The Late Clara Beame (3 page)

The snow had stopped during the night. But by ten o’clock the following morning it had begun again, this time with blizzard force growing wilder by the hour. The wind of the night before was now a whistling gale, slamming against the ancient walls of the big stone house. It howled in the chimneys and rushed across the frozen earth, bursting upwards into white, swirling fountains. It sounded to Laura as though endless freight trains were screaming overhead.

At noon she listened worriedly to the news and weather broadcasts. The announcer stated jovially that the East was definitely “in the grip of one of the worst blizzards.” A white Christmas was predicted, so he amusingly advised housewives to look over their supply of candles. Laura listened to the warm hum of the furnaces. What if the lines did go down? The furnaces would stop. Would Alice and David, and the new guest, John Carr, enjoy being isolated? Alice and David were certainly not the cozy type. Impatient and restless by nature, they would resent enforced seclusion. They liked to walk and explore. Laura looked gloomily at the windows shrouded with snow, her mind on the stranger from Baltimore. What would John Carr think of the white isolation of a really formidable storm? This, thought Laura, but without much hope, might be an interesting experience for him. On the other hand, what if he were a bore, and restless too? Advertising men, she had discovered, could be volatile.

Alice, of course, knew these storms. She had always hated them; they frightened her. Orderly and indifferent by nature, she preferred things to be smooth and under control.

The storm had darkened the day. Laura had had to turn on lights. At three o’clock their handyman, who doubled in everything, would have to drive to the station to pick up Alice and David. Would he forget the chains? He was both indifferent and incompetent and he usually did. She would have to check. As she listened to the wind she remembered that this was only the 22nd of December. John Carr was not due until tomorrow. Perhaps he would not be able to come. It was doubtful whether Henry would even be able to go to New York tomorrow to see him. Laura found herself wondering if Christmas would be bright or not. Alice and David rarely liked people. If they didn’t like John Carr, and showed it in a cruel way, then the whole holiday would be a disaster.

“I hope,” Laura was shocked to hear herself say, “that David and Alice can’t come either!” Why had she invited them? Pity for Alice, in her small apartment in New York? Hope that Alice might eventually come to like her and realize that she had had no part in influencing Aunt Clara’s will?

“You are too dependent on others,” Henry had often told her. “It’s all right to be dependent on me. That’s the way it should be. But others! Why should you care?” That was all very well for Henry, who knew everyone in the township and liked them and who was liked in return. But she was afraid of people, their frank way of looking her in the eye. She felt certain that they thought her weak. Sometimes it was agony for her to join her husband in New York for one of his business dinners and to meet strangers. She knew they thought her pretty — at first. But later they appeared to forget her very existence, and she would sit silently for the rest of the dreary hours, yearning for home. Often they even forgot to say goodbye to her, not out of malice but simply because they had entirely overlooked her. She often wished that she could make a good impression because it would be valuable for Henry.

When she had been a small child, after her father had remarried his first wife and had gone away with her and his first two children, she had languished in a miserable boarding school in New Jersey, where the tiny rooms were always cold and dank, the food almost unedible, the teachers poorly paid and listless. She had received only three letters from her father. She remembered him quite clearly, though as a silent, gray-colored man who had once been a successful lawyer like Henry. But that was when Mama had been alive, Mama who was lively and beautiful and bouncing with fun. Aunt Clara, the soul of propriety and severity, had, amazingly enough, loved the pretty Lucille, who had been a chorus girl in a nightclub. And she had insisted that the young dancer have the child in her home. And, Laura remembered fondly, Mama used to make Aunt Clara laugh, often by dancing some of her abandoned dances right in this house! It seemed incredible to Laura that she had watched her mother actually perform something perilously close to a strip tease — here in the huge, staid sitting room!

Bertram Beame had remained horrified and unforgiving. Was it because his wife had ‘made a spectacle of herself’ before Aunt Clara? Or was it because he had come to regret his incongruous marriage and to fail in his profession? There had been the large alimony payments to his first wife, and she had refused to divorce him unless she received nearly two thirds of his income. “A cold, mean stick of a woman. Always detested her,” Aunt Clara had once remarked. “Greedy. Like a starved harpy. No wonder Bertram finally got rid of her.”

Laura could remember her father’s misery, his lost look, his silence. What had made him give up a woman like his first wife, who was surely more suitable for him, to marry laughing, dancing Mama? Infatuation? “Middle-aged funk,” Aunt Clara had once said, abruptly. “Never blamed him.” Surely, by her very nature, Aunt Clara had been closer in character to the first wife. Yet, she had loved vivacious, radiant Mama. She had even given her some of her old but valuable jewelry. Where was it now? Sold for living expenses?

