The Fat Lady's Ghost

by Charlotte MacLeod

  Shaggy was the word for Alex Bodmin. His brown hair was too short for a folk singer, but much too long for anybody else. It looked as though he simply never got around to having it cut. Or combed, for that matter. He had on an old pair of chinos, stained with paint and India ink, and a baggy gray Shetland sweater that was coming apart at the elbows. He was reasonably clean and had shaved not long before, so he could not be quite the beatnik he appeared at first glance. She found him hard to classify. One thing sure, he was out of place in this group of well-dressed, well-behaved young people. He was older than any of the rest; at least twenty-six, she decided. Even Jack Banks looked like a well-scrubbed schoolboy as he joined them and prodded Alex into being more or less civil.

  “He’s studying to be a genius. Aren’t you, Al.”

  “Don’t be a jackass,” Alex grunted. He stared at Corin a moment longer, then demanded, “Are you a freshman?”

  “I’m not quite sure,” she admitted. “I had one year at State Teachers College and took all the art courses they had.” And deliberately flunked everything else, she might have added. “At the end of the year, my advisers told my folks that I belonged in an art school. I couldn’t have agreed more.” Or planned it better.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Applied design. Like—well, this.” She pinched a fold of her dress with a little flourish. People were always terribly impressed when they learned she had printed the material herself.

  Alex bent and scowled at the design for some moments. Finally he jabbed with a long, sensitive forefinger. “Why didn’t you do something about that edge? The way it joins the repeat of the pattern is so clumsy it throws the whole thing off.”

  Corin stared down at her dress, stunned. Never, never once in her life had she received such a brutal criticism of her work. Among the pupils at the little school in Proctor’s Crossing, at the district high school, at State Teachers College, she had always been head and shoulders above everybody else. Corin was always the one chosen to draw the maps on the blackboard, to cut out the Santa Claus faces to stick on the windows at Christmas, to design the costumes for the class play, to trim the Valentine box.

  Everything Corin did was miles ahead of what anybody else could have done. Everybody had always said so. Corin was, always and undisputably, the Class Artist.

  She had slaved over this dress for weeks. She had worn it deliberately that day to impress her new fellow-boarders with her talent and originality. It was far the best thing she had ever done. And here was this mangy character telling her it was all wrong!

  And the worst of it was, as she studied the motif over which she had worked so hard, she could see what Alex meant. What had seemed so perfect in Proctor’s Crossing began to look awkward, almost amateurish.

  It was Jack Banks who saved the situation. “Oh, knock it off, Al. You’re just jealous because she’s prettier than you are. Which reminds me, Corin, how would you like to step out and see a few of Boston’s scenic beauties like maybe the Rib Room for dinner?”

  The way he said it, the Rib Room, whatever it might be, sounded especially inviting just then. “I’d love to,” the girl answered. Then she caught Madame Despau-Davy’s eye. Oh, that blasted kitchen. “But if you take it, you must use it.” The woman had been very positive on that point. How would it look if she went out to dinner her first night? She didn’t dare spoil the arrangement that was going to save her four dollars a week. Especially—suddenly her cheeks flamed—if she was going to have to buy some new clothes. After Alex’s remark, she knew she could never wear her adored hand-printed dress again. All at once she hated it, and him, and all of them. “But I’m afraid I can’t,” she answered firmly. “I’m going to cook my own dinner. I have a lot of settling to do.”

  Angela sidled up and slid one sinuous arm through Jack’s. “I’m available,” she cooed.

  “When were you ever not, Angie?” Jack winked. “Okay, then. Another time, Corin.”

  “Thank you.” The red-haired girl watched, trying not to look envious as her attractive new acquaintance left the room with the glamorous model.

  The others began to drift off. Madame Despau-Davy got up. “I’ll just feed the pussies, then you can have the kitchen to yourself,” she said, and swept out. Her four great spotted cats leaped after her, emitting jungle whines.

  Alex, the last in the room but herself, slouched toward the door. “Don’t get scared down there,” he drawled.

