Corporation Wife

by Catherine Gaskin

  It was something else to remember that by this time he had intended to be well on the way to Toronto. He looked at his watch, and somehow he didn’t care that he wasn’t going to reach Toronto to-day, and perhaps not even to-morrow. His client wasn’t expecting him there until Monday, and now Mal played with the idea of spending another night in Burnham Falls, driving back to New York late Sunday, and taking a plane to Toronto. He enjoyed driving long distances by himself; it provided a kind of longed-for solitude on which nothing and no one could intrude. That was the reason why he had driven to Burnham Falls the day before, with the intention of heading straight on, for Canada. But it was just as easy to give up the thought of pushing on for the North; it was a deep satisfaction for him to reflect that he could lie here and make up his mind which of two places he would be in, and no telephone would ring to command him to do otherwise, and there was no one who would reproach him for whatever way his whim went. He valued intensely the thought of such freedom; he was rarely lonely.

  After he was showered and shaved he drove slowly by the supermarket, noting the big parking lot that was filled with cars, and then the outskirts of Burnham Falls straggled towards him. Here, also, the streets were lined with cars ‒ narrow streets that had never been intended for this volume of traffic, and which could only be improved by slicing into the front lawns and the two graveyards, and as far back as the very steps of the courthouse and the churches. Watching people desperately hunting for a parking place, he knew why the supermarket down the highway was flourishing. He cruised around until another car pulled out and then he backed in swiftly, and deposited his nickel in the parking meter. The diner was just across the road, and for all the warmth of the morning, he found he was hungry. As he crossed the road, he kept looking about in half-expectation of seeing some of the faces from the Dexter party last night, but then he realised that the women, efficient housewives all of them, would have done their week-end shopping the day before, and the men would be doing whatever it was that executives did on a Saturday morning.

  He ordered a stack of wheatcakes and sausages, and coffee. The girl brought his coffee at once, and as he started to drink it, he looked up and saw George Keston passing. George was with his son Jerry ‒ George in his business suit, and Jerry wearing the tie and plain white shirt that looked so oddly out of place in the middle of the casual dress all about him. Mal leaned forward and rapped on the window. George’s face broke into a smile when he recognised him, but he shook his head and gestured helplessly when Mal beckoned him inside. Then abruptly his reluctance vanished, and he turned back and went to the door of the diner. Mal rose to greet him.

  ‘Hallo, there, Mal,’ he said. ‘Glad to see you. You remember Jerry, don’t you?’

  ‘Sure. How are you, Jerry?’ Mal in turn shook the young man’s hand. ‘Have a cup of coffee with me.’ He gestured towards the booth.

  ‘Haven’t time, Mal. Saturday’s busy with us ‒ and I’ve just spent nearly an hour over at John Martin’s office ‒ he’s the insurance man. He had a mutual client of ours there who enjoys telling her bank manager when and where she’ll see him, and she’s rich enough to be able to do it.’ He smiled a little feebly as he spoke. ‘But there are other things I’d rather do on a hot morning.’

  ‘Well, take a spell. The bank will wait another ten minutes.’

  ‘I suppose it will ‒ at that.’ He plumped down heavily in the booth, and Jerry slid himself in silently and neatly. For his size he was well co-ordinated, his movements smooth and graceful. Then Mal remembered that George had boasted that his son was an athlete. The young man regarded him unsmilingly and with frank curiosity. Mal sensed that he disliked and resented him, and he couldn’t think why.

  ‘How’s business, George?’ he said as the extra cups of coffee were brought.

  ‘Fine ‒ just fine. The town’s booming. Amtec has brought a lot of money in here, and they encourage their folks to spend it right here in town. All this construction’s damn’ good for business.’

  ‘But what about when they finish the plant and the housing development. The men are itinerant …’

  ‘Yes, but there’ll be the wages from the new plant, and about three hundred-odd new families moving in to man the plant. These defence contracts ‒ they’re good business, you know.’

  Mal nodded. ‘I have good reason to know. They’ve kept me busy long enough.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘And the town likes it? Place looks overcrowded to me.’

