In the chair next to Clif, Tom Burns, who ran the dry-cleaning store next door spoke. ‘Well … I dunno … when a girl’s got a figure like Jeannie’s, something’s almost bound to happen to her. She’s sure stacked.’ He met Clif’s stare quite calmly because it had suddenly become permissible now in Burnham Falls to talk about Jeannie Talbot this way.
‘I tell you it’ll be some show when those guys come up for trial,’ John Vanesco said. ‘It’ll blow the lid right off this town ‒ the Talbots being church-going an’ all that ‒ and Amtec being sort of responsible for the construction camp being here. I guess Mr. Ed Peters isn’t too comfortable about the whole thing. Selma Talbot helps out at his house now and then. I hear he was at the hospital to see Jeannie right after it happened.’
‘Sure was queer how Mal Hamilton found her,’ Burns said. ‘I’d like to know what he was doin’ on that road that time of night.’
Clif struggled with the towels around his neck.
‘That’s O.K., John. I’m thin enough on top. Don’t take it all.’ He climbed down from the chair stiffly, and reached into his pocket for money to pay John, at the same time shrugging off the other’s efforts to brush his neck again. ‘See you again,’ he said.
There was silence while he settled his tie, and got his jacket and hat from the bench. But the talk started up again even before the door properly closed behind him.
When he walked out on to the street again, the heat seemed to hit him with physical force; after a few paces he was sweating, and he took out his handkerchief and carefully wiped his face. He recognised it as the gesture of an old man. He pushed his panama a little farther back on his head, and thought of going into Drake’s Bar for a shot of whisky. He hesitated only because he had never, so far, taken to drinking in public at midday, obeying a loose kind of code that it was undignified to do so. Perhaps if he drank beer, people would know it was only because of the heat, and not the need for liquor. Then he shrugged away that idea, because he couldn’t convince even himself with it. He was still thinking about the drink as he drew level with Drake’s; he paused in a kind of shuffling hesitation before the door, and then, quite abruptly, he turned away. Inside he had seen a crowd of men, much like the one he had left at the barber shop ‒ bigger than usual for this time of day ‒ and he also recognised from their animation that the talk was hot and strong. He knew, without stepping inside that they were talking about Jeannie Talbot. Somehow, the sight of the place disgusted him for the first time. It was heavily shaded from the sun by awnings, and inside only two dimmed lights burned at the back of the bar. It was an atmosphere that invited comment more lurid and suggestive than at Vanesco’s. Jeannie’s name would be common property for a time in this town, he thought, and people who had barely known her name would claim knowledge of her, if not friendship, and for a time around the bars it would be a sign of sexual prowess to talk about her in a way that suggested intimacy. She had become everyone’s possession, a girl whom women could either defend or draw away from, whom men could speak about with a knowing smile, and a broad innuendo.
He felt a little sick as he turned away, and absolutely powerless. He stared unseeingly into the blinding sun, and wondered what he ought to do.
It was a shock to feel the hand come down on his shoulder, to hear the voice so close to him.
‘Hi, there, Mr. Burrell! How’ve you been? Haven’t seen you about lately.’
Clif faced the other man unwillingly, shrinking a little away from his touch, and not caring if it was noticed. ‘Oh ‒ how are you, Benedict?’ he said distantly.
‘Can’t complain ‒ can’t complain.’ The tone was too hearty, with an edge of triumph to it which Clif knew must mean that Benedict had something to tell him.
John Benedict had set up practice in Elmbury more than twenty years ago, and had developed a flourishing business on the basis of his homespun manner, and his occasional, deliberate bad grammar. He called himself a ‘people’s lawyer’ ‒ and they believed him. Clif’s Harvard Law School background had been the subject of many of Benedict’s sly digs over the years, and it had been something of a trial for Clif when Benedict had established a branch office in Burnham Falls at the time that Amtec came into the town. It was run by a young man fresh from N.Y.U., and supervised at a distance by Benedict. He never came to Burnham Falls for minor business.
‘Had an interesting client this morning, Clif.’ The use of his first name sounded like a deliberate insult, but Clif thought it probable that using people’s first names had built up Benedict’s business.
