They were putting Hennler on the stand, now, and Gary gave a little closer attention.
"Now, Mr. Hennler, just tell us in your own words exactly what happened as you remember it."
"... then Captain Heaslip reported his altitude, flying at five thousand feet. So I told him that Boston Center reported converging traffic at five thousand and that he should descend immediately to three thousand, and then report leaving five thousand. Then he reported leaving five thousand at fifteen fifty-one ..."
Then Hal Ludley got up from his seat beside Gary's. "Remembering that you are under oath, Mr. Hennler, are you absolutely sure you said three thousand and not two thousand?"
"It's right there on the tape, sir."
Ludley sat down. He whispered to Gary, "If that guy's lying, he certainly has more nerve than I'd expect anyone to." In the background voices said, "That's all Mr. Hennler." Then, "Captain Gary Heaslip? Will you sit up here, please."
The questions were calm, as though they had nothing to do with the bodies caught in water and twisted metal. "Now this is the important question, Captain Heaslip," the CAB lawyer said. "Can you absolutely swear that Mr. Hennler instructed you to descend to two thousand feet? Can you swear to that?"
"I can. I've given it a lot of thought, sir. There is no way I could have been mistaken. I didn't want to go down into the overcast, and if there'd been the slightest question in my mind, I would have asked for a repeat."
McGonigle said, "I guess all that remains, gentlemen, is for us to hear these phonograph records, or whatever they are, and we can close up shop."
Then they set up the machine, plugging it into a wall socket. The tape was fed into the machine and spun rapidly until a mark of white crayon showed. The CAA inspector said, "It starts right here. We can play the whole thing, but only this part has to do with flight one-oh-five."
"I think that will do. Any objections?" McGonigle asked. Nobody objected.
Then the machine began to talk. First with Hennler's voice, and then with Gary's. Hennler said, "Montaugan to flight one-oh-five. Montaugan to one-oh-five. Report altitude." In the background there was the sound of a ship just beginning to run up its engines. They were big engines. Sounded like the nonsked C-46 that Cape Airlines kept based at Montaugan so it could use Long Island's shops. Then there was his own voice--strange hearing your own voice--mixed with the thrum of the DC-3's engines, not quite as lifelike as Hennler's, radioed from out over the ocean, saying, "One-oh-five to Montaugan. Flying at five thousand as per flight plan."
Then, clearly again--sharply, bitterly clear--"Montaugan to Long Island one-oh-five. Boston Center reports converging traffic at five thousand. Clears Long Island one-oh-five, descend immediately to three thousand. Report leaving--"
"No!" Gary was on his feet. Hal Ludley pulled at his arm.
"Wait up," Hal said. The CAA inspector at the machine had turned it off.
McGonigle said, "Inspector, can you back that up and play it over?"
"Yes, sir." Hennler's voice said: "... Boston Center reports converging traffic at five thousand. Clears Long Island one-oh-five, descend immediately to three thousand. Report leaving five thousand."
The rest was a blur. The examination of the tape by his own lawyer. Ludley's sharp questioning of the inspectors. McGonigle's voice, asking him, "Captain Heaslip, would you care to change your testimony?" McGonigle saying, "This matter will, of course, have to be held over for final hearing on September fifteenth, but, in the meantime, I have no choice but to continue the temporary order grounding Captain Heaslip. That's all, gentlemen ..."
*
The sound that brought Gary out of it, now, was a crunching of sand on concrete. Automatically, he turned the brand of his cigarette inward under his hand, and sat very silent. Then he saw her, a dim gray figure in a dim gray gown, coming along the concrete walk to the seawall.
Gary kept quite silent as she moved to where the hawsers held the Ivalor. She caught up her skirt, and he got a brief flash of white legs as she leaped the narrow space to the deck of the cruiser. For a moment he could hear her in the deckhouse, opening the hatchway. Then a light went on in the cabin.
It wasn't the kind of thing you were supposed to watch. He thought, I ought to get out of here. But through a cabin porthole he saw her throw herself face down on one of the bunks. Her shoulders were shaking, and she was sobbing. He stood there, hesitant. Then, a little angrily, he threw his cigarette into the water, and stepped aboard. He went into the deckhouse, and down the open companionway. He made no effort to be quiet, but the girl--whoever she was--gave no indication of having heard him.
