Mildred Pierce
Authors: James M. Cain
th
Division. He returned to become professor of journalism at St John’s College in Annapolis and then worked for H. L. Mencken on The American Mercury. He later wrote editorials for Walter Lippman on the New York World and was for a short period managing editor of The New Yorker, before he went to Hollywood as a script writer. His first novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice, was published when he was forty-two and at once became a sensation. It was tried for obscenity in Boston, and was said by Albert Camus to have inspired his own book, The Stranger, and is now a classic. Cain followed it the next year with Double Indemnity, leading Ross MacDonald to write years later, ‘Cain has won unfading laurels with a pair of native American masterpieces, Postman and Double Indemnity, back to back.’ Cain was working on his autobiography at the time of his death.
By James M. Cain
Our Government
The Postman Always Rings Twice
Serenade
Love’s Lovely Counterfeit
Three of a Kind: Career in C Major,
The Embezzler, Double Indemnity
Past all Dishonor
The Butterfly
Sinful Woman
The Moth
Jealous Woman
Galatea
The Root of his Evil
Mignon
The Magician’s Wife
Rainbow’s End
The Institute
James M. Cain
AN ORION EBOOK
First published in the United States of America 1941.
This ebook first published in 2010 by Orion Books.
Copyright © James M. Cain 1941
Copyright renewed © 1969 by James M. Cain
The right of James M. Cain to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the copyright, designs and patents act 1988.
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978 1 4091 3239 4
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I
n the spring of 1931, on a lawn in Glendale, California, a man was bracing trees. It was a tedious job, for he had first to prune dead twigs, then wrap canvas buffers around weak branches, then wind rope slings over the buffers and tie them to the trunks, to hold the weight of the avocados that would ripen in the fall. Yet, although it was a hot afternoon, he took his time about it, and was conscientiously thorough, and whistled. He was a smallish man, in his middle thirties, but in spite of the stains on his trousers, he wore them with an air. His name was Herbert Pierce. When he had finished with the trees, he raked the twigs and dead branches into a pile, carried them back to the garage, and dropped them in a kindling box. Then he got out a mower and mowed the lawn. It was a lawn like thousands of others in southern California: a patch of grass in which grew avocado, lemon, and mimosa trees, with circles of spaded earth around them. The house, too, was like others of its kind: a Spanish bungalow, with white walls and red-tiled roof. Now, Spanish houses are a little outmoded, but at the time they were considered high-toned, and this one was as good as the next, and perhaps a little better.
The mowing over, he got out a coil of hose, screwed it to a spigot, and proceeded to water. He was painstaking about this too, shooting the water all over the trees, down on the spaded circles of earth, over the tiled walk, and finally on the grass. When the whole place was damp and smelled like rain, he turned off the water, pulled the hose through his hand to drain it, coiled
it, and put it in the garage. Then he went around front and examined his trees, to make sure the water hadn’t drawn the slings too tight. Then he went into the house.
The living-room he stepped into corresponded to the lawn he left. It was indeed the standard living-room sent out by department stores as suitable for a Spanish bungalow, and consisted of a crimson velvet coat of arms, displayed against the wall; crimson velvet drapes, hung on iron spears; a crimson rug, with figured border; a settee in front of the fireplace, flanked by two chairs, all of these having straight backs and beaded seats; a long oak table holding a lamp with stained-glass shade; two floor lamps of iron, to match the overhead spears, and having crimson silk shades; one table, in a corner, in the Grand Rapids style, and one radio, on this table, in the bakelite style. On the tinted walls, in addition to the coat of arms, were three paintings: one of a butte at sunset, with cow skeletons in the foreground; one of a cowboy, herding cattle through snow, and one of a covered-wagon train, plodding through an alkali flat. On the long table was one book, called ‘Cyclopedia of Useful Knowledge’, stamped in gilt and placed on an interesting diagonal. One might object that this living-room achieved the remarkable feat of being cold and at the same time stuffy, and that it would be quite oppressive to live in. But the man was vaguely proud of it, especially the pictures, which he had convinced himself were ‘pretty good’. As for living in it, it had never once occurred to him.