‘Oh?’ he said.
‘Yes ‒ Ted Talbot. You know ‒ father of the girl that’s had this trouble.’
Clif took a deep breath; he had feared this from the moment he had seen Benedict, but he hadn’t been quite prepared to accept that Ted had gone past him to seek help from the other lawyer. It was the worst he had feared, and it had happened. It was the first time that he knew completely and truly that he was finished in Burnham Falls.
‘It’s a nasty bit of trouble this girl’s in …’ Benedict said.
Clif thought it was typical of him that he had avoided using the word ‘rape’ so far. It was part of his system of delicate vulgarisms, instead of straight words ‒ almost like the way a mortician talked of the dead. Clif detested it.
‘I thought it was the men who committed the rape that were in trouble,’ Clif observed.
‘It’s hard on the little girl, too,’ Benedict answered. ‘Of course, we don’t do much criminal business, but Talbot asked me to find the right people to handle it when the men were caught and the trial date set. We have to see that justice is done by this poor little innocent girl,’ he added piously.
He was watching Clif’s face closely, and now he thrust his hands in his pockets, and prepared to enjoy the rest of what he had to say. ‘Of course, Talbot would have gone to you, Clif, but I understand you’re not handling cases any longer …’
‘I’m sure your firm will handle it to everyone’s satisfaction,’ Clif replied stiffly.
Benedict beamed. ‘We’ll do our best, Clif.’ Again he touched the other’s arm with a gesture of intimacy. ‘But believe me, I’m looking forward to the day when I’ll be able to put my feet up and forget about law. But I have to make a little something to put by first. It’s different with you Harvard men …’
On the way up Main Street towards his house Clif passed George Keston. Usually when they met they stopped to exchange a minute’s talk, but to-day George kept right on walking.
‘Hallo, Clif,’ he said, waving vaguely in his direction. He hurried straight by, and Clif pondered about him for a while, and wondered if he had only imagined that George looked embarrassed. By the time he had reached his front gate he had remembered that Jerry Keston was Jeannie’s boyfriend.
He walked moodily indoors and went straight to the liquor cabinet. He poured himself a stiff shot of whisky, and drank it standing up. Then he poured another one, and drank it more slowly at his desk, thinking about what he had seen and heard downtown. It was like the buzzing of flies ‒ distinct and unpleasant, not to be ignored. He thought that he should do something about it, but he didn’t know what to do that wouldn’t make more fuss. Benedict had made it impossible for him to offer his help again to the Talbots and he was still enough hurt by Ted passing him over to make him unwilling to consider any way around that. He wondered what kind of fees Benedict would charge Ted, and he knew whatever they were, Ted could not afford them. He muttered angrily under his breath, and went and poured another drink. Milly Squires put her head in the room, and he told her curtly that he wasn’t ready for her yet, and he saw her look disapprovingly at the bottle and the glass. By the time the third drink was finished, he had thought of something to do.
He went and got the clippers from the tool shed, and walked slowly around to the front lawn. The afternoon had grown hotter, even the faint breeze was gone now, and the air was still and dead, unmoving. He pricked his finger as he cut the
first rose, and stood there sucking the little droplets of blood that oozed slowly, and wishing at the same time that he was inside in the shade. Then he bent and quickly stripped the bush ‒ these were fat red blooms, whose scent hung heavy on the air. He thought of it as a dark scent, like their colour. Then he heard the telephone ring inside, and a minute later, Milly leaned out of her office window, and called to him.
‘Mr. Burrell, it’s for you.’
He straightened slowly. He thought it was regrettable that Milly had no style in anything she did. ‘I imagined that, Milly,’ he said, ‘Who is it?’
‘It’s Mrs. Williams. She wants to talk to you about some changes in her will.’
‘Tell her I’ll talk to her later. Tell her I’m not home.’
Milly’s eyes widened. ‘But, Mr. Burrell ‒ she knows you’re home. She said she saw you from the window.’
