Barbara Greer

by Stephen Birmingham

  Earlier than most Prospect Avenue residents, Barbara’s father had seen the inexorable coming of change. When Barbara was seven years old and Peggy was two, he had heard about a farm that was for sale in the country, ten miles outside Burketown. He bought it—it had been vacant for several years and was being sold for taxes—and moved the family there.

  Barbara could hardly remember living on Prospect Avenue. If she happened to drive by the Halcyon Rest on her way to see her grandmother, it was hard for her to believe that this curiously shabby house had once been her home. Still, she had driven Barney there—that summer two years ago, a few days after she had first met him on the terrace, that summer during Carson’s South American trip when she had come to the farm for a weekend and stayed somewhat longer. She had slowed the car in front of the Halcyon Rest, ‘That’s the house where Peggy and I were born,’ she said.

  ‘Stop the car,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I want to walk around, I want to see it,’ he said.

  ‘What on earth for?’ she asked.

  ‘Let’s get out and walk,’ he said.

  ‘There’s no place to walk. We can’t go in. All we can do is walk up and down the sidewalk.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said, ‘that’s all I want to do.’

  So she made a U-turn in Prospect Avenue and started back toward the Halcyon Rest. She stopped in front of it and they got out. They walked slowly along the sidewalk, looking at the house.

  ‘I don’t see why you want to look at this old place,’ she said. ‘It’s depressing, actually. Let’s go.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘It’s interesting. Interesting. Wherever we live is part of our lives. This is part of yours and your family’s. Do you blame me for wanting to understand it?’

  ‘But it’s depressing, Barney!’ she said. ‘Please, let’s go.’

  ‘Not yet, not yet,’ he said. He stood, arms folded, gazing at the old house with a shingled turret that rose above the crowded shrubbery. It was a long time before she could persuade him to get into the car again and drive back to the farm.

  The main house at the farm had been built in the early nineteen twenties by a millionaire from New Haven as a summer place. He had evidently been a man of whims, for part of the house was built of stone, in a style that was close to, if not exactly, Tudor. Another part of it was built of white frame, in a Georgian style. The house had a complex of chimneys, most of which were not functional but ornamental, although the house did have seven working fireplaces. All the windows were large and many-mullioned and several of these, too, were false—imposed upon certain sections of exterior wall for decorative effect. The house had been written up once in an architectural magazine that had called it, ‘A conversation-piece house, sprawling and capricious, full of surprises—corners, cubbyholes, passageways and nooks.’ The description was accurate. Rooms appeared unexpectedly off narrow galleries; doors opened upon flights of steps that led to odd little rooms that because of their whimsical sizes and shapes, were of no use to anyone except to children playing hide-and-seek. It was a house that seemed to ask to be explored, that was built for rainy afternoons.

  The house had four living rooms strung together in a row. A vase of flowers, placed before the mirror in the farthest room, could be seen through a series of four identical archways from the front hall. In one of these rooms, according to one story, the New Haven millionaire had shot himself after the Crash in ’29; a long, jagged crack in the black marble mantel marked, supposedly, the spot where his first bullet had gone astray. But there were at least three other theories that were equally well supported. One, that he had shot himself in his office in New Haven; another, that he had done it in the garden behind the house and had been discovered by a faithful servant (the others had run off, like slaves after emancipation, when their wages were suddenly stopped) lying in the basin of the fountain with the stone frog spewing water over him; and a third—the one that the Woodcocks subscribed to—that he had killed himself in the room of a cheap hotel in New York. After his death, a rumour had sprung up that the house was haunted. Ghostly lights were reported, seen on winter nights, moving through the empty rooms. But the restless shade of Mr. Harlow P. Lerner had never been glimpsed by the Woodcocks—not even in the spot he frequented oftenest during his days there, the greenhouse, where he had grown prize-winning tuberous begonias.

  It was Preston Woodcock’s idea to turn the place into an operating farm. He had begun by tearing down one wing of the house and building a new wing in its place. With Edith’s help on matters of interior decoration, he had modernised the whole house, added bathrooms, a gas furnace and insulation. Preston had built the other buildings, the barn, the stable and quarters above it, the playhouse for Barbara and Peggy, and the swimming pool. The property included a lake, and on one shore, Preston had built a dock and a boathouse. On the opposite side, he had built another dock and a three-room guest cottage. It had been Preston Woodcock’s idea that for large house-parties some of his guests could have the fun of crossing the lake to their rooms by boat. For this purpose he had bought two small motorboats. But when the war came and the girls were away at school, and house-parties, large or small, were few, he had sold the boats, There remained, bottom-up on the shore, only an old canoe that had been Barbara’s. ‘What are those words painted on it?’ Barney had asked that summer, two years ago, when she had taken him down the hill to show him the lake.

  ‘It’s named the Bobby-Boo, I’m afraid,’ she had laughed.

