Barbara Greer

by Stephen Birmingham

  As the voting began, pencils and sheets of yellow paper were passed around the room. Preston, as executive vice-president and secretary, quickly read off the list of shareholders, advising each member of the exact number of shares each owned. Then they voted.

  The results were surprising. The position of president was given to William Dobie Woodcock the Third. Preston—to whom the job fell of counting the ballots—read off the results in a queer voice. Grandfather Woodcock merely nodded, satisfied. Then he turned to Cousin Billy, shook his hand, and said, ‘Congratulations.’ Billy, who looked pale and a little glassy-eyed, jumped slightly in his chair, taking his great-uncle’s hand, and mumbling, ‘Thank you, sir.’

  The mood of the little group as they stood up and started out of the room had been a curious one. There were no exclamations of surprise, no congratulations. Cousin Billy fixed his eyes upon the floor. There were no admonishments, no expressions of regret or sympathy. In fact, there had been nothing at all, only silence. Outside a few faces broke. There were a few nervous smiles. Mary-Adams deWinter lighted a cigarette, patted the damp curlers in her hair. Then, briefly, she squeezed Barbara’s and Peggy’s hands, but said nothing. What had happened, of course, they all understood. Grandfather Woodcock had simply lifted control of the company from his side of the family, from his son, and placed it firmly with the other side—with his brother’s son’s child, the grandson of the brother who had been the ne’er-do-well, the black sheep, the fornicator and disgracer. Preston, who stood among them looking astonishingly composed, had been passed by. At fifty-two, he had been placed second in command of a company whose president was his second cousin, Billy, only thirty-one years old. And the same thought instantly occurred to all of them: it was all right for the old man to do this now, perhaps, awful though it was; but what would happen at his death? Where would his stock go then?

  In the little anteroom, a few more cigarettes were lighted. There began to be quiet murmurs of conversation. ‘Are you driving into New Haven tonight, Talcott?’ ‘Woody, is your car in the parking lot?’ ‘Yes, Mother.’ ‘Mind if I take it, dear? I came by taxi and it’s so hard to find one going back …’

  Grandfather Woodcock, standing in the centre of the group and yet, at the same time, apart from it, turned to the person next to him who happened to be his grandnephew, Woody. His chin was cocked and his bright old eyes flashed. He said, ‘Well, Woodcock? What do you think?’

  It was the words, ‘Well, Woodcock?’ that hushed everyone. It was a salutation that might have been addressed to all of them.

  And Woody—Woody, the rebellious, the unpredictable one, the off-horse—turned his head sharply away, saying nothing. Then the others, conscious of this, increased the tempo of their talk just slightly to cover his silence. The weather: how odd these early-morning fogs had been, all week, drifting up the river valley from the Sound, chilling the mornings and then burning off by noon in the sun’s heat! Such weather! Had there ever, in anyone’s memory, been anything quite like it?

  They all knew. They all understood. They were all family. They had always been and they would always be, in some way, bound together by ties of love and pride, bright old ribbons the colour of loyalty and courage. Ties that were truly stronger than either love or pride, for they could be so much more painful ties. They had been through so much together. Through William, Junior, at Salerno. (Too old for the Army they had told him; they had been right, he had been killed.) They had been through births, deaths, one divorce (Sally), a failure at Yale (Talcott), a curious marriage (Talcott), an attempted suicide (Woody), that awful thing that no one would ever completely understand, nor would anyone but the family appreciate the struggle that had followed, the heartache, the trying times. They had been through the uncertain war years that had been profitable financially but which had taken their toll in a darker and more tragic battleground. Through all this they had been family and they would always be. Through all this they had suffered as they were suffering now and would surely suffer again, beginning their suffering with silence, polite silence, for what else but silence could so surely comfort the bereaved and so swiftly heal the wounded? They would follow silence with a little polite talk, and then, in a few weeks’ time, it would all be forgotten; time for family parties again, little dinners, jokes and laughter. But forgetting was only an illusion of forgetting, they knew. Nothing was ever forgotten. Still, silence would bolster the illusion. Silence, politeness, and time.