He shook his head. ‘And she’s going to die so soon she can’t let me pick my roses in peace?’ He considered for a moment, and then he said, ‘Tell her to take her business to Benedict! Tell her I’ve retired!’
‘But Mr. Burrell …’
He took no notice of Milly, but bent over the bushes again, thinking of Sarah Williams watching him from the window of her big white house across the street. It was the best thing that had happened that afternoon. After a time Milly decided that he had meant what he said, and she drew back. In spite of the heat, she slammed down the window. Clif went on picking the roses unhurriedly until all the bushes were bare.
Clif hadn’t been to the Kempton General Hospital for some years ‒ it was where Dorothy had died after that last operation, and he didn’t like the place. As he drove up he thought that it had changed more than just the extent of the fresh coat of paint, and then he realised that a big glass side porch had been added and there were convalescent patients out there, watching the arrival of cars with all the avid interest of people who are shut in. It occurred to him that wherever he went about the country these days there seemed to be people watching.
He was about to get out of the car when he saw Jerry Keston come down the front steps and walk towards the parking lot. Clif’s car was the last in line, and Jerry didn’t have to pass him to reach his own. His face was kept carefully turned away from the observers on the porch, but Clif was able to study it as the young man walked nearer. It was a dark and bitter look he wore, a look of humiliation. His head hung slightly forward, and he kept his eyes on the ground. When he backed the car out of line, he did it gently and quietly, as if he didn’t want to attract attention.
When Jerry Keston was gone, Clif felt suddenly embarrassed by the size of the bunch of roses, and he saw it as a useless, flamboyant gesture that would deceive no one, least of all Jeannie. He thought of her lying in her bed, with her beaten, marked face, and he imagined what might have been said between her and Jerry, what had happened to cause Jerry to creep out of here like a sulky, frightened child. Clif knew he couldn’t go and talk to Jeannie then ‒ not take with him his silly bunch of roses and his old man’s smell of whisky. Jeannie didn’t need or want the comfort of an old man now.
So he just left the roses with a starched young girl at the reception desk, and asked her to see that Jeannie got them. She looked up briefly from her pad.
‘Whom shall I say sent them?’
‘It doesn’t matter. No name.’
When he left the Kempton General he drove to the Carpenter place. Harriet would be there, he thought. It would be cool, and there would be understanding in Harriet’s calm face, and they wouldn’t have to talk too much about Jeannie. He wouldn’t even have a drink ‒ he’d ask Harriet for some tea and she’d pour it for him from Claudia Carpenter’s silver teapot. Harriet had the gift of making him feel important, even though he and she both knew he wasn’t important any longer in Burnham Falls, or anywhere else.
III
By Thursday morning there was almost no food left in the refrigerator, and Sally decided reluctantly that she would have to beg a lift to the supermarket from Marcia Webster. Marcia was good-natured, and generally inclined to do what Sally suggested. Sally cut short the other’s offer of coffee before they started, and hustled her towards the car. The pile of manuscript on the living-room desk had grown considerably in the last three days, and she was full of impatience with anything that took her away from it. On the way to the supermarket she was almost tempted to tell Marcia about the novel ‒ in a way it would guarantee her from interruption in the future ‒ and then decided against it. It would be better, in the end, to produce the finished book.
At the supermarket Sally rushed through the food-crammed aisles at a pace that bewildered Marcia, who liked a leisurely procession, and to deliberate each choice.
‘What’s the hurry?’ she protested, as Sally started for the check-out counters.
‘I’ve got a lot of things to do ‒ letters to write,’ Sally said.
Marcia shrugged. ‘Well ‒ from the way you’ve been pounding that typewriter in the last couple of days, I’d have thought you could have written to about forty cousins by this time.’ As she spoke she continued her slow study of the frozen food display.
