Barbara Greer (31 page)

He shook his head. ‘No,' he said. ‘I'm still busy.'

‘But it's
Sunday
, dear!' Edith said. ‘You've been holed up in that study of yours most of the day! Come, now, and join us.'

‘In a little while,' he said. ‘Not right now.' He turned and walked back toward his study.

‘Oh, dear!' Edith said. ‘He's been working so hard!' She stood up. ‘Excuse me a moment,' she said. ‘I'm just going to see if he won't—' She left the sentence unfinished and went out of the room after him.

Barney walked back to the window and rested his palms on the sill, looking out. Barbara sat quietly in her chair and for several minutes only the sounds of the storm filled the room. Then Barney said softly, ‘It won't work.'

‘What won't work?' she asked him.

‘She won't get him to come out.'

‘Really?'

‘She'll be in there for quite a while, talking to him. But it won't be any use. He's too busy being alone.'

She said nothing.

Still looking out the window, he said, ‘Are you angry with me?'

‘No.'

‘You seem very quiet.'

‘I'm—thinking,' she said.

‘What are you thinking about?'

‘Well,' she said, ‘I'm a little confused.'

He turned quickly and faced her, leaning back against the window sill. ‘Are you?' he asked. ‘Why?'

For several minutes she had been debating in her mind whether or not to tell him what Cousin Billy had said. She had thought first of speaking to Peggy or perhaps to her father, about it. And she had also thought that perhaps it would be better to speak to no one; tomorrow, she would be leaving, and perhaps it would be better to escape that way and leave the controversy behind. It was a controversy, she felt weakly, that she did not completely understand. She had never understood or cared about—as Peggy had said—the corporate intricacies of the paper business. Problems of the family, of course, concerned her, but not problems of the business. And yet the family was the business, as Billy had said, and she had begun to wonder whether Peggy and Barney were planning to betray them both. So she said, ‘I don't quite understand what you and Peggy are trying to do to the rest of us.'

‘Ah,' he said. ‘Go on.'

‘Woody said something to me last night,' she said. ‘And this morning Peggy said she wanted to buy my stock. Just now Cousin Billy said—'

He nodded slowly. ‘So that's what he wanted to see you about. He knows, then.'

‘It's a small business and a small family,' she said. ‘It isn't easy to keep secrets.'

‘Of course,' he said.

‘What is it, exactly, that she wants to do?'

‘It's very simple,' he said. ‘I think you know all there is to know. She wants to get a controlling interest in the company.'

‘But why?'

He shrugged. ‘She thinks she deserves to have it,' he said. ‘And she thinks I could run the company better than it's being run now.'

‘Could you?'

‘Possibly,' he said. ‘I don't know.'

‘It doesn't seem from what Billy told me—to be a very practical thing to do.'

‘She'll have some trouble doing it, I admit,' he said. ‘But don't underestimate Peggy. She's got all sorts of angles. I wouldn't be surprised, actually, if she brought it off.'

‘I'd be surprised,' she said. ‘But most of all I'd be very upset if she did.'

‘Why?'

‘Because she doesn't deserve it. She doesn't deserve to control the company. If anyone deserves it, Daddy does.'

‘Oh, I know,' he said. ‘But I think Peggy has lost faith in your father.'

‘What do you mean?'

He raised his hands in an open gesture. ‘Just—just lost faith in him, that's all. As an administrator.'

‘I want you to ask her to stop it,' Barbara said.

‘Why? Why do you care?'

‘I care,' she said quickly, ‘because of Daddy. Peggy forgets. Maybe she was too young to remember what I remember. But I remember very well. It nearly killed Daddy when they took the control of the company away from him and gave it to Billy. He's really never been the same. What do you think would happen to him now if even more was taken away—and given to you? It's been bad enough for him, taking orders from a thirty-six-year-old man. Do you think he could work for a man who's still in his twenties?'

‘I suppose you're right,' he said simply.

‘Then will you please tell Peggy not to go any further with this? I'll tell her, too, but I want you to help me.'

