They lay together enjoying the temporary surfeit of their love and their return to individuality.
She let her fingers trickle over his belly, tugging lightly at his hairs. "No man is an island. Yet we are, all -- each of us -- wrapped in our covering of flesh, blood, muscles, nerves," she said. "I can only try to be you or Anne, and you can only try to be me or Anne . . . the trying . . . that is the important thing, isn't it? The thing that most people neglect?" She took his hand. "Come on. The bed upstairs is big enough for the three of us. This first night I can't sleep here alone with you because I am too able to be Anne, alone up there."
Anne grumbled when they got into the bed with her. "Who does Yale Marratt think he is?" she demanded sleepily. "Even sultans don't have it this good . . . sleeping between two women."
Her voice was gruff but Yale knew she was pleased. "We couldn't go to sleep without you," he said.
As he drifted into sleep, aware of each of them; Anne on his right, Cynthia on his left, their legs crossing his, he prayed that their strange marriage would be a happy one.
8
Summer came to Midhaven, as it often did in New England, without preliminaries. After days of rain and cold, and spring dampness that extended into late June, suddenly the sun burned through the clouds. The easterly wind shifted to the south. The temperature shot up to ninety and stayed there.
Sitting on the veranda of the Midhaven Country Club with Liz, sipping a planter's punch, Barbara Marratt watched her father tee up for his first drive. He was with a foursome made up of club members Alfred and Jim Latham . . . and Paul Downing, to whom Barbara had just been introduced.
Downing, a handsome man in his fifties, heavily tanned, with an intent appraising stare, had examined her carefully. Barbara guessed that Pat or Liz had probably mentioned to him that her divorce from Tom Eames would be finalized this week.
Pat's swing was hard and graceful. His ball soared out on the fairway. Paul Downing followed Pat, and his drive was even more expert. They saw Pat congratulate Downing. A few minutes later the four men walked toward the first hole.
"I'm bored," Barbara said. "I'm sick of hanging around a country club slopping up hooch. Are you going to stay here all afternoon?"
Liz looked at her. "Bobby, you asked for this. You had another life . . . you had found friends. Why did you throw it all away? I've watched you for a month, now . . . coming in at all hours, so drunk half the time it's shameful . . . staying in bed all day because you don't know what to do with yourself. Pat and I are pretty worried. I still can't understand why you would insist on going through with the divorce."
"You wouldn't care if Pat were fucking hell out of your best girl friend, and then told you it was nothing to get alarmed about?"
Liz looked at her, shocked. "Barbara, I wish you wouldn't use such language. It's cheap and vulgar. As for your father, I imagine that he hasn't been entirely faithful."
"But you didn't know about it, did you?" Barbara asked sourly. "You see, there's a considerable difference."
Liz tried to change the subject. "Why don't you play bridge with us this afternoon? You were pretty good once. When Pat comes back we're having dinner on Paul's schooner. It's quite nice. A seventy-footer with a crew of six.
"And at least as many bedrooms," Barbara said sarcastically. "He's between wives. Evidently, I look as if I need to be serviced."
"You mean he propositioned you?" Liz demanded. She didn't know what to say or how to handle Barbara either as a daughter or as a divorcée.
"Of course not. Not yet. I just met him, but he was asking me just the same . . . in a very cool self-contained way. If I go with you tonight, I'll get the details later. So crap on that. I've met his kind by the dozens in Texas. Down there they are in oil or cattle. What does he do?"
"He's president of Downing, Wiswell and Curtin. It's an investment house. We met him in Florida. He's trying to convince Pat to sell stock in the Marratt Corporation. Pat would be listed on the stock exchange. He is really a very brilliant man. He's supposed to have a tremendous art collection."
"I'll bet! . . . etchings and everything."
Liz ignored her. "He told Pat a very strange thing about Yale. I think it kept Pat awake most of the night."
Barbara perked up. Interested, she lighted a cigarette. "No! What's my kid brother done now? Got himself a third wife?" Barbara had been home the night Doctor Tangle described to Pat and Liz the shocking treatment he had received from a young woman who, Doctor Tangle claimed, had introduced herself as Yale's "other wife." Pat and Liz had tried to treat the incident as just the kind of perverted joke that a friend of Yale's would indulge in.