  Barbara sat, very quietly now, with Cousin Billy in the library, remembering it all. There seemed to be nothing left to say. At last she said softly, ‘Poor Daddy.’

  ‘Now, don’t say that, Barbara,’ he said. ‘That isn’t realistic. Don’t forget, your father’s been taken care of pretty fairly well all these years. Pretty fairly well.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know …’ she said.

  On the terrace now, outside, she could hear voices. The swimmers had left the pool and were gathering for talk in the cool shadows of the garden shrubbery, on the green-cushioned chairs, away from the sun. She could hear them, the family, and their bright Sunday afternoon laughter.

  Two and a half weeks after the board of directors had met, at 1045 Prospect Avenue Grandfather Woodcock spilled his milk. He had refused, somewhat testily, the curved glass sipping straw that Binky Zaretsky had offered him, and when he lifted the glass of vitamin-fortified milk to his lips, it fell from his fingers on to the floor. Tiger, his yellow cat, leaped from his lap for the milk. His wife, sitting next to him, said, ‘Binky will mop it up, dear,’ but old Mr. Woodcock bent, reaching apparently to pull Tiger back to his accustomed place on his lap (‘He wasn’t the kind to care about milk spilled on the rug,’ Mrs. Zaretsky explained as she told the story later), and bending in his chair, his fingers clutching for the cat’s fur, his heart stopped. A rich, full life was ended.

  The night before the funeral, Edith and Preston talked.

  ‘There’s one thing you can be sure of,’ Preston had told her. ‘I won’t stay here. I’m not going to stay here and work for Billy. We’ll take whatever money comes and move away. We’ll go to Florida. Or California. Would you like that, Edith? I’ll either retire completely or—well, maybe just try retirement for a while and see how I like it. If I don’t there are dozens of companies that would be glad to take me on. The thing is, we won’t have to worry any more! We can do exactly as we please, go where we want. Oh, I know how you love the farm. I love it, too. I love everything we’ve done here, all the work we’ve both put in on it. But now that he’s gone, we won’t have to worry, we’ll be secure. When that stock of his comes to me, sure, I could elect myself president! But I won’t do that! I won’t stoop to that. Let Billy take it. If he wants the stock I get, I’ll sell it to him. I just don’t give a damn about the company any more. You and I will be secure, that’s the big thing. We won’t have to wait for those paycheques of his! We can go anywhere we want, Edith. We’re not going to stay here.’

  She went to him, put her arms around him. Through tears, now, of joy, she saw him unchanged, youthful, the man she had married. ‘Oh, my darling!’ she had said. ‘Is it any wonder I love you? Is it any wonder? Of course! I’ll go wherever you want, to the ends of the earth!’

  But, of course, they did not go anywhere.

  The terms of his father’s will, when they were revealed, precluded it. It was a beautiful will, the lawyers said. They had to admit, begrudgingly, that he had made a beautiful will, which was surprising, since he had not consulted them at all but composed it himself. It went to show, they said, that old Mr. Woodcock had been a remarkable man with a brilliant, remarkable mind, a kind of genius, right up until the very end.

  There were the usual charitable bequests, including a sizeable gift to Yale University, gifts to servants, nurses, a gift to the hospital in the name of his brother, a gift to the Dobie C. Woodcock Memorial Library, which he had founded in his father’s memory, to be used to purchase books for a new reference section. Of his stock in th
e paper company, a third went to his widow. The remaining two thirds were divided four ways. There was a bequest of stock to Barbara and an equal bequest to Peggy. There was a sizeable bequest to Cousin Billy, to give him ownership that befitted his title. To Preston, also, there was a stock bequest but it was directed to be held in trust. And the income from the trust, which gave Preston no voting privileges, was to be paid to Preston contingent upon his continued association with the company. Should Preston at any time leave the company, the will directed, the trust would pass directly to Cousin Billy. Upon Preston’s death, the trust was to pass to Preston’s two daughters, Barbara and Peggy, who would share it equally.

