(1961) The Chapman Report (33 page)

She went to him, head on his shoulder, arms encircling his chest.

“I’m not angry,” he said. “Only try not to do this again, Sarah. I’ve nothing to hide. There’s no one but you. But sometimes I’m out, or some friend is here, or today-she-“

“I won’t, Fred, not again. I just wanted to see you.”

He stroked her sleek hair. “That’s good of you. I appreciate it. I want to see you as often as possible. What happened this morning? How was the child psychiatrist?”

“Psychiatrist?” She had momentarily forgotten her fiction, and then she remembered it. “Fine-very helpful. I … I’ learned a good deal.”

“Have you had breakfast yet?”

“That’s not what I want.”

He held her off. “What do you want?”

“I want to know you love me.”

He drew her to him again, and spoke gently, lucidly, as one addresses a small child. “Of course I love you. But let’s not ever spoil it by being rash. I want this to go on forever. The main thing to remember is-we must both be sensible.”

She gazed up-at him. “Why?” she asked.

It was something she had never asked him-or herself-before.

Long after, Paul Radford would still relive the interview that took place between the hour of four and five-fifteen that tropical Thursday afternoon.

What had first intrigued him about her was the soft, low-keyed voice that filtered through the obstructing screen. There was a throaty quality about the voice that conjured up an association of words: reposeful … sophisticated … ladylike … chaise longue … lace … boudoir … ardor … infinity. Someday, when they had the Zollman Foundation grant and their fabulous sex center, he would suggest to Dr. Chapman that a paper be prepared correlating feminine desirability to vocal timbre.

He wondered if the reality of her matched the promise of her voice. Again he thought, as he had several times before, that the dividing screen was an artificial nuisance, more inhibiting than encouraging.

Before him lay her history, through adolescence and the premarital stage. Except for certain puritanical overtones, and a tendency toward restraint, her life performance was not remarkable. Most of her early behavior was widespread and therefore, by their standard, eminently normal.

“Before we embark on a series of questions about the marital sex act,” he said, “perhaps you’d like a brief break-smoke a cigarette?”

“If you please.”

“Matter of fact, I’ll have a pipe, if it won’t annoy you?”

“Not at all.”

He heard the unclasping of her purse, and he extracted his pipe and filled and lighted it. He lifted the questionnaire from the

table and reviewed the beginnings of their interview, as he had several times before.

Her name was Kathleen Ballard. Her age was twenty-eight. She had been bom in Richmond, Virginia, and removed to San Francisco when she was twelve-this would account for the slight Southern slur, attractive, on some of her words-and she had been educated at Roanoke College and the University of Richmond, and spent a short time at the Sorbonne, explained by the fact that her late father was high-ranking regular army. Like Paul himself, she was Presbyterian by heredity and indifferent by choice. She had recently joined a church in The Briars, but only so that her daughter might have Sunday-school activity. Her marital status was that of widow. Her husband of three years had been a jet test pilot and had met with a fatal accident over a year ago.

Paul had undergone a curious emotional conflict when he had heard the fate of her husband. His first reaction, spontaneous and uncivilized, was one of relief. Why relief? Because, he told himself, a woman like this must not be owned by any man and reduced to a commonplace chattel taken for granted. And besides, if she were free, it made his fantasies less immature. At once, the old dependable guilt overtook him. And for the feeling of relief he substituted the more acceptable and sanctimonious attitude of pity.

Now, drawing contentedly on his pipe, preparing to ask the series of questions on marital coitus, he suddenly related her last name to the test pilot recently dead. Ballard. And then it came to him that this might be the widow of the renowned Boy Ballard, a legendary figure whose name had so flamboyantly filled the front pages for several years. Of course, this was the great Boy Ballard’s widow, and immediately Paul Radford felt embarrassed for his fantasies. He felt like a chimney sweep in the presence of Her Majesty. But another glance at the questionnaire reassured him. She was a woman.

He set the sheet on the table before him, settled his pipe in the ceramic tray, and cleared his throat. “Well, the pause that refreshes. If you’re ready, I am.” “Yes, I’m ready.”

