The Late Clara Beame (11 page)

“Go down and eat your breakfast. Things might look different after you’ve eaten. I’ve already had my breakfast, and from the looks of the help they’re getting restive.”

Walking like an old and broken man, Henry left the room. David watched him go. When he heard his slow footsteps on the stairs, he went into Laura’s room.

She had eaten all the food, and was half asleep. When David came in she smiled at him and held out her hand. “Dear David. You are so good to me.”

He took her hand and squeezed it gently. “I see you’ve eaten your breakfast. Stay down? Good.” He sat on the edge of her bed, and his smile disappeared. “Laura. I’ve told you before, but I want to mention it again: don’t eat or drink anything that I haven’t okayed. You’ll remember that?”

“Of course,” she promised.

Suddenly there was a loud thumping sound, and then a whirring.

“Oh, good!” Laura exclaimed. “The lines are up again!”

They both listened to the hum of the furnaces. “Now everything will be wonderful for tonight! No more freezing rooms. No more huddling around the fireplaces, no more smelly oil stoves — David, why are you looking at me so strangely?”

“Do you really want me to tell you?”

“Why, of course.”

“I was just thinking that you and Alice are the same age, chronologically, but you are a child in comparison with her.”

“I’m not sure that’s a compliment.” Laura laughed.

“It isn’t. When are you going to stop believing the world’s a lovely place, Laura, full of the kindest people, just teeming with affection and good will?”

Laura appeared startled.

“I don’t, honestly,” she said in a low voice. “I know what the world’s like.”

“Then why, in God’s name, do you give the impression that you are about sixteen years old?”

She hesitated. Without appearing to be conscious of the act, she reached out a slender white finger and began to trace a slow pattern over the back of David’s hand. He sat very still, watching her.

“I think it’s because I am — afraid. I’d like to think the world is good and decent and kind. I know better, really. But I had a lot of it the other way — loneliness, fear, desertion, cruelty. When I came here to be with Aunt Clara, it was like leaving a dark, cold place for sunshine, where someone saw me, not as a nuisance, but as a person who deserved to be cared for. It was strange about Aunt Clara,” she said, thinking back. “She was so sensible, so realistic. She had loved my mother, who found life joyous and amusing. I was surprised that Aunt Clara seemed to think, when Mama was here, that the world had — another face. I was so grateful to Aunt Clara, who was old and alone. I knew, even when I was ten, that she was exactly like me in so many ways. Mama had made her happy, had made her laugh, and cuddled up to her like a kitten. So, I tried to make it up to Aunt Clara, and pretended to be like Mama, so she would laugh again and enjoy some happiness. I — I often felt that Aunt Clara was the child, and not I. Sometimes I even thought it was Aunt Clara who had been lonely and afraid and abandoned, and not myself, and that she had come to me to be cared about; in other words, I almost felt that our positions were reversed. So I stayed with her all the time I could, being her guardian and taking my mother’s place, at the same time. I’m afraid,” she admitted, “that it’s all very complicated and complex. But that’s the best way I can explain it.”

“I think I understand,” David told her. “But, Laura, that doesn’t really explain why you persist in being childish at your age.”

Laura considered this without offense. Then she nodded. “Well, Henry expects it, I suppose, and I never had any friends to speak of. I discovered that people just don’t like you if you’re serious or sad or depressed. But if you pretend that you think everything is just lovely, they’re nice to you and want you around.”

David nodded gravely.

“But you don’t have many friends around here, do you?”

She laughed a little, and shook her head. “It’s awfully wearing to keep pretending all the time. So, when I just feel like being myself, which is almost always, I don’t go anywhere. Then Henry doesn’t get home until very late, and so we see little of the community except on summer weekends, at the club, and once or twice a week isn’t too much to be the life of the party, is it?”

“I suppose not.”

“It’s all I can stand, anyway, David.” She hesitated. “I met Henry when Alice became engaged to Sam, and he thought I was a fluffy helpless little thing, and he liked that. We’ve been married five years now, and I keep pretending — ”

“That you’re a simple little girl who needs protection and pampering?” David’s tone was dry.

“I’m afraid so. Anyway, it makes him happy. I’m not a fool, really. It’s very tiring to be gay and gushing all the time. No one ever really cared about me except Henry and Aunt Clara and Mama, and so I have sort of — well, an inferiority complex, and I do try to please.”

