The Man Who Loved His Wife

by Vera Caspary

  Since Nan and Rex Burke had returned from the yachting trip, the young Hustings had been entertained lavishly. New friends had asked Don and Cindy to parties, offered them seats in their boxes at the racetrack, remembered them when they were selling tickets to charity affairs. Many of these people were valuable as business contacts.

  “We can’t go on forever accepting hospitality without reciprocating. We’ve got to establish ourselves even if it costs a few dollars.”

  It was out of the question for them to entertain in a good restaurant. They simply hadn’t the money. “We could do a cocktail thing in the garden. With those fabulous caterers everyone uses,” Cindy suggested.

  “What about your father?”

  “If only he’d relax a bit. It wouldn’t hurt him at all to mix with people . . . I mean . . . Elaine really ought to do something! It’s her fault he’s so morbid. But he sees through her, Don, I’m positive. Sometimes,” she added with a squeal that topped the drums, “he just acts beastly to her.”

  “Let’s not suggest a party now. We’re stuck here and we’ve got to do things his way.” Don had sensed intolerance in his father-in-law and did not want to be insulted with the news that he was no longer a welcome guest in the house. Beneath his suave and gallant manners Don hid a sorely troubled mind. Even Cindy did not know the full extent of the debts he had left in New York. His small supply of cash had dwindled tragically. Although he had no rent to pay, no food to buy, there were still cigarettes and gasoline, service on the car, barber and beauty shop bills; flowers, jars of caviar, boxes of candy and other tokens of gratitude to generous hostesses. When Nan or her friends asked Don and Cindy to buy tickets to charity affairs they could not refuse, and if a few people stopped at a bar, Don had to occasionally pick up the check. They could not afford to be known as freeloaders since Don’s career as well as their social future would be affected.

  Inevitably when Don and Cindy were trying to have a private talk Elaine would knock at their door. “Please turn down the radio a bit. Not all the way,” she would say apologetically, “but lower. The noise makes your father nervous.”

  “If only we had a place of our own,” fretted Cindy.

  Quite by accident they found the house.

  5

  SUMMER HAD GONE AND COME AGAIN. IN THE MIDDLE of October the heat returned, raging. A Santa Ana, the natives called the wind that blew in from the desert with such fury that even the seashore burned. There was no humidity, no decent sweat to relieve fever temperature. Fletcher’s wound needed moisture; with every breath he inhaled pain. His temper became insufferable. Elaine suggested that they drive north to Carmel, fly to Hawaii, sail off on any boat that went anywhere. He stamped about the house, grunting, refusing comfort.

  To escape the unbearable climate of the house, Don and Cindy drove down to Nan’s place at Newport Beach. She had promised that her house would always be open to them, her pool available. They found the doors locked, the gate barred. Too late Cindy remembered that Nan had gone to stay at her father’s Lake Arrowhead place while her husband was abroad, her servants on holiday. It was irksome. She and Don had met a few people with houses in that area, but none whom she could visit without invitation. The shore burned like desert sand, the ocean lay sullen in the glare, the sky was as blue as oxidized copper molded to reflect heat. Although they disliked public beaches, they had to get into the water just to feel alive. Like ordinary people whose friends do not own beach houses, they undressed and left their clothes in the car. After the swim Cindy combed her hair and did her face on the open beach. While their bathing suits dried, they could find no pleasant place to sit, no cafés with tables under parasols, not even a decent cold drink. They walked a long way in search of some place more inviting than the sordid shacks whose signs advertised bottled drinks and whose stoves filled the air with the stink of frying fat and cheap ground meat. A diamond is easier to find on the California shore than a glass of fresh orange juice or real lemonade.