  George shrugged. ‘What can they do about it? It’s money in their pockets. All those automobiles out there …’ he gestured towards Main Street ‒ ‘represent a family buying something. It’s change all right, but who wants to stand in the way of progress?’ He glanced quickly at his watch as he spoke.

  Mal turned to Jerry. ‘And what do you think of it? Are you going to stay here?’

  Jerry’s face was blank, but Mal noticed that his shoulders tightened slightly, and he seemed reluctant to answer. ‘I have three more years in college, and then the draft taps me. When that’s done will be plenty of time to decide.’

  George spoke quickly. His tone was aggressive, and Mal guessed that he and Jerry had argued this point many times. ‘Jerry’s draft is deferred until he finishes college. Five years from now you won’t know this town ‒ the highway will be through, and the new plant settled in. I’ve got definite information that the Carnegie Bank will locate here during the next two years, and I’m going to need every trained young fellow I can get my hands on. Jerry doesn’t know what he’s passing up if he doesn’t come back here. This place has got a lot to offer …’

  Jerry suddenly rose, his face hostile and set. ‘I’m sorry, Dad, I’ll have to get along. There’s a pile of work over there, and you did say you expected me to go to the Mellons’ to-night. I’ll have to be through by six …’ He nodded to Mal. ‘S’long, Mr. Hamilton. It was nice to see you again.’ Somehow he made the words sound insulting, though his tone was smooth. ‘It’s kind of a real big thing with my Dad to have you back in town. He’s always telling me how you made your own way, and how well you’ve done. Of course, you left Burnham Falls …’ He saluted him vaguely. ‘Goodbye, Mr. Hamilton.’

  The insult was open and intended when he paid for his own coffee on the way out.

  After George Keston left him Mal went across to Carter’s to get some cigarettes. The cool breath of the air-conditioning met him as he entered, and he grinned a little as he noticed the streamlined fixtures, the recessed lighting, the clean, antiseptic look of the rubber-tiled floor that was shiny with wax. He faintly regretted the marble-topped tables they had once had in the fountain section, but he admitted that Wally Carter could fit more customers into the booths and the chromium stools along the counter. It was efficient, but not homely any more. As he paid for his cigarettes he wondered why he should even faintly regret the old Carter’s, since ease and efficiency of operation were his gods, and beside that, in the old days he had never had time or money to spend in Carter’s, and it shouldn’t matter a damn to him what it looked like now.

  As he turned to the door he saw Jeannie at the long cosmetics counter on the far side of the store. She was looking at him expectantly, and half-smiling; she was wearing a pale pink shirt-maker dress that looked as if it was just fresh from the iron. There was nothing about her to suggest how late she had stayed at the Carpenter house the night before.

  ‘Hello, Mr. Hamilton!’

  ‘Hi, there, Jeannie.’ She was displaying a box of soap to a customer, and two more were waiting. A couple of high school girls with tanned legs in Bermuda shorts were bending to examine the display in the showcase counter. Jeannie gave him another quick smile and turned to wrap the soap and ring up the sale on the cash register.

  ‘You’re busy, Jeannie,’ he commented purposelessly as he swung open the door to leave.

  ‘I need six hands!’ Then she laughed. ‘But I like it that way.’

  All her customers turned to look at Mal as he left the store
. Outside the heat was waiting, the heat and the Saturday morning noise was stronger. Even the breeze blowing in from Lake Burnham didn’t help much.

  He bought a bag of apples at a shop on Main Street whose interior was dim, and which had half-heartedly tried to convert into a small supermarket, or ‘superette,’ as it said on the window outside. It was run by people whose name Mal didn’t recognise, and it wasn’t doing much business. The fruit was good, but the prices were high. He put the bag on the seat beside him, and he munched an apple slowly as he drove through the town. He cruised aimlessly for a while, turning off Main sharply on Chester to go past the new school. It was almost finished, and was almost indistinguishable from a thousand other schools across the country. It stood about half-way between the town and Amtec Park, with open playing fields on both sides of it. It was big and clean-looking, and dull ‒ and he knew its laboratories would have all the equipment he had once dreamed of using in the old school building on Dunbar Street.

