Her voice sounded hoarse to her. “You see, that house … well, in a way it’s hateful to me. There it stands, safe and sound, up there on that hill, as if it were mocking the rest of us. She died and we’ll die and our children will die, but the house is still there. I think I hate that house, and I think I want nothing to do with it.”
She got up. “Am I keeping you from your duties, shall I go home?” she asked.
“If I’m needed, they’ll call me. Let’s walk a while.”
They did that, hand in hand, over the rough, coarse grass. Talking about other years. “Remember the time we nursed the sparrow with the broken wing?”
“And then it flew and left us.”
“Remember the time we got bombed on Gilby’s gin?”
“And I threw up all over the crazy-quilt Aunt Lietitia made …”
Doug, back in the sunny kitchen, fried eggs and crisp bacon, and they had another drink. “I’ve enjoyed today,” Margo said. “Oh, so much. Thanks, Doug, thanks very much.”
She drove off. Rounding the bend, going past the cross-bar fence, she looked back. He was standing there, a big, healthy man with an arm raised. She waved back. So there were men like that, men who tilled fields and loved their acres, men who lived in quiet, sun-filled farmhouses, and rose with the dawn.
• • •
When she got home there were two callers. The Reverend John Paul Jones was there, in his clerical collar, from the First Methodist Church, and Mrs. Pride, an old friend of her aunt’s. Pompey was serving them tea. The curate set his Haviland cup and saucer down on an end table and got up spryly, looking a bit like a great black crane on his pipe-stem legs.
“My dear,” he said, and held both Margo’s hands. “Needless to say — ”
“How are you, Pastor? I haven’t seen you for so many years. You still look exactly the same.”
His eyes twinkled. “Not you though, my dear child. You were a skinny little tadpole when last I laid eyes on you. Look at you now! You remember Mrs. Pride, Margo?”
“Of course I do.”
She gave the old woman her cheek, received a cackle in return to her greeting, and held a dry old claw in her hand. The veins stood out like ropes. “Sit down directly and have some tea,” Mrs. Pride ordered. “Pompey makes it good and strong. Tend to her, Pomp, that will put hair on her chest.”
There was laughter, in which the old woman joined. “Nice to see you, my dear, and looking so blooming. Thank the good Lord you’re bearing up well. I won’t offer you sympathy, never held with it. What happens happens, no use in crying over spilt milk.”
The metaphor was apt; at the same time she uttered the words she made a great spill down the front of her drip-dry cotton dress, dabbed at it with a serviette and then shrugged it off. “Sloppy weather, my mother used to call me, but of course that was many many years ago. I do seem to be getting on, every day a new wrinkle; can’t guess when I go to bed at night what I shall look like the next morning. One does lose one’s vanity, though, and it’s only when I look at old snapshots that I realize I was once pretty, like you, my dear. They said I was like Mary Pickford, she was a film actress, though I doubt you’ve ever heard of her. What are your legs like, my dear? I can’t see the shape of them in those pants things.”
“I’m sure they’re as lovely as the rest of her,” the minister said gallantly, and Pompey added, “Knock your eyes out, they would, that child has legs like a flapper. Here’s your tea, Miss Margo, drink up.”
“Thanks, Pomp.”
Mrs. Pride hogged the conversation shamelessly, talking about the long ago, about George, her husband, dead now, and their two sons, one killed in “the Great War,” the other (the baby) now head of a publishing firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “I always say to George, at least one of them lived. I’m quite comfortable financially, but it wearies me sometimes, the way he sits silently and looks at the television. Who knows whether he even hears me?”
Suddenly realizing her lapse, she screwed up her face. “Did I say George … I’m a bit mixed up … that is to say …”
She rallied, cackled again and asked for more tea. Pompey poured it for her. “Got my memories too,” he said. “Guess we all have, us old ones.”
“And how is your dear wife, Pompey?”
“Dancing with the angels, I expect.”
