don’t think he would have done that. Besides, until two years ago he didn’t have much to leave.” She sounded vaguely contemptuous. He wondered why she could never bring herself to accept sympathy from anyone. He rather thought that at the moment she might be going to need a lot of it.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “Charles had about one hundred thousand in the bank and he owned the beach house at Bolinas outright, as well as this house under certain conditions that aren’t important. Oh, well, he had a life holding, but could not dispose of it. The will allows for hundred-dollar bequests to each servant who had been with him for more than eight months at the time of his death. There’s a small bequest to the College of St. Ignatius, a
nd another to augment any legal scholarship at Stanford University, at the discretion of the trustees, provided that his name shall not be mentioned. He went to Stanford, you see. The possession of this house reverts to me. The beach house at Bolinas goes to Maggie.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “He had his ironies. She has it on the condition that she either sell it to strangers in two years or else tear it down. Everything else I’ve got IOU’s against.” She leaned forward. “That was an agreement between us. Charles could be grateful. I suppose Foster told you I bought him into the firm.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Well, I did. And I believe in protecting my investments.”

  He did not quite know what to make of it, except that it seemed to please her very much. “What about Maggie?” he asked. “There’s such a thing as community property, you know.”

  “Maggie’s money is in trust until she is thirty. Under the circumstances I don’t think she’ll quarrel with the will. It’s harmless enough, anyhow.”

  “I’d call it damn odd.”

  “I don’t think it matters what you call it.” He wished she would stop acting. It was that that made it so difficult to talk to her. He had never learned how to act.

  “People sometimes make personal bequests,” he prompted.

  “Charles didn’t. There was this, though: he’ll be buried in the Barnes vault. I think he’d have liked that, so I had him put it in. But that isn’t exactly a personal bequest, is it?” Her mouth slipped suddenly sideways and she got up and went to the window, gazing out over the city much as Foster had done. But unlike Foster she did not speak to him. Around the silhouette of her body he could glimpse the blue bay, dotted now with the white triangular sails of little boats that the warm weather had brought out of their harbour. She did not seem to be looking at the view, but beyond it.

  He wished there was not that old barrier between them, to make this new barrier the higher. If she did not turn around, it was clearly because she could not speak to him. This period between death and discovery was not doing any of them any good. He reached over and took the black booklets and slipped them back into their hiding-place. They would have to stay where they were, for there was a limit to how much of a man you could destroy before he was even legally dead. Whatever damage had been their intention, they could not do that damage now.

  He sat there restively, wondering what was wrong with her. The room was not a nice room, and sitting in that chair was like sitting inside a dead man. Yet Charles still seemed very much alive. He did not like to think of that body lying unidentified in some hot county morgue.

  He could not think of anything to say to Lily. He wondered what he was waiting for.

  Somewhere behind them both the front door slammed loudly. He jumped up from the chair, catching sight of Lily’s startled face, from which some private, previous thought had not yet been erased. He dashed through the living-room and up the stairs to Maggie’s bedroom. The bed was a rumpled mess and she had placed a chair with its back cocked under the closed door to the dressing-room. He did not care for the look of that chair. The bureau was open in disorder, but he did not think she had taken any clothes. He raced down the stairs again and ran into Lily standing at the foot of them.

  “Where would she go?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. But she mustn’t be seen. She mustn’t.”

  “I’ll go after her.”

  Lily looked genuinely scared. “Be careful, Luke,” she said. He had never heard her use his name with less condescension. “She may say anything. We’ve got to get her back.”

  He went out of the house, forcing himself to walk sedately until he was down the block, in case anybody was watching. At the corner he saw her high above him, at the top of the hill, going towards the park. He started after her.

  VIII

  HE HAD A STITCH IN HIS SIDE when he reached the top of the hill. It was so steep that steps were cut in its paving, and up these he had jumped as fast as he could. At the top of the hill was Alta Plaza itself, a big undulating park. Underfoot he could hear the cable of the trolley running in its purple metal groove. Looking east, he saw Maggie boarding one of the cars. Impatiently he waited for the next one, but fortunately there was a double up and he did not have to wait long. He swung aboard, sitting at the front to see if she left hers. He jammed irritably into his pocket for small change.

  The second cable hit the stop signs all the way down into the hollow of Van Ness, and then up the other side as well. Sometimes, when the first cable breasted a rise, he all but lost sight of it. The trolley bell clanged incessantly. He could not figure out where she was going.

