Some Came Running (41 page)

Bob was smiling at her affectionately.

And perhaps a little quizzically, Dave thought.

“You see,” Bob explained turning to him, “this room was their original kitchen here. They had house slaves you know to do the work. They did most of their cooking in the big fireplace down at the other end, and used this smaller one here for baking chiefly and for short orders you know. The slaves, of course, ate all their meals here, which is one reason the room is so big I imagine. How is your martini?” he smiled. “I wasn’t sure I made it dry enough for you.”

Dave looked down at the glass in his hand and then took a sip from it. “Fine,” he said. “Couldn’t be better.” This was true, too. But right now, here, he felt he would have liked it if it had been half vermouth.

“Good,” Bob said, rubbing his hands together and looking pleased, “good. I can’t drink them much anymore,” he said. “Except when I go out somewhere. Then I am forced to. But I’m having a manhattan, and so is Gwen, so don’t feel alone—all right?” He strode off on his long legs back down to the counter bar, to mix the others.

“I’ll have mine down there, Dad,” Gwen said. “Don’t you want to go down and sit by the fire, Dave?”

“I’m fine,” Dave said, and grinned at her. “I’m fine right here.”

She didn’t answer, but stared at him from the stove somberly.

Dave was a little amazed at his own audacity. All at once, for no reason, the old engaging woman-charm had begun to flow up through him. It was exactly what he needed, but he wasn’t sure how long it would last. Loin-fired, he could feel it flowing along his arteries and veins like melted butter, and spilling out through his eyes and face and voice. It wasn’t something he could control or call up at will whenever he wanted it. It came or went in him according to its own private set of rules, and usually those rules were based on confidence. So now he tried with his mind to keep it coming, and to put no stumbling blocks in its path before he got a chance to use it.

Dave took another sip from the glass in his hand and looked around, feeling the same self-warmed self-confident self-expansion the house had made him feel. Probably that was what was responsible for the charm he was about to use. On the end wall, long, open shelves of canned goods and jarred spices added the bright gaiety of their colored labels to the effect. In the center of the floor space at this cooking end stood an old worn-dull aluminum cook’s table that must have come out of some restaurant kitchen somewhere, with rows of utensils hanging from its double rack. Everything; everything seemed to fit. He noticed there was one of the brand-new automatic dishwashers, too, set in beside the sink. It was the only piece of equipment in the whole place that
was
brand new. But even it seemed to fit. Gwen was no longer watching him in that way she had been, but had turned back to her cooking.

If he could just keep the confidence, which meant the charm that came along with it. All you had to do was believe you were attractive. But that was the hardest thing to do. And for a man as ugly as he was . . . Don’t Think That! Come on now.

Holding his drink he leaned on the counter, a little ways down from the stove, and let the melted butter bubble out of him.

“Do you ever use that?” he asked, grinning the charm grin, and nodded at the brick oven. There were wood ashes in its firebox.

“Once in a while,” Gwen said, looking up, and then looking right back down. “It’s very good for Boston baked beans and big roasts and things like that. Barbecues. But it’s a lot of fuss to use it.” She bent, long-haired, competent, with that attractive sort of raw-boned look she had, and opened the stove’s oven to look inside.

Bent over as she was, this time she turned her back away from him, he noticed. Looking at her Dave had the same feeling he’d had observing Edith Barclay in Smitty’s Bar: I could really love this woman!

Gwen straightened up. This time when she looked at him she smiled, her eyes going out of focus with excited self-awareness, and when she moved it was with a conscious grace.

It was working! Dave thought exuberantly, in spite of all her promises of disinterest, even though she knew her way around plenty, this gal. A smell of rich meat and of some spice or other had flowed out of the oven into the room and this seemed too to fit exactly like everything else. She likes for me to look at it, he thought, even if she does turn it the other way.

“What’re you cooking?” he said.

“Stuffed beef hearts. Do you like them?”

“I don’t know. I never ate them.”

