Skeleton Key (5 page)

Ricky Devlin lingered beside Georgine; she saw that his color had returned to normal, and was no longer afraid that he might burst into tears of shame if anyone noticed him. “Is it you who plays the mouth-organ, Ricky?” she asked. “I heard someone practicing this afternoon.”

“Not me,” Ricky said. “It musta been Mr. McKinnon over there. He's the old bearcat on the harmonica.”

“The one who was just talking? Not
really
?”

Mrs. Gillespie, preparing to go, bent over her. “He's a little queer, anyhow,” she said anxiously. “I don't know if he'd be a very responsible warden. You know what he told somebody? They were talking about draft numbers, and he said he'd never be called, the Army didn't want him because he was a Japanese spy. He said they'd fixed up his face with plastic surgery.”

Georgine's lips twitched, and she glanced once more at the transformed face, which would have looked perfectly at home under a Glengarry bonnet. “Of course I knew it was a joke,” Mrs. Gillespie added, “but he must have a funny kind of mind to say a thing like that.”

The living-room was gradually emptying; Mrs. Devlin folded up the embroidery to which she had given her attention throughout the meeting, and looked for her son. He was speaking to Claris Frey. The sight of the two young things standing in a glow of afternoon sunlight brought a queer pain to the heart, but they behaved like no more than casual acquaintances. “New dress, Clar?” Ricky said politely. “Very solid set of threads.”

“Thanks,” said Claris languidly, turning away to follow her father. Mrs. Devlin gave a little sigh, in which relief and satisfaction were plain. “Coming home with mother, Ricky dear?” she said triumphantly.

It was at that moment that Georgine conceived a violent partisanship for young Frederic Devlin. Anyone could have forgiven him if he had snarled at his mother; but he did not. With a curiously adult resignation he stood back to let her precede him, and there was nothing in his boy's face but courtesy.

Hollister had gone to the door with some of the party, and Mr. McKinnon came strolling across the room to stand by Georgine. The light struck a spark of copper from his sandy brush of mustache. “As one temporary resident to another, Mrs. Wyeth,” he said, “let me tell you that all wardens aren't quite as zealous as this one. He does a conscientious job, but maybe we're not so near to dissolution as he makes out.” The casual quiet of his voice made light of everything from the war downward.

“I'd gathered that,” said Georgine. “This block seems to be organized within an inch of its life.”

This innocent remark caused an explosion that made her drop her pencil. From beside the door Ralph Stort shouted, “God, yes! That's a sample of what the authorities do for you, they're not contented with getting us into this goddamned war, they give someone the power to get us in here once a month and torture us. We might as well all be dead. I wish I
was
dead!”

Mimi Gillespie, who had been waiting for him in the hall, now popped back into the room, “Oh, brother, don't say that,” she began ineffectually, laying her hand on Stort's arm. At the same moment Harry Gillespie said harshly, “Skip it, Ralph, and come on home. Can't we get through a day without one of your nerve-storms?”

Stort turned on him furiously. “You great hunk of flesh, you don't know what I go through.”

“Well, go through it somewhere else,” said Mr. Gillespie, vigorously pushing his brother-in-law into the hall. Mimi trotted after them, hopelessly murmuring, “Harry, don't, please. Now, Ralphie, you just need a drink.”

“Impassioned,” said Mr. McKinnon mildly.

“Right in tune with the rest of the meeting,” said Georgine rather crossly. “I never saw a bunch of people so set on annoying each other, or getting embarrassed. And heaven help me, I did my share. Did you hear me in that yelling contest with Mr. Frey?”

Mr. McKinnon nodded, very gravely, but with the twinkle reappearing far back in his eyes.

“Look here,” Georgine murmured, “is he as deaf as all that, or is it just convenient?”

“Why?”

“When the door banged he jumped, just like all the rest of us. Were you here then?”

“Yes, I was here. But I think Frey's affliction is genuine. You ever hear of sound perception? The totally deaf can't distinguish words, but they can feel vibrations.”

“Oh,” Georgine said. “I'm glad to know that; I was just ready to get mad at him all over again, for ignoring his doorbell this afternoon.”

“Was that you, ringing at house doors about three o'clock? H'm. I'm sorry I didn't answer, but I was working.” He sat down beside her, his light voice flowing effortlessly along. “The morning was one long list of callers: the Fuller Brush man, the last one in captivity probably; and two ladies trying to find out how many extra beds I had, but not with any ulterior motive I believe, and”—he chuckled suddenly, and Georgine looked up—“a little tike about two feet high asking it I had ‘any skwap wubbah.'”

Why
, she thought,
he's attractive when he talks about something he likes; that kind of amused tenderness makes his face come alive. Funny how much more affectionate the word “little” sounds in a Scots accent that takes the t's out of it
. “Li'le,” Georgine murmured inaudibly.

“And so,” McKinnon continued, again looking impassive, “I planned to ignore the doorbell from then on. But if I'd known what I was missing…”

He didn't finish, but it was obvious that he was one of those who took second looks at Georgine.

“Maybe it's as well for you,” she said. “The way I felt then, I'd have sold you a Magnificent Combination Offer before you could get your breath.”

“Sold him a what?” said Mr. Hollister genially, coming in to receive her completed dossier.

“Magazines,” she told him. Mr. McKinnon looked over the warden's shoulder and read her address aloud. “Right down in my home district,” he observed pleasantly.

“Magazines?” Hollister said, “You're not a secretary?”

“Only temporarily. Professor Paev happened to be looking for one, and I grabbed at the chance.”

“Well, well. That must have been what that mousy little gal was after; the one who went in there last week.”

“Didn't see her,” Mr. McKinnon said.