  From Alta Plaza they dropped down into the commercial district, and then rose through tight squalid houses towards Nob Hill, and the open air. There the buildings were cleaner, fresher, and more impersonal. They passed the cathedral and the large hotels and began to descend the hill again. Maggie got off the cable at the corner of Grant Avenue and he began to understand. He followed suit.

  On the right was the old red brick Catholic church, swallowed up by the Japanese-Chinese community. He followed some way behind her. She did not seem to be moving aimlessly: it was as though she were making for a burrow, and he began to suspect which one. The street was busy with tourists, so that it was difficult to keep her in sight.

  It was the time of the New Year festival and tall wet branches of peach blossom stood in pots along the streets. Maggie turned down to the small square where the steel statue of Sun Yat Sen was, standing with its immaculately folded stone hands, gazing indifferently towards a German Art School. She did not go down the hill, but doubled back, crossing Grant Avenue at the far end, where dried ducks lay crinkled and luminous brown in the stores; and where live rabbits and coloured eating fowl stood shaking in their small boxes. She went down a small street that at first seemed to puzzle her. It was a tall street of cheap rooming houses and restaurants with many balconies. She stopped to buy some sweetmeats in a shop. He could see her earnest face in profile, staring down at a counter. There was music from the balconies, Chinese music. From one of these balconies he had seen a sailor jump out holding a white cat and land on the paving uninjured. It was a rowdy street.

  He knew now where she was going and it made him sadder than if she had just aimlessly been wandering around. He slackened his pace, and bought some crisp, somewhat unsatisfactory candies, the water lily root that tasted of rancid sherry, the coconut with sugar, and the frosted melon.

  She reached the end of the street and passed through the crowd of vendors, where almond blossoms already shed their petals on the asphalt. Hesitating, she went doubtfully down a dark alley, as though she had forgotten her way. He did not follow her at once. Instead he stood on the corner, looking across the narrow street at some bad blue vases in a laundry window and at a dingy tortoise-shell laundry cat. When he thought he had waited long enough, he went slowly down the alley. It was dark and dirty. At the end was a pink neon sign. He approached it and went through a doorway.

  The outer lobby was gaudy. It was like the inside of a temple. In the middle stood the lacquer rickshaw that gave the place its name. The folded-back roof of the rickshaw was brittle as lizard skin. Dubiously he went round behind it and into the bar, a long, dark room with shoulder-high cabinets let into the walls. It was from the cabinets that the only light came. A curio dealer, half to advertise himself, but partly because he had an interest in the bar, had filled the cabinets with mildly erotic curiosities in marble, crystal, ivory, and wood. Some of these were in themselves beautiful. Some of them were not. Glowing in the obscurity of that quiet place they had a mysterious effect. He had discovered this bar for himself, long after it had first ceased to be popular, and once Maggie and he had come here often to drink and talk together. For him it was an intimate, personal place, but he had carefully forgotten it, because it had meant something to him. He had always thought that she had forgotten it, too.

  She was at the far end o
f the bar, squeezed down in the darkness, in front of a Tibetan passion Buddha covered with coral and turquoise. Luke stood in the doorway and then went over to her. He sat down one stool away from her and held out a brittle paper bag, already stained by the candy inside it.

  “You didn’t buy any melon,” he said. “So I got some.” He picked out a piece of the yellow stuff and handed it to her. “It’s better than the coconut.”

  She took the melon and began to nibble it, looking at him seriously out of the darkness.

  “The place hasn’t changed,” he said. “It’s just the same as it ever was.”

  “I’ve never been back. It always seemed so lonely.”

  He put his hands on the counter and crooked his head at the bar-tender. He felt more at his ease here. “We’d better have frozen dacquiris,” he said. “That’s what we always did have.” He spun round on the stool, feeling almost exultant. It was as though everything was going to be all right now. “We can take them off into the corner and play some music.”

  “What kind of music?”

  “Oh, just music,” he said. “Any old music will do.” He got up and went into the back room, where the juke box was. He put in a quarter and pressed three buttons at random. It was not his fault that one of the records turned out to be an old song called “Don’t Blame Me”. He sat down beside her, munching his melon and not saying anything. When the song came on she began to cry.

  “Oh, hell, Maggie,” he said. There wasn’t anything else he could say. He took the two dacquiris and led her over to a dark table in a corner. She sat down and fumbled for something in her bag. The song played on remorselessly. He gave her a handkerchief and felt both completely helpless and happier than he had been for years. In here that song still meant something to them. Outside it wouldn’t mean a thing.

  When she had stopped crying she wadded up his handkerchief and put it in her bag.

  “You must think I’m pretty terrible,” she said.