Collected Novels and Plays (18 page)

Seated at the desk, Lady Good looked up from her letter. “Good morning, Benjamin darling. Did you have a lovely sleep? Good morning, Francis dear.”

She was wearing shorts. The old man stared at her inscrutably.

“Why, what’s the matter?” she asked, but in such a way that Francis knew that she knew.

Mr. Tanning resorted to a fake British accent. “There is a parcel for Her Ladyship in the vestibule.”

“Yes, I saw it,” Lady Good smiled, “but there must be some mistake, Benjamin. I’ve ordered nothing from that shop.”

“Oh dear,” he moaned, rolling a mournful eye to heaven, “I never met a girl with so little curiosity.”

“What
is
he talking about, Francis?” She returned to her letter long enough to underline a phrase. “Why I should open a box that doesn’t belong to me I can’t for a moment understand. Doubtless some other poor woman is waiting
most
impatiently for it, whilst it just sits there. I’d best ring up the shop.” On which she rose.

Francis was appalled. Had she behaved like this from the start, and had
he
learned from Xenia how to see through such displays? Why, Prudence was no better than Irene!

The box contained, of course, the evening gown she had admired some weeks before. Mr. Tanning had bought it in connivance with Natalie—a matter of measurements surreptitiously taken, even a pair of Lady Good’s shoes stolen in order to have matching slippers made. To all of this she had lent herself, if you could believe her, in absolute innocence. Francis did believe her; he liked her too much not to. But watching her blink and protest and finally gasp,
scarlet with pleasure, over the open box, he had a glimmering of the truth. Luxury was at work upon her. Softened by days in the sun, nights on smooth clean sheets in a bed she hadn’t had to make herself, growing used to roasts and chops and, above all, used to the devotion of their provider, Prudence found less and less occasion to recall her life in Jamaica. Moreover, along with the
routine of that life, she relaxed her grasp of the ethical system that
had kept it useful and noble rather than flatly exhausting.

Well, she was only human. Even as high-minded a woman as Vinnie Tanning had eaten and drunk and dressed in keeping with the opulence of the Cottage. Still, Francis wished Lady Good had shown more fortitude.

He wondered if she wasn’t, in her heart of hearts, sickeningly conscious of the change at work. She might have been reproaching
him
for having deserted her in favor of Xenia. She hadn’t bothered lately to invite him on walks along the beach. Those mornings Francis had accompanied her he found her listless, distracted. He suspected now that Prudence had responded to a distraction of his own, had seen that he was in no state to help her. The sobs of
an hour before rose in his throat. Why was it to
him
that everyone turned?

At the tarnishing mirror Lady Good twisted and preened, the dress held up in front of her. “I think I shall go right now and try it on,” she said, but couldn’t tear herself from her image.

“Yes, yes,” sighed Mr. Tanning, “you’ll be surprised how many opportunities come to put it on.”

“Oh dearest, it’s so lovely!”

“Or
, I might add, take it off …”

“Benjamin!
”

Just then, however, hearing a step in the hall, Lady Good sped to her room.

It was Xenia, in hairnet and smock, ready to begin work. She gave Benjamin a good-morning kiss. Francis strolled to the far end of the room, pleased that his father, today of all days, had chosen not to pose.

“Ah,” she coaxed, “not even a very short session? There’s a tiny place at the corner of the mouth that I wanted—”

“I said,” Mr. Tanning broke in with an authority that seemed to impress even himself, “that I just don’t feel up to it. Can’t anyone in this God-damn house give me some plain consideration?” And out he went,
reappearing instantly in the doorway long enough to add, “Don’t mind Grandpa. He’s feeling sorry for himself.”

A frightened look had come over Xenia’s face. “Oh God, what’s the matter?” she breathed.

Francis could have told her. Who wouldn’t be worn and vexed, forever pampered as the old man was, sought after,
drained
by people he cared nothing about? His son felt unusually close to him that morning. Before long the Maxons, the Feuermans, and Wally Link would be setting out gleefully from New York, with tanks full and tops down and no doubt whatever of Benjamin’s eagerness to see them. As it happened, Benjamin was eager to see nobody except
Prudence Good. Damn friendships, damn contacts, Francis could imagine his father thinking, and above all—at a moment when even Sir Edward had had the tact to remove himself—damn Xenia and
her
demands!

