Peggy’s first reaction had been horror and fury with her sister. How could she! How could she have subjected herself to such a thing? Every shred of respect she had once had for Barbara vanished instantly, as though one of the soft and comforting lights that bathed her existence had been suddenly switched off. She went to her own room. On her dressing table, a photograph of Barbara stood in a pink leather frame. She picked up the picture, spat at the face, and threw the picture to the floor, smashing the glass. She bent, and from the sharp splinters she ripped the photograph into tiny shreds. Then she threw herself across her bed and cried for a long time, pounding the bedclothes with her angry fists. Never, never, never, she promised herself, would she speak to or look at Barbara again.
But this presented a problem. She could not stop speaking to or looking at Barbara without telling Barbara why. And she could not tell Barbara why without admitting her own guilt. Reading another person’s mail was, as Barbara had often grimly reminded her, a federal offence, punishable by fine or imprisonment, or both: So, though Peggy continued to be disturbed by her knowledge for several weeks afterwards, she had never mentioned it to Barbara. And, gradually, she began to forgive her. But since the revelation of that afternoon, her attitude toward Barbara was never again precisely the same. The golden face she had worshipped as a child was tarnished.
All this she told Barbara now as she sat cross-legged on the floor in her grey slacks, a little smile on her round, snub face.
Then it was time for the ritual of cocktails—somewhat earlier that evening because there was a busy night ahead—and dinner. Then, at eight-thirty, it was time for the men to leave for the bachelor party Cousin Billy was giving for Barney. Carson, Barney, Preston Woodcock and Woody—who had come for dinner that Friday night—departed in various cars for Cousin Billy’s house on Hillside Road. Edith and Peggy, along with Edith’s servants, were to take the station wagon back to Grandmother Woodcock’s house on Prospect Avenue to finish the decorations, begun that afternoon, so that everything would be in order for the photographers who, most of Saturday morning, would be taking pictures there. Barbara was welcome to come along, they said—they could use as many hands as they could get—but Barbara, who was tired and who had developed a throbbing headache during the day, asked to be excused, and suddenly, at nine o’clock, she found herself absolutely alone in the house.
She had gone to her room, undressed, and put on her blue quilted robe. She propped pillows against the headboard of her bed, swallowed an aspirin tablet, and lay down against the pillows with a book. She alternately read and dozed, experiencing the curious sensation of having—when her eyelids closed—the book that she was reading continue with an improbable new plot, new characters, in her dreams. At last she put the book aside, sat up straighter, and began idly chipping the lacquer from her fingernails. When she had created a tiny crimson snowstorm of chips about her on the sheet, she decided to do the job properly. She got out of bed, went to her dressing table, and, with a bottle of remover, cotton balls, nail file, orange stick and polish, began seriously to do her nails. Her door into the hall was open and suddenly, in the middle of her concentration, she heard a sound and turned and saw Barney standing there. He looked weary, leaning with one hand against the doorjamb.
Startled, she asked, ‘Is the party over?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s still going on.’
‘What happened? Why did you leave?’
‘I couldn’t take it any longer,’ he said.
‘What was wrong with it?’
He sighed. ‘Nothing, I guess. During the movie, I decided to take a walk. Nobody seemed to notice when I left, so I decided to come home. Is Peggy back yet?’
‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘What do you mean—during the movie?’
‘The dirty movie,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t every bachelor party have a dirty movie? This one was different, though. There were four—four that I saw, anyway. Maybe there are more.’
‘Really?’ she asked. ‘That doesn’t sound like Cousin Billy!’
He laughed shortly. ‘Doesn’t it? I gathered it was typical—’ Then he broke off. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t know, really. Mind if I sit down?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘No—please do.’
He came into the room and sat on the upholstered bench at the foot of her bed.
Then, it seemed, a deep and terrifying silence fell between them. She raised her hand, still damp with nail polish and waved it absently in the air. Then she lowered it.
Finally she said, ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Something very simple,’ he said.
‘What?’ Her voice was barely above a whisper.
‘I’m marrying the wrong Woodcock girl,’ he said.
It was difficult to remember what she had felt—what, exactly, her emotions were then. They had seemed to change with breathless speed. The thought, the idea, the idle, dreaming, half-conscious thought—put into words just that one time by her mother—had been only an aimless and impractical wondering. It had not been a specific thought; it had not involved any specific plan of action. It had been only a daydream up to then and the realisation, so swift, that she had walked to the end of the daydream into a specific place where specific words and specific actions were required stunned her, blurred her thoughts, dizzied her. Up to then, the fanciful thought that had begun that summer had involved the word ‘affair.’ Her friends, married and unmarried—Nancy Rafferty, all the rest—talked of affairs they had had or would like to have. In this vernacular, there was nothing—other than the one obvious thing—wrong with having an affair. It was modern, everyone did it—or seemed to do it. As long as an affair was all that it was—because affair meant something brief, handled sensibly. It meant something temporary, quickly over, quickly forgotten and forgiven.
