‘Do you really believe that?’ Clif said gravely.
‘Sure I believe it! It’s not for me ‒ that kind of job never was for me. But if that’s what you want, then it’s one of the best!’
‘I’ve sometimes wondered …’ Clif said. ‘Steve never talks about his work ‒ security reasons, as well as his own natural reticence ‒ but I’ve wondered if the Amtec deal was what he really wanted.’
‘How can he have anything different?’ Mal asked calmly. ‘What other place is there for him? ‒ or any other scientist? In one way or another he’ll work either for a Foundation, a corporation or the military. Steve was one of the few who managed to make a discovery in a home lab, and he made it just in time, before his money ran out. He knows, as well as anyone else, that he couldn’t have made any development of it without Amtec, or someone like them. The day of the basement chemist is gone, Mr. Burrell. It takes thousands of men, and millions of dollars to put one of those babies up in the sky. There’s no such thing as an individual act in science any more.’
‘You work alone …’
Mal shook his head. ‘I don’t research alone, Mr. Burrell. I just advise on one tiny aspect of the whole, and there are enough companies concerned with that aspect to keep me busy. I’m not a research scientist … that’s for guys like Steve.’
‘He’s good?’ It was not precisely a question.
Mal nodded slowly. ‘Amtec is lucky to have him.’
‘Ah …’ Clif took his own time to think about what Mal had said. He rummaged at length in the deep bottom drawer of his desk to find a fresh box of cigars. The good mellow aroma drifted softly through the room, the fresh scent momentarily overpowering the residue of the thousands of cigars that had been smoked there. He proffered the box to Mal.
‘Do you use these?’
Mal shook his head, at the same time bringing out his cigarettes. ‘No ‒ I’ve always thought it was a habit that belonged to more reflective men than myself. I seem to have been for ever up and on the run.’
‘You were a young man in a hurry … you seem to have proved it was worth while.’
Mal did not reply as Clif went through the business of getting the cigar lighted. The old man broke the match between his fingers, and dropped it into the waste basket.
‘We’ve plenty of time,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘How about taking a drink out on to the side porch? Generally catch a breeze there this time of day.’
Mal got to his feet. ‘Leave your jacket there,’ Clif continued. ‘You’ll be more comfortable without it.’
He led the way along a passage covered with worn carpet which connected his professional rooms with the rest of the house. From the main hall with the stair well, Mal could see open double doors that gave a glimpse of an old-fashioned dining-room and living-room on each side. Like Clif’s office, they were in half-darkness, but they looked lifeless and unused. A middle-aged woman came through the swing-door at the end of the hall. She looked expectantly at them.
‘Oh … Mrs. Martin! Could we have ice and some glasses on the side porch, please? And the decanters …’
‘Yes ‒ right away, Mr. Burrell.’
When she had disappeared, Clif turned to Mal, and said softly, ‘It’s all right to sit outside drinking when I have company. When I’m drinking alone, she gets upset if it isn’t done inside.’ He motioned Mal to follow him.
They settled themselves in the shabby, deep cane chairs, turned a little to give a view on to Main Street. Between them and the street were four tall maples, shading the lawn which was Ted Talbot’s pride. Clif had been right ‒ here a slight breeze stirred now, and rustled the leaves of the maples. Mrs. Martin came and placed the tray on the table between them. It was a massive silver tray, heavy with engraving and scrolled edges; the glasses and decanters were fine engraved crystal, sparkling in the afternoon sun. She bustled over setting them out, with the air of a woman who was glad to have the excuse of using them.
‘Thank you, Mrs. Martin,’ Clif said in his deep, rumbling voice. She lingered a little, eyeing Mal with interest, but finally they heard the flat slap as the screen door closed behind her.
‘New in the town since your time,’ Clif said. ‘She’s been here almost since Dorothy died. Lives with her husband over on Becket Street. She’d like to polish me up ‒ same as she does these glasses, but I’m set in my bad habits, and she knows it. Nice woman, though ‒ pretty harmless, as housekeepers go.’
