Burnt Offerings (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) (8 page)

His will was weakening; he recognized the signs. The shade moved and he waited for the breeze to pass over him. When it did, he called “Marian?” quietly. The heavy breathing lost a beat.

“Does it really mean that much to you?” he said.

Her voice, when it finally came, was very much awake. “You know it does.” She shifted a little away from him. “I’ll survive,” she said.

“The question is . . . will I?” He put his hand on her shoulder and let it slide down to her hip.

“It’s hot,” she said. “Move to your own side.”

He didn’t and she made no attempt to move away from him.

“Do you want me to call them?” he asked.

She gave a long sigh and her breath caught, just a little beyond control. “At this point, Ben, I don’t care much what you do.”

Just before noon Sunday morning, the phone rang in the hall. Miss Allardyce reached it on the second ring, and then let it ring three more times, until Brother came in from the living room and Walker from the kitchen. They heard her say, “Marvelous, just marvelous . . .” and “Brother will be thrilled . . .” which was all they needed to hear. The first of July would be fine, and of course they’d all be there and show them the house and everything they needed to know. When she hung up, she was smiling.

“Our mother . . . ?” Brother asked, holding out his hand to Miss Allardyce.

“. . . is going to be just fine, Brother.” She patted his hand reassuringly, and Walker, without waiting to be barked at, went out to the car to prepare it for their biennial trip.

(5)

A few days later they received two hand-written copies of a letter of agreement, signed “Arnold Allardyce,” with space for Ben’s signature. They would agree to occupy the premises of Seventeen Shore Road from July First to Labor Day, vacating September Third. A check for four fifty should accompany the signed letter; four fifty was payable directly to Arnold Allardyce on September Third. Ben withdrew the money from their savings account, leaving them with a balance of just over seventeen hundred dollars, and mailed a check to P.O. Box 121, Mohonkson, New York.

The letter and the scrawled receipt that followed made it all real to Marian; the house and everything in it was theirs for two months; the grounds and the pool and the beach and the private dock which was useless but nice to have anyway. All her instincts had been right, from the moment she had circled the ad and called Miss Allardyce. Fate, she decided, nothing less. When she told him, Ben said, “Fate, my ass. You’re a spoiled brat and I’m a weak-willed pushover.” But it had been something close to fate, as much as meeting Ben had been ten years ago. It was only a house and it would only last two months, not a lifetime, but the depth of her reaction surprised even her when she thought about it, which was often. Having met Ben and not having married him was inconceivable to her in retrospect; the same was true of the house. Her mood – black, blacker than she could ever remember – when he had decided the house wasn’t for them, was not mere petulance, not the reaction of a spoiled child. The house was absolutely essential, a vital part of herself which she recognized immediately.

She didn’t understand it, was surprised that she could even vaguely analyze the complexity of her feelings. But it was true; the house was everything she had always wanted; it was, like Ben and David, a reflection of what she was or could be inside, at her best. And when she repeated to herself, occasionally, “For God’s sake, it’s only a house,” she was either denying the truth or – and this came to her in an ultra reflective moment – minimizing it to still some embryonic fear buried way down inside her. Why did the word “fear” come to her first? Why not “anxiety” which was probably more accurate? The house, after all, was enormous, and, yes, an old woman was something of a responsibility.

If it hadn’t been for Ben and his groundless suspicions, the feeling wouldn’t have been there in the first place, and the voices wouldn’t come back to her every once in a while, and the disconcerting looks. When they did she reminded herself that the Allardyces were old, senile maybe or close to it, insular certainly, and harmless. Besides, as she said over and over to Ben, they wouldn’t be anywhere near the house and their summer.

It was anxiety after all, and perfectly natural.

She mentioned none of it to Ben. He wouldn’t understand, or if he did, he’d laugh and, worse, say his instincts were truer than hers. Which they weren’t. Either way it was none of his business. They had taken a house for the summer and the glosses were purely personal.

Marian had seldom, she reflected, spent so much time inside herself.

Once she rearranged her calendar, Aunt Elizabeth would be delighted to spend the summer, or at least a good part of it, with them. But were they sure they wanted an old lady hanging around all the time? Ben roared and Aunt Elizabeth wondered what she had said that was so funny.

The term was over in mid-June. Ben spent an additional week at school, cleaning up his desk and meeting with the rest of the English Department to plan the fall schedule. He fought with the cretinous Miss MacKenzie over a sophomore assignment, and received a vaguely threatening exhortation from Byron, the principal, about getting on with his Master’s. When he got home after the confrontations, he was irritable and distracted, and for the first time the house and the distance and two months of leisurely reading under a tree or beside the pool seemed distinctly attractive to him.

They arranged to have their mail held until they could provide a forwarding address, and after much discussion decided they were “out of town, far out” for the summer as far as their friends were concerned. Selfish or not, they’d have enough to handle without having to gird themselves for weekly invasions. They didn’t dare mention the pool and the beach, and the house became a small cottage in the woods where Ben could work up his courses peacefully. Everyone understood, and since Aunt Elizabeth would be with them, the Rolfes would effectively pass out of existence for the next two months.

