Evil Friendship

by Packer, Vin

  “Just to think,” Roddy was saying, “that a year ago this time I was over the Atlantic, on my way here. Christmas over the Atlantic. It was a sad time, I’ll tell you.”

  “Poor thing,” Helen Kent said.

  “And I had the Crow’s Nest,” Martha spoke up.

  “Aw, Martha, do you miss your room so much?” he asked. He stood by the mantle — tall, lean, handsome, Martha Kent had to admit, with the white-blond hair glistening in the light of the Christmas tree bulbs. “Do you?”

  “Wouldn’t you miss it? It’s rather like a hide-a-way, I’d say.”

  “I used to worry about you when you were in the Crow’s Nest,” William Kent spoke. “It’s too far from your mother and me. If you should cry out in the night or anything, we wouldn’t hear you.”

  Martha said, “Oh, you can hear noises from up there quite well on the second floor. At least I do, casting a significant glance at her mother.

  Her mother’s black hair was done in a chignon, and she was wearing that lemon-shaded dress that fit her so well, showing the good woman’s figure; simple-cut wool that hugged her body like a new lover. At Martha’s words, her mother looked down at her drink momentarily, then raised up her head to say something when the phone rang.

  “I’ll get it,” Roddy said. “Maybe it’s the pub ringing up about the roses. I know it was there I left them.”

  “Still,” William Kent said, “I’m glad you’re on the second floor with us, Martha. I worried about you,” which saved her mother from taking up the subject.

  Her mother said, “You didn’t even wrap Mary Drew’s gift, Martha. Isn’t that it there, behind the tree.”

  “That’s it.”

  “Well, darling, what on earth! Christmas is all but over!”

  Then Roddy came back and said, bowing low at Martha’s side, “The Queen wishes your pleasure, Madam.”

  “For me?”

  “That Queen of Secrecy, the Violet,” Roddy said, bowing again, and looking over his shoulder at William Kent, “That’s Keats, good Doctor.”

  Martha got up. “Who is it?” she said, knowing, suddenly weak-feeling, her heart pounding.

  “I told you,” Roddy answered. “The Queen of Secrecy, commanding you.”

  “Don’t you talk about secrets!” Martha said while she walked from the room.

  She stood by the phone for a moment before she picked it up. Then, as if to brace herself, she held her hand to the wall, and with the other hand, lifted the phone’s black neck.

  “Hel-lo?”

  “Moly?”

  “Hello, Druid.”

  “Oh, Moly, how rotten I feel! I thought if I could just talk to you, if you would just hold on while I did. Moly, I did it!”

  “What?”

  “I went for a walk today. I didn’t plan it, but I had it on my mind. I didn’t even know where I was going, but I knew I couldn’t go near the Boardwalk or Trumpet Head, not after our afternoon, and so I went to Southwark, and it just happened. Maybe it was best that it just happened suddenly.”

  “Druid, what?” Martha could hear Roddy’s laughter from the other room, then her mother’s; horrible! “What did you do?”

  “I was with a man, the way you said to be. He was in the park.” “A man?”

  There was a click, and Martha said, “Hello, hello?”

  “I met a man in Southwark Park, Moly,” Druid told her, “and the blossom is plucked, Moly. Wasn’t that what you wanted?”

  “Druid — oh, my poor Druid,” Martha Kent sagged against the wall, holding her hand to her forehead, “Oh, no, dear Druid!”

  “I must talk to you. I need to talk to you, Moly.”

  Then the other voice came, cutting in knife-sharp and suddenly: “Mary Drew, you are to hang up immediately!”’

  It was Mr. Edlin.

  Martha Kent let the phone drop from her hands back to its cradle.

  From the other room, Roddy was entertaining with an American song: ”All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth — ” and her mother then, joining in “my two front teeth, my two front teeth — ” while William Kent imitated the noise a saxophone makes, in perfect rhythm with them.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Mr. Sawyer is staying in the top floor room in our home. He has been with us a year and a half. We were at the house together the afternoon my husband brought the girls from Southwark Park.

