The Lady and Her Doctor (38 page)

“In plain English, Mrs. Austen, her ladyship thinks you were bought off.”

“Madam?”

“The pension, Mrs. Austen, you're forgetting that.”

“The pension! The pension!”

“Her ladyship thinks Milt gave you the pension so you would keep your trap shut.”

“Oh, madam!”

“Why else? So O.K., then? You know that Milt gave you that pension out of the goodness of his heart, don't you think you owe it to him to explain the reason you gave Milt that dirty look?” She was nodding. “Is the telephone line shut off yet? No? Not?” Jenny pointed to the old suitcase. “Lock her up.” She hurried along the hall to the telephone.

Jenny could tell that the old woman must be wondering what had hit her, why she was standing there now, holding onto the black carved table where the telephone sat as if she had all the wind knocked out of her. She had to hold onto the black table because her legs felt so weak they'd give way otherwise. When the desk clerk at the hotel had informed her that Lady Constant was on the
Queen Elizabeth
this minute, it had knocked her for a loop!
She
was seeing Milt off when Jenny couldn't. Jenny couldn't go to the boat with him, oh, no, but
she
could! “Lady Constant isn't at the hotel. She's on the boat.”

“On the boat, madam? Then Lady Constant is returning to France, madam?”

“To France?” Jenny glared.

“Well that is where her ladyship lived, madam.”

Jenny groaned and straightened up, thinking, that fool, Milt! Oh, God, that dope, Milt! The royal suite was for royalty, who else? Milt had the royal suite, didn't he? Two bedrooms. She, Jenny, was the dope. Hadn't Milt himself told her that the Duchess was the one who had given him the idea of the Riviera in the first place? He had such a yen to go to the Riviera it was all he could think of. My God, could he be taking her along, letting her use the extra bedroom so she could introduce him to the Four Hundred there? A brilliant idea—brilliant! No matter what he said Milt didn't speak a word of French. Brilliant idea. That the Duchess was poison, that from the minute she had arrived on the scene she'd been after his head, that she still was, that didn't matter to that dope, Milt! Of course, Jenny thought, that was why he wouldn't let her go to see him off, of course! There was no other reason in the world he wouldn't have let her come to see him off! She had a vivid mental picture of the delicately made-up face. Was Milt the first man to forget everything because of a pretty face? Because she had a size twelve figure? Because
she
would look good in a bikini? Because the hardest work
she
had ever done with her hands was rub cold cream into her face—not scrubbed Milt's floor or cooked Milt's meals or washed his dirty socks! “What?” Jenny asked the old lady, who had been saying something, what Jenny hadn't been able to make out because of the way her heart had been going like a trip hammer. “What did you say?”

“Do you think we might catch her at the pier, madam?”

Jenny shoved herself away from the black carved table, “Sure we could!” The strength came back to her legs. “We could try!” She started down the hall, then returned for Mrs. Austen's suitcase. “Come on, I've got Milt's car outside.”

“Yes, I do want to speak to her ladyship, madam.”

About halfway down the path to the gate, Jenny stopped abruptly. The old suitcase had been banging her side the whole way, “Butt out, butt out, butt out.” She set the valise down, rubbed her side and considered the warning. She heard the old lady breathing heavily.
Her? The old lady?
Jenny rubbed her sweated palms down the side of her coat. “Mrs. Austen?” She heard how silky her voice sounded, how coaxing. “Mrs. Austen, why do you want to talk to ‘her ladyship'? I mean, the most I expected was you'd back me up and I'd do the talking. What do you want to say so special to her?”

Mrs. Austen's lips were tinged with blue from hurrying down the path after Jenny. “It's difficult to tell you, madam.”

“You better.”

“Madam—Her ladyship—”

“I told you what her ladyship was trying to do. I have to know what it is you want to tell her to make sure it's nothing she could twist—”

“Oh, madam, it is nothing like that. This is about me, Mrs. Krop. I wish to explain something about myself.” She was talking more easily now, having stopped moving. “I'll tell you, madam, and you'll see it is nothing to do with Dr. Krop. I want to explain to her ladyship that I took the pension even when I—I was very angry, you know, madam! It was only because I felt Mrs. Krop would have wished it. I want to explain to her ladyship that I could not face the dole again. If I could have got employment, I wouldn't have taken it, madam. Not feeling the way I did, madam. But it was no bribe, madam! I want to tell her ladyship why I can't hope for employment now that madam is dead.”

