Love Among the Walnuts (3 page)

"I thought you said the inmates were high-class here," Mousey squeaked in distress.

"But, darling," Horatio said, "you must admire her taste in baseball hats."

Sid Skeet laughed. "She's no inmate. That's Opal, the custodian. She's got the manners of a train wreck. But Waldemar saves a fortune by having her around. She can do anything: electricity, plumbing, carpentry, furniture moving, tree uprooting, and, in a pinch, she can subdue a violent case."

"I thought there weren't any of those here," Mousey said, looking over her shoulder.

"If there were any," Sid amended, "she could subdue them. But there aren't."

The office door opened, and a short, plump man wearing a gray suit and a distracted air came out. He was mostly bald, with a fringe of white hair circling the back of his head; and he wore round steel-rimmed glasses. "Hello, Sid," he said. "What can I do for you?"

"Hi, Doc. These folks are interested in buying the Federated Conglomerates property adjoining Walnut Manor. They want to check out your security here. Don't want to wake up some morning and find a bunch of nuts in the backyard." Sid Skeet chuckled.

"Oh," Dr. Waldemar said. "Well, let me assure you, there is no possibility of such a thing ever happening. Security here is very, um, secure. Banks could take lessons from us." He gestured to a large panel on the wall full of little TV screens, red lights, and buttons—all with labels under them. They could see themselves on one of the TV screens. "We've never had an escape. Why would anybody want to escape from here, anyway? We like to consider Walnut Manor a sort of private club for our guests. And our guests are from some of the finest families in the country. I'd call them more, um,
distressed
than disturbed. Even if they were to wander off, they would represent absolutely no danger to the public. But why don't I show you around? That should ease your minds. You can wait in the office if you want, Sid. You've seen Walnut Manor plenty of times." As he led Horatio and Mousey down the hall, he said, "We welcome contributions to Walnut Manor from any source, and they are completely tax deductible."

Dr. Waldemar took them first to the dining room. Large windows looked out over the pool and gardens and green lawns, which stopped at the brick wall dividing Walnut Manor from the Federated Conglomerates property. China and silver and crystal were on the tables. As they watched, the kitchen door burst open and Opal shot out carrying a huge plastic bucket of water and ice cubes. She began filling glasses on the tables so quickly she was almost a blur.

They moved on to the library where about twenty people sat playing cards, watching television, reading magazines, and staring at the wall. None of them looked the slightest bit dangerous.

They peered into the neat bedrooms, apparently furnished with some of the patients' own furniture, and into the crafts rooms, before going outdoors to examine the pool, shuffleboard courts, and garden. Everything Horatio and Mousey saw served only to set their minds at ease.

As they walked back to the office, Dr. Waldemar said, "I hope what you've seen would encourage you to send any distressed relative of yours to us should the need ever arise."

They thanked him, but said they doubted such a thing was likely to happen. They collected Sid Skeet from the office and took the Daimler back to Jupiter, where they attended to the paperwork necessary to purchase the land for their new home.

The next few months were busy ones. Horatio and Mousey worked on plans for the house and selected furnishings. Construction began. Mousey often had Bentley drive her out to the site, the Daimler loaded with picnic hampers for the workers. She wanted them cheerful so that they'd work fast, because she intended to bring the baby home from the hospital to the new house.

Horatio was happier than he could remember since he was a child. His businesses ran along without a hitch, and he had lots of time to spend with Mousey, watching her perform her plays, playing games, thinking up names for the baby. When Mousey couldn't find pretty lingerie to accommodate her changing figure, Horatio designed a line of maternity underwear that was frilly and feminine. He called it Mater-Nifties and it was an immediate success. More money rolled in, and Bart and Bernie sat in their dark apartment pounding their idle fists on their fat thighs in frustration. They would have pounded even harder if they had known that all the money from Mater-Nifties rolled right out again to charities benefiting needy children.

One morning Horatio received a phone call from the contractor telling him that his house was finished. That same afternoon he took Mousey to the hospital to have their baby.

