The Man in the Net (6 page)

The anger was suddenly out of control. He slapped her across the mouth. She gave a whimpering cry, throwing her hand up, watching him from eyes distorted by astonishment and fury and fear.

He’d never hit her before, but he felt no shock. Rather, he felt elation.

“Okay,” he said. “Now there’s no explaining to do at the Careys. That makes your little speech one hundred per cent correct.”

She had backed away from him and sat down in a chair, her hand still up to her mouth.

“You hit me,” she said.

He crossed to the bar-table and, deliberately, poured himself a shot of bourbon.

“John …” Her voice came from behind him, low, faltering. “John …”

He didn’t turn.

“John,” she said, “you mean—you mean you’re still not going to take that job?”

He swung round with the glass in his hand. “What do you think?”

“But you must.” There was only panic on her face now. “You’ve got to. I told Charlie Raines. I said you were going to take it. We’ve got to go to New York. I can’t stay here. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t …”

“Then go,” said John. “If you don’t want to stay here – go.

She got up, half stumbling over the skirt of her green dress. She ran to him. She clutched at his arms and then let her hands move spasmodically up and down the sleeves of his coat. He could have pushed her away, but he didn’t. He was luxuriating now in his sense of freedom from her. Let her clutch and grab. What difference did it make?

“John … maybe I didn’t do it right. Maybe I shouldn’t have called. I didn’t know. It was such a terribly difficult decision. I didn’t know what to do. But … if I did it the wrong way, forgive me. But you see, if you only knew …”

She had thrown her arms around him. Her face was pressed against his chest. Her hair was touching his cheek. In the light from the table lamp he could see the grey hairs at her temple, flat, dull, dead. Her body was warm and yielding against his. Incredulously, he thought: She still thinks I’m attracted to her. And then, without any warning, as his body revolted from hers, he felt the pity flooding back.

“John,” she said, “please listen.”

“I’m listening.”

“You’ve got to listen. We can’t stay here anymore. Don’t take the job. If you really don’t want to, don’t take it. But we can’t stay here. We’ve got to leave. We’ve got to go somewhere else.”

She raised her head. Her face, with the puffy swelling under the eye, was only a few inches from his own.

“It’s Steve,” she whispered. “Steve Ritter.”

“Steve?” he said blankly, without a clue.

“Oh, I wanted to tell you. A dozen times. John will be able to help me, I said. But I couldn’t. I was too ashamed. I …”

“Linda.”

“I didn’t want it to happen.” She was still looking straight into his eyes with a wild, desperate abandon. “I swear I didn’t. You know that. You know it’s only you I love. But all the time, when you were away, when you were out with the kids, he’d come. I told him. I told him I didn’t want him. But it—it was like something too strong for me. He … Even today,” she said, “when I came back from Pittsfield he was waiting. And, before you came back …” She dropped her face against his chest. “It's like a disease. It’s … You thought I’d been upstairs taking a shower and that he … oh, John, you’ve got to get me away from here. Mrs. Ritter will find out. You know how she’s always suspicious of him. She’ll find out. They’ll all find out. Oh, please, help me.”

Steve Ritter! The image of Buck’s father swaggered through his mind, the blue jeans hanging low on the lean hips, the brash blue eyes watching him with their special quality of sardonic amusement. So Steve Ritter … And then, almost before the anger, the humiliation, the disgust, came the thought: I saw her car pass when I was with the kids and I went straight home. I got here less than ten minutes after her. She’s lying. This is just another device. Since all the others failed, she’s been bright enough and mad enough to invent this.

He began, “But, Linda …”

Then he stopped. What about the gold bracelet she’d been wearing that afternoon, the bracelet he’d never seen before and which she’d slipped off her wrist the moment she realized he was in the room? Had Steve given her that? And if he had… No, don’t go into it now. What was the use? Perhaps it was a lie; perhaps it wasn’t. It didn’t really matter anymore, not now, because he knew what he had to do. At last she had forced him beyond pity, beyond crippling indecisiveness into action.

He drew her away from him and guided her to a chair where she sat down meekly, her face covered in her hands.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do.”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes.”

“I’ll go to New York tomorrow. I’ll talk to Charlie Raines. I’ll turn down the job and then I’ll go see Bill MacAllister.”

