Love & Mrs. Sargent (2 page)

But Mrs. Flood was an experienced autobiographer, “So I knocked about—the better shops, a little decorating . . . that sort of thing. But it was just too hectic for an old homebody like me. So for the past couple of years I’ve been—uh—assisting my cousin, Mrs. Richard Sargent, in her little project.”

“You mean
Sheila
Sargent, the lonely hearts dame?”

“
Well, yes, but of course she does so many
other
interesting
things, too. Her books, her lectures, the television program she’s
considering. It’s stimulating, Emily, and Cousin Sheila’s a darling.”

Mrs. Sargent may have been a darling, but she was no kin of Mrs. Flood’s. Their late husbands had been distantly related and Mrs. Sargent, who was known for kindness, patience and tact, had met Mrs. Flood at one of the enormous cocktail parties at a propitious time in both their lives. It was a time when Mrs. Sargent was frankly weary of losing giddy young secretaries to the altar and when Mrs. Flood, whose feet had all but given out in the marts of commerce, was puzzling her way through the last lap of a Speedwriting course. One look at Mrs. Flood and Mrs. Sargent sensed that suitors would give her little trouble. One look at Mrs. Sargent—at Mrs. Sargent’s house and the quarters that went with the secretarial post, at the cars and the furs and the furniture and the aura of well-being—and Mrs. Flood
knew
that she would be safe and protected for as long as she could still totter. So far the arrangement had worked out satisfactorily for both.

“And so here
I
am, Emily,” Mrs. Flood had said, with just a tiny hint of patronage.

“Jesus!” Mrs. Porter had said, “quarter of three and the old bitch will be bawling for her back rub. Let’s get the check.”

“No, Emily,” Mrs. Flood had murmured, laying a tender hand on the slimy nylon of her friend’s sleeve. “This is to be
my
party. I in-
sist
.”

Mrs. Flood stopped the Anglia at the intersection, squinted to left and right and then ventured southward. She deplored what had happened to the
old
Lake Forest, for Mrs. Flood hailed from
a day when the name on every gate summoned forth impressive, associations with bathtubs and tractors, pure lard and chewing gum, chain stores and ham. The old aristocracy was on the wane and in the parks of their great estates had sprung up new, modern houses crowded in as many as one to an acre. “Tacky,” Mrs. Flood snorted, heedless that each of the buildings she deplored cost just ten years of her full salary.

Nor was Mrs. Flood’s salary anything to sneeze at. She was paid about ten dollars more than a competent young woman who could take shorthand and type with eight fingers and one thumb would be getting in a real office downtown. In addition Mrs. Flood had her own room and bath, her meals at the family table, plenty of free time and first grab at Mrs. Sargent’s hand-me-downs. Her expenses were nil. But Mrs. Flood was cautious with every dollar, content to do without in order to watch the little nest egg in the Continental Illinois Bank grow and grow and grow. Every week fifty good dollars were banked against the day when Mrs. Flood would be too old to work. And the day was not far off. Mrs. Flood claimed fifty-seven. Actually she was sixty-two. With any luck she could last here until seventy. Plus; the little retirement gift Mrs. Sargent would undoubtedly give her that would be . . . hmmmm. Mrs. Flood had no head for figures, but it would be quite a lot. Enough so that she’d never again be hungry or poor or frightened.

Mrs. Flood thought of Emily Porter again and shuddered. . . Poor, dear Emily. Such a plucky little thing! So brave and gay in the face of. . . . She wondered if she just shouldn’t have used one
of the crisp five-dollar bills in her bag to send Emily a little
remembrance from the florist. “No,” she said firmly, “no sense
my
sending Emily flowers. What would she
do
with them?”

Mrs. Flood slowed down to a crawl. On her left—on the lake
side—was a sign reading ‘’Private Road,” Beneath it, a sign read
ing “Sargent.” Not one of the Great Estates, perhaps, but, today, one of the very largest. With a frantic flapping of her hand and a blinking of lights, Mrs. Flood announced to the deserted road that she was going to turn. Swinging her little car inexpertly to the left, Mrs. Flood heaved a sigh of relief. Here was the nest, the cave, the den, the womb, Mrs. Flood was Home.

