What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (18 page)

But she was not defeated, not yet. Taking another short rest, she reached out again, this time with both hands. And then she stopped, aware suddenly that for the last few minutes there had been no new sound from the kitchen, only silence. There in the darkness her cry of alarm was only a faint whimper. He had gone!…

She lay there, her cheek pressed deep into the mattress, her hands still anchored on the edge of the tray. Tears started again in
her eyes. And then, abruptly, there came a loud bark of laughter from down below. Instantly she tightened her fingers on the tray, and rolling this time as she did so, pulled.

The dishes, the silver, the glassware cascaded to the floor in one brief din. Then the tray itself struck upon all the rest with a crash that resounded through the darkness like a clap of thunder.… It was done, and the silence descended as suddenly and shockingly as the noise. Drawing her aching arms back to the bed, Blanche lay back, gasping for breath, listening… listening.…

I’ve got to have the money you promised me. And I want it tonight.

Edwin had meant to say it, and just that bluntly, directly he saw her. In the first place, he wanted to get it over with, and in the second, he was determined to put their relationship firmly on the businesslike level at which it belonged. Now that he had finally left Del, he was determined there would be no more toadying to weak-minded, neurotic old women.

Despite his hard determination, however, he had suffered a collapse of courage; it was harder to make financial demands on a woman than he had supposed. Then, too, he had the excuse that Jane Hudson, in her present state of alcoholic emotionalism, was hardly in the mood to discuss business. Still he was determined that she would give him the money. She
had
to. And for this reason, he had decided to stay and drink with her. A way to accomplish his purpose would surely turn up sooner or later.

Under the harsh kitchen light, Edwin grinned with a certain looseness and helped himself to his third drink of raw whisky—a heavier concentration of liquor than he had experienced in all his life previously. Putting down the bottle, he looked across at Jane Hudson who was still babbling at him with vaporish incoherence.

At first it had been some kind of nonsense about how she had been damned and thrown into hell. Now it was a lot of drivel about how he was the only friend she had in the whole wide
world, and the only one she would ever need. He was glad to note, however, that the old bag was at least beginning to cheer up. He had no more than made this observation when Jane, as if to assure him of its accuracy, suddenly threw back her head and emitted a peal of laughter, shocking in its shrill penetration.

“We’ll be on Ed Sullivan!” Jane Hudson crowed, gasping out the words through diminishing bursts of laughter. “But he’ll have to put up a fight to get us. Shove off, Ed—we’ll say—you can’t get Baby Jane Hudson for peanuts!”

“Or,” Edwin interjected in quick response, “Herr Maestro Flagg!”

“Or Herr Maestro Eddie—Edwin—Flagg,” Jane agreed with an abrupt nod. “No, sir!”

“Or even the piano—you can’t get that for peanuts, either!”

“Or the damn violin!”

“Don’t bother us, Ed,” Edwin said, taking another draft from his glass, “until you can be really—truly—serious. Maybe you can get Marlene for that kind of chicken feed. Or Frankie. But Baby Jane and Maestro Flagg—are you kiddin’?” At this, Edwin himself was dissolved into gales of mirth.

“Hell, no!” Jane cried.

“A thousand times no!”

“A thousand times
hell
no!”

“Maybe you can get Clark Gable to dance the tango—or Orson Welles to saw Marilyn Monroe in half but—but——”

Edwin rocked back in his chair, trembling with laughter. He was enjoying himself so hugely that it was some moments before he noticed that his companion’s mood had again and with the same lightning swiftness as before, reversed itself. As he looked up in surprise, Jane Hudson returned his gaze with a mournful shake of the head.

“No,” she said, “no.” Her eyes filled with tears, and Edwin felt a charge of anger that she should want to spoil his fun. “It isn’t right to laugh…”

“Oh, come on, come on!” Edwin said crossly. “You said all you needed was a friend—everything would be all right if you just had a friend. Well, here I am—I’m your friend. Isn’t that right? So what’s the matter now?” Jane shook her head again, and the tears glistened in her eyes like trembling jewels. “You were feeling just great a minute ago. Come on, cheer up!”

