Jack and Susan in 1933 (14 page)

She kissed him tenderly. He smiled.

“Every moment without you will be misery,” he said gallantly.

“Perfect misery,” she echoed. “I don't know what I'll do…”

Barbara and Jack picked up Harmon at the Quarry on Monday afternoon. Barbara smiled knowingly when Susan said she wouldn't be coming along. She made a smart remark about lovebirds that pecked each other to death, but Susan affected not to hear it. Barbara Beaumont could think what she pleased. Susan was, however, disturbed by the look of curiosity on Jack's face, when Harmon remarked, “I think Susan must be in love with a gardener, or the postman, or someone of that brawny ilk, and that of course is the reason why she's not coming back to Manhattan. As for me, why, I intend on making violent love to Audrey as soon as I can get home. As the months go by, I find I've become deeply attracted to her asthmatics.”

“Good-bye, darling,” said Susan, kissing Harmon.

“Utter misery,” he replied easily. “Utter, utter, utter.”

She walked a few dozen yards down the driveway, waving to them. When the automobile disappeared behind a stand of birch, just showing the first hint of spring green, Susan turned back toward the house. Suddenly she heard the sound of another car behind her.

The Rhinelander touring car pulled up beside her, and Marcellus stepped out. He waved his chauffeur on. “Are you relieved?” he asked Susan, taking her arm and guiding her across the lawn. For the first time, the ground felt soft beneath her feet and no longer frozen.

“Yes,” Susan admitted. “I must admit that I am. It's going to be spring here soon. I told Harmon I wanted to work on the gardens here. I do, in fact.”

“It's very modern of you,” Marcellus Rhinelander remarked.

“Gardening? I should have thought that would be considered fairly old-fashioned.”

“No, not that. Allowing Harmon to return to New York and his paramour.”

“His what?”

“Your husband is”—he sought for a delicate way of putting this indelicate matter—“is occupying himself with another woman.”

Susan stopped short and stared at Marcellus Rhinelander. This might just be one step too far, even though Susan had every suspicion, no, every confidence that what he said was true.

“You look surprised,” said Marcellus Rhinelander with a broad smile and a twinkle in his eye.

“I'm a little surprised to hear you say it to me with such apparent satisfaction, and with such—”

“With such what?” Marcellus Rhinelander asked with a broader smile and a brighter twinkle in that eye.

“With such certainty, I suppose.”

“I am perfectly certain of it,” said Marcellus Rhinelander. “The detective I hired is entirely trustworthy in such matters.”

Previous astonishment had already stopped Susan. Now greater astonishment propelled her onward again. “You hired a detective? Why?”

“To obtain proof of Harmon's infidelity to you.”

“Why on earth would I want that?”

“You want it so you can get a divorce.”

“Why on earth would I want that?” Susan repeated.

Marcellus Rhinelander laughed heartily at her apparent obtuseness. “Why, so you can marry me, of course!”

JACK AGAIN

H
ARMON ALMOST
immediately fell asleep in the backseat. He snored. Barbara complained about life in the country with the same intensity as she complained about life in the city. Jack kept his eyes on the road, the mileage gauge, and his watch, but he might as well have been in one of those infinitely frustrating dreams in which the road never led anywhere, the mileage gauge went backward, and time stood still. New York seemed never to come closer.

“Susan looked very pale, didn't you think?” said Barbara. That was how Barbara initiated a conversation about any other woman. She remarked the other woman had looked pale. If she had wanted to talk about Hottentot Venus, Barbara would have started off remarking, “She looked very pale, didn't you think?”

Jack hadn't thought so. “No more pale than usual,” he said. He didn't need to glance over into the backseat to see if Harmon was listening. The man was snoring loudly. He wouldn't hear anything Barbara said about his wife, though Jack still didn't want Barbara to say it.

“Let's talk about Susan later,” said Jack quietly.

Barbara looked at him sharply. “There's something to talk about?”

“Yes,” he admitted reluctantly.

“Hmmm…” said Barbara, and was quiet for a while.

They let Harmon off at his building. Harmon stood on the sidewalk, looking about vaguely in the twilight, as if wondering in what city on what continent he now found himself. Jack pulled Harmon's bags out of the back and placed them beside the front door. “This is New York,” said Jack. Harmon stared at Jack as if he weren't quite sure who Jack was that he should be telling him this. “And this is where you live,” Jack added, pointing at the wide double doors of the building. “And here comes George to take up your bags. Hello, George,” said Jack carefully, in case Harmon had forgotten the elevator man's name, too. “I'll see you tomorrow,” said Jack slowly to Harmon. “At the office.”

“Oh yes, of course,” said Harmon as if he'd just remembered who he was, who Jack was, what they did for a living, and why this black man in a red uniform should be carrying bags into a building with the numbers 128 over the doors. It all came together at once for him.

“Harmon really is a little peculiar,” Jack sighed when he got back in the car.

“A little? Anyone who would marry that pale-faced simpering hypocritical gold digger is a candidate for the lunatic asylum so far as I'm concerned.”

