House Party (24 page)

The picnickers straggled silently back to the house just as Betty was getting into her raddled old car. Mrs. Ames stood at the doorway, incongruous in a denim apron, absent-mindedly stroking a platter with a dishtowel, and urging Betty to stay, while Betty, aching to leave, tossed off a running flow of insincere platitudes in the manner of well-bred people everywhere.

"But you
will
be back for dinner, won't you, dear?" Mrs. Ames called. "And with your father, too. I believe Violet has asked him to see her fireworks display."

"Oh,
yes,
Mrs. Ames," Betty said, quickly brushing away a tear. "We're both looking forward to it. And thank you so much, again. It was a—it was a lovely picnic."

"Thank
you,
dear. Good-bye." Mrs. Ames returned to the pantry.

Betty was trying for the third time to start the car when Bryan rushed up to her. "Betty, please don't go—not without giving me a chance to . . ."

"Detach yourself from the car, please, Bryan. I'd hate to knock you down here in the driveway."

"But, Betty, won't you let me explain about this morning?"

"There isn't anything
to
explain, Bryan. You overslept and then gallantly made up a perfectly ridiculous lie to cover yourself. That
is
the explanation, isn't it?"

"Betty, I . . "

"If you'd told me the truth to begin with, Bryan, I promise you I wouldn't have minded. It would have struck me as pretty funny. It still does. You can almost see it as a headline in the
Mirror
—'Cinderella Taps Tiny Tootsie While Prince Charming Pounds Pillow.' It's too typical of what usually happens to me for me to be very surprised."

"Betty, can't you ever forgive me?"

"Certainly I can."

Bryan brightened. "Then you're willing to forgive and forget?"

"That's right, Bryan. Forgive you and forget you."

"Betty!”

"Sorry, Bryan, but you're just too rich a dish after army rations. I've got to be getting home." The motor roared and Betty was gone.

Bryan was depressed. Not only did he feel like a heel, but he felt like a fool. And not only did he feel like a fool and a heel, but he felt like a fool and a heel who has been rejected. Bryan had never been rejected before. He kicked at an outsized piece of gravel in the driveway and stumped into the house.

"Bryan," a voice said. He turned and saw Claire standing tragically in the doorway of the library.

Bryan could think of about a dozen things he'd rather do at the moment than talk to Claire. He would have liked to have gone upstairs, packed, and driven back to town. He would have liked to have gone to his room to be by himself. He would have liked to have got mildly drunk. He would have liked . . . well no matter what he might have preferred, this was his house and Claire was a guest in it. Claire was also a guest who had just been mortally and needlessly insulted by his cousin.

"Claire,I—I want to apologize for—for what Felicia said. You know she didn't
mean
it. She's just—well, she's had an
awfully
hard time and she gets upset easily—and . . ."

"Please," Claire said holding up a thin hand. "It doesn't matter. One has to get accustomed to being treated like a shopgirl when one
is
a shopgirl." Claire was rather glad she was wearing the prim little gray chambray instead of the vivid green she had considered. It lent a sort of pathetic institutional air to her in this dim room—the poor little orphan. Together they sat on the big leather sofa.

"D-don't be silly," Bryan said. "Everyone works nowadays. Felicia would probably be better off if
she
had a job like yours, but of course she's got the children to take care of."

"But that would hardly be the same thing, would it, Bryan? You see, I
have
to work. I've had to work ever since I was a little girl. Ever since we lost Daddy and I had to leave the convent in Paris and move to a horrid, dark little apartment in Chicago. Mom—
Mother
had to go to work just to feed us and I had to go to a terrible public school—and—and, well, Bryan I never had the chance to come out or go to college or do all the things that
most
girls do, and so when . . ."

"Yes?" Bryan said. He wondered what all this was leading up to. A touch?

Claire had told variations of this story before. She told it well and with confidence. Because
every
word of it was true! Claire and Mom had indeed lost Daddy; lost him to the bottle, the bookie, and a redheaded widow named Doris. They had left Paris, Illinois, for a very nasty little flat in Chicago and Mom, tickled pink to be shed of Pop, had gone to work for the very reason Claire had outlined.