"He's already married to that Jewish bitch," Pat had said. He dismissed the subject. "Barbara witnessed his marriage at the home of a justice of the peace who lives in Midhaven."
But in the following months strange rumors began to emanate from the old Langley place. There really were two women living in the old Georgian farmhouse with Yale Marratt. Two women who were occasionally seen together shopping in Midhaven. One blonde . . . the other one brunette and pregnant. All during the spring the rumors multiplied. A big construction project was going on. The Langley place was being remodelled. A huge swimming pooi was being built. The barn had been converted into what seemed to be "business offices."
"I don't know what your son is up to," John Brockmann, president of the Midhaven National Bank, said to Pat. "But there's no doubt about it he's really pumping money into that Langley place. Have you seen the plans? Bob Coleman went over them with me. Yale has a loan with us backed by a cashier's check as collateral. It equals the amount of our loan. I think he expects we will take the place as collateral against some other venture when he finishes. From the looks of it, I'd say we might do just that."
Brockmann kept talking, enthusiastically. He assumed that Pat was aware of what Yale was doing. He asked Pat about the two exciting looking girls who seemed to be making all the decisions on the new construction and the interiors. "I suppose the pregnant one is your daughter-in-law, Pat? But who is the blonde? Quite a dish. Saw her yesterday out at that new supermarket. Yale was with her. They had a bright-eyed little baby with them."
Pat ignored Brockmann. "He's a damned old biddy," Pat told Liz later. "He was watching with his sharp bird-eyes to see if I was going to let slip some juicy gossip."
Liz looked hurriedly around to see if anyone had heard Barbara. "Bobby, I'm telling you right now to stop the wise-cracking about Yale. No one is exactly sure what is going on. I should hope he would have enough sense left to know that he couldn't get away with bigamy." Liz shuddered. "I just don't believe it. What on earth would a man want with two women? It's just a filthy lie someone has started." She paused and looked vaguely in the direction that Pat had taken across the fairways. "Oh, dear. I wish Pat wasn't so pig-headed. When Yale called from New York that night, he told Pat that he would come to the house the day we invited them both. It would be so simple. What difference does it really make if the girl is Jewish?"
Liz had told Pat that he might as well give in and make the first overtures. But Pat had refused to consider the idea. She knew Pat was deeply bothered. All the plans that he had for the Marratt Corporation involved Yale . . . needed the participation of a younger man. Watching Pat from day to day -- seeing him daily, as he involuntarily looked out their bedroom window across the several miles of woodlands that separated his land from the Langley place, Liz knew that he was constantly thinking about Yale. Time and again he had wondered aloud where Yale had got the money to put into the Langley house. It was as if Yale had frustrated him in the one area where he was certain that Yale would flounder. Liz knew that Pat expected, eventually, Yale would have to come to him . . . looking for assistance. Maybe he even expected Yale to be repentant. When he talked with Brockmann and discovered that somehow Yale had acquired at least fifty thousand dollars, it irritated Pat. It seemed so out of character for Yale to earn that kind of money that it bordered on fantas
y.
"Okay, Liz. I'll be good. I won't go around telling our friends that we have a Mormon in the family." Barbara grinned. "What has the fantastic Yale Marratt done now?"
Liz took a sip of her drink. She looked at her watch. "I've got to be going. The girls must be inside already. You can kibitz if you want, or we'll play something else." She got up, and looked at Barbara and shrugged. "I guess you might as well know your brother, according to Paul Downing, is a millionaire. It seems last March he invested in some securities. Something called convertible debentures. I don't really understand about it too well but if Paul is right Yale struck it lucky. He guessed against the whole market, and made around three million dollars."
Barbara whistled. "That should make Pat proud! If Daddy doesn't watch out, Yale will be richer than he is."