  The beach ended in a bluff. Pretending to be gay and beatnik and unconventional, they decided to walk in bathing suits along the highway where they might find an edible sandwich. They ascended a narrow street. A sign caught their eye: FOR SALE—UNUSUAL—A BARGAIN. The house was only a few feet up a narrow lane, tree-shaded and secluded; a perfect gem, adorable, divine, irresistible and not expensive; less than forty-five thousand dollars. Forty-four, nine hundred and fifty. A few miles up the coast, where Nan lived, a narrow lot cost seventy-five thousand. Without the house. This was ideal for a young couple, the sort of unpretentious place they could explain to people who lived in two-hundred-thousand-dollar houses as “cozy” and “completely private.” It was only five years old, authentic California modern with a flat roof, two sun decks, glass walls all over the place. There was no pool, merely the ocean for swimming, but they could maintain status by reminding their friends that they had come from the East, had spent their summers on the Atlantic and preferred surf bathing. The house was offered at this absurd price because the owner, a young executive who was transferred to his company’s Ohio branch, wanted to sell immediately. For a down payment of only five thousand dollars they could own the house. They were almost naked, Don in the trunks, Cindy wearing a few inches of a bikini, but the owners of the house at once recognized them as the right sort and said they would be happy to have their home occupied by such nice people. Don mentioned casually that Nan’s father would arrange the financing. Cindy added that the famous banker’s daughter was her closest friend. The effect was magic, the house practically theirs.

  Hand in hand, like enchanted children, they raced along the beach to fetch their clothes and car. “Just think, a home of our own. We can entertain,” Cindy said, “informally, of course, but with chic.” She saw a dining table in an ell that faced the sunset; laid it with wedding presents of china and silver stored now in her mother’s basement; clothed herself in a fabulous cotton hostess gown and welcomed guests who simply adored her new house. Don thought barbecue dinners a better way of entertaining. Over watery coffee and plastic-wrapped sandwiches they argued about the sort of parties they would give.

  They had been too hungry and too impatient to look for a decent place, so had settled on a so-called beach café where food and drinks were thrust over a counter at barefoot customers who, if they were lucky enough to get a table, could sit down while they ate. At this hour only one other table was occupied. A pair of foreigners in dark glasses spoke an ugly guttural language.

  “What’s the soonest we could move in, Don?”

  Don bit into his sandwich, grimaced, said, “Well, I guess that settles it. We’re staying in California definitely.”

  Cindy’s sandwich might have been of glue or caviar, smoked turkey or cardboard. She was too excited to taste mere food. “Do you think we can use the Hitchcock chairs and the hutch in a modern house?” She had inherited the antiques from her maternal grandmother.

  “Maybe I can land that job with Carter Consolidated.” Don rode his own train of thought. “I’ll try to see Doug Third in the morning. He told me his grandfather was looking desperately for the right man, and promised to make an appointment. There’s a future in that outfit.” He saw himself at an executive’s desk in an air-conditioned office with wall-to-wall carpeting, a beautiful secretary, and his name on the door. A group of young Negroes invaded the shack, took possession of the empty tables, crowded their brown bodies into the narrow space. They ordered hamburgers. A greasy smog drifted from the grill. Laughter and guttural foreign syllables interrupted Don’s dreams of executive importance and Cindy’s plans for entertaining millionaires.

  When they returned they found the house prettier than they remembered. Imagination had made it their own. The owner’s wife suggested that they change their clothes in a bedroom where they had a private moment, a naked embrace in the lustful thought that this pretty chamber would be their own. While Cindy took her own good time to redo her hair and face, Don discussed details of the transacti
on. The owner’s agent lived close by and had been summoned by telephone.

  Arrangements were the usual ones. A deposit of one thousand dollars would put the house in escrow. When these proceedings had been completed, Don would pay the additional four thousand and the house would be his. “Unfortunately,” he said gaily, “I haven’t a thousand dollars on me, and I didn’t bring my checkbook to the beach.”

  No one expected him to pay on sight. A house is not purchased like a cake of soap. Impatient to make a deal, the agent suggested that they meet the next morning at the escrow department of a bank in downtown Los Angeles. Don remarked that deals of that sort were simpler in the East where no escrow formalities were demanded, and people simply bought and sold without having to wait while a third party held the buyer’s money and searched the seller’s title.

  “It’s for your protection,” said the agent piously.

  “You won’t find any termites in this house,” the owner added.

