by Leslie Ford
She looked at me grave-eyed.
“Do families always have to fight?”
“They fight over estates,” I said, “and who gets what, more than anything else, I expect. Or so lawyers tell me.”
“And they say civil war is the worst kind. Boy, are they right.—What’s the matter?”
I said, “Nothing.” I was thinking of the cottage and Roy Cather going to live in it, before he went to Java, and wondering. But it wasn’t, obviously, where he was now. Alice was throwing open the doors and shutters and putting up the windows around the lanai.
“Did you ever notice,” Mary asked, “that you can always tell when Mother’s plotting something? Just watch her. I’ll bet she’s figuring something right now so Aunt Norah won’t be able to move up to the cottage. I’ll bet anything we have guests before supper . . . Waves or Wacs or a bunch of tired submariners from the Royal Hawaiian.—What Mother wants, she gets.”
She laughed and switched on the motor. “Let’s pretend we’re dreadfully surprised.”
I may say we didn’t have to pretend. And surprise isn’t quite the word. Consternation fits what happened better. But that was later, and consternation is only the shadow of a word that would fit what happened in between.
We left Alice at the ramshackle painted wooden barracks that houses the Pacific Ocean area headquarters of the Red Cross, behind St. Andrew’s Cathedral, and went out to Waikiki. It never occurred to me, as Mary let me out in front of the hotel and took the car along to park it, that the simple business of coming to get my bags would be in any way catastrophic. The only person it even entered my mind we might meet that I’d prefer to avoid was Aunt Norah. And I wasn’t even thinking about Aunt Norah then . . . I was thinking about going back to the house where Uncle Roy was the unseen guest, and wishing there was some decent way to avoid it without having to sleep in a foxhole on the beach at Waikiki.
I got my key at the desk and came back toward the door. The lobby was already crowded with officers coming and going. I stood waiting for Mary out of the main line of traffic to the elevators, without any intimation of disaster of any conceivable kind. Then my heart sank with a sickening jolt. Not three feet away from me was Swede Ellicott, and with him was the half-caste girl Corinne. She was dressed in white again, her shiny black hair in a high smooth pompadour off her broad forehead, her brown eyes laughing, one hand tucked in Swede’s arm, with an air of possessive intimacy that wasn’t possible to mistake.
Outside across the street I could see Mary just getting out of the car where she’d parked it. She was locking the door. In another minute or two she’d be across the street and up the steps into the lobby. And Swede saw me as quickly as I saw him, too late for me to slip behind a pair of naval officers next to me and disappear.
“Hello, there, Grace,” he said.
I suppose the consternation I felt for an awful instant must have been more than visible in my face, because his went very sober, abruptly.
“Hello, Swede,” I said.
I think he would have skipped everything from there on if the girl hadn’t looked over at me and back up at him, so that he couldn’t very well not introduce us without being rude to her. And anyway, I was making one of the noblest efforts to smile that I think I’ve ever been called on to make.
“—I’d like you to meet Corinne Farrell. Mrs. Latham, Corinne. You remember Ben, Grace.”
“Yes, indeed,” I said. I put out my hand automatically. Corinne’s was very small and soft, like a kitten’s, and warm as it touched mine a moment.
“How do you do,” she said. “Ben used to talk about you, and Swede told me you were here.”
Her accent was not foreign, certainly, but it had a strange quality that made it different from most Americans’ and yet hard for me to place. It was precise and her voice rather high-pitched.
And Mary was starting across the street.
“I was sorry to hear about Ben,” I said.
“Oh, yes, it was very sad.”
I don’t know why I didn’t have the feeling that there was any profound regret either in her voice or the way the laughter went out of her face for an instant to come back again almost as quickly. It didn’t dim the radiant possessiveness of her smile as she looked back up at Swede. His face was still sober and his brows contracted a little, but again I didn’t have the impression that that was as much for Ben as it was irritation with me for my surprise and dismay seeing him and the girl together. I could see he was putting it down to racial snobbishness on my part.
