Cancel All Our Vows

by John D. MacDonald

  “Here. This one goes to Sue Hosking, and this one to her husband.”

  She took the glasses dutifully and walked off with them. Fletcher saw Jane give her a rather startled look, and then turn and stare at him. He turned back to his duties as Hud came up. “Something tall and cold and full of gin, Fletch.”

  “Sir, keep my wife out of this. By God, I’ve been waiting for a chance to use that line ever since I read it.”

  Hud looked at him mournfully. “I was going to stand around and talk to you. Not if you keep up that sort of thing. Martha wants the same thing too. I was going to stand here and help you feel sorry for the pair of us.”

  “Why?”

  “While we labor in the city, our wives dally with younger men at a woodland lake.”

  “We’ve gotten middle-aged and unexciting, Huddleston.”

  Hud nodded sadly. “Life goes by. But before the last juices are gone, old boy, I should like a fast hack at the Corban woman. She exudes an aura.”

  Fletcher kept his tone casual. “You’ve noticed it too?”

  “She has brightened these rheumy old eyes. She has reactivated sagging hormones. Yes, as a man who in years past has made an intensive study of such things, I recognize the type. Wives bristle when she walks by. She has that deceptive tranquillity, like a blast furnace with door closed. A highly specialized organism, I should judge. Do you suspect that yon elderly cub-scout is able to cope? One wonders. She bemused me, my boy. Feature by feature she is almost plain. The little body has all the usual parts and configurations, but not in any particularly startling manner. Yet somehow the whole effect is that of something barely able to contain live steam at a pressure of four thousand pounds per square inch.”

  Whenever he was with Hud, Fletch found himself talking in Hud’s florid manner. “Jane expresses that mysterious element by declaring that the woman just doesn’t care. But her analysis stops there.”

  “A not inadequate analysis. I suspect that an explosive element has been added to our little sewing circle, Fletcher. Remember Dorry Haines? Lovely little girl. She broke up three marriages before departing for points unknown with one of our most promising young attorneys.”

  “Do you really think she’s another Dorry Haines, Hud?”

  Hud nodded solemnly. “Note the walk as she approaches. Very indicative, my boy. When they walk as though they were carrying a silver dollar clenched between their dimpled knees, they’re invariably hell on wheels. And note the hands. I haven’t had a look yet, but I would give odds that you will find a pronounced curvature of the nails over the tips of the fingers, plus very plump pads at the base of the fingers. And, should you ever get close enough, Lord help you, you will detect a slightly heavy personal odor—not at all unpleasant—but a bit on the musky side.”

  He dropped his voice on the last few words as Laura approached them. Fletcher squeezed the quarter of lime in on top of the vodka and ginger beer in the copper mug and handed it to her with a slight bow. “Give the ice a chance to work before you start on it, Laura. Hud was just telling me the results of years of research.”

  He saw the look that she slanted up at Hud, knowing and speculative. “I didn’t think you were the research type, Mr. Rogers.”

  It was one of the few times that Fletcher had seen Hud discomfited. “I … I was giving Fletch the benefit of my vast experience, Mrs. Corban.”

  “Do you think I would profit by it, Mr. Rogers?” she asked, wide-eyed. And, as Hud gulped, she turned and gave Fletcher a bawdy wink and said, “You see, I need a lot of practice, Fletch. I’m making a study of innuendoes, Mr. Rogers. I’ve been told they’re the favorite indoor sport in Minidoka. Is that Ellis’ drink? I’ll take it to him, thank you.”

  As she reached her hand for the glass, Fletcher looked at it and saw that it was precisely as Hud had said it would be. She walked off with glass and copper mug, turning to smile brightly back over her shoulder.

  “That,” said Hud solemnly, “is an infernal machine and it’s set to go off in your face, sir. I hope you brought your Bandaids.”

  “I have a strong character.”

  Hud waited while Fletcher finished making the two strong Collinses. He took them and started away, then stopped and turned and said, “I don’t think she has any interest in your character, Mr. Wyant. She is in a phase. A female Samson. Somebody cut her curly locks and they have just grown back and you are a temple and she is about to push you down, just to test her strength.”

