Evil Friendship (3 page)

“R-Rush,” Mary Drew repeated, feeling Miss Nicky’s eyes needling her mercilessly, “Evelyn.”

“What’s the difficulty, Mary Drew?” Miss Nicky said. “Does that name upset you?”

“No, mam.”

“No? Very well then. Here — Dragmore, Beth.” “Dragmore,” Mary Drew managed, “B-Beth.” “You seem to be stammering over the last two names.” “Mam?”

“You’re all innocence, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know what you mean, Miss Nicky.” Mary Drew stared at the lines on the sheet of paper before her, feeling the blush on her ears and her cheeks.

Miss Nicky tossed her pencil to her desk top. She studied Mary Drew a slow moment, then straightened in her swivel chair, swinging it about a little, and facing Mary Drew directly.

“I’m supposed to teach sports at Chillam. That’s my purpose here. There’s more to sports than just playing games or climbing ropes. If I thought that were all my duty consisted of, I wouldn’t find it altogether challenging. Hardly interesting or agreeable. But that isn’t all. Mary Drew, even if you were able to perform well in the gymnasium, or out on the field, which you are not, but
if
you were, you would be a very poor sport.”

Miss Nicky paused and Mary Drew wiggled in her chair and said nothing.

“I saw you kick the note into the aisle at assembly. You have nothing to say to that fact, do you?”

Mary Drew sat stiffly, then shook her head.

“I don’t feel nearly as angry with you, Mary Drew,” Miss Nicky said, “as I do feel filled with pity for you. You’re empty, Mary Drew Edlin. I know it, and you know it.”

Miss Nicky’s chair squeaked as she swung back to face the desk. She picked up her pencil. “It’s your choice, Mary Drew, whether to stay as you are, or to change. At Chillam, you’ll find suitable opportunities to do either … Craig, Diana.”

“Craig,” Mary Drew repeated, “Diana.”

A hundred years later, final bell rang.

• • •

Outside the gymnasium, the weather had turned black and sodden. The prospect of going into the other building to gather up her books was too depressing. Her face was still smarting from Miss Nicky’s words. Miss Nicky knew and Rush knew; by now how many others? What a bloody mess to have bolted into. Why? And tomorrow, to face another hellish day at Chillam, with everyone turned against her. Mary Drew envied Belinda’s soft-in-the-head safety.
Emptyheaded,
Miss Nicky had said … No, full! Pull! Too full! Suddenly her path was blocked.

“Admit it,” Rush said. She stood there with a trench coat over her shoulders, a lock of her short-cropped black hair hanging over her forehead, looking brave and heroic; a young James Mason bent on amused revenge.

“Admit what?” Mary Drew’s voice summoned up strength. Her heart hammered at her chest.

“You know what. All you have to do is admit it.”

But then, unexpectedly, Mary Drew heard the words Rush wanted her to say. “I admit it.”

Only she hadn’t said it.

“What?” Rush spun about.

“I
admit it,” the girl with the pitch-black hair and the very white skin repeated. “I did it. There you are.”

Rush stared at her — this girl on whom she had bestowed her most dashing smiles that morning at the sports field.
“You?”

“In assembly,” the girl said. “I sit directly behind Mary Drew. You mistook the culprit. I did it.”

For a moment, Rush just stared at her, standing arms akimbo, the trench coat flapping in the wind, her bright eyes fixed on the girl’s beautiful face. “You did it,” she said slowly. Then flatly. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” the girl answered.

Rush continued to stare at the girl’s face, but gradually, her left eyebrow raised slightly, and a tip came to her lips. “I see,” she said. “I see.”

Mary Drew was watching the scene with utter disbelief. Before she could think of anything to add to the moment, Rush turned around in a violent movement, and marched off down the walk, her head high, like a tall, strong Napoleon, oddly enough giving the impression of having been victorious.

The girl looked after her with an amused smile. “Silly person,” she said.

“Do you sit behind me?” Mary Drew asked.

“Sure. Have for two weeks.”