Hollister kept his eyes on the printed form he held. “Sure. I guess she found the old Prof was too hard to get on with—or something. I only saw her going in that one time. Come to think of it, I never saw her again.”

He looked up suddenly, with a jovial chuckle. “Seemed like she just disappeared.”

Georgine had thought of Grettry Road as situated at the other end of nowhere, but after all it didn't take so long for her to get home. She could walk it in half an hour, by using the short cut which dropped through the Gillespies' back yard and through the brush and dry grass of the canyon, ending in a breathless scramble up the far side. From then on the streets were steep, but inhabited.

She was tired; she felt thankful for once at the sight of her landlords' house, a job of remodeling which had changed an honest old dwelling into a pseudo-Spanish monstrosity. It was only a few feet from the sidewalk, and Georgine lived in a yard cottage at the rear of its spacious lot. It was lucky that the landlords were elderly and didn't drive, since her house had once been the garage. The approach to it, though now closed by a stucco wall and a very artistic gate, had been the driveway. She went through the gate, under the overhanging balcony lavishly ornamented with pendent baskets and standing pots of petunias, and cast an unhopeful glance at the mailbox. Too early to expect a letter, of course. Barby had been gone only since this morning.

She looked at her check, frankly gloating. In the face of its written figures, she could forget her absurd fancies, the eerie stillness of Grettry Road in the afternoon, the tensions of the warden's meeting, even the curious gardening habits of her new employer.

A year ago she might have regarded the residents of Grettry Road as a queer crew; now, she was aware that they were no more peculiar than the inhabitants of any block in Berkeley—perhaps than a cross-section of a university town anywhere. The know-your-neighbor campaign must have brought surprises to a lot of people.

Georgine put off until after supper the pleasure of endorsing her check and putting it in the mail, addressed to Barby's doctor. The late sunset had died when she slipped out in the warm June night and posted the letter. “There,” she said aloud as the green metal flap of the box clanged.

She should have felt triumphant. Instead, an inexplicable feeling seized her; quite against her will, she found herself remembering a horrible story she'd once read. In it, a man had lost the object which could have saved him from doom, and a voice, audible to him alone, kept repeating in his ear, “You can't give it back now. You can't give it back now.”

Well, how foolish! Why should she want to give back the check? What if it had passed out of her keeping, almost irrevocably?
You can't give it back now
.

That odd chilly feeling on her shoulder-blades must be due to the fact that she'd run out without a coat. Nobody was abroad on this quiet, respectable street. There was no reason for her to hurry back to her cottage, and close the door behind her and turn on an extra lamp.

But in spite of forcing herself to a moderate walk, she was breathless when she reached the house. Her living-room waited for her peacefully, the same as always in its shabby, comfortable furniture, its brown and tawny colors, the familiar smells of redwood and starched curtains and whole-wheat toast.

She leaned against the door that shut night out, and felt her world swing back to its normal state. This was home, this was sanctuary.

CHAPTER THREE

M
ORE THAN ONCE
, in the days that followed, Georgine Wyeth noted with amusement how much Grettry Road, in its semi-isolation, resembled a village. There was a little more tolerance, not quite so minute a knowledge of other people's affairs; but it had most of the other traditional elements, the self-elected grande dame, the eccentrics, the restless youngsters, the village siren. “All we need,” Georgine told herself, “is a Safeway store at one end and a movie at the other, and we could hole in for the duration. Maybe we'd need a hairdresser's, too—No, they're using me to talk to instead.”

It was even more entertaining to find herself in the role, not exactly of confidante, but of a fresh mind on which everyone was eager to stamp his own impressions. She had sought no further acquaintance with the Road's inhabitants, but it was forced on her. In her brief outdoor rest periods at noon and mid-afternoon, and in the times of arrival and departure, she managed involuntarily to collect an astonishing amount of knowledge about the neighbors.

On the day after the block meeting Mr. John Devlin, at No. 18, returned from his sales trip through California and Nevada. He was on the lawn with his son when Georgine started homeward after an industrious and uneventful day. Ricky, friendly as a puppy, greeted her.

“Hello, Mrs. Wyeth! Look, here's my dad. He just got in about an hour ago.”

Georgine's first glance at the elder Devlin gave her a small shock. The descriptive word that sprang to her mind was—
haunted
. The next minute, as he smiled politely, she thought she must have imagined it. John Devlin was dark-haired, gray-eyed, an older and more worn edition of his attractive son, but obviously several years his wife's junior. Georgine had a wholly indefensible thought about the union, for which she had to reprove herself.

In the midst of this she realized that Ricky was trying to enlist her as an ally. “
She
thinks there'll probably be some bombings, Dad,” he said eagerly “And gosh, look, they'll need me if there are. If you'd just insist that I could be a messenger or something… Don't you think I could do it, Mrs. Wyeth?”

“Ricky, really, I can't take sides, when your parents feel they don't want you to serve.” The look in his face made her add, “You do seem very strong and—mature.”

“Old enough to go into the Navy, if I could get Mother or Dad to sign a permission,” Ricky muttered.

“Now, Rick, that's enough,” John Devlin said irritably. “You know how y'mother feels about it. You're needed at home. We can't both go off and leave her alone.”

“There are lots of jobs around here.” His voice was low.

“I have to do what I'm doing. You don't know anything about it,” Devlin snapped back at him.

Ricky looked at him hopelessly. “Well, if I'm old enough to be the man of the house…! No, please don't go, Mrs. Wyeth, I kind of hoped you'd talk to—”

“I can't, Ricky. Don't you see I can't?” Georgine had begun to edge off toward the intersection, but the voices followed her.