“Oh, that,” Jenny said. She narrowed her eyes and looked straight at the old woman. “You mean your cardiac condition?” She was sour but she was honest. You could see she was honest. “Come on,” Jenny said. “There's no reason you shouldn't tell about your operation.” She saw the old lady was puzzled. “That's supposed to be funny. ‘Let me tell you about my operation,' they say.” She could not help smiling.

All the way down to Forty-seventh Street, the old lady kept going: She was used to a good class. There were no more good classes. They didn't want servants nowadays. If Milt had shown the good sense he was born with, Jenny thought, she wouldn't butt in, but when he started cuddling up with a cobra, how could she not butt in? If Milt were taking Cissie, Jenny thought, she wouldn't have butted in again—she had butted in once with Cissie, and that was enough, but not Cissie—that one!

“Madam was willing to put up with the salting all food at table because she knew what a good servant was and it was worth it to her, but these others—No one else would put up with it. I want to explain to her ladyship.”

“That's right,” Jenny said, “explain to her ladyship.”

A steward led the gaping Jenny and a blue-lipped but determined Mrs. Austen through the first class lounge, which was full of people seeing other people off, and upstairs to A deck, and along the carpeted, faintly oil-smelling, heat-smelling, antiseptic-smelling corridor to the door of the suite; then he knocked smartly. When Milton gave him permission to enter, he threw open the door. “Mrs. Krop and Mrs. Austen to see you, sir.”

Amory had been sitting in a blue upholstered chair which Day would have called “Marine-
moderne
.” (Day was going to have the laugh on her, wasn't he?) She was becoming very tired of hearing Dr. Krop say all the usual things about a big boat. “A boat is a boat is a boat,” and Dr. Krop paused, shrugged and then continued. To Dr. Fell a boat was not a boat—it was a ticket to Paradise, he explained. He was not like her, remember. She had probably been back and forth so much it was like a trip on the subway to her, but not to him.

“Believe me,” he said, “Sloane knew what it meant. She got the reservations, you know.” He swallowed. “And you know Sloane.” His hand ran over a green upholstered chair in appreciation of the fabric.

Amory hated her sister's name in his mouth; it made her flame inside. “Yes,” she said. “I know Sloane.”
Sloane was not insane
.

“All this—” He took his hand off the green chair and waved at the sitting room, toward the bedrooms. “She did it for me.”

And what did you do to her? “Yes.” He was getting an enormous thrill out of it but what was she getting? Exactly nothing. Just before the steward knocked on the door she had been getting so much nothing that she had announced she must go and he had said, oh,
must
she? He had been so ecstatic (so confident, so cocksure!) that he had insisted they must have their little party first, there was still an hour before the visitors had to leave. His hand had trembled with excitement and he opened the box Hamburger Heaven had sent down. He had offered her a hamburger but she would have choked on it, and when she refused—just before the steward knocked—he had unwrapped a hamburger for himself and had taken a big bite out of it.

When the steward knocked he had his mouth full of hamburger.

Amory had been quite uninterested in the knock until she saw Dr. Krop's face. His eyes seemed to sink right back in his head and become hollow. He stopped chewing. Amory jumped up off the blue upholstered chair. Sloane. Sloane. Now! Amory thought. Now! She hurried to the two women who stood uncertainly just inside the door. “Well, Jenny! And it is Mrs. Austen, isn't it? I saw you at Sloane's funeral, Mrs. Austen. I'm Amory Constant.” She held out her hand which Mrs. Austen took after wiping her own down her coat. “Just in time for the party!” It was obvious to Amory that Dr. Krop wanted to throw the pair of them out on their ears—to the steward, also. The steward looked as if he were waiting, not for a tip, but for Dr. Krop to order him to show the ladies out. Amory hurried to the Hamburger Heaven box and began to lift the hamburgers out onto the table. “Do sit down, Jenny. Mrs. Austen.”

“Sit down, sit down. Now you're here take a load off your feet!”