“And this morning? This morning — ” Mary Drew was not sure if the girl knew she had kicked the note in the aisle then, or if the girl were simply playing a joke on Rush.

“I did do it, you know,” the girl said. “Exactly what you did — in my mind.
Before
you did it.” She gave a husky chuckle. “Oh, I saw it hit your shoulder and saw you clamp down on it. When the Recessional started, I moved my own foot, before you did, just as though it were mine holding the note. I had the maddest notion that I could kick it into the aisle. I wanted to. And as soon as I thought that, well —
you
did it. Isn’t it uncanny?”

“But now you’ll be on the spot, won’t you?” Mary Drew said.

“I don’t think so. Rush likes me. She’s
such
a fool.” “Still — ”

The girl laughed. “No. Do you know what I believe she imagines? That I’d like to get to know her better and that I’m jealous of her friendship with Beth. She’s horribly pompous, you know … and conceited.”

“Oh, my God!” Mary Drew said. “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” She began to laugh. Both did. For a long time.

Then in the aftermath, as they straightened themselves, coughing and sniffing, after the spontaneous burst of humor that had grown between them like some rare and abandoned eternity, they stood face-to-face. The light rain fell. In the distance the tower bell on Old Building chimed four times. They looked at one another in those slow seconds, and then an odd thing happened. Instinctively, as though leach one knew the other would, they reached out their hands, the one meeting the other half way, and they shook.

“I’m Martha Kent,” the girl said.

Mary Drew answered, “I’m Mary Drew Edlin.”

J
UNE
8, 1956

“Naw, g’on,” Mr. Tullet waved the young man away that June afternoon. “I won’t be nagged no more!”

But the young man with the melting ice creams in his hand broke in, “It’s horribly serious, I’m afraid. It’s murder, I’m afraid! Please hurry!”

Mr. Tullett dropped the rake he was using to heap the rubbish.
“Murder?”

Then the two of them began to run toward the tearoom in Southwark Park.

It was about twenty past four, and while he was running, Mr. Tullett caught sight of Stoke, down by his shack. “Come on!” he shouted. “Here!”

He burst through the door, and then for the first time saw them — Mary Drew Edlin and Martha Kent.

“The Kent girl — she was screaming, ‘we’ve got to get clean!’ “ Mr. Tullett told the court later, “and the other one was sitting there with blood on her face, across her nose and on her chin. And their clothes was full of it!”

Crown Prosecutor Baird led the questioning:

Q. What happened next, Mr. Tullett?

A. Next? Next I found the body —

Q. No, Mr. Tullett. What was the very next thing that happened?

A. I told Ruby — my wife — to call for an ambulance. I told her to phone the police too. I wasn’t sure what had happened, and so I asked one of them, then. She —

Q. Who?

A. I can’t say who — one of them — and she said it was through the trees, down in the valley by the brook. ‘What happened?’ I said, and she said — I remember now — it was
her,
the Edlin girl because she said, ‘Mother was hit on the head by someone. Mother’s on the ground all bloody!’

Q. And then Mr. Tullett?

A. I ran out of the tearoom where Stoke — Mr. Stoke — was standing. We went down the pathway, and I found the body of a woman in the path, about a half a mile from the top. She was lying on her stomach. Her head was bashed in. There was blood on her head, on her face, on the path.

Q. Did you touch the body?

A. No sir, but Stoke did, sir. Her skirt was up past her knees. Stoke pulled it down.

Q. What else do you remember seeing, Mr. Tullett?

A. There was an egg-shaped rock on the path by the body. One of her shoes was off. That was there by the rock. And her teeth — dentures — they was there. And there was an extra stocking by her pocketbook, and her pocketbook was open, with things spilling out.

Q. What do you mean, an
extra
stocking?

A. A sock, really. A man’s red sock. Or a sock, man’s
or
woman’s.

Q. She was wearing stockings?

A. Yes, she was. This here was a sock. I didn’t mean to say stocking.

Q. Was there anything else there you can remember?

A. One more thing, yes. Yes, sir — a stone, sir. A little one, a blue one. Looked like it come out of a ring, it did. A blue stone.

