Evil Friendship (10 page)

Everyone in the library was occupied behind a book. Mary Drew reported late to Miss Francie, the librarian, a gross woman with liver marks covering the exposed parts of her skin. Her severe asthma had earned her the nickname “Wheezy.” Mary Drew wrote out her points off slip and then went immediately to the rear of the library, where she always went. There, in a lower stack, was Oswold’s
History of Landscaping and Gardening.

The note was pressed between the first and second chapters. She put the book back and sat down.

“May I have that, Miss Edlin?”

Mary Drew saw the liver marks on the wizened hand that came around in front of her. Miss Francie stood by her chair waiting. Mary Drew wadded the note up into a ball.

“I want you to give that to me, Miss Edlin.” Mary Drew refused to open her hand. She said, “It’s not yours.”

“Neither is Oswold’s
History of Landscaping and Gardening
your mailbox. Very well, I won’t argue with you. At any rate, you are to report to Miss Pierce-Morgan immediately. Those are my instructions.” After she said this, Miss Francie bent over in a fit of coughing and wheezing, her face becoming very red, with the thin blue veins bulging. She waved her hand at Mary Drew as if to force her on to Miss Pierce-Morgan’s with that gesture and a senior seated opposite Mary Drew at the rear table said, “You heard Miss Francie. Do as she wishes. Can’t you see the state she’s in?”

Miss Pierce-Morgan’s office was across from the library in the Administration Building. The waiting room was decorated in the English Victorian manner — leather chairs and gold-knobbed mirrors, drab brown draperies, and a painting of a founder of Chillam framed with a light spotted at it from the frame’s base. There was always the smell of disinfectant in this room, and Chillamites claimed that because so many girls came down with upset stomachs immediately after leaving Miss

Pierce-Morgan’s office, the rug was worn through with cleaning fluid.

For once, Miss Pierce-Morgan was prompt. Almost the moment after Mary Drew gave her name to Miss Ficklin, the receptionist, the monstrous brown door with the eagle carved into the wood swung open. There Miss Pierce-Morgan stood, her pince-nez swinging from her bosom, her jowls twitching nervously the way they did when she was waiting to capture an offender.

She never said come in. One simply knew to do it. And once Mary Drew passed over the threshold, she looked at the leather chair beside the huge desk and saw, sunken down in it, Martha.

Miss Pierce-Morgan shut the door behind her and went to the desk, adjusting her pince-nez on her nose.

“Sit down, Miss Edlin, anywhere.”

Mary Drew sat opposite Martha. Instantly as they looked at one another, wry smiles came at their mouths, and they looked away, down at their hands to keep from laughing.

“I’ll come right to the point” Miss Pierce-Morgan said, “I have had a report from a trustworthy source that you two have a
significant relationship,”
She took a deep breath, picking up the spoon-shaped letter opener from her desk blotter. “I have been too lenient in the past about these
significant relationships.
This was brought to my attention in a very unhappy and tragic way. In this special case to which I am referring now, it was a one-sided
significant relationship.
There was no way of predicting the disaster that resulted, but none-the-less, that is no excuse for my permissiveness with regard to this matter. When you leave this office, in a few moments, I am going to call both of your parents and inform them that I have sufficient reason to believe a
significant relationship
exists between you two girls. I am going to inform them that I must forbid you to fraternize with each other henceforth. Being day girls, it is up to your parents to decide whether or not you may fraternize off campus, but while you are on Chillam grounds, you are to ignore one another. If you were residents, I should ask one of you to withdraw from Chillam. I feel that strongly on this matter. But as you are not, I can only warn you that I am alerted, and the faculty and seniors-in-charge shall be alerted, and any violation of this rule will bring on expulsion.”

She stood up. “Are there questions from either of your’

Neither Mary Drew nor Martha spoke. Both sat white-faced, shocked.

“This decision is not without foundation. I am fully aware of your use of the library as a receptacle for your fond notes, and the Victoria statue as a rendezvous point; and I can only repeat that we will not allow a
significant relationship
to exist hereafter at Chillam.”

She nodded. “Good day.”

Martha and Mary Drew walked slowly toward the door.

Miss Pierce-Morgan gave a final thrust: “This is effective immediately, of course. You are not to converse together once you leave this room.”

They went out the door and past Miss Ficklin, then down the hallway toward the front door of the administration building. Mary Drew was just in front of Martha.

Martha whispered, “Slow up and keep your head exactly as it is.”

“Miss Pierce-Morgan will watch us as we leave, from her window,” Mary Drew whispered back.