  ‘It’s quite an ingenious arrangement, Pres,’ one of the lawyers had told him. ‘And quite a compliment to you. Obviously the old man didn’t like to think of what would happen to the company if you weren’t on hand to help guide things along.’

  Cousin Billy stood up now and walked to the library window, puffing on his pipe. ‘So you see,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing Peggy can do. And the sooner she realises that, the better it will be for all of us. She’s wasting her time, and so is Barney. So what I thought was, Barbara—that if you could tell her, just sort of explain to her the way things stand, remind her, it would be a help to her and a help to me. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. It’s better if it comes from you than if it comes from me. Your sister, Peggy’s never cared too much for my advice, I don’t think. But if you remind her of all this, she ought to have sense enough to understand. What I want to avoid, what I want to forestall, is a big family ruckus, you know what I mean. If there’s one thing I’d hate to have, it’s a big family ruckus. It’s like the old maxim says—a house divided against itself cannot stand! So talk to her, Barbara. That’s really all I have to say.’

  The sky outside had grown suddenly darker and a heavy stillness had fallen upon the air. Then a wind came up, turning the leaves at the window so that they showed their white undersides. ‘Looks like a storm,’ Cousin Billy said. ‘I’d better run. Didn’t bring an umbrella—’ He turned to Barbara, and Barbara stood up. ‘Well, goodbye for now, Barbara,’ he said, ‘and thanks for anything you can do. Drop by the house if you get a chance. Janet’d love to see you, and the kids would love it, too.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘Got to run before it pours,’ he said.

  ‘Goodbye, Billy,’ she said.

  He walked hurriedly out of the room. She stood at the window and watched him as he ran down the front steps, across the driveway, to his station wagon. The sky grew even darker. There was a bright flash of lightning and then, a few seconds later, a deep rumble of thunder. She could hear the family now as they rose from the terrace and hurried into the house, carrying their cocktails in advance of the storm.

  She turned and started out of the library. In the darkened hall, she met Barney. He stopped her with his hand. ‘They say you’re going home tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Are you?’

  ‘Yes, I must,’ she said.

  ‘But you came up here to see me,’ he said. ‘You know you did.’

  She pulled away from him, suddenly angry. ‘That’s not true!’ she said. ‘Leave me alone, please! Can’t you leave me alone?’

  And his face, as he stepped back, looked all at once so hurt, that she said more softly, ‘Please, don’t you see?’ Don’t make things so hard for me. Everybody expects so much of me! And I’m simply not up to it.’

  ‘Barbara?’ her mother called. ‘What did Billy want?’

  ‘He just stopped by to say hello, Mother,’ she said. And she and Barney walked toward the living room where the rest of the family were gathering.

  13

  In the old days there had been many family picnics at the farm and it had been at one of these that Carson had first met Barbara’s parents. He had gone home to Maryland for summer vacation, between his sophomore and junior year at Princeton, and in his pocket had been a letter from her, inviting him to come to Burketown for the second weekend in June. He remembered it now, as he sat alone in his hotel room in London, just back from the movies.

  It had turned out to be an American movie, and disappointing, but he had sat through it anyway, and afterward he had walked back along the streets in the late English twilight, encountering the bold London whores, some haggard and some beautiful, who approached him imperiously and shrugged when he turned his eyes away from them, who laughed and spoke loudly as he passed. He had walked past Hyde Park slowly, watching the late, slow strollers there, and turning north, had got lost briefly in a maze of little angular streets but had finally found his way to his hotel. Now it was nine o’clock, but the sky was still light, and from his open window he could hear the distant sound of trains as they steamed into the great glass vault of Paddington Station. Perhaps, he thought, it was the train sounds that reminded him of that other summer, the train ride south from Princeton with Barbara’s letter in his pocket. Still, it seemed to him now that London trains had a different sound from the trains at home; London whistles were higher-pitched and their wheels sounded more fretful than lonesome. They had, he thought, a nervous, impatient sound, different from the steady, reassuring rhythm of the Pennsylvania Railroad heading south to Washington.