‘Lot of new things and people since my time,’ Mal said. He vaguely saluted Clif before he drank. He sipped, and let the whisky lie on his tongue. ‘Say ‒ this is good stuff!’
‘Twelve years old,’ Cliff said. ‘I figure if I’m going to rot my guts with liquor, it might as well be a good one. I might last longer to drink more of it that way.’
He continued, waving his glass in the direction of the street. ‘Yes, a lot of new things and faces, Mal. What do you think of it all?’
‘It’s damn’ good,’ Mal said firmly. ‘Best thing that could have happened! I tell you, Mr. Burrell, this town owes a debt to Steve Dexter for bringing Amtec here. I hope they know it.’
‘They know it,’ Clif said dryly. ‘And they tell him so ‒ and expect him to make excuses when something comes up they don’t like. He does his best ‒ I think he really suffers if he thinks the town is being hurt in any way. But Steve was never a joiner … he’s lived too long in his laboratory to feel very much at home in crowds. Oh, they’ve roped him into all the appropriate boards and committees, but he isn’t really with it at all. Burnham Falls can’t turn him into another Joe Carpenter.’
‘And just as well, too,’ Mal said bluntly. ‘Joe Carpenter was a short-sighted old sentimentalist who was always trying to turn the clock back.’
‘Joe had his points … he wasn’t altogether wrong.’
Mal laid down his glass. ‘I took a drive round town early this morning before I went up to the Laboratories. This is a different town, and that’s because of Steve and not Joe.’
‘Different …’ Clif said mildly. ‘But is it better?’
‘Certainly it’s better! I took a good look at it all … all those houses in Amtec Park, and the new development for people who’ll be coming in to work at the plant when it’s ready. That plant’s going to be a big one, Mr. Burrell … it’ll take care of every man who wants to work in Burnham Falls, and it’ll bring business into this town like it’s never had before. Don’t tell me the town hasn’t felt the benefit from that trailer camp for the construction crews?’
‘Oh, yes ‒ it’s felt it all right. I can’t deny that. But some of the crews are hardly worthy additions to Burnham Falls. Some of them are kind of rough. There’s fights outside the bars just about every Saturday night.’
‘But their money looks good, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, their money looks good,’ Clif said stonily.
Mal raised his hand and pointed at Clif. ‘That consolidated school they’re building ‒ isn’t that a better thing for the town?’
‘I couldn’t say, Mal. We need a bigger school because we have many more children.’
‘Yes but this school is going to have the things that the old Burnham Falls High never had ‒ big and well-equipped labs, better library, better gym and lecture halls. Steve told me all about it. By anyone’s standards, this is going to be a fine school.’
‘If it gets the right teachers …’
‘Teachers or not, Mr. Burrell ‒ all I know is that if there had been a school like this in Burnham Falls when I was growing up, I’d have had to do a lot less rooting and elbowing to get where I wanted to go. This school is a recognition of the kids like Mal Hamilton you were talking about. If it needs Amtec and higher taxes to bring it about, then for God’s sake let’s have them!’
Clif nodded slowly. ‘I guess I’m older and more out of touch than I think.’
They sat in silence for some time, each having enjoyed the ruffled feeling of the other, the sense of an argument
swiftly pursued. Clif knew that he must necessarily be cast in the role of defender of things past. But Mal was the man of science, the man of new things, the new age. They had to argue ‒ it was expected of them. But not argue so strongly as to spoil this evening hour, with the breeze growing cooler as they sat there, and the shade deepening under the trees.
Clif reached over for the decanter, and pushed it towards Mal. ‘Here, fill it up this time. Women are always so parsimonious when they pour liquor.’
Three
Jeannie wore nothing under her blouse but a bra, and Jerry had reached around and unhooked it; he unbuttoned the blouse and slipped the bra down. Her breasts were round and mature, but still the high, firm breasts of a young girl. He cupped one in each hand gently. Then abruptly, with a kind of desperation, his grip tightened.
‘Please, Jeannie … take off your things. I can’t stand this!’
Now he put his head between her breasts, and his lips tugged urgently. ‘Please, Jeannie.’