I glanced at the door again. I was really sick. It seemed so ghastly, someway, for Mary to have to meet him like this. It was fate, maybe, but it was a blind and very cruel fate. And if there was ever an answer to an unspoken prayer, it came then . . . in the form of a long line of khaki-colored trucks filled with GI’s in fatigue clothes. Mary was still on the curb on the other side of the street. I could tell that by the way the GI’s were craning their necks and waving as the trucks lumbered by.
“We’re just going to have lunch, Mrs. Latham,” Corinne said, smiling at me. I thought her eyes, quicker and sharper and more on the alert than Swede’s, had followed mine out the door and that there was a curious appraising flicker in them as they turned to me. “Why don’t you join us? I think Swede has much to talk to you about. I think so.”
“Sure, Grace . . . come on.”
The trucks had passed and I saw Mary run across the street, the sunlight glistening on her hair as she reached the sidewalk. The meeting, staved off a moment, was inevitable now, and my heart went down quietly and stayed in the pit of my stomach.
“I’m awfully sorry,” I said. “I’d love to, but I’ve got an engagement—I’m waiting for a friend.”
That was when I knew Corinne had seen Mary Cather too. Her face did not change exactly, or outwardly anyway, but it was as if somebody had quietly tilted the slats in a Venetian blind, shuttering out the direct rays of light from the room of her mind. Her hand tightened a little on Swede’s arm as she turned him toward the dining room. Then my heart rose again. Mary, already on the bottom step, turned and stopped as some one called her, and held out her hand, laughing. Corinne saw that too.
“Another time, I hope, Mrs. Latham,” she said. “Come along, Swede. We’re keeping Mrs. Latham, and we won’t get a table if we don’t hurry.”
Swede nodded. “Good-bye, Grace.” I thought he was still a little troubled as he moved away with her. And it was just in a fraction of the nick of time. Mary came running into the lobby.
“I’m sorry,” she said breathlessly. “First there was a line of trucks and then a friend of Dad’s. What on earth’s the matter? You didn’t run into Aunt Norah, did you?”
“No,” I said. “Come along—here’s an elevator.”
She started over with me. I could see Corinne, standing alone, looking across at us. There was no smile on her red lips and no laughter in her eyes. Swede, his back to us, was over at the telephone by the room desk.
“Oh, look!” Mary touched my elbow. “See that girl? Her name’s Corinne, and she’s a wonderful dancer. Her hula’s lovely.”
I didn’t somehow want to look at Corinne again.
“Are you coming, darling,” I said, “or aren’t you?”
Having so narrowly escaped this far I couldn’t bear to give up. I gave her a little push into the waiting elevator . . . and Swede Ellicott turned, caught my eye and nodded at me just as the door of the elevator closed.
“You’re just like Mother,” Mary said. “Every time I used to want to go to see Corinne dance she hit the ceiling, and really she’s lovely. A real hula is beautiful.”
I didn’t say anything. It’s hard to explain the relief I felt as we got out on my floor and went along the corridor to my former room. In any one of half a dozen fractions of a moment there in the lobby the laughing violet-eyed girl with me now could have changed into one I hoped I’d never have to see. And I could still see in my mind the shuttered unsmiling mask tha
t Corinne Farrell turned on us as we started for the elevator. There was no doubt, I thought, that she knew a great deal more about Mary Cather than Mary knew about her. I thought there was no doubt either that she had it in her mind to keep Swede Ellicott, by fair means or any others, and also that Mary would be tragically unprepared for a kind of attack that Corinne would be an old and no doubt established hand at. It was better for her that none of their paths, hers and Swede’s or hers and Corinne’s and Swede’s, should ever cross. It was sheer chance that they almost had just then, and even sheerer chance that they had not.