“She is pale-faced,” Jack conceded. “But she certainly doesn't simper, and I don't see that she's particularly hypocritical.”

“She most certainly is. She obviously hates me because I see right through her,” said Barbara hotly. “And yet she's always so polite.”

“That's not so much hypocrisy as good manners, I think.”

“You can't deny she's a gold digger though, can you? She married Harmon for his money. She obviously doesn't love him. If she loved him, she wouldn't be spending all her time in the country. Leaving Harmon alone here to fend for himself.”

“That's the strange thing about it,” said Jack.

“What is?”

“I thought, too, that she was a gold digger. But most women like that, when they've married good money, the
last
thing they want to do is hide themselves away in the country. They stay in the city, they run up bills in the shops, they go out every night to expensive restaurants, they sail along in new cars with new furs and new dogs and new jeweled bracelets. I've heard Harmon complain that Susan doesn't spend
enough
money.”

“You see? She
is
a hypocrite. She's a gold digger but she won't act like one. There's perfidy for you,” said Barbara complacently.

It was obvious Barbara wasn't to be convinced. But Jack didn't know what to think. He wondered what was going on in that marriage. The two when together seemed romantic and happy, but they were also content to live apart. Harmon said three times a day how desperately he missed his wife, but so far as Jack knew, he had never asked her to return to New York, and she had never begged Harmon to come to the country. But every marriage was a mystery, and the happy ones more enigmatic than the unhappy ones.

Barbara and Jack went out to dinner that night. Barbara chose El Morocco, which is where they always went when Barbara wanted to talk about something.

Tonight Barbara didn't want to talk about anything.

She pushed bits of meat about on her plate. She sipped at a glass of water. She smoked a cigarette and dropped the ashes on the zebra-striped fabric of their banquette. She tugged at the fronds of the silly cellophane palm trees on the dark blue walls.

“Harmon was making a joke,” said Barbara at last. “But do you think he was right?”

So they were going to talk about Harmon and Susan after all. But there was something different here. Barbara very rarely asked Jack's opinion.

“What joke are you talking about? Harmon never says anything seriously.”

“The joke he made to Susan when we first got to the Quarry. He accused her of having an affair with the gardener. Do you think that's why she stays up there?”

Jack stared. “No, I don't think that at all. I think that's ludicrous. Harmon doesn't even keep a gardener up there.”

“Then with someone else. She could be having an affair with anybody. It doesn't have to be the gardener, per se. But someone with muscles beneath his shirt and sweat on his brow. Someone who doesn't use proper grammar. Susan's the type to die for the type.”

“How do you know that?”

“The way she talks to the servants. You can tell. Maybe she's seeing Richard Grace. I don't think I'd doubt it for a minute. A chauffeur is the next best thing to a gardener when you're starved for love.”

“I wasn't aware,” said Jack. “But I don't think the reason Susan is staying at the Quarry has anything to do with her being, as you put it, starved for love. In fact, I think it much more likely that Harmon is occupying himself with the equivalent to your gardener-chauffeur. A girl in the hat check, or one of these”—he nodded to the gowned young woman with silver hair in the style of Harlow who sidled between tables with a tray of cigarettes and cigars around her neck—“would be very much to Harmon's taste.”

“Probably you're right,” said Barbara dismissively. “Luckys,” she said to the gowned girl with the tray around her neck. When she'd ripped the foil from the pack, and Jack had lighted her cigarette, Barbara went on. “But if Susan
were
having an affair, and she were discovered—”

“How?”

“It doesn't matter how. But if she were discovered, then it would be grounds for divorce, wouldn't it?”

“Yes,” said Jack. “But husbands don't generally file. Only wives file.”

“But husbands
can
file?”

“Yes, of course. But it looks bad.”

Barbara shrugged. “It looks worse to keep a wife like that.”

“Why are you so concerned with this?”

“I'm not a bit concerned,” said Barbara. “Do I look concerned?”

She didn't. She looked bored, but then, Barbara always looked bored.

“But Father's concerned,” said Barbara. “He thinks that Harmon made a terrible mistake. He'd like to see Harmon freed of that dreadful crooness. Do you know any detectives?”

Jack blinked. “Why do you ask?”

“A detective could get evidence that Susan is sharing her bed with Father's chauffeur. Do you know any?”

“Yes,” answered Jack reluctantly.

“Hire him then.”

“No,” said Jack.

“Why not?”

“Because it's none of our business.”

“It's very much our business. Harmon is our best friend. He's your employer. He's Father's favorite person in the world next to me. We owe it to him.”

“We owe it to Harmon not to interfere with his marriage. If it's the wrong marriage for him, then he'll get out of it of his own accord, in his own good time. I won't hire a detective.”

“All right,” said Barbara. “Then give me his name, and I'll hire him, and I won't even tell you I've done it.”

“No,” said Jack.

“I'm tired,” said Barbara, stabbing out her cigarette in Jack's butter. “Let's go home.”

They went home, and Barbara said not another word about Harmon, about Susan, or about the detective.