Marian, both of them were surprised to discover, had no qualms at all about abandoning the apartment and everything she had collected so lovingly. She began to dust every other day and vacuum only twice a week. She’d wash the windows when they got back in September, and the floors could wait as well. The apartment, in her mind, had suddenly become transitional.

July first, they picked up Aunt Elizabeth at eight in the morning. Ben struggled with the luggage in the small trunk of the Camaro and managed to squeeze her one suitcase in. He had attached a rack to the top of the car, which he piled with luggage, tied down, and covered with canvas. It took him half an hour to slip her easel in under the covering and maneuver Aunt Elizabeth, who was thin and amazingly agile for seventy-four and a half (her reckoning) into the back seat crammed with books and shopping bags. David sat in the front, uncomfortably, between the two bucket seats.

“We’re like a bunch of Okies,” Aunt Elizabeth said, delighted, as Ben started the car. She straightened her dress, a bright silk print, and tied a blue veil over her hair which was silver and beautifully sculpted. Marian asked her if she was comfortable, and she said, “Heavens, no!” She put on a pair of large sunglasses.

“It’ll be worth it,” Marian promised her, and then groaned and pushed herself closer to the door. “David,” she said, “my leg.
Please
.”

By the time they reached Shore Road, everything in Aunt Elizabeth had gone numb. “Except of course my mouth.”

Marian was leaning forward anxiously, searching the foliage for the stone wall.

The deserted road reminded Aunt Elizabeth of the driving lessons Ben had been promising her. “I’ve renewed my learner’s permit,” she told him. “I’m determined this time.”

Marian said, “Slow here, Ben.”

“I must say,” Ben said, “I admire your persistence.”

“My persistence is the reason I’ve flourished this long.”

“You’ve just got to learn to relax at the wheel.”

“I’m always relaxed at the wheel. I get nervous inspectors. The last one never took his hand off the door handle. ‘Young man,’ I told him, ‘I’ve been taking this test for nine years. I know exactly what I’m doing.’ ”

The wall had appeared, and soon after, the twin pillars.

“Here we are, Ben!” Marian said. He had seen them and already slowed the car.

“I trust myself more than some licensed drivers,” Aunt Elizabeth continued, and her voice had become grating and distracting to Marian who watched the dipping road as Ben drove between the pillars. “Mrs. Brinkman, for instance. Backing out of her garage the other day . . .”

“Isn’t this lovely, Aunt Elizabeth?” Marian cut in.

Aunt Elizabeth looked out at the shrubbery which had grown much thicker and closer to the drive. “Yes, just lovely,” she said, and then rested her hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Her car shot forward, Mrs. Brinkman’s, and bang! right into the side of her house.”

“She get killed?” David asked.

“Let me finish. Hit the side of her house and then jerked back, all the way to the opposite curb.” She was illustrating the motion with her hands. “You follow?” she asked David.

“That kill her?” he asked.

“Wait. Made a perfect U-turn, and then smashed through Mrs. Monsees’ bay window, straight into the living room.” She tapped Ben’s shoulder for emphasis. “Hitting, I might add, poor Mrs. Monsees who was on the phone at the time.”

She giggled and Ben said, “Oh, come on, Aunt Elizabeth,” skeptically. They were reaching the end of the woods.

“It’s the truth, Benjie,” she said, trying to control the giggle.

“That must’ve killed her,” David said.

“There it is!” Marian said. “Look at it, just look at it!”

Aunt Elizabeth looked and said, “Good God!” She raised her sunglasses, was silent for a long moment, and then repeated it. “
Good God!
”

The garage doors were closed, with the huge old Packard nowhere in sight, and so were the French windows lining the terrace, and all the other windows in the house. Ben honked the horn once as they pulled up in front of the steps.

David said, “There are sixteen of them,” and Aunt Elizabeth groaned.

“You can avoid them by going around the side,” Marian said, “toward the terrace.”

Ben turned off the ignition. Marian was watching the front door which remained closed while they climbed out of the car stiffly.

“Looks deserted,” Ben said.

Marian searched the face of the house, her eyes once again stopping at the large rounded bay. “It can’t be,” she said, moving toward the steps. “They probably didn’t hear the horn.”

“I can’t get over it,” Aunt Elizabeth exclaimed, pulling back her shoulders and stretching. She paced to get the circulation going, taking in the grounds and the house rising high above her.

Ben was untying the canvas cover. “Okay, Dave,” he called, “let’s get to work.”

When she reached the top of the steps, Marian saw a bulging envelope resting against the base of the door. It was addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. Rolfe” in Arnold Allardyce’s large and florid hand.

Oh, no,
she thought as she lifted it and felt the ring of keys inside.