  He continued on past Amtec Park, and the Laboratories, past the Talbot house, slowing down as he reached the shellac factory and the half-finished plant. Next to it was the trailer camp for the construction workers, who worked on the plant and on the housing development on the other side of town. It was an ugly, cluttered sprawl that he had seen many times from the windows of the Laboratories; washing was strung on lines between the trailers, and all the grass had vanished. It was a dust patch, which in bad weather turned to mud. It had the disreputable, cynical air of an impermanent shanty-town, a grouping of people and belongings that cared nothing for Burnham Falls, and owed nothing to it. It stood there in blatant, uncaring contrast to the clean lines and mown lawns of the Laboratories on the hill above it. The management of Amtec had complained to the construction bosses, who did nothing about it, and over the months it had grown worse as the litter of cans and boxes, old paraffin stoves and junk collected about each trailer. Amtec had called a crash programme to get the plant completed and into production; the workers were on overtime and their pockets were stuffed with dollars. They drank good whisky, and cooked prime steaks on their makeshift barbecue pits. They didn’t give a damn about what Amtec thought.

  After the trailer camp, Mal picked up speed again. Three miles farther on, just past the old White farm, he saw the road he had been seeking, and he turned into it. It was an old road, not much used even when the White farm had been functioning, and now almost abandoned. It was unpaved, and deeply rutted; ice, and the rushing water from summer storms had gouged deep holes in it. He imagined that the only ones who used it now were the fishermen who fished the waters of the small lake it skirted on one side. Pitching and bouncing, Mal followed it for three more miles as it skirted the back of the golf course. It came out on the Farmington road just a little above the entrance to the country club. Before he reached the last bend that led on to the highway, Mal pulled into the side and stopped.

  He took the apples and his rolled-up jacket from the car, locked it, and started off through the woods. The land was level and a bit swampy at first, and then it rose steeply, displaying great falls of lichened rock that were almost lost in the deep green shadow of the crowding trees. The earth was carpeted with dry, dead leaves, and the birds seemed strangely noisy in the quiet. The sounds of the cars on the highway below had diminished to a gentle swish.

  In his wallet somewhere was a guest card for the club, but he didn’t intend to use it, and it gave him a somewhat childish pleasure to know that if he was seen he would look like any other cautious trespasser as he beat through the heavy brush and wood that fringed the golf course. In the brush the heat was humid and sticky, and the mosquitoes began to plague him. The traces of the old path he had followed as a boy were still there, overgrown in parts, with fallen trees crossing it, and the weedy, paper-like grey birdies bent over parallel to the ground from the weight of the ice in the winter. Some of them had been torn out by the wind, and the earth clung about their dead roots. The path wound steadily up the side of the hill, slippery with dry, dead leaves. In Mal’s time as a child in Burnham Falls, this had been a favourite place for the kids to go in summer. At the top there was the great circle of granite boulders from which you could get a view over the whole town and down through the valley. It had been part of Joe Carpenter’s land then, but Joe didn’t mind them building a fire and cooking sausages there, as long as the fire was thoroughly out before they left. Also, they weren’t allowed to shoot in his woods. Mostly these rules had been respected, and Joe left them pretty much alone. Mal knew from the look of the path that almost no one went there now.

  He reached the top at last, put down his jacket and the apples, and stretched himself full length on the sloping granite, which was hot to his touch. The granite shapes were all about him, almost as tall as he remembered them. Below was the valley ‒ the town, the lakes, the summer cottages, and all the new things that had come to the valley since. Directly below, close at hand, was the Carpenter place.

  The heat hit up at him; he began to sweat, and even that felt good. He felt his body go limp, and after a while he slept.

  When he opened his eyes again the sun had shifted, and he lay in shade. The afternoon shadows were fingering out across the valley; he rolled over and lay with his head pillowed in his arms. Presently he reached out and got an apple from the bag, and ate it greedily, and then he sat up and tossed the core high in the air, as far as he could, listening to the crash it made as it fell somewhere in the trees. Then he picked up his jacket and the apples, and started down the opposite side of the hill from the way he had come, down towards the Carpenter place.