Liz shook her head. "That's bad enough but there's more to it than that. Paul isn't quite sure how it's going to work out, but he was telling Pat that Yale has been up to some very slippery business with Latham Shipyard stock. It seems that the Lathams have been having their difficulties since the war ended. There have been war contract cancellations. The stock has been selling pretty low for the past year. Last week an announcement was made in the Midhaven Herald that a non-profit foundation called Challenge Incorporated claims to have acquired control of Latham Shipyards. I don't understand really . . . but there's something in the market called 'short-selling.' A lot of speculators have been selling Latham stock short. It means that they thought the stock was going down, but now the stock has gone up from fifteen dollars to almost eighty dollars a share. This foundation claims that it has a majority of the stock. Alfred Latham has a lot and so does Agatha Latham. None of them will sell to the speculators. I don't understand how . . . but Paul Downing was caught in the deal. It seems he sold forty thousand shares short at twenty-five dollars a share. Then the stock went up. Now he has to deliver the stock and pay eighty dollars a share for it. Only there isn't any stock to buy. Anyway, that's the reason that Paul is here playing golf with Pat and the Lathams."
Barbara looked bewildered. "I don't get it."
Liz smiled. "Well, neither do I really . . . but believe it or not, darling, Paul has found out that your baby brother, Yale, is the financial brain behind this thing called Challenge Incorporated."
Barbara started to laugh. "Oh, God -- that's wonderful. I don't suppose that Paul Downing is aware that Pat and Yale aren't speaking."
"Both Pat and I have told you that the family problems of the Marratts are not for publication," Liz warned her. "Not even the Lathams know. Since your own messy divorce has created quite a fuss in Midhaven, I'll thank you to keep this to yourself. Come on and play bridge with us."
Barbara shook her head. She promised Liz to be home early. Being divorced and coming home to live had put her right back where she started, she reflected. She had to get away. There was nothing for her in Midhaven. In the fall, she thought, I'll either go to Europe or take an apartment in New York. The settlement had cost Tom Eames a quarter of a million dollars and forty thousand dollars a year until she remarried. She could do anything she wished. With a bitter frustrated feeling she realized that there was nothing she wanted to do . . . except to be loved and wanted for herself. She had had such an unrelenting desire in the past weeks to be with a man that she frightened herself. She wanted sexual release, yes -- but she wanted more. She wanted love and companionship, too. That was the only way she could release her deep sexuality.
She thought of Paul Downing and grimaced. Ugh -- no -- no matter what . . . she wouldn't do "it" . . . just for the sake of a man's "thing" between her legs ... no matter how badly off she was. "I'd freeze up anyway," she told herself half aloud. She looked around to see if anyone had heard her. She realized that Liz had gone inside the club. Barbara decided she wasn't going to hang around any longer.
She slid behind the wheel of her new Cadillac convertible -- one of the first that had come off the production lines since the war's end, and drove, aimlessly, listening to the music on the car radio and enjoying the wind in her hair. Speeding along Route 6, she caught a glimpse of a closed iron gate set between two large granite blocks. She brought the car to a screeching stop. It was the entrance to the old Langley farm. On one of the gateposts, the legend "Challenge Farm" had been neatly lettered in black paint.
She backed up to get a better look. She hadn't seen Yale since the day he married Cynthia. In the past few months there had been no particular reason to talk with him. There was no denying they were both in the doghouse at home, but her own problems had seemed more weighty than Yale's. Besides, she guessed that Yale did not, from what he had said when she was so ill, particularly approve of her divorce. Now, she was intrigued. It would while away the dreadful afternoon to pry on Yale. Later when she went to dinner with Downing and her family, she could report factually on what was going on.
Ye gods, two wives . . . what an existence . . . if it were true. As she backed her car in front of the gate she felt perspiration trickle uncomfortably down her back. At least she hoped Yale would offer her a drink.
The gate was locked. A sign on the post said, "Ring bell." She rang it. While she waited she tried to look up the tree-lined asphalt driveway. She could see nothing hut trees. No house was in sight. She wondered why the gate was locked, and how far in the road it was to the house. She pushed the bell button several more times but still there was no response. She was about to give up when a jeep thundered down the driveway and stopped with a metallic rasp of its brakes.