But now, with him sitting there, his deep eyes looking inexpressibly sad, having just said what he had said with the meaning that could not be misunderstood, it was too late to think of it in terms of the word affair. He, or perhaps she herself, had somehow pushed everything far beyond the word affair into an area that was complicated, treacherous, deep—not temporary, but for ever. And so everything changed; the old thoughts, quaintly mixed with self-flattery, idle curiosity, a perfect selfish longing for excitement, a smug feeling of I’ll-go-into-it-with-my-eyes-open—all that vanished. She was sitting face to face, soberly, with the victory her dreaming mind had been devising, but the victory had betrayed her because she was looking now at the face of a man with whom an affair was no longer possible. Since what he had just said had meant that he was in love with her, how else could she answer him except by saying that she loved him, too? Methodically, now, appeared in her mind, the steps ahead: Divorcing Carson, taking the children, leaving—at last—Locustville, waiting for a little while, then marrying Barney. Peggy would be heartbroken, of course, but after all these were the cruel demands of love. She could no longer have two men in love with her at once.
She did not remember, exactly, what she had said to him. She remembered asking him to repeat what he had just said, and when he had, saying that he must not say such a thing unless he meant it truly and always and when he had said yes, he had, that it had been growing with him all through the summer, she remembered that she had begun to cry—not sob, but to sit, swaying slightly with unexpected tears streaming down her face. At some point then he had stood up, come to her and brushed the tears from her face with his fingertips and out of all the jumble and confusion of thoughts running wild in her head, old thoughts racing with new, she had one overwhelming thought: the house was empty, they were all alone there. She remembered asking him if the things she herself had felt all summer long—the curious wish, desire, longing and the little furtive thoughts—had, could have been, love? Could they? She herself did not know. She hardly remembered what his answer was because suddenly from the turmoil of feelings there came a great, smooth calm and she thought: All is well; it is as it should be. She felt blissful
and serene, as if she were about to perform some ancient and noble rite, moving toward the bed; he knelt, she remembered, on the rug beside the bed and she reached for him to lift him to her. He kissed her. He said—she remembered the jarring sound of his words—‘I was taught that adultery is a mortal sin. If it is, we’ll both be punished for it,’ and she remembered her own equally jarring words—‘I don’t care.’
Then, from the floor below, was the sound of the front door opening and her mother’s clear voice saying to Peggy, ‘Darling, I’m exhausted, aren’t you?’ and the sound of the door being closed again and their high heels moving across the polished floor. Instantly, Barney was gone. She was left alone staring blindly at the white ceiling of the room, at the rippled crimson border above the pretty flowered wallpaper.
On Sunday, the Burketown Evening Eagle said:
The sun made a surprise appearance today to brighten the wedding of Miss Margaret McPartland Woodcock of Burketown to Mr. Bernard Joseph Callahan of Boston, Massachusetts. St. John’s Episcopal Church, decorated for the occasion with autumn flowers and colourful fall foliage, was the scene of the three o’clock solemnisation. The Reverend Hartley L. Waterman officiated.
The bride, a member of a prominent Burketown family, wore an heirloom gown of ecru silk brocade, created for her paternal grandmother by Worth of Paris. Her shoulder-length veil, also an heirloom, was fashioned of Chantilly lace. She carried a prayerbook marked with miniature white orchids and Bouvardia.
The former Miss Woodcock is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Preston Littell Woodcock, III, of ‘Orchard Farm,’ Valley Road, and the granddaughter of Mrs. Preston L. Woodcock, II, of 1945 Prospect Avenue, this city, and the late Mr. Woodcock. Her maternal grandparents were the late Professor and Mrs. Andrew B. McPartland of Providence, R.I. Prof. McPartland was formerly Chairman of the History Department of Brown University.
The bride was graduated from the Westover School, Middlebury, and Wellesley College. She was presented to society in 1952 at a dance given by her parents in their home and also at the Junior League Ball in New Haven. She is a member (Provisional) of the New Haven Junior League.
Serving as matron of honour was the bride’s sister, Mrs. Carson V. Greer of Locustville, Pa. Mr. Greer served as best man. Miss Susan Robinson Woodcock, age six, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William D. Woodcock, III, and a cousin of the bride, was flower girl. Following the ceremony a reception was held at the Prospect Avenue residence of Mrs. Preston Woodcock, II.
The groom, the son of Mr. and Mrs. James Gerald Callahan of Boston, was graduated in the class of 1950 from Boston University and from Harvard Business School. After a honeymoon in Bermuda, the couple will reside in Burketown.
‘It was a nice wedding,’ Carson said.
‘Yes,’ she said.
They were driving back to Locustville late Sunday night. He had to be at the office Monday morning.
‘The reception was nice, too,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s too bad we couldn’t have stayed longer.’
‘Were you enjoying it that much?’
She put her head back across the smooth leather seat of the car. ‘No,’ she said, ‘but anything seems like more fun than going back to Locustville.’
