Rest and Be Thankful (16 page)

“Come on, Karl,” Grubbock said. “We’ll visit Chuck and see if he has any beer left. Pity we killed that bottle last night. That’s one thing you learn out here: ration yourself.”

“We can go into Sweetwater tomorrow and stock up again,” Koffing suggested as they walked up to the ranch. “I want to collect my mail too. I’m expecting some newspapers and magazines. Take a damned long time to arrive. Wonder what’s delaying them?”

“Tomorrow we are having our first long ride. Deep Canyon, remember? That’s the scene of Chuck’s story about the Indian massacre. I can drink myself to death in New York, but I can’t go riding into Deep Canyon. I’ll ask Bly to get us some liquor in Sweetwater. She’s always shopping there, anyway.”

“And if you ask her to bring more than a couple of bottles she’ll open wide her big blue eyes.” Koffing laughed, and then imitated Sally as she offered them a drink in the evenings: “Another Scotch, Mr. Grubbock?” He looked with amusement at Grubbock’s face. “Why don’t you take that third drink in the evenings anyway? Scared of her?”

“Well, she thinks she’s being generous,” Grubbock said uncomfortably. If Sally Bly hadn’t offered him another drink he would have resented it. But she offered it. And by taking it he would have proved he couldn’t refuse. In New York he used to say that he could take a drink or leave it. But he must have taken it oftener than he had left it, for the one thing that annoyed him about Rest and be Thankful was the fact that the nearest bar was twenty-five miles away. And he hadn’t enjoyed finding out that it should annoy him. I can take it or leave it, he told himself angrily.

“You’ll be drinking Coca-cola before she finishes with you,” Koffing warned him.

“The hell I will,” Grubbock said. Then he halted, looking at the blue sky over Flashing Smile mountain, and changed the subject willingly. “Hey!” he said, pointing. “There’s an eagle!”

High in the blue sky the eagle soared over Flashing Smile Mountain. It circled slowly, turning in a wide curve, travelling surely, with pinions seemingly motionless. Yet it had left Flashing Smile and was over Deep Canyon even as you watched; then past Deep Canyon, past the forests, to the cloud-shadowed hillsides. Its brooding circles brought it lower, its giant wings outstretched as if to cover its kingdom. It seemed to halt. For a moment its large, hard shadow hovered over the trail. You halted too, waiting, watching. It circled once more, alert, majestic, dominating. The black shadow swept over the hillside, betraying the speed and power of the eagle’s flight. Then suddenly, as if its body had lightened and had lifted triumphantly in some unseen current of air, it rose high into the sky once more. Your heart lifted too. But you still watched it, travelling now across the first ridge of mountains, planing over the sea of rocky pinnacles, to soar away into the vast stretch of blue.

On the green hillside there were only the harmless shadows left—the moving clouds; the steers bunching together as they moved down the trail; the three riders urging them on watchfully, bringing them slowly and carefully to new pastureland.

A group of three steers, then two more, then three again, broke from the herd. One of the horsemen spurred his horse into a gallop, as smooth and as effortless as the eagle had travelled, flanking the strays, drawing them together, edging them back into the herd with swinging rope and repeated short, sharp-pitched yell. Then he waited, his body now relaxed, the horse still eager but obediently motionless, until the herd had passed and he could follow it.

Mrs. Peel watched the distant eagle until she could see it no more. Then she turned away from the window of the living-room, and continued with her afternoon rest, which today took the shape of putting away all the phonograph records in their proper albums. She discovered five beer-bottles behind the couch along with the missing third record of Shostakovich’s Seventh. Thank goodness, Karl Koffing still considered it “artistically great.” There were so many composers whom he now spurned, and writers, such as Huxley or Eliot, who might never have written for all he ever mentioned them. Mrs. Peel frowned. She found Karl and his judgments such a disturbing echo of Marie and Charles in Paris. Would he, if ever he were to control a magazine, behave as they had done? Would he seek to ruin Earl Grubbock’s reputation and career, for instance, as Marie and Charles had set out to attack André Mercier? Poor André, who had always treated Marie’s writings so fairly and honestly, even if he disagreed with her politics.

Of course, Karl wasn’t a Communist. That was what he had said yesterday in that bitter argument. “Sure,” Karl had said then, “smear everyone with liberal views as a Communist, so that no one will listen to him.”

