Corporation Wife

by Catherine Gaskin

  She drew in a long breath. ‘Oh, God! How I envy you, Mal!’

  He touched her again, touched her arm urgently. ‘And that’s what I have to offer you. You’d be free of Burnham Falls. You’d be free of everything you thought you had to be ‒ your father’s girl, your husband’s shadow.’ He paused. ‘Is that saying it too roughly? Well, it’s needed to be said for a long time.’

  Then he added, ‘Naturally, freedom has its price. There are few stabilities, and very few plans. There are no mortgages, either.’

  ‘I have children … there’s Gene and Tim. And Steve … what about Steve?’

  He squashed out his cigarette. ‘Look, Harriet, I’m not interested in figuring out how many obstacles we can remove before you make your choice. If you want to do this, you make your choice and then you figure out how it can be done. This time you have to act for yourself.’

  ‘Gene and Tim ‒?’

  ‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t have them with you.’ Then he gestured with annoyance. ‘I wasn’t going to make your arguments for you, Harriet. If you really want this, you’ll know that the obstacles can be overcome. If you don’t …’ He shrugged. ‘If you don’t you’ll find plenty of reasons for saying “no”.’

  ‘I don’t want to say “no”,’ she murmured, almost in a whisper. ‘I want this more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.’

  ‘Then say “yes”,’ he urged her. ‘Commit yourself to it, and go after it! Want it, and go after it, and it will be worth having, I promise you it will be worth having.’

  ‘You can say that … because you’ve never had anything to lose.’

  He swore softly. ‘God damn it! That’s true ‒ and how lucky I was! I was drunken Charlie Hamilton’s son, and I hadn’t got a nickel’s worth to lose. But you, Harriet ‒ you were born in the Carpenter place, and it must have seemed that you had a lot to take care of, a lot to look out for. I guess I was luckier than you ‒ the way things turned out.’

  She pressed her hands together, closing her eyes and for a moment blotting out his face, the sternness, the hardness. It was possible to see why he was so strong ‒ why he had gained such freedom. He was still ruthless with himself, as he had always been. He never permitted himself the luxuries of wavering and indecision. He had always gone straight to the heart of the matter, and now he was demanding the same courage from her. She shied away from it violently.

  ‘Mal, you sound as if you hate me! Why do you have to talk to me like this?’ She turned to him wildly. ‘If you had ever said you loved me … if I had ever heard one word of love from you …’

  A look of wonder broke on his face. ‘You crazy idiot! Do you imagine that I could ask you to do this if I didn’t love you? I’ve been loving you since you were seventeen years old, and your legs were skinny and you didn’t know how to talk to a man.’

  ‘Since then? I wanted you then, Mal, but you sent me away?’

  ‘What did you expect me to do? You were a kid. You didn’t know your own mind, and it would have been too easy. How was I to know you were never going to know your own mind? By the time we met again in California I knew I was ready to make it up for you.’

  He reached out and touched her hair, stroking it back from her forehead gently and rhythmically. ‘I’ve thought about you so much since that time ‒ more than you’ll ever understand. Little Harriet Carpenter with the tender brown eyes and the wide mouth ‒ always asking questions and wanting to learn. And I was aching to teach you.’

  ‘I didn’t know, Mal. Oh, God, I was such a fool that I didn’t know.’

  He drew her into his arms and kissed her, a long kiss that had the expectation for further time behind it.

  ‘I want you, Harriet. But I won’t take just acceptance from you ‒ I want more from you than that.’

  ‘It’s much more than that ‒ much more.’ She lay back on the rock and pulled him down towards her. She felt his weight close over her, and again the sun was blotted out.

  Their love had not the urgency of the first need and knowing in the desert; it was more thoughtful, and fuller.

  II

  When Harriet opened the front door Nell was seated on the chair by the telephone. She got to her feet immediately. Her bony face had a pinched, greyish cast.

  ‘I’ve been calling round town to see if I could find you,’ she said. Her voice was quiet, but sounded on the edge of desperation. ‘I just called the Laboratories for Mr. Steve.’

