Calamity Town (3 page)

So Mr Queen began to look forward to escaping with Pat in the mornings, when she would call for him dressed in slacks and a pullover sweater and take him exploring through the County in her little convertible. She knew everybody in Wrightsville and Slocum Township, and introduced him to people named variously O'Halleran, Zimbruski, Johnson, Dowling, Goldberger, Venuti, Jacquard, Wladislaus, and Broadbeck—journeymen machinists, toolers, assembly-line men, farmers, retailers, hired hands, white and black and brown, with children of unduplicated sizes and degrees of cleanliness. In a short time, through the curiously wide acquaintanceship of Miss Wright, Mr Queen's notebook was rich with funny lingos, dinner-pair details, Saturday-night brawls down on Route 16, square dances and hepcat contests, noon whistles whistling, lots of smoke and laughing and pushing, and the color of America, Wrightsville edition.

‘I don't know what I'd do without you,' Ellery said one morning as they returned from Low Village. ‘You seem so much more the country-club, church-social, Younger-Set type of female. How come, Pat?'

‘I'm that, too,' grinned Pat. ‘But I'm a Sociology Major, or I was—got my degree in June; and I guess I just can't help practising on the helpless population. If this war keeps up—'

‘Milk Fund?' asked Ellery vaguely. ‘That sort of thing?'

‘Barbarian! Milk Funds are Muth's department. My dear man, sociology is concerned with more than calcium for growing bones. It's the science of civilization. Now take the Zimbruskis—'

‘Spare me,' moaned Mr Queen, having met the Zimbruskis. ‘By the way, what does Mr Bradford, your local Prosecutor, think of all this, Patty?'

‘Of me and sociology?'

‘Of me and you.'

‘Oh.' Pat tossed her hair to the wind, looking pleased. ‘Cart's jealous.'

‘Hmmm. Look here, my little one—'

‘Now don't start being noble,' said Pat. ‘Trouble with Cart, he's taken me for granted too long. We've practically grown up together. Do him good to be jealous.'

‘I don't know,' smiled Ellery, ‘that I entirely relish the role of love-irritant.'

‘Oh, please!' Pat was shocked. ‘I
like
you. And this is more fun.' Suddenly, with one of her quick sidelong glances: ‘You know what people are saying, incidentally—or don't you?'

‘What now?'

‘You told Mr Pettigrew that you're a famous writer—'

‘Mr Pettigrew supplied the adjective “famous” all by himself.'

‘You've also said you don't write under the name Ellery Smith, that you use a pseudonym…but you didn't tell anyone
which
pseudonym.'

‘Lord, no!'

‘So people are saying that maybe you aren't a famous author after all,' murmured Pat. ‘Nice town, huh?'

‘Which people?'

‘People.'

‘Do
you
think I'm a fraud?'

‘Never mind what I think,' retorted Pat. ‘But you should know there's been a run on the Authors' Photograph File at the Carnegie Library, and Miss Aikin reports you're simply not there.'

‘Pish,' said Ellery. ‘And a couple of tushes. I'm just not famous enough.'

‘That's what I told her. Mother was furious at the very thought, but I said: “Muth, how do we
know?”
and do you know—poor Mother didn't sleep a wink all night?'

They laughed together. Then Ellery said: ‘Which reminds me. Why haven't I met your sister Nora? Isn't she well?'

He was appalled by the way Pat stopped laughing at mention of her sister's name. ‘Nora?' repeated Pat in a perfectly flat voice, a voice that told nothing at all. ‘Why, Nora's all right. Let's call it a morning, Mr Smith.'

That night Hermione officially unveiled her new treasure. The list was
intime
. Just Judge and Clarice Martin, Doc Willoughby, Carter Bradford, Tabitha Wright, John F.'s only living sister—Tabitha was the ‘stiff-necked' Wright who had never quite ‘accepted' Hermione Bluefield—and editor-publisher Frank Lloyd of the
Record
. Lloyd was talking politics with Carter Bradford; but both men merely pretended to be interested in each other. Carter was hurling poisonous looks at Pat and Ellery in the ‘love seat' by the Italian fireplace; while Lloyd, a brown bear of a man, kept glancing restlessly at the staircase in the foyer.

‘Frank had a crush on Nora before Jim…He's still crazy about her,' explained Pat. ‘When Jim Haight came along and Nora fell for him, Frank took the whole thing pretty badly.' Ellery inspected the mountainous newspaper editor from across the room and inwardly agreed that Frank Lloyd would make a dangerous adversary. There was iron in those deep-sunk green eyes. ‘And when Jim walked out on Nora, Frank said that—'

‘Yes?'

