Collected Novels and Plays (42 page)

A cry of distaste rose from the ladies at the far end of their table. Mrs. Gresham had just decided to eat her candy baby.

“Don’t
do
it, Boopsie!” laughed Vinnie in spite of herself.

“Too late!” she said, and bit it in two. A ruddy syrup ran down her chin. The others screamed. “Ummm!” She smacked her lips. “They’re full of liquor!”

“What are you
doing
over there?” Enid called.

“Mummy, Mrs. Gresham ate her baby!” squealed Lily, jumping up and down in ecstasy.

“Oh my goodness!”

“I’m going to get mine,” Francis told Bertha Durdee. “Are you going to eat yours?”

“Absolutely!” She popped it into her mouth.

The idea was catching on. “I like sweets,” he heard his mother say, “but they don’t like me.”

“Play something!” Mrs. Gresham commanded the accordionist.

“Play ‘Baby, It’s Warm Inside!’” said Wally Link.

“I don’t mind sucking mine,” Mrs. Sturdevant was explaining to Vinnie, pointing to the bulge in her cheek, “but I could never have
bit into
it like Boopsie.”

The music began and didn’t stop, though all but drowned out by shrieks and laughter, until every baby in sight had been consumed. Those too squeamish to eat their own saw them gobbled up by their neighbors. The first arrivals at Lily’s birthday party, two neat little boys accompanied by a nanny, looked at one another with misgivings.

Lunch was over. Rising from his seat, Francis entered the ocean room, where card tables had already been set up. On the north terrace, which faced the sunken lawn, children were gathering. Shyly they offered Lily their gifts. Francis sighed to think he had nothing for her. Outside his father’s door he met Mrs. McBride, her hands full of knitting. A startling green-eyed young girl stood next to her; Francis waited to be introduced. “Go on in,” the
nurse said, “You’ll find a nice quiet
family
party.” He watched them move away, neither looking back, then put his head into the dim room.

Benjamin lay flat on the bed with a thin white blanket over his legs. On one side, holding his hand, sat Prudence. They seemed in a trance of contentment, beyond speech. “Is everything all right?” asked Francis.

His father’s eyes opened. “Everything’s under control,” he said.

“Everything’s just wonderful, Francis,” came from the gloom behind the door, where he had failed to notice Larry Buchanan sitting peacefully. Francis tiptoed across the room and took a chair. Ornate curls of smoke rose from his brother-in-law’s cigar, like the clouds surrounding a representation of some powerful spirit, in Chinese painting. His face was purplish red in the suppressed light, his tie cobalt and cream. The stump of his little
finger pointed up. Dreamily he repeated for Francis the good news he had been telling the elder Tannings. Benjamin’s pet project, Bishop Petroleum, had closed at 18½ Friday afternoon. That meant a
500-percent profit since a year ago—a profit in which both Enid and Francis shared, and for which they could thank their father.

The latter cleared his throat. “Don’t be modest, Larry.”

“Me modest?” He grinned. “I’m a private in your ranks, Ben. You give the orders, I try to carry them out. How about it, Francis? Want another ten thousand shares in your account?”

“Go right ahead,” said Francis pleasantly but flippantly. “I love money.”

“Don’t let your father fool you,” Larry went on. “Look how he handled the mess last winter, when the President of the company resigned. We all stood to lose plenty that day.”

Benjamin remarked, “Orson Bishop’s a fine man,” and yawned.

“A high-minded man, a man with ideals. We know now,” Larry addressed Francis, “why that crisis occurred. Irene Cheek had been poisoning his mind against your father, writing him a lot of nonsense about your father’s immorality.”

The old man leered. “Every word of it true, what’s more.”

“But why?”

“Because she was jealous of
me
, Francis,” said Prudence. She touched her hair, causing a star sapphire he hadn’t seen before to twinkle victoriously.

“Anyhow,” Larry said, “that’s all settled now.”

“Grandpa’s decently married,” groaned Benjamin. “Lily Buchannibal can come to the Cottage without being corrupted by the old poop. He’s harmless as a baby and hairless as a French whore.”

“Benjamin, I’ve
begged
you…”

“Was that Mrs. McBride’s daughter just now?” asked Francis.

“Yes, Mary Ann. She’s sweet, isn’t she?”

“She has phenomenal eyes,” was the best he could do.

“My goodness!” exclaimed Enid from the doorway. “Aren’t we the shining examples of hospitality!” She perched, nevertheless, on the edge of the bed and took Benjamin’s other hand.