The man that got out startled her. He was barrel chested, stripped to the waist, and heavily tanned. With a full head of grey hair and a pointed goatee, he looked like a handsome middle-aged character actor. "Well, howdy, Barbara," he said, smiling broadly. Barbara didn't recognize him. "Don't know me, do you? Don't blame you much. We ain't never been introduced formally. If we had, don't suppose you would know me anyhow . . . what with my new beard. Mrs. Cynthia said if I wouldn't shave, then I'd have to grow one. Kind of becoming, don't you think?" Weeks waggled his chin. He introduced himself.
"If the local drama group sees you, they'll ask you to play Falstaff," Barbara said, unimpressed, "Are you going to let me in? I suppose my brother is around."
Weeks nodded. He reached into an iron box behind the gate and withdrew a telephone. "Got to clear you with the boss. It's the house rules."
"What in hell has Yale got in there? A gambling casino?"
Weeks was on the telephone. "It's your sister, Yale. Yeah, I understand. No, she's alone. Okay, I'll bring her to the house first." Weeks hung up the phone. "It's okay," he said to Barbara. "You're to go to the house first."
He made her park her car inside the gate. She sat beside him in the jeep.
"What's this funny business all about?" Barbara demanded. "Why do I have to leave my car here? What do you mean that I have to go to the house first?" She got a whiff of Weeks' breath. "You've been drinking."
"I'm damned if I know about your car," Weeks said. He ignored her remark about his drinking. "I guess as a new guest at Challenge Farms, Yale wanted to check you out before you started prowling around by yourself. Anyway, you can ask him."
Weeks made a sharp turn. Barbara had a surprised vision of a cool, white Georgian house with tall columns reaching to its roof. Leaded glass windows edged with black shutters looked across the rolling lawn. It was only a momentary picture, because her shocked gaze stopped on Yale who was walking toward her from the broad front porch that flanked the house. Her mind kept telling her that she was seeing things. No! Yale couldn't be naked! Not stark-naked! But it was true. It was Yale and he was tanned even darker than Weeks.
Yale walked up to her, grinning. He held out his hand and took her limp one. "Well, Bobby, at last a part of my family has remembered that we live in the same world. It's good to see you."
Barbara looked away disgustedly. "Well, it's not good to see you . . . without a damned thing on. What the hell are you doing . . . practicing up
for a nudist convention? What's all this funny business, anyway? Why do you have to meet me at the house first?"
Yale smiled indulgently. He pointed to a small parking area near the side of the house. There were five cars parked in it. "I have guests, Bobby. We are all up at the pool. You see, every fourth Sunday afternoon we have open house at Challenge Farms."
Reluctantly Barbara looked at him. She tried to ignore his nudity. She couldn't believe he was serious. There was too much of a tone of sly laughter in his inflection. "I suppose all your guests are nude, too," she said with sarcasm.
"As a matter of fact, not quite," Yale said. "Let's see -- there's Peoples McGroaty. You know him. He's editor of the Midhaven Herald . He has a sweat shirt on, I believe, but no pants. I think he was getting a sunburn. There's Sam Higgins and his wife, Clara. Sam hasn't got a damned thing on, but Clara will need another drink before she gets undressed. Clara is wearing a bathing suit. Harry Cohen and his wife, Sarah . . . I don't believe you know them, either. Well, they simply believe being naked is more comfortable on a hot day. Let's see, there is also Bob Coleman . . . my architect. He's about your age. He's naked. So is Anne. Cindar got a sunburn on her legs yesterday so she's wearing a skirt . . . but no top. Oh, yes, there's Agatha Latham. She's living here with us for a while . . . she enjoys the conversation, but she says that since she was eighty last spring, it is too late for her to do everything she wants to do. . . ."
"You don't mean to say that Alfred Latham's great aunt is here? Not Aunt Agatha," Barbara said, aghast. Then she laughed, "Oh, brother, that's rich! How much stock does she own in the Latham Shipyards?"
"I see by your new concern with finance," Yale said lightly, "that you have something you may want to tell me. The only reason that I'm greeting you here is that I wanted to prepare you. Actually, you see, my guests appreciate the privacy. We're not running a nudist camp here . . . this is the Abbey of Thélème. You know 'fais ce que voudrais.' However, since many people would believe that because we are casual about clothes we are equally casual about sex, we have to be careful whom we invite." Yale grinned, "'However I will vouch for you."
The Rebellion of Yale Marratt Page 52
