The Late Clara Beame

by Taylor Caldwell

  “First time I ever saw him act human, and warm up,” Aunt Clara had commented during the first few months of his marriage. He had been a fastidious man, very impeccable in his way, almost chilly. But the glamour, which had at first excited him, departed quickly, and finally. His natural character had reasserted itself. All that Mama was, all she represented with her grammatical errors and bad manners, warm and loving though they were, had finally revolted him.

  He came to hate his wife, even to detest her. And Mama, in the very face of her indestructible exuberance, had suddenly realized this and died of a broken heart. Then came boarding school for Laura in New Jersey and Papa’s return to his first wife and children, and Aunt Clara’s offer. Papa was only too grateful; his spirit seemed broken, or perhaps his first wife, during the period of his second marriage, had defamed his name so thoroughly that his reputation was irretrievably lost. And that, Laura said to herself, as she watched the swirling snow blurring the windows, was a judgment on her.

  She never saw her father again after the day he had abandoned her in New Jersey. She had not known he had died until Aunt Clara informed her of his funeral a month previous to her eleventh birthday. “Don’t cry,” Aunt Clara had told her, gruffly. “He doesn’t deserve it.” But Laura had really been crying for her dead young mother.

  The first Mrs. Beame had promptly asked Aunt Clara “for adequate support for Bertram’s children. After all, they are related to you too.” Did Aunt Clara send any money? Laura never found out. She only knew that the children were not mentioned in the old woman’s will. She had never thought of her father’s other children as being her half brother and half sister, and therefore her own flesh and blood. She thought of herself as belonging only to Mama and then to Aunt Clara. Yet, those two still existed — somewhere? Was their mother still alive?

  The wind howling outside broke Laura’s reveries, and she went to the kitchen to see if the handyman, who had the unlikely name of Evelyn, was putting the chains on her car. He was, Mrs. Daley informed her. The kitchen smelled of hot mincemeat and cherry jam. Mrs. Daley smiled at Laura and suggested coffee and a piece of her homemade pie.

  “I think I’ll wait for Mrs. Bulowe and Mr. Gates, and have tea with them.” The delightful odors conjured up nostalgic memories of other Christmases, and suddenly the presence of Aunt Clara was so acute that she almost swung about to run into the living room with a cry of welcome.

  “Is something wrong?” Mrs. Daley asked. “You look awful pale, Mrs. Frazier.”

  “No,” Laura told her. “I was just thinking of Aunt Clara. Christmas always reminds me. I felt, just now, that if I went into the living room I’d see her.”

  Mrs. Daley stirred a huge pot of soup. Her face was hidden. “Funny,” she said, in an offhand voice, “I’ve been kind of feeling her around, myself, the last few days. Well, I’m Irish, and I get those feelings, and that’s supposed to be superstition, the priests say. But Father Gregory in the village isn’t Irish, so how would he know?”

  Laura, who was highly superstitious, moved closer to the older woman. Absently she scooped up a spoonful of mincemeat and ate it. “If you feel my aunt, that is, if you have a sensation she’s here just now, what’s the reason?”

  Mrs. Daley clattered the spoon. “Well,” she said, with elaborate carelessness, “she might be thinking of you and Christmas, but the souls don’t come back, they say. Sometimes, maybe, I think they’re wrong.” She still kept her head averted. “Maybe it was kind of a dream. But you remember how you were sort of sickly as a little girl, Mrs. Frazier, and Miss Beame always knew just when you’d be coming down with something. She’d get everything ready a couple of days before you came down, though she never let you know. ‘The child’s sickening, Mrs. Daley,’ she’d say to me. And sure enough, Mrs. Frazier, you’d be flat on your back a couple of days later.”

  When Mrs. Daley became silent, Laura urged her to go on.

  “And there was that time, you remember, when you were fourteen, and all the kids in the village were going on them toboggan rides, and you teased to go. Your aunt thought about it and said, ‘No’, and you cried. She said to me: ‘Mrs. Daley, I have a premonition.’ Now, you’re not supposed to listen to premonitions, but Miss Beame was a Protestant, so I suppose it don’t matter. And then, the very toboggan sled you were supposed to be on got out of control and ran into rocks and trees, and Sally Brewster was killed, and the other girls all had broken legs and arms. You remember.”

