Lemon in the Basket

by Charlotte Armstrong

  On television that evening, the boy was identified as the son of his father, of whom there were lurid remembrances. And of his mother, who had had her share of publicity in earlier times. Her presence here was not revealed, nor was the Doctor’s name mentioned, nor the precise nature of the boy’s problem. But the King, his grandfather, was mentioned. Then the case of the twenty-eight American professors was tacked on, although not specifically connected. The result was hint, for wonder, for gossip, for warning, of Big Story coming up!

  Tamsen watched the eleventh-hour news and turned it off.

  Duncan was not at home. She knew where he was, but she was feeling almost unbearably alone. She had not phoned, not spoken, to any member of the family all day. Duncan had suggested that it might not be wise. She was ready to climb the wall when he finally came in.

  “How are they?” She was dancing with nervousness.

  “Rolling with it,” he said. “What else is there to do? The only good thing is, as Maggie says, the whole damn world looking over Mitch’s shoulder isn’t going to change the tiniest muscle in that hand, thank God.” Duncan sat down, looking exhausted.

  “But the world … The hospital hasn’t given out Mitch’s name.”

  “Aw, come on,” he said wearily.

  Tears began to stream down Tamsen’s face. “If it was my fault …” she quavered.

  Duncan looked at her, with neither condemnation nor comfort. “It happened. Oh, it went through Rufus, all right.”

  Tamsen squealed with pain.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” he said, “it happened the way it happened. I’ve been all day tracking down exactly how it happened. I’ve got every link in the chain, and it leads right smack dead-on to my brother Rufus.”

  “And so to Lurlene?” she whimpered, “And so to me?”

  “All right,” said Duncan, in his exhaustion. “You are a miserable sinner and ought to be drawn and quartered. Is that what you want to hear?”

  Tamsen took hold of herself. “No,” she said thinly, “but I’d like to be sure exactly what I did have to do with it. How did it happen?”

  “Well.” He gave her a somewhat gruesome smile as apology. “I finally found the fellow who brought in the story to the newspaper,” he said drearily, “and it took some chasing around and some persuasion, but I finally got hold of his source. And when I got to the source of the source—it seems that Rufus went to the ball game Sunday with a couple of his cronies. And when the inning was getting a little dull he, evidently making small-talk,” said Duncan bitterly, “or just for the hell of it—broadcast the whole business.”

  Tamsen had stopped crying. It had become obvious that she could not just keep on crying. “Did you talk to Rufus?”

  “I did not. Wouldn’t trust myself not to wring his fool neck.”

  “There are guards all over the hospital,” she told him.

  “They are more conspicuous, eh? Oh, the State Department was never about to let anything happen here. Don’t worry about Saiph. They’re not going to let a mosquito get at him. It’s what might be going on in Alalaf.”

  “Oh, Duncan, what might?”

  “Dad says to me, privately …”

  “All right,” said Tamsen.

  “That Alice Foster isn’t safe there. How’s that for openers?” He got up. “Phillida says that she told Lurlene, and that she judged it to be necessary. Phillida says she laid secrecy on the line and you did your best to persuade Lurlene to keep quiet. So nobody is blaming you. Unless”—now he was sad—“you absolutely have to blame yourself?”

  “Not unless I see I absolutely have to,” she answered bravely.

  “Good.” He kissed her brow. “Honey, I’m bushed. I’m going to bed. Stewing and fretting and assigning blame isn’t going to help one damn thing in the world.”

  But Tamsen’s brain had clicked. “Then why did you spend all day tracking down the source?” she asked.

  He reeled and answered. “So that it won’t happen again,” he said patiently. “So that we can know what we have to deal with here. So we can do better next time. Why else?”

  Tamsen said, “Is she … terribly upset?”

  “No, no,” said Duncan. Then he realized that neither of them doubted that the other understood the pronoun, and he grinned at her painfully. “But I am,” he confessed. “It makes me pretty sick to know that it got out through the family. I don’t blame myself, and I don’t cry easy. But I am a very upset fella.”

  “Go to bed,” said Tamsen gently.