He glanced at her, then looked back at the road ahead. ‘Barbara,’ he said, ‘I’ve been thinking. I’m afraid it’s pretty hopeless with you and me. I think we should go our separate ways for a while. As far as I’m concerned, Locustville is where I work and it’s where I live. It has certain disadvantages, perhaps, but I’m willing to put up with them. There are people there that I like, and I like the job pretty well. You, on the other hand, can never be happy there. I see that now. You’ve never tried to be, but then it’s possible you don’t know how to try. So, this week, I’d like to have you get your things together, and next Saturday morning I’ll drive you, Dobie and Michael back up to Burketown and leave you there. You can have the car. I’ll take the train back. And whatever arrangements you want to work out after that—well, we’ll work them out, that’s all.’
In the dark front seat she had sat back, pressed hard against the leather, unable to speak, feeling only a kind of total terror. For a long time she sat motionless as Carson drove on, southward, on the New Jersey Turnpike.
Then she said softly, ‘Oh please, Carson! Please give me another chance, please! I’ll try, darling. I’ll try so hard! I promise you.’
She continued to sit, with the reflected lights of cars flashing past her closed eyes, waiting for him to speak, thinking only that she had just lost one of the two men who loved her, she could not lose the other now, the one, indeed, that she loved the most.
‘I love you!’ she said.
And she still sat, waiting for him to answer her.
That had been the end of that summer.
Monday came, then Tuesday. And then the rules were established—the first few anyway; others came as they were needed. They were rules of consideration, politeness, tact. Quarrels were to be extinguished by the quickest means. Complaints were to be silenced. Locustville was to be tolerated.
It had seemed a shame that they needed to have rules for how to get along together. But it had seemed to them then that the rules would help, and, of course, the rules had helped. They helped even when they were broken because—as they reminded each other—each act of breaking the rules reaffirmed the fact that the rules were there. The rules were only for the time they lived in Locustville. But, of course, if one lives by rules one can live anywhere, and for any time.
On Wednesday she had Muriel Hodgson over for tea. On Thursday she bought two tickets for the Locustville Symphony Orchestra’s first concert of the fall season. And, on Friday night, she and Carson went to it. ‘I’m trying,’ she said to him.
‘I know you are,’ he said.
‘It’s fun to try.’
It was fun to try, but not easy. It made the days and weeks and months that followed seem to form ranks, then battalions, that arrayed themselves in front of her and marched slowly forward, toward her, over her. They came—October, November, December, January—and then obliterated, with their steady pace, all the careless summer scenes behind.
Now, alone in her room, the lighted face of her little clock said half past two.
She was alone, in the darkness, with its electric purring. On the table beside her bed, her mother’s note containing Carson’s cabled message lay folded.
She remembered him this morning. ‘If a letter comes from Ted Sloane, open it and see what he says … Call Clyde Adams and tell him … And you’d better call what’s-his-name, DeLuca, and have him come and clean out the oil burner. It should have been done last month, actually. Ask him if the chimney needs to be cleaned. Don’t forget to send my mother something on her birthday.
She remembered the instructions he had given her, this departing passenger. And it was queer that she should remember them so clearly now. This morning, after he had left, she had forgotten them. She had forgotten to call DeLuca. If a letter had come from Ted Sloane, she had not noticed it in her careless glance at the mail. She had forgotten the date of Carson’s mother’s birthday.
She tried to console herself by thinking that none of the things she had forgotten were important. They could wait until she got back. Still, in the dark bedroom, forgotten duties, broken promises, rose and haunted her, swarmed like wasps in the attic of her mind. She saw vital letters buried in her desk. Oil burners exploded and she saw chimney fires (‘Harry Walsh had a fire in his chimney the other day, and his house is the same age as ours.’) Though she knew that these infernos were all created out of darkness and sleeplessness and loneliness, it was no use trying to extinguish them. So, when the clock said three, she gave up the struggle. She got up, went into the bathroom, swallowed one of her yellow sleeping pills and crept humbly back to bed.
Barney had said he could not sleep either.
The darkness was blue. She closed her eyes and wondered sadly if she had been l
ying awake, waiting for him.
And then, in a brief and vivid dream, she was a child again and struggling in the grass somewhere with him, in the dark and steaming grass near the secret island where the doll’s grave was.
She awoke with tears in her eyes and tried to sleep again.
8
In London it was nine o’clock, a clear and cool Sunday morning. And thank goodness it was quiet. He was at the back of the hotel away from the street, and his window overlooked a narrow passageway that ran between two buildings. He was up and half dressed, in his socks, shorts and shirt, and he had stopped dressing midway, after fastening his garters, when he had remembered a request made the night before, that had not been attended to. He decided to wait, to make a little test, and so he got back into bed, pulled the bedspread up over his bare knees, lighted a cigarette and waited for the phone to ring. Ten minutes later, gauged by the time it took to smoke the cigarette, he picked up the phone. When the clerk at the desk answered, he asked, ‘What time is it, please?’
Barbara Greer Page 13