David thought of his sister. “I suppose you antagonized Alice by your eagerness when you were kids here together?”

“Yes. I never did understand Alice. I felt, inside, just as lonely and insecure as she did, and I was always surprised that she didn’t understand.” The small white finger traced another pattern on David’s hand.

“People will only believe what they want to believe,” he suggested. “I’ve just been wondering when you’d give up the little girl bit, that’s all.”

“But Henry likes it. He expects it. He wants to be deceived. Sometimes I don’t know where the real me begins or ends. If I get serious with Henry, it makes him miserable. When he comes home he wants to find a never-never land, where everything is warm and beautiful.”

David’s face changed. He looked at her finger on his hand.

“If you had married me, Laura, you wouldn’t have had to pretend.”

She blushed. The afghan slipped from her shoulders. “You didn’t want to marry me, David! You always looked at me as if I amused you, and that frightened me.”

“You did amuse me,” he said. “I knew all about you.”

“You didn’t — ” she murmured, and stopped.

He stood up. “I did,” he said flatly. He waited, and when she didn’t speak he went on. “Would it have made any difference, Laura? If you had known?”

Laura thought of the thin, dark, ‘older’ boy she had seen only a few times when she had been quite young. She had timidly thought him very handsome. But when he had looked at her coolly, she had told herself he probably thought her a silly child. Then she had seen him more often when Alice was working in New York, before she had married Sam Bulowe. And each time she had been aware of a kind of overwhelming excitement. However, she had needed to say only a few words to make him turn away, as if he were unutterably impatient with her. Then she had met Henry Frazier, who had accepted her for what, she saw now, was not herself at all. But she had suddenly loved him, when she had understood that he loved her. Her awareness of David, always too acute, had faded away.

“I’m very happy with Henry,” she told him. “We haven’t been married too long. We’ll understand each other, eventually. We’re reaching that point more and more, every day.”

“Good,” David said gently. He stood up, and went to the door, where he paused. “Don’t forget what I’ve told you. Eat or drink nothing unless I tell you you can.”

“All right,” she answered. The room was growing warm. “And I’ll get up very soon, David. We can’t have a really gay celebration tonight, because of Sam. But I will try to make it pleasant. I feel really well, thanks to you.”

He left without speaking again.

Henry sat with John Carr and Alice in the dining room, drinking a last cup of coffee. There were grayish shadows under Alice’s eyes. The brilliant sunlight bathed the side of her face, revealing her pale cheeks. She wore a blue sweater and skirt, and John Carr was watching her listless motions as she tried to eat breakfast.

When David came in, Henry said at once, “The phone is still down. But the Ulbrichs’ phone may be all right. So I’m going to get out the snowshoes and go over there.”

“Oh? You’re their caretaker?” David asked, regarding with interest the large platter of ham and eggs, and then sitting down.

“They leave their key with us when they go away for the winter. We’re old friends. Evelyn or I go over every day or two, when we can, to check up on things.”

“And if the phone there is all right?” David helped himself to food. Henry cleared his throat.

He glanced furtively at John Carr, who was pouring Alice another cup of coffee.

“I’m going to call the highway department and ask them to plow out our private road. Tomorrow’s Christmas. The boys will come, if they think we’re still here. A little handout does wonders, you know.”

“I’ve wondered why you and Laura stay up here in the winter like this,” David said.

“Laura likes it up here, alone,” Henry told him. “She doesn’t care about New York.”

“You don’t think it’s lonely for her?”

“She likes to be alone. And this isn’t exactly Antarctica.” Henry was a bit annoyed. “We have neighbors, scattered far off, I must admit. But the club is open all winter; we have skiing and other winter sports, and dinners. It isn’t always that we’re marooned like this, and if we are we’re soon plowed out. We are going to a New Year’s party at the club this year, as we always do.”

“And you think Laura likes to be alone?”

“Certainly! You know how shy she is. Everybody loves her because she’s so gentle and simple. She’s always been sheltered and protected. And I admit that I intend to keep on sheltering and protecting her.”

David asked abruptly, “If the Ulbrichs’ phone is all right, are you going to call the police about someone taking a shot at you — and poisoning Laura?”

Henry stood up. He looked at all of them. “I might do that. Yes, indeed. I might do exactly that.”

“I’m glad,” David said. “I’d like to see Laura stay alive.”