Sally turned away to hide her flush of annoyance. She didn’t offer any reply. She had forgotten how the constant tapping of the typewriter would reach across the pretty, trim garden between her house and Marcia’s. No one in Amtec Park used the sleek little portables ‒ which they all seemed to possess ‒ for six hours a day, and if anyone did, it was noticeable. For an instant Sally wished herself back in the crowded apartment in New York, where, behind the closed front door, your world was your own, and no one knew or cared what you did ‒ and where the rumble of the traffic in the street below would cover the sound of anything ‒ weeping, laughing, or even dying, if you wanted it that way. She compared it, in a moment’s regret, with the house she had thought of as an intimate warm place of love for herself and Tom when they had first moved to Burnham Falls, and which now seemed to expand and open up to admit pressures and influences that made no recognition of their own special needs.
‘Well, don’t be in too much of a hurry,’ Marcia continued serenely, ‘that is, unless you want to be trapped at the counter with Madame Taylor.’
Sally turned guiltily and looked down the aisle to where Alan Taylor’s wife was waiting in line at the cash registers. Marcia’s husband, Bill, also worked with Tom in Alan Taylor’s department, and ‘Madame’ Taylor was their private nickname for the boss’s wife.
Marcia took three beef pies out of the freezer and laid them in her shopping-cart.
‘I suppose you know,’ she said, ‘that Barbara Taylor was as mad as hell with you and Tom for ducking out on such short notice on Sunday. Her invitations are meant to be taken seriously, believe me!’ She bobbed her head knowingly. ‘And it doesn’t do Tom much good with Alan … or the company.’ Marcia deepened her voice then to an absurd imitation of Alan Taylor’s. ‘The corporation expects dependability from its young men …’
Sally felt herself grow tense. ‘Did she really mind?’
Marcia shrugged. ‘I guess she did, Sal. You know how it is in the company … no one expects insubordination from the junior ranks.’
Sally tried to steady a tremble in her voice. ‘Well … we telephoned and told her we wouldn’t be there. I thought she’d hardly miss us in the crowd.’
‘Whether she missed you or not isn’t the point, is it? You backed out of an invitation, and in the company book that means you’re uncooperative. It doesn’t go down too well,’
‘What can I do?’ Sally said defensively. ‘I’ve already apologised.’
‘I guess you’ll just have to wait until Madame Taylor decides to forgive you. The move has to come from her. I don’t suppose …’ She hesitated. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve been invited to to-morrow’s little gathering.’
‘What gathering. What are you talking about.’
‘Barbara Taylor asked all of the women who were at the lunch on Sunday to meet
Maurice Delbert’s wife at a tea party at the club to-morrow.’
‘Maurice Delbert … You mean the Frenchman who’s visiting ‒?’
Marcia nodded. ‘That’s the one ‒ Nobel Prize and all! He’s very interested in something Alan’s department is working on, and he and his wife are staying with the Taylors. I think the husbands are supposed to join us at the club for cocktails afterwards …’
She broke off. ‘Why, Sal ‒ what’s the matter. Are you sick?’
Sally shook her head wanly. ‘Thanks, Marcy, I’m all right. Just a bit tired. Not sleeping so well in the heat …’
The other nodded sympathetically, and Sally turned away from her, wheeling her basket round the corner of the aisle, out of sight of both Marcia and Barbara Taylor. She stood staring at a display of canned soup, trying to hold back the dismay and panic that flooded her. She didn’t know quite how to face what had happened, or what Tom would think when he learned about it. Maurice Delbert was one of the most distinguished men ever to visit the Laboratories. Tom had spoken of him with admiration and awe, and had even told Sally, as if he were recounting a triumph, that he had glimpsed him in the corridor with Alan Taylor. Not only would Tom have given much to have been invited to cocktails with Delbert, but his very absence, when people of Bill Webster’s position were invited, would be significant. It would place Tom below the line of people considered important or interested enough to meet Delbert.
In a daze Sally read the labels on the soup cans before her … Tomato … Asparagus. She didn’t really know what she was reading, but she reached up and took some cans indiscriminately, because she needed something to do.
And inside of her, beyond the noise of the supermarket and beyond the reality of the printed labels before her eyes, she was raging against the unfairness of the system, and raging against the stupidity of the blunder she had made.
‘Tom … Tom!’ she whispered miserably to herself. ‘I’ve done something wrong! I’ve hurt you …’
Corporation Wife Page 27