  ‘Bobby-Boo?’ he had asked very seriously. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘When I was a little girl and used to sail boats in the bathtub, I called them Bobby-Boos—for Barbara’s boats. Daddy remembered it and had it painted on the canoe. It’s one of the troubles with having adoring parents.’

  ‘The Bobby-Boo,’ he repeated. ‘Shall we take her out?’

  ‘I’m afraid she isn’t seaworthy any more,’ Barbara said. ‘Her bottom’s full of holes.’

  With his blue-sneakered toe he kicked, very gently, the side of the canoe; the canoe’s side yielded even to this slight pressure for her boards were soft with rot and her green canvas covering was as brittle as old paper.

  The trip from Locustville to Burketown took six hours by car; she had left shortly after one o’clock, and considering that it was a summer Saturday afternoon, she made good time. As she turned the car into the road that led to the farm, she glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It was ten minutes to seven. The twisting road that led to the house was rutted and unpaved, kept that way to discourage sightseers. It had been six months since she had been to the farm last, and tonight—perhaps because she was driving fast, in a hurry to get home—the road seemed rougher than usual. But as it neared the house, rounded the last turn that brought the house into view, the road improved. It turned, at the end, into a wide, paved circle in front of the front door. She stopped the car, removed her sunglasses, and looked at her reflection in the rearview-mirror. She reached in her purse for lipstick and painted her lips. Then she pulled the scarf from her hair, letting it fall loose, and with her purse comb, she arranged it. She opened the door and stepped out of the car; carrying her overnight case, she went up the white marble steps to the front door. She did not ring the bell, but tried the handle; the door was unlocked. She opened it and let herself in, setting her suitcase down in the hall. To her eyes, blinded from driving the last twenty miles westward toward the declining sun, the hall seemed dim and shadowy.

  From the library came the sound of music and she walked toward it, her heels clicking on the bare, polished oak floor. At the door to the library she stopped, looking into its deep, carpeted depths. It was a long room, its walls lined with bookcases. The furniture was dark, heavy and comfortable. Shafts of pale sunlight spread from the high windows, and in one corner of the room, a lamp was lighted, sending out its own soft yellow pool of light. In the opposite corner a bright pinprick of red light glowed from the control panel of t
he phonograph, where a record was playing. At first the room seemed empty, filled only with Vivaldi; then, from behind the curved back of the brown velvet sofa that faced into the room, away from her, concealing its occupant, a stream of blue cigarette smoke floated up. She walked to the sofa, looked down, and the young man who lay on his back stretched full length upon it, smiled up at her. Then he slowly raised his arm in a high, stiffly exaggerated gesture of welcome. ‘Hail!’ he said. ‘Behold! My beloved comes. Leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills!’ His voice was deep and theatrical.

  ‘Hello, Woody,’ she said. She leaned across the sofa’s back. He raised himself slightly on his elbows and she kissed him lightly on the cheek.

  ‘Behold, thou art fair, my love. Thou hast dove’s eyes,’ he said. He let himself back into the cushions, then suddenly raised a finger to his lips. ‘Sssh!’ he said tensely. ‘Listen to this!’ Violins, from the phonograph, came forward plaintively. ‘That passage undoes me,’ he said in a whisper, then he went limp, letting one arm trail to the floor.

  She went around the sofa and sat down in one of the two armchairs, facing him. ‘How’ve you been, Woody?’ she asked.

  ‘Fine,’ he said, ‘can’t complain.’ With his trailing hand he groped about the floor beside him, picked up an object that lay there. It was attached to a black wire that led somewhere under the sofa out of sight. ‘Take a look at this,’ he said. ‘Remote volume control.’ He turned a small dial and, immediately, the music diminished in the background. ‘Pretty tricky, eh?’

  ‘It is,’ she said.

  ‘I’m a sucker for gadgets,’ he said, dangling the control device by its wire and lowering it slowly to the floor again. ‘And how have you been?’

  ‘Fine,’ she said, ‘just wonderful. Where is everybody?’

  He looked at her with an expression of shocked surprise. ‘Where do you think?’ he asked. ‘Preparing for your arrival, of course! My dear, you have no idea the commotion you have caused in this house today! Eleven o’clock—first bulletin: Barbara may come. Frantic excitement! Will she or won’t she be able to get Flora to stay with her children! Tension! Wild speculation! Eleven-fifteen—second bulletin: Barbara is coming! This afternoon! Bring on the minnesingers! Fill the house with flowers! Butcher the fatted calf! The prodigal daughter is returning!’

  Barbara laughed weakly. ‘Oh, Woody!’ she said. ‘You are a nut!’

  He raised one eyebrow, pushed it upward, actually, with the tip of his finger. ‘I notice,’ he said, ‘that dear old Carson barely gets a chance to get off the ground and on his way somewhere before you take it on the lam yourself.’

  ‘Now you’re being mean,’ she said.

  ‘Well, anyway,’ he said, ‘You’ve caused untold chaos in this house. Do you realise—’ he shook his finger at her ‘that the cocktail hour which always begins at six o’clock on the nose has been postponed a whole hour—just because of you?’ He smiled at her.