  — Mrs. William Kent, testifying at the Edlin-Kent trial

  JUNE 8, 1956

  It was dark in the room where the phone was ringing. It was hot too, that afternoon at the start of June. The woman had kicked off the sheet covering her, and as she came awake to the bell’s persistence, she was wearing a man’s white shirt, the sleeves rolled up, two buttons holding it closed across the midriff.

  She sat up in bed. A crack of light came from the bathroom, where she could hear the sounds of an electric shaver. While the phone continued ringing, she reached for a cigarette, pushing back a strand of the soft, coal-colored, silver-streaked hair that spilled to her shoulders. She undid the two buttons on the shirt and let it fall open.

  “Roddy! Phone!” she called.

  Above the razor’s buzz, from inside the bathroom, his voice answered, “Yeah, let it go!” “Why?”

  “Probably about the car. Somebody else answering the advertisement.”

  She sighed and let the smoke go from inside her, watching it spiral up into the room in drifting snake motions. She leaned over and picked up her watch from the bed-table. The phone stood there and was still ringing.

  “I’ve thought it over,” he said, still shaving. “It’s a silly idea.”

  “Selling it?” She got out of the bed, walked barefoot across the room toward the bathroom. “Well, so soon,” he said.

  She opened the door and leaned against the doorway, watching him. Roddy wore only his trousers and his socks, no shoes, and he was bare-chested. The ash-blond hair was tossed on his head; his jaw thrust forward as he shaved through the sweet-smelling cream. He had a rather skinny frame, naked — a surprisingly scrawny look. His arms seemed too long for his body; his head, with its handsome face, somehow too healthy for the rest of him; and his skin was the very fair kind that could not tan. Helen Kent’s long, firm body was bronze from the good Weerdale sun. Under Roddy’s shirt, which she was wearing loose and open, where the tan was missing there was an almost perfect outline of a strapless bra and shorts, filled in with supple, white flesh. She had breasts of the large round type, with the wide pink areolae. At thirty-six, she was a mature woman with a body that reached feminine perfection.

  She said, “You don’t want to sell the car, do you?”

  “Not yet.”

  “It’s so unnecessary, to run an advertisement and then change your mind.”

  “I’ll get a lot of use out of it, Helen.” “There’s mine.”

  “Yours and Williams. No thanks. Hand me a towel, hmm?”

  She reached for the towel and gave it to him.

  He said, “How about a drink? Bottle’s on the floor by the bed, my side.” “I’d rather not.” “Would you get it for met” “It’s almost five.”

  “Cocktail hour,” he said. “All the more reason.” He snapped off the razor and ran water from the faucet. “Be a good girl and get the drink.” He splashed his face with the water, then pushed the towel up to his face.

  When she came back into the bathroom, carrying the bottle by the neck, she handed it to him and said, “You’ve been drinking too much lately, Rod.”

  “No more than usual. What time’s William due?”

  “Seven or so. There’s a meeting of some kind.”

  “Good then. We can take our time straightening up. Pull ourselves together, hmm?” He tipped the bottle and let the whiskey go down his throat. “Ah! Good!” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, set the bottle on the floor. “And Martha?”

  “She should be along soon.”

  “Better get a move on after all,” he said. “Ha
nd me my shoes?”

  He shut the cover of the toilet and sat down, pulling one leg up as he took a shoe from her hand. “Shouldn’t you dress?” he said.

  “Roddy — ” she walked over to him, reaching out as though she were going to touch him, then dropping her hand before she did. “I suppose I ought to put on my dress,” she said. She looked down at his shirt on her body with some sadness to her expression, and started away. Rodney Sawyer caught the shirttail. “Hey, not without a kiss, you don’t.”

  He pulled her into him and kissed her. Immediately she responded with an intensity of emotion that seemed somehow embarrassing to him. He gave her a playful push from him, and smacked her across her bare skin. “Get something on,” he said. “Sure you don’t want a drink?” “No, never mind.”

  When she was gone from the bathroom, he took the bottle by the neck and drank more.