  ‘What is it?’ Harriet took a step towards her, but her body seemed suddenly weak. You always paid, she thought ‒ you never got away without paying. A bitter feeling of guilt was upon her already. She said unsteadily, ‘Has anything happened? Gene or Tim?’

  ‘No, it’s Ted’s girl ‒ Chrissie. She was with him at Downside to-day. And now they can’t find her. She’s wandered off somewhere … into the woods. She’s lost!’

  Abruptly Nell sat down again. ‘She’s lost,’ she repeated. She twisted her hands together. ‘‒ And there’s going to be a frost to-night.’

  Sixteen

  The word started to drift through Burnham Falls later that evening. At first it went only to the local people, the ones who had known the Talbots all their lives and to whom the news that Chrissie was lost had a sense of real and personal tragedy. The word was passed by telephone, and the men went off to join the search with no more hesitation than if it had been one of their own children who was wandering in the darkness somewhere in the Downside woods. The women began to prepare sandwiches and put coffee into vacuum flasks, and they were more patient with the noise and wilfulness of their own children as they thought of Chrissie.

  As the hours passed the news went farther. It reached the strangers in Burnham Falls ‒ the construction workers in the bars and the poolroom who had come into town with their Friday pay cheques in their pockets. It was talked about at the cash registers in the supermarket; people talked about it in low voices and then stared out beyond the bright lights and the big windows to the darkness of the parking lot where the cold autumn wind tossed the dry leaves before it with a noise like the scurrying of feet.

  There was no organised movement among these people ‒ the ones to whom Burnham Falls was only one town among a string of towns where they had built a plant or factory and then gone on to the next job. They knew the Talbot name well enough because of what had happened to Jeannie; they remembered the police and the questionings at the trailer camp. All they knew beyond that was that Chrissie Talbot was five years old. They were not woodsmen, any of these people ‒ they had arrived at the Amtec construction camp out of every possible environment ‒ and very few among them would walk with familiarity among the heavy underbrush and the granite outcrops of the woods. But at the bars along Main Street, they finished their drinks and didn’t order a second round; most of them left quietly without attempting to recruit any of their friends. Cars started pulling out of the parking spaces along Main Street and heading in the direction of Downside; soon there was no one left in the diner. The men who had gone to the supermarket with their wives cut down the shopping list drastically and drove back to the camp with more haste than usual. They checked the batteries in their flashlamps, slipped on a sweater under their jackets, and set out for the seminary. Most of the men didn’t know the way to Downside; they fell into small convoys following the lead car of someone who did know.

  It was getting late before the news finally spread through all the houses of Amtec Park. Here there was less certainty about what was the best thing to do. There was more telephoning from house to house than there had been in the town; more consulting with one another, more advice given. Some men set off alone for Downside, but most of them waited for a signal from authority. There were those who pointed out that if they choked the narrow dirt road leading through the Downside estate with their cars they would hinder the police; they talked of the need for a properly organised search instead of a haphazard, hit-or-miss one.

  Steve finally located Ed Peters
at a house on Long Island where he and Laura were week-end guests. Ed’s voice was noticeably impatient when he was finally brought to the phone.

  ‘What is it, Steve? … I’m in the middle of a game of bridge.’

  Very briefly Steve told him about Chrissie Talbot. ‘I want your authority to go all out on this, Ed,’ he said. ‘She’s got to be found, and quickly. A kid about her age wandered off over in Hale County a couple of years back. It took them four days to find him, and that was just about a day too long.’

  ‘Isn’t this a job for the police?’ His voice was still impatient. ‘We haven’t gone into the rescue business yet, and I don’t see that we can do any better job than they can.’

  There was silence for a few seconds on the line between them. It seemed to carry a suggestion of all the windy distances of that October night. Finally Steve spoke again. ‘It isn’t a question of taking over from the police ‒ they need help. They’re getting the kind of help they can do without at the moment. Everyone in the district seems to be converging on Downside and they’re about as efficient as a flock of sheep. If someone doesn’t organise this thing properly we’ll have half a dozen other people lost as well as Chrissie.’ Suddenly Steve’s tone rose with exasperation. ‘For Christ’s sake, Ed ‒ you know what the Downside woods are like! They’ll have to be combed. If the kid’s asleep or unconscious you could pass a yard away and not see her.’