S
EPTEMBER,
1955

The Kent house in Weerdale was an old three-storied Tudor place with too many drafts, and a lawn filled with oaks, chestnuts and slender birches. It had a rambling, almost dilapidated, look and an incredibly well-kept garden. William Kent had named it “John-a-dreams.” He had bought it in 1950, when he moved to Weerdale to accept a position at Melrose College For Women.

Martha used to occupy the room on the third floor and called it “The Crow’s Nest.” But it had been converted into an apartment for Roddy, who lived with them now.

That morning after making her diary entry, Martha reread the part about the Druid’s egg in the encyclopedia, so she could tell Mary Drew about it when she arrived at school.

“Superb!” Martha smiled, shut her diary and locked it with the tiny gold kev she wore on a chain around her neck. She thought:
dear Druid, dear Mary Drew
— and then Roddy shouted from the staircase below:

“O.K. Duchess, get a move on!”

Even though she loved America and all the Americans she had never met, she detested Rodney Sawyer. He was a leech! He had come for a visit a year ago, and he was still there. Worse luck, it appeared he’d be there forever. “A brilliant boy!” her father had said. “The most promising student I had abroad!”

“No,” Roddy would protest, flinging his arm around Dr. Kent’s shoulders in a wretched display of affection, “you were the brilliant one.
You
made
me
spark, Doctor!”

“Martha darling, Rodney’s waiting for you,” Mrs. Kent called from the next room. “Don’t keep him waiting now.”

Martha answered. “I’m not so particular as you, where he’s concerned,” gathering her blazer from the chair, “or perhaps I’m
more
particular. I don’t know which.”

Again Roddy shouted: “Get a leg on! It’s quarter to eight, Martha!”

Martha placed her diary under the cushion of the lounge chair by the window seat and put on her blazer. As she walked out into the hall, she found her mother there in her dressing gown, with her long hair still to her shoulders and not yet done up into the bun. Her mother was thirty-six. Martha had inherited her beauty, but to Martha, her mother was not beautiful, because no one over twenty could be. Except for movie stars. They had no age. Men didn’t either, up to about forty. Then they were old. Martha’s father was very old. Ancient. He was fifty-two.

Martha’s mother had been performing the morning ritual of combing her hair. It was soft, long black hair like Martha’s, but there were streaks of gray through it. Martha was never able to fathom why her mother did not dye the gray out. It seemed perverse on the part of her mother to think that it was attractive.

Her mother said, “Suppose you explain that last remark.”

“Which one? That I’m not particular about Roddy? Well, I’m not. He can float face down in a river for all I care.”

“Are you very proud of the way you express yourself, Martha?” “Sometimes.”

“I’m quite disappointed,” her mother said. “I thought you had a bit more sensitivity.”

“I’m
your
daughter. That may explain why I haven’t.”

“You’re not leaving until you apologize to me, Martha.”

“I’ll keep Roddy waiting. That’s a catastrophe,
isn’t
it?”

“Roddy has tried to be your friend, Martha. You won’t let him. You shut him out. Why?”

“Because I’m father’s daughter too, mother dear. And I know what’s what. And don’t think I don’t.”

From beneath them, Roddy’s voice: “Martha! Hustle the bustle, kid!”

Helen Kent looked at her daughter for a moment, and Martha met the glance directly. Then Mrs. Kent slapped the silver-bordered comb to her side and sighed.

She said, “Don’t be tardy!”

“Goodbye, mother.”

Momentarily, Mrs. Kent looked over the railing, down at Martha as she skipped past Roddy without even a nod; and at Roddy as he stood watching her for a second, before he straightened himself, stubbed out his cigarette in the tray on the table and followed. Roddy — too tall and skinny, with his arms dangling, wrists jumping beyond his shirt cuffs; the ungovernable lock of white-blond hair falling across his forehead; brown eyes boyish, too much so for thirty-four. She was often aware she looked older than he did when they were together, and it was painful, because she was.