  “Didn’t the temple kill Samson?”

  “She’s the type to push and run. Or vice versa, as the case may be.”

  Fletcher made his own drink last and then wandered over and joined the group. Martha was giving a spirited account of the water skiing. Midge Van Wirt was competing with a more spirited account of a bridge hand with eleven hearts in it, and a partner with holes in her head. Ellis was sitting gingerly on the edge of the terrace on the grass, beside Laura’s chair. His sports jacket was vivid and hairy, and his slacks were a peculiarly unpleasant mustard shade. The faint breeze was dying and Fletcher saw the dew of perspiration on all the polite faces and knew that they would have to move out of the sun or melt. Next year, he decided, he would have a lattice roof put over half the terrace, and Jane could train something green to climb and cover it, so that the sun worshipers could at least sit near people who wanted the shade.

  The conversation suddenly turned itself, like an aimed cannon, on the weather, and nearly everybody began to talk at once—as though they had diligently suppressed weather talk as being dull, and now found that through restraint it had become the most fascinating topic in the world. “… seven dead of heat prostration they say … worst in the history of Minidoka … I say it’s those damn rainmakers seeding the clouds … feels like there’s a thunderstorm coming, but it never comes … move out of this bastard climate for good …”

  Fletcher made another round of drinks, two at a time, and heard Jane inviting all sun bathers to don their costumes while she got the blankets from the garage. Of the women only Sue Hoskings sat where she was. The others began to drift toward the house. Fletcher saw Laura walking with Martha Rogers. Dick murmured to Sue and she got up and he carried her chair over into the shade for her. She gave him a warm grateful look and he bent down a bit awkwardly and kissed her. The men, except Dick gathered around Fletcher as he prepared refills, and they all decided that sun bathing interfered with serious Sunday drinking, and it was a woman’s sport at best. Harry Van Wirt said, in his most confidential voice, that the last time he’d been naked in the sunshine was when he was fifteen, and it had only taken him one time to find out he didn’t like it. Hud said that as long as the bar was in the shade he, personally, planned to sit down right beside it. Ellis said it only took ten minutes to burn him so bad he’d have chills, but the sun didn’t seem to bother Laura at all Didn’t burn her and didn’t even tan her very much.

  Jane spread the blankets on the grass in the place where they would get any available breeze, should one happen to come along, then hurried into the house to change. Ellis was at his most affable state. His manner filled Fletcher with dull annoyance. Damn the man, he was like a puppy which had been kicked too often and figured that if you wagged your tail hard enough, they wouldn’t kick you again. He saw Hud examining Ellis with mild disapproval. Dick came over and got another very light drink for Sue and took it over to her chair.

  It was Hud who gave the low grunt of surprise. Fletcher looked at him, then turned to look in the direction of Hud’s startled glance. Martha, Laura and Midge were walking out together. Both Martha and Midge wore sun suits consisting of shorts and halter. They were both quite brown. Midge was thin-limbed, spidery. Martha was round and buttery. Both of the women seemed to be making a ludicrous attempt to pretend that they weren’t with Laura, and had never seen or heard of her before. Laura wore a Bikini suit improvised out of four dark blue bandannas. There was a knot between her small rather sharp breasts, and a knot at each side about two inc
hes below where her slim waist curved out quite abruptly to form the lyre curve of hip. The taut blue fabric bisected the satin flatness of her belly. She was all of a piece, a perfect even shade like milk tea, and the texture of her was like cream. She was flawless and tight in her skin, and she made Fletcher think of a tiny figurine he had purchased in London during the war. The dealer said it had once been a toy made for the favorite daughter of a maharajah. It depicted a fragile, nude Indian princess, and, with typical Hindu literalness, each anatomical detail had been carved with almost embarrassing exactitude. The child for which it had been made was long dead, and the ivory of the figurine had yellowed, and the saris of the doll wardrobe had long since mouldered away. Yet the figurine remained in its eternal resilience of youth. He had paid far too much for it and later it had been stolen out of his room in the BOQ in Paris.

  Laura, in her clothes, had walked with a restraint that was near awkwardness. Naked, her stride was long and lithe and free. Her face was expressionless, but Fletcher had the vivid impression that she was laughing inside, laughing at all of them.

