Family Skeletons

by Patrick Quentin

  The young man showed white, ingratiating teeth. “Hello, Lew.”

  “I met Ray last month in Antigua,” added Sheila, though I demanded no explanation. “He’s a wonderfully clever writer and, since he had to come to New York to look for publishers and things, I’ve installed him in Beth’s old flat. It’s always seemed ridiculous to keep that whole wing of the apartment unoccupied.”

  “Sheila’s been just wonderful to me.” Ray Callender’s grin was even wider. “In exchange I’m trying to show her how the other half live. It’s all quite new to her.”

  “And most fascinating,” said Sheila, being the gracious older lady. “We’ve just come from a beatnik joint. Beards and four-letter words and everything. Can you imagine?”

  Sheila Potter, for all her smart wordliness, was as conventional as the Denhams and this change of pattern both astonished and intrigued me. It also dissipated most of the awkwardness I’d felt about presenting Virginia to Beth’s stepmother—not, of course, that it was as embarrassing as it could have been, since the relationship between them had never been successful. Sheila had made no effort to hide the fact that she found her stepdaughter a bore, and Beth, who had been very much a daddy’s girl, had never forgiven the interloper.

  I said, “Well, we’re both breaking new territory lately. I’d like you to meet …”

  I turned and stopped because Virginia was no longer there. For a second I felt an absurd panic. Then, twisting around, I saw her moving through the tables in the direction of the ladies’ room.

  “She’ll be back in a minute,” I said.

  “Oh yes,” said Sheila, “I saw her getting up when we arrived. It’s Virginia Harwood, isn’t it?”

  I blinked. “You know her?”

  Sheila raised a delicate eyebrow. “Surely you’re resigned to the Denham grapevine by now. Hugo was on the phone this afternoon, spluttering.”

  “I’ll bet he was.”

  She was leaning towards me. “Dearest Lewis, I’m afraid you’ve caused quite a commotion, but if it’s any comfort to you, there won’t be any trouble from me. I’m not a great believer in mourning. Poor Beth was a model wife, I’m sure. But when one life’s over, the only thing to do is to get on with a new one.”

  In my gratitude at her unexpected sympathy, I was almost ready to blurt out the fact of the marriage for the comfort that unburdening oneself of an embarrassing reticence always brings. Whether I would actually have done so or not I don’t know, because at that moment a man’s voice, deep and jocular, said, “I’m not breaking into anything, am I?”

  I glanced up to see the red-haired musician. His heavy Roman face was beaming at us all but most directly at Sheila Potter.

  “Well, well, Mrs. Potter. What an honour.”

  With her automatic radiant smile, Sheila raised her hand towards him. “Good evening, Mr.—er—Olsen, isn’t it?”

  “What a memory. What a memory.”

  “But of course I remember. I consider you almost a fixture at the Antigua Beach Club.”

  “But how few people remembered cocktail pianists. They’re usually considered as part of the furniture.” He was British, it seemed, or at least his voice was plummily Anglicised. Bending forward, he kissed Sheila’s raised hand with large wet lips in mock continental gallantry. “Am I permitted to meet your friends?”

  “Why, yes,” said Sheila. “This is Mr. Callender. And this is my ex-son-in-law, Lewis Denham.”

  “Mr. Lewis Denham of the Denhams? Well, well, the Club Marocain is certainly getting its tone raised tonight.” His clever eyes, studying me, changed their expression to solemn concern. “By the way, what a terrible tragedy with your wife last year. I offer my belated condolences.”

  More uncomfortable than anything else, I said, “You seem to know a lot about us.”

  “Oh, there isn’t much we miss—in my profession.” He patted my shoulder and turned the jovial smile back on Sheila. “Well, Mrs. Potter, I hope you’re going to stay for our second show. A fine artiste, Esmeralda—genuine Circassian stomach dancer from the casbah in Meknes. Quite a change from my little piano solos in the Beach Club lounge.”

  “How exciting,” said Sheila. “Of course we’re staying.”

  “Okay, then. This is where I say so long to you good people.” The pianist raised his hand in a farewell salute. “Enjoy yourselves. I’d buy you a drink but I’m sure you can afford one better than a poor pianist.”