He said, "Miss? Is there anything I ran do?"
She turned so quickly that she fell from the bunk and looked up at him in shocked amaze from the cabin floor. Her dark hair hung about her naked shoulders and a strand, run loose from the careful arrangement, fell into the valley between her round breasts. Her eyes were wide, almost frightened, but not quite. She was very young. She said, "Who are you?"
IV
DOLORES CARTER
Dolores sat before the desk in her room, gazing with empty eyes at the cluttered pigeonholes, the blue-bound book of checks, the litter of bills, the inkstand, blotters--sat before the desk and tried to follow the train of her thoughts. But the train wandered.
She thought about Erica. It had gone on so long, now, that it would be absurd to say anything to Ivan about her. It would only drive him farther away and he was already withdrawn enough. He no longer came to her room at night, no longer sat with her in the evenings--barely, even, took the trouble to pretend he was seeing someone else when he went to Erica.
You couldn't blame Erica. She had come here, a twenty-year-old girl, to work for a big surgeon. How could she know that the big surgeon was, nowadays, nothing more than a conversationalist, a writer of monographs for the surgical journals so that his name should not perish entirely from the profession? How could she know that the occasional patients he had were only the residue of the practice he had, bit by bit, let go because he had no real interest in his work? How could she know that Ivan's wife was paying the salary he gave his mistress?
And, if she did know, what could you say to her? Something stupid like: "Unhand my husband, woman! You are found out?" Dolores lit a cigarette, rose to her feet, and started pacing back and forth.
All that she had done, really, was to complicate her situation by bringing Gary into it. The business of Ivan seeing them on the hotel steps. He couldn't misinterpret that--or rather, he couldn't fail to misinterpret it. And what would she say to him? How could she handle it? Should she bring Gary in to Ivan, and say, "Ivan, this is our new chauffeur?" Would that change things? Or should she say, "Ivan, I was just letting Heaslip get his things at the hotel?" What would Ivan say? "Anything I can do, you can buy better, my dear?" in that damned phoney manner he could put on when he wanted to be sarcastic?
She couldn't come right out and say, "Ivan, I've hired Heaslip to seduce Erica away from you." She couldn't tell him.
Erica couldn't really want this situation. Not now that she had come to some understanding of it. Or could she? You wanted to hate Erica. And what was it you had said to Gary this afternoon? "My husband, Doctor Carter, is having an affair with his secretary. It isn't really serious. At least I don't think it is. But it's getting more and more serious all the time, because I behave more and more like a bitch about it. I want you to break it up. Make up to her--to Erica. I don't care what you do. But break it up, somehow."
Wasn't that a stupid thing to say? What could Gary think of you after that? What could any man think of a woman who hired him to seduce another woman? He'd been shocked by the idea. But what had shocked him more? That she wanted him to seduce Erica or that she was making him a prostitute by offering him money?
And what would happen with Ivan if Gary decided to go along with the scheme? He hadn't this afternoon. He'd only said he would think about it. And then there was Irene. Nobody was considering her. When s
he'd come in to borrow the ermine cape tonight--it must have been for an important date--you could have asked her if it was a big date, instead of dismissing her with "Oh, take the darned cape. What do I care?" That was cruel. Nobody paid any attention to Irene any more. Nobody but Erica.
Dolores stabbed her cigarette into an ashtray on the bed table. She was losing her daughter, too. And that was something she couldn't blame Erica for.
There was a knock at the door. Dolores said, "Yes!" with a sort of angry impatience. Then, "Come in."
Ivan stepped through the open panel. He said, "You're cheerful tonight."
"Oh, damn you. Do I have to put up with your sarcasm?"
"I'm not doing anything. I come into the room. You snap at me before I even get in. You must have second sight to know it's me outside and not someone you might accidentally want to be pleasant to."
"Just what do you mean by that?"
"If the guilty conscience fits, by all means try it on."
"I don't see that I'm the one to--" Careful, Lor! You promised yourself you'd never make this kind of scene. "I'm sorry. I'm just irritable, Ivan. Sit down."
