Peyton Place (35 page)

“Hurry,” she moaned. “Hurry. Hurry.”

For only a moment, Rodney was panicky, and after that he did not care, not even when she had to help him. For less than a moment he wondered if all the stories he had read and heard and told about virgins could be wrong. Betty did not scream in pain or beg him to stop hurting her. She led him without a fumble, and her hips moved quickly, expertly. She did not cry out at all. She moaned deep in her throat the way she did when he kissed her, and the only word she uttered was, “Hurry. Hurry. Hurry.”

After that, Rodney did not notice what she did or said. He was lost in her, drowning in her, and he did not think at all. In a very few minutes he lay shivering on the blanket next to her, and her voice seemed to be coming from very far away.

“Smart guy,” she was hissing at him. “Smart guy who knew all about it. So smart he doesn't even know enough to wear a safe. Get me home, you dumb jackass. Quick!”

But, unfortunately, Rodney did not get her home quickly enough, or her douche was not strong enough, or, as Rodney was inclined to believe, the Fates were out to foul him up good. It was five weeks later, during the third week of August, when Betty faced him with the worst.

“I'm a month overdue.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I'm pregnant, smart guy.”

“But how can you tell so soon?” stammered Rodney.

“I was supposed to come around the week after we were at the Like. That was five weeks ago,” said Betty tonelessly.

“What are we going to do?”

“We're going to get married, that's what. Nobody's sticking me with a kid and then running out on me, like that bastard from White River did to my sister.”

“Married! But what will my father say?”

“That's for you to find out, smart guy. Ask him.”

Leslie Harrington was not a worrier, for he had discovered as a young man that worry is profitless. Early in life, Leslie had learned the best way of beating any problem. Whenever one presented itself, instead of spending hours in futile, squirrel-in-a-cage worry, he would sit down and list on paper all the possible solutions to the problem at hand. When his list was as complete as he could make it, he was able to choose a good, sensible solution which was, more often than not, advantageous to him. This system had never failed him. If it had, he would have discarded it at once and searched for another, for Leslie Harrington could not stand to be bested by anyone or anything. He had never been curious enough to wonder why this was so. It was simply a facet of his personality and he took it as much for granted as he did the shape of his skull. He could not bear to lose, and that was the end of it. On the few occasions when he had lost, he had been physically ill for days and mentally depressed for weeks, but even these bad times served a purpose. In the painful wake which followed a loss, he had time to figure out the reasons why he had not won, and to strengthen the weaknesses which had caused him to lose. At fifty, Leslie Harrington could, and often did, say with pride that he had never suffered the same loss twice.

As a small child, Leslie had thrown himself to the floor in screaming tantrums of rage on the few occasions when his mother or father beat him at a game of lotto or old maid. His parents had adjusted quickly to this twist in their son, and as soon as they had, Leslie never lost another game of any kind when he played with them. Later, he had discovered that it was possible to win at practically anything if one could cheat successfully and well. He had become the star of his basketball team at school as soon as he had learned to knee and elbow so well that the referees could not catch him, and he had graduated as valedictorian of his class after four years of carrying notes on his shirt cuffs and thin tubes of paper in the hollow half of his fountain pen. Leslie Harrington was voted most likely to succeed by his classmates, and this was not the mockery it might have been. It was extremely likely that Leslie would succeed, for he felt he must where others would merely have liked to enjoy the rewards of success. To Leslie Harrington, success was not the vague word of many meanings which it was to a majority of his intellectual classmates. In his mind the word was crisp, sharp and clearly defined. It meant money, the biggest house in town and the best car. But most of all it meant what Leslie termed “being the boss.” That he would “be boss” at the Cumberland Mills was a foregone conclusion. The mills had been started by his grandfather and enlarged by his father, and the “boss” chair in the factory offices was cut to fit Leslie, the third generation owner. It was, of course, not enough. What Leslie really wanted was to be boss of the world, and while he wisely limited himself to his mills, his home and his town, he never lost sight of his larger desire.