“You’ll like these,” she promised, smiling, and for a moment looked him fully in the eyes. Then she looked down at her watch, and moved to turn off the burner under the single boiling pot that had been boiling away ever since he had come in. Holding the lid as a strainer, she poured the water off of what when she removed the lid was disclosed to be over a dozen huge potatoes, both Irish and sweet potatoes. Taking a big spoon, she began to put some of both into the oven with the meat, bending as before with her back away from him. Then, looking up and seeing the surprised look all those potatoes had brought to Dave’s face, she laughed.

“You won’t have to eat all these tonight,” Gwen said gaily, getting another one on the spoon. “You don’t know much about cooking, do you?”

“Oh, a little bit,” Dave grinned. “Why?”

“You thought I was going to serve all of these, didn’t you? But I always boil a big batch when I boil them,” Gwen smiled up at him, her eyes squinted. “It saves me time, you see, and what’s left over I keep in the icebox. The Idahoes become hash browns or I use them in soup or hash.” For a moment, her eyes changed; they opened wide, looking up at him in a way that was intimate, and inviting, and made the smile still on her face suddenly flirtatious. “And the sweet potatoes I fry.”

“Fried sweet potatoes?” Dave said, leaning on the countertop.

“It’s Southern,” Gwen laughed. “You’ve never tasted anything good until you’ve eaten cold, sliced leftover sweet potatoes fried in butter and sprinkled with sugar.” She had put four of the huge potatoes, two of each, into the oven. She straightened and shut the door.

“You always boil baked potatoes first?” Dave grinned, looking into her face.

Gwen nodded. “Again, it saves me time. I’m not one of these cooks who likes to spend hours and hours in the kitchen. And also, boiling them first makes them bake moist.”

“Oh,” Dave said. He straightened himself a little and sipped at his drink, watching her over the rim of the glass.

Still with that squint of embarrassed self-pleasure, Gwen turned and walked down to the other end of the counter by the door, not the one they had come in by, she walking rawboned and leggy with that almost masculine angularity, but with those definitely female hips. Hips she was aware of and enjoying now, obviously. She was having a flirtation as much as he was. And she knew how to play it, he thought. She wasn’t beautiful, at least you never thought of her as beautiful when you were away from her, but when you were with her, she was beautiful.

“What’re you fixin now?” he said.

“Apples,” Gwen said. “And now you go on down to the other end and talk to Dad until I get this food fixed. Or I’ll never get it fixed,” she laughed. “We will be ready to eat in a few minutes.”

“Okay,” Dave muttered. It was all set. There was a note almost of promise in her voice and he reflected how easy it was, really, once your mood was right. But at the same time, he was suddenly aware of Bob French, still standing down at the other end of the counter, still mixing his manhattans. It seemed to be
taking
him a very long time. He had completely forgotten he was here. He turned quickly and started down the long room toward him.

“Guinevere, your drink is ready!” Bob called almost immediately.

“Put it on the coffee table, and I’ll get it in a little bit,” she said.

“It may get warm,” he cautioned.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll get it in just a minute.”

Dave walked on down the long length of the room to where he stood beside the inside counter which served as the bar, holding the two red-tinged drinks with their maraschino cherries in them.

“Let’s sit down,” Bob said. Then he grinned delightedly. “By the fire!” It was impossible to tell whether he had followed anything that had gone on up the counter or not. Dave looked at his face to see if he could read it.

“Let me put some records on,” Bob said, and went to the console where two thick albums were set up neatly on its top. “I’ve been listening to Bach’s
The Art of the Fugue
a lot lately,” he said, in that almost apologetic way he had whenever he spoke of anything that might be construed as culture, “and I have it out, here. Will that be all right with you?”

“Sure,” Dave said. He looked around the room again. Down at the other end, Gwen was gracefully squatting down putting apples into a bowl, and he could see part of the inside of her bare thigh where the top of her stocking ended.

Suddenly, as if realizing exactly where he was looking, though she did not look up, Gwen seized her dress and tucked it up under her knee, covering the offending spot. Dave, confident now, did not bother to look away, and grinned at her openly.

“This is group III,” Bob said, coming up behind him. Startled, Dave swung back around.