But now, as she thought about it, it was rather a clever remark. It implied that Communists had liberal views. And yet they hadn’t: they followed a philosophy which, when put into practice, killed liberalism.

“What we all need is a thorough training in simple logic,” Mrs. Peel said to the album of Shostakovitch records, as she patted it into order next to Sibelius. “And a thorough training in semantics too.” Take this newly fashionable word “smear,” for instance. A “smear” was another way of saying a lie nowadays. Yet if anyone had been lying last night it was Karl, who had been quoting the Communist explanation for everything all evening, and then, when challenged by O’Farlan, had denied he was following the party line by saying he was being smeared. If Karl believed he
was
being smeared, then he implied he despised pro-Communist views. If he despised them, why did he express them so constantly?

“If a man refuses meat at every meal, and talks about the virtues of vegetables why should he say he is being smeared when he is called a vegetarian?” Mrs. Peel demanded of the neat row of record albums. If only she could think about these things in time to say them at the correct moments! She placed the beer-bottles on the table so that she would remember to take them to the kitchen, and looked round the room to see if she had missed anything. Today was Norah’s day off, and Drene Travers had been responsible for cleaning the living-room. Ah, yes, these ashtrays...

“I thought someone was with you,” Esther Park said behind her. She had come in so silently that Mrs. Peel jumped, and lifted her hand to her heart.

“No. Not at all. I was only arguing aloud. Don’t you ever talk to yourself?”

Esther Park had already reached the couch. “No,
never!”
she said quickly. She looked at the empty beer-bottles and then at Mrs. Peel. She had her note-book under her arm, the case for her eyeglasses in one hand, and a large, straight-brimmed felt hat swinging from the other.

Well, there’s no need to be so emphatic about it, Mrs. Peel thought.

“How do you like me?” Esther Park asked suddenly, gaily, and pirouetted around. She was in full Western costume, with every possible detail and expense. And, of course, she wore her frontier pants tucked inside her elaborate boots.

“Oh!” Mrs. Peel said. “Why, it’s—it’s—”

“You never noticed! And I went upstairs especially to put them on for you. They only arrived today. I ordered them in Sweetwater when I came, but, of course, they all had to be taken in for me.” She tugged at the tight satin blouse and the bulging frontier pants. Then she fingered the broad silver concho belt nervously. “I think the effect is worth waiting for, don’t you? I could have got everything in New York, of course, but I
did
want to capture the real Western flavour.” Then she smiled as she glanced down at herself, pleased with what she could see, and threw her hat, with its striped chin-strap, on to a far chair, from which it slipped and rolled to the floor.

“Let’s have a
long
talk, shall we?” she asked, with her most brilliant smile, and sat down on the couch. “Tell me about your life in Paris. I love Paris. It’s so—
so
—you know! Rome, of course, is beautiful—in its own way, and I adored, simply adored, Athens. Didn’t you? The Aegean...”

“Yes, yes,” Mrs. Peel said, at the end of a wild Baedeker ride which had lasted almost ten minutes, “you love Paris.” For they were back there again.

“Of course, the people...” Esther Park said darkly.

“The people?”

“Well, the men... Mrs. Peel, what
makes
men like that?”

“Like what?”

“You
know.” Esther Park looked at Mrs. Peel critically. “Or perhaps you don’t. Some women aren’t so—well—”

“So young? So attractive?” Mrs. Peel’s sense of humour reasserted itself. She was smiling.

“Well, it does depend on the woman, doesn’t it, after all? But, honestly, men are so—so predatory. Do you ever walk in New York?”

Mrs. Peel’s amazement returned. “I’ve lived there since last September,” she suggested mildly.

“Have you ever walked in Central Park?”

“Frequently.”

“At night?”

“But why at night? I’ve all afternoon to go walking.”

“Then you don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?” Mrs. Peel asked irritably.

“The dangers.”

Mrs. Peel looked partly in distaste, partly in pity at the middle-aged woman who faced her so expectantly. “Well,” she said, her voice more brusque than usual, “you can stop worrying about all these dangers here. You’ll find Wyoming perfectly safe.” And probably dull, she thought.

Esther Park smiled. “Is it?”

Mrs. Peel stared.

“Do you know what happened last night? Someone tried to get into my room. I always lock the door, fortunately. But I heard the handle being turned. I heard it. Again and again. Quietly. I thought I would die.”

“Why didn’t you scream?”

“You don’t believe me. You are laughing at me.” Esther Park was mortified.