“These questions will concern just the three years you were married. To begin with, what was the frequency of sexual intercourse with your husband?” On the other side of the screen, Kathleen Ballard, in a cool,

sleeveless, ice-blue linen dress, sat rigid and erect in the chair. She had just ground out the butt of her cigarette, but now she sought another in her purse.

“Let me think …” she said.

It was the moment that she had dreaded all these last days, but she was prepared. Meeting Ursula Palmer before the post office, Tuesday morning, had been fortunate. They had taken tea at The Crystal Room, and Ursula, with her keen reportorial mind, had explained the entire experience. In her car afterward Kathleen had located a pencil in her glove compartment, and, writing on the back of a pink garage receipt, she had jotted down as many of the Chapman questions as she could remember, especially those concerning marital life. As a result, she had been ten minutes late picking up Deirdre at dancing class. But that night, and the night after, she had kept the notes before her in the kitchen, and then in the bathroom and bedroom, thinking about the questions that she would be asked and thinking about her life with Boy.

Now,-holding a newly lighted cigarette between faintly nicotine-scarred fingers, she wondered if Jim Scoville, official biographer, and J. Ronald Metzgar, keeper of the shrine, had been right, and she had been wrong: It was too late now for remorse. She was face to face with it-with that surprisingly kind and thoughtful person concealed behind that sensible screen-and there was no turning back. Besides, she was prepared.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but could you ask the question again, please?”

“The frequency of-“

“Oh, yes. Three times a week,” she blurted.

“Would that be the average?”

“More or less, when he was home. He was away a good deal.”

“Did you engage in petting before-“

She was ready for that one, too. “Yes, of course.”

“Could you describe-“

Hastily, she described it.

“How much time, on the average, did you devote to petting?”

She suffered a moment of panic. Ursula had left that one out. Of had she forgotten to note it? No, Ursula would forget nothing, Odd. She was so thorough. Maybe Ursula had not been asked the question. Why not? And why now? How much time, on the average? How could that be answered? What should it be? An hour? Too fanciful. Too pat. “Fifty minutes,” she said.

Coolly, so she thought it must appear, she went on and on, with no hesitancy, with full confidence, from magnificent performances to incredible satisfactions, always the paragon of enlightened womanhood.

She had replied to a crucial question. There was a momentary silence, and she watched the screen and wondered if he approved.

“Now, as I have it here,” said Paul, “you and your husband were intimate three times weekly, with fifty minutes devoted to petting and an hour devoted to love. Do I have it right?”

The cigarette almost burned her finger, and she hastily rubbed it in the tray. Nerve filaments quivered tautly beneath her skin, and it was difficult to swallow. “Yes,” she said loudly. Too loudly, she decided. “It’s difficult … to remember exactly.”

More questions, too carefully worded, she thought. She wondered.

More answers, too recklessly given, he thought, He wondered.

“To what degree did you enjoy intimate relations with your mate-very much, somewhat, not very much, not at all?”

“I always enjoyed it very much. Isn’t that normal?”

At ten minutes after five, Paul Radford noisily pushed back his chair to indicate clearly that the interview had been terminated. “Well, that gives us everything we need. Thank you very much.”

“It was painless. Thank you.”

He listened intently, and heard her remove the purse from the end table, heard the clack of her high-heeled pumps on the floor, heard the door open and close, and at last he was alone with the coded sex history of Kathleen Ballard, Widow.

Scowling, he took up the sheet, rose, and started around the screen. Twenty minutes stretched between now and the next scheduled interview. He decided that he needed a cup of black coffee in the conference room. Going past the screen into the forbidden female place, he halted a moment to contemplate the empty chair, recently vacated, and the ash tray with the remains of six or seven cigarettes. And then he saw on the floor, beneath the end table, a dark-green wallet.

He moved to the table, kneeled, and picked up the wallet. It was plainly feminine, and because no one else had been in the chair this morning, he knew who its owner must be. Unsnapping it, he pondered how she could have left it behind. Then he recollected when it must have happened. During the first minutes of the interview, he had heard her drop her purse. She had requested a moment to retrieve the scattered contents. Apparently she had overlooked the wallet.