Alice spoke for the first time. “You think the police could persuade Laura not to try to kill herself again?”

Henry spoke quickly. “I don’t intend to tell them about the — accidental — poisoning, if it really was poisoning. Laura couldn’t stand scandal and talk and the newspapers. Besides, there’s a little law about suicides; it’s a felony to attempt to kill yourself. Do you think I want to expose Laura to all that? What good would it do? Her whole life would be ruined; she’d be afraid of facing anyone after that. And, it’s just possible that my own firm would take a dark view of the thing; they’d wonder if I were at fault. Wives who attempt suicide are a poor recommendation for a partner.”

“Do you think Laura really did try to commit suicide?”

“I tell you, I’m not going to mention it! What I think is my own business. But I
am
going to tell them about the pot shot at me.”

David said thoughtfully, “You mentioned this morning that Laura’s poisoning was probably a blind.”

“I’ve thought it over,” Henry retorted angrily. “No one poisoned Laura. She’s very excitable; you know that. She was upset at the shot at me.”

“Well, we’ll soon know when the police examine that specimen.”

John Carr and Alice listened intently. They saw Henry’s deep flush.

“I know,” he told them, “that you don’t like Laura. But what good would it do to hurt her any more than she’s already been hurt? How can you be so vindictive?”

“You haven’t the slightest idea how vindictive I can be,” David remarked cheerfully, as he buttered a piece of toast.

“Can I persuade you not to subject Laura to a police investigation, or the newspapers?”

David gazed at him blandly. Then he turned to Alice and John Carr.

“I’ll make a bargain — temporarily. Though it’s a police offense to do so. I won’t say a word — unless something else happens to Laura.”

“Thanks,” Henry said gratefully. Then his expression changed. “But what if she — ”

“She won’t,” David told him heartily. “She’s in good spirits now, preparing for a happy, if subdued, celebration tonight, because of our late lamented Sam.”

Alice moved restlessly. “If we can ever get to the main road, I’d like to leave tomorrow. I’m a city girl at heart. I want to go home; all this snow is too much for me.”

Henry smiled at her. “We have snowshoes in the garage. Bear-paws and beaver-paws. You’ve used snowshoes before. How about walking with me to the Ulbrichs’? The air will do us both good.”

Alice was about to shake her head when she caught David’s eye. “All right,” she agreed. “I’m rusty, though. I’ll probably pitch into the nearest snowbank.”

“Not with Henry’s manly arm to protect you,” David remarked. Alice’s mouth tightened angrily, and she stood up.

“In about half an hour?” Henry suggested. “I want to talk to Laura before we go.” He left the room, and Alice followed a moment or two later. She paused at the door of the dining room and looked at John Carr. Then she was gone.

The two men ate in silence. Finally John Carr asked: “Will the phone be up, at that other house?”

“I don’t know,” David told him. “I doubt it.”

“It was all right here,” John remarked casually. “Though it isn’t, as of now.”

“What did you do?” David whispered.

“Cut it. What else?”

David nodded. “If it was on here, then it will be on at the Ulbrichs’. He might call the police, you know.”

“No doubt of it,” John Carr commented. “But he won’t.”

“Why not?”

“All of you, including our host, forgot something. The Fraziers share a party line with the Ulbrichs’. This is off, the Ulbrichs’ are off, too.”

“Then,” David told him, “you did a damn dangerous thing with the line.”

“Not dangerous, if you know how. And I’ve done a lot of dangerous things in my time. It did take some scrabbling, while you were all concerned with Laura. The phone, for your information, was all right at midnight, long before the other electricity went on. I checked regularly.” John sipped at his coffee. “When it suddenly went on, I went on suddenly, too. The telephone boys are always eager to keep their lines up.”

“What if the phone boys check?”

“They won’t. They just take it for granted that if a phone line has been restored it stays restored. After all, it’s just this line.”

“This game we’re playing could be disastrous,” David said.

“So it could. That’s what you intended, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Except for the complications. Not that they weren’t expected.”

John laughed. “By the way, I like your sister.”

“She’s suspicious of you.”

“She has reason to be. Very astute girl.”

Henry entered the bedroom he shared with his wife. Laura had just taken a warm bath, and the room was steamy and comfortable. She came out of the bathroom wrapped in a pale pink dressing gown, her blonde hair curling softly about her head, her cheeks flushed. When she saw her husband, she laughed and ran to him. “Oh, isn’t it wonderful that the furnaces are on again!” She kissed him warmly. He held her off to examine her face.

