H. M. Pulham, Esquire

by John P. Marquand

  It was cold enough, when Kay and Bill had gone, to start a fire in the living room. Even with the logs burning the chintz-covered furniture looked cold. The bare light-colored walls, with only a few etchings on them, all arranged by Kay to give an impression of coolness and restfulness, were cold too, reminding me that summer was about over. Even under the new chintz covers the furniture looked battered and out of shape and the hooked rugs which we used to buy at auctions were pretty well worn down. Kay always said that you couldn’t do much with a house when there were children in it. When George and Gladys were younger they used to bounce on the big sofas and they used to drag all the chairs and pillows onto the floor to play games of train and dragon. It was the same way with the house in town. Kay always said that when the children got bigger we would have to do both the houses over so that our nice things would really “stand out and show for something.” George was still hard on furniture and he had not lost his habit of fingering books and of testing the tensile strength of small articles such as pewter ashtrays, but he would grow out of it in a year or so. Gladys, being a girl, was not destructive. In a year or so we could do both houses over, and I might start now building up a fund for the purpose. Kay used to say that I was always building up funds. Nevertheless she could see the sense in it.

  The logs snapped in the fireplace, but the chimney did not smoke even though it had not been used since the foggy weather several weeks before. I stood there looking at the flames until I felt warmer. Then I sat down and picked up a book off the table. Kay always made a point of having a few of the latest books around the living room. The one I happened on was a new novel, and, frankly, I never liked new novels. The characters in them, ever since the twenties, were always struggling with internal emotional conflicts that revealed themselves in sexual irregularities, and they were never like anyone I knew. They were farmers in the Dust Bowl or traveling salesmen or people who lived at Palm Beach or on the Riviera, never decent, honest-to-goodness men or women. I could not put my mind on the story. The Education of Henry Adams was upstairs in our bedroom, but I was not in a mood for that either.

  I had never known the house so still.

  “Before you know it,” people used to say, “the children will be all grown up.”

  It had sounded like a silly remark when George was in his play pen or roaring in the nursery, but it was true. All sorts of things happened before you really knew it. You got married and had children and then the children grew up and left. Some day Kay and I would be alone and I was certainly alone now. I rang the bell near the fireplace. I had never believed in having bells in the house, but Kay had wanted them.

  Ellen came in, wiping her hands on her apron. Ellen had stuck by us for a good many years, the only servant who had ever stuck.

  “Ellen,” I asked, “where are George and Gladys?”

  Ellen said that Master George was on a beach picnic and that Miss Gladys had gone out to supper with one of the Frear girls, and that Jerry was going to call for her in the Ford and would then pick up George.

  “Where’s Bitsey?” I asked.

  Ellen said that Bitsey was asleep under the kitchen stove, and then she inquired whether there was anything else I wanted. I looked at the clock over the mantelpiece, the clock that used to be in Father’s study. It was nearly half-past eight. Kay would not be back for three quarters of an hour, but there was nothing else I wanted.

  “No,” I said, “that’s all. I was just wondering where the children were.”

  “I hope you’re feeling better, sir,” Ellen said.

  “A good deal better, thanks,” I answered. “I’m sorry I made such a lot of trouble.”

  “Sure, sir,” Ellen said, “you weren’t any trouble and it was nice having Mr. King. He’s such a jolly, generous gentleman.”

  It had been a long while since I had missed Kay so much. I paced up and down the room. I went out on the porch and looked at the sea and listened to the crickets in the grass and looked at the lights in the other houses. I picked up the book again and tried to read it. Then I heard the car in the driveway and I heard Kay run it into the garage and shut off the motor. I opened the front door and waited for her. Kay came in with her hands in her coat pockets. Her hair was blown and her face looked clean and clear.

  “Well,” I said, “you’re back.”

  “Yes,” Kay said, “where else would I be?” She pulled off her coat and tossed it on a chair with a little sigh. “I’ve put the car in. Aren’t the children back yet?”