Sir Edward was a different story. “I’d feel a hundred percent better,” Mr. Tanning had brooded only a day ago, “if Prudence’s husband were less of a nice guy and more of a son of a bitch.” Whatever that meant. Didn’t the old man
know
about Sir Edward? Wondered Francis at the time, and now thanked heaven he hadn’t repeated the remark to Xenia. A similar one having been made about Charlie Cheek,
“There you are!” she had cried, “here’s proof Irene’s your father’s mistress!” That was nonsense enough—couldn’t she see how sick and old Mr. Tanning was?—but if she were further to imply that Prudence—! Although Xenia had done no such thing, Nonsense! thought Francis in a fury, nonsense and damn her! She couldn’t be expected to understand so fine a person as Lady Good.

“I haven’t the vaguest notion,” he said distantly in answer to her question. “I doubt that anything’s the matter unless he wishes not to be bothered for a little while. I’m surprised you can’t make an effort to respect that.”

Tears sprang into Xenia’s eyes. “Have the human kindness, Francis,” she whispered, “to remember I’m a guest in this house. More than a
guest, a friend—yes, in spite of what you think—a friend whose life, whose whole career is at stake!”

“Xenia, for pity’s sake!”

“I can turn only to you! If you turn from me, if Ben does—”

So that explained her distress! Xenia believed he had just been telling his father what had taken place the night before. In a calmer hour Francis might have smiled to see that
she
was as conscience-stricken over the whole miserable business as he himself. Instead,
“How
can you think such a preposterous thought?” he shouted.
“What
do you imagine I’m capable of? Answer me!”

Xenia stared at him, her face streaming and white. “You are capable, Francis, of anything,” she said quietly, and turned to go.

By then he, too, had begun to weep. Fumbling with the screen door, he escaped towards the sunken garden, away from the sea, whispering to himself, “I must go, I must go …” And when Lady Good reappeared in her finery to strike a not altogether humorous attitude on the threshold, she found the ocean room deserted.

It was one of those days for tears. The next to succumb was Natalie Bigelow.

At four o’clock, back from the village, a picture with hair now sleek and golden as a greengage plum, she had literally stumbled over her packed suitcase. No maid answered her ring. Xenia and Lily were in the pantry. Mrs. McBride had gone to rub her patient’s feet. Still thinking nothing bad, Natalie groped her way back to the ocean room, where Prudence was playing patience. Did
she
know why a suitcase had been packed?

“How very peculiar, Natalie dear!”

“Well,
I
think so,” laughed the victim. “I guess I’ve outstayed my welcome, after all.”

“Now you’re being silly. Besides,” Lady Good grew complacent, “Benjamin said nothing about it to
me
.”

“Pardon me,” Francis interposed from a distant sofa, “he told Louis
Leroy that he wanted the Underwoods to have Natalie’s room, and that she’d be sleeping at the Inn tonight. I assumed,” he couldn’t resist adding, “it had all been settled between them.”

There was a brief silence. “That,” said Natalie gaily, “answers my question, doesn’t it?” But as she started out her shoulders began to tremble. Before Lady Good had time to rise and embrace her she was heart-brokenly sobbing.

It caught Francis off guard. He had always thought of Natalie as a good sport who, having got what she wanted from life years ago, no longer cared much how people treated her.

Nerves, he decided at first—accustomed to that view of his father whereby the old man brought nothing to pass, good, bad, or indifferent, and couldn’t therefore be credited or blamed for what went on. Still feeling
he
was needed, Francis got up and approached the women.

“Darling,” Lady Good was saying, “you shall sleep in
my
room tonight. We’ll send Ned to the Inn.”

“We’ll do nothing of the sort!” cried Natalie, coloring, swallowing. “He wants me out, I’m getting out. I’m definitely not a gal who has to be told twice!”

“Natalie, dear, think! He can’t have meant—”

“Prudence, my pet,” through clenched teeth, “I’ve known him twenty-five years.”

“Francis, did Benjamin—?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Certainly he did!” Her wonderful half-blind eyes flashed. “But would he have the guts to tell me to my face? I should say not!” Whereupon Natalie broke away. By the time she returned, struggling with her suitcase, it was to confront a circle swelled by Xenia, Lily, Mrs. McBride, and Louis Leroy whom, in a dulcet whisper, she requested to call a cab.

“Natalie,” begged Xenia, “take
my
room!”