  “I can take care of myself,” she replied shortly. Then she wished she had not even bothered to answer. She stood alone, scowling at the dying fire for a few minutes, then started down the long corridor.

  As she entered the kitchen, the ocelots were just finishing their suppers, each with its muzzle dipping gracefully into a gay plastic bowl of a different color from the others’. Not knowing what a cat that size might do when disturbed at its food, Corin stepped noiselessly into the room and tiptoed over to the refrigerator.

  Madame Despau-Davy was puttering around the sink, singing “The Man on the Flying Trapeze” in a cracked falsetto.

  “Oh, he floats through the air with the greatest of eek!” She half-turned, caught sight of the girl, and fell back against the sink, clutching one hand to her heaving taffeta bosom.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Corin, trying to keep her face straight. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  “Frighten me? Not at all. You just startled me for a moment, my dear.” The landlady tried to laugh, but her face was chalk-white except for the round spots of rouge on her cheekbones. “I’ll be through here in just a second.” She went back to her washing-up with hands that trembled so violently she could hardly turn the faucet.

  “Don’t let me hurry you,” begged the girl, beginning to feel ashamed of herself for having given the old woman such a start. “I’m just going to make a salad and warm up a can of spaghetti.”

  “All through. There you are, my dear.” The landlady gave the sink one last, hasty wipe with a pink sponge, and nodded at the ocelots. They had finished their meal and were washing their whiskers just like ordinary cats. “I’ll take the pussies out for their little run.”

  The young boarder blinked. “Where do you take them?”

  “Just here in the back yard. I had it caged over for Selim.”

  “Who’s Selim?”

  “Was, my dear. Poor Selim passed away a year ago. He was a beloved old friend. A black leopard. Come, angels.” Madame Despau-Davy threw a beaded magenta stole around her shoulders and led her pack out the door.

  Alone with her can of spaghetti, Corin puzzled. All right, maybe she had been a little thoughtless, but did the old woman have to throw a fit about it? It was almost as though Madame Despau-Davy was expecting to be frightened. But why? Had somebody been trying to break in?

  The place looked safe enough. The small, high, street-level windows were protected by heavy iron gratings, and there was a big brass bolt and chain on the door.

  “She’s probably just jumpy from having kept a black leopard for a pet,” Corin decided. “Who wouldn’t be?”

  She dumped her spaghetti into a brightly polished saucepan, added a pinch of dried basil, struck a match to light the elderly gas burner, and began washing vegetables for a salad.

  It was the way the sink was placed, she made up her mind a few minutes later. There was something eerie about that corner behind the great old iron range. Even though a hundred-watt bulb was burning directly over her head, shadows lurked in unexpected places. And she had a weird feeling that somebody was watching her. Although her cool common sense told her the kitchen was empty, she could not resist casting furtive peeks over her shoulder.

  As soon as she sat down at the table with her steaming plate in front of her, the feeling disappeared. “I guess I was just hungry,” she murmured.

  Actually, the kitchen was every bit as charming as her first impression of it. She simply could not imagine why none of the other young people used it. Even if they couldn’t cook, th
ey could warm up TV dinners, surely. Were they all so rich that a saving of almost two hundred dollars for the school year on their board meant nothing to them? She doubted it. Angela’s clothes were smart but not really distinguished. And as for Alex Bodmin—she almost bit the tip off her fork.

  Incidentally, what about that other man the landlady had mentioned? Leo, was it? Why was the woman so positive she would never see him? Not that she wanted to, of course. He was probably as dim as the rest of the crew seemed to be, except possibly John Banks. She wondered, with another twinge of regret, what the Rib Room was like.

  Chapter 3

  Corin woke early the following day. After her long fight to get to art school, she wanted to lose no time in registering. Three-quarters of an hour later, she was ready to explode with frustration. Angela was still in the bathroom.

  “Oh, for Heaven’s sake,” she fumed, stamping one terry-cloth mule frantically. “Is she going to stay here forever?”