  He walked away, laughing as if this had been a sensational witticism. I had found him fairly unappetising, but as I glanced across the table, I was startled by the expression of furious disgust on Ray Callender’s face. The moment the pianist was out of earshot, he whipped around to Sheila.

  “The bastard!”

  Sheila patted his arm. “Now, Ray dear, why are the young so intolerant?” She turned to me. “Lewis, it is too bad you didn’t make it to Antigua this year. It was quite gay. The Gordons were there and even the Ellerys. I must tell you about Grace Ellery’s unfortunate experience in St. Moritz.”

  Sheila Potter was one of those wealthy women who are given to elaborate social reminiscence. In someone less pretty it would have been horribly boring. As she started to tell me about Mrs. Ellery and St. Moritz, I began to worry about Virginia. Surely, if she’d merely been going to the ladies’ room, she would have said so. I pretended to listen to Sheila, harrowed and still astonished by the ridiculously irrational anxieties which come with love. Had something happened to her? Or had she suddenly got bored? Or had she …? At least five more minutes had gone by, and I knew my face, turning to Sheila, had become a meaningless mask, when the lights dimmed and soon afterwards I felt a hand on my arm.

  “Hello, darling, did you think I was dead?”

  Virginia was slipping back into her chair. “Heavens, what dramas in the powder room of the Club Marocain. A lady from Wichita with a broken shoulder-strap, an attendant without a needle, and I and I alone to save the day”—she patted her evening purse—“with my ever-ready Girl Guide’s stitching kit.” She took out her cigarette-case and, leaning across me, said to Sheila, “As Lew may or may not have told you, I’m Virginia Harwood.”

  “I know, my dear,” said Sheila. “I’m Beth’s stepmother.”

  Virginia was lighting her cigarette and her face behind the quivering flame of the lighter was suddenly at a loss.

  I said quickly, “It’s all right. Sheila’s given us her blessing.”

  “Of course,” said Sheila. “I have great faith in Lewis’s taste and I’m delighted to meet you. For what it’s worth you can think of me as an ally—that is, if you need one.”

  Virginia’s smile returned. “That’s awfully sweet of you. Do have a cigarette. It’s the nearest thing to a peace pipe I happen to have on me.”

  “Thank you, my dear.”

  Ritualistically, Sheila took the proffered case. Ray Callender lit her cigarette.

  Introducing him to Virginia, Sheila said, “Sweet I may be, Miss Harwood, but there’s a tiny bit of method in my sweetness. As it happens, I haven’t broken it to the Denhams yet that I’ve got a good-looking young man living in the apartment with me. It’s going to appall them. I’m overjoyed that they’ll now have to divide their fire.” She turned to me. “By the way, I’m having them all, including the Prince and Princess, to dinner tomorrow night to meet Ray. Why don’t you and Miss Harwood come too? Wouldn’t it be killing two birds?”

  I realised then just how calculated Sheila’s sympathy had been. I also realised that her sly plan for slipping Ray into the family circle under the screen of Virginia was far more to her advantage than to ours.

  I said, “Thanks, but I think that might be a little too much for them.”

  Her smile was as bland as ever. “You think so? All right.” She shifted the smile to Virginia. “But at least I can break the ice, my dear. I shall tell them that I’ve met you and that you’re enchanting. And British, too. That’s lucky. The British go down splendidly with the Denhams.”
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  “Only half British, I’m afraid,” said Virginia. “My mother was Polish. There. I’ve revealed my shameful secret. I don’t think even you knew that. Did you, Lew?”

  Did I? Probably not. I knew practically nothing about what she’d been or done before she met me. That was one of the many things the emancipated Denham in me found so enchanting.

  Dimly visible in the muted light, two waiters were pushing a grand piano on to the centre of the stage.

  “Oh dear, the stomach dancer,” said Sheila. “At least we can all endure her together.”

  For a second Virginia seemed to hesitate. Then she got up, saying rather breathlessly: “I do hope you won’t think we’re rude, but I really feel we ought to go. Lew’s had a long day and, well—I’m terribly tired for some reason.”