‘Never mind what Frank said,' Pat jumped up. ‘I'm talking too much.' And she rustled towards Mr Bradford to break another little piece off his heart. Pat was wearing a blue taffeta dinner gown that swished faintly as she moved.

‘Milo, this is
the
Ellery Smith,' said Hermy proudly, coming over with big, lumbering Doc Willoughby in tow.

‘Don't know whether you're a good influence or not, Mr Smith,' chuckled Doc. ‘I just came from another confinement at the Jacquards'. Those Canucks! Triplets this time. Only difference between me and Dr Dafoe is that no lady in Wright County's been considerate enough to bear more than four at one time. Like our town?'

‘I've fallen in love with it, Dr Willoughby'

‘It's a good town. Hermy, where's my drink?'

‘If you're broad-minded,' snorted Judge Martin, strolling up with Clarice hanging—heavily—on his arm. Judge Martin was a gaunt little man with sleepy eyes and a dry manner. He reminded Ellery of Arthur Train's Mr Tutt.

‘Eli Martin!' cried Clarice. ‘Mr Smith, you just ignore this husband of mine. He's miserable about having to wear his dinner jacket and he'll take it out on you because you're the cause. Hermy, everything's just
perfect
.'

‘It's nothing at all,' murmured Hermione, pleased. ‘Just a little intimate dinner, Clarice.'

‘I don't like these doodads,' growled the Judge, fingering his bow tie. ‘Well, Tabitha, and what are
you
sniffing about?'

‘Comedian!' said John F.'s sister, glaring at the old jurist. ‘I can't imagine what Mr Smith must be thinking of us, Eli!'

Judge Martin observed dryly that if Mr Smith thought less of him for being uncomfortable in doodads, then
he
thought less of Mr Smith. A crisis was averted by the appearance of Henry Clay Jackson announcing dinner. Henry Clay was the only trained butler in Wrightsville, and the ladies of the upper crust, by an enforced Communism, shared him and his rusty ‘buttlin' suit.' It was an unwritten law among them that Henry Clay was to be employed on ultra-special occasions only.

‘Dinnuh,' announced Henry Clay Jackson, ‘is heaby suhved!'

Nora Wright appeared suddenly between the roast lambwreathed-in-mint-jelly-flowers and the pineapple mousse. For an instant the room was singing-still. Then Hermione quavered: ‘Why,
Nora
darling,' and John F. said gladly: ‘Nora baby,' through a mouthful of salted nuts, and Clarice Martin gasped: ‘Nora, how
nice!
' and the spell was broken.

Ellery was the first man on his feet. Frank Lloyd was the last; the thick neck under his shaggy hair was the color of brick. Pat saved the day. ‘I must say this is a fine time to come down to dinner, Nora!' she said briskly. ‘Why, we've finished Ludie's best lamb. Mr Smith, Nora.'

Nora offered him her hand. It felt as fragile and cold as a piece of porcelain. ‘Mother's told me all about you,' said Nora in a voice that sounded unused.

‘And you're disappointed. Naturally,' smiled Ellery. He held out a chair.

‘Oh, no! Hello, Judge, Mrs Martin. Aunt Tabitha…Doctor…Carter…'

Frank Lloyd said, ‘Hullo, Nora,' in gruff tones; he took the chair from Ellery's hands neither rudely nor politely; he simply took it and held it back for Nora. She turned pink and sat down. Just then Henry Clay marched in with the magnificent mousse, molded in the shape of a book, and everybody began to talk.

Nora Wright sat with her hands folded, palms up, as if exhausted; her colorless lips were twisted into a smile. Apparently she had dressed with great care, for her candy-striped dinner gown was fresh and perfectly draped, her nails impeccable, and her coiffure without a single stray wine-brown hair. Ellery glimpsed a sudden, rather appalling, vision of this slight bespectacled girl in her bedroom upstairs, fussing with her nails, fussing with her hair, fussing with her attractive gown…fussing, fussing, so that everything might be just so…fussing so long and so needlessly that she had been an hour late to dinner.

And now that she had achieved perfection, now that she had made the supreme effort of coming downstairs, she seemed emptied, as if the effort had been too much and not entirely worthwhile. She listened to Ellery's casual talk with a fixed smile, white face slightly lowered, not touching her mousse or demitasse, murmuring a monosyllable occasionally…but not as if she were bored, only as if she were weary beyond sensation.