“We’ve been talking about Irene,” said Larry.

“Irene mutilated your portrait, Enid,” her father said. “It wasn’t Fern. I’m sure of that now.”

“Enid and I have always been sure of it.”

Francis watched his sister smooth out the folds of her dress, pale blue with little yellow suns, and say nothing. They all fell silent for a bit, following her example, as if that world in which violent deeds were done revolved far beneath their own concerns.

“Why don’t you tell us how pleased you are with your grandson?” asked Prudence.

Benjamin gave her an enigmatic look and said, “Which one?”

She snorted. “Are we to suppose that you have grandchildren in all corners of the earth?”

Each one smiled wisely out of an imperfect knowledge of the others that amounted to a real community of feeling. How much they had kept and would keep secret all their lives! Indeed, thought Francis, their equilibrium as a family seemed to depend upon separate orbits, a law preserving them from collision or eclipse. He took pleasure in reflecting that he knew more than the rest, that in a sense, if they smiled, it was largely because
he
hadn’t yet told
Larry about Lily, Prudence about Fern, Benjamin about the true fatherhood of Xenia’s child. He held in his hands their peace of mind. As for secrets they might be keeping from
him
—for not doubt it worked both ways—he felt at once incurious and complacent. Of course he was being spared something,
some
joke had to be on him—well and good. Like a tired child on the eve of his birthday, glimpsing gifts but too drowsy to speculate upon them,
Francis chose to leave it at that.

He couldn’t leave
them
, however, without a trifling test of his power. As he got to his feet he produced Bertha Durdee’s name. She was an attractive woman, wasn’t she?

“Oh, very!” said Enid.

“Terribly,” said Prudence.

“Who is Bertha Durdee?” Larry asked.

“Warren Durdee’s wife.”

Benjamin spoke. “Warren Durdee hasn’t changed. He’s still the biggest stuffed shirt on Wall Street.”

“Two incarnations ago,” said Francis, “he was a white dog.”

“He’s not the most alert little soul,” Enid admitted.

Francis came to the point. “I wondered, Daddy, if you mightn’t like Bertha to stay on for a few days, after he leaves. I have a feeling she’d enjoy a holiday from her husband.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Yes, I do,” said Francis; a note of interest in his father’s voice had made him smile.

The old man studied him quizzically. “Very well, my loving son, bring her on! If you prefer we can move her into
your
little house.”

“You’d have to move Natalie back first,” said Francis, before understanding that he was being made fun of. He added without inflection, “In any case, it’s for you to decide.”

Benjamin thanked him. “Have
you
issued the invitation?”

“Of course not.”

“Then may I suggest you let
me
be the judge—” But in mid-sentence his tone changed. “Don’t mind me, Francis. I’d be glad to have Mrs. Durdee stay on if you think she’d like to.”

“Really,” said Francis, “it was only an idea.”

“It’s just that new people tax Benjamin so,” Prudence explained. “I’d selfishly been hoping for a quiet week, after today’s celebrations.”

“Come to town with me tomorrow,” said Larry. “It’ll be quiet enough there, I promise you.” He grinned and cracked his knuckles. Enid let out her lilting laugh, as if Larry’s solitary week was a joke they shared.

“It’s for Benjamin that I want quiet,” insisted Prudence, “not for myself.”

Francis sighed, reading into her concern the anxiety of any reigning favorite, caught in a web of watchers and whisperers. More telling yet
was to find her eyes on him. “It appears that nothing,” she all but said aloud, “helps the poor woman who marries Benjamin. She must pass her test alone.
Even you
are no longer my ally.” Granting the justice of her reproach, Francis still couldn’t expect Prudence to
understand how much his position demanded a firm line taken towards favorites. They, by definition, had passed their test, stopped needing help, unlike others he knew of. The recent talk, for instance, had started him brooding over Irene. He didn’t like her, but she
had
been falsely accused in the matter of Enid’s portrait—perhaps in the Bishop affair as well—and the injustice of it caused Francis a real pang. He thought of her in that cheerless
house, alone with Charlie Cheek. Would she receive him if he drove out there one day next week? Why, she’d have to—they were relatives! And it might do something to help ease the tension.

The reconciliation he envisaged never got very far. That following winter, Charlie Cheek’s sailboat capsized in a heavy sea. Both he and Irene were washed up onto the beach days later, badly mutilated by sharks. The news was to leave Francis with an odd feeling, not quite annoyance, not quite frustration. “The emptiness, the pity of it,” he wrote his father at the time, remembering his high hopes, the day of the christening.