  8

  Tuesday morning there were headlines. Determined assault had evidently breached the walls of silence at the hospital, at some weak point. Now the world was told that it was a matter of life or death for the heir to the throne of Alalaf. And the Doctor’s name was proclaimed, with a résumé of his career, and sentences out of medical journals about his revolutionary technique. The most sensational sentences were, naturally, assumed to be the simplest for the layman to understand.

  Two columnists analyzed the American image, as seen from Alalaf. One viewed the record with alarm and assessed a possible future improvement if American know-how saved the royal child. The other assessed the record as spotty, and viewed with alarm the possible future damages “if anything goes wrong.” The one outlined Al Asad as a human grandfather, after all. The other painted him a primitive tyrant, unpredictable in his powerful ignorance.

  By afternoon the news was out that severe rioting had taken place in the capital, and Al Asad, in the course of putting it down with a ruthless (or firm) use of the brutal (or loyal) military, had restored order with the loss of only three lives, although a dozen or more nameless natives had been (more or less) critically injured.

  The hollow-cheeked, hollow-eyed prophets of doom on television, that evening, began to speculate openly on the consequences if the young prince did not survive the very tricky, very dubiously new, surgical procedure. “Worry, worry,” they said to their viewers.

  On Wednesday morning the story was rehash, but it kept the tension going. It had “heart.”

  On Wednesday afternoon Rufus was driving in his normal style, not very fast, and wandering rather dreamily from lane to lane, as the whim took him. But Lurlene felt so nervous she wished she had taken another tranquillizer. They had been summoned. She had dressed carefully because it could be that they had been summoned to meet this princess. But the truth was Lurlene didn’t know what to make of such a summons. It had never happened before.

  The Judge opened the door himself and said, “Come in,” gravely. He was not smiling. The spacious house seemed very silent. You could practically hear the dust motes floating in the air. They were to go into the study. Lurlene hung back, with leaden legs, but Rufus went on into the room and she heard him say cheerfully, “Hi, Maggie.”

  “Go in, please,” the Judge said, behind Lurlene. So she had to go in.

  Maggie was sitting on the big black leather couch that was let into a niche among the bookcases. She was sitting tall; she was not smiling.

  “Sit there, please,” the Judge said, indicating the two leather chairs angled toward each other, across from the couch, a cozy conversational grouping of furniture that was arranged here in the center of the long narrow room. The Judge’s big desk was at the far end. He did not go to his desk, but sat down beside Maggie.

  “What’s up?” said Rufus. “Who else is coming?”

  “No one,” said Maggie. Her voice was like a bell tolling.

  “Well, say,” said Lurlene from sheer nerves, “this is an unexpected …”

  But Maggie’s look stabbed all the way through to Lurlene’s frightened core and she couldn’t finish. She tried to relax, but the big chair was so tilted for lounging that when she put her back against its back, she felt like a stuffed doll, limp and helpless, her stomach humping up and her legs dangling.

  The Judge said to Rufus, “Exactly when did you find out that the Prince of Alalaf was here, in the hospital?”

  “Oh, th
at?” said Rufus. His lips were moist. He smiled his little chirrupy kind of smile.

  (He don’t know what it’s all about, his wife thought. He never, never did. And she made, within herself, a hard resolve.)

  The Judge knew that his was the role of reason and justice. Maggie was probably going to let loose later on. But she conceded him his turn, and first. So the Judge put his mind to it.

  “Will you answer the question, please?” His deep voice was not impassioned.

  “Well, let me see.” Rufus began to slam his skull with his palm in that idiotic gesture that means “I am jolting my memory to make it work,” as if a memory were a balky piece of machinery in a case. (The Judge was feeling very sad.) “Must have been the day Lurlene took the girls to lunch,” said Rufus. “When was that, Lu?”

  “Saturday,” she said shortly.

  “They told you, Lurlene, at lunch that day?” asked the Judge, who knew this already.

  “Yes, they did,” she said, as brightly as she could.

  “They also told you that it must be kept a secret?”