The weight of his body had pushed her sideways on the car seat, so that he was almost lying on top of her; he put one arm under her back, and pulled her closer in to him, pressing her as tightly against him as he could. He could smell a clean soap smell from her, the fragrant warmth of her skin. Then he felt her hands, her strong hands, pushing against his shoulders; her body had stiffened to loosen his grasp.
‘We mustn’t do this, Jerry! It’s crazy … please don’t ask me to!’
‘I can’t help it, Jeannie … please … please!’
‘No … we mustn’t!’
Roughly he pulled her back to him. ‘Why not? Don’t you want it? Don’t you feel like I do?’
There was a short pause. Her voice was muffled when she spoke. ‘Yes, I want it, Jerry. But I’m afraid. I don’t want to have a baby!’
‘You don’t have to worry ‒ I’ll be careful. I promise you you don’t have to worry.’
‘No!’ she whispered. ‘No! … Sometimes there’s an accident. It isn’t worth the risk … and all the worry.’
His hold on her slackened, and he moved back from her a little. ‘Well, damn you! Why did you let me touch you in the first place?’
She let out a low cry of protest. ‘Jerry, that isn’t fair! You know it isn’t! I wanted to be here. I … I like you to touch me like that. But I can’t let you go all the way. And you know why!’
His words choked a little with scorn and frustration. ‘You girls … you’re all the same! You let a guy kiss you, and lead him on, and then when it gets to the big question, you chicken out. You’re all cheats … all of you!’
In her turn, she grew angry. ‘What else do you expect? What other way is there to be? I’m human, like you … but I’m the one that’ll have to take the consequences if there’s a baby. What’s a girl supposed to do? Never have a date because she knows that pretty soon she’s got to tell the boy that she won’t ‒? A girl has to do that, or shut herself up at home all the time.’
‘You’re so calm about it,’ he said bitterly. ‘You’ve got all the answers, haven’t you? If you really loved me, you wouldn’t keep on saying no all the time.’
‘But I do love you, Jerry!’ Her voice broke in a desperate little sob. ‘I do really love you!’
He moved away from her, back to the driver’s side of the seat, saying nothing. The blood seemed to be smashing in his temples, and he gripped the seat with both hands to stop them trembling. He slid down in the seat, resting his neck against it and staring straight up into the dark canopy of the trees above him. The sweat had broken all over him now; he could feel his hands clammy against the seat, and his shirt was sticking to his back. Beside him, Jeannie had not moved.
He had parked the car by the side of the dirt road that led down to the Carpenter fishing cabin. At the end of the road were the group of fishing cabins and the lake, but the trees were too dense for them to catch even a glint of the starlight on the water. Around them was all the unbroken silence of the Downside estate; there was not enough wind to raise a ripple on the lake. Jerry’s keen, listening ears could not even hear the lap of the water against the rocks, or the gentle scrape of the row boats against the old wooden pier. The fishing cabins were empty and shuttered.
He knew he had no business to be parked along this road, which was the right-of-way to the cabins. Technically, anything off this road belonged to Downside, and he was trespassing. But the Downside road was almost always deserted at night, and he had had an excuse ready if he had met a car coming from the seminary. None of the high school kids ever came here to park with their dates; with all the privacy of the place, the feeling that they were on the only road that led to the seminary had a strangely inhibiting effect. Most of them had forgotten about the dirt road that led to the cabins.
Jerry liked it here because it was one of the few places he felt like driving to with Jeannie. She was different from other girls, he thought, in a special way. It had never occurred to him to take her to the places that the kids parked their cars around Burnham Falls ‒ the spots on the lake where the trees made friendly shadow, and where theirs could be one of six or seven cars with silent, amorous couples in it. Jeannie just wasn’t the sort of girl you took to places like that ‒ he couldn’t quite explain why he felt this way about her, but at the back of his mind he always carried the remark he had heard Vanesco, the town’s barber, make one day as he watched Jeannie walk by the shop ‒ ‘Girl who looks like that got to be twice as careful as others because every old hen in the town’d be cackling about her …’ Jerry didn’t want anyone cackling about Jeannie because of him.