“Miss Park, there are so many noises at night in the country. The wind rises and a window rattles, the temperature falls and a beam contracts, a mouse runs down a wall, a pack-rat scurries in the attic, a squirrel drops from a tree on to the roof, a coyote calls on a hillside. I used to worry about them at first, but now—why, we don’t even lock the front door any more.”

“And I think that’s terribly dangerous. I do, Mrs. Peel. There were people moving around last night. There were. Dewey Schmetterling left the house and didn’t come back for two hours. And I heard Mimi Bassinbrook too.”

“That’s really none of our business, is it?” Mrs. Peel rose, and hoped that her guest would take the hint. But she didn’t.

“Mimi went to a party at the guest-cabin. That’s where she went.”

“Well, what if she did? Why shouldn’t Mr. Grubbock and Mr. Koffing give parties?”

“And the girl who cleans the bedrooms, Drene Travers, she was there too. After she left Dewey Schmetterling.”

“How remarkable,” Mrs. Peel said coldly, “that you could see so much from your bedroom window.”

Strangely enough, Esther Park was silent.

“You really shouldn’t worry, Miss Park. I’m sure you—and everyone else—will be as safe here as you want to be. Just go on writing your book. And stop worrying.”

“But that worries me too... I did want to discuss My Work with you,” Esther Park said, watching Mrs. Peel gather up the beer-bottles. “I need your advice. I’ve so much material,
so
much. It is so difficult, isn’t it, when you have too much richness? I mean, to decide just what to use?” She fumbled with her note-book. “Of course, I have the title.” She held out a page, and Mrs. Peel saw
The Mirrored Darkness: a Mezzotint in Four Shadows.
“I think ‘Mezzotint’ is good, don’t you? It’s so much more sensitive than just saying ‘a novel,’ isn’t it?”

Mrs. Peel laid down the beer-bottles. She had waited hopefully for her guests to mention their work to her. Now one of them had—and if Mrs. Peel was sure of anything at this moment it was that Esther Park had never written, couldn’t and wouldn’t. She tried to shake herself free from this idea, but it persisted.

“What is the trouble?” she asked encouragingly, trying to forget all about the title. But the outpouring of words that answered her added to her depressing discovery. She said, if only to dam the torrent, “Well, show me the last chapter you’ve written so that I can see what you mean by difficulties. I’ve had quite a lot of practice in reading manuscripts, you know. In the old days, I used to—”

“Oh, I can’t, I’m afraid. Mr. Atherton Jones is reading it. He is such a good critic, isn’t he?”

In Esther’s excited contortions over an excuse her notebook fell on to the carpet. She bent quickly to pick it up, and the leather case for her glasses fell in its turn. The case hit the ground with a solid thud, the clasp unsnapped, and Mrs. Peel saw the neat handle of a small revolver, just as she was thinking how odd it was that Esther never seemed to wear the eyeglasses she carried around so constantly.

Esther Park looked up and saw Mrs. Peel’s startled face. “I had the case made for me specially,” she said casually, and smiled.

“For Central Park?” Mrs. Peel asked, recovering herself.

“I take it everywhere. It is such a comfort.”

“But hardly necessary here.”

“Oh, you never know,” Esther Park said hopefully. She rose. “I think I’ll go up to the corral. I suppose you are too busy to walk up? Poor Mrs. Peel, always so busy. We must have another talk soon. Perhaps in your little sitting-room tomorrow afternoon? That would be so cosy. I’ll
try
to slip away from the others. Mr. Atherton Jones tells me you know all about Sartre.” She picked up her hat, and settled it firmly on the back of her head. “Well, see you tomorrow. About two o’clock?” She waved the spectacle-case playfully, and clumped on her high-heeled boots into the hall.

Mr. Atherton Jones, Mrs. Peel thought angrily, Mr. Atherton Jones had a number of questions to answer. Mr. Atherton Jones had better have a few replies that were not only quick, but plausible. She picked up the beer-bottles and the overfull wastepaper-basket, and carried them along with her bad temper into the kitchen.

* * *

Mrs. Gunn had just put something into the oven. The kitchen smelled of spices and baking pastry and hot coffee. Robert O’Farlan and Carla Brightjoy were seated comfortably at the long table under the opened windows, talking to old Chuck and Ned. Mrs. Gunn added her comments to the conversation, very much in the way she sprinkled the correct touch of seasoning into a cooking-pot.