His voice was so peculiar, now he found it again, that everybody stared at the host standing there with his hamburger in his hand. He was still pale, Amory noted, but now he seemed different somehow. Fatalistic? No, determined, Amory thought; he looked ready, get on your mark, go. Go? All he did was lift his hamburger to his mouth, take another bite and start chewing.
Faute de mieux?

He made a face. “Not enough salt! They never put enough salt!” He laid his hamburger down on the table next to the others still in their wax paper and took the onions, relish, pickles, out of the box. “Nope.” He walked to the hovering steward, his hand working his wallet out of his breast pocket. “Could you get me a salt shaker before these get cold?” Using his wallet as a shaker, he pantomimed shaking salt.

“A salt, sir?”

“That's correct.”

Now something was going to happen, Amory thought. Ready. Get set. Go. Either Jenny or the old cook was going to say the magic wordie now. Because she believed that Milton was simply going to try to stop up the two mouth with this complaint about her hamburgers, she spoke sharply to the steward. “They must have salts in the dining room, steward! Fetch one, please!”

“Rush it, will you?”

The steward bowed and disappeared.

Immediately, Jenny, explaining that she had never been on an ocean liner before, began making a tour of the suite.

“I was just telling Lady Constant, me neither, Jenny,” Milton said. “I never set foot on one in my life either. You probably did, Mrs. Austen, but not me or Jenny.” That was established now. Insurance.

“Well, I better take it all in while the going's good. You're going with, Milt, but not me.”

“I'm going with. I'm sailing. This is
der Tag
for me, Jenny. D-day! Finally, at last, I'm sailing!” He moved closer to Jenny. “Jenny knows how much this means to me, Lady Constant. I was just telling Lady Constant, Jenny, how much this trip means to me!”

He was trying to give Jenny some message but she had her mind on other things. Jenny was searching for something in the cabin; not finding it, she walked to the door of the first bedroom.

“That's a knockout new suitcase! Pigskin! Yours, Milt?”

“All I had was Hut's old wreck.” With the slit in the lining.

“The last word!” She went to the door of the other bedroom. “No baggage or anything in here. Empty, Milt?”

“I told you.”

“That's right.” She turned away from the bedroom door. “Don't fence me in, Milt! Milt likes the great open spaces!”

“Don't we all?” Amory asked. Innocent chitchat? But he did look fenced in. “I wish Dr. Krop had told me you two were coming to our little
bon voyage
party, I'd have ordered more hamburgers.”

Four will be enough, Milton thought. She'd ordered four. Turns out the right number. But only if she makes me. “This is Lady Constant's idea, Jenny. Went to all the trouble of ordering the eats sent up from Hamburger Heaven. Nice to get a
bon voyage
party, huh, Mrs. Austen?”

“Very nice, sir.”

“A
bon voyage
party? Correct me if I'm wrong,” Jenny said. “Were they surprised when she sat down at the piano and talked French!
Bon voyage
means so long, farewell, good-by, right?”

“Quite right—only Dr. Krop should have told me!”

“Milt didn't know. I'm the uninvited guest. I crashed, didn't I, Milt?” She pointed at Milton. “Look at him! I'm the regular bad penny always turning up. Look at Milt's face!”

He had told her not to come here. He didn't want her or the old cook, either.

Jenny took a step toward Milton, who moved away. “Don't worry, I had good reason to come, Milt. Don't worry.”

The way he was backing off made it obvious to Jenny that Milt wasn't going to take her word for her reason. She turned to Lady Constant. “The reason I had for butting in like this and bringing Mrs. Austen is I found out what you wanted to know so bad at the funeral. Do you remember what you said? ‘Oh, Jenny, she does hate him!' Big mystery! Well, I just found out why. Big mystery!”

“Oh, madam!” The old woman's chin began to quiver.

“Now, Mrs. Austen. I told you why we had to call a spade a spade, didn't I?” She swung toward Milton enthusiastically. “You'll die when you hear this, Milt! Honestly, you'll die! Milt, when you hear this, you'll thank me. After—by dumb luck—I found this out, I had to come.” His face didn't soften. “This is the way it was, Milt. To make a long story—One: When you said good-by to me before, I felt kind of restless. You know.”

“At loose ends,” Amory said, to encourage Jenny. “Go on. Hurry.”