And then, as suddenly as she had come in, she said: ‘Excuse me, please,' and rose. All conversation stopped again. Frank Lloyd jumped up and drew her chair back. He devoured her with a huge and clumsy hunger; she smiled at him, and at the others, and floated out…her step quickening as she approached the archway from the dining room to the foyer. Then she disappeared; and everyone began to talk at once and ask for more coffee.

* * *

Mr Queen was mentally sifting the evening's grist as he strolled back to his house in the warm darkness. The leaves of the big elms were talking; there was an oversize cameo moon; and his nose was filled with the scents of Hermione Wright's flowers. But when he saw the small roadster parked by the curb before his house, dark and empty, the sweetness fled. It was simply night; and something was about to happen. A gun-metal cloud slipped across the moon, and Mr Queen made his way along the edge of his lawn on the muffling grass toward the little house. A point of fire took shape on his porch. It was swaying back and forth about waist-high to a standing man.

‘Mr Smith, I presume?' A woman's contralto. Slightly fuzzed with husk. It had a mocking quality.

‘Hullo!' he called, mounting the porch steps. ‘Mind if I turn on the porch light? It's so beastly dark—'

‘Please do. I'm as curious to see you as you are to see me.'

Ellery touched the light switch. She was curled up in a corner of the slide-swing blinking at him from behind the streaming veil of her cigarette. The dove suède of her slacks was tight over her thighs; a cashmere sweater molded her breasts boldly. Ellery gathered a full-armed impression of earthiness, overripe, and growing bitter. She laughed, a little nervously he thought, and flipped her cigarette over the porch rail into the darkness.

‘You may turn off the light now, Mr Smith. I'm a fright, and besides I shouldn't want to embarrass my family by making them aware I'm in their immediate neighborhood.'

Ellery obediently switched off the porch light. ‘Then you're Lola Wright.' The one who had eloped, and come back divorced. The daughter the Wrights never mentioned.

‘As if you didn't know!' Lola Wright laughed again, and it turned into a hiccup. ‘Excuse
me
. Seventh hiccup of a seventh Scotch. I'm famous too, you know. The
drinking
Wright girl.'

Ellery chuckled. ‘I've heard the vile slanders.'

‘I was all prepared to hate your guts, from the kow-towing that's been going on, but you're all right. Shake!' The swing creaked, and steps shuffled to the tune of an unsteady laugh, and then the moist heat of her hand warmed his neck as she groped. He gripped her arms to save her from falling.

‘Here,' he said, ‘You should have stopped at number six.'

She placed her palms against his starched shirt and pushed strongly. ‘Whoa, Geronimo! The man'll think li'l Lola's stinko.' He heard her totter back to the swing, and its creak. ‘Well, Mr Famous Author Smith, and what do you think of us all? Pygmies and giants, sweet and sour, snaggled-toothed and slickmagazine ads—good material for a book, eh?'

‘Elegant.'

‘You've come to the right place.' Lola Wright lit another cigarette: the flame trembled. ‘Wrightsville! Gossipy, malicious, intolerant…the great American slob. More dirty linen to the square inch of backyard than New York or Marseilles.'

‘Oh, I don't know,' argued Mr Queen. ‘I've spent a lot of loose time prowling, and it seems a pretty nice place to me.'

‘Nice!' She laughed. ‘Don't get me started. I was born here. It's wormy and damp—a breeding place of nastiness.'

‘Then why,' murmured Mr Queen, ‘did you come back to it?'

The red tip of her cigarette waxed three times in rapid succession. ‘None of your business. Like my family?'

‘Immensely. You resemble your sister Patricia. Same physical glow, too.'

‘Only Patty's young, and my light's going out.' Lola Wright mused for a moment. ‘I suppose you'd have to be polite to an old bag named Wright. Look, Brother Smith. I don't know why you came to Wrightsville, but if you're going to be palsy with my kind, you'll hear a lot about little Lola eventually, and…well…I don't give a damn what Wrightsville thinks of me, but an alien…that's different. Good grief! I still have vanity!'

‘I haven't heard anything about you from your family.'

‘No?' He heard her laugh again. ‘I feel like baring my bosom tonight. You'll hear I drink. True. I learned it from—I learned it. You'll hear I'm seen in all the awful places in town, and what's worse,
alone
. Imagine! I'm supposed to be “fast.” The truth is I do what I damned please, and all these vultures of women on the Hill, they've been tearing at me with their claws!'