Honolulu Story

by Leslie Ford

  In the entrance hall a door balancing the one to the lower level was open. The telephone receiver was lying on the table in the little room. I went in and picked it up, and started to close the door, because I decided then that it was fate taking me to the telephone in spite of myself, and I might as well submit with what grace I could. I’d have to go out then and tell Alice Cather and her daughter, but once done it would be over and a part of my conscience would be clear anyway. But I didn’t close the door. Kumumato was too busy brushing up something that probably wasn’t there, by the entrance, and I didn’t want him listening when I finally made my own call. I turned around with my back against the wall where I could see him as well as be seen by him.

  “Hello,” I said. I hadn’t even wondered who was calling me.

  “You’re very difficult to get hold of, Mrs. Latham.”

  “Colonel Primrose!”

  I said it—gasped it is better, I suppose—more as a general announcement than as recognition of him. For a moment my heart rose—or fell, I can’t say which. Then as quickly it occurred to me he wasn’t there in Honolulu. It was long distance, probably.

  “Where are you?” I demanded.

  “I’m at Hickam Field, at the moment,” he said. “How are you?”

  I remembered Kumumato then and glanced at the door where he’d been. But he was gone.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  I thought I noticed an instant’s hesitation at the other end, and wondered if there’d been anything in my voice.

  “I won’t keep you then. I’ll see you—this evening, perhaps, if you’re going to be at home.”

  I said all right. I don’t quite know how I said it, but I did. I heard his laugh as he said, “Good-bye, my dear,” and the phone was dead. I stayed where I was for several moments. I had a strange feeling that a blank wall had suddenly risen in front of me.

  Yet in a sense it was a sharp relief. If there was any question of whether Roy Cather had come, however he may have come, from Japan or from anywhere off the Island, if Mary was right about what she’d gleaned about his past, then there was no possible compromise. I’d known that really all along. There’s duty that’s more compelling than friendship or the obligation of a guest in anybody’s house. Colonel Primrose would come and I would tell him the story. In my way I guess I was as optimistic as Alice Cather. He hadn’t seen me for over two weeks, and it never for an instant occurred to me he’d let anything stand in the way of coming to see me as soon as he could. Which only proves again the profound conceit of the female.

  I’ve pretended for a long time that my friendship with the colonel, who lives with his iron-bound, rock-faced, fishy-eyed Sergeant Buck, once top sergeant and now legman extraordinary in their shadowy liaison with first one and then another of the Intelligence Divisions in Washington, is casual and unimportant, but I think I’d be pretty upset if I really thought so. Whether he actually would want to give up the ease and freedom of fifty-odd years of bachelorhood, I don’t know. The idea of his marrying me was certainly at first just a horrible nightmareish figment in his sergeant’s mind. Having protected him through the last war from shot and shell and Army rations and nothing but water to drink, it was Sergeant Buck’s plain duty to go on protecting him from the designs of the widow across the street. If his methods were as frail and obvious in their way as Alice Cather’s seemed to me to be in hers, they had so far succeeded, anyway. I prefer to leave out my side of the case. I’ve never been quite sure, for example, that Colonel Primrose and Sergeant Buck and I would always see eye to eye about the conduct of my two small boys. My doubts were gravest the day I found them in the area way outside the kitchen with Sergeant Buck teaching them to say “Seven come eleven.” I had to give them extra allowance money for Christmas, and the headmaster wrote a tactful letter when they went back to school in January. When you’re dealing with the Army there are a lot of things you have to consider, and where Colonel Primrose is his sergeant is sure to be.

  However, my problem at the moment was settled, and I came out of the telephone closet with mixed but less fundamentally disturbed emotions. At least I wasn’t going to aid and abet the enemy. I looked around to see if Kumumato was still in spying distance, but he was nowhere in sight. I had a vaguely uneasy feeling that if Alice Cather had told Roy Cather about Colonel Primrose, Kumumato might very well know about him too, and perhaps I’d made a mistake in gasping out his name. I began to wish he’d come quickly . . . in fact, before the sun went down.