At the age of twenty-five, Leslie decided to marry Elizabeth Fuller, a tall, slim girl who had the aristocratic look which sometimes comes after generations of inbreeding. At the time when Leslie set out to marry her, Elizabeth had been engaged to Seth Buswell for over a year. The obstacles between Leslie and Elizabeth were of a number and caliber to excite any man who loved a contest which he was sure of winning, and Leslie knew that he would win. He had only to look at Elizabeth, sweet, young and as pliant as a green willow branch, and he knew. The obstacles in his path consisted of her family, Seth and Seth's family and the Harrington family, and there was not a soul among them who thought that marrying Elizabeth was the wise thing for Leslie to do. He had beaten them all and he had won Elizabeth, and in less than ten years he had killed her. In eight years, Elizabeth Harrington miscarried eight times in the third month of each pregnancy, and after every time Dr. Matthew Swain and several Boston specialists to whom Leslie dragged his frail, tired wife, told him that she could not survive another. It was impossible, they said, for Elizabeth to carry a child full term, and none of them realized that with that word, “impossible,” they had changed what had been a desire for a son and heir in Leslie to an obsession. When Elizabeth became pregnant in the ninth year of her marriage, Leslie hired a doctor and two nurses from White River. The three of them moved into the Harrington house, put Elizabeth to bed and kept her there for nine months. When she was delivered of a black-haired, red-faced, nine-and-one-half-pound son, Elizabeth lived long enough to hear him cry once. She died several minutes before one of the nurses from White River had had time to clean the baby and put him at his mother's side. When Leslie held his son for the first time, his triumph had been greater than any he had ever known, and it did not horrify him that this time the obstacle in the path of his desire had been his wife.

As the years passed, Leslie continued to “boss” his mills and his town, but he did not “boss” his son. This, too, was of his own choosing. It pleased him when he saw reflected in Rodney the traits which were his.

“Got gumption, that kid has,” Leslie often said. “There's not a trace of the weak-kneed Fullers in him.”

In this, Leslie Harrington was badly mistaken, for Rodney was weak in the terrible, final way in which only those who are protected and surrounded by powerful externals are weak. Rodney never had to be strong, for strength was all around him, ready-made to protect and shield him. Nor was Rodney driven by a compulsion to succeed as was his father. True, he liked to win well enough, but not to the extent that he would fight and struggle to win, especially if his opponents happened to be his physical match. Before he was ten years old, Rodney knew that there was nothing worth winning that involved effort, for without effort he could win anything he wanted from his father. He had merely to ask or, later, to hold out his hand, and whatever he wanted was his. Yet Rodney was not a fool. He knew that it was politic for him to please his father whenever he could, especially when it involved no sacrifice on his part. Thus, when he had been younger and his father had wanted him to associate with “nice” children, Rodney had done so. It made no difference to him. He could be King anywhere. And later, when his father had wanted him to go to New Hampton, Rodney had gone willingly. He hated school anyway, so it did not matter to him where he went. When he was expelled, he had not been afraid to come home and face his father.

“I got bounced, Dad,” he said.

“What the hell for?”

“Too much drinking and girling, I guess.”

“Well, for Christ's sake!”

Leslie had gone at once to the headmaster at New Hampton and told him what he thought of a school that tried to prevent a youngster from sowing a few wild oats.

“I'm paying you to teach him a few academic courses,” Leslie had shouted, “not to worry about what he does with his free time. I'll worry about that.”

But Leslie Harrington had never been a worrier. It was stupid and profitless. He certainly did not worry about his son, for there was no scrape that Rodney could possibly get into that his father could not fix. It was natural for a healthy, red-blooded boy to get into a few scrapes. Leslie said often that he wouldn't give a nickel for a boy who didn't get into a fix now and then. He had a fine relationship with his son, who was a normal, healthy, good-looking boy. He and his son were pals, chums, and while they respected one another in the way good friends would, there were no binding father-and-son strings attached to their relationship.

“Apron strings are for women,” Leslie told Rodney often, so that when he was still very young, Rodney learned to love his life in the womanless house on Chestnut Street.

For all these
reasons,
Rodney, at sixteen, was not in the least afraid of his father. When he asked Betty Anderson what she thought his father would say about the trouble she was in, it was not fear which prompted him but, rather, a curious desire to know.