Did people — at the Milk Bar, or the drugstore, or any number of a hundred places where they went together in Weerdale, the beach, the butcher’s, to the campus to meet William — did people guess? And if they did, did they think:
What’s he doing with
her,
a young chap like that?
Or didn’t they wonder at all? How did others see Roddy? As she did? Not really handsome but good-looking certainly — somehow vaguely exciting when you saw him laughing across a room, or walking in that long fast gait down a street with his hair blowing in the wind and his coat collar turned up, and the bright, gaily colored scarf flying. How Roddy loved his scarves! Did people see him that way? Or, with the spectacles of love removed, was Roddy dull, average, the American who was a writer of some kind. Roddy as shiftless — playing darts at the local pub until closing time every evening. Roddy, childish. How did he look to others?

William Kent saw Roddy the way he saw everyone else — as a Shakespearian character, whatever character he might remind William of at the time.

Last night, after supper, Roddy had said, “Well, what will I be up to tonight?” Martha had answered, “Why not ring up some girl, Roddy?” William, stuffing his pipe at the mantle, had turned and chuckled, “Ah, Benedick, no snares like that.” He grinned at Roddy.

Roddy grinned back. “Tonight I’m Benedick, hmm?”

“Every night, my dear fellow. Benedick, the mirthful young lord of Padua.” William had nodded his head with satisfaction, rubbing his gold Claridge key, strung across his vest, nodding with his eyes shut, the way he did just before he was about to give a quotation: “ ‘He hath twice or thrice cut Cupid’s bowstring, and the little hangman dare not shoot at him!’ ”

Then William had chuckled more, scratched a match on his shoe, and lit his pipe, still enjoying the comparison of Roddy to Benedick.

And Martha? She had said cryptically: “Oh, I don’t know about that.”

It couldn’t, it mustn’t continue, Mrs. Kent decided. As though she were steeling herself to some inevitable moment, she squared her shoulders, took the comb resolutely in the other hand, and walked down the long hallway to the end room. She knocked on the door.

“Good morning, my dear.”

William looked up at her over his eyeglasses, which had slipped forward on his nose. He was an immense man, not fat, but heavy-set and tall. Fifteen years ago, he had been a striking man, with every girl in Helen’s class, including Helen, swooning over him. Now? He was all his fifty-two years. And regrettably enough, Helen realized, he was the same man. Gentleman and scholar. Trite but accurate words.

“William,” she began, “I — ”

“Yes?”

In a moment, another tune, “I wondered if you wanted more tea?”

“Thank you, my dear. No, no, I’ve had more than my quota. It’s odd, Helen, very odd …” He took his eyeglasses off and swung about in his chair to face her.

“What is?”

“The things that are so obvious, that we don’t seem to grasp until we’re too old to do very much about them.”

“Yes,” Helen Kent said. Perhaps at last even William knew. Was it possible?

He said, “Youth is really a dreadful incapacity. We’re not possessed of all our faculties when we’re young. It seems unfair that when we have strength, courage, imagination — all those powers we lose year by year — that we should lack understanding. Do you believe that, Helen?”

“Yes, William. I think I know what you’re speaking of.”

He smiled at her … sadly? … “Ah yes, you, dear Helen, always know my heart — and my mind. I’ve been grateful for that, and fortunate. Grateful and fortunate.” He sighed, rubbing his eyes with his large fingers. “Yes — things that are so obvious, we are too impetuous and ignorant to see.”

“What made you decide this, William?” She settled herself on the large leather footstool beside his desk. If it could be this easy, this calm, with only delicate pain, pain the mind can resolve.

“I’ve thought it a long time. Perhaps only in the past few weeks have I actually believed it. It’s so obvious, that I don’t want to form it into a thought. I think how silly, that it’s a cliche, and then I disregard it. Helen, I’ve thought and thought about it this morning …” He nod ded to himself, looking down at his desk. “You used to tease me about reading and rereading Shakespeare, but do you know every year I’ve learned something new from what I’ve read in these plays?” He touched the backbone of the leather-bound book before him on the desk. “Antony and Cleopatra, for example … Antony, so captivated by the fascinating Egyptian that he repudiated his wife and went to live in a strange country.” William Kent shut his eyes, leaning back in his chair: “Cleopatra, woman unparalleled, and Antony, ‘the noble ruin of her magic.’ ”

William Kent sighed and sat forward.