  “What time do we meet?” asked the agent.

  Don assumed an important air. “I happen to have a rather full day tomorrow. A meeting that may go on all afternoon.” Like a man of affairs, he shrugged off the dreary business, suggested that they get together in the morning of the next day. There was no doubt that he had made a good impression. The Jaguar and the Strode address in Pacific Palisades had not gone unnoticed. These were solid assets like cash in the bank. Donald Hustings seemed a man whose signature could command thousands. But he did not feel that he had made a commitment recklessly. He had given himself an extra twenty-four hours to raise the money.

  “You think your father’d advance it?”

  Cindy thought about it bitterly. They were driving on the freeway, and she noticed all the posters advertising houses that could be owned by veterans without a penny’s down payment. Don had given two years of his life to the US Navy. Her father would probably suggest that a man without ready cash take advantage of some such drab opportunity. During their stay in his house her father had shown little generosity to the honeymoon couple. It was galling to contrast her fate with Nan Burke’s splendid life. If Cindy had been a poor man’s daughter she could have forgiven her father’s ungenerous attitude, but she had so often heard her mother speak in angry reverence of Fletcher’s fortune that Cindy had grown up believing herself an heiress. Nothing in Fletcher Strode’s present style of living (except the absence of a servant in the house) suggested that he was not wealthy. What had Cindy to expect from such a father? His money was squandered on that second wife.

  She looked up at Don. His well-cut features were deformed by a scowl, the sculptured lips pressed between his teeth. “I don’t know. Daddy’s been so dismal lately, he’s in a sort of depression.” She did not speak in her usual flat voice but wailed softly like a disconsolate child. “I’m kind of afraid of asking. It’d be easier with Nan’s father. He likes you so much, Donnie.”

  Don turned down the car radio. At any other time the jazz combo would have delighted him, but with so many cars whirring on the freeway and Cindy using that affected childish voice, he could barely hear. His tones, still adjusted to the jazz band, were far too loud. “We can’t ask him for the down payment. If he’s going to finance us for forty thousand, we can’t let him know we don’t have the first five thousand.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’d be poor security. I doubt that his company would accept us even with his recommendation.”

  Cindy was not informed about money. Don had to explain the transaction in words of one syllable. He became harsher as the reality of the situation became clearer. It had disappointed Don that Cindy’s private income and expectations were not what he had been led to believe; but then he had also represented himself as a suitor with a solid job and brilliant prospects. The house might indeed be a bargain for a man who had a few thousand dollars, but for a man in Don Hustings’s position, there were no bargains. “Maybe we oughtn’t to buy now.”

  “I’ll die if we don’t get that house. Isn’t there some way, Don?”

  “We might borrow on your trust fund.”

  A transformation took place in Cindy. The plaintive little girl became a woman of iron. Her very skin took on a metallic hue. Once before Don had suggested borrowing on the principal. She had burst out with such an astonishing series of shrieks, accusations, and tears that for days he had been afraid to talk to her. The trust fund settled upon her by Fletcher at the time of his divorce was sacred, her only security against starvation in the streets.

  “You know I’d never do that,” she answered with surprising dignity. “But there must be some other way. For people like us. Daddy must still have plenty of money. Couldn’t we just use his name?”

  Don had become very tense. An idiot truck driver had slowed up just ahead. They were entering the city. Smog made breathing impossible. Heat lay upon the earth like an electric blanket. “Not unless he’d co-sign. That’d be no different from asking him to lend us the money.”

  “I don’t mean asking him. I mean just being his daughter. After all,” Cindy held her breath while Don swung out and passed the huge truck, “I am his daughter, and he’s not so young and has had that terrible operation.”

  “He’s done all right by you. Do you know how much principal it takes to earn a seventy-five-a-week income? We know nothing about his will, and besides he may live for years.”

  “I hope he does,” Cindy said and added without thought of the contradiction, “but there are big insurance policies. He made them out for Mom and me before the divorce and it was in the settlement he’d keep them for us.”