“I know. Go slow until then. Rush did this.”

“Are you positive?”

“Yes, and there’s more.”

“What?”

“On my way to No.
1
period, before I was sent for, I heard the most curious news. Everyone’s talking hush-hush about it. Beth Dragmore slit her wrists.”

“What? Are you serious?”

“Perfectly serious. She’s dead. And her family’s hired a lawyer.”

Mary Drew was at the door now.

“Go ahead,” Martha Kent said, “but meet me at the boardwalk, where we were before, directly after Class 7.”

J
UNE 8, 1956

The tall American man standing by the fireplace said, “It’s a damn shame. As you know, Mary Drew is staying with us and we gave them both knock-out pills.”

“The Edlin girl is the only one I’ll have to talk to for now,” Detective Randolph said.

“May I get anything for you?” Mr. Kent asked him. “A drink, or some lemon water?”

“Thanks, no. One thing, though, the things I took along from your daughter’s desk — her writings. Did I miss anything?”

William Kent shook his head. “I really can’t say. Now Mrs. Kent could. She would know.” “You got all of it,” the American said.

Randolph noticed the almost involuntary shrug of helplessness William Kent made at the American’s words. He felt sorry for the older man. It was clear who was acting the part of master in this house.

Randolph turned to the American. “Then Martha Kent didn’t keep a diary?”

“No,” Rodney Sawyer said, “so far as I know, she didn’t. I never saw one.” He poured himself out a jigger of whiskey. “How are things coming Inspector? Any suspects?”

“I’m not an Inspector,” Randolph said.

“No leads, then?” Rodney smiled.

“Not so far,” said Randolph. Then in the entranceway Mrs. Kent appeared, her arm around the Edlin girl’s shoulder.

The girl was wearing flannel pajamas and red scuffs. She wore a yellow towel-cloth robe covering the pajamas. She was not very tall, and certainly not nearly as pretty as the Kent girl. But she had — what was the word? — appeal. Her eyes, a chestnut color, were set wide apart in a face of the type popularly referred to as heart-shaped. Her hair was mouse-colored, but cut becomingly in the new gamine style, so that now, though it was tousled from sleep, she looked young and bright and slightly restless — the way so many young girls seemed to impress one nowadays. Below each cheekbone, a slight hollow, a miracle of delicate modeling, gave the face charm and pathos. Her lips were slightly too small, as were her ears. Too small and too close to her head.

She was a plain sort of girl, after all. Not the sort you would notice in a crowd. And not all the type, it seemed to Detective Randolph, to write in her diary: “I
know all the vast secrets of love.”

The girl’s glance met his own squarely.

She asked, before anyone else in the room said anything, “Did you find him? The murderer?”

Randolph said, “No, Mary Drew.” He turned to the others. “I wonder, may we talk alone?”

It was Rodney Sawyer who gave permission. “Certainly. We’ll all wait upstairs in the study.”

After they had left, Mary Drew Edlin sat on the couch, and Randolph pulled up a beadwork chair alongside the couch. He was a middle-aged, spare man, with three daughters of his own, a rather easy manner, and a calm outward appearance which belied his professionally suspicious disposition.

She said, “Are you going to smoke your pipe?”

“No. Why?”

“I rather like it.”

“Very well,” he answered. He took it from his linen suit jacket, and with it, the nylon pouch, stuffing tobacco into the pipe’s bowl as he talked. “Did you and your mother fight often, Mary Drew?”

“Yes. Lately, quite a lot.”

“Why was that, do you suppose?”

“I know why. I don’t have to suppose. She didn’t like my friendship with Martha.”

Randolph scratched a match on the sole of his shoe and put fire to the tobacco. “And did you ever want anything to happen to her, similar to what happened this afternoon at Southwark?”

There was a moment’s pause, while the girl played with her robe belt. Then she said, “No. Mother and I were not getting along, but I never wished her dead.”

“You asked me earlier if we found
“him.”
Whom did you mean?”

“The man who beat mother.”

“And was it a man?”

“I should think it would have to be.”

“Why?”

“A woman doesn’t seem logical to me.”

“Are women ever violent, do you suppose?”

“Oh, sometimes, I suppose.”

“When, do you suppose?”

“Passion affairs, I suppose.”

“Was your mother a very violent type?”

“No, mother was quiet.”

“And you’re quiet too, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

Randolph sucked in smoke and then watched it zigzag up before him as he exhaled. “You sometimes call Martha Moly, don’t you?”