‘All right', he said. ‘But I don't know what good it will do.'

‘Barney,' she said, ‘I'm confused about another thing. Where do you stand in all this?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I mean—suddenly I don't know. This morning, when you met me at Nana's—and on the rock, was it all part of a scheme of yours and Peggy's? To get me to sell my stock?'

He came toward her. ‘Do you really think that?' He stood over her, his dark eyes gazing deeply at her. ‘Do you really mean that?' he asked her.

She looked away. ‘I don't know. I asked you,' she said.

‘Listen,' he said, and his voice was a harsh whisper. ‘Don't ever say that. Do you want to know where I stand? I thought you knew where I stood. Remember me? I'm the family's pet Persian cat! I don't stand anywhere. This is Peggy's scheme, not mine. Of course she consulted me. No. Consulted is the wrong word. She told me, that's all, what she planned to do. A year ago, or even six months ago, I might have cared about what she wanted to do. But I don't now. I simply don't give a damn now. As far as I'm concerned she can try whatever she wants to try. I don't care, because it doesn't involve me any more. I'm going to leave her, Barbara. I've made up my mind. I'm not going to be engulfed in it—in the business, and the family—the way everyone else is. I'm going to escape, somehow—I don't know yet quite how. But I'm not going to let this family and this company—because they're the same thing, as everybody keeps saying—submerge me and destroy me the way they've destroyed everybody else. Do you understand what I'm saying, Barbara? Do you?'

‘Oh, Barney—'

‘Quiet. Listen to me,' he said. ‘Listen! It's destroying you, too—it will, if you let it. It will destroy you, just the way it's destroyed your father, and destroyed Woody, and destroyed Peggy. You've got to escape, too. You asked me where I stood, and I'll tell you—there's only one thing I care about, Barbara. You know what it is. I want the two of us to go away together.'

‘But we can't.'

‘So you said this morning.'

‘Don't you believe it?'

‘Not yet. Not quite,' he said.

‘How can two people run away from their responsibilities?' she asked, but the words which she had intended to sound sensible sounded foolish.

He smiled. ‘That's for the two people to discover,' he said.

‘We couldn't. Even if we wanted to.'

‘You mean you don't want to?' he asked her.

‘I'm—well, I'm very flattered, of course, and—'

‘Flattered? Is that all you feel? We're in love with each other.'

‘That's the point,' she said quietly. ‘I don't think we are.'

He looked momentarily stunned; his eyes closed. ‘But I love you,' he said finally. ‘And you love me.'

‘No. I don't think I do.'

‘You told me you did.'

‘Did I?' she asked a little wildly. ‘I don't remember saying that, Barney, and if I did—'

‘What about that night? That night in your room?'

‘Did I say that then?'

‘What else did it mean?' he asked her.

‘Sit down,' she said. ‘Please sit down.'

He didn't move. Another of his small half-smiles crossed his face, then disappeared. ‘I want to stand up,' he said. ‘I lost the argument on the rock this morning because I lay down. I let you gain the upper hand. This time, I want to keep my head higher than yours.'

‘You're such a funny boy!'

‘Tell me what it meant,' he said. ‘Please.'

‘Well,' she said. ‘there were a number of things wrong with that night. Carson and I had had a quarrel for one thing. I was feeling sorry for myself. And I was younger then. It was only two years ago, but a person can grow up a great deal in two years. I've thought about that night often. I was immature then, I must have been. It was a very selfish thing for me to do, or think of doing. It was a very greedy thing. I thought you were attractive. I still do. I was playing a very silly little game. I flirted with you. I thought—how pretty to have this handsome young man like me! I thought, what fun! I thought, all right, why not? What difference does it make? I'll have an affair with him.'

‘An affair?' he said quietly. ‘Is that all it was going to be?'

‘Sometimes I think I grew up too quickly,' she said. ‘Other times I think I grew up much too late. Sometimes I think I'm a very unsatisfactory human being. Sometimes I think I should go off to a Himalayan mountaintop and contemplate the sunrise and find out what I am.'