  Don sighed. They could not raise money on hopes and promises. Their only chance was a direct appeal to Fletcher Strode. The prospect appalled Don. From time to time he turned to look at Cindy and saw the fear in her face. There were only two courses, either to give up and go back to his hopeless job and his debts, or to risk his father-in-law’s contempt. Presently he suggested that Cindy appeal to her father. She answered that financial problems were his responsibility. For the rest of the drive they argued, weaving in and out between the speeding cars and breathing foul fumes. In anger Don drove faster and more dangerously until he was stopped by a traffic cop and given a ticket for reckless driving. This was not a good omen.

  A MIRACLE AWAITED Cindy’s homecoming. “Nan’s here,” she announced with the reverence of a herald angel. A Rolls-Royce was parked in the driveway.

  “Don’t say anything about the house.”

  “Why not? I’m dying to tell them.”

  “We’ve got to break it to your father carefully. He might not approve if he’s not in the right mood.”

  In the living room they found Nan Burke chattering at Fletcher. Her simple cotton dress had cost two hundred dollars, if not more. “Darling!” she and Cindy cried simultaneously and hurried to touch cheekbones.

  “I thought you were in Arrowhead,” Cindy said.

  “I was. I am,” Nan replied with the accent and giggle she and Cindy had acquired the same year at the same school. “But after all, Arrowhead shops aren’t exactly fabulous and I was desperately in need of shorts. Imagine forgetting to pack shorts! They’re an absolute must in the mountains.” Nan could go on like this for hours. About nothing important. “And with the place at Newport empty, there was no one to fetch them so I came to town for some new ones. And stopped in to see you. And met your famous father.” She glanced toward Fletcher coyly. She had been told about his infirmity and warned that he was morbidly sensitive. “Actually I dropped in to bring you something.” From a mammoth alligator bag that must have cost three hundred dollars (if not more) she brought out a pair of engraved cards. “With Rexie away I don’t feel much like going out at night. The mountain air’s so positively great that . . . well, really, you won’t believe this . . . we fall asleep at nine. Isn’t it fantastic? You really ought to come up there, Mr. Strode”—she favored him with a bright, apologetic smile—“it’s so relaxing. Really! And you’d be welcome to us
e our bit of beach and sail one of my father’s boats if you’d like.” She gestured with a cigarette, brushed ash off her expensive cotton bosom. Her breasts were large, her waist filling out. Although she was Cindy’s age and had so far only one child, she had begun to wear the bountiful air of a patroness.

  Cindy cooed over the cards which were for a widely advertised movie premiere, a benefit sponsored by one of Nan’s favorite charities. Cindy had heard the girls talk about it, had been aching to go but could not dream of paying fifty dollars for the cheapest seats. The tickets Nan bestowed were for the best box and had probably cost a thousand dollars, if not more. They also entitled the bearers to attend a midnight supper dance at the San Marino estate of an oil millionaire.

  Ecstatic, Cindy contrived to show decent protest. “Are you sure you don’t want to go, Nan?”

  “Without my husband?”

  “Why not?” asked Don with a provocative smile.

  “Who’d take me?”

  “I’m sure there are dozens of men who’d welcome the privilege.”

  “I’m not that sort of wife. Not yet.”

  Cindy joined Nan in gales of merriment over the innuendo. Don had pleased Nan, which pleased Cindy; and Don was pleased with himself. Fletcher’s stomach rumbled. Elaine came in with a tray of iced tea and cookies.

  “What about your parents? Couldn’t you go with them?” asked Cindy, stretching the danger of self-sacrifice to its limit.

  “They’re too lazy. And my father’s bored to death by those affairs. People make speeches.” Nan made the word sound obscene.

  “If you change your mind, just call up and you have your seats back,” Cindy offered reluctantly as she tucked the tickets away in an amusing straw bag which cost only eighteen dollars at a sale.

  “Why don’t you use my father’s seats, Mr. Strode? I’m sure you and your wife would enjoy the show.” Nan addressed Fletcher in a slow, clear voice calculated to show compassion for the afflicted.