III.

“My reply to this young bride was: ‘Go right ahead and have the baby early. The friends who count
don’t
count.’ “

The ballroom of the Orrington Hotel reverberated with laughter and applause. Sheila was sweltering in her sables, not that she’d have taken them off in the lowest chamber of Hell. And speaking of Hell, Sheila thought, I’d love a cigarette. The air was thick with smoke. Sheila felt for a moment that if she took just one deep, deep breath it would be almost as good as a cigarette all her very own.

She held up a hand for silence. “Well, I didn’t come here to talk
at
you. I came here today to talk
with
you. And so, if there are any questions please ask them and I’ll do my level best to answer them—really I will.”

There was a pause. There was always a pause while the girls
got up their courage. Someone always had to be first and no one
was ever willing to be. Sheila smiled encouragingly. She knew that it would be nearly a minute before one of the leading lights in the organization would ask the first question—just to Get Things Going.

The shill raised her hand. Just as Sheila suspected, she was sitting at one of the front tables and wore a committee badge.

“You!” Sheila said. “First your name. I always like to know who I’m chatting with, don’t you?”

“Mrs. Shaun O’Brien. Florence O’Brien.”

“Good! I’ll call you Florence and you must call we Sheila. Now! The question?”

“W-well, uh, Sheila, suppose you got a letter from a middle-aged woman who still loved her husband but who found that romance had gone out of her life. What would you tell her?”

“That’s a very good question, Florence. Here’s what I’d suggest. . . .”

IV.

“Sure you wouldn’t like a brandy, a stinger, something like that, Johnson?” Mr. Malvern asked.

“No thanks,” Peter Johnson said flatly. “It’s nearly three. How far is this Forest Lawn place and how do I get there?”

“Where? Oh. Ohohohoho. Lake
Forest
. Long way. Good twenty, twenty-five miles. But I’m going to drive you out there myself—pay a little surprise call on Sheila. Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried,” Johnson said in the same flat, noncommittal tone of voice.

If Peter Johnson was not worried, Howard Malvern was. Mr. Malvern was a born worrier. He worried about trouble that had happened, trouble that was happening, trouble that would happen. When there was absolutely nothing to worry about, Mr. Malvern worried about things that just
might
happen.

Now he signed “J. Howard Malvern” on the luncheon check and worried again as to whether the Tavern Club had been the
right
club for entertaining a reporter from
Worldwide Weekly.
He had been worrying about the suitable place to lunch for some days now. He had never met this Peter Johnson before and he didn’t like to take a chance on entering the Chicago Club with—well—with a Pig in a Poke. After all, Mr. Malvern hadn’t been a member there for any too long himself and it worried him to appear with someone—well—with someone Funny. Then again if this Johnson should have turned out to be esthetic or very intellectual, the Athletic Club would have been just too hearty. The Key Club and the Barclay had a certain furtive glamor
reminiscent of the speakeasy days but they weren’t very exclusive
—oh no, you could never call them exclusive—and if this Johnson
should have turned out to have been notably dark and—well-
Semitic looking, some drunk at the bar might have made a crack.
No, perhaps after all the Tavern
had
been the best choice; fair food, good drinks, light, bright and uncrowded.

“Lovely view from here,” Malvern said, rising. “That’s the Wrigley building there, just over the bridge. And down there is Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive and. . . .”

“Yes, I know,” Johnson said. “I’ve been here before.”

Mr. Malvern began to worry again. Did this Johnson mean he’d been to Chicago before or did he mean he’d been
here
in the Tavern Club before? And, if so, did he mean that he didn’t
like
the Tavern Club? Had he, Howard Malvern,
insulted
his guest by bringing him here?

“Like to wash up—or anything?” Mr. Malvern asked.

“No thanks,” Johnson said.