The thought brought him back to what she had just said. In the warm darkness he was acutely conscious of her sitting there, the whole length of the long seat between them. Jeannie knew all about the ‘old hens’ of the town, about the talk that could circulate so quickly about a blonde with a voluptuous figure. Jeannie wasn’t any fool, and when she had made her angry protest he had known in his heart that it was valid. But validity or reasonableness had little to do with how he felt when he could touch Jeannie, and kiss her soft, warm mouth, feel the response of her body within his arms, hear the shaken, urgent whisperings in his ear.
He glanced across at her. In the faint light he could see her staring straight ahead, as still and motionless as the air about them. He had pushed her blouse back off her shoulders, and she sat there with her arms by her sides, almost naked to the waist. He was aware of the simple dignity and pride in her bearing. Having repulsed him, she did not hasten to gather her clothes about her with expressions of outraged modesty. Jeannie knew she was as much responsible as he for the fact that she sat here half-naked beside him, and there were no bitter, prim recriminations. Jeannie didn’t whine. She was honest and fair … much more fair than he had been.
At last he spoke, swallowing to get rid of the dryness in his throat.
‘Jeannie, let’s get married.’
Slowly she turned her head. The light was too faint to let him see her expression. She didn’t answer.
‘Did you hear what I said?’ he demanded impatiently. ‘I want to get married.’
‘I heard you,’ she answered. ‘But I don’t think you know what you’re saying.’
‘Sure I know ‒ I just said, “Let’s get married”.’
Her voice was soft ‒ the soft, gentle tone that he loved to hear. ‘That’s sweet of you, Jerry … honestly, that’s sweet. But we’re just a couple of kids. We can’t get married.’
‘We’re both eighteen …’
‘Yes,’ she interrupted, ‘and you’ve only finished one year of college. What happens to that, Jerry?’
‘We’ll manage. We’ll get married, and I’ll get a job in the evenings, and there’s the bank during the summers. We could get an apartment near the campus. Thousands of freshmen get married, Jeannie … there’s nothing strange about that.’
‘Hush, Jerry ‒ there’s no use talking like that. I wouldn’t marry you now, and put a millstone round your neck.
Getting through college isn’t a cinch. Even if I supported myself while you got through it still wouldn’t be college the way your father wants it for you ‒ the way a boy should have it.’
‘What’s my father got to do with this? …’
‘Quite a lot,’ she said, ‘and I don’t want to spoil things for you. Your father meant you to enjoy college, and then come back and help run this town. He meant you to look around before you decided to get married. A boy of eighteen who gets married starts to be an old man.’
‘That’s just a lot of talk, Jeannie. You’re just saying these things. I want to hear about your side of it. I want to hear what you want to do, not what you think I ought to do.’
‘Me?’ He heard her faint sigh. ‘I’d like nothing more than to marry you, Jerry. I’ve never loved anyone else but you, and I don’t think I could. I’d like to marry you and settle down here in Burnham Falls …’
‘Then why don’t you?’
‘Not now ‒ it’s too soon! I don’t want to be known as the girl who grabbed Jerry Keston before he had a chance to get out of this town and see what other girls looked like ‒ college graduates ‒ girls from different kinds of family. I’m afraid to do that, because maybe in a few years you might start to believe that was what happened. I couldn’t bear it if you thought you’d been trapped.’
‘For God’s sake, Jeannie, this is just a lot of bull! Girls don’t talk like that! If they want to get married, they get married!’
‘Now you just listen to me!’ she said firmly. ‘I know what I’m talking about. If we get married it’ll be in three or four years’ time, when you’ve had a good look around at what college girls have to offer and when you’ve decided that Burnham Falls isn’t such a bad place.’
‘And what will you do?’
‘I’ll stay here and work,’ she said calmly, ‘and wait for you to come back. If you come back I’ll know it’s because you want to.’
He turned to her, bewildered and a little outraged. ‘I never heard a girl talk like you, Jeannie. They just think about getting married and … everything.’
Corporation Wife Page 17