“I’m off,” Francis said. “We needn’t decide about Mrs. Durdee now.” As nobody contradicted him, he started for the door. Larry and Enid rose at the same time.

Benjamin’s eyes followed them. “I’m glad you’re taking an interest in your own affairs, Sonny,” he said drowsily.

“What do you mean?”

No answer came.

“What does he mean?”

Prudence smiled and put a finger to her lips. The old man had pulled a black mask over his eyes. So that Francis, going out with the Buchanans, had to content himself with Larry’s explanation. Mr. Tanning had meant the interest shown by Francis on hearing about Bishop Petroleum.

“Oh come now!” he protested. “I wasn’t serious, I was being ironic!”

“I know, I know,” said Larry, patting him on the shoulder so amiably as to leave uncertain which of them had the greater command of irony, in the last analysis.

All three paused in the shade of the north terrace, watching children play hide-and-seek on the lawn down beyond the ha-ha.

“They’re learning fast,” said Francis.

Enid nodded vaguely. “They’ll have their supper at five-thirty.”

“A cake with parents on it …”

“Let’s go in,” said Larry, “and do our duty.”

Francis thought he would stay outdoors. His brother-in-law took a step or two away, then returned. “Your father and Prudence and I,” he said in a low voice, “were talking before you came in. Did you know that the Cottage would be yours one day?”

Francis nodded dreamily.

Larry gave him an annoyed look. “Well, it was news to me,” he said, and went into the house, leaving a funny doubt in Francis’s mind. How
had
he known?

Between games he caught Lily’s eye and beckoned to her. She took a long time to reach his side. “I have no present for you, Lily,” he said when she did; “will this do?”—offering her a five-dollar bill.

“Oh, Uncle Francis!”

The twins had followed her. He produced coins for them. Their real pleasure brought back his own childhood, and the subsequent painful process of learning to hide his love for money.

“What are you playing?”

“Hide-and-seek. Would you like to play?”

“Good heavens, child—well, why not?”

He let her lead him out onto the sunny grass. Coming to the brink of the small artificial precipice—the ha-ha—they jumped, hand in hand, down to the sunken lawn. Presently Francis was in the midst of children, their faces flushed and grave as if he were going to wrench some vital
secret from them. Lily alone couldn’t stop giggling as she rehearsed the rules he had obeyed at her age, in the same walled garden.

“Uncle Francis is It,” she announced proudly at last. “If he wants to play he has to be It.”

So Francis obligingly buried his face in a hydrangea bush, hearing the muffled running of children seeking to elude him in far corners of the garden. As he slowly counted to one hundred, his mind wandered from the simple rules of the game—he, she, or It—to the shrubbery, the rose arbor, the wicker chairs on the terrace; he relished in advance the found child’s shriek of excitement. A vast silence now defined itself, in which he distinctly heard the
opening and shutting of a screen door. That was odd. Somebody must have come out of the house to watch him, beneath the egg-white sky, his face deep in foliage, take part in a children’s game. He responded to the quiet attentiveness of that person, whoever it was, advancing to the edge of the ha-ha. The green eyes of Mrs. McBride’s daughter shone unbidden in his memory—would it be she? It would be somebody, at any rate, to whom Francis had never been a child,
though seen as one among so many other greennesses; to whom indeed, rising from the growing discomfort of his position, he might turn with a smile, idly begin to talk. One by one he would shed, in favor of others more pressing, his obligations to the game. He would join his watcher, they would stroll together back into the house. The children, sensing the sudden drop in tension, the way a string goes limp when snapped, would come out of hiding and, accepting his withdrawal as they
had his appearance, reshift the delicate balances of their play.

“Ready or not!” he shouted, more to his observer than to the twenty little hearts pounding out of sight. Then he raised his head, looked round to the ha-ha.

There was nobody in sight.

Well then, thought Francis, managing an empty smile, what else but to play the game?
Their
eyes, at least, were on him, peering through leaves, peeking through wicker. With exaggerated stealth and flashing stern glances into the greenery he started across the lawn. Something
winked in the rose-arbor, he darted forward—a bird. Something rustled out from the bushes behind him; crying “Aha!” he pivoted—a rabbit froze
on the hushed lawn. Where
were
they? No sound of smothered laughter came to ease his confusion. It took Francis another few minutes to connect the sound of the screen door with the children making their escape. He was alone in the garden.