  After he had dressed, while he was slipping his tie under his collar, he walked from the bathroom back to the bedroom of the Crow’s Nest. Helen Kent was pulling her dress over her head, and he waited while she did it, then zipped her up the back.

  “You know, in a way I wish there was more time,” he said.

  “I know you do.”

  “Well, just what the hell does that mean?”

  “You’ve been postponing everything. Selling the car, writing your friend about an apartment there, arranging for Martha’s school …”

  “Helen, good Lord, I told you. Apartments in New York aren’t that difficult to get. The Sunday Times is full of them. And Martha just has to enroll in a public school. There’s no trouble. As for the car, I can use it until August. After all, under the circumstances I’m not going to feel right about borrowing William’s and yours.”

  He walked back into the bathroom. “After all, it isn’t as though we’re going somewhere that’s strange to me. I know the ropes pretty well over on the other side.”

  “I’ll have a drink after all,” she said.

  “It’s so goddam hot. We ought to make whiskey sours. They’d taste good.” He brought the bottle back and handed it to her. “Any lemons downstairs?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Tell you what. I’ll run out for some. That’ll give you time to straighten up, and then we can have ourselves some decent drinks.”

  “Sounds like fun,” she said.

  He looked at her. “Well, what’s eating you?”

  “Nothing, Rod. I said it sounds like fun.”

  “Well, your voice doesn’t sound like fun.”

  She was standing in her stocking feet, in her dress, her long hair still loose and not bound in the chignon. She tossed a comb on the chair beside her and said, “Oh, Lord, I don’t know.”

  “What?” he said.

  “I wish you’d just hold me for a moment.” “For God’s sake, Helen!”

  “I know, I know — it’s silly of me…. I just feel uncertain all of a sudden.”

  “You always do after. Sometimes I wonder what kick you get out of it anyway. Why don’t you comb your hair and finish dressing, and we can have the whiskey sours.”

  She said, “If you don’t stop at the pub on your way,”

  He chuckled. “No fear of that. I won a lot of money from Clarkie at darts yesterday. He’s damn sore. Second time in a row.” He walked over and put his hands on her shoulders. “Aw, c’mon now, Helen, don’t get all down in the dumps this way. It’s that kid who does it. I know that much. Goddam her, I’d like to take her across my knee and give her a good one for upsetting you this way.”

  “No, it isn’t Martha. Why should it be?”

  “Well, if I was worried about my daughter being a Lesbian, I’d get in the dumps myself, but you’ve got to pull out of it.”

  Helen Kent turned her back on him. “Don’t be so … crass. I haven’t any such worry. That isn’t it.”

  “No?”

  “That’s Mrs. Edlin’s idea. It isn’t mine. It never was. Martha’s confused, and she has good reason to be.”

  Roddy got his coat from the chair and put it on. “I’d say confused was an understatement, but you won’t face facts on that matter…. Damn hot for a jacket, or maybe it’s just up here.”

  “Listen, Roddy,” she said, “with the divorce and everything, it’s difficult enough to face facts. I’d rather you wouldn’t try to interpret Martha and Mary Drew’s relationship without knowing what you’re talking about. Good Lord, when I was a girl — ”

  He reached for her and kissed her, as if to make some point by her own quick and completely uncontrolled response, and while she still clung to him, he set her away, still with his hands at her back; he said, “When you were a girl, you gave every promise of what you are now — all woman. That’s just the way the ball bounces, Helen. Girls don’t just snap into women the way you snap on an electric light.”

  “If that were completely true, I wouldn’t have married William,” she said. “And I did marry him. You — well, you’re different. Do you think I’ve ever felt like this with any man, Rod? You can’t think that.”

  “I wouldn’t like to,” he grinned. “Now, how about those lemons I’m going after?”

  But she did not take her hands from him. “It isn’t easy for me to divorce William, or to leave England. It wasn’t easy to hurt Martha as I did, Rod.”