“Don’t do it!” exclaimed Francis. He gave Xenia a look to show he knew what had prompted her offer, then hurried to intercept Louis.
“I’m
driving Mrs. Bigelow to the Inn.”

“Thank you, my sweet.”

“And
I’m
going to speak to Benjamin,” Lady Good announced, decisively pivoting.

“If you do,” said Natalie on a note that froze her in her tracks, “I’ll never forgive you.”

Lily simpered. Francis picked up the suitcase.

“But the dinner party,” said Mrs. McBride.

“Don’t worry.” Natalie smiled over her shoulder. “I’ll be here for that. I’m a gal who fulfills
her
obligations to the letter.”

Francis relaxed only when the Cottage began to writhe in the rear-vision mirror. In silence he headed for the Inn. He felt a gradual dancing clarity. Natalie’s nerves, indeed! No, Benjamin was at fault, Benjamin—his lips kept forming the words—was thoughtlessly, stupidly at fault.

For Benjamin had to have his own way. He no more considered Natalie’s feelings, in packing her off to the Inn, than Lady Good’s, in forcing on her an embarrassingly lavish gift. Benjamin consulted nobody. Whatever he decided to serve—whether caviar or humble pie—the victim was meant to choke it down and be grateful. Nobody had ever had a chance to refuse the brutal bounty. Here the car just missed crashing into a tree.

I must be terribly mixed-up, thought Francis, remembering how often he’d represented his father to Xenia and others as sick, old, irresponsible. Not since childhood had he felt such direct antagonism towards Benjamin—but all at once an odd, elated antagonism, more like an acknowledgment of Benjamin’s reality; as if what had happened the previous night—and for the moment Francis didn’t mind despising himself for it—as if what had
happened in Xenia’s bed had actually
given
him a kind of strength. He smiled, but it was so. Strength enough, at least, to admit that Benjamin was strong. Father and son seemed now to drop a charade kept pointless by fear, on the part of each, that the other could bear no intenser relationship. Something caved in. They might have been living adversaries, laughing now across a chasm. Yes, Benjamin was strong, thought Francis with a glance at Natalie’s swollen
eyes. He had learned, however, a way of opposing Benjamin.

Or thought he had.

They were at the Inn. Stopping the car, full of tenderness, Francis reached for Natalie’s hand, as he had reached twelve years before for his mother’s when
they
had driven away from the Cottage together. But his gesture, while signifying nothing darker than “Never mind, I shall be loyal and loving,” was met by such poor mechanical gratitude, the squeeze, the sniffle, the reach for Kleenex and rouge in order to hide her misery from
whom it didn’t concern, that Francis withdrew as if he had touched ice. Staring once again at the world through glass, he heard the dim chime of that earlier lesson: one couldn’t hope to triumph where Benjamin had already done so.

During dinner an accordion player, hired by Enid, went from table to table.

This man, swarthy and balding, had been seen at parties thereabouts for close to a quarter century. Off and on, that night, he accompanied Wally Link (who loved to fit old songs with exhaustive lyrics all about life at the Cottage—a bard of yore, Mrs. Gresham called him); but most of the time the musician spent gazing with meaningless impudence down the bodice of whoever had requested “Some Enchanted Evening,” which he sang as if she alone, all
summer, had flattered him by naming a little-known number they both loved. By the meal’s end, with nobody asking for it, he sang this song to some who hadn’t glanced in his direction.

Whenever his gaze lit on Lady Good she turned pink. Her gown was an astonishment, dewdrop and gossamer, but it might have been cut from the very tissue of sin, she wore it so cheerlessly. A cable had come, while she was dressing, from Jamaica; Sir Edward was needed. He had read it quickly, shrugged and told her to do as she wished—
his
duty was clear. Prudence then fled to Benjamin, who, tying his tie, had shrugged and told her he couldn’t advise
her in such a matter. Did nobody care
whether she stayed or went? Finally, just before dinner, it hadn’t helped to discover that the only other “important” gown at the party was being worn by Irene Cheek, who under the stress of compliments had given way to baby-talk. “I’n’t it pwetty?” she gurgled, “’s Iwene’s birthday pwesent fum Cousin Benji!”

“When was your birthday?” Francis thought to ask.

“Week before last,” she replied, snapping her fingers for Louis to bring her a cocktail. Francis and Lady Good exchanged a bleak look. Evidently Mr. Tanning had decided, all by himself, that evening gowns made highly acceptable gifts.