We got my things, quickly. We got out of the hotel while they were still in the dining room—and without running into Aunt Norah—and went to the Outrigger Club for lunch. It was half-past four when we drove up Nuuanu Avenue. It was brilliant and clear until we came to the Pali road, and then it was raining cats and dogs. We turned left through the lichen-covered gates of the Cathers’ place under the mountains, and it was all brilliant and clear ?gain. The cottage furniture was all out on the lanai, and Kumumato and the two little maids were working like beavers, scrubbing and dusting and airing.
Mary stopped the car. “I’ll go see what’s happening,” she said.
She ran up the path to the little house. I saw her talking to Kumumato, and in a moment she was back.
“Do you mind walking in the rest of the way?” she asked. “They’ve got an awful lot of old stuff Mother wants moved out, and she isn’t home yet. I thought I’d leave the car for them. Kumumato can bring your bags when he comes.”
“Surely,” I said.
“Let’s cut down and go this way and I’ll show you my room. I’m in the other wing. There are a lot of orchids down there.”
We went off the road down to the left through a wooded gully, though I don’t know if gully is the right word for a place where the orchids grew in pale gorgeous showers under the trees.
“Be careful, it’s wet,” she said.
It was not only wet, it was muddy, and our shoes were caked. It must have been raining worse than cats and dogs there recently.
“Let’s go back—we can’t make it,” Mary said. We scrambled up another path that was muddy too and that took us out a little to the left of the main entrance. Our shoes were a mess.
“Just take them off,” Mary said, slipping out of hers and parking them at the door. “The Japanese have a lot of very sensible customs. Kumumato’ll get them. We’ll go for a swim. I’ll get my suit and bring you one till your things get in. I won’t be but a second.”
She skipped barefooted off toward her wing, and I, feeling a little awkward walking around anybody else’s house in my stocking feet, went out onto the lanai to go to mine.
I put my bag on the bed and started over to close the door leading to the inside hall. I wasn’t, for some reason, even thinking about Uncle Roy. The busy rushing about down in town where there were people and shops would have wiped him out of my mind for the time being even if it hadn’t been for that scene in the lobby of the Moana, and if I was thinking about anything it was whether Mary would remember to bring me a cap so my hair wouldn’t get wet. I suppose that knowing Alice Cather wasn’t at home and Kumumato was up at the cottage may have put me off guard too. Anyway, I started over to the door to close it, and I stopped quicker than I ever remember stopping before. Alice Cather’s door was partly open, and I could hear a man’s voice as plainly as if he were in my room.
“—a bargain,” I heard. “Not as good a bargain as I hoped to make, Alice. But a bargain.”
It was a voice such as I’d never heard before, quiet and arrogant and dark, and with some entirely indescribable quality that made me shiver suddenly, standing there. I’d thought, at first, that he was talking on the phone, and I glanced quickly around at the lanai to make sure it was as close, and as accessible, as I’d thought it was. It was Alice Cather’s voice there that stopped me a second time.
“I’m only keeping my end if you keep yours, Roy.”
“Of course, my dear.”
“And let me tell you, Roy. I’m not being funny. You can stay here till you can get away—as long as you do stay. I don’t know why you’re here, and I don’t trust you, and I don’t believe anything you say——”
“Oh, come, Alice . . . don’t be heroic.”
It was playful and mocking, the man’s voice, and in some way still more frightening. Then it changed sharply.
“When are you going to get her out of here?”
“I’ve told you I can’t, Roy! Harry asked her. She was nice to us in Washington. She’d think it was very funny if I asked her to leave. I don’t dare!”
I swallowed down the cold lump that had risen in my throat and stood there, motionless, any sense of ethics I may have had about eavesdropping gone in a flash. If I was being used, it was clearly my business to find out what for and why.
“She won’t bother you if you stay where you’re put and quit prowling around the house. She didn’t hear you last night. I got the cord you cut before she saw it this morning.”
The man laughed a little, almost noiselessly. “I think she heard me, Alice. I think so.”
My feet were like lumps of ice-cold lead and my spine crawled. I don’t know how to describe the menace in that quiet voice.