  “No,” I said, “but Jerry’s going to get them. It’s been awfully lonely with no one in the house.”

  “Lonely?” Kay repeated. “You always say that if you could be left alone for a minute you could get some reading done.”

  “I know,” I said, “but I’m awfully glad you’re back. Did Bill get off all right?”

  “What?” Kay said. “Oh—oh, yes, Bill got off.”

  “No matter what happens,” I said, “Bill’s always just the same.”

  “Yes,” Kay said. “Let’s not talk about it now.”

  “How do you mean?” I asked. “Not talk about what now?”

  “Oh, about Bill, or about anything,” Kay said. “Harry, I’ve got a headache. Do you mind if I go up to bed? Will you wait for the children?”

  “Why, yes, of course,” I said. “Is there anything I can get you, Kay, an aspirin or something?”

  “No,” Kay said. “I’ll be all right when I get to sleep. Don’t bother to come up, please.”

  “You’ve worked too hard over Bill,” I said.

  “Oh, Harry,” Kay said, “please. I’ll be all right in the morning.”

  The coldness next morning and the heavy haze over the sea marked the end of the summer as surely as a fall of snow. I found myself, by the time I was shaved and dressed, in what I might term the autumn frame of mind. It was an attitude that was made up of all sorts of old associations with the autumn—the smell of rain on fallen leaves, the smell of wood smoke, new clothes and packing up for school, the Skipper, football. There is nothing like our autumns. Instead of being sad they are the pleasantest seasons in the year, a period of hope, of getting everything cleaned up before the winter and of going on. Of late years they meant moving the family and the maids back to town, a process so complicated that I always hoped to arrange my vacation to coincide with those few days when Kay and Ellen and all the rest of them were closing up the house and opening up the other one.

  Kay usually liked to go to town two or three days beforehand with Ellen in order to hire two or three individuals whom she called “cleaning women.” Kay often tried to explain to me what she did in those three days with Ellen and the cleaning women, and it always seemed to me that she did a great deal that was needless. For the life of me I could never imagine why Kay and the cleaning women always cleaned everything in our house in town when we left it in the summer, if they had to clean it all over again before we got back in the autumn; but Kay used to say that I did not understand, that you could not have summer dirt piling on top of winter dirt. It did no good to tell her that the cleaning women kept coming every week, keeping out the winter dirt. Whenever I reached town with the children and all the things in the car the house would be spotless, but Kay would be exhausted. Every autumn I used to hope that Kay and I could talk it over and invent a better system, but in the end every moving day was like every other one.

  As I say, I could feel it all coming over me again as I got up that morning. It was time to start getting organized, time to do all the things that we had meant to do all summer. Kay was still in bed, but she was awake. She pushed her hair out of her eyes and sighed when I got up.

  “Harry,” Kay called when I was shaving, “please don’t whistle. I’m trying to think.”

  “I’m trying to think too,” I said. “We’ve got to get organized, Kay.”

  “Get organized for what, for heaven’s sakes?”

  “For getting back to town,” I told her. “I suppose you
’ll be going down with Ellen on about the twelfth.”

  “Yes,” Kay said, “but let’s not talk about it now, Harry.”

  “If we just went over it beforehand,” I said, “and if you could make me a list of what you wanted brought back in the car, we wouldn’t all be mixed up in the end.”

  “Jerry will take the heavy things down in his brother’s truck,” Kay said. “You only have to take the children and the cook in the Packard and Bitsey and the electric iron and the electric toaster.”

  “We don’t need to have great stacks of junk piled up in the car,” I said.

  “Has the car ever been hurt by anything that’s been put in it?” Kay asked.

  “Kay,” I said, “there isn’t any reason to get excited about it. If we just arranged it all in time—”

  “Let’s not talk about it now,” Kay said. “Let’s not always be so boring, Harry.”

  “I don’t see that it’s boring,” I told her, “to try to make a few consistent plans.”