  He remembered the summer vacation train, the vestibules crowded with suitcases, portable typewriters, tennis rackets and lacrosse sticks, and the heady noise in the club car where everyone gathered, jammed together, sweating, shouting above the noise of other shouting, and the way the atmosphere in the club car changed when the Bryn Mawr girls got on. You could tell, he had always said, a Bryn Mawr girl by her hair. Her hair was always smooth and shining, precisely parted on the left, so sleek and perfectly in place that she seemed to be wearing an invisible hair net. And her skin, too, was smooth, and her voice was smooth and expressionless as she talked of Gide, Bergson and Russian novels. But he had had no eye for the Bryn Mawr girls that summer because in his pocket there had been the letter from Barbara Woodcock. And he would be heading north to see her again in two weeks’ time.

  He had arrived at the farm on Saturday. Though Barbara had told him a great deal about the farm and had often described the house, he had been unprepared for what he saw. When the house first came into view around the corner of the bumpy road, it had reminded him, suddenly, of a Mississippi side-wheeler, painted white, set adrift among the rhododendrons, which were then in full bloom. A Mississippi side-wheeler, floating serenely among purple, white and scarlet-dotted waves; and yet, as more of it appeared, the house lost its resemblance to a boat. With jutting ells, its patchwork of styles and contours, it resembled absolutely nothing in the world that he had ever seen. Barbara had come running down the steps. ‘Welcome to the farm!’ she had said.

  That afternoon there had been a picnic. It was like no picnic he had ever been to. They had crossed the lake behind the house in boats, and on the opposite shore, in front of the guesthouse on a wide, flat stretch of grass, the picnic had been spread upon a large white tablecloth. They sat on canvas cushions in the grass and John, the Woodcocks’ houseman, made cocktails and passed them on a silver tray. Carson had never been to a picnic where cocktails had been passed and where, presently, solid silver knives and forks were placed, wrapped in heavy linen napkins, beside china plates while a Negro chef in a white coat cooked steaks above an open charcoal fire. He remembered the huge, icy bowls of salads and the steaming loaves of herb bread and the yellow ears of corn pierced with silver skewers and the small silver pitchers of melted butter, and during the meal, there had been iced champagne in tall, crystal glasses with silver stems. ‘The champagne is in your honour,’ Barbara had whispered to him.

  He remembered Barbara’s mother most vividly from that afternoon. He had thought her a rather pretty woman, with a clear and youthful face and beautifully arranged white hair, and after the meal, when coffee was poured, she had beckoned him to come and have his coffee beside her. ‘Come talk to me, Mr. Greer,’ she had said, lifting her hand to him from where she sat and letting a tinkling
cascade of thin silver bracelets run down her arm. He sat beside her, and as she talked, she lifted a palm fan from her lap and fanned herself, and he remembered the soft, pleasant fragrance of her perfume that stirred in the little breeze she created for them both.

  ‘You’re from Chevy Chase, Barbara tells me,’ she had said.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘It’s a lovely town. One of the loveliest suburbs, I think, of Washington. Tell me, was the weather warm when you left?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, quite warm,’ he said. ‘You know Washington.’

  ‘Oh, indeed I do!’ Edith said. ‘But it’s a beautiful city. Tell me, don’t you think this is a pleasant spot for picnics—here, by the water? Pleasant, and lovely and cool?’

  ‘Oh, I do, Mrs. Woodcock,’ he had said. ‘Very pleasant. Yes, a beautiful spot for picnics. And, I might add, a beautiful picnic, too.’

  ‘Why, thank you!’ She gestured around her with a fan. ‘This side of the lake is quite different from the other side, where the house is, have you noticed? We’ve tried to keep it this way, nice and rustic. We’ve just let the trees go wild over here, and this strip of grass, where we’re sitting now, is never mowed. We have it cut once or twice during the summer, just to keep the brush down around our picnic place, but otherwise this side of the lake is just as Mother Nature made it.’