  “Yes, I do.” Laura waited a moment or two, then asked: “Why do you suppose I feel Aunt Clara’s in the house just now?”

  “Maybe something’s going to happen. Mrs. Frazier, you were the apple of her eye. Maybe she thinks you’re in danger or something.”

  “From what?” Laura couldn’t help smiling.

  “From who, that’s what,” Mrs. Daley said, giving her a serious look. “I don’t want to commit a sin, filling you with superstitions, Mrs. Frazier. There! Evelyn’s just turning out of the garage! Snow’s hubcap deep. Good thing he put on the chains or he’d never make it to the dee-pot.”

  “Mrs. Daley, I forgot to tell you and Edith, that there’s a gentleman coming for Christmas too. John Carr. A client of Mr. Frazier’s.” She paused. “You don’t suppose, do you, that there’s something — well, wrong — with Mr. Carr?”

  “Oh, I’ve got you all worried.” Mrs. Daley’s plump face flushed with embarrassment. “You mustn’t listen to me. Honest.” She struggled with herself, but lost. “It was the day before you fell off that broken swing, Mrs. Frazier. I’d gone into the living room to check up on that girl’s dusting, and I just felt Miss Beame there. I turned around and said right out loud: ‘Yes, ma’am?’ It was like she’d called me. And I got so blue and frightened that I couldn’t sleep that night. And the next day you had that accident.”

  Laura was suddenly apprehensive. “You don’t suppose, with this storm, that Mr. Frazier might have an accident, driving home from the station tonight, and Aunt Clara — I mean, could she be warning me?”

  “Miss Beame never cared for nobody but you and your mother,” Mrs. Daley pointed out in a dry tone. “She never met Mr. Frazier now, did she?”

  Laura was relieved. So long as nothing threatened Henry all would be well. She went back to the living room, where firelight and lamplight waited for her. Her eyes were suddenly drawn to her aunt’s chair. “Aunt Clara?” she whispered. “Are you here?”

  The sense of someone being in the room with her increased, and she shivered. “I wish you could tell me and I could hear,” she said, aloud. Then she started violently. Edith, Mrs. Daley’s niece, smiled at her a trifle derisively from the doorway. “You want the tea when the guests come, ma’am?” she asked.

  “Yes.” Laura was annoyed at the girl’s smile. What a fool she must think I am. “That is, for me. Mrs. Bulowe likes very dry martinis. And Mr. Gates always prefers bourbon. They don’t care for tea.”

  “Maybe sherry for you, ma’am?” Edith asked demurely. She was a tall, thin girl, and very plain.

  “I don’t like sherry,” Laura told her, annoyed. “And I’ll wait for martinis, myself, until Mr. Frazier gets home.” Laura rarely used a peremptory tone with servants, as she respected them too much. Edith inclined her head with exaggeration and mock humility, and disappeared. Oh dear, Laura thought, I wonder what I’ve done to make that girl despise me so?

  In the kitchen, Edith said to Mrs. Daley: “I told you she was crazy. I caught her talking to an empty chair, and asking it to tell her something.”

  “You’re crazy, yourself!” Mrs. Daley said angrily. She shivered. If Edith had not been in the room she would have crossed herself. “Get out the glasses they’ll need, and keep your mouth shut. What you’ve got against Mrs. Frazier, and she always so good and kind to everybody, I don’t know.”

  “She’s dumb,” Edith said.

&nbs
p; “What do you mean?”

  Edith giggled. “Oh, I got my way of finding out things. She couldn’t see anything if it came up and hit her in the face.” She refused to explain. If she weren’t kin, Mrs. Daley told herself, I’d discharge her on the spot.

  Laura watched lights flicker ominously in the living room. She hoped Evelyn had stacked the woodshed high with logs, and not left the wood outside in the snow. There was no sound from the kitchen. The sky darkened steadily as the storm grew worse. Then the telephone rang, and Laura ran to it gratefully. She heard her husband’s cheerful voice.