“I want to,” Jane said. “I want to so bad, Edwin. But I can’t be happy now… not now.…” She looked up at him suddenly, her eyes weirdly intent through the glaze of her tears. “Edwin…” she said, “could I tell you—something—and you won’t think I’m—terrible? I mean——”

Edwin waved a hand. “Sure,” he said grandly. “You can tell me anything you want—any time you want. You don’t have to hold back; just get it off your chest.”

Jane’s eyes searched his face. “You promise?”

“Promise?”

“Not to—to stop being my friend?”

“Yes, sure, I promise.”

Jane Hudson spread her hands in a gesture of finality upon the table, and when she looked up at him her eyes seemed to hold an expression of absolute sobriety. In preparation for what she was about to say, she moistened her lips nervously with her tongue. And then, in that moment, it came. The crash. A calamitous, smashing sound almost directly above them. Edwin, startled, leaped to his feet, knocking his chair over behind him. For a moment he stared at the ceiling, then looked down into Jane’s pale, upturned face.

“Holy smoke!” he said, “what was that?”

J
ane shook her head, seemingly without comprehension.

“What happened?” Edwin swung loosely around toward the hallway. “Who’s up there?”

“No one! Edwin!…”

In an instant she was there beside him, holding tightly to his arm. He looked down into her ashen face, felt a tremor pass through her body. Some very urgent and terrible communication seemed to pass between them. What was it she had been about to tell him just before the crash? Had she been on the verge of some sort of confession? Turning away to the darkened hallway, he pulled free of her.

“I’m going up and have a look.”

“No!” After a moment’s hesitation, she followed quickly after him. “No! Edwin… it’s nothing!”

He moved on through the hallway, lumbering through the darkness to the living room and across to the bottom of the stairs, his footsteps made heavy with the drink. Jane hurled herself after him, catching again at his sleeve.

“Edwin—listen!”

Goaded on rather than deterred by her objections, he grasped the handrail and pulled himself forward. At the top of the stairs, he stopped and waited for her to come up beside him.

“Edwin…”

“Turn on the lights.”

“Edwin, please, listen to me.…”

“Turn them on,” Edwin said with a rough authority born largely of the liquor. “Turn them on, dammit!”

She moved away from him then, obediently, and there was the click of a switch. The flame-shaped bulbs in the wrought-iron brackets, twins to those in the rehearsal room, came alight with a dusty orange glow. Along the wall the paintings shone with a wettish, oily sheen. Jane Hudson turned back to him, and in the pall her face looked yellow and sickly.

“Go back down,” she pleaded. “Please… let me tell you first…”

He turned to her threateningly, enjoying her reaction of fright. “What’s going on around here?” he said. Following the direction of her glance, he moved toward the entrance to the hallway.

“Edwin!”

There was such urgency in her cry that he stopped, and with a faint feeling of dismay, looked back at her. For a moment their eyes met and held, and then Jane shook her head in mute desperation. In that moment Edwin wished that he had not come here, that he had not insisted on climbing the stairs. And then the words came spilling from her mouth, in a tide that would not be stopped.

“She was going to put me out—out of the house—out alone…” She had begun to sob, as if telling him of some terrible grief. “I—I didn’t know what to do. She hates me! She thinks I don’t know, but I do. She always did hate me—even when we were little—when we were children. All these years——” She stopped suddenly, staring at him, blinking back her tears. “Edwin?——”

Edwin nodded back toward the hallway. “Your sister?”

For a moment longer she continued to stare and then, defeated, she nodded. “Yes. Blanche—She’s in there.… But it’s all right——”

“In there?” Compelled now, even against his will to play out this moment to its end, Edwin moved off into the dimness, in the direction of the closed door.