“Are you all right now, darling? No bad effects?”

“You know I’m really abominably healthy, darling,” she confessed. “Well, come to think of it, I do feel a trifle weak around the knees, and my stomach hurts as if it had been kicked. Otherwise, I’m quite all right. David said I could go downstairs, and that there is nothing wrong with me, now.”

“Thank God for that,” Henry said with a tired sigh. The ice-coated windows were dripping, and through wet patches he could see the shining blaze of the day. He hesitated. He did not want to tell Laura that he was going to the Ulbrichs’ to phone for the police. But should he? Wouldn’t it be best to wait until tomorrow? Or even the day after? Frankly, he did not know what to do. He only knew that the police must be told about the attack on him. How, though, was he to keep Laura’s ‘poisoning’ from them? David had given his word; but he did not trust David. At the very least, outside of his natural malice, David would be compelled by the ethics of his profession to tell the authorities.

“What is it?” Laura asked, sensing his hesitation.

“To be quite frank, Laura, I’m thinking of going outside for a little air. To be even more frank, I’m fed up with our guests.”

He took his wife’s hand and led her to the bed. “Now, lie down for a little while.” He tucked her under the blankets. “I want to talk to you.”

“Yes?” She looked up at him expectantly.

“Darling, you said that you remembered Carr from someplace. Then you decided that it was at that damned cocktail party. You met a lot of people there that night. Can you remember anyone else besides him, except for that author, of course, and Dave and Alice?” She thought for a moment, and then shook her head. “No, I can’t remember a single soul. The room was packed.”

“Then how could you remember Carr? He isn’t unusual-looking; he doesn’t stand out.”

She frowned. “That’s true,” she admitted thoughtfully. “He’s the sort of man you’d overlook in a crowd, unless you knew him well.”

Henry scrutinized her closely. “Think, Laura. You didn’t know him before that time, or meet him afterwards?”

“I told you I didn’t. I honestly don’t remember meeting him anywhere. If it hadn’t been for Alice mentioning that party I wouldn’t have recalled it. And, I don’t even remember seeing him at the party, though that’s the only place I could have seen him.”

“Never at the club? Never in New York? Never at friends’?”

She was so absorbed in trying to remember that she did not see the reluctant suspicion in his eyes. Then she said, “I give up! I can’t recall a single time I ever met him. Yet, he’s familiar in a way, as if I had known him for years. It could possibly be that I’ve met someone who looked very much like him. Don’t you ever meet people who remind you of other people?”

“Yes. Quite often.”

She noticed his expression. “Henry! Is there something wrong about him?”

“I don’t know. I thought you could help me — by remembering.”

She was dismayed. “But, Henry, you knew all about him two weeks ago, didn’t you? Mr. Bancroft’s client?” She paused. “Is he an impostor?”

“Of course not.” Henry tried to sound reassuring. “It’s just that I remember him faintly, too.”

“But what would an impostor want here? Have you told Alice and David about your suspicions?”

“Laura, I haven’t any suspicions. It was just something that puzzled me.” He saw that she was tense again, and he bent and kissed her. “I’ve got a legal mind; I just like everything orderly and neat, with no loose ends, no little mysteries. That’s all. Now, be quiet, or you won’t be able to come down this evening.”

After he had comforted her, he went downstairs slowly buttoning his mouton-lined leather coat. He was sure, now, that Laura had never seen John Carr before. She was incapable of pretense. If he hadn’t been exhausted this morning he’d never have permitted David to arouse any suspicions in him. Damn David! He felt for the woollen cap in his pocket. Alice was waiting downstairs, wrapped in her thick coat with the seal collar, a blue scarf tied over her blonde hair.

“How’s our precious little invalid?” she asked.

“Fine, now. But you don’t look well, Alice.” She was indeed very pale; her light lipstick was a startling note on her face, and her eyes appeared sunken. She shrugged. “With all the alarms you have around here, who could be placid? I remember years going by when I was a child, and nothing ever happening. Do you do this sort of thing regularly, Hank?” She smiled briefly.

“We live a very quiet life,” he answered in a tone of mock gravity. “Where are the others?”

“They’re both stretched out in the living room, fast asleep. I tell you, Hank, the city is never as rugged as this; we’re all exhausted.”

