Jeannie knew well enough, as other people did, that she was not the first woman with whom Charles had sought to lighten the loneliness and boredom of his marriage. He had stopped at her counter at the department store early one morning before Jeannie’s supervisor had appeared on the floor, had questioned her about sales, and then invited her to dinner. A week later she had moved from the department store to a job in the promotion department of the company. It was a relatively minor job, and in the course of it she never caught even a glimpse of Charles, but it meant a good rise in salary, and an immense, rise in prestige. Charles never directly mentioned that he had been responsible for the change, but she knew it was meant to indicate that the way was open to her to move steadily upward. She was learning that the way upward was going to require toughness and patience and staying power. Charles could be an invaluable guide on the way.
He knew the harsh and rapidly moving world of New York, and he loved it; his experienced hand smoothed Jeannie’s path, and pointed the pitfalls before she reached them. She needed him, too, in a desperate, frightened way, as a haven and a respite from her own fears and loneliness. Just with him she could relax and forget her homesickness ‒ though she never called it by that name. Charles made her feel secure and warm; he made her forget that sometimes she woke at night sobbing Jerry’s name. But he also strengthened her and taught her not to permit her fears to show; he taught her the ways of his world, and the world that was to be hers.
She knew that in time the small-town attitudes would be stripped away from her one by one; that in time she would be polished and honed and hardened to the point where she was indistinguishable from any other successful woman of this city ‒ where she would not need Charles as a refuge but would be able to meet and challenge this world on its own terms, with all the shrewdness and toughness it demanded.
These were the things she thought as the empty spaces of the parkway swept by them. The powerful headlamps of the Lincoln probed the darkness, picking out single trees, startling, paper-like clumps of grey birch, massive outcrops of granite. This was the road back to Burnham Falls. Her heart ached to think that it was her world no longer ‒ she would touch and experience it again for only a few hours, a few days, but she would not be a part of it, she would not belong. The foundations of her life had slipped that Saturday night with Patrino and Reitch, and no rebuilding was possible. The situation with Charles seemed to her a poor substitute for what she might have had in Burnham Falls. But leaving it behind had not been her choice. Other people and other attitudes had taken it away from her for ever. In this case the city was not the despoiler ‒ the spoiling had been done already. And Charles was not to blame because she had come easily to him. There had been no other person to whom to go ‒ no other place. She felt only gratitude towards him, and she already knew enough to hope that gratitude would not turn to love, because he might be hers only for a short time, and never that wholly and completely. But the thought of having him to return to in New York would sustain her through these next days in Burnham Falls, would help her not to care because she no longer belonged.
So she sat close to him in the warm softness of the car, and smiled faintly when he looked down at her. It seemed important to let him know that even in the midst of the fear and worry she was glad to be with him.
The light had started to appear in a cold grey sky by the time they reached Burnham Falls. Jeannie directed Charles down past the shellac factory to the Talbot house. They kissed urgently for a moment; she felt herself clinging to him.
‘I’m afraid to go in,’ she whispered. ‘I’m afraid of what’s waiting.’
‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said. ‘My Jeannie’s never afraid.’ Then he touched her softly under the chin. ‘I’ll come if you need me. All you have to do is call.’
She slid out of the warmth of the car and met the cold morning air.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
She stood watching the car as Charles turned it and headed back towards the town. Soon he would be speeding down the parkway, and the seat beside him would be empty. He would return to the brownstone house in the Sixties that was just an address to Jeannie, and he would bathe, shave, and change; and then he would be off again in the Lincoln, heading this time towards Idlewild Airport. His wife was arriving on an early plane from Paris. Possibly in Sunday’s papers there would be a photo of them together, smiling like two friends. After the meeting at the airport they would drive to the house on Long Island where they had a dozen week-end guests expected. For two days they would be together before his wife set out on a tour of her salons in California and Texas.