“I have trained ears, Alice. I think she woke. She stopped breathing——”
“No, Roy! You’re being crazy!”
Alice Cather’s voice had a sudden frantic note in it.
“She took a sleeping pill I gave her. I asked her this morning. She drew a complete blank.”
“You’re not lying to me, Alice?”
The menace in the slow dark voice was terrifying.
“I wouldn’t like you to lie to me, my dear.”
“Stop it, Roy. I’m telling you the truth.”
“Then why is she here? Who is this colonel? Where is he?”
That was sharp and staccato. I drew my breath quickly and held it for a moment, understanding nothing at all.
“His name is Primrose and he’s a special agent.—Let go of me, Roy, I’m trying to tell you! Military intelligence, something—nobody knows. I tell you he’s been watching me. He was in San Francisco when I got there, and so was she. He was in Washington, New York, Charleston, everywhere, since the broadcast. I don’t know how they traced it. He was everywhere. I know he’s coming here, if he isn’t here already. That’s why she’s here. She’s watching me for him. I know it. That’s why she came out when we did. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s supposed to be observing rest camps and USO’s, but that’s absurd. She’s not bright enough to work on her own, but he uses her. That’s what he’s doing now. As long as she’s here it’s all right.”
There was silence for an instant. I heard her catch her breath in a panic-stricken sob.
“—I’m telling you the truth, Roy.”
“You’re not lying, trying to keep me in that hole?” the dark voice said. “Not lying about her connections . . . to save yourself, Alice?”
8
I WAS WONDERING VERY MUCH MYSELF, JUST then. It was indescribably strange, hearing myself and Colonel John Primrose made into a joint team trailing her—for what reason I had no faintest idea—since February of 1942 when I’d met her getting off the evacuation ship in San Francisco. It was true that Colonel Primrose had been there; he’d introduced us. But that was because she’d been with a general’s wife he knew, and she introduced Alice to him as I was standing there. I certainly wasn’t there on her account, and neither, so far as I knew, was Colonel Primrose. Still, I could easily see why at the moment it might seem advisable to use us that way, and if any possible connection I had with Colonel Primrose, who was in Washington the day I left, would help, it was all right with me. It was all right with me, that is, except when I remembered that swift terrifying figure in the dark, and the gleaming knife. He was so right about my not breathing. I hadn’t dared to breathe.
“I’m telling you the truth,” Alice
Cather repeated.
“All right. I believe you because I have to.” The voice was easy now, all the dark menace gone out of it. “In any case, my dear, I think you wouldn’t try to lie to me.”
It was not till then that I was aware of the shadow on the floor at the end of the beds. It was motionless there, a head, a body, elongated from the lanai entrance. I hadn’t heard any one coming, and my heart froze still more. I didn’t know what to do. I’d forgotten Mary. I knew it was she, standing there in her bathing suit, watching me, frozen to the floor, listening to a conversation from her mother’s room, my hat still on my head. I could almost see the contempt shining from her clear violet eyes, and there was no way to explain to her that I had a right to listen. I couldn’t close the door now and turn around. The dark quiet voice still held me there. If they knew I’d heard . . . and could still hear, as Roy Cather’s voice went on.
“—Because you’re in love with me, Alice. You always have been. You’ve never loved my sainted brother. If you had——”
I forced myself to turn then. It was Mary, and her face was pale and intense. She wasn’t looking at me, and she raised her hand quickly to stop me from speaking, and shook her head, listening too.
“If you had, you’d have told Harry this morning I was back to see him. That’s why you came home, Alice. Because you——”
“That’s a lie, Roy! I don’t love you—I hate you. You’re simply a fiend——”
The sudden fire of passion in her voice burned across the space between us. Mary had crept in beside me and was holding my arm tightly.
“—A fiend in human form,” the man said calmly. “You’ve gotten dull, Alice. Old and dull, my dear. And you are in love with me—but afraid of me too.”
“Of course I’m afraid of you.”