“That’s my pet name for her. Everyone knows that.”

“Is she a violent type, Mary Drew?”

“Moly? Heavens, no!”

“I had the idea she was.”

“That’s idiotic! She isn’t at all.”

“What if she were to have a — passion affair? Would she be then, do you suppose?”

“She’s not old enough for that.”

“No?”

“Moly’s only fifteen.”

“And how old is Raynor?” Francis Randolph said. At this, the girl’s head jerked up and her eyes met level with his.

“Do you remember the night near Trumpet Head?” Detective Randolph asked.

The eyes stayed riveted with shock to his.

J
ANUARY, 1956

Mary Drew Edlin went directly to the boardwalk after her last class, just as Martha had told her to that morning after their session with Miss Pierce-Morgan.

It was close to five when they finished building the windbarrier from boards they’d picked up on the beach. They wrapped their Coats around them and sat on some shingles they’d gathered, watching the incoming tide lap away at the sand, seeing it grow dark around them.

They had avoided talking about it. They talked about how Rush had caused it; then about Beth Dragmore’s suicide; about Rush’s conversation with Martha that morning by the statue of Victoria; and about how they might find a way around the ruling — a
new
place to leave notes, a better rendezvous point, out of Chillam’s wary eye. But they had not discussed what it all meant. Now there was a lull in their conversation, and it was getting late.

Martha Kent said, “I suppose mother knows about it all by now.” “Oh, yes, this morning probably.”

“I finished in 95 bracket, in my semester finals. That should help some.”

“I was in 90 bracket,” Mary Drew said, “but it won’t help me.”

“What will your mother say, Druid?”

“It won’t be nice. You can be sure of that.”

“ ‘Significant relationships are not allowed at Chillam,’ “Martha smiled. “Irony. Irony.”

“Thanks for your letter this morning, Moly.”

“Did you like it?”

“I know how Gretchen feels. You’ve brought all that out quite clearly. It’s helped me with my sixth chapter immensely. You know it was a mess before.”

“I’m sure she’d feel that way,” said Martha.

“Oh, I know she would.”

“Druid, it’s queer,” Martha Kent said, hugging her knees in her wool coat, shaking her long black hair back in the biting evening wind. “So much of normal love — so much of mother-and-father type love — is unreal, really. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes,” said Mary Drew, “but tell me.”

“Well, for example last night. I was watching my father. He always sips lemon with water, on top of ice cubes. It’s a wonder how his bowels hold up, but that’s his drink, night after night. You know, while mother and Roddy are having coffee after dinner in the parlor, or brandy or whatever, Father sips his lemon water. Well, last night, for example, he took an empty glass to the kitchen after he’d finished one lemon water. He came back with a glass that just had ice cubes in it. Nothing else. He started talking to Roddy; he hadn’t been talking a minute when he picked the glass up, tipped it down his throat, saw there was no lemon water in it, and said, ‘Good heavens, I’m certainly drinking too much lemon water tonight. This is my second glass in less than an hour!”

Mary Drew said, “He didn’t realize what he’d done.”

“Oh, I know it’s a small example, but it goes on continually. And you know he isn’t senile. He’s not nearly old enough to be in second childhood, but there he is. And once, Druid, once he and my mother had a rather hot romance going. Do you know?”

“I know.”

“I mean, what
happens
to people? What makes them become such strangers after love? How
could
it happen?”

Mary Drew Edlin sighed, sifting pebbles through her fingers. “I know what you mean. I dearly believe my father would rather look at an impacted wisdom tooth than my mother naked. They just don’t click anymore. Mother says he was a great catch. But now what is he? What has she really caught? Oh, don’t misunderstand me. I like him far better than her, but it is dreary and depressing to believe they were ever in love. From love’s point of view, I mean.”

“And my mother,” Martha said, “age thirty-six, and giddy about a fool like Roddy Sawyer, boy American. He’s a professional American, I’ll say. Won’t answer yes if he can say okay. And that book he’s supposed to be writing. I haven’t seen a page. Father hasn’t either. You think he’d show Father.”

“Do you think anything like that would ever happen to Raynor and Gretchen?”

Mary Drew said, “Of course not. They have a forbidden love. It’s far less boring and dull.”

“I wonder if that isn’t the only real kind,” Martha said.

“There was never anything written about the other kind in great literature,” said Mary Drew. “All the most beautiful love stories are about people who have forbidden love.”

“I believe you’re right, Druid!” Martha said in an amazed tone. It seemed like a fantastic revelation to her; to Mary Drew too, who had just thought of it. She said, “I have something there.”