Chicago's social seasons had indeed come and gone without celebrating Claire's debut and no seat of higher learning had ever matriculated Miss Devine. But it was a touching story in what it left unsaid and it placed Claire immediately in that chaste sisterhood of gentlewoman who, but for lack of lucre, might yet be leading the very best society.

Claire went on, a little more surely, a little more daringly, "I'm not a little whore, Bryan. I've never slept with any . . .”

"I know you're not," Bryan said, blushing. "It was unpardonable of Felicia to say . . ."

Claire held up a wan hand. "But, Bryan, I've
had
to work! Had to work to keep
alive.
And, Bryan, I hope you won't think I'm being conceited when I say I've been a success. You understand success, Bryan, and I can tell that you respect it. Well, I am a success. I've risen high in a difficult field and I've done it by using my brains and not my body." Claire allowed her voice a bitter tinge.

"Claire, Felicia didn't know what she was . . .”

"Then when I met Paul I was certain that at last my life was going to work out; come to its logical conclusion. Oh, Bryan, you don't know what it's like to go from having everything to having nothing and then having to work yourself back up over the years to just the barest sort of . . . And I hope you never
will
know." Bryan squirmed and lighted a cigarette.

''Well, as I said, I met Paul and I knew—Bryan, I
knew
when I saw him—that we were right for each other. He was a boy of talent and taste and breeding. He was a success and he was going farther—further. I admire success, Bryan. I have to! I could see us married. What a team we'd be! Paul going higher in architecture, I going
higher
and
higher
in fashion. I could visualize the rich, happy, creative life we could share together—knowing the people who are important, doing the things that are important. Each of us
building."

"Mm-hmm," Bryan said. He was profoundly bored, and although he had a certain admiration for Claire, he would have preferred brooding over his own troubles for a while. Still Felicia had obligated him to endure this interview. And he was faintly curious about what Claire was leading up to and a little more than faintly intrigued by the perfume Claire was wearing.

"His firm wants to give him a partnership, you know," Claire was saying.

"Really?" Bryan found it difficult to believe that
anybody
could have much faith in Paul—an architectural firm
or
a smart woman.

"Yes. Not only because of his talent, but because of his
name,
his
connections,
his
position
—things that really matter." Bryan lowered his eyes. He was not displeased. "And, as I guess you already know, Paul and I hope to get married."

"Yes," Bryan said. "We're all very pleased about it." Bryan might have wished for a sister-in-law more obviously from the Ames milieu, and perhaps with something of a dowry in case crazy Paul pulled one of his usual harebrained stunts. But Bryan knew that Paul could do a lot worse than a smart girl like Claire—a whole lot worse—and it was reassuring to find out that Claire was really a lady.

"Well, Bryan, you can imagine how I felt, after the life I've led, when Paul blithely announced that he was quitting his job . . ."

"Oh, Paul's nuts! He'll change his mind tomorrow,"

"And
expecting me to quit mine.
And
moving out here to live in your gatehouse . . ."

"Gatehouse?"
Bryan said with a shudder. This was a painful subject.

"And instead of moving up and up with the most successful architectural firm in New York, Paul is planning to start a housing project right here."

"What do you mean, 'right here'?"

"Just what I said. He's throwing everything away to make millions and millions of houses for a lot of . . ."

"In Pruitt's Landing?"

"In Pruitt's Landing."

"But that's impossible, Claire. Where would he find the land?"

"Right across the road. There are thousands of acres. One house to an acre. Build at five thousand, sell at six thousand to a lot of vulgar Army privates and . . ."

"Do you mean to tell me that that crazy Paul is planning to start a housing development across the road from our
home?"

"Yes, and he expects your bank to finance it and he expects
me
to throw away everything I've achieved and come out here with a lot of mice and rats and . . ."

"Paul wants
my
bank to give him the money to ruin the property
I'm
going to inherit? Property that's been in our family for more than . . ."

"Yes, Bryan,
yes!
And you've got to stop him! My career, my whole life, everything that's important to me is . . ."