  ‘So!’ Ed said irritably. ‘You don’t need my O.K. to go ahead and organise. This is supposed to be your own backyard, Steve. I don’t have to tell you what to do!’

  ‘It’s going to need more than that. There should be search parties tackling the area from the back way ‒ possibly based on the country club and the Laboratories. We’ll need a lot of food and coffee. The club could provide all that, but they’ll want to be paid. As soon as it gets light we should be ready to really move into those woods. I thought about those walkie-talkie sets and the mobile units Amtec used at that Civil Defence show at White Plains. We could use them … and the company helicopter from Newark …’

  ‘Just a minute! Isn’t this carrying things a bit far? I don’t see that all this is going to be necessary! How do you know the kid isn’t found now? I’ll look a damn’ fool if I ask for all this equipment and then it turns out it isn’t needed. These people aren’t going to relish being pulled out of their beds and told to get themselves to Burnham Falls …’

  Steve cut in. ‘She isn’t found, and she’s not going to be until someone gets moving! The county police and firemen just don’t have the kind of equipment Amtec has just sitting about waiting to be used. If you give the word we can get behind them and really do a job.’

  ‘I still don’t see …’

  ‘I suppose I don’t have to remind you,’ Steve said. ‘This little girl’s name is Talbot ‒ got that! Talbot. Just forget that she happens to be a sweet, pretty little kid who’s only five years old. Just forget that her parents are nearly out of their minds. She’s also the kid sister of Jeannie Talbot.’

  ‘Talbot ‒ I didn’t …’

  ‘Amtec earned itself a fair share of bad feeling in this town over that affair. If you can’t think of it any other way, just see it as a chance to win back something.’

  ‘Yes ‒ I see,’ Ed said at last.

  ‘O.K.! Then I’ll go ahead … I’ll get on to White Plains and Newark right away.’

  ‘Never mind that!’ Ed’s tone was sharp, the edge of impatience had disappeared. ‘I’ll attend to that from here. Get things moving on your end, and I’ll be back in Burnham Falls in about three hours.’

  ‘You’re coming back?’ Steve said in surprise. ‘Well ‒ I didn’t mean to pull you away from …’

  ‘Skip it,’ Ed answered shortly. ‘You just do what you have to do, and don’t worry about me.’

  He hung up decisively, cutting off whatever Steve had been going to add.

  In his host’s panelled library, Ed looked down at the telephone and swore softly.

  ‘Son-of-a-bitch! Don’t think you’re going to shut me out of this. If you’re looking for organisation, I’ll really give it to you!’

  He spent the next twenty minutes on long-distance calls, and fifteen minutes after that he and Laura were driving away in the Cadillac, leaving behind a dinner-party that was both bewildered and impressed. Laura in her silk dress and fur coat, sat slumped on the seat beside him, angry at the way the week-end had come to an abrupt end. She would have preferred to have been left behind, but their hastily packed bags were in the trunk, and they were not going back. Instead she was faced with Burnham Falls again. On the journey Ed hardly talked to her except to tell her what she was to do when they arrived, about coffee urns and supplies of food that she hardly bothered to listen to. There were always people like Harriet Dexter who managed those things so much better. She was sulky and unresponsive when Ed stopped for five minutes at a diner for coffee. It was hard to think that Chrissie Talbot had anything to do with her, or that any act of hers could help. She thought of Selma Talbot. Selma would understand that she, Laura, couldn’t be of much help. Then when they were back on the road again, and midnight was long past and the drive had taken on a wearying monotony she realised that it had grown colder. As she pulled her coat closer and turned up the heater, she was suddenly much more aware of Chrissie. She remembered her more clearly ‒ a slight, golden-haired child who had occasionally accompanied her mother to the Peters house when the weather was too bad for her to go with her father. Laura remembered her as docile and quiet, busy with her own secret games; she was sensitive, and talked only rarely, but she was also trusting and confident with strangers. She looked as if no one had ever hurt her, and she had not learned to be suspicious! As Laura remembered these things she felt ashamed that she was not more eager to go back to Burnham Falls and help look for Chrissie. But she knew that whatever she tried to do would have very little effect. What was going to happen would happen whether she was there or not. Nothing or no one depended on her.