Jeannie knew it wasn’t much of a life, even if what there was of it was wrapped in luxury. But she felt desolate and alone as she watched the car move off. For the first time she felt a stirring of jealousy and envy.
A light had gone on in the front room of the house. Jeannie picked up her bag and turned towards it. The door opened and Selma’s figure was outlined against the light. Jeannie started to hurry down the path.
‘I heard a car …’ Selma said.
‘A friend drove me up,’ Jeannie answered. ‘Is there any news …?’
Selma shook her head. ‘None.’
Inside Jeannie dropped her bag and closed the door. ‘Where’s Dad?’ she asked. She could hardly bear to look at her mother’s stricken face; it was a reproach for all the thoughts she had had of her own affairs during the drive, the anxieties and fears that had not been for Chrissie. She was shamed by her own selfishness. ‘What can I do?’ she said.
Selma shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’ A spasm of pain crossed her face; her lips started to quiver. ‘I don’t know what I’ll do,’ she said, transferring the words suddenly to herself. ‘I can’t bear to lose Chrissie … too.’
For the first time in her life Jeannie saw her mother weep. But as she put her arms about her she knew she could only offer the outward symbols of comfort. There was nothing in her own empty heart from which to give her mother strength.
Seventeen
The full force of the movement into the Downside woods began as soon as the light was strong enough. Until then, through the night, there had been sporadic searching ‒ little groups setting out from Downside itself and beating slowly through the underbrush, missing some places, and twice searching others, and unable to say, when they returned, exactly what area had been covered.
By dawn the search was preparing to move out from four different centres. The groups from Downside would search the area between the lake and the highway, the groups from the Carpenter fishing cabin would search the other side of the lake. Parties would also set out from the Laboratories, and from the country club. Listening to Ed Peters explain it again, with frequent reference to the maps on which he had heavily outlined the various areas, Steve couldn’t help thinking that it sounded for all the world like someone planning a blanket sales campaign. But by that time Steve was weary, and the awareness of Chrissie Talbot as a child had slipped a little; she had become an object ‒ a prized and desired object for whose finding a whole giant corporation had paused in its stride and was pouring out its energies and resources.
Nominally the police were in charge of the search, but they were far outnumbered, and somewhat bewildered by the swiftness and smoothness of the organisation which offered to help. They watched the chain of command operate with practised efficiency; they could only nod in agreement as Ed oulined his plans, and then take over the leadership of some of the groups that had been formed from the construction camp personnel, the factory workers, and the research men from Amtec Park. It was no longer a matter of volunteering. The word had gone out to everyone even indirectly connected with Amtec. They were expected to, and they did, turn up in full strength.
There was no golf played that day from the country club, and the restaurant served no meals. Every member of the staff, and every catering facility was strained to provide the sandwiches and coffee that Ed had ordered was to be on hand at all the cen
tres. He had stationed doctors at Downside and the Carpenter cabin, and by six o’clock two company doctors from the Newark factory had arrived to take their places at the Carpenter cabin and the Laboratories. The Civil Defence mobile units from White Plains stood ready.
The Downside lake, which never before had heard the sound even of an outboard motor, was noisy with the high-powered hum of Ed Peters’ launch which he had had brought over from Lake Burnham. The police were using this to ferry the parties of searchers to various points along the curving lake-shore. There was a student from the seminary in every rowboat as they inched along the shore searching the water line. For the first time the calm of Downside was gone. All about it, on the lake, in the woods, along the narrow road, were the sounds of feverish, urgent striving. Men’s voices reached across the water.
Everything, just everything, Steve thought, had been reckoned with, organised, and finally put in motion. What remained now was the heart and guts and imagination to find the child. The incalculable entered here, and it seemed to defy the organisation.
One of the incalculables was the fact of the people of Burnham Falls themselves. They did not belong to Amtec, they were unused to the chain of command, but they had suddenly, the old and the young, become invaluable. They were the ones who knew the woods and the lakes. They were the hunters and the fishermen. They emerged as the leaders of the groups.