Now did
he
think that I meant that I thought that
he
was unclean? Mr. Malvern started worrying all over. He was having
a perfectly miserable time. Actually Mr. Malvern wanted to go to the bathroom quite badly himself. He knew he could never manage to drive out to Sheila Sargent’s place in Lake Forest without relieving himself here and now. “Well, if you’ll excuse me?” he said tentatively at the door of the men’s room, “Like to sit in the lounge? Read a magazine?”

“I’ll manage, somehow. Thank you,” Johnson said.

Alone in the men’s room, Mr. Malvern was in a perfect panic for fear that he had offended this important guest—this alien man who had come out to Chicago to do a cover story on Sheila Sargent for that snide and unfriendly magazine,
Worldwide Weekly.
His hands trembled fumbling with the zipper of his excellent flannel trousers.

When Howard Malvern was not too busy worrying about
something, when he’d had about two-and-a-half bourbons—just
enough so that he wouldn’t worry about drinking too much—
he sometimes grew calm and reflective, lighting one of his good
Upmann cigars and thinking with satisfaction just where his forty years of worrying had put Famous Features and J. Howard
Malvern.

Famous Features, as the most casual reader could tell you, was a vast and successful organization supplying syndicated columns, cartoons and comic strips to newspapers all over the world. And Howard Malvern, starting as a most unpromising office boy, was now its president. He had fussed and fidgeted and fumed until Famous Features had grown from a weekly household pets
column, a boozy sports writer and a totally unread comic strip
involving a hen named
Chickie Chuckles
into something of an
empire. Famous Features now boasted
three
boozy sports columnists, three syndicated political columnists—one who worried
Mr. Malvern because he was so far to the left, another who
worried Mr. Malvern because he was so far to the right, and a middle-of-the-road man who worried Mr. Malvern because he was so dull. Famous Features offered two different peddlers of
cafe society gossip, a fantastically popular character assassin in the
Hollywood office whose inaccuracies and innuendoes about film
stars caused Mr. Malvern many a sleepless night. The Famous Features
Weekend Bookworm
was second only to the
Saturday Review Syndicate. Chickie Chuckles
had been plucked and replaced by ten big comic strips, four daily cartoons,
Kute Kids’ Komments
and the ghost-written rantings of a senile elder statesman whose daily cries of woe were often relegated to the comic page by mistake. Famous Features had the usual complement of
cracker barrel philosophers, medical advice, puzzles, fashion and beauty news, television criticism, the solacing words of a famous
minister, tips on etiquette, a daily horoscope, answers to idiotic questions, stamp and coin news, household hints, travel tips—more than a hundred in all. But the uncontested star in Famous
Features’ firmament was Sheila Sargent whose five-times-a-week
column of advice to people in trouble (mostly to women with man trouble) was read by uncounted millions including, it was said, Sir Winston Churchill and Bernard Baruch. Fifteen years ago she had burst onto the newspaper scene as temporary re
placement for one of the old sweetness-and-light lovelorn ladies.
Her advice had been so cool, so intelligent, so witty and so wise that Sheila Sargent had become as familiar a household name
as Betty Crocker or Emily Post. Hers was the most popular single
column in America and Howard Malvern worried most about Sheila Sargent. Because for the past fifteen years he had been hopelessly in love with her.

Hurriedly—but very carefully—Mr. Malvern washed his hands
first in warm water and then in cold, pushing back all ten
cuticles. He would have liked to have gargled and brushed his teeth, for he worried about Offending.

Meanwhile Peter Johnson was a trifle worried himself. He rather prided himself on being a Man of the People. He hated being taken to places like this and he hated himself for hating it. He liked to feel that he was at ease with all mankind and it made him uncomfortable to be uncomfortable with the rich. Howard Malvern was certainly rich and so was Sheila Sargent. For that reason, he caught himself being a little tougher and more petulant than he really intended to be.

He had always had a grudging admiration for Sheila Sargent’s column. Now that was all gone. Peter liked to imagine her as a young, tough newspaper dame who
^J
d clawed her way up from the copy room to eminence. But the dossier he had on her, in preparation for a
Worldwide
cover story, had more than soured
him.