  Jeanie and Jennie came dashing out of their room, hugging identical pink bathrobes around them. They thumped on the bathroom door in unison, screaming, “Angela, hurry up!” in twin soprano voices.

  “You’ve got to tell her,” explained Jeanie, or Jennie. “If you don’t, she’ll never come out,” said Jennie, or Jeanie.

  They kept pounding until an irritated voice drawled, “All right, I’m coming. Can’t you give me a minute?”

  “She’s had almost an hour already,” snapped Corin.

  Angela emerged at last, in a most unglamorous old cotton duster stained with cosmetics. She was clutching an enormous make-up kit. Her face was a work of art, except that she had attached inch-long false eyelashes to one lid and forgotten to do the other side.

  One twin giggled; the other poked her savagely in the ribs. “Don’t say anything,” she hissed, “or she’ll be there another hour.”

  They both turned to Corin. “You go first, because you’ve been waiting longest. But could you possibly—”

  “I’ll be exactly five minutes.”

  Angela had left the room a mess. Corin grabbed up a sponge, wiped hair and make-up base out of the sink, picked up a wad of soggy towels and hung them on a rack, then raced through her morning routine. In hardly more than the promised five minutes she was back in the hall, showered and shining, leaving an immaculate bathroom behind her.

  “Corin, you’re absolutely fantastic,” chorused the twins. “How did you ever do it?”

  “I grew up with three older brothers and short-tempered parents in a one-bathroom house,” Corin could have explained; but she only shrugged.

  “I’ll have coffee ready in the kitchen by the time you’re dressed.” The chance to show off her efficiency a little more was irresistible. “Will you join me?”

  The twins exchanged nervous glances. “If—it’s awfully sweet of you, Corin—but we haven’t much time. We’ve got a class. We don’t think—” they slipped into the bathroom and shut the door.

  Corin went back to her room, that small feeling of uneasiness beginning to crawl up her spine again. Those girls were obviously scared to death at the mere idea of entering the kitchen. What was the matter with the place, anyway?

  Well, she couldn’t worry about it now. Thanks to Angela’s eyelashes, she was probably going to be last in line for registration. She dressed hastily in another of her Johansen originals. This one was a tawny slubbed silk that picked up the coppery glints in her hair. Even her mother had approved of it; but now she wasn’t quite sure. Was the cut too severe? Did the intricate motif she had embroidered on the shoulder look a trifle overdone? Should she wear something else?

  “What’s the matter with me?” She thrust her narrow feet savagely into black patent pumps, picked up a matching bag and short black cotton gloves. The outfit was perfectly all right. Just because one frowsy so-called art student—she managed to work herself into such a blind fury that she did not even notice John Banks on the stairs until he whistled.

  “Here she is, Miss America! You look like a million dollars after taxes. Don’t tell me you’re not going to have breakfast with me.”

  Corin hesitated. Surely Madame Despau-Davy did not expect her to eat every single meal in the house. She wouldn’t mind going to some pleasant coffee shop with this good-looking fellow who so clearly admired her. But what if the twins got over their nervous attack and came down for that coffee she had offered them? She’d look like a nut if she didn’t have it made.

  “You’re not going to say no,” Jack was pleading.

  “All right, then,” she said. “I’ll just shake my head slowly from side to side. I promised the twins I’d make coffee.”

  The boy blinked. “In the kitchen? Are they going down there?”

  “I’m not sure,” she confessed. “We’re all running late, because Angela took so long to put on her eyes,” she added cattily. “But I said I would, so I’d better do it.”

  “You’re a hard woman, Johansen,” he sighed. “How about lunch, then?”

  “I suppose I could.” She was a little taken aback by his persistence. “I don’t expect it will take me all day to register.”

  “Great! Let’s say one o’clock at the City Room, then.”

  “Where’s that?”

  Jack looked surprised, then laughed. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of it. It’s just a couple of blocks from Kenmore Square. Turn left when you leave the school and walk up Beacon toward town. You’ll see the sign. I’ll be waiting inside the lobby.” He gave her one of his dazzling smiles and ran down the stairs.