  “Oh, Harry,” Kay said, “please! No sooner do we get settled here than we have to think about moving back. We’re always moving and we never get anywhere.”

  “But everybody we know always moves from the country to the city and back,” I said.

  “That’s just it,” Kay answered. “I’m tired of being everybody. And why do I have to be waked up to discuss every simple little detail?”

  “I haven’t done anything wrong, have I, Kay?” I asked.

  “No,” Kay answered, “no, no, no! Just go down and get your breakfast and ask Ellen to come up here. I think I’ll have my breakfast in bed.”

  I knew it was a mood of Kay’s. It was the reaction after that long week end of entertaining Bill. Bill was so restless that he was tiring; sometimes he even made me tired.

  “Just as soon as I’ve had some coffee,” she said, “I’ll be all right.”

  XXX

  They Possibly Might Start Talking

  I had been telling myself for quite a while that I ought to have a talk with my sister Mary, and North Harbor during my vacation was the place to do it, for Jim would be back in town working and he wouldn’t interrupt us. It was something that I didn’t much want to do, but I was the one to do it. I was not greatly disturbed by anything that Kay had said. I certainly had not gathered the idea from Jim or from anyone else, and yet I did have the impression that people were talking about Mary. All that summer whenever I had wanted Mary for anything she had always seemed to be at the Riding School, and there had been talk before about Mr. Rigal who ran the place. It was simply that he wasn’t the sort of person that one had for a friend. It was all very well to sit on his veranda up by the stables, but not many people asked Rigal to dinner, although Rigal was always careful to point out that he had come from an old Dorsetshire hunting family and that he knew everyone in his county back at home. The first time I had seen him at Mary’s house having cocktails it had not really bothered me; it was only when I saw him on a second occasion that something made me think that he had been around there a good deal. It was not because Mary called him “Rig.” It was rather in the way he passed things, and when Mary had sent him out to the pantry for more ice cubes, Rig had known exactly how to get into the pantry without being told. Of course it was simply that Mary had not thought, but I did think that I might speak to her about it, so I called her up as soon as I had finished breakfast.

  It was always pleasant to hear her voice. It was always clear and strong and it always made me wish that she and Jim and Kay and I got on better together.

  “Are you out of bed?” she called over the telephone. “Are you cured?”

  I told her I was feeling fine, that I just wanted to see her.

  “If it’s about those estate papers,” she called, “Jim took them with him.”

  I told her it wasn’t about the papers. I just wanted to see her.

  “Well, it’s a tough time to see me,” Mary said. “There was a big party here last night and somebody broke three of Jim’s dinosaurs. Jim’s going to have a fit.”

  “I shan’t blame him,” I said.

  “Well, come on over, darling. I’d love to see you.”

  When Mary and the executors and I were making the division after Mother’s death, we had agreed to sell Westwood and the house on Marlborough Street as places too cumbersome for either of us to handle, particularly after what had happened to the trust estate. At the time, Mary and Jim had both wanted the house near the point at North Harbor. It puzzled me that Mary was so fond of it and that Jim liked it, as it was big and rather ugly. My memory of it, and the way it looked now, always made the house confusing, for Father and Mother and I never seemed to have left it entirely. I asked Mary once if none of this ever bothered her and she surprised me by saying that she rather liked it.

  “We used to have a darned good time here,” she said. “I like to be with it still.”

  I imagine that she was always a happier person than I. All I could remember of the house were awkward moments; and what I could never get away from was a memory of the time when I came there from New York, just before I told Marvin Myles that I loved her. Marvin Myles had never seen the house, and yet I always associated it with her, because I had wanted to take her there. I had imagined her in the halls so often and on the porch. I had thought that she would like it. Perhaps that was why I never wanted to go back there. It always gave me a guilty feeling that I was not being exactly fair to Kay, although of course this was absurd.