  He climbed the stone wall at the back of the house, noting how far the brush had encroached on the square that had been Joe Carpenter’s lawn. The Rolls was in the garage, but there was no sign of Steve’s car; he wondered what it was he missed, and then realised that so far he had heard no sound of voices in the quiet afternoon air. There was no sign of Gene or Tim about. The screen door cut off his view into the kitchen.

  ‘Hallo!’ he said. ‘Are you there, Nell?’

  He heard the sound of a chair scrape on the floor.

  ‘Mal? Is that you, Mal?’

  It was Harriet’s voice. She appeared at the screen door, and swung it open. She stood there looking at him, her face shadowed with a kind of weariness he had never seen there before; she wore a simple blue cotton dress which brought out the warmth of her skin and hair. She had the look of being totally unprepared for him, and she didn’t try to cover her expression.

  ‘Mal … I was just thinking about you. I didn’t hear the car …’

  ‘I came over the hill. The car’s back on the side road.’

  ‘You didn’t go to Toronto?’ she said as she stood back to let him pass into the kitchen.

  ‘No.’ He offered no explanation. He stood quite still, looking about him, liking the order and serenity of the kitchen.

  Harriet said. ‘Nell’s resting … I make her go and rest every afternoon.’

  He turned and looked at her. ‘It seemed quiet … Aren’t Gene and Tim about?’

  ‘They’re off somewhere with Willie Prescott. They should be at Arlene Sommers’ birthday party, but they refused to go, and I couldn’t make them.’ She put her hand to her face. ‘It’s difficult sometimes … trying to tell Gene and Tim where they should have their friends. Steve is bound to see Art Sommers sometime on Monday at the Laboratories, and he’s such a bad liar …’

  ‘Where’s Steve now?’

  ‘At the lab.’ Harriet moved to the sink, and filled the kettle. ‘I’m having some tea … would you like a cup? Or some coffee? I’ll fix you a drink later and we’ll take it on to the porch, but I want my tea first.’

  ‘Yes … yes, I’ll have some tea.’ The novelty of the idea was attractive. Mal pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘Does Steve often work Saturdays?’

  She nodded. ‘I think … most Saturdays. Sometimes Sunday, as well. Only he doesn’t think of it as work. It’s almost a re
creation. You see, he’s able to get into the laboratory on week-ends for a few hours without interruption. He has so little time for laboratory work during the week, and it’s still the only thing that really interests him.’

  ‘Steve should be head of the Laboratories,’ Mal said carefully. ‘And he should be in the laboratory all the time. He’s too good to waste on administration. He should have Ed Peters’ position.’

  ‘Steve doesn’t like administration … and Ed Peters’ job is nothing but that. You don’t understand, Mal. Ed has been with Amtec a long time. He knows the company … he knows what it wants. Steve remembers only half the time that he works for Amtec.’

  Mal watched her spooning the tea into the pot. ‘Wouldn’t you like to see Steve have that job?’

  She poured the boiling water in carefully. ‘I wouldn’t stand in the way of anything that Steve wanted. But life would be very different for all of us if Steve had Ed’s position. The president is a sort of company … showpiece. He has to be in sight … and his family. Steve couldn’t spend the week-ends at the Laboratories, and the boys couldn’t not go to Arlene Sommers’ birthday party.’

  Mal took the cup she passed to him, and watched her cut a chocolate frosted cake; he remembered now that it was the same cake Nell had been famous for in Burnham Falls before he went away.

  ‘And what about you, Harriet?’ he said, stirring the tea reflectively. ‘Aren’t there any plans of yours it might get in the way of? You look as if you’re still waiting … yes, waiting for something you’ve been expecting for a long time.’

  She didn’t look at him. ‘What else can happen to me? What would I want to happen?’

  ‘How should I know?’ he said abruptly. ‘How should I know what a woman wants. I’ve never made much of a success of understanding women.’