When Rodney left Betty Anderson on the night she told him she was pregnant, he went at once to his father. Leslie was sitting in the house on Chestnut Street in the room designated as “The Study.” The walls of this room were covered from floor to ceiling with shelves containing books in handsome, leather-bound sets, none of which had ever been read. The books had been bought by Leslie's father for decorative purposes and Leslie had inherited them along with the rest of the house. Twice a week, old Pratte dusted the book spines with an attachment which she hooked up to the vacuum cleaner. Leslie was seated at a table in front of a book-lined wall, doing a jigsaw puzzle.

“Hi, Dad,” said Rodney.

“Hello, Rod,” said Leslie.

The conversation which ensued after this exchange might have shocked and surprised an outsider, but it held neither of these elements for the two participants. Rodney flopped down into a leather-upholstered chair and flung his legs over the wide arm, while Leslie continued to work on the jigsaw puzzle.

“There's this girl down on Ash Street who claims I knocked her up.”

“Who's that?”

“Betty Anderson.”

“John Anderson's girl?”

“Yes. The youngest one.”

“How far gone is she?”

“She says a month, although I don't see how she can know for sure so soon.”

“There are ways.”

“She wants me to marry her.”

“What do you want?”

“I don't want to.”

“O.K. I'll take care of it. You want a drink?”

“O.K.”

The two Harringtons sipped whisky and soda, the father's drink only slightly stronger than the son's, and talked about baseball until eleven o'clock when Rodney said that he guessed he'd take a shower and go to bed.

On the following Monday morning, Leslie Harrington sent for John Anderson who worked as a loom fixer in the Cumberland Mills. Anderson entered Leslie's pine-paneled, wall-to-wall carpeted office with his cap in his hand and stood in front of Leslie's desk shuffling his feet.

“You got a daughter named Betty, John?”

“Yes, sir.”

“She's pregnant.”

John Anderson sat down on a leather chair without being asked. His cap fell on the floor.

“She's going around saying my son did it, John.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don't like that kind of talk, John.”

“No, sir.”

“You've worked for me a long time, John, and if you're having trouble at home I'd like to help you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Here's a check, John. It's for five hundred dollars. There's a note attached to it on which I've written the name of a close-mouthed doctor from White River, so that your daughter can get rid of her package. Five hundred will be more than enough, with a little bonus for you in the bargain, John.”

John Anderson stood up and retrieved his cap. “Thank you, sir,” he said.

“Do you like working for me, John?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That's all, John. You can go back to work now.”

“Thank you, sir.”

When John Anderson had left, Leslie sat down at his desk and lit a cigar. He buzzed his secretary to find out if his coffee was ready.

That same afternoon, Betty Anderson who had not only the morals but the claws of an alley cat, stormed her way past Leslie's secretary and into
Leslie's
office. Her face bore the marks of her father's rage, and her mouth was still twisted with the filthy names she had called Rodney. She flung Leslie's check down on his desk.

“You're not buying me off that cheap, Mr. Harrington,” she screamed. “It's Rodney's kid I'm carrying, and Rodney's going to marry me.”

Leslie Harrington picked up the check the girl had flung. He did not speak.

“Rodney's going to marry me or I'll go to the police. They give a guy twenty years for bastardy in this state, and I'll see to it that he serves every single day of it unless he marries me.”

Leslie buzzed for his secretary. “Bring my checkbook, Esther,” he said, and Betty flounced to a chair, a smile of satisfaction on her bruised lips.

When the secretary had come and gone, Leslie sat down at his desk and began to write.

“You know, Betty,” he said, as he wrote, “I don't think you really want to bring Rodney to court. If you did that, I'd have to call in a few boys as witnesses against you. Do you know how many witnesses it takes to testify against a girl and have her declared a prostitute in this state? Only six, Betty, and I employ a great many more than six men in the mills.” Leslie tore the new check from his book with a crisp rip. He looked at Betty and smiled, extending the check. “I don't think you want to take Rodney to court, do you, Betty?”