  It seemed to me when I opened the front door—I never liked to ring the bell, since it used to be our house—that I was beginning already to go back and to think of things as they might have been before either Mary or I was married, when we could look forward into a mysterious future. I could hear the vacuum cleaner going behind the closed doors of the living room. The damp salt breeze was blowing through the hall.

  “Mary,” I called just the way I used to call her, “where are you?”

  She came running down the stairs, dressed in riding breeches and boots and a polo shirt, her hair done straight in a “page boy” cut.

  “Hello,” I said, “are you going riding?”

  “I give you three guesses,” Mary said. “Why don’t you come too? Rig can lend you some boots and breeches up at the stable. You’re just about Rig’s size.”

  “I can’t today,” I said. “I’m just trying to wind things up. You don’t have to go right away, do you?”

  “Why, no,” Mary said. “Let’s go out on the porch.”

  “You’ll catch cold in that shirt,” I said.

  I wanted to see her where we would not be overheard, so I asked if we couldn’t go into Father’s old study. Of course the study was Jim’s room now, but Mary had left some of Father’s stuffed birds on the wall and the four-pound trout he had caught. I had always wanted that trout. I had even thought of asking Mary for it, but if she had given it to me I should not have known what to do with it. Mary and I sat down on the sofa in front of the fireplace and I saw that there was a whole row of china and clay and ivory dinosaurs upon the mantelpiece.

  “There you are,” Mary said, “more of those damned things of Jim’s—jade ones, china ones, clay ones, and there’s one made out of soap, and there’s his latest made out of a piece of toast. I wish to goodness Jim’s Club had some other symbol I’d like to smash them all.”

  “Now, Mary,” I said, “Jim naturally thinks a lot of his dinosaurs.”

  “Well,” Mary answered, “I think it’s arrested development.”

  I had not come to talk about Jim. In fact, I never approved of talking about Jim with Mary.

  Mary slapped her hand on my knee and smiled at me.

  “Gosh,” she said, “it’s nice to see you! Even at half-past ten in the morning, even when I have a hangover. That party last night started before Jim went to the Junction and it went right on.”

  “You ought not to do that sort of thing, Mary,” I said.

  “Now, listen,” Mary a
nswered. “I love to have you tell me things, but you know I hold my liquor. How’s Kay?”

  “Kay?” I repeated. “Kay’s fine.”

  “She certainly was stepping out all week end.”

  “She was awfully nice,” I said, “looking after Bill. She’s sort of tired this morning. You know Bill—he sort of gets you down.”

  “What?” Mary said.

  “You know the way Bill is. He sort of gets you down,” I repeated.

  Mary took a cigarette out of a box on a little table and tapped it on her red thumbnail. I always wished that Mary did not have so much color on her nails.

  “I should have gone to see you,” she said. “I didn’t know you were sick until yesterday, dear.”

  “Well, I’m feeling all right now,” I said. Mary lighted her cigarette and threw the match into the fireplace. It fell on the carpet and I got up and kicked it onto the hearth and sat down again.

  “Harry,” Mary asked, “you’re not here because you’ve had a row with Kay or something?”

  “Now, look here, Mary,” I said. “Have I ever had a row with Kay?”

  “No,” she said, “I don’t suppose so, but then why are you here at half-past ten in the morning?”

  “It’s just that we don’t seem to see much of each other,” I said. “You’re my sister, aren’t you?”

  “Darling,” Mary said, “please sit down, and don’t twist up your face. You wouldn’t say that if something weren’t bothering you.”

  “Well, it really isn’t anything,” I said, and I sat down beside her. “It’s just that we know more about each other in some ways than anybody else. I always feel responsible for you, because I’m fond of you.”

  Mary sighed and threw her cigarette in the fireplace. Like the match it fell upon the carpet.

  “Never mind the damned thing,” Mary said. “Don’t keep bobbing up,” but I got up and kicked it onto the hearth and stepped on it. “Sit down. I feel responsible for you too. I used to feel responsible when you spilled at table and when you went to the war and when you brought that Myles girl home.”