  ‘Good!’ she said. ‘It will do you good to wait.’

  ‘Believe me, it hasn’t been easy,’ he said. Moving only with his elbows he adjusted his position on the sofa.

  It was true, as Nancy Rafferty had said, that—of the younger generation of Woodcock males—Woodcock deWinter was easily the handsomest. Though he was thirty, he looked younger, with smooth, fair skin and very blond, very curly hair.

  Woody and his mother—Barbara’s cousin Mary-Adams—did not get along. They were too much alike, people said. When he had reached his majority, after college, Woody had moved out of his parents’ house and taken a bachelor apartment in town, which he had decorated in serene, pale colours and furnished with low, modern furniture. Periodically, Woody showed up at the farm, driving out in his small Italian sports car that was the colour of black-raspberry sherbert—dressed rather extravagantly, as he was now, in a heavy hand-knit orange sweater and a pair of very slim, very tapered black trousers, black silk socks and black loafers—bringing with him when he came a stack of his favourite records. Preston and Edith Woodcock were fond of Woody; he was one of the few Woodcocks, Preston often said, who didn’t take himself too seriously, and Edith, who admitted that she would have liked to have had a son, often said Woody was exactly the sort of young man she would have wanted that son to be. When Woody dropped in, he didn’t have to be entertained. He brought his own entertainment—his records. And if there happened to be some little chore to be done around the house, Woody was always cheerfully willing to do it. Five days a week, from nine to five, Woody worked for the Woodcock Paper Company; he worked hard and had been given the title of Advertising Director. Although he was not an artist, he had good taste and occasionally worked with the art department on designs for letter-papers. He was courteous and observant, quick to notice and remark upon any new, small detail of food, service or décor at the farm—to compliment Edith on a flower arrangement or a dress or choice of jewellery. ‘You’re looking singularly gorgeous tonight, Mrs. W.,’ he would say. ‘You’ve done something different with your hair.’ And Edith, pleased, would exclaim, ‘Why, Woody, aren’t you clever! I don’t believe even Preston noticed it!’

  He turned now to Barbara and said, ‘You look singularly gorgeous tonight, Mrs. Greer.’

  Barbara laughed. ‘Ah, Woody,’ she said, ‘are you still using that same old line?’

  ‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘You look very pretty in this soft light.’

  ‘Because it hides the wrinkles,’ she said.

  He rolled over on his side. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘where is dear old Carson off to this time?’

  ‘London first,’ she said. ‘Then Paris, Zurich, Brussels and back to London. He’ll be gone six weeks.’

  Woody sighed. ‘Lucky guy!’ he said.

  ‘Well,’ Barbara said, ‘I don’t think Carson looks at it quite that way …’

  ‘He’d rather stay in Locustville, you mean?’

  ‘No, no, not that. But it’s just part of his job. And he’s pretty sick of travelling.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t be,’ he said. ‘Never.’

  ‘Well, you’re not Carson,’ she said.

  ‘No, I’m not Carson. Carson is solid! Respectable!’ He raised one orange-sweatered arm and shook his fist. ‘Carson is solid as—as the Prudential Life Insurance Company. Dear old Carson.’ He let his arm fall to his side.

  ‘Please stop calling him dear old Carson,’ she said. ‘He’s done very well and you know it.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ he said absently. He frowned and began to pluck invisible bits of lint from the front of his orange sweater.

  ‘Woody,’ she said, ‘where do you get your clothes?’

  He continued picking lint. ‘From here, from there,’ he said. ‘From the Spice Islands and Samoa, from lands that lie by torpid seas, where lovely ladies weave their lazy looms.’

  She smiled. ‘What is that a quote from?’

  ‘A poem by Woodcock deWinter,’ he said. ‘The only poet who’s been able to capture the rhythm and mystery of his age.’ He looked at her again. ‘Do you know what I did yesterday?’ he asked her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I did write a poem.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Want to hear it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He lowered his voice. ‘My only love, my heart’s design, I long to hold your hand in mine; my love is true, if true is thine, then won’t you be my valentine?’

  ‘What in the world—?’

  ‘Coming next spring—a new line of valentines by the Woodcock Paper Company. Very beautiful. They’re going to be printed on scented paper, and do you know what they’re going to be called? Can you guess? ‘Sweet Scentiments’ by Woodcock. Get it?’

  ‘Oh, Woody, that’s priceless!’ she said.

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’ he asked in mock anger. ‘Oh, God!’ he said, striking his forehead with the heel of his palm. ‘You critics! Strangling a poet in the middle of his art!’

  ‘Woody, you’re wonderful,’ she
said. ‘And speaking of sentiments—I’ve got a T.L. for you, as we used to say.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Do you remember Nancy Rafferty? Who was with me at Vassar?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Short, skinny—’

  ‘Well,’ she said, interrupting him, ‘Nancy’s living in Philadelphia now, going to nursing school—’