“But it’s all right now,” Jane said. “You don’t understand…”

Edwin reached out to the door, tried it. “It’s locked,” he said. He turned to her, looked down into her frightened face. “You’ve locked her in, haven’t you?”

Jane nodded. “You said you’d be my friend.… You promised.…”

Abruptly, Edwin held out his hand. “Where’s the key?”

Jane took a faltering step backward. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “No!…”

Edwin stared at her, thinking how much she looked like Del there in the dimness, with that expression of hurt bewilderment on her silly, old face. In a red burst of sick anger he suddenly grabbed her by the shoulders and began to shake her. “Give it to me!” he yelled. “Give it to me!” As in a nightmare he watched her head bobbing there before him, heard the choking gasp of her voice.

“Edwin—don’t!”

He let go of her and again held out his hand. “Give it to me!”

Jane nodded, still gasping for breath. “Yes,” she whispered. “It’s in my room.…”

He followed her, watching from the doorway as she took the key from the drawer of the desk and brought it back to him.

“All right.” His anger was suddenly gone, leaving him empty and ill. Still, now that he had the key, he had to go through with it. “All right,” he repeated, and turned back down the hall.

At the first sound of the key touching the lock, Blanche strained upward in the darkness, struggling to face the door. She had won! Her heart beat wildly with the wonderful certainty that she had managed to bring help at last. A moment before, listening breathlessly to the voices outside her door, she had only been able to pray and hope. But now she knew!

The key turned in the lock and the door swung open. Still struggling, she was only obliquely aware of a dim fan of light upon the carpet, broken by a large stretching shadow. But then
she looked up and saw him there in the doorway in silhouette, stout, towering, enormous. She had to speak; she had to make him know what it meant to her that he had come.

“Thank God!” There in the darkness her voice was only a dry whisper, so weak she wasn’t at all certain that he heard. “Thank God you’ve come.…”

Uncontrollably, tears began to stream down her face, tears of gratitude and relief. The figure in the doorway swayed slightly. But it made no move to come forward.

With a first faint tremor of misgiving, Blanche brought her hand up to her breast, watching.… A moment passed, and then the man moved again, reaching out to the wall in search of the panel that contained the light switches. When he found it, there was a faint click, and a harsh flood of light came down upon the room from the ceiling, forcing Blanche to close her eyes. There was a beat of silence and then, from the man, a sharp grunt of dismay.

Opening her eyes against the glare, Blanche looked up at him. He was there just inside the doorway, staring down at her with an expression of glazed horror. Blinking furiously against the brightness, she had only a vague impression of what he looked like; he was stout, his forehead glistened with perspiration. She struggled to prop herself up on her elbows.

“Take me—away—away from here…” she panted. “Please… please!”

She waited, but he still did not come to her. As her vision cleared, she looked more closely into his face and saw that he was immobilized by shock. But then his expression changed and became one of sick revulsion. He took a faltering step backward toward the hall, and his hand reached out again, mechanically, to the light switch.

“Please!” Blanche whispered in fright. “Oh, please!”

The switch clicked, and the darkness was upon her with the
numbing impact of a physical blow. The man in the doorway was once again only a faceless, hulking silhouette.

“No!” she cried. “No!” She tried vainly to pull herself forward across the bed. “Don’t leave me here! Don’t!——”

For a moment longer the man loomed there in the doorway, as if torn with indecision. And then, with a sound like that of retching, he turned and reached for the door.

“No!” Blanche cried, her voice no more than a faint gasp now, even to herself. “Oh, no! You can’t!”

Abruptly the door closed and he was gone, and in his place was only the darkness and the stinging shock of what had happened. She remained for another moment straining toward the door, and then she turned, pressing her face down hard into the tangled bedclothes.

“Oh, please!” she sobbed, “please… please!”