  “They sure did. I thought it was supposed to be a secret but, I mean, I see in the paper …”

  The Judge lifted his hand to stop her; his eyes were sharp. “You told Rufus, that day?”

  “Well, certainly,” said Lurlene, bridling as best she could in her semireclining position. She began to struggle to sit up straighter. “Why shouldn’t I tell my own husband?” she said, with wide eyes. “He’s a Tyler, too, ain’t he?”

  “Yes,” said the Judge, “he is. Did you tell anyone else at all?”

  “Of course not,” she said. “I certainly did not.”

  Rufus had been blinking and looking from face to face. “You know, I don’t get this,” he said unnecessarily.

  “You went to a baseball game on Sunday afternoon?” the Judge said to him. “You told a man named Ed Duveen that the boy was here, and you told him why?”

  “I did? Well, yes, I guess I did. I must say I didn’t realize it was that much of a secret.” Rufus was turning a bit pompous.

  “You should’ve,” murmured Lurlene, her heart pounding visibly.

  “The fact is,” Rufus went on, “Ed Duveen is a very close friend of mine …”

  The Judge said, “Do you remember your mother warning us all that what she was about to say concerning Alice Foster’s letter from Alalaf was ‘just for the family’?”

  “When was that?” said Rufus, frowning a little.

  “You know what that phrase means to us?”

  “Certainly I do,” said Rufus promptly. “Look, I’m sorry if I spoke out of turn, but I can’t see …”

  “Because you spoke out of turn,” the Judge said, “all the news media are now telling that secret to the entire world.”

  “Because of me?” said Rufus.

  Lurlene had taken courage (because Rufus was stupid, and she felt protected now). “Pardon me, Judge, but how do you know it was because of him? It didn’t have to be, did it?”

  “I know it was,” said the Judge quietly, “because Duncan spent all day Monday tracking it down. There is no doubt about it.”

  “What do you mean, Duncan tracking it down?” Rufus, still bewildered, now began to be resentful. “I don’t get this!”

  “We had to know whether it was a member of the family who betrayed this secret,” said Maggie icily.

  “You could have asked me, Mother,” said Rufus, and his back slapped the back of his chair with a sharp sound.

  “Or you could have told us,” said Lurlene, “all about it, in the first place.” (She kept thinking that she didn’t have to sit here and take this, and then realizing that she was sitting here and taking this.) “Or else the girls should have kept still and not told me.”

  “I believe that I have heard,” the Judge said patiently, “what was said at the luncheon table, and why. I am ready, of course, to listen to your version.”

  “I don’t see any point in telling any version,” Lurlene muttered. “You’ve got your minds made up,” she added sullenly.

  “I believe that you, too, Lurlene, heard Maggie’s warning. And I believe that you have already told me that the girls did warn you. And very carefully.”

  “Yah, but I didn’t tell,” cried Lurlene. “I didn’t go around telling. I told Rufus, that’s all. I already said that, didn’t I?”

  Maggie said, in that voice of ice, shimmering cool and far away, “Did you, very, very carefully, explain to Rufus that it must be kept secret?”

  “I said I did,” cried Lurlene, “and if you’re going to call me a liar, on top of everything …” Lurlene began to weep.

  The Judge suspected that she was a liar, to some degree. He said to his son, sadly, “But you did not realize?”

  “Maybe I wasn’t paying too much attention,” said Rufus. “I don’t understand why it was supposed to be such a secret.” He was querulous.

  “You need not understand,” his mother said. “When you are told a secret, and told that it is one, then you ought to keep it. Is it possible that you do not understand that?”

  Rufus began to flush. “Well, I’m sorry. I know I’m stupid.”

  “But that is so very simple,” said Maggie, and her voice mourned. “A matter of principle, very simple.”

  The Judge himself was wincing now. Rufus was looking blank.

  Lurlene said, sniffling, “Are they pestering the poor little boy? Honest, I wouldn’t have had him pestered …”

  “He won’t be pestered,” the Judge said.