The chalk bluffs of Trumpet Head had disappeared in the growing darkness, and the tide was in now.

“Ought we to go, Druid?”

“I guess we had,”

They stood up, brushing off the backs of their coats, and nestling into the turned-up coat collars. The boardwalk, above them, was lighted, and in the sky overhead, winter stars started very faintly.

“Druid?” Martha Kent said as they walked on the pebbles, “do you mind awfully?”

“Mind?”

“This
significant relationship
label.”

“I guess I hate it,” Mary Drew answered. “I know I do. It’s so unfair I Moly, I was going to keep a secret from you, but it will come out now anyway. Mother wants me to see a psychiatrist … because of us.”

“That does it, doesn’t it,” Martha said softly.

“I’m afraid things are going to be rather hot for us, from here on.”

Martha Kent stopped walking. “Druid, listen, let’s not go home now.”

“I hate to.”

“Let’s not, then. I have some money. We could take the bus to Trumpet Head. There’s a tearoom there.”

“I know the one you mean,” Edlin said, “Oh, it’s a fantastic place. Up on the rocks!”

“Come on, Druid,” Martha Kent said, reaching for the other girl’s hand, “the hell with them at home, I say!”

• • •

It was a tiny tearoom near the chalk bluffs, not terribly busy at six, when they arrived. They had tea and raisin cakes, and they laughed a good deal at almost everything each other said. They sat very close together, and they pretended they were sisters to the little old lady who served them, and after they had swallowed their tea and finished their cakes, Mary Drew said, “I feel so free of any cares, don’t you, Moly?”

“Terribly.”

“It’s good, isn’t it?”

“Let’s pretend, Druid,” said Martha. “We never have on weekdays.”

“All right, I’m Rob. L.L. has just found me, finally, after searching everywhere. But as he comes upon me, he finds me surrounded by other glaciers, and boats, and whales, and everything imaginable. And it makes him very shy. I’m that way too. All I can think to say is, ‘Hello, Lord Love-Lost.’ ”

“Splendid!” Martha Kent laughed. Then she made her face very solemn. “Can you come with me, Rob?”

“When?”

“Right now. This minute.”

Martha Kent reached for her coat, “(I’m waiting.”

Mary Drew took her coat from the back of the chair. She watched while Martha placed some coins under the saucer. Then silently, not smiling, she got up, following Martha Kent from the tearoom.

Outside, it was cold. It was now full night. The two girls walked on the cobblestone path in the direction of the hill. Below them, on the circular walk that bordered the drive up to the tearoom, there were people hurrying, and on the drive, a few cars pushing along.

“We’ll find a place to be alone, Rob,” Martha Kent said.

She felt Mary Drew’s bare hand slip into her gloved one, and she removed the glove and held to it tightly. They came off the cobblestone onto the dirt, leading into the trees beside the hill.

“Have you missed me a great deal?” Mary Drew asked.

“I’ll never be away from you again,” said Martha. “There’s your clue to that question.” “Can you promise me that?”

They came to a dense section of the trees lining the hill, and here, Martha stopped. “I promise you that,” she said solemnly.

Mary Drew stopped the same time Martha did. They stood and looked at one another. A long time, it seemed, before Martha pulled Mary Drew to her, bending to bring her mouth down on the other girl’s.

They stayed with their lips pressed together until Mary Drew, trembling, whispered, “I can’t help it!”

Martha brought her hand up to smooth Mary Drew’s hair, touching her face, watching her eyes in the darkness, before both girls came together again, in a desperate franticness.

Then Martha’s eyes filled with tears. She let go of Mary Drew.

“Let’s walk some more,” she said.

And from her voice, Mary Drew knew the pretend was over. She walked along side Martha, holding her hand. “It was a good scene, Moly,” she said.

“Yes,” said Martha. “I always get worked up in that kind of scene.”

“I do too. I can just imagine how they feel. It’s so — beautiful, isn’t it?”

“It’s because it’s sad, I think. They’ll never be able to stay together, really. At least, I don’t plan to end the novel with them together. I plan to have them separated again, and searching for one another again.”

“That’s what I’m going to do with Raynor and Gretchen,” said Mary Drew.

“We’re so much alike, Druid. It’s incredible!”

“I know.”

Up ahead there were lights from a large flat house, set on the cliff.

“There’s the Craig place,” Martha said. “It looks quite mysterious.”

“It does! Let’s mooch around up there, want to, Moly?”