  Roddy Sawyer looked angry. “Well, what do you want me to do? Give you my bloody head on a platter, for Christ’s sake, because you’re leaving your bloody William and your bloody England, and because you got some screwy idea you made your daughter queer! What about me? Is it going to be easy for me, for Christ’s sake? I never wanted to get married, much less have a ready-made problem child. God, Helen, what the hell is this — are you some kind of goddam martyr because I’ve agreed to marry you, and give up my writing — the only thing I ever wanted to do in the first place — and — ”

  But Helen Kent had gone.

  As she went down the stairs toward the second floor, Rodney Sawyer picked up her shoes from the floor and tossed them after her.

  “Don’t leave any goddam evidence behind for the kid to squeal to William about!” he shouted.

  He kicked the white shirt which was at his feet on the rug, picked up the whiskey bottle and walked to the window. As he was reaching in the jacket of his linen suit for a cigarette, he saw William Kent’s black Austin pull in the drive.

  While he unscrewed the bottle top, he watched Kent get out on his side, then go around and in a very solicitous manner help his daughter and Mary Drew Edlin from the car.

  Martha Kent was crying — he could see that — and the Edlin girl had her face covered with her hands. “Now what the hell!” he said.

  He drank the whiskey, then pressed the light switch and hurried to make the bed.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Q. Mention was made of a man referred to as “Horrible” in the Edlin girl’s diary. Is there any reason to believe there was such a man?

  A. None. Both girls were highly imaginative. Throughout the Edlin girl’s diary there are references to nonexistent people, such as a “Raynor,” who was a character from a novel she was writing. In my opinion “Horrible” is a fantasy character. Both girls have admitted this to me during our interviews, and I believe that in this instance they are telling the truth.

  — Defense cross-examining Dr. Rose Mannerheim at the Edlin-Kent trial

  JANUARY, 1956

  That night, Mary Drew Edlin stayed over at the Kent house as Martha’s guest. It was a week after Christmas, two days before Chillam would reopen after the holidays. At ten o’clock, they were sipping sweet tea and lounging about Martha’s room on the second floor, just as though the day had been like any other.

  Mary Drew sat cross-legged on the downy double bed, sucking the end of a pencil as she looked down at her diary, which she had packed in her overnight case. Martha wore a yellow corduroy robe and sat at her desk, with her diary before her.

  “When I write mine up,” Mary Drew said, “I’m no
t going to say anything about the place or him. If mother ever found it, there’d be a row to end all rows.”

  “Did you write up Christmas day?”

  “Just that it was rotten. I didn’t mention Horrible. Father was trying every way to find out who the man was.”

  “I’ll call him Horrible, too!”

  Mary Drew said, “Oh, he was, wasn’t he?”

  “Slimy!”

  “Loathsome!” Mary Drew said. “And the sardine smell!” She giggled. “Oh, the sardine smell! That’s what I won’t forget!”

  “Did it smell the other time, too?”

  “I can’t say I remember. It was too gruesome to remember!”

  “Does your father have any suspicions?” “Just that there was a man. The damn doctor verified that!”

  “What was it like, Druid, the examination? Was it terrifying?”

  “Gruesome, and he was a damned silly fool. Told me to relax!”

  Martha Kent squealed. “Eeee! I want to hear all about it. But let’s make our entries. Then we can get more tea and talk.”

  “Right,” said Mary Drew.

  Both girls frowned, thinking.

  Then Mary Drew wrote:

  “January 3, 1956. Everything is all right now. Moly and I see eye-to-eye on everything, and understand one another thoroughly. She made up for her lie by keeping the promise, and we both visited Horrible together. And he is horrible, horrible, calling us puppies. When it was Moly’s turn, I couldn’t watch, though he keep saying to. Moly said watching was exciting, but I didn’t, and I’m rather sorry now. The shack was a mess, sardine smell, dreadful! Day after tomorrow, Chillam again. And thank God, Tony goes back to school. He was nice enough about the Christmas thing though, took up for me and said I imagined it and doctors were fools. Well, he’s right about that, anyway…. Moly and I are like sisters, more than sisters. We are one person, and the world is our puppet! Mother thinks we are too close, so the hell with mother!”