  Since only a few minutes before, she had been pleading to wait until the “bitter end,” I could only assume that Sheila had spoiled the mood for her. It was understandable, of course, and if anything, I was delighted at the chance of getting her home to myself that much earlier. I paid the check while Virginia and Sheila exchanged almost gushing civilities. Just as we were leaving, the pianist—Mr. Olsen?—appeared on the stage. He turned to our table with a special greeting, raising his arms above his head like a boxer receiving an accolade. Then he sat down at the piano. As we made our way towards the exit, he started softly and romantically to play what happened to be a favourite song of mine, “Our Love Is Here to Stay.”

  Virginia, who was moving in front of me, turned as if she were suddenly scared of losing me. Her hand came out to mine, and as I took it, I glanced back at Sheila. In the murky candle-light I caught a glimpse of her hand flashing across the table and coming to rest on Ray Callender’s.

  It was a tiny coincidence, two women’s hands simultaneously clutching for two men’s hands. It had no obvious significance unless it confirmed what I had already guessed about Sheila’s unlikely relationship with her “brilliant” young writer. But it brought me a baffling little chill.

  It was only later in the taxi, as Virginia sat silent beside me, that I realised what had happened. The coincidence of the two hands had reopened a door in my memory which I had tried to keep closed. They had brought back another hand which had haunted my imagination ever since a broken, white-faced Hugo had poured out to me the story of that fatal night off Guadeloupe.

  “I ran up on deck, Lew, because the squall had hit so suddenly and I didn’t trust Beth. You know how she was. So convinced she could cope with anything. She wasn’t at the wheel. I thought: This is crazy. She must be there. It was dark as Hades, all those tropical stars blotted out. The waves were lurching down like roller coasters. We were drifting right into their trough. I leaped on the wheel and started yanking like mad. It was then that I saw it, only for a second, lit up by the starboard riding light. A hand stretching up out of the water, a woman’s hand, Beth’s hand …”

  I had, of course, never seen that hand thrusting up in nightmare helplessness out of the storm-racked Caribbean. But I could see it vividly now—with the freckles on the wrist…

  Later that night I awoke at five-twenty. I could tell the exact moment from the soberly lit face of Beth’s little alarm clock, which I’d never got around to putting away. Virginia was lying warm and relaxed against me in the narrow single bed. The faintest grey of dawn was seeping through the windows. It made the chilly white spread of the other—of Beth’s—bed gleam with an almost hostile virginity, and it came to me that I’d awoken from a dream of Beth.

  I had no idea what the dream had been, but the feeling was there. It was only the dimmest feeling, with nothing to restore her to reality, but the very shadowiness of the impression brought a sense of guilt, and I saw myself as the Denhams would be seeing me if they knew. Here I was lying in bed with the girl I loved naked and unabashedly happy, exactly as if my first wife had never existed. What had I ever given Beth, anyway, during the five years of that model marriage that had plodded its conventional course to so unconventional and violent an end for her? Hadn’t I, in my scared young determination not to repeat the deplored pattern of my father’s life, been more eager to win the Denhams’ approval with a suitable bride than to try to understand or appreciate my wife? Had I ever seen in her anything more than the right family, the right Swiss finishing school, the right financial position, which Uncle Gene had taught me was as important in a girl as what he archaically termed “a well-turned ankle”? Hadn’t the unadmitted boredom of those years perhaps been my fault rather than hers?

  I made an effort to re-create the flavour of my past with Beth and for one shocking moment I found I couldn’t even remember why I’d not been with her on Uncle Gene’s yacht when the accident happened. It was, of course, only a second before I remembered. But the lapse appalled me and to punish myself—as if Hugo were standing admonitorily at the end of the bed—I did what I hadn’t done in months, I forced on myself a total recall.

  Tanya and Hugo had been married in Switzerland, where Tanya, orphaned in the Hungarian uprising of 1956, had been living with her grandparents; and immediately after the ceremony, the Prince and Princess had come back to New York with them. In typical Denham fashion, instead of a honeymoon, the original plan had been for us all, including Sheila, to fly to Antigua for a group family celebration. As it happened, I was tied up with a housing project in Baltimore and since Aunt Peggy was having one of her “seedy” spells, Beth, who always took on the family dirty work, had stayed behind with her until she was sober enough to travel. They had finally got off a few days later with the understanding that I was to join them in another week.