For the rest of his life, Horatio remembered that day as the zenith of his personal happiness: The wife he adored presented him with a perfect child; the dream house they had planned together was ready for them to bring their little family to; and he was young, healthy, and wildly happy.

He flew a flag, a big blue one inscribed with
IT'S A BOY
! from the top of his tallest office building. When he went to see Mousey in the hospital, he was accompanied by a panel truck filled with flowers and candy, not only for Mousey, but for all the other mothers on the maternity floor and all the doctors and nurses.

He found Mousey sitting up in bed looking fresh and radiant and very satisfied with herself.

"Oh, Horatio, isn't he beautiful? He looks just like you."

"Oh, Mousey, my darling!" he exclaimed, kissing her and running off to the nursery. He stood before the glass, tears of wonder and gratitude in his eyes as he gazed at his sleeping son.

Three days later he tenderly gathered Mousey and their still unnamed child into the Daimler, and they drove to their new house in the country.

The days and weeks and months flowed easily into one another. Gradually Horatio and Mousey decided there was no reason for them ever to leave their beautiful home. Everything they valued was there.

A high, attractive brick wall surrounded their property. The big iron gate in it stayed locked until visitors had identified themselves through, the intercom at the gatepost. Inside the gate were the house, the pool, the tennis court, a stable for the three horses, and a barn for the cow who supplied their milk. There were a few chickens to produce fresh eggs and for Louie—living in a cat's paradise—to chase, and some picturesque ducks who swam in the little brook.

Once in a while, at the beginning, they rode their horses over to the wall that separated them from Walnut Manor and looked over, just to be sure all was in order there. They never saw anything more threatening than a few distracted-looking people, one of whom was sometimes Dr. Waldemar, sitting on the lawn or strolling through the gardens; and eventually they quit thinking about it.

Bentley finally got so lonesome for Flossie that he swallowed his fears and married her, and then wondered why it had taken him so long. She, too, came to live in the country, where she helped with the house and the baby, and tended a vegetable garden outside the kitchen door.

One evening at dinner, Horatio announced that he had decided to name the estate Eclipse.

"Eclipse?" Mousey asked. "Why?"

"Because that's what Bentley does to keep the garden in shape. He clips," Horatio said, laughing.

"But that's such a silly reason," Mousey told him.

"No, that's not why. I'm just teasing you." He took her hand in his. "I'm naming it Eclipse because my new life here with you has so far surpassed my old life in joy and contentment, I can hardly remember it."

"Oh, Horatio," Mousey squeaked. "How beautiful."

Horatio and Mousey quit taking a newspaper because they never found any good news in it. They gave away their television sets because they kept getting bad news on them, too. Horatio called in to his offices once a week, but as long as he left things alone and just allowed the money to make more money, everything went more smoothly than when he was juggling corporations and meeting with his business advisers and tax accountants and worrying about debentures and estoppels and liquidity ratios.

More and more, Horatio and Mousey and Bentley and Flossie spent their time in quiet, peaceful pursuits: reading aloud to one another from the favorite old books; playing games of cards and pool and checkers (Horatio lost his interest in Monopoly); singing to the accompaniment of Mousey's piano and Horatio's guitar; tending to the grounds and the animals; putting on plays; and playing with the baby, whom they had finally named Alexander, because they liked the way his initials spelled AHA, but whom they called Sandy.

The years drifted by in perfect peace and contentment. Sandy learned to swim and ride a horse, to read and play games and make music with his parents. Mousey and Horatio considered sending him to Jupiter to school when he came of school age. But he was such a sweet and generous and likable child that they hated to risk changing that through exposure to other children, and they decided to keep him at home.

The whole family—for Bentley and Flossie were certainly family—participated in Sandy's education, and they all benefited. All of them learned Latin, and one Christmas they translated several Christmas-carols into it, not just "Adeste Fidelis," which everybody knows.

To study geography, Horatio ordered an enormous globe, and they all finally found out where Tasmania and Transylvania and Timbuktu and Perth Amboy, New Jersey, are. Mousey learned long division, which she hadn't understood in fourth grade; and Bentley did chemistry experiments in the butler's pantry, accidently discovering a way to make plastic out of potato peelings. Horatio sold the formula to DuPont for Bentley, which assured Bentley and Flossie's retirement income.