  I shut the door to the closet. I could hear Alice and her husband coming along the hall from her sitting room, talking pleasantly. I might have waited for them to go with me into the living room, but I didn’t. I put off the evil moment of having to face her for another few seconds, and started in by myself. And I stopped, stopped as abruptly as blazes, I may say.

  “—good deal, eh what, my lads?” I heard. “Jeepers! Free rent, laundry collected, luau juice on the house—imported, I hope, direct from Scotland, no local cane squeezings disguised as gin. Oh, boy, is this pretty!”

  It was a familiar voice, and the hushed irritated reply was just as familiar.

  “Shut up . . . you want to get us thrown out before we’re in?”

  I went mechanically the rest of the way across the polished floor of the entrance hall to the broad archway down two steps into the living room. There was no mistake. There they were, Lieutenants Thomas E. Dawson and David Boyer, standing in the middle of the long room, Lieutenant Dawson looking the place over as if about to buy it and send it home as a souvenir.

  “Nice little grass shack they’ve got here, eh, David?”

  And that was not all. Swede Ellicott was there too. He was over in the opening onto the lanai, but he wasn’t looking the place over. He was standing stock-still, frozen in his tracks, staring down at the other end of the room, his face a complete blank, the cigarette in one hand motionless, the lighter in the other flaring like a large and fitful candle. I looked the way he was staring. Mary was there at the entrance of the passage to her wing. She had stopped as motionless and blank as Swede.

  When I said surprise was not the word, that consternation fitted better, it was, I think, an understatement. Even Tommy Dawson, never known to be nonplussed by anything at all, stopped dead when he turned and saw first me and then Mary, his freckled face blanker for an instant than both Swede’s and Mary’s put together.

  Then he said, “Jeepers.” He turned to Dave Boyer. “David—I thought you said ‘Flather,’ David . . .”

  He turned back to us, a sardonic lift to one eyebrow.

  “Well, well,” he said. “Fancy meeting you girls here. What a small, small world it really is, after all.”

  10

  MARY CATHER’S IMPULSE TO TURN AND RUN was as evident as if she’d already made the initial move. It wouldn’t take a second for Alice Cather to get here—and that was what I was waiting to see. But before she came Mary proved she was her mother’s own daughter. She didn’t turn and flee and she didn’t do anything crazy that she’d regret the rest of her life. She raised her chin a little and came forward quickly, her body very straight, her eyes brighter than they should have been, probably, and her cheeks warmer. They only made her look more vivid and really very lovely.

  She held out her hand. “Hello, Tommy—hello, Dave,” she said, as calmly as if she’d left them just after lunch at the Outrigger Club. “Are you the guests we’re expecting for the cottage?”

  She turned then. It must have taken more effort than all the rest of it.

  “Hello, Swede, how are you?”

  She smiled and turned back to Tommy. “Won’t you all sit down? Mother’s just coming.”

  Her eyes met mine for an instant. Her look was blank and at the same time oddly communicating. It said, “—Did you know about this?” It said, “What are we going to do now?” and “Where on earth is Mother, why doesn’t she come?”

  I hadn’t said anything. I was aware of the slight jolt to Tommy Da
wson’s amazing aplomb as he realized their being there was as much of a shock to the little Cather as it was to him and Swede. He was also casting another suspicious sidelong glance at Dave Boyer that underlined his “David—I thought you said Flather, David.” On the other hand Dave Boyer was completely at ease, or was until he heard Alice in the hall. Swede was the only one who seemed unable to adjust himself with any degree of articulate grace. If he’d said “Hello” or anything else in response to Mary’s greeting I for one didn’t hear it. He was caught as completely off base as it was possible to imagine, his face an extraordinary picture, flushed and dark, not truculent or sullen but very hard-bitten and unsmiling. And he was unable to take his eyes away from the slim golden-skinned girl in the blue gingham dress with a blue ribbon holding the damp curls back from her forehead. She looked nearer twelve than twenty, but she was as outwardly composed and casual as a woman who’d spent a lifetime coping with unexpected guests.