  “Darling, the storm’s bad in New York, and I can imagine what it’s doing up there. So, I’m taking the 3:30 home. You’d better send Evelyn with your car, with chains on it. I know I won’t be able to move mine from the station.”

  “I’m so glad you’re coming home soon!” Laura told him.

  “Why?” Henry asked good-naturedly.

  She felt foolish. “Because — well, because of the storm, of course. Evelyn’s at the station now, picking up Alice and David. The plows ought to be out on the main road. I’m sorry about Mr. Carr. He won’t be able to come tomorrow, will he?”

  “He’s here with me,” Henry said. “So I’m bringing him along. What’s the matter, sweet?”

  Laura looked at the dark hall. She could hear the bass ticking of the grandfather’s clock. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m just nervous, I guess.”

  “Well, don’t be. I’ll be there soon. Lights all right?”

  “They’re flickering.”

  Then he said, as he always did, in a low, warm voice: “Love me?”

  “Always,” Laura answered, in the ritualistic reply. Then she repeated, “Always!”

  She was smiling when she turned on the lamp in the hall. The dark mahogany of the clock beamed in the lamplight. When the lights of a car swung through the glass door in the hall, Laura knew that Alice and David had arrived.

  While Evelyn got out of the car and opened the doors with a flourish, David muttered to his sister: “You have it all down now, don’t you? You know exactly what to say and do?”

  “Yes,” Alice assured him. “I still don’t think he knows anything.”

  “I think he does. That’s why he kept seeing you all last summer. He was trying to find out if you knew.”

  Huddling together, Alice and David walked up the three wide stairs to a door already opening. Laura stood on the threshold, smiling. “I’m so glad you got here safely. Hurry in!”

  Alice thought: “As usual, she looks about eighteen, in that pink wool dress. And a pink ribbon in her hair, too, for God’s sake! Why doesn’t she grow up?”

  As they sat around the fire with their drinks, Alice was thinking, All this, by rights, should be mine. Laura knew on which side her bread was buttered. Playing up to the old woman. How could Aunt Clara have been so stupid not to have seen? I was rather stupid, myself. I should have contested the will.

  Laura’s smile was almost too bright, as she poured martinis for her guests. She could feel the hatred in the room like a malignant danger. As she gave David his glass her fingers touched his and they were cold and stiff. Startled, she looked up into his black eyes. They were studying her with an odd expression, one she could not fathom. Strangely enough, she didn’t feel that David shared his sister’s hatred. She remembered how concerned he had been last summer, after her accident. He had stayed on for two weeks, in spite of his appointments in Cleveland, not leaving until she was out of danger. In many ways he had shown kindness, apparently feeling that the accident was in some way his own fault.

  On the twelfth night after the accident he had stayed up all night with her, giving her injections because the nurse had accidentally given her an overdose of sedatives. “If it happens again,” he had warned the nurse in a hard voice, “I’ll call the police. Mrs. Frazier might have died. It’s lucky that I missed my train and came back.”

  The nurse, grave and frightened, had nodded dumbly. Later, Laura had implored David sleepily: “Please don’t report her. It was an accident, and she’s very young.”

  David had also given Henry a sedative that night. And he had stayed two days longer. Before leaving he had given instructions to Henry: “Just keep an eye on that nurse, and check on the dosages.” Henry, white-faced and gaunt, had promised.

  Remembering, Laura smiled up at David. “Are the martinis strong enough?” she asked. She wished she knew him better. She had never before noticed that he was quite handsome in an intense sort of way.

  “Strong enough,” he replied curtly, and as she turned she could feel Alice’s eyes on her. There was no one but Alice who hated her in this relentless way. She felt trapped among enemies, alone and vulnerable.

  “Oh, David,” she suddenly remembered, “you drink bourbon, and here I am, giving you martinis!”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he answered indifferently. She saw him give his sister a peculiar look. As usual, Alice looked lovely, in a starkly tailored dark-blue suit and blue blouse. There were large turquoise clusters at her ears and throat, and a broad band of turquoises set in silver about her right wrist. Sleek and blonde, she makes me feel like a frump, Laura was honest with herself.

