Deep Water (10 page)

       "Take a couple of ours," Vic said. "We've got more than we need."

       Peterson protested, but Vic went to the garage, got the pitchfork and a couple of burlap bags, and dug up two of the bushes. There were four hydrangea bushes, scattered in no particular pattern on the lawn, and Vic happened to detest hydrangeas. At least he did that afternoon. Their big pastel pompoms of blossoms looked tawdry and insipid. He presented the two bushes, their roots wrapped in burlap, to Peterson with his greetings to Mrs. Peterson.

       "She'll be tickled pink with these," Peterson said. "It'll certainly improve the lawn. Give my regards to your wife, too. Is she here?"

       "No. She's out visiting a friend," Vic answered.

       Peterson nodded.

       Vic was not sure, but he thought Peterson had looked a little embarrassed when he asked about Melinda. Vic waved at him as his car pulled away, then turned back toward the house. The lawn looked as if two small bombs had hit it. He left it that way. Melinda came in at a quarter to seven. Vic heard her car, and after a few moments went from his room through the garage into the living room, ostensibly to get a few sections of the 'Times'. He half expected to find De Lisle with her, but Melinda was alone.

       "No doubt you've been imagining me in the depths of iniquity this afternoon," she said, "but we went to the trotting races. I won eight bucks. What do you think of that?"

       "I didn't imagine anything," Vic said, with a smile, and turned the radio on. There was a news commentator he wanted to hear at seven o'clock.

       Janey Peterson stayed for dinner with them, and then Vic drove her home. He knew that Melinda would call Charley while he was out of the house. Charley had had a telephone installed almost immediately, because Melinda had used all the influence she had—or rather that the name Van Allen had—to get the company to put the phone in without the usual two or three weeks' delay. Vic wished she hadn't said that about the "depths of iniquity." He wished she weren't quite so crude. She hadn't always been so crude. That was the fault of the company she kept, of course. Why had she said anything at all if she hadn't done anything with De Lisle or didn't intend to? When a woman as attractive as Melinda handed it to them on a platter, why should a man like De Lisle resist? The morals to resist didn't come very often any more. That was for people like Henri III of France, after his wife the Princesse de Conde died. There was devotion, Henri sitting in his library the rest of his life, with his memories of the Princesse, creating designs of skulls and crossbones for Nicolas Eve to put on book covers and title pages for him. Henri would probably be called psychotic by modern psychiatrists.

       Charley De Lisle came twice to the house for dinner during the following week, and one evening the three of them went to an outdoor concert at Tanglewood, though Charley had had to leave before it was over in order to be at the Hotel Lincoln by eleven. One of the evenings he dined with them was a Monday, when he didn't work and could stay later than eleven, and Vic obligingly said good night around ten o'clock, went to his own room, and did not come back. Charley and Melinda had been sitting at the piano, but the piano stopped, Vic noticed, as soon as he left. Vic finally went to bed and to sleep, though the sound of Charley's car leaving awakened him, and he looked at his wristwatch and saw that it was a quarter to four.

       The next morning Vic knocked on Melinda's door at about nine o'clock, carrying a cup of coffee for her. He had had a call from Stephen a few minutes before, saying that his wife was not feeling well and that he didn't want to leave her alone. Stephen had asked if Melinda could possibly come and spell him, because two other women he might have called on were out of town with their husbands on vacation. Melinda didn't answer his knock, and Vic pushed the door open gently. The room was empty. The beige cover on the bed looked unusually taut and smooth. Vic carried the coffee back to the kitchen and poured it down the sink.

       Then he went on to the plant. He called Stephen and told him that Melinda had had an early appointment to go shopping with a friend in Wesley, but that she ought to be back by noon, and that he would call him again. Vic called home at eleven and at twelve. She was in at twelve, and he asked her, in a perfectly ordinary voice, how she was, and then told her about Georgianne. Georgianne was pregnant, six or seven months pregnant, Vic thought. Stephen had had a doctor for her, and they didn't think it was going to be a miscarriage, but Georgianne needed somebody with her.

       "Sure, I'll be glad to go," Melinda said. "Tell Stephen I can be there in about half an hour."