He took her arm affectionately. “Let them sleep.” Together they went to the garage where they fitted on snow-shoes. The air was cold and sharp, stinging their faces. Alice was silent as they began their first few awkward steps on the snow. It was well packed and very deep, and they hardly sank into it. Alice floundered a few times until Henry took her arm. She laughed at their awkward progress; a yellow strand of hair fell across her forehead, and all at once she was young again. They walked with care, at a slow, steady pace.

“It’s wonderful,” Alice murmured. “I’d forgotten a country winter, the pure air, the way the sun shines so blue on the snow, the still conifers like a mass of big white hands hanging down, the clean wind that sweeps out your sooty lungs, the quiet. The blessed quiet!”

The wind brought out color along her smooth cheeks and brushed her lips with red.

Henry’s square, kindly face smiled down at her. “You aren’t too tired?”

“No. I feel renewed. Just bursting with oxygen.”

They had left the house far behind, and as they climbed uphill they stopped to get their breath at the edge of a copse of frozen trees. Alice looked back. The big gray house stood in the snow, its windows winking, its chimneys smoking against the greenish light of the sky. Alice’s smile disappeared.

“I always loved it,” she said, as if speaking to herself. “I always thought it would be mine. Even the barns, and the old chicken run. Once we had a cow. That was for Laura. Fresh milk. It was all for Laura, after all. It was the first home I ever had, and the last. Never once did I think, until Aunt Clara died, that it wouldn’t always be my home.”

Henry fumbled for his pipe and carefully lit it. He did not look at Alice for some time. Then he said, “You can still consider it your home. But you never come. God knows we’ve invited you often enough.”

“You don’t understand,” she told him sadly. “I’d only be a visitor. I don’t want to be a visitor in a house I’d always thought of as my own.” Her voice broke. “Dear God, I used to imagine myself living there always, with a husband. And children. I planned what to do on all these acres. I’d have a swimming pool where the natural spring is, I’d have arbors, and glades. I’d never leave even for a day, unless it was necessary. You can’t imagine what it’s like, to love every inch of land, every tree, every shrub, to hold it in your thoughts, so that it becomes part of you. I used to touch the tree trunks. They knew me, just as I knew them. It was like a death to me, when I learned that Aunt Clara had left it to Laura, all those green cool orchards, the brook, the spring, the fences, the brick chimneys, the fires, the waking in the morning to a day like this!”

Her lips trembled; there was a hint of tears on her cheeks. “And in the warm, rainy June nights; the smell of the roses in the air, and the scent of the pines and the grass. I’ve been driven away, Hank. It’s not so much the actual owning of it, not really. It’s as if my whole self is there, and what is with me in New York, and what was with me in Chicago was the real ghost.”

“I understand,” Henry said gently. “I love it that way, too.”

“Does Laura?” she asked, with sudden sharpness.

“I think so.”

“But not the way I do?”

He hesitated. “Perhaps not exactly. I don’t think Laura has the imagination you have, Alice. And sometimes I do think she’s lonely here.”

“I wish I had the money to buy the house from you and Laura!”

“And live here alone?” His tone was affectionate.

And then they were looking into each other’s eyes with enormous intensity. Both were silent, unable to turn away. Alice’s breath rose in a faint plume from her mouth.

“No,” she whispered. “Oh, no, Hank.”

She reached out and put her hand on his arm. “You know I love you, don’t you?”

His lips opened on a quick sound. He took her hand. “Yes, Alice,” he said, “I’m afraid I do.”

“And you?”

He turned away from her.

“Why did you marry Laura, Hank? When you loved me, even before I married Sam?”

There was no answer. Her fingers dug into his arm. “Was it the money, Hank? The money and the house!”

He shook his head. “Alice, you know it wasn’t that.”

“What was it then?” she demanded. “Tell me!”

“Would you believe me if I said it was love?”

She pulled her hand away from his. “No, I wouldn’t believe you.”

“Not even if it’s true?”

She shook her head. “I don’t believe it. How could you? A man like you — and that stupid child? What have you in common? What can she be for you but a clinging vine? How can you possibly stand her!”

“You hate her.”

“Yes,” she admitted. “I do. I’ve never concealed it. I wish she had died last summer! I wish she had died.”

“Alice!”

“I do! I do! Then you and I — ”