  Almost instinctively, he turned to glance at Ellis at the same moment Hud did. Ellis’ face had darkened and his eyes were uneasy. He laughed a bit nervously and said, “Laura likes to get plenty of sun.”

  “And that, class,” said Hud in an awe-stricken tone, “is an example of a self-evident truth. The lady will get plenty of sun.”

  “They wear those all the time on the French beaches,” Ellis said defensively.

  “I’ll stay to hell out of France,” Harry rasped huskily. “My blood pressure, you know.”

  Ellis acted like a man who wanted to be offended, and didn’t know exactly how to go about it. He took his drink and wandered out toward the blankets where Laura was in the process of spreading herself out.

  Hud said, “I request permission to retract a statement, Mr. Wyant. I mentioned Dorry Haines previously, somewhat in the nature of a comparison. Even in my myopic state, I can see that the comparison was inept. Scratch Dorry Haines, please.”

  Harry giggled, a bit damply. Dick was staring over toward Laura, rigid as a setter at Bok Tower. Sue was aiming a rather cool glare at the nape of his neck. Jane came across the yard from the house, and from the depth of the black and ominous look she tossed in his direction, Fletcher knew that Jane had seen Laura before she came out. Jane wore a yellow terry-cloth sun outfit, and that particular shade of yellow, Fletcher noted with annoyance, was as wrong for her as Laura’s yellow had been right for her on Friday evening.

  There were two refills to take over to the blankets, one for Jane and another mule for Laura. He made the drinks and took them over. Laura lay a bit apart from the other three. Midge and Martha and Jane chatted with just a shade too much animation about meat prices. Laura lay on her back, with two little plastic cups, joined by a nose-piece, on her eyes. The little cups were dead white.

  “Another mule, lady,” he said with hostlike joviality. She rolled up onto one elbow and took the chill copper mug with a quick smile.

  “Thanks loads, Fletch. They’re awfully good.”

  He felt the stir of his blood as he looked down at her. She was just naked enough so that it was embarrassing to look at her, and almost impossible to look away. She sipped from the mug, and her eyes were bland and mocking. In the delicate intricacy of her, satin textures over the small bones, body-down sun-bleached to white against the flawless gold, she made the other women look distressingly coarse-grained and meaty. She made Jane’s a peasant body, made Martha’s bounciness into glutinous obesity, turned Midge into a hideousness of brown strings and knots. And Fletcher guessed that the other women were uncomfortably aware of their disadvantage. He handed Jane her drink a bit blindly, and then walked back to the bar, the song of Laura running hard through his blood. He told himself he wasn’t an adolescent any longer. A naked woman was merely that, and nothing more. But he remembered the feel of her in his arms, and the quickness of her response. And she was a woman who didn’t give a damn. She was making that obvious. There would be no arduous campaign, no move and countermove. Perhaps she would like best a plain statement of intent, and respond best to that.

  Harry had wandered over to talk to Dick and Sue. Hud moved close to him and said, “Have you got a claim staked, or can anybody play?”

  “Try your luck, Huddleston. I’m not having any.”

  “Then you better stop trying your smirk on her. It shows, my boy. Jane has willed you to drop dead twice already. In my case, it’s different. Martha knows I’m weak. And I don’t think another set of horns on that fatuous husband will make any particular difference.”

  Fletch dropped ice in a glass and turned and looked at Hud with a sudden anger out of all proportion to the situation. Suddenly the farmery look of his best friend annoyed him. The big plow-jockey hands and the seamed neck.

  “I suppose all you have to do is snap your fingers and she lies on her back.”

  “No. I bedazzle her with witty sayings and homely philosophies, and before she knows my foul design, bingo. And why is your back hair standing on end? I asked, didn’t I?”

  “Oh, skip it, for God’s sake!”

  Hud stared into his glass, picked up the bottle and made the drink much stronger. He set the bottle down. “One would suspect that there is enough over there to go around, my old pal.”

  “Don’t you ever talk about anything else?”

  Hud’s eyes narrowed a bit. “What would you like? An analysis of the Korean truce talks? The infamy of the Minidoka City Council? Take any card.”