The search now had everything that could be given it, Steve thought. And as the skies lightened on the horizon it even had the promise of a fair day ahead, a day when a child might awaken in the woods with the sun on her face. He did not let himself think too much of the possibility that it had been the lake, and not the woods, which had drawn her. But as his eyes sought Ted Talbot’s drawn face among the crowd at Downside he knew that that possibility had been well examined, and had been faced.
II
Steve held out a mug of coffee towards Ted. The man stood by himself at one end of the great ornate entrance hall of Downside. He was deliberately apart from the other men and the students who moved in and out of the refectory where breakfast of a kind was being served to those who had just returned from a night in the woods.
‘The bastards!’ Ted said simply. ‘The stinking bastards!’ Mechanically he took the mug from Steve but he just held it without drinking.
‘She’ll be found, Ted,’ Steve said. ‘Everything’s working for her now.’
Ted made a motion as if to spit, and then restrained himself. ‘D’ya think I like knowing how it is?’ he demanded. ‘D’ya think I like the idea that these stinking bastards are going out to find Chrissie? If I could do without them I’d spit in their faces!’
He clenched the mug tightly between his hands. ‘Look at them! That scum from the construction camp. Just look at them! And they’re the ones that’re goin’ out to look for my little girl. After what they did to Jeannie, I have to stand here cap in hand and be grateful to them.’
‘Take it easy, Ted. There’s no question of being grateful ‒ no one expects that,’ Steve said quietly. He knew that in Ted’s mind he wasn’t remotely connected with the activities of the Amtec people; Ted still thought of him as Joe Carpenter’s son-in-law.
Ted went on as if he hadn’t heard. ‘If I could do without them I’d tell them to go to hell. If I could search every inch of these woods myself I’d do it rather than have any of them lay hands on one of my family again.’
Then he looked at Steve, and the agony in his eyes was very real. ‘But I keep thinking of that kid over in Hale County a couple of years back. It took too long to find him. I haven’t got that kind of time for Chrissie, and so I have to let these bastards go ahead.’
He jerked the mug angrily, and some coffee splashed down on the polished wood floor.
Steve didn’t try to argue against Ted’s conviction. Ted wanted his scapegoat and Amtec would have to serve.
‘Just try to remember there are a lot of your friends among the searchers, Ted ‒ and Chrissie’s friends too. Every last one of the students have turned out, and every man in Burnham Falls. Chrissie will be in good hands. She’ll be all right, Ted.’
Ted took a swallow of the coffee at last, and he seemed to be reflecting on the other’s words.
‘I still can’t figure out,’ he said, gloomily, ‘why she decided to wander off in the first place. She must have been here a hundred times before with me. The Fathers were all very nice to her, and the lay brothers in the kitchen made a sort of pet of her.’ A bleak kind of smile flickered across his face. ‘You know, Brother John was just joking with me the other day that she’s gettin’ too grown up to be around a monastery. Of course she is gettin’ grown up. She’ll be startin’ school next year.’
He spoke the words with a kind of defiant hope. Chrissie had been missing less than twenty-four hours. There was still plenty of reason to hope if you forgot about the lake.
‘Brother Matthew was her favourite,’ he went on. ‘He’s young ‒ a real nice boy, he is. He always takes Chrissie to help feed a couple of pet raccoons they’ve got out back of the kitchen-garden. Well, Brother Matt’s sick in the infirmary, and we figure Chrissie probably went to see the raccoons by herself. The woods come in close to the kitchen garden there. We figure maybe she saw a deer, or a rabbit, and maybe followed on in … and couldn’t find her way back. These woods are awful dense ‒ no one ever cut ’em over.’
‘Dense or not, we’ll find her. There are just too many people searching now to miss her.’
He finished his coffee, and reached out and took Ted’s mug from him.
‘I’ll drive you home, Ted. We both can use a couple of hours’ sleep.’