They all learned to diagram sentences and to make pie crust, to spell
cirrostratus nebulosus
(a cloud formation producing a halo phenomenon) and to write haiku, to determine their own blood types and to appreciate Montaigne. Their days were full of sunshine and love and discovery.

The only blot on their otherwise perfect landscape was the third Thursday of every month, when Bart and Bernie came to Eclipse for dinner. All five of them dreaded that day. But they made the best of it and collaborated on an elaborate dinner so there was at least
something
about the evening to enjoy.

These evenings were hard on Bart and Bernie, too. As disagreeable as Horatio's brothers were to start with, the happy atmosphere of Eclipse somehow made them even more odious. They simply could not stand to see people enjoying themselves.

"It's unhealthy for you to bury yourselves out here in the country," they always said. "It's unnatural."

"It's not good for Alexander," they said, "to be deprived of the company of other children. He doesn't act like a regular child."

"Thank goodness," Horatio would reply.

"What do you
do
out here all day long?" they asked. "You're neglecting your businesses."

Horatio and Mousey and Bentley and Flossie and Sandy bit their tongues and gritted their teeth and refrained from arguing with Bart and Bernie. For one thing, they were too polite to argue with their dinner guests, and for another, they didn't want to lower themselves to Bart and Bernie's level.

All of them, except Sandy, of course, knew about smog and traffic jams and computer billing, acid rain and MTV and microwave cooking, the IRS and alarm clocks and soy protein, and they didn't want any more. They were happy in their little Utopia, and they didn't care how much that bothered Bart and Bernie.

The years rolled on, each one happier than the one before. Gradually they lost track of time. The batteries in their watches died and weren't replaced. They had no need for calendars. They had no newspaper. They forgot how old they were. What difference did it make?

They never even thought of the future. Each day was perfection enough. Sandy grew taller and more handsome and became a young man, but that was the only chronometer they had. To Horatio, the lines in Mousey's face only made her more dear to him; and she thought the gray in his hair improved his looks.

Bart and Bernie aged, too. The years turned them more churlish than ever because they saw themselves passing into old age without Horatio's fortune to squander. No matter how generous he was with them, they wanted it
all.

On the third Thursday in September, a crisp fall evening, Bart and Bernie arrived for their monthly dinner with a cake box tied up with string. "We've brought a birthday cake," they announced. "We've noticed that you never celebrate birthdays, and we thought it was time to have a celebration for all of you at once, for all the missed birthday parties."

This was so uncharacteristic of Bart and Bernie that everyone was immediately suspicious. But as the evening wore on and Bart and Bernie remained cheery and pleasant, Horatio and Mousey, too out of practice to remain distrustful, relaxed and smiled with the thought that Bart and Bernie had finally learned to be nice.

Something continued to bother Sandy, though, and he couldn't be at ease. He, who had no experience at all with deceit, deception, and ruthlessness, sensed something odd.

In spite of much urging by Bart and Bernie, he stubbornly refused to have any of the cake. His parents were surprised and disappointed in him for his lack of good manners, but because he had never before behaved strangely without a reason, they trusted his decision.

As usual, they were all relieved when Bart and Bernie, still in high good spirits, left. They sat before the fire with their coffee, once again relishing their solitude and the pleasure of one another's company. Flossie helped Mousey wind some skeins of yarn into balls, and Horatio and Bentley played a game of chess. Sandy sat quietly and stared into the flames, a puzzled look on his face. There was something ... something. He shook his head and then stared and puzzled some more.

When Sandy awoke the next morning, it was with the sense that something was wrong. He recalled that he had gone to bed with the same feeling. He got up and went to the window, from which every morning he saw Flossie making her inspection tour of the kitchen garden. That morning the garden was empty except for Louie. Old but still remarkably spry, the cat was stalking his favorite chicken—the one they called Attila the Hen—through the scallions.