  “I’m sorry, Hud. I mean one topic of conversation can get tiresome.”

  Hud smiled sleepily. “Then get yourself another boy. I’ve got one of those one-track minds.” He walked away in a long half-circle that inevitably took him over to Laura Corban. He sat down beside her and a few minutes later, as Fletcher was making a stronger mule this time for himself, he heard her laugh. It was a good, rich, bawdy, throaty laugh. She had laughed at the club, but not like that. He was jealous, he realized, of Hud Rogers, who could make her laugh in a way that verified his immediate estimate of her.

  Jane went toward the house and signaled him to come along and help bring out the trays of snacks. Once she was in the kitchen alone with him, she exploded.

  “Understand I’m no prude, Fletch, but that’s the limit. What does she think we’re running here? A peep show? And you made it worse, you and Hud and Harry over there snickering and drooling. If I were Ellis Corban, I’d smack her bottom good and take her home. Showing off like a nasty little kid. Waving her bare ass in the breezes! I suppose you think that’s cute and adorable. Maybe she thinks next time she can get away with a G string and two rosebuds. Well, there won’t be any next time. I’ve got a thirteen-year-old boy, and I don’t want him coming home to goggle at that spectacle. She had the nerve to tell us those four handkerchiefs cost nineteen cents apiece, and that she liked the outfit because it’s so comfortable and inexpensive. You ought to see her put the darn thing on. She had the four folded bandannas in her handbag. You should have seen Midge’s face. What in the world are we going to do?”

  “I don’t think there’s anything we can do.”

  “You men don’t want anything done. It’s a free show for you, and don’t think she doesn’t know it. Little bitch!”

  “Look, what do I do? Put on my policeman hat and go tell her to get off the beach? Or do I pray for rain, for God’s sake?”

  She stared at him with an unpleasant accusing expression on her face. “You don’t have to bite my head off.”

  “Well then, make sense. There isn’t anything we can do.”

  “Then stop getting off with Hud and you two nudging each other and snickering.”

  “Sure,” he said wearily. “Sure.”

  “I told you she’d make trouble. I knew it right away. I know the type, believe me. A troublemaker from the word go.”

  He carried the trays out. Laura and Hud had moved off the blanket
s over onto the grass. They sat cross-legged, facing each other. Hud had produced a penknife and they were playing mumblety-peg. As he took a tray to them, he heard Laura say firmly. “You missed. That’s three you owe me.”

  When he took the tray to Martha she did not see him for a moment. She was looking at her husband and the girl in the bandannas. There was an expression of black fury in her eyes. She smiled absently up at Fletch and selected a round piece of bread with a sardine dead across it.

  Chapter Twelve

  Some of it, he guessed, was due to the heat, and some of it to the odd strain Laura had contributed. Everybody seemed to drink much too much. All except Dick and Sue, and they had gone home early. The rest of them had made a spectacular hole in the liquor supply, and he knew, fuzzily, that he’d done more than his fair share. The kids had come home from the movies and feasted off the surplus snacks and gone down the street to watch the Sunday night programs on a TV set that had a bigger screen than theirs.

  When the sun had at last faded, leaving the day stickier and hotter than ever, the women had gone in to shower and change back to the clothes they had come in.

  Now dusk was blue on the hill and it was already night down in the city. The lights down there were beginning to show brightly. He felt unsteady on his feet, and he had begun to lose track of people.

  Midge came up in the darkness. “Fletch, is that you? Harry got taken drunk, dear. He told me to tell you he’s lying down inside and we’re supposed to wake him up in an hour. If possible. You may have a house guest on your hands.”

  “Always plenny a room for you and Harry, darling.”

  “Fletch! God, you better go in and lie down beside him. You’re boiled.”

  He spread his lips in a stiff grin. “Not that bad. Got my sea legs now. What else you going to do on a bitch day like this? Old climate control. Drink and forget the temperature. Yessir, the best climate control in the world. Hey!”

  He turned to stare at her and she was gone and he had the feeling she’d been gone for a long time. This was a night for losing track of people. He walked over and saw cigarette ends in the night. Two people were sitting in chairs.