Ted looked at him, frowning. ‘I couldn’t leave here. Supposing they find her? She’ll need me …’
‘They could just as easily find her and bring her in to one of the other places. As long as you’re at home they can reach you quickly.’
‘But she’ll expect me to be here.’
‘She’ll expect you to be standing on your feet and able to give her a smile.’ For a moment, gravely, Steve rested his hand on Ted’s arm. ‘I’m sorry, Ted, but it’s possible that she won’t be found to-day. Selma will need you at home, too. Jeannie just called here, and she’s with her mother now. She’d like you to come as soon as you can.’
‘But Jeannie knows I’ve got to be around when they bring Chrissie in,’ he persisted.
‘They need you at home, too, Ted.’
The other man shook his head. ‘I’d rather stick around here and wait.’ He spoke more slowly, with less conviction. Then finally his gaze wavered from Steve’s; he shrugged, with a gesture of defeat. ‘Well ‒ I guess I don’t want to go home. I can’t face Selma and tell her Chrissie’s not found.’
III
It was Sally who suggested searching the porches and gardens of the deserted summer cottages on the hill above Lake Burnham. The idea came to her as she brewed one of the countless cups of coffee she had made since Tom had left early that morning. He had been with the first party which had set out from the Laboratories at daybreak; she did not expect to see him again until evening ‒ or until Chrissie was found. When he was gone she went through the usual round of housework, slowly, moving heavily and with care because the baby was due soon ‒ in a little more than two weeks. The chores were too quickly performed in the shiny efficiency of the house, and she was back again in the kitchen drinking coffee and smoking continuously. The thought of Chrissie did not leave her; she pictured the child too vividly although she had never seen her ‒ a yellow-haired child of five, they said, dressed in a brown skirt and yellow sweater. Inside her Sally felt her own child stir and kick, vigorously claiming its own hold on life. She gloried in the feeling of strength and passion there, and yet she clutched on her swollen belly protectively, as if to shield the unborn child from danger. She found herself praying silently. ‘… the Lord is with thee; Blessed art thou … and the fruit of thy womb …’ She rested her face in her hands, bowing forward over t
he kitchen table. ‘Holy Mother, let them find her … please let them find her soon.’
It somehow seemed that the fate of the unknown little girl, Chrissie, was in a sense bound up with the safety and well being of her own child. She was praying for them both, with real desperation.
When she thought of the empty summer cottages on the hill she went to the phone immediately to call the Laboratories to check whether they had already been searched. The possibility that Chrissie had travelled so far from Downside without being discovered was fairly remote, but the Laboratories agreed that there was no harm in trying.
Sally spent the next ten minutes on the phone, and soon afterwards a little caravan of four cars left Amtec Park, loaded with Sally’s near neighbours and the children who were too young to be left at home. Sally felt her heart beating with an absurd, unfounded hope as they drove through the town and on along the lake front towards the colony of summer cottages.
The little gardens of the boxy frame houses were blanketed under drifts of leaves; blown by the wind they had collected in dry heaps around the steps and along the walks, they clung about the rose bushes and the lilacs. When the wind touched them they would lift and move tentatively, erratically, the rustling sound had the quality of light soft voices in the empty gardens. The maples and oaks with which the hill was bespattered were all the shades of gold and scarlet, a dazzling sight with the sun shining fully on them.
They did not find Chrissie. She was not on any of the porches, not lying in the shelter of any of the garages or the little tool-houses. As Sally moved heavily down the porch steps of the last house she could not quite believe it. The premonition had been so strong, the hope so wild and apparently foolish that it had almost seemed to prove something by itself. She felt again her moment of strong faith as she had prayed in the kitchen, but it had only been the hopeful, trusting prayer of a mother wanting her child to live. It had not meant anything for Chrissie. She was disconsolate and more troubled than before when they drove down off the hill.
Corporation Wife Page 35