  I had my ticket. My work in Baltimore was finished in time. I was actually packing in the hotel to leave for the airport when I thought of the hallowed ritual of sailing, more sailing and banal chatter around the swimming-pool. I thought of Uncle Gene’s neighing, nautical laugh as he captained the Arabella, with Hugo and Beth in blue jeans and T-shirts scurrying about as deck hands because it wasn’t the done thing to hire a crew if you were real yachtsmen. And quite unexpectedly, all the un-Denham part of me, which I had tried to control from boyhood, broke out into rebellion. That was The Life, I knew. That was what I was supposed to want. Why not? It was the Denham life, the only “civilised” life. But revulsion, so long suppressed, was in my mouth like a taste of rust—revulsion against all of it but particularly, yes, against Beth, so solidly my wife, so unquestionably the correct mother-to-be of my delayed but truly okay-to-be Denham offspring.

  I called Antigua. I said something had come up and it was quite impossible for me to get away at all.

  Next to me in the bed, Virginia gave a tiny sigh in her sleep. Her hand stirred on my thigh, curling a little finger through mine. Making myself think back, I remembered the exact words of Beth’s reply on the phone. Eerily, as if a barrier had been broken in time, I could hear the eager little-girl voice which had always faintly irritated me but which now she was dead seemed hauntingly poignant.

  “Oh, Lew, how dreary. We were planning a special celebration dinner for you at the Club tonight and there’s a full moon. Uncle Gene’s got a marvellous plan for sailing through the night to Guadeloupe. How disappointed he’ll be to be short-crewed. And so will I, of course. But then things can’t always be jim-dandy, can they? And if you get back to New York, give poor little Maisie my love.”

  Maisie was her disagreeable Dandy Dinmont, left at home because of a stubborn eczema condition which, Beth felt, would not benefit from the tropical heat.

  Those were the last words I’d ever heard my wife speak. After the phone call I’d gone out to dinner, and when I got back to the hotel Beth had telephoned again, leaving a message for me to call her back at the Club, which was unlike her, because she made a dutiful point of never pestering me. But by then I’d started to feel guilty and knew that if I talked to her again I’d give in and join them. Instead, I checked out of the hotel and drove to the shore for no particular reason, just to be alone. And the Arabel
la left on its moonlit sail to Guadeloupe without me. And so Beth, the model niece-in-law, determined to be everything a Denham should be, had insisted on taking the third watch alone. And so—the squall—Hugo dashing up the lurching companionway—the hand …

  As I lay there with Virginia’s soft dark hair brushing against my cheek, I thought: Would it have happened if I had gone along instead of leaving the boat “short-crewed”? I had never thought of it that way before. If I’d been there, wouldn’t it have been I who had taken that watch? Hadn’t I, by omission, been responsible for her death?

  Almost at once I realised that the fancy was ridiculous, nothing but the hysterical progeny of five o’clock in the morning, but I could feel the sweat prickling under my arms. To calm myself I reached across Virginia to get a cigarette from the bedside table. My fingers found her case and lighter. I brought them over, and opening the case with one hand, lit the lighter with the other. I had seen her case, of course, often enough. It was gold with a sizeable ruby inserted in the centre of the lid, one of the few valuable things she seemed to possess. But, as it happened, I’d never looked inside it before. Now, as I took out a cigarette, the flame of the lighter illuminated the interior of the lid and a message inscribed in tall fancy script.

  It said:

  To V.

  Gibraltar may tumble, but …

  Oh, my dear …

  Q.

  I recognised the quotation immediately. It was from the song which had been played that night at the Club Marocain.

  Our love is here to stay! I lay gazing at that message from the unknown Q., and against all my principles, I felt a painful stab of jealousy. Who was this Q. from whom she’d received such a valuable gift? What had happened to the love that had been here to stay? I knew it was none of my business. I also knew that all I had to do was to ask her and she would tell me. But the whole of her early life, which was completely beyond my possessing, seemed suddenly to be of crucial importance as if it could, after all, in some way threaten our happiness.