“I was once the best dancer in town. I had a mean ankle. I saw them all looking at it! Dear Reverend, have some more tea. And sit down, sit down! Take a load off your feet. I always did abominate a man who paced the floor.”
“Just that I must run along now, my parishioners,” he said hastily, and Margo went to the door with him. “For heaven’s sake, don’t ask her for dinner,” he whispered in the hallway. “You’ll have her for à week. She’s senile, of course, quite harmless, but do send her home soon.”
“I’m sure Pompey will be master of the situation,” she said, smiling. “You’ll come again, I hope.”
“Yes, of course.” He fished in a pocket of his coat. “I have something for you. It’s a copy of the Service. I thought you might like to have it.”
“It’s so kind of you. I do appreciate it,” she said, and he went off, down the long walk, on his heron-like legs, getting into his nice, neat Buick and waving as he drove away. She put the mimeographed sheet on the hall table, her eyes catching a word here and there … “Whosever believeth in me … I am the Resurrection and the Life … in my Father’s house are many mansions …”
What had the organ played, in her absence? And had there been tears? Whose tears? She went back to the living room and the sound of Mrs. Pride’s gabble and cackle. “You want some more tea?” Pompey was asking, long-suffering.
“Good heavens, I’m filled to the brim with tea. As a matter of fact, I find myself beginning to have quite an appetite.”
“Guess you want to get home to make your dinner,” Pompey said kindly, but with a firm glint in his eye. “You just run along whenever you’ve a mind to, Mrs. Pride.”
The vaguely hopeful look faded from watery eyes. It had been a good try. In order to underline the fact that there was to be no forthcoming invitation to an evening meal, Pompey added, “And Miss Margo, if you intend to be ready for that engagement you got tonight, better be thinking of your shower and getting dressed.”
“Oh, you have an engagement?” Mrs. Pride asked, vanquished at last. “Well, then, don’t let me keep you. I must cook my asparagus anyhow.”
“No real rush,” Margo said, bleeding for age and loneliness.
“Well, then, just a few minutes more. It’s such a pleasure to see you after all these years.”
“But not for long,” Pompey said, fixing Margo with a stern eye. “You got to get ready and you know it.”
“Yes, Pomp.” She poured out more tea from the ornate Georgian service and they sipped.
“Funny she never married, isn’t it?” Mrs. Pride remarked. “She always did love children so. I never particularly cared about them myself, though I raised two sterling sons. However, ours is not to reason why. And now my dear, congratulations. Many congratulations, heartfelt congratulations.”
“Oh?”
“You deserve it too, you’re a most remarkable young woman, amiable is what I mean, beauty is skin-deep, but you’ve got more than that. A good, decent face, and a kind heart. I’m leaving Margo a fortune, she said, and I asked her, well, will she appreciate it? Now I’ve no doubts. You’ve been kind to me this afternoon, you got rid of that tiresome old man, that blackbird with the turned-around collar. I know his heart’s in the right place, but he’s so damned, deadly dull, and now we can have a good chat.”
“Well, I — ” Margo started to say, but was interrupted by a regally lifted hand. “I know you’ll never misuse what she left you,” Mrs. Pride said. “You’ll put the money to good use. I can’t see you spending it on frivolous things; any fool could see you have more intelligence than that.”
“As a matter of fact,” Margo said gently,
“there’s no money, Mrs. Pride.”
“Yes, there is, there’s a great deal of it, she told me so. Didn’t they inform you, my dear?”
“My aunt left me this house, that’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
“I know she left you the house! She always said she would. Of course! I’m talking about the money.”
“I guess she did have a great deal of money at one time, Mrs. Pride. But the years depleted it. She lived well, but she lived for a long time. There’s no money now.”
“Oh yes there is,” Mrs. Pride said positively. “Now, I’m not saying that the others know about it. But there is, and I may have my crazy moments, but she and I were friends for many, many years. There’s a fortune, and she told me so. Ask Mr. Bach.”
“I did.”
“And?”
“He said she died almost penniless.”