"You mean he expects
me
to pay for . . ."

"Yes! He wants to throw away everything we've . . .”

"Well! I'll tell that crazy. . ."

"My, what a cozy little chat!" a voice said. Claire and Bryan wheeled about and saw Paul standing in the doorway.

"Paul!" Claire whispered. "How long have you . . ."

"I came in just as you were leaving the convent in Paris, Claire. The story of your meteoric rise in the rag business was so touching
that I didn't have the heart to interrupt. I'm glad, now, that I . . .”

"Paul, listen kid," Bryan said with a grin. Really, it was embarrassing being caught quite so redhanded, but now that the facts were more or less out in the open, this little defeat might very easily be turned into something of a triumph. Bryan was a good talker. Unlike Paul, he was able to keep calm, be objective, mar-shall his facts.

"Shut up!" Paul said. He wheeled on Claire. "Of all the Goddamned, underhanded tricks, sneaking in here to . . ."

"Paul," Bryan said sternly, "there's a lady present."

"Is
there? As I was saying, of all the God-damned, underhanded tricks, sneaking in here behind my back to sabotage me . . ."

"Paul," Claire began. "That's not
true.
I was talking to Bryan for your own good—for
our
own good. I should have preferred to have you in the room during our little chat, but . . ."

"Lucky girl. I
was
in the room. And I
heard
your little chat. You rigged it just fine, didn't you?"

"But, Paul, darling," Claire said, "can't you understand that Bryan and I are the two people in the world who care about you most? We both have reason to be deeply concerned about your future. We . . ."

"My
future, Claire? It seems to me that you were doing your level best to protect your own future and to louse mine up good and proper. It doesn't really matter, though, because from now on they're going to be completely separate futures, anyhow."

"Paul!" Claire cried, "you can't . . ."

"Paul, kid," Bryan said. "Don't you think you're being a little hasty? Claire was only trying to protect you from making a costly and terrible mistake."

"And she's succeeded splendidly. I've just been saved from the costly and terrible mistake of being tied down to a shallow, deceitful little clothes horse with the intellect of a window dummy and the integrity of . . ."

"Paul," Claire wailed,
"darling,
won't you see that we were only discussing your career because we . . ."

"It seems to me," Paul said, "that the logical person to discuss my career with would be me. We could have worked something out if you'd had the honesty and the decency to come to me and give it to me straight. But instead you go slinking around to Bryan like an assassin in a grade B movie to louse up my work before . . .”

"Louse up your work indeed!" Claire shouted. "Louse up a ratty little housing project for a pack of common factory hands and their cheap, vulgar wives and a lot of ill-bred brats!”

"Nothing common or cheap or vulgar or ill-bred about you, is there Claire?"

"You ought to be knocked down!" Bryan boomed.

"Would you like to try to do it?"

"Let's not forget that we're gentlemen, Paul."

"Oh, no. Let's never forget
that.
Claire. There's just one thing I want you to do for me."

"What is it?" Claire said, a little too anxiously.

"Please give me back my ring." Snatching his ring from her, he stomped out of the library and drove off in the station wagon, straight to Betty Cannon's.

Claire went sedately to her room. She felt that she might cry, but she kept clinging to Bryan's embarrassed, but optimistic, words of comfort. Just a lovers' quarrel. Yes. It would be all right soon. Her index finger, briefly the site of the Pruitt signet ring felt cold and naked. The rest of her felt hot and overdressed. Claire closed the door of her room. It's bound to work out, she kept telling herself. Paul would apologize. Paul had a sense of honor. I'll take a good hot bath, she thought, then I’ll put on the pink orlon with the pleats and a choker of jets and my . . .

While Bryan had once wanted to be alone, he now wanted not to be alone. He wanted to be with Elly, with Aunt Violet—with
noisy
people. He wanted to be free from thinking. He wished Uncle Ned would pop in and tell him that hilarious story about King Edward in Marienbad, or being with Crown Prince Somebody on the Somebodys' yacht. He also wanted a drink and someone to talk to. He was not disappointed for long.