  “But then,” Lurlene looked up from her handkerchief, “I don’t see what the fuss is all about, really. I mean …”

  Maggie let loose her wrath. “I had assumed you were not malicious. But I hadn’t known you were dangerous. It is our luck, and yours, too, that your brother will not be affected, that you cannot make Mitchel do less than his best, which is very good indeed.”

  Rufus said boldly, as if he had been stung at last, “Then what is the fuss about—if no harm’s been done?”

  “That’s right,” chimed Lurlene, in support. She thought it was a darned good point.

  “Harm was done,” said Maggie with a frightening drop to a sad calm. “There are three people, dead on the streets of Alalaf, who might not have died if you had held your tongue. The fact is, you ought to have held your tongue, and you did not. I can only conclude that I was quite right not to tell you ‘all about it’ in the first place, and wrong to have given you even the slightest hint.

  “You are my children,” Maggie continued with a curious grace. “You are welcome here. And always will be. But it is dangerous and unwise to tell you secrets, isn’t it? For that I am sorry, but it is not I who can help it. Excuse me, now?” She rose and she left the room.

  The Judge rose. “I think that is what we wanted to say.” He felt helpless and sorry.

  In the car Lurlene said, “Um, boy! The good old Princess, she probably bawled Maggie out. That’s probably at the bottom of it.” She glanced at his face slyly. Rufus was driving more erratically than ever, but his face was blank.

  “I guess Maggie’s not so crazy about being bawled out,” said Lurlene. “You want to know something? Neither am I. And I don’t think they were very fair to you, hon. Honest, I don’t.”

  He didn’t speak. Well, he was dumb. He was stupid. Lurlene could rely on that.

  “Listen, sumpin’s phony about the whole thing though,” she went on. “Tamsen tells me it’s because the kid could get pestered. So now the Judge says that’s not true. What are we supposed to think?”

  He didn’t answer. She moved closer to him. “Gee, honey,” she said, “I guess you shouldn’t have ever married me. Your family thinks I’m some kind of slob, all right. Well, what’s that they put on ashtrays? ‘I may be a slob, but I’m sincere.’” She laughed, in a tense way.

  “My brother,” said Rufus, talking like them somehow (as he sometimes did, although on the whole he had long ago fallen into Lurlene’s speech ha
bits), “my brother Duncan tracked me down.”

  “And didn’t even have the decency to come and ask you,” she supplied. “And Tamsen and Phillida, oh, sure … They go blabbing to the Judge, everything that was said at my party. Believe me, you don’t catch me giving any more luncheons for them two. Well, I guess you and me are o-u-t out.”

  “Tracked me down.” Rufus seemed stricken by this, in particular.

  “And Duncan, he goes blabbing to the Judge and Maggie, too,” Lurlene was happy to continue.

  “But Mitch was in the paper this morning.”

  “Yah!” said Lurlene. “Yah, and here you went ahead and killed off three of them Arabs, or whatever they are, just while you’re sitting at the ball game, thousands of miles away.” She began to laugh a little hysterically. “I don’t believe that. That’s ridiculous, that is. I don’t know what they think I am, but that stupid I’m not.”

  She glanced at his face again.

  Rufus said, “She acts, you know.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “The whole thing is phony.”

  He had such a funny look on his face that Lurlene didn’t dare prod him to explain this. She simply agreed with him.

  9

  On Thursday, Saiph’s smiling face decked the covers of two news magazines. The morning paper quoted rumors of mysterious inside seethings in Alalaf. There was a rumor that American women and children were quietly being evacuated. There was a rumor of bombings. A rumor of a possible coup in progress. Rumors of rumors, flying among the people, that the Little Prince had been spirited away to the U.S.A. by his foreign mother on false pretenses, never to return. That the King, being senile, had been deceived. That the young man, nicknamed Dhanab, was preparing to seize power and act as regent for the boy, as in any case he might do when the old King died. Once in charge, Dhanab proposed to insist that the boy return at once. Dhanab was a strong man. Dhanab was weak, but a patriot, and riding the wave of the future. Dhanab was a mystery. All these rumors were unconfirmed. But there was some hard news of mobs screaming anti-American slogans.