"Delighted." He sat down. Suddenly, almost desperately, she wanted him. She wanted to feel his arms around her, his lips on her neck, his hands probing the soft forms of her body. It was an urgent, an agony of desire, an apotheosis of all the long months of waiting. She felt a flush coming into her cheeks, a tense, tingling pressure growing in her thighs. But how?
You couldn't say, "Ivan, darling, I want to go to bed with you." You had some pride. You had to make him want you without saying it. She said, "You just sit there, Ivan. I want to change."
She went to the closet and took out a gown and negligee, then slipped into the bathroom. The thing to do was to keep the conversation casual.
She removed her dress, and called through the partly opened door, "Did you see the way Reenie looked tonight? Wasn't she lovely?"
"Gorgeous," Ivan said, from outside. "If she keeps on like this, she'll be as lovely as you, Lor." That was the right vein. He was going along with her. She unfastened her bra and let go the garter belt without detaching the stockings. ,
She looked at herself in the full-length mirror, seeing the rounded perfection of her breasts, dark nipples ajut, seeing the firm flesh of her body, still young and still--still desirable. She raised the sheer nylon of the pale green gown over her head, letting it fall about her shoulders, feeling the sensual caress of the fabric on her skin. Her desire was an ache now and yet she must be careful--not pressing, not urgent. Nothing to break the mood, nothing to anger him.
The nylon clung to her body, transparent as cellophane, soft as gossamer. She was trembling. "Darling," she called.
"Yes, Lor?"
"There's a bottle of perfume on the boudoir table. The one with the very tall crystal cap. Would you reach it in to me, please?"
"Of course." She heard him get up. She took up a brush and began stroking the deep red lustre of her hair, perfectly aware of the picture she made standing before the mirror. He would come up and stand in the doorway and then, when he had seen, he would--
"Here you are, Lor." Ivan's voice was matter-of-fact. She turned. His hand extended around the edge of the panel, at though he were politely, rigidly, protecting her from the intrusion of his eyes on her nudity.
She snatched the crystal container angrily. Then, remembering herself, she said, "Thanks, darling."
It couldn't be like that. It couldn't be that he wasn't going to give her a chance. She pushed her hair back from her forehead with a tense pressure of her hand, mussing the careful brush-gloss.
She dabbed the perfume behind her ears, between her breasts, in the hollow of her throat, feeling the odor mounting to her brain like a magic excitant. This perfume seemed really to be all the things that the names of perfumes pretended they were: Aphrodisia, My Sin, Follow Me, Indiscreet, Desire, Breathless, Moment Supreme, Mais Oui, Pretexte, Tabu, Excitement. The anger faded from her mind--the anger and the fear. She picked up the negligee, no more than an erotic mist, and slipped it about her body, stepping into the high-heeled sandals beside the bowl. She looked at herself once more in the mirror, pulling herself up into a seductive posture that forced out her breasts, displayed the delicate glints and shadows of her body.
Then she went into the huge bedroom. Ivan sat where she had left him, thumbing through a copy of Vogue from the magazine rack beside the chair. She posed, model-like, in mid-room. "Like it?" she asked.
He looked up. "Lovely," he said. His voice seemed-- cautious.
Dolores perched on the arm of his chair, letting the flowing skirt of the negligee fall open so that it draped across his knees. "Cigarette, darling?"
He nodded. "Please." She got up and, deliberately sensuous, walked across the room and took two from the lacquered box on the bed table. She came back and sat down, putting both in her mouth, lighting them together, and letting the smoke flow from her mouth in a heavy cloud. She handed him one, now marked with the carmine of her lipstick. Her hand shook a little, and a terrible panic gripped her.
She could feel his hesitancy, as though he were caught in some vast indecision. She bent around and kissed the top of his head.
He raised his arms, as though to take her into them. Then he let them fall back.
Then she knew. She hadn't lost her appeal. It was the thing that had happened this afternoon when he had seen her coming from the hotel. That had to be it. He wanted her, but he--he couldn't abide the idea of his wife--Not that he wasn't carrying on with Erica. But he thought of Dolores as his wife and ... She'd have to get out of this, somehow.
She tried to make it sound casual. She said, "What do you think of the new chauffeur--what's his name--Heaslip?"
Ivan stiffened. "I don't know. I haven't met him yet."