  She wished miserably that she had never invited them. Even Henry had been displeased when he learned that David was coming. Loath to say anything unpleasant about anyone, nevertheless he had remarked: “Frankly, I’m sorry to hear that. I know we should feel grateful to him, and I’ve known him all my life. But there’s something about him I never liked, though God knows I tried. No, I can’t tell you, for the simple reason that I don’t know. He and Sam were closest to each other. And that’s a funny thing,” he had added, frowning.

  “What?” Laura had asked.

  Henry shook his head. “I just don’t know. There’s something about Chicago, when Sam died, that I’ve been trying to remember. It keeps slipping my mind; but never mind. It probably isn’t important.” Apparently, however, his subconscious mind registered some disquiet, for he referred to the matter again, later. Then, only this morning, at breakfast: “If I could just put my finger on it,” he had muttered.

  Laura, intrigued, recalled Sam’s death, and the subsequent events. Yes, she had conceded, sipping more coffee after Henry had left for New York, there had been ‘something’. A strangeness in the air, perhaps, when the police had come. A sort of hiatus, as if someone knew something he wasn’t telling. Alice had only cried once, briefly and painfully. David had merely walked through the apartment, again and again, his head bent. If someone spoke to him suddenly he would start, and then stare, his black eyes unseeing. Had he actually looked afraid? Laura could not remember. But surely it was all imagination. Poor Sam had killed himself when he had discovered that he had an incurable disease. However, who had told him about it? For months, the police searched for any physician who had attended him and warned him of his illness. None was found. They finally came to the conclusion that, knowing he was ill, he had gone to a physician out of town, and had given a false name. But, why should he have done that, Sam who was like a playful and young boy, Sam who could never keep a secret, good or bad? It wasn’t like him at all. He would have confided in Alice, at least, for he had loved his wife. Or, if not Alice, then David, who was a physician. But he had said nothing to anyone, and had never appeared abstracted or depressed. Of a buoyant nature, and a good color, he had not seemed sick. In fact, he was excited about Christmas, a Christmas he never saw, and he had bought Alice something very special. They had found it later, a string of exceptionally fine, matched cultured pearls with a diamond clasp.

  “You’re spilling your drink,” Alice warned her in a detached voice.

  “So I am,” Laura said, her cheeks flushed. “I was thinking of a year ago.” She couldn’t help it, and she was ashamed, but she wanted to hurt Alice. “It was exactly a ye
ar ago that Sam killed himself.”

  “No,” Alice corrected her calmly, “it was a year ago yesterday.” She spoke as if she were referring to something of no consequence. She gave her brother a quick glance, and he spoke as if cued.

  “Why bring up the melancholy subject, Laura?”

  She could not explain that she had wanted to hurt Alice. “It’s just that — well, you can’t help remembering, can you?”

  “Like Banquo at the feast,” David suggested.

  “Henry and I were talking about it only this morning,” she heard herself saying. “Henry thinks there was something ‘off’, as he called it.” She caught her breath.

  David and Alice had not moved at all, yet Laura had the sensation that they had closed in about her — tightly. The glass in her hand shook. Gently, David took it from her and put it on the mantelpiece. “What did Hank mean, Laura?” he asked softly.

  She was frightened, and this was absurd, in her own house, in front of her own crackling hearth. She looked from David’s intense eyes to Alice’s blue ones. Alice no longer seemed indifferent; she was vividly alert.

  Oh, thank God, Laura thought, there was the car with Henry and his guest! “Please forgive me. I shouldn’t have mentioned it at all. It was nothing. Henry and Mr. Carr are here.” She ran out of the room like a frightened child, and the brother and sister heard her throwing open the door.

  “Don’t worry,” Alice said in a low voice. “She’s too scatterbrained to remember that she told us that. Are you afraid she might repeat it to Hank? Look, I know Laura. She’s an absolute fool. Listen to her carrying on out there. She’s already forgotten.”

  “Now I’m sure of one thing,” David told her. “Henry does know something. We’ve got to find out. Why don’t they shut that damn door?”