  “What would you like to drink?” she asked. “I’m sure we’ve got some Scotch—from Scotland.”

  She smiled at Tommy, who had the grace to blush to the freckled roots of his ginger-colored hair.

  And that was when Alice Cather and her husband appeared at the top of the two broad steps leading from the hall into the living room. It was the moment I’d been waiting for. Alice appeared there smiling like any hostess knowing her guests were waiting and she herself a little late, coming in quickly not to keep them waiting longer. And she stopped. For a superb fraction of a second the smile left her face, and left it blankly uncomprehending, for all the world as if instead of the guests she expected she found a troup of orang-outangs in short green pants and boaters. It lasted only an instant—quite long enough to deceive Swede and Tommy, and even Dave for all I knew, and give them the additional jolt that they were as much of a shock to her as she was to them. If it was play-acting it was divine. It didn’t look like it even to me, and I saw Mary’s startled eyes widen as she pressed the service bell. Then Alice Cather was every inch a hostess again. She came down the steps with a quick light tread, her hand extended.

  “This is a very delightful surprise,” she said. “We’re very lucky. How do you do, Tommy? Harry dear, Lieutenant Dawson, Lieutenant Boyer. Hello, Dave.”

  She turned and went over to Swede.

  “Hello, Swede. It’s so nice to see you again. This is Swede Ellicott, Harry. Isn’t it pleasant to have people we know in the cottage? I should think you could give them some of your Scotch, darling, to celebrate.”

  I saw that Harry Cather was a well-trained husband. He plainly had not understood the situation until he heard Swede’s name. I thought he stiffened just slightly, and didn’t glance at his daughter until he moved aside where he could see her without being obvious about it. His brow was a little clouded, but otherwise he was as always, gentle and reserved and very kindly. I thought again that he was also oddly detached, some way, as if he were also, in a sense, a guest who was pinch-hitting for an absent host. It was probably the effect of never knowing when Aunt Norah would descend.

  He went over to the ohia wood cellarette and brought out a bottle of Scotch. Kumumato entered with a tray with glasses and soda and ice, and a cocktail shaker full of daikaris, rum being much less scarce than other forms of what Tommy called luau juice, which except for gas is the only serpent in the otherwise unrationed garden of the paradise of the Pacific.

  I can’t really think of any particular way to account for the pleasure I was getting out of the discomfiture of Lieutenant Thomas E. Dawson. Finding himself an unexpected guest of the she-buzzard in her own house, he’d suddenly become shy, awkward, heavy-handed and very young, and it was Dave Boyer who was doing the Public Relations job. As for Swede Ellicott, he seemed simply unable to keep from following every move Mary made, with grim unhappy eyes. And she was to all intents unaware he was in the room. The spot where he stood still rooted to the floor might have been empty, or so enchanted that any object on it was totally invisible. She didn’t even seem aware of it when he moved abruptly, almost with a wrench, and strode out onto the lanai. Tommy and Dave looked quickly at each other, and Tommy looked at me and made an imperceptible nod toward the opening leading out. I shook my head. I didn’t want to go out when Swede obviously must have wanted to be alone a few moments.

  And all the time Alice Cather kept up a quiet liquid flow of words that covered everything with a sheen of the best-grade velvet. The second time Tommy looked at me, jerking his head toward the lanai, I went out.

  Swede was standing at the corner post, just standing there, his glass still full to the brim, staring out over the treetops not at anything in particular, and not seeing anything either, I imagined, except in his own mind. I didn’t want to obtrude, Heaven knew, so I sat myself down on a bamboo chaise longue a little way off. He turned, came over and sat down next to me, his elbows resting on his knees.

  He didn’t say anything for a minute.

  “This your idea, Grace?” he asked then. He was gruff and abrupt to the point of rudeness.

  “No,” I said. “It was not. It most certainly was not.”