       She sounded very willing to go, both to expiate her sins of last night, Vic supposed, and also because she really did like doing things for people, doing errands of mercy. It was one of the nice things about Melinda, perhaps one of the curious things, that she loved taking care of people who were sick, anybody who was sick, loved helping a stranger in distress—someone with a flat tire, an uncashable check, or a nose bleed. It was the only direction in which she showed her maternal instinct, toward the stranger in distress.

       Melinda's staying out all night was not going to be mentioned, Vic thought, but Charley De Lisle would be just a little different the next time Vic saw him, because De Lisle hadn't the aplomb to be quite the same. He'd be a little more servile and furtive. It was the fact that De Lisle would dare to face him at all that angered Vic.

       The evening at Tanglewood had come two days later, and Vic was very calm and amiable that night, even paid for the refreshments in the intermission, though the Van Allen family had provided the tickets, too. Mr. De Lisle seemed to be feeling very pleased with himself A pleasant summer job in the delightfully cool Berkshires, a made-to-order mistress whom he didn't have to pay for—on the contrary, she paid for him, bought him liquor and took him food—and didn't have to be responsible for, because she was married. To top it all, the husband didn't mind! Mr. De Lisle's world must have been a very rosy one indeed, Vic thought.

       On Friday of that week Vic ran into Horace Meller in the drugstore and Horace insisted on their having a quick drink together before they went home. Horace wanted to go to the Lord Chesterfield bar. Vic proposed a little beer parlor known as Mac's two blocks away, but Horace remarked that it was two blocks away and they were right across the street from the Chesterfield, so Vic agreed to the Chesterfield, thinking it would look odd if he argued about it.

       Mr. De Lisle was at the piano when they went into the bar, but Vic did not look his way. There were people at four or five tables, but Melinda, Vic had noted with a quick glance as he came in, was not among them. They stood at the bar and ordered Scotch and soda.

       "We missed you at the club last week," Horace said. "Mary and I putted around the first couple of holes all afternoon. We kept thinking you'd turn up."

       "I was reading," Vic said.

       "How's Melinda? I haven't seen her lately either."

       "Oh, she's fine. She's been doing some swimming with Trixie at the club. Just not on Sundays, I suppose." She'd taken Trixie once to the club pool, after a lot of begging on Trixie's part.

       Mr. De Lisle stopped playing, and a few people applauded. Vic was aware of De Lisle standing up, bowing, and stepping off his platform, going through the door into the lobby beyond.

       "I'm glad she's coming around," Horace said. "You know—I hope you'll forgive me for talking to you sometimes in the past—about Melinda, I mean. I never meant to meddle. I hope you know that, Vic."

       "Of course I know, Horace!" Horace had leaned closer to him, and Vic looked into his serious brown eyes, framed by the bushy eyebrows and the little wrinkling pouches below. Horace was around fifty, Vic realized. He should know a lot more than he himself did, at thirty-six. Horace straightened up and Vic could see that he was embarrassed, that it had been a speech Horace had thought he ought to make, and Vic tried to think of the right thing to say now.

       "I just wanted you to know—and Mary feels the same way that we knew things would straighten out and we're awfully glad they have."

       Vic nodded and smiled. "Thank you, Horace." He felt a sudden, frightening depression, as if his soul, somewhere, had slid down a hill into darkness.

       "At least I assume things are straightening out," Horace said.

       "Oh, yes, I think they are."

       "I thought Melinda looked awfully well the night we came over. The night of the club dance, too."

       The night the Mellers had come over had been only two nights after the dance, Vic remembered. There had been an evening since, when the Mellers had invited them to hear some new records Horace had bought, when Melinda had been too tired from an afternoon with Charley De Lisle to go. The Mellers hadn't seen Melinda and Charley together yet. It'd take them only two minutes, if they ever saw them together, to know what was happening. Melinda had been considerably more gracious to people during the time the town had been debating the McRae story. That was all Horace meant by her straightening out.

       "You're very thoughtful tonight," Horace said. "What's the next book going to be?"

       "Oh, a book of poems," Vic said. "By a young man called Brian Ryder. I think I showed you a couple one day in my office."

       "Yes, I remember! A little metaphysical for me, but—" Horace smiled. There was a silence, and then he said, "I hear the Cowans are going to treat us to a big outdoor party soon. They want to celebrate Phil's book. He's just about to finish the second draft of it. Evelyn says she feels they've been cooped up and have had to neglect their friends, so she wants a big outdoor affair with lanterns—and I think costumes." Horace chuckled. "I suppose we'll all end up cooling our heads in the swimming pool."