As a Man of the People he could have forgiven Mrs. Sargent if she’d used both bed and blackmail to get to the top. What
he could not forgive was that she had simply exchanged a silver
spoon for a gold one.

A nubile researcher at
Worldwide—
a
girl proud of her wither
ing sense of syntax—had already ruined this assignment for him.
He fingered the memo in his breast pocket, took it out and read it again.

SHEILA PATTEN FORESTER SARGENT (MRS. RICHARD) born Chicago, Ill., November 11, 1918. . . .

That disillusioned Peter right there. Mrs. Sargent had looked a lot younger in her photographs.

Parents: Oliver Jaynes Forester, broker, and Isabelle Abbot Fores
ter, housewife. Both deceased. Can find dates if you really care.

Only child.

Lived in Evanston, Illinois. Attended Roycemore School (pvt.)
Made debut December 25, 1936, Casino Club, Chi. Emile Petti’s
Orch. 500 guests. Conservative affair. Deb wore white velvet ermine trim. Full details Chi. Trib. & Chi. Daily News. If you
care.

Engaged to Richard Sargent (foreign correspondent—3 Pulitzer prizes—need I say more) March 25, 1937. Party at Casino Club again. It is a gambling hell? Sheila in teal blue. Ring 5 carats.

Married to Richard Sargent, June 14, 1937, St. Lukes Cathedral
(Episc. natch) Evanston, Ill. 6 b’maids, 6 ushers. Best man J. (for
Jasper) Howard Malvern (now pres. Famous Features). Matron
of H., Mrs. Eamon Kennedy, II of Winnetka. Who she? Where that? B. in ivory satin, heirloom veil. B’maids in yellow lawn
princess dresses (ugh!) leghorn picture hats. Reception following
in garden of bride s home. 900 guests. Some garden! More details
in Chi. Trib. . Chi. Daily News, Chi. Herald Examiner, Chi.
Times, Town & Country, Time, N. Y. Times, N. Y. H Trib. Big
do. Honeymoon Paris (for Exposition) and Europe for tensing
international scene.

Son, Richard Sargent, Jr. born November 1, 1939. 6 lbs. 7 ozs.
Duly reported Time.

Daughter Allison born May 18, 1942r—8 lbs. 14 ozs, (the petite
type). Again see Milestones—Time. Richard Sargent killed in
plane over Eng. Channel March 3, 1945. See any newspaper or magazine.

Johnson remembered only too well the death of every news
paperman’s hero, Richard Sargent, It had been reported during one of the President’s radio addresses and Mr. Roosevelt had interrupted his speech right there and then to announce to the American public the untimely passing of Richard Sargent.

Sheila took over agony column for late Amie Love. Jan. 1946.
Made big success. Now syndicated in 946 papers. Author 3 bks.
Love and Marriage
(1953),
Mail and Females
(1955),
Letters to
Sheila
(1958) all pub. by Boysen Berdell Associates. More than
5 million in print—counting paperback.

Richard Jr.’s first novel,
Bitter Laughter
scheduled this Oct. also
Berdell Ass. Want to read?

Daughter coming out at Casino Club, Dec. this year. On Chi. Deb. Cotillion Committee.

Pix of Sargent house in
House Beautiful,
Jan. ‘55. Mrs. S. listed
in
Who’s Who, Celebrity Register
and
Chi Soc.
Register.
Clubs: Arts Club, Saddle & Cycle, Service and Casino, of course!
All Chicago. Country club—Onwentsia.

Scandals—absolutely none.

Rumors—3:

She’s popping com with Howard Malvern.

She’s dickering with TV show.

She’s going to be voted Mother of the Year.

All uncheckable.

Peter put the memo away as Mr. Malvern came out of the men’s room. He composed his face into a sort of grim grin to match his host’s.

“Well,” Malvern said, “all ready for the long voyage?”

“All set.”