“My recording is transcribed for orchestra,” Bob said. “I prefer that to piano only—for this, at least.” He sat down beside Dave on the divan and picked up his glass from where he had set it on the coffee table, in the warmth radiating out to them from the huge fireplace.

Again, it was impossible to tell from his face whether he was following what was going on, or just missing it entirely. Then the music came out into the room—like also the warmth of the fire—low in volume, first one violin, then two, then other instruments, exceedingly simple apparently and yet tremendously complex, slow and measured seemingly even in its faster parts, calm, cool, melodiously sweet. To Dave, who knew next to nothing about classical music, it seemed as if this were the only music which could have been played here and now, and be such a perfect complement to all the rest of this place.

“Tell me,” he said suddenly, feeling again that ridiculously emotional desire to please the older man, “tell me, is it all like this?”

Bob grinned, coming up out of the music, the grin a little rueful. “No. No, as a matter of fact, it isn’t. It’s rather a good deal less so. Except here and there. But we hope to get it all done someday. I’ll show you the rest of the house later, if you like.”

“I would,” Dave said. “Very much.”

“You see, we have so much stuff,” Bob said, as if ashamed for having it. “Like that big table there. We have stuff like that all over the house. That table is from my mother’s family. It was carried overland in a covered wagon from New York State to Ohio, then again from Ohio to here. We have clothes chests, and sugar chests, and cedar chests,” he said wearily, “and old beds, and corner cupboards, and chairs, and tables, sitting all over the house. Most of it comes down from one family or another. Although a few of the things my wife bought. She was an antiquer. But, you see, it rather got so we almost couldn’t get into the house in Parkman, and in order to get something from one chest we had to move another you know. Practically.”

“That isn’t true,” Gwen said, coming down toward them with a bowl of apples. She sounded very positive, and almost prim. “I don’t think you should persist in using the furniture as an excuse for buying this house just because you’re ashamed of having a little money. I don’t think that’s fair to yourself or to anyone else. It’s cheating, and it’s immoral.”

Both of the men looked at her. In a very short time, she seemed to have changed completely into another person; a person more like the coldly responsible schoolteacher Dave had met at Frank’s, than the warmly sympathetic woman he had ridden downtown with.

“You are quite right, dear Gwen,” Bob said, looking at her quizzically. She went right on with her apples.

“Is that what you call Early American?” Dave said, looking away from her to the table.

“Well, if it is, it is rather a bastard type you know,” Bob said in a pained voice that was very like his apology for culture.

“It’s nothing of the sort,” Gwen said without looking up, “and you know it.”

“Early American is rather supposed to be quite plain, I understand,” Bob went on to Dave. “Whereas you can see the legs of this table are not plain.”

“They’re not ornate, though,” Dave said.

“Yes,” Bob said. “They’re not ornate. You see I have rather an idea, as I said before, about eventually fixing up different rooms as different periods and styles, you know. For instance, we have enough Pennsylvania Dutch things to outfit a whole room. We have so much stuff, and so many rooms. And it’s a project. And I like to putter around,” he said.

Gwen said nothing. Then quite suddenly she reached out for her drink, which she had hardly touched, and drank it all down in two swallows.

Bob looked over at her again, his face not derisive so much, as understandingly humorous.

“What kind of wood is that?” Dave asked of the table.

“That?” Bob said. “That is cherry and rosewood. That’s unusual you know. Mostly they mixed mahogany and rosewood. The legs are solid rosewood. The thing that makes it good is the carving of the legs, however. Not the turnings themselves, but the hexagonal tapered panels between them. I’ve never seen another quite like it actually.”

“It’s very beautiful,” Dave said. “So are those chairs.” He felt he had just about run out of anything else to say, or to comment on.

“We have a lot of antique furniture,” Gwen said without looking up from her apples. “And in spite of the way he talks, he’s going to have a very unusual and beautiful thing when he gets the place finished.”

“Yes, but it is coming along rather quite slowly,” Bob said.

“I don’t see how you can expect to complete a project like you have in mind in a few weeks or days,” Gwen said. She got up with her apples, which she had finished cutting, having put each unpeeled slice in the pan, and took them down to the stove, as if there were nothing more to be said.