“First time I ever saw him act human, and warm up,” Aunt Clara had commented during the first few months of his marriage. He had been a fastidious man, very impeccable in his way, almost chilly. But the glamour, which had at first excited him, departed quickly, and finally. His natural character had reasserted itself. All that Mama was, all she represented with her grammatical errors and bad manners, warm and loving though they were, had finally revolted him.

He came to hate his wife, even to detest her. And Mama, in the very face of her indestructible exuberance, had suddenly realized this and died of a broken heart. Then came boarding school for Laura in New Jersey and Papa’s return to his first wife and children, and Aunt Clara’s offer. Papa was only too grateful; his spirit seemed broken, or perhaps his first wife, during the period of his second marriage, had defamed his name so thoroughly that his reputation was irretrievably lost. And that, Laura said to herself, as she watched the swirling snow blurring the windows, was a judgment on her.

She never saw her father again after the day he had abandoned her in New Jersey. She had not known he had died until Aunt Clara informed her of his funeral a month previous to her eleventh birthday. “Don’t cry,” Aunt Clara had told her, gruffly. “He doesn’t deserve it.” But Laura had really been crying for her dead young mother.

The first Mrs. Beame had promptly asked Aunt Clara “for adequate support for Bertram’s children. After all, they are related to you too.” Did Aunt Clara send any money? Laura never found out. She only knew that the children were not mentioned in the old woman’s will. She had never thought of her father’s other children as being her half brother and half sister, and therefore her own flesh and blood. She thought of herself as belonging only to Mama and then to Aunt Clara. Yet, those two still existed — somewhere? Was their mother still alive?

The wind howling outside broke Laura’s reveries, and she went to the kitchen to see if the handyman, who had the unlikely name of Evelyn, was putting the chains on her car. He was, Mrs. Daley informed her. The kitchen smelled of hot mincemeat and cherry jam. Mrs. Daley smiled at Laura and suggested coffee and a piece of her homemade pie.

“I think I’ll wait for Mrs. Bulowe and Mr. Gates, and have tea with them.” The delightful odors conjured up nostalgic memories of other Christmases, and suddenly the presence of Aunt Clara was so acute that she almost swung about to run into the living room with a cry of welcome.

“Is something wrong?” Mrs. Daley asked. “You look awful pale, Mrs. Frazier.”

“No,” Laura told her. “I was just thinking of Aunt Clara. Christmas always reminds me. I felt, just now, that if I went into the living room I’d see her.”

Mrs. Daley stirred a huge pot of soup. Her face was hidden. “Funny,” she said, in an offhand voice, “I’ve been kind of feeling her around, myself, the last few days. Well, I’m Irish, and I get those feelings, and that’s supposed to be superstition, the priests say. But Father Gregory in the village isn’t Irish, so how would he know?”

Laura, who was highly superstitious, moved closer to the older woman. Absently she scooped up a spoonful of mincemeat and ate it. “If you feel my aunt, that is, if you have a sensation she’s here just now, what’s the reason?”

Mrs. Daley clattered the spoon. “Well,” she said, with elaborate carelessness, “she might be thinking of you and Christmas, but the souls don’t come back, they say. Sometimes, maybe, I think they’re wrong.” She still kept her head averted. “Maybe it was kind of a dream. But you remember how you were sort of sickly as a little girl, Mrs. Frazier, and Miss Beame always knew just when you’d be coming down with something. She’d get everything ready a couple of days before you came down, though she never let you know. ‘The child’s sickening, Mrs. Daley,’ she’d say to me. And sure enough, Mrs. Frazier, you’d be flat on your back a couple of days later.”

When Mrs. Daley became silent, Laura urged her to go on.

“And there was that time, you remember, when you were fourteen, and all the kids in the village were going on them toboggan rides, and you teased to go. Your aunt thought about it and said, ‘No’, and you cried. She said to me: ‘Mrs. Daley, I have a premonition.’ Now, you’re not supposed to listen to premonitions, but Miss Beame was a Protestant, so I suppose it don’t matter. And then, the very toboggan sled you were supposed to be on got out of control and ran into rocks and trees, and Sally Brewster was killed, and the other girls all had broken legs and arms. You remember.”

“Yes, I do.” Laura waited a moment or two, then asked: “Why do you suppose I feel Aunt Clara’s in the house just now?”

“Maybe something’s going to happen. Mrs. Frazier, you were the apple of her eye. Maybe she thinks you’re in danger or something.”

“From what?” Laura couldn’t help smiling.

“From who, that’s what,” Mrs. Daley said, giving her a serious look. “I don’t want to commit a sin, filling you with superstitions, Mrs. Frazier. There! Evelyn’s just turning out of the garage! Snow’s hubcap deep. Good thing he put on the chains or he’d never make it to the dee-pot.”

“Mrs. Daley, I forgot to tell you and Edith, that there’s a gentleman coming for Christmas too. John Carr. A client of Mr. Frazier’s.” She paused. “You don’t suppose, do you, that there’s something — well, wrong — with Mr. Carr?”