The cackle came again, and the old eyes gleamed with excitement. “Tell it to the Marines,” Mrs. Pride said. “So the old goat wasn’t in on it! Now, I just wonder what she did with all that money? How much did she say? Yes, I remember. Fifty thousand dollars, yes, and she said with time it would be even more, that it was an investment and could only appreciate with the years. You mark my words, Margo, there’s money here somewhere, and it belongs to you.”
“Well, perhaps. And now, Mrs. Pride, I suppose I must start getting ready for my … for my evening.”
“Oh yes, yes indeed. Well, the tea was very good, you tell Pompey I said so. And you won’t forget what I said, don’t listen to that rickety old Jim Bach, he’s got some age on him and he never did know his knee from his elbow anyway. There’s a fortune somewhere here, somewhere in this house.”
“Where, under the floorboards?” Margo asked, smiling.
“Oh, I don’t think she’d do a thing like that,” Mrs. Pride said. “It’s in a reticule, or some simple place like that. I daresay she didn’t want the others to get their hands on it.”
“The others?”
“The lawyer, the boys, everyone. It belonged to you and you’ll find it, never fear. You’re still in a hurry, are you?”
“Well, rather. We’ll get together soon again.”
“Tomorrow?”
Pompey popped out of the kitchen and came down the long hall. “Bye bye, Mrs. Pride,” he said, opening the door for her. “Thanks for dropping in. Mind you be careful on the way home.”
“I certainly shall. The roads were slippery with ice on the way over. I drove at a snail’s pace.”
She looked out and raised astonished eyes. “Why, no, it’s summer, isn’t it?” she said. “Oh, I am so glad about that, I do so dislike winter. Well, then, thanks for the tea.”
She took Margo’s hand and gripped it. “A lovely afternoon,” she said. “Very lovely. Don’t tell the others what I said,” she added, with a conspiratorial look, and waved to Pompey. Then she trotted down the front steps and got into her ancient electric, its speed limit twenty or thirty miles an hour, and tooled down the driveway.
Oh, dear Mrs. Pride!
In her room, resting, she heard doors opening and closing, finally got up and showered, then changed. When she went downstairs Norma was there, arranging flowers in bowls.
“Oh, you’re here, how nice,” Margo said gratefully. “And the flowers look beautiful, Norma.”
“You think so? Come on, let’s do the dining room.”
She gathered up an armload of blooms from a newspaper spread on the floor, and in the other room fell to work, arranging, rearranging, and then standing back. “You think just a touch more of the fern?”
“To me it looks perfect.”
“You may be right. Too much of a muchness is … too much of a muchness.” She laughed, and held out her hands. “I’ll want to wash,” she said.
“Use my bathroom.”
“May I? And will you keep me company?”
“Yes, certainly.”
In the bathroom off Margo’s room they chatted while Norma soaped her hands, applied perfume to her neck and forehead, and did a few things to her face. “Too much color?” she asked.
“No, not at all. You have such wonderful skin.”
“You should see me in the morning. There, I guess that will do it.” She stood back and stared, then packed up her make-up kit. “Drinks won’t be amiss,” she said. “I had quite a day.”
“Did you, Norma?”
“Yes. I was born lazy and yet I work harder than anyone I know. Isn’t life odd? Oh, I do have too much color on!”
“No, it’s really just right, Norma.”
“Would your Switzerland school approve it?”
“That was, alas, long ago.”
“Everything was long ago. What’s for dinner tonight?”
“I don’t know, it’s nice to be surprised.”
“It seems to me I smell roast lamb.”
“I hope so, I’m fond of lamb.”
“Me too. Let’s go, shall we?”
“After you, my dear Alphonse.”
It was roast lamb, with a delicious, crusty outside. The potatoes were au gratin, there were buttermilk biscuits, and for dessert rhubarb pie.
“What did I do today?” Margo said, when asked. “For one thing, I visited Douglas at the farm.”
“Did you now,” Norma said, smiling, but John was silent on the subject.