  “Whose?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “Well, it’s lousy,” he said. “That situation is over. I’m not back for a second round.”

  “I don’t think any one thinks you are, Swede,” I said. “Aren’t you taking something a little too much for granted?”

  He looked at me quickly, his bleached eyebrows screwed together in a tight straight line, the pupils of his eyes hard black points in a field of blue unrelenting ice. I couldn’t tell whether here was a boy who had been hurt too much or just one who thought he was being pushed around. He was one I certainly didn’t know, and very different indeed from the boy who’d visited his aunt next door from time to time as he grew up and that I thought I knew fairly well.

  “Get this, Grace,” he said deliberately. “Since it’s come up.—I’m going to marry Corinne. Neither Dawson nor Boyer nor you nor anybody is going to stop me. Get it straight, lady. That’s the deal. You can all take it and like it. Corinne’s had a rotten deal all her life. It’s not her fault her parents weren’t the same race. It wouldn’t make any difference to me if they were both Hottentots. That’s just to get the record straight. And leave us not make any more mistakes about it.”

  “—Leave us not make any mistakes at all, Swede,” I said. I was pretty mad myself at this point. “Suppose you just get something yourself. I don’t care who you marry, Corinne, a Hottentot or the Queen of the Esquimaux. I think you’re a damn fool—for the record—and you do too, or you wouldn’t be on the defensive so. But that’s your business. It isn’t mine. What is mine and what I want you to get perfectly straight is this—I had nothing whatsoever to do with your being invited here, if you were particularly invited. I didn’t tell Mary you were in Honolulu. I was careful not to tell her, in fact. I didn’t know you were coming here and neither did she. And you don’t have to stay. You can leave right now or half an hour ago. But quit acting this way. Nobody says you can’t marry Corinne.”

  “So you’re telling me,” he said abruptly. “You’re telling me after the royal brush-off I got——”

  “Brush-off?” I said.

  Tommy Dawson came out onto the lanai.

  “What goes on?” he demanded.

  Whether it was the luau juice or whether a glass of water and a little time would have had the same effect I don’t know, but he was himself again, debonair and everything under control again, taking the place over for the greater comfort of personnel present of the United States Army Air Forces of the Pacific Ocean Area.

  “This way, folks, the grand tour starts on your——”

  He broke off and looked at Swede, his face sobering abruptly. He looked at me, and back at Swede. “Or do you want to stay put?” he said. “Mary’s going to show us around this rugged foxhole of hers. She’s just gone to turn on the lights at the pool.”

  I got up instantly. The unexpect
ed presence of the three boys had wiped Uncle Roy completely out of my mind. He was back again in a flash. The rugged foxhole he was in under the orchid-covered bank was too near the pool for a grand tour to skip. I thought for an instant Mary might have forgotten. Tommy’s nose would be poked in there in nothing flat.

  Swede got up, slowly and with deliberation. “I’m shoving,” he said calmly.

  “Suit yourself.” Tommy turned and went back into the living room. I followed him. Swede went over to the rail and stood there again where he’d been when I came out, looking down over the dark slope of wooded hills to the city and to the ocean stretching into the quiet infinity of the far horizon.

  Mary wasn’t in the room. Dave Boyer was saying to Harry Cather, “. . . B-29 Punch. You take one quart of gin, one quart of rhum, one can of grapefruit juice, one can of pineapple juice, ice if possible but it’s not customary . . .”

  “It sounds horrible,” Alice Cather said, shuddering a little. She looked suddenly pale and distrait. Her eyes were fixed anxiously at the end of the room where Mary was coming back from along the passage from her bedroom wing.

  “That’s known as gross understatement,” Tommy said cheerfully, heading off to join Mary. Swede was the forgotten man. “Come on, David. Coming, Grace?”

  Alice Cather made a small frantic movement with her hands.

  “Darling, why don’t you wait?” She managed to keep her voice casual. “Dinner’s almost ready. Harry, do give them another drink and let’s all relax. The boys have seen hundreds of swimming pools.”