Trembling, Edwin moved back from the door and reached out a hand to the wall. For a moment he was beyond any further movement or speech. It was a nightmare past all imagining, the sudden glimpse of that pallid, wasted face with its streaming, sunken eyes, its matted white hair, its bluish, lifeless lips pulled back upon the teeth in a horrible grimace of pleading. And the twisted, emaciated body in its tangle of nightdress. And the dry, whispering voice… the voice of a dead person… or of someone close to death…

He could not have looked at her another moment. He could not have gone to her and touched her if his very life had depended upon it. It was too horrible, too repugnant. He turned, seized by a new wave of nausea, and made his way out to the gallery. Footsteps sounded behind him, and he looked around to see Jane Hudson emerging from the shadows.

“I couldn’t trust her,” she said unevenly. “I’ve taken care of her all these years—all these years… and she only wanted—she
wanted to get rid of me—get away from me.… It’s only for a few days more—until tomorrow—or the next day…”

Edwin turned from her, moved away. Crossing to the top of the stairs, he gripped the newel post for support. The sweat on his forehead, capturing the light from the orange globes, glistened like beads of polished bronze. He stood there, waiting for the sickness to pass. All he wanted now was to be away from here, away from the awful, crushing reality of the horror he had just seen in that room. He faced around to Jane, his eyes dark with loathing.

“Your own sister!” he managed to say.

“You don’t understand!”

“It’s awful—
awful
!”

Jane put her hand out to him. “Don’t,” she implored him. “Don’t take her side. Everybody always, always does. You don’t know…”

Edwin straightened, looking down at her with fixed wonder. “You’re insane,” he breathed. “You’re mad.…”

Jane shook her head. “You’re my friend,” she protested, “mine—and you promised!…”

Shuddering, Edwin turned back toward the stairs. “I want out of here.” Avoiding her outstretched hand, he moved off down the steps.

“Where are you going?” She moved close after him, following. “Edwin?…”

Impervious, he continued down to the living room and across to the front door.

“Don’t leave me here alone!” she cried. “I can’t stand it if you do! Edwin—you can’t leave me alone, you can’t! I mustn’t be alone now—you don’t know…”

He opened the door, and then as she reached out to him, stopped and looked back at her.

“Get away from me,” he said with quiet horror. “Get—
away
!”

Even after he had gone Jane stood staring at the closed door
in stunned disillusionment. He had pretended to be so good, so nice; he had pretended to be her friend. It came to her in a rush; she hated him—
hated
him! Whirling about, she hurled her gaze up the stairs, toward the gallery and the darkened hallway. Her face contorted and then, with a small, strangled sob, she began to cry.

The weeping, however, lasted for only a moment, for then, all at once, she saw the terrible danger in what had happened. Edwin had seen—he knew—and he would tell! He was probably on his way to the police at this very moment! She made a small whimpering sound of terror. She had to stop him! She had to go after him and find him.… She started convulsively toward the door.

She had only touched the knob when she pulled back again. He had been gone too long now; she would never be able to catch up with him on foot. She would be safer taking the car. If she could just find him and make him understand—if she could just persuade him to come back to the house with her… The key. The key to the car was in her room upstairs. She would have to run… hurry!…

Edwin, leaving the Hudson house, made his way blindly down the street, past the suspended light at the intersection and into the darkness beyond. Passing a number of houses, he came to a second lighted intersection, started to follow the street into a sharp, descending curve. Overcome, at that moment, with a sweeping feeling of weakness, he stopped. Making his way over to the short stone protective barrier that stretched around the length of the curve, he sat down.

Absently, he looked down into the black abyss beyond the wall. Never had he suffered a shock such as this one; never had he been brought up so sharply against stark, hideous reality. As Blanche Hudson’s gaunt, pleading face appeared again in his mind, he
strove to blot it out. He would not think of it again. He couldn’t bear to—not yet.

He sat there staring down into the descending darkness, his thoughts wildly mixed and uncertain. For the moment he knew only one thing; from this night forward he would never be able to think of Jane Hudson or her sister without experiencing all over again the same awful, retching sickness that he felt now.