“He seems to be doing quite well,” Margo said. “Don’t you think so, John?”
“So far,” he agreed.
“Don’t you approve of his venture?”
“It isn’t that,” he said. “It’s just … a drought, a wet season, a cyclone, if you will, could wipe him out. Insurance doesn’t cover an act of God.”
“I think Doug’s terrific,” Norma said. “And so do you. I can see that, Margo. And then what did you do?”
“Came home and found the minister here, and Mrs. Pride, who gave me the electrifying news. It seems I’ve been left a fortune.”
“Really?” John said, smiling.
“Her exact words.”
“Did she say where it was?”
“No.”
“Poor old soul,” Norma said. “If you come across it, buy me a steak dinner with champagne and caviar?”
“It’s a promise.”
“Well, until that there fortune shows up, I’ll make the most of being here for such time as God sees fit. Time’s almost up for old Pomp. Today Brand Manor, tomorrow Missus Alberson’s rooming house.”
“Sic transit gloria mundi,” John murmured.
“I don’t know what that means, but it would sound dirty coming from anyone but you, Mr. John.”
“Pompey, darling,” Margo said, smiling, and Norma laughed.
“There’s only one Pompey,” she said. “And I love every inch of him.”
“The feeling’s mutual, Miss Norma.”
Later, they played canasta on a card table. Margo kept looking at John, wondering why his face was so different from his brother’s. It was the expression, she decided. Sober John, laughing Douglas. They finished the game, had brandy and some idle conversation; then Norma drove home, and the house became quiet. John locked up; Margo went upstairs and roved restlessly in her room. This was her home, her only home. And, by a quirk of fate, it now belonged to her. She gazed at herself in a mirror, without really seeing the face reflected there, and then prepared for bed, where the white curtains, lifted by a soft breeze, billowed inwards. A bullfrog croaked, tree toads sang. She slept and then woke, thinking she was in the Provence, in France, with the cicadas singing. No, I’m here, she told herself, and slept again, an arm flung out over the coverlet.
• • •
It came so suddenly that she jerked in her bed. Her head raised from the pillow. What was that?
And knew instantly.
It was the telephone.
Darkness outside, only the faint light of a half moon. Darkness … she looked at her bedside clock. It was a few minutes to one, and the telephone was ringing on the la
nding.
No, she thought, stiffening. Don’t let it be that again.
The bell shrilled, insistent. I won’t answer, she told herself, pulling the sheet over her head. I won’t, I won’t.
It stopped after a while, and she pushed back the sheet. Lay, wide awake now, waiting. Five minutes later it rang again. Pealing outside in the thick dark, angering her, frightening her. “Please,” she said aloud. “Please don’t do this …”
It stopped.
But it will ring again, she thought. She knew it, of course. Of course she knew it. And stifled a scream as it rang again. Ring … ring … ring …
She sprang up and dashed outside, picked up the receiver. “Hello,” she said. “Hello. Who is this? Who is this calling me at this hour?”
Silence, but not quite silence. That faint, eerie breathing. Almost not there but there … a suspiration … it was like some ghastly nightmare. There was a person who chose to ring her up in the wee hours of the morning, and not say anything, simply let his presence be known. He was there, he was breathing, he was alive and horrible and —
“What do you want?” she shouted. “What do you want? If you do this again I’ll have you tracked down, don’t think I can’t! I’ll move heaven and earth …”
She broke off and listened. There it was, the sinister, quiet sound of someone breathing …
She banged the phone down. Walked up and down the hall. Don’t let it happen again, she prayed, walking up and down, back and forth. It’s enough now, don’t let it happen again.
The phone rang.
Now I will truly go mad, she thought, and ran to the instrument, looking at it, cursing it, wanting to tear it out of the wall. It rang, rang. Maddened, she plucked the sampler off the wall, GOD BLESS OUR HOME, held it in her hands and then dashed it against the door frame. The glass splintered and flew, the frame twisted and warped in her hands.
Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances Page 86