‘An affair?' he repeated.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘Honestly, that was all I had in mind! A little affair we could both forget about afterward.'

‘What fun,' he said. ‘How nice.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘I don't believe you.'

‘I'm sorry, it's true.'

‘I don't believe it,' he said, ‘because you're not the sort of girl who has affairs.'

‘I'm glad you think that, ‘she said, ‘because, you see, we didn't have one.'

He shook his head slowly back and forth. ‘You couldn't have thought that,' he said.

‘Anyway,' she said, ‘what happened that night isn't important. Because nothing happened! We were very lucky. Saved—literally—by the bell. The important thing for you to remember now is that I'm happily married. And you're happily married, too. Peggy is very dear to me, even though we're very different. She's my sister and I couldn't do anything to hurt her. I mean this, Barney.'

‘Peggy,' he said slowly, ‘is a heartless and mercenary bitch, obsessed and consumed by the idea of money.'

‘You told me once that you respected money, too. You said you thought it was a perfectly decent thing to serve.'

‘That's true,' he said. ‘I could serve money in a true way, not Peggy's way. You said yourself that what Peggy wants to do would kill your father. But did you know that Peggy knows this? And doesn't care? She doesn't care if it kills him because she thinks he's weak. And weak people deserve to be killed, according to Peggy.'

‘And I simply don't believe that!' she said.

‘It's true. Of course she doesn't want him literally to die. Just—just spiritually. She wants to finish the job your dear old grandfather began.'

‘That's ridiculous,' she said angrily.

‘Is it? I don't think so. I think it's a family trait.'

‘Please, Barney!'

‘No,' he said. ‘You haven't seen it. You've seen the outside, the politeness, the family
love
as they call it. You haven't seen the way each one wants to gobble up the others. You see everything all so close and loving! You see the little dinners and the lunches at the pool. You see this room—' he started around the room, striking at objects with his hand as he went. ‘Curtains made in France, tables and chairs made in England, rugs from—I don't know—Persia, I suppose, and—'

‘Don't be absurd,' she said. ‘Rugs from Sloane's or Altman's. Barney, please stop this.'

‘What difference does it make where the rugs come from? The point is, that's all you see—lovely things, this lovely house, lovely people. I used to think I wanted everything the Woodcocks had, until I saw that it was all rotten.' He picked up the cigarette box and slammed it down. ‘You're so loyal,' he said. ‘It makes me sick to see you so loyal! Don't you know they'll never be loyal to you? The strong eat the weak in this house, Barbara, and they'll eat you because you happen to be good. And goodness is weakness in this scheme of things. Look at your father. Look at Woody—'

‘What's wrong with Woody, for heaven's sake?'

‘Haven't you seen him? Gone, defeated. Given up—just a little mechanical figure that hops along the ground!'

Suddenly there were tears in her eyes. ‘Be quiet!' she said. ‘You don't have any business talking this way! Just because you've never had a family that loved you, you have no business insulting ours!'

He came now and stood in front of her again.

‘I think you're right!' she said. ‘You should leave Peggy! I think you should get out of this house and never come back. You never did belong here, and if you've hated this house and this family so, you had no business staying. You've lived as a guest in this house for two years. You should be grateful! We've done everything for you and if you can't be grateful, you should get out!' She started to stand up, but he quickly knelt beside her and seized her wrists.

‘Barbara,' he said softly. ‘Barbara—'

‘Let me go!'

‘No, no. Wait. I'm sorry. You're right. Let me tell you something—'

‘No, I don't want to hear any more!'

‘Listen,' he said. ‘Please listen to me. I'm sorry. You're right, Barbara, I am the villain. I'm the worst kind of person, Barbara. You said you wanted to find out what kind of person you were, but I know what kind of person I am. There's a dirty word for men like me. I married your sister under false pretences. I didn't love her. Every word of my marriage vows was a lie. But do you know why, Barbara? Do you know why I've stayed here for two years?'

‘No. Why?'