Sure enough, they had gone. “Hi Folks,” the letter began, and went on to describe, most apologetically, how the damn travel agent had messed them up, miscalculating their schedule by a full day. There was a map of the house enclosed, mimeographed and quite detailed. “Boy,” “Aunt,” and “Master Chamber” had been inked in. Marian flipped through the pages of instructions and the list of names (grocer, plumber, electrician, doctor, even their insurance agent).

“What’s up?” Ben called from beside the car.

She came to the edge of the porch and tried not to hesitate or betray her own surprise and annoyance. “They had to leave,” she called back.

“
Leave?
”

He dropped the canvas and climbed past Aunt Elizabeth who had puffed her way up eight steps. Marian handed him the letter.

“ ‘Enjoy the house,’ ” he read aloud, incredulously, “ ‘and don’t worry about anything. Arnold and Roz Allardyce.’ ” He looked directly at Marian and said, “Jesus Christ!”

“I know,” Marian agreed, “it’s crazy. They
did
try to get us though.”

“They couldn’t have tried very hard.” He scanned the list of names. “What if something goes wrong? Where do we reach them?
Jesus!
” he repeated.

“Well,” Marian said as decisively as she could, “obviously nothing’s going to go wrong.” She was looking at the map with Ben. “Our Mother,” she noticed, was mimeographed across two rooms at the western end of the house. Marian recognized the position immediately; her window would be the rounded bay.

“I was wrong,” Ben said; “they’re a couple of steps beyond weird.” He folded the papers and stuffed them into the envelope. “What about the old lady?”

“I’d better look in on her,” Marian said. The keys, nine or ten of them, were all neatly labelled. She picked out “Front Door.”

“You do that,” Ben said sarcastically. “She’s all yours.”

“Rub it in,” Marian said, sticking the key into the lock.

“Oh, I intend to,” Ben said. “Here.” He handed her the envelope and turned to help Aunt Elizabeth up the last few steps.

“I won’t have to do this again, Benjie, will I?” Marian heard her say as she opened the door and stepped into the hall. “Ever?”

The double doors to the left and right of the entrance hall were closed, and the passage leading to the kitchen and servants’ wing in the rear of the house dark and silent. She remembered, as if over a month hadn’t passed, the chandelier, still cloudy in the light streaming in from the open door and the fanlight, and the Persian rug, still rolled against the wall. The mirror that had been hanging over the Regency console had been removed, leaving a tall rectangular shadow and a circle of white plaster, the size of a bullethole, in the pale green wall. She hadn’t remembered the pictures, old Italian prints, flanking the highboy against the opposite wall; but one of the two Chippendale wingchairs was missing, leaving the wall particularly naked and unbalanced. The console’s clock, gold and elaborately scrolled, read two-thirty which was wrong; the grandfather clock just before the passage at the opposite end read seven.

Marian checked her watch; it was almost ten-thirty. The Allardyces’ letter had been dated July first, which meant they had left the old lady that morning.

Brother’s inclinator, with the seat pulled up, was at the foot of the staircase. She walked past it and up the carpeted steps which curved and climbed to a long, broad hall, cut with four doors on either side. An enormous oriental rug, faded and frayed, travelled the length of the hall whose walls were covered with fabric, a green and gold pattern, worn and curling at the seams, and in one place hanging like a wide, colorless frond.

Marian checked the map and followed it down the corridor, passing another tall clock in a finialed Baltimore-type case, this one reading eight. She could hear Ben and Aunt Elizabeth dimly in the hall below.

“They do crazy things sometimes, old people,” she heard Aunt Elizabeth saying.

The second door on the right, according to the map, was hers and Ben’s, opposite was David’s, and next to his, Aunt Elizabeth’s. The rooms, which she looked into just briefly, seemed bright and spacious, their light spilling into the corridor. She spent more time in front of an incredibly beautiful bombé cabinet of burled walnut; behind the glass which had a long hairline crack were several pieces of rose medallion, and several blank spaces as well. There were pictures on the walls, lush landscapes most of them, and more smudged rectangles and nail holes where there had once been pictures. Midway down the corridor was a green striped Empire sofa, and opposite it a pier-glass-console combination with a great silver candelabra.

At the end of the corridor, and indicated on the map, were five wide steps leading to the west wing of the house which could be closed off by shutting the white double doors. Marian climbed the steps and found herself in a small dark hall, about ten-by-ten. There was one door, directly ahead. On either side of the door were pedestals supporting huge Canton bowls. “Our Mother,” the map said; a bedroom and a sitting room were indicated beyond the door.

Marian folded the map, cleared her throat, and knocked lightly. The hall was absolutely quiet and airless; whatever light there was came from the main corridor, and if the doors were closed there would be none at all.

She waited, and then called, “Mrs. Allardyce?” There was no reply. She pushed the door and called again, through the narrow opening.

The old woman was obviously in her bedroom which should be to the left of the sitting room and, Marian reminded herself, locked. “Always,” the voice came back to her, “our poor, gentle darling . . .”