       Mr. De Lisle was now offering "The Song from Moulin Rouge." Light and gentle and sentimental. Melinda had been playing it lately, trying to imitate Charley's style. Have you met Charley De Lisle? Vic wanted to ask Horace. You will. Probably before the Cowans' party.

       "What do you think of the new pianist?" Horace asked. "Makes our old hostelry practically like New York."

       "Pretty good, isn't it?" Vic said.

       "I'd rather have silence. Lesley's business must be good this year. I hear the rooms are all taken, and there's a pretty good crowd here today" Horace had half turned and was watching De Lisle, who was in profile to them.

       The man had a date with my wife this afternoon, Vic wanted to state in a firm voice. I don't want to look at him or hear him. "Know his name?" Horace asked.

       "No idea," Vic said.

       "He looks like an Italian." Horace turned back to his drink. He did look like an Italian of the worse type, though Vic didn't think he was, and it was an insult to the Italian race to assume that he was. He resembled no particular race, only an amalgamation of the worst elements of various Latin peoples. He looked as if he had spent all his life dodging blows that were probably aimed at him for good reason.

       "Time for the other half?" Horace asked.

       Vic woke up. "I don't think I have, Horace. I told Melinda I'd be in about six-thirty tonight."

       "All right, you be there:' Horace said, smiling.

       Vic insisted on paying the bar tab. Then they walked out into the fresh air together.

Chapter 9

The Cowans' party was a costume party. People were to come as their favorite hero or heroine, fictional or factual. Melinda was having a hard time deciding who she should be. She wasn't quite satisfied with Mary Queen of Scots, or Greta Garbo, or Annie Oakley, or Cleopatra, and she thought somebody else might go as Scarlett O'Hara, though Vic said he doubted it. Melinda went through them all, imagining the costume for each in detail. She felt there should be some character more appropriate for her, if she could only think of her.

       "Madame Bovary?" Vic suggested.

       She finally decided on Cleopatra.

       Charley De Lisle was going to play the piano at the Cowans' party. Melinda had arranged it. She told Vic with naïve triumph that she had persuaded Charley to do it for fifty dollars instead of the hundred he had wanted, and said that Evelyn Cowan hadn't thought that was a steep price at all.

       Something in Vic stirred with revulsion. "I assumed he was going as a guest."

       "Yes, but he wouldn't have played. He's very proud about his work. He says no artist should give his work away. In a room full of strangers, he wouldn't touch the piano, he says. It wouldn't be professional. I can see what he means."

       She could always see what De Lisle meant.

       Vic had made no remarks about De Lisle lately, or the time Melinda spent out of the house. The situation had not changed, though De Lisle had not come for dinner anymore, and Melinda had not stayed out all night a second time. Neither had they been to any social affair to which Melinda might have dragged Charley, so perhaps none of their friends suspected anything yet, Vic thought, though Evelyn Cowan might by now. And everybody would certainly know after the Cowan party, which was why Vic dreaded it. He longed not to go, to beg off somehow, and yet he knew his presence would have a slightly restraining influence on Melinda, and that logically it was better if he did go. There were many times when logic was of no comfort.

       Xenophon was printing. Stephen stood at the press all day, banging a page out at fifteen-second intervals. Vic relieved him three and four times a day while he rested by changing his task. Stephen's wife Georgianne had given birth to a second son after her seventh month of pregnancy. She and the child were doing well, and Stephen appeared happier than he had ever been, and his happiness seemed to pervade the shop in the month of August. Vic set up the other press so that he could print along with Stephen. They could set only five pages at a time, as they had no more Greek type, but the twenty pages alone would have taken Stephen more than a month without Vic's help. They were printing a hundred copies. Vic could match Stephen in endurance at the press, and he loved to stand in silence, hour after hour, the only sounds the final impacts of their platens against paper, with the summer sun streaming through the open windows and falling on the freshly printed sheets. All was order and progress in the plant in the month of August. At six-thirty or seven every evening, Vic stepped out of that peaceful world into a chaos. Since he had started the printing plant he had always stepped out of it in the evenings into something less peaceful, but the two worlds had never contrasted so profoundly before. The contrast had never before given him a feeling that he was being torn apart.