  II

  The telephone was ringing as Jeannie turned the key in the door of her apartment. It had a lonely, urgent sound in the semi-darkness. The glaring neon sign from the night club across the street threw bars of light across the room. As she hurried towards the phone she glanced at the clock. It was twenty minutes after three. Behind her, her companion closed the door softly.

  ‘Hallo?’

  ‘Miss Jeannie Talbot?’ the operator asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Long distance calling. Burnham Falls, New York. Go ahead please.’

  ‘Jeannie?’ It was Selma’s voice. ‘I’ve been trying to reach you all night.’

  ‘Oh! … I’ve been with a friend who’s sick,’ Jeannie lied swiftly and unoriginally. ‘I had to wait …’

  Selma didn’t seem to hear her. ‘Something terrible has happened,’ she said flatly.

  Jeannie listened, and one part of her mind seemed to refuse to grasp what was being said. The words sounded false and theatrical, just as the words printed in newspapers never carry a personal and intimate sense of tragedy. ‘Chrissie …’ she murmured unbelievingly. ‘Chrissie?’

  But as her mother started to repeat herself all over again like a lesson she had learned, Jeannie’s senses began to function once more. Her first stunned reaction over Chrissie changed to concern for Selma. The distant voice was strained to breaking point. In the dull tones repeating the words for the second time there was the warning of hysteria. That in itself was part of the strangeness. No one had ever expected Selma, who was so calm, to break. She had faced the horror of her daughter’s rape and beating with such strength that she had held the whole family together at that time. Jeannie wondered desperately, as she stood holding the phone, if her mother hadn’t borne too much of the load then, and that now she lacked the endurance for the waiting period, the hours and perhaps the days that must pass before she learned the final truth about Chrissie.

  Jeannie spoke quickly. ‘Mom, I’m coming r
ight away! Do you understand? I’m leaving here immediately and I’ll be with you in a little while. Just try to hold on and I’ll be with you …’

  When she replaced the receiver she turned to the man, who was still wearing his coat and scarf, as if he had anticipated her request.

  ‘Charles … will you drive me up? I must go at once.’

  He nodded. ‘Of course.’

  The big Lincoln moved easily and silently along the northbound parkway; the traffic lanes were clear and empty. The October night was cold, but within the car there was warmth and luxury. Jeannie talked a little about Chrissie as they sped along. Charles encouraged her ‒ nodding, asking a question occasionally. It eased the tension to talk of Chrissie, somehow Charles’s speaking her name gave Jeannie reassurance that she was still alive, not lying somewhere in the wood or in the Downside lake. In the moments she spared from thinking about Chrissie and Selma, Jeannie had to acknowledge again that Charles was the kindest of men.

  Occasionally she glanced sideways at the thin, handsome face. If it were not for the lingering thought of Jerry she could have been in love with Charles. As the situation was, it was fortunate for her that she was not in love with him. Right from the beginning it had been understood that there would never be any more than what existed now.

  The beginning had been less than two months ago, but Jeannie knew that because of Charles she would eventually go a long way in the cosmetic industry. He would discreetly open doors for her at the right moments, and from there on her own energy and initiative would do the rest.

  Charles had been married for fifteen years to the woman whose famous name was on the products Jeannie sold; he was president of her company. It was more than twenty years since his wife had started manufacturing in the States, and by that time she was already rich from her European salons. She was twice divorced and in her third husband she was looking not for money, but a man with a sense of business and the right social background. Charles gave her both these, and she never asked for more than that. They were amiable and friendly with each other at the times they were together, which wasn’t very often. Beyond that, they went their separate ways. After fifteen years their financial affairs were too entwined ever to permit a divorce ‒ unless Charles was prepared to walk away from it with no money at all. It was obvious that he would never do that.