“Fine,” said Martha. “I don’t care if I ever go home, you know!”

There was a small lace-iron gate around the white brick house. It squeaked as the girls pushed through it and made their way up the yard. In the front, there were lights, and there was one on the second floor. The shrubbery was leafless and bare-sticked, and it scratched some as they pulled it apart to peer into the windows.

“Look, there’s old Craig,” Martha said, “over there in the chair.”

“What’s he doing?”

“Hard to say. Sleeping?”

The figure in the living room of the house was slumped down in a high-back Victorian chair, with his legs crossed and stretched out in front of him. He was dressed in a suit, shirt, bow-tie, and socks with their garters unhitched and hanging below the cuffs of his trousers. His shoes were scattered on the rug in front of him; there was a decanter beside him where his hand dangled.

“That’s right,” said Martha, “he’s an awful drunk. I saw him pass out cold in the street a few weeks ago.”

“Let’s ring the bell, want to? Tell him we’ve come for a visit.”

“Like our visit to Horrible?” Martha laughed. “Oh, would we dare?” “I would, I think.”

“We’d have to be together.
That’s
understood.”

“Of course, or there’d be no fun!”

They giggled and hugged one another; then Martha held the stick bushes back for them, while they went around to the front of the house.

Mary Drew held her hand on the bell.

“He’s awfully ancient, though.”

“He was a lawyer before he began lushing about,” Martha said. “His wife left him.”

Again, Mary Drew poked the bell.

“Filthy rich too,” said Martha. “Maybe hell give us money to go to America if we’re good to him.”

“Moly?”

“What?”

“I wish there were some way we
could
get money.” “And I!”

“He doesn’t answer.”

“Oh, yes, he has. Look now, there’s the light.”

There was a fumbling with a lock after the porch light went on. Then the door opened, and Philip Craig stood swaying unsurely in the entranceway. He was a medium-height man, bald, and red-eyed, with dark bluish bags under the eyes, and a deep, thick-tongued voice. “What is it?”

“We’ve come to call,” said Mary Drew.
“Who
has?”

“We have. We’ve lost our way, and we saw your light.” Philip Craig looked at them. “You want to telephone?” “If we may,” Martha said. She nudged Mary Drew’s side, smiling.

Craig stepped back, almost falling. “Come in, then. The phone’s in there.” He pushed a button, and a light went on in the room to the left of the living room.

Mary Drew went in first, with Martha close behind. Craig pushed the door closed, and swayed toward the living room. “We’re sorry to disturb you,” Martha said.

“Make your call,” he answered. He disappeared around the corner, presumably on his way back to the high-back chair and the decanter by its side.

“He’s too drunk,” said Mary Drew.

“I don’t care, it’s fun.”

“What shall we do now?”

“Let’s sit in his den.” “Let’s,” said Mary Drew.

They took off their coats, and threw them across the red leather sofa. Martha stretched out on the sofa, smoothing down her navy wool shirt and her white cashmere sweater. She ran a comb through her long black hair, propping herself up on her elbows, while Mary Drew inspected the books in the wall-to-wall cases.

“Latin-American Legal Philosophy,
by Luis Siches,” she said. “Horridly dull man, I’d say.
Britain’s Way to Social Security
, by Francois Lafitte.”

“Terrible!” Martha agreed.

“Social Security in the British Commonwealth,
by Ronald Mendelsohn,” said Mary Drew.
“Textbook of Jurisprudence,
by G. W. Paton.”

“Don’t look at any more, it’s nauseating,” said Martha.

“It’s father a nice room though, Moly. I like the wooden beams above.”

“Oh, he has a fortune. His damned son was shot down in the war, I’ve heard. That’s why he’s all to pieces this way.”

Mary Drew knelt on the white rug before the couch. “What would it be like to go to war and say goodbye to someone you loved
very
dearly.” “Awful, I would imagine.”

“I suppose you’d spend the whole last evening just loving.”

“You wouldn’t be able to tear away,” Martha said.

“It’d be awful, wouldn’t it, Moly?”

“Rotten.”

“Do you want to pretend?”

Martha tucked the comb back under her sweater at her skirt waist and lay back with her hands under her head. “Yes. Let’s say that I’m a beautiful woman who loves this man, but has never told him so in just so many words. Now he’s off to war. He’s a pilot, and he’s in his uniform, and he’s come to my apartment to say farewell. Let’s say he walks in, and I’m here, just as I am, like so. He comes in, and I say, ‘Well, Roger, I expect you’ve come to say goodbye. Is that it?’ ”