“Helen,” he said, “I’ve made a mistake.”

Helen Kent was prepared for this moment. She said simply, “No, William.
You
haven’t.”

“Ah, yes I have. Helen, for years and years I’ve neglected the minor characters. Yes, I have. I’ve concentrated on the Antonys, the Hamlets, the Richards, the Macbeths. But Helen,” he rose now, “in all of Shakespeare show me a man more brave than Scarus — right here in
Antony and Cleopatra,
jabbing his finger on the leather-bound book atop his desk, “Scarus who, when Antony said, ‘Thou bleed’st!’ replied, ‘I had a wound here that was like a T, but now ‘tis made an H.’!”

The comb dropped to the floor from Helen Kent’s hands.

“I’ve been a silly fool for years, Helen!” William Kent bellowed. “I’ve neglected the Scaruses of this world!”

• • •

Coming up the walk that morning at Chillam, Martha Kent was pleased with the way she had conducted herself in the car on the way. She had Roddy squirming. He had tried and tried to make up to her, and she had not answered him once. Again, he had asked her if he could help her with the book she was writing.

“You’ll have to admit, I’ve had a little more experience than you at that,” he had said, “and good constructive criticism never hurt anyone.”

That was typical of his infinite capacity for platitudes.

He had even said, “You know, I might show you some of my stuff too.” Something he had never offered to do before. And she had always been curious about his “stuff” because he locked the door to “The Crow’s Nest” so she couldn’t snoop. But she did not give him the satisfaction of an answer, nor did she wave at him as she got out of the car.

Inside the door, someone pulled at her sleeve. Turning, brightening because she thought it was Mary Drew waiting there, she faced Evelyn Rush. For two weeks, Rush had pretended to ignore her, ever since the episode outside the gymnasium. But Martha could tell how Rush felt; could sense the emotion behind her casual bumping against her in the hall during rush between classes; or the fleeting glimpse of Rush’s eyes at assembly or in the dining hall. She felt like laughing in Rush’s face, for of all things, she seemed almost shy at that moment, almost self-conscious.

“Listen, wait a minute,” she said.

Haughtily, Martha stared at Rush’s fingers on her sleeve until she dropped her hand to her side. Rush wore the same trench coat in the same silly fashion, over her shoulder, like a detective in a movie.

Rush said, “President Eisenhower’s had a heart attack. It came over the radio. Did you know?”

“Did he croak then?” Martha answered.

“Not yet.”

“Pity.”

Rush shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Look, what is it with you?” Rush cocked an eyebrow, her lips tipping in that same put-on grin of charm.

“I might ask the same of you.”

“Well, are you — do you — ” Rush fumbled for words while Martha waited. Rush said: “What is it between you and Mary Drew?”

“You’re like a child, Rush,” Martha Kent answered.

For some unfathomable reason this seemed to please Rush immensely. She actually blushed, looked down at her oxfords and stuck her hand in her blazer pocket. She said, “You’ve known I didn’t mean it — snubbing you, haven’t you?”

“I’m not a fool.”

“I know you’re not,” Rush said, looking up and into Martha Kent’s eyes. “That’s why I like you.”

“I have to go to class,” said Martha.

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

That was like Rush, Martha decided, to think anyone would find it hard to accept the fact Rush had a crush on her. She began to fumble with both hands in the pocket of her trench coat now, saying: “Wait. I have something. Here,” struggling with a box. “Here, Martha. I have this for you.”

“What is it?” Martha Kent looked nonchalantly at the box.

“It’s something for you,” Rush repeated, and she plunged it into Martha Kent’s hands in a desperate motion, then took off down the hall in that fast, soldier’s pace of hers.

• • •

After noon meal, before fifth bell, Martha met Mary Drew at the Victoria statue on the ground of Chillam, behind it, on the stone steps.

“I like it,” were the first words Mary Drew said, and without asking, Martha knew what she meant.