  With her ego fully restored, Corin found the old kitchen more charming than ever. A few homey touches had even been added since the night before. The big, square table was spread with a gaudy printed cloth, and a jug of hideous plastic daisies stood in its exact middle. Madame Despau-Davy’s idea of the artistic, no doubt. Her lip curled at the lack of taste; but she had to admit it was rather cute of the old girl to make the effort.

  She found three percolators of different sizes, all shined bright as new dimes, but all well used. By whom? she wondered. Choosing the smallest, she set it to perk. Ordinarily, she liked a good breakfast; but today toast and coffee and orange juice would have to do. Anyway, the lunch at the City Room would probably be fairly lavish.

  She bolted her food, rinsed the dishes quickly under the faucet and left them to drip on the drainboard, grabbed her things, and dashed out the door. Halfway up the stairs, she met her landlady, carrying a small brown paper bag very carefully.

  “Oh, did you go out for coffee? What a shame, I’ve left half a potful on the stove.”

  “That’s all right, my dear.” The old woman smiled. “I like a little walk in the morning. This is for Leo. I always bring him some.”

  “Why, is he sick?”

  “Oh, no, it’s just that he—oh, dear, I must rush. The pussies will be fussing.”

  What was it the landlady did not want to tell her about the invisible boarder? Corin’s curiosity was roused; but she had no time to press the issue now. It was getting horribly late.

  The school was only a few blocks from the boardinghouse. From the outside, it looked like nothing in particular; but once inside the door and up the narrow, iron-railed staircase, she knew she had found what she had come looking for. Students’ work lined the walls; most of it good and some of it better. One spacious, well-lighted studio led to another, and another. The place was enormous, full of the thrilling tools and smells of the artist’s world. She forgot about registering and simply wandered from one classroom to another, running her fingers over the edges of paint-stained easels, sniffing the odors of charcoal and turpentine, assuring herself that she was really part of it all.

  The variety of drawings, paintings, and graphics on the walls intrigued and vaguely disturbed her. Beside some of these things, the efforts she had been so proud of in Proctor’s Crossing would look pretty sick. She was going to have to work harder than she had ever dreamed just to hold her own, much less excel, in a g
roup like this.

  There was one student she knew she would never equal. Neither would any of the others. Samples of his—or her—work were all over the school, and a less discerning eye than hers would have had no trouble picking them out. For originality of treatment, for sureness of technique, for color sense, for sheer artistry, they would have held their own in any professional showing. She paused before a small pen-and-ink drawing, entranced by the subtle beauty of design and execution, marveling at how anybody could pack so much meaning into a few square inches of cardboard. At last it occurred to her to wonder who the artist was. She found a signature, crowded as small as possible into the lower right-hand corner of the design. It was next to impossible to read; but at last she made it out. A. Bodmin.

  “Alex Bodmin?” That ghastly creep in the torn gray sweater? She didn’t believe it. Or rather, she didn’t want to believe it. But there it was. And, to put an end to any possible doubt, her obnoxious fellow-boarder himself walked up to her.

  “Registered yet?”

  “No, I—did you do that?” She pointed, almost accusingly, at the drawing.

  To her astonishment, he flushed. “I told Hink not to put that up.”

  “But why?”

  “It stinks, that’s why. Don’t you see how I’ve heavied up on the lines there in the lower left?”

  “So what if you did?”

  “So it spoils the whole thing, that’s what,” he mimicked savagely.

  “You’re out of your mind! It’s—I’ve been standing here staring at it because it’s so beautiful.”

  “What do you know about it?” But his angular face softened. “No kidding, have you?”

  “Yes, I have, and if you don’t think it’s good, you’ve got rocks in your head.” She was beginning to feel slightly less hostile to Alex. If he could attack his own work so brutally, maybe she could even forgive him for what he had said about her dress.

  He was scowling at the drawing. At last he turned back to her, “You really like it?”