“Oh, I’ve got you all worried.” Mrs. Daley’s plump face flushed with embarrassment. “You mustn’t listen to me. Honest.” She struggled with herself, but lost. “It was the day before you fell off that broken swing, Mrs. Frazier. I’d gone into the living room to check up on that girl’s dusting, and I just felt Miss Beame there. I turned around and said right out loud: ‘Yes, ma’am?’ It was like she’d called me. And I got so blue and frightened that I couldn’t sleep that night. And the next day you had that accident.”

Laura was suddenly apprehensive. “You don’t suppose, with this storm, that Mr. Frazier might have an accident, driving home from the station tonight, and Aunt Clara — I mean, could she be warning me?”

“Miss Beame never cared for nobody but you and your mother,” Mrs. Daley pointed out in a dry tone. “She never met Mr. Frazier now, did she?”

Laura was relieved. So long as nothing threatened Henry all would be well. She went back to the living room, where firelight and lamplight waited for her. Her eyes were suddenly drawn to her aunt’s chair. “Aunt Clara?” she whispered. “Are you here?”

The sense of someone being in the room with her increased, and she shivered. “I wish you could tell me and I could hear,” she said, aloud. Then she started violently. Edith, Mrs. Daley’s niece, smiled at her a trifle derisively from the doorway. “You want the tea when the guests come, ma’am?” she asked.

“Yes.” Laura was annoyed at the girl’s smile. What a fool she must think I am. “That is, for me. Mrs. Bulowe likes very dry martinis. And Mr. Gates always prefers bourbon. They don’t care for tea.”

“Maybe sherry for you, ma’am?” Edith asked demurely. She was a tall, thin girl, and very plain.

“I don’t like sherry,” Laura told her, annoyed. “And I’ll wait for martinis, myself, until Mr. Frazier gets home.” Laura rarely used a peremptory tone with servants, as she respected them too much. Edith inclined her head with exaggeration and mock humility, and disappeared. Oh dear, Laura thought, I wonder what I’ve done to make that girl despise me so?

In the kitchen, Edith said to Mrs. Daley: “I told you she was crazy. I caught her talking to an empty chair, and asking it to tell her something.”

“You’re crazy, yourself!” Mrs. Daley said angrily. She shivered. If Edith had not been in the room she would have crossed herself. “Get out the glasses they’ll need, and keep your mouth shut. What you’ve got against Mrs. Frazier, and she always so good and kind to everybody, I don’t know.”

“She’s dumb,” Edith said.

“What do you mean?”

Edith giggled. “Oh, I got my way of finding out things. She couldn’t see anything if it came up and hit her in the face.” She refused to explain. If she weren’t kin, Mrs. Daley told herself, I’d discharge her on the spot.

Laura watched lights flicker ominously in the living room. She hoped Evelyn had stacked the woodshed high with logs, and not left the wood outside in the snow. There was no sound from the kitchen. The sky darkened steadily as the storm grew worse. Then the telephone rang, and Laura ran to it gratefully. She heard her husband’s cheerful voice.

“Darling, the storm’s bad in New York, and I can imagine what it’s doing up there. So, I’m taking the 3:30 home. You’d better send Evelyn with your car, with chains on it. I know I won’t be able to move mine from the station.”

“I’m so glad you’re coming home soon!” Laura told him.

“Why?” Henry asked good-naturedly.

She felt foolish. “Because — well, because of the storm, of course. Evelyn’s at the station now, picking up Alice and David. The plows ought to be out on the main road. I’m sorry about Mr. Carr. He won’t be able to come tomorrow, will he?”

“He’s here with me,” Henry said. “So I’m bringing him along. What’s the matter, sweet?”

Laura looked at the dark hall. She could hear the bass ticking of the grandfather’s clock. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m just nervous, I guess.”

“Well, don’t be. I’ll be there soon. Lights all right?”

“They’re flickering.”

Then he said, as he always did, in a low, warm voice: “Love me?”

“Always,” Laura answered, in the ritualistic reply. Then she repeated, “Always!”

She was smiling when she turned on the lamp in the hall. The dark mahogany of the clock beamed in the lamplight. When the lights of a car swung through the glass door in the hall, Laura knew that Alice and David had arrived.

While Evelyn got out of the car and opened the doors with a flourish, David muttered to his sister: “You have it all down now, don’t you? You know exactly what to say and do?”

“Yes,” Alice assured him. “I still don’t think he knows anything.”

“I think he does. That’s why he kept seeing you all last summer. He was trying to find out if you knew.”

Huddling together, Alice and David walked up the three wide stairs to a door already opening. Laura stood on the threshold, smiling. “I’m so glad you got here safely. Hurry in!”