Studying the billfold, now open, and knowing its owner, he justified his next action by telling himself that he had to be positive it was her own. The wallet contained a five-dollar bill, two singles, a Diners’ book, and several gasoline credit cards. Opening the flap to the celluloid inserts, he found a driver’s license, and then her photograph, or, rather, her photograph with a small girl child. This, he knew, was what he had been hunting for from the beginning.

He stared at the formal, wallet-sized picture, obviously the contact print for an enlargement. He was not surprised one bit. She was almost exactly what he had imagined. Prettier, perhaps, with a loveliness that held him breathless. For long seconds, he studied the marvelous face, the dark hair bobbed short, the Oriental eyes, the tip of the nose, and the sensuous mouth.

Quickly, he closed the wallet and snapped it tight. He would give it to Benita to return.

He slipped the wallet into his pocket, and there was the questionnaire still in his hand. The questionnaire, he thought, less real, less true than the face with lips like a thread of scarlet.

For a moment, he peered down at the sheet of paper in his hand. And then, in a single abrupt motion, half exasperation, half disappointment, he tore the sheet in two.

Why had she lied?

In the corridor, he saw Benita behind the desk writing a letter.

“Any coffee?” he asked.

“On the hot plate,” she said.

He nodded and went on. He did not give her the wallet,

Kathleen Ballard stood before the Spanish grille panel of her bar, which she had slid back earlier, and now she dropped fresh ice cubes in the two glasses, uncomfortably aware of Ted Dyson’s eyes upon her. Pouring the Scotch across the ice-she really shouldn’t have another drink, she knew-she was sorry that she had worn this black sheath. It left her shoulders bare and clung tightly to her thighs, and was too short. If it made her feel unclad, what was it making him feel?

Slowly, she stirred the drinks, forgetting that there was no water in them and that they need not be stirred. Yet, she had selected

the dress with care, and earlier she had driven Deirdre over to the Keegans for the night, and, after the dinner was under control, she had dismissed Albertine two hours early and said that she would serve the meal herself. What had possessed her?

It was the interview, of course. She had faced the fact of it and the lie of it, these last hours since. The ordeal had been sick-making, with all those dreadful, ruthless questions, and, worse, she had misled the poor, earnest man like some psychotic liar. But it had been necessary to go through with the interview, to resolve a stand she had taken toward her past, and it had been equally necessary to prevaricate, if she were to live with that past. But the point was, and this she knew short minutes after the interview, she did not want to live with her past or make false terms with it. She wanted to start anew; she wanted to be normal. The questions had fashioned her goal: in a year or two from now, if she were asked them again, she wanted to be free enough, sufficiently liberated and unashamed, to answer each and all honestly. This had been her mood and temper driving home, and dressing, and waiting for Ted Dyson. Perhaps he was not her ultimate man, but he was a man, and she had not known one for a year, nearer two, perhaps ever. Lord, she was twenty-eight, and still not yet a woman.

Now, the two drinks in her hands, she left the bar and saw that Ted had, indeed, been watching her. He sat sprawled indolently on the low silk sofa, exuding cockiness, and she did not like it. In fact, there was the frightening feeling inside her that she did not like him at all. Although there was a sulky virility about him, there was also something angry, jittery, unwholesome, that reminded you of male carhops and juvenile hopheads you saw in the morning paper. Yet, he was an old friend, and he respected her, and his membership card reminded you that he was of the elite who often dwelled in the news.

She set her drink on the tea table and then went around the table to the sofa. She held out his glass.

“Hi, oasis,” he said thickly.

Bending toward him, she could smell the liquor on his breath. He had been drinking before he arrived, that she knew, and this was the fourth she had served him.

He accepted the drink with his left hand and suddenly grabbed her wrist with his right.

“Come on, Katie-sit down beside me.”

“Not now, Ted. I’ve got the dinner-“

“To hell with the dinner. Let’s talk.”

Her stance was awkward, bent forward, her wrist clamped in his hard hand.