Today, he gave it neither a glance nor a thought. He hurried through, whistling, and went back to a bedroom, which was filled with a seven-piece suite in bright green, and showed feminine touches. He dropped off his work clothes, hung them in a closet, and stepped naked into the bathroom, where he turned on water for a bath. Here again was reflected the civilisation in which he lived, but with a sharp difference. For whereas it was, and still is, a civilisation somewhat naive as to lawns, living-rooms, pictures, and other things of an aesthetic nature, it is genius itself, and has forgotten more than all other civilisations ever knew, in the realm of practicality. The bathroom that he now whistled in was a utile jewel: it was in green tile and white tile; it was as clean as an operating room; everything was
in its proper place, and everything worked. Twenty seconds after the man tweaked the spigots, he stepped into a bath of exactly the temperature he wanted, washed himself clean, tweaked the drain, stepped out, dried himself on a clean towel, and stepped into the bedroom again, without once missing a bar of the tune he was whistling, or thinking there was anything remarkable about it.
After combing his hair, he dressed. Slacks hadn’t made their appearance then, but grey flannels had: he put on a fresh pair, with polo shirt and blue lounge coat. Then he strolled back to the kitchen, a counterpart of the bathroom, where his wife was icing a cake. She was a small woman, considerably younger than himself; but as there was a smear of chocolate on her face, and she wore a loose green smock, it was hard to tell what she looked like, except for a pair of rather voluptuous legs that showed between smock and shoes. She was studying a design, in a book of such designs, that showed a bird holding a scroll in its beak, and now attempted a reproduction of it, with a pencil, on a piece of tablet paper. He watched for a few moments, glanced at the cake, said it looked swell. This was perhaps an understatement, for it was a gigantic affair, eighteen inches across the middle and four layers high, covered with a sheen like satin. But after his comment he yawned, said: ‘Well – don’t see there’s much else I can do around here. Guess I’ll take a walk down the street.’
‘You going to be home for supper?’
‘I’ll try to make it, but if I’m not home by six don’t wait for me. I may be tied up.’
‘I want to know.’
‘I told you, if I’m not home by six—’
‘That doesn’t do me any good at all. I’m making this cake for Mrs Whitley, and she’s going to pay me three dollars for it. Now if you’re going to be home I’ll spend part of that money on lamb chops for your supper. If you’re not, I’ll buy something the children will like better.’
‘Then count me out.’
‘That’s all I want to know.’
There was a grim note in the scene that was obviously out of key with his humour. He stood around uncertainly, then made a
bid for appreciation. ‘I fixed up those trees. Tied them up good, so the limbs won’t bend down when the avocados get big, the way they did last year. Cut the grass. Looks pretty nice out there.’
‘You going to water the grass?’
‘I
did
water it.’
He said this with quiet complacency, for he had set a little trap for her, and she had fallen into it. But the silence that followed had a slightly ominous feel to it, as though he himself might have fallen into a trap that he wasn’t aware of. Uneasily he added: ‘Gave it a good wetting down.’
‘Pretty early for watering the grass, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, one time’s as good as another.’
‘Most people, when they water the grass, wait till later in the day, when the sun’s not so hot, and it’ll do some good, and not be a waste of good water that somebody else has to pay for.’
‘Who, for instance?’
‘I don’t see anybody work around here but me.’
‘You see any work I
can
do that I
don’t
do?’
‘So you get done early.’
‘Come on, Mildred, what are you getting at?’
‘She’s waiting for you, so go on.’
‘Who’s waiting for me?’
‘I think you know.’
‘If you’re talking about Maggie Biederhof, I haven’t seen her for a week, and she never did mean a thing to me except somebody to play rummy with when I had nothing else to do.’
‘That’s practically all the time, if you ask me.’
‘I wasn’t asking you.’