She looked up quickly. “No. No, John, no.”

“I’ll tell him the whole story. And then either he’ll recommend a good psychiatrist around here or”—he couldn’t bring out: If you’re not lying about Steve—“or we’ll move to New York and Bill can help you himself. Those are my terms. If you don’t like them—you can get the hell out of here. You can work out your own problems in your own way.”

The panic still showed on her face but there was also a look of incredulity too, as if she couldn’t believe he’d said what he’d said, that the idea of the worm turning was beyond the reach of her imagination.

“But, John, you know I’m not going to a doctor. I’ve told you.”

“You’re going—or else.”

“But I’m not sick. Are you out of your mind? Nothing’s the matter with me, nothing at all. It’s only you all the time, pressing, distorting, trying to make me that way.” She got up, her face set in a stubborn, threatening mask. “If you go on talking that nonsense about a doctor, I’ll go upstairs. I shall drink all the rest. I’ve got a bottle hidden. You’ll never find it. I’ll drink it all.”

He knew then that she’d played her last card. Never before had she admitted her secret drinking. Even if he’d found her hidden bottle, she’d disowned it. The hidden bottle had always been the unmentioned threat. Now, at last, she had brought it out into the open. It was meant to shatter him, to bring him round even now to her purpose. It was pitiful if you looked at it that way. Of course it was. But what difference did that make?

“Okay,” he said. “Go drink your bottle.”

She collapsed then, as he’d known she would. Slowly, almost like an old woman, she sank into the chair.

“So you won’t take the job?”

“No.”

“And you won’t leave here—not even because of Steve?”

“I don’t believe you about Steve.”

“You don’t believe me?” She gave a little dry laugh. “So that’s it. That’s funny. That’s really funny. You don’t believe me.”

“And you’ll go to a doctor, either here or in New York.” She started to sob again, softly, hopelessly. “All right,” she said. “I’ll go. I’ll go to anyone. I’ll do anything. But you can’t leave me. You can’t throw me out. Where could I go? What could I do? You can’t. Oh, you can’t …” Her voice babbled on and, as he listened more to the sound of it than to the words, he felt the net narrowing again. He wasn’t free of her. For a moment—it had seemed wildly, improbably—just possible that he had escaped. But it had to be this way. He had to give her the chance of the psychiatrist. If he didn’t, she’d be on his conscience to his dying day.

Something had been achieved, at any rate, much more than he had ever hoped for at his most optimistic. Or had it? What would she be like tomorrow?

The exhaustion had come back now. Eventually the words stopped pouring out of her and she too seemed half dead from fatigue, slumping back against her chair. He helped her up the stairs. She undressed herself and went into the bathroom. She didn’t take another drink. He was almost sure of it. She climbed into the bed and, while he was still undressing, fell sound asleep. He wanted to move into the guest bedroom. Now that he was still committed to her, he wanted at least a few hours of illusory independence. But her sleeping face was the serene, vulnerable face of a child. Even the swelling under the eye looked innocent and comical—like a child with mumps. She was terrified of sleeping alone. She might wake up. Oh well …

When he came out of the bathroom he slipped into his side of the bed and turned out the light.

Steve Ritter, he thought. And then, suddenly, a picture came of his first meeting with Linda. At the Parkinsons’. She was moving through the crowd of guests in a white dress with her hair in a pony tail, looking lost and shy but fresh as a spring flower, so different from the others.

“Hello.”

“Hello.”

“Are you enjoying this party?”

“Not particularly.”

“Aren’t parties terrible?” She looked up at him from those great solemn green eyes. “I can’t imagine why people go to them. Everyone so phony, just trying to impress the right people! A world without parties. Think of it. How wonderful it would be…”

He turned over on his side but he didn’t sleep for a long time. To help him relax, he thought of the children.

IT WAS after six and the train had passed Sheffield. John Hamilton, sitting next to Brad Carey, who was doing a crossword puzzle, looked out at the familiar New England summer evening—the parched meadows, garish with black-eyed susan and devil’s paintbrush, the distant, wooded mountains, the scattered white clapboard houses, lawns shaded by sugar maples, a