"Yes, you did. I drove him over to the hotel from the employment agency so he could pick up his things ..." That had been the wrong thing to say. She felt it instantly. Ivan thought she was making excuses before the accusation had come.
"Really?" he said. "I hardly noticed who you were with."
Son of a bitch. I hate you. She snapped up from the arm of the chair. Then she turned. "Just what do you mean by that?" That was wrong, too. But the anger inside her was getting out of control, desire turned to anger; anxiety, fright, panic, all turned to anger.
"Nothing, my dear."
"Then what are you sneering about?"
"You really are a little hellcat." He was grinning, now, feeling himself master of the situation.
"Well, what do you want? You couldn't have just come up here to see me. It's so long since you've done that I can't even remember the day."
"Lor, really! Aren't you blowing up unnecessarily?"
"I'll do as I please."
"I'm sure you will. I didn't really come in to discuss your peccadillos, which I'm sure are no worse than mine. As a matter of fact, I wanted to... Oh, to hell with that. Look, I just got the bill for the overhaul on the Ivalor. I can't pay it myself, so here the damned thing is." He had lost control. His face was red and angry. "I manage to feel like a rotter having to beg my wife for money. But the damned boat is as much yours as mine and you'll just have to pay it." He tossed the bill on the desk and went to the door. "Good night, Lor." It closed behind him.
The absolutely agonizing part was that Dolores knew that if she could only have kept her mouth shut a while everything would have been all right. He hadn't been suspicious or, if he had, he have forgotten it until she had brought it up.
Her body ached. Her pulse was pounding. Her head throbbed with self-hatred. She went over and looked at the bill. Eight hundred dollars to refloat that damned boat, and they might use it six times in the whole summer.
She went into the bathroom and opened the medicine chest. She took down a small bottle and shook two aspirins into her hand. Then she filled a glass of water, and drank them down. The glass fell, a clatter of sparkling bits, into the washbowl as she tried t
o replace it. She let the fragments lie where they had fallen. Maybe everything was her fault. She flung herself down in the chair her husband had occupied and tried, for dull minutes to interest herself in a magazine. She got up and turned on the radio, switching from station to station. But the air was filled with a din of slogans.
There was a television set in the corner. She went over to it, glared into its single glassy eye, and viciously kicked at one of its legs. She yanked open the medicine closet, searching out a bottle marked, "If unable to sleep, as directed. Dr. Carter." She swallowed a pill, went to the bed and pulled down the covers. She flung the negligee at the chair, switched off the room light and got into bed, reached up and turned off the bed lamp. The summer night, full of sensuous sounds and odors, drilled through the open windows. Her mind spun like a pin-wheel.
You knew where Ivan was--it was a safe bet he was not in his room. Well, if not where, at least with whom. Her breathing came faster as that image burned across her mind.
Then other things. You should have gone in to help Irene dress. Poor kid. You would have to spend more time with her.
The dreadful, ticking minutes went by, measured off by the rhythm of the tiny clock at the bedside.
A car she had not heard depart followed the drive to the garage. Ivan must be bringing Erica back from wherever they had gone. Angrily she flung her body over in the bed. Even the seconal did no good tonight.
She lit a cigarette, half sitting in the darkness, and lay back on the pillows. Ivan had brought Erica back, and now he would have gone to bed, gone to bed, gone to bed, leaving you here to want him, hate him, rage at him.
The crickets, outside, sang happily. How could the cricket be happy when your whole mind spun with suffering?
What about Heaslip? Gary? What about that handsome young man? What did he think of you? A woman buying a lover for her husband's mistress? Or did he think that this was all a fantasy, an excuse for bringing him here for yourself?
Dolores thought of Gary. What did he want? Everybody wanted something. Why had he told the employment agency he would take any job that paid him eighty a week and kept him in Montaugan? Could he be a spy for the Russians? But there was nothing to spy on. No atom laboratories. No airforce base. Besides, he had wanted to give references. What did the man want? Everybody wanted. Dolores wanted Ivan. Ivan wanted Erica. Erica wanted--to be the second Mrs. Carter? Reenie's stepmother? And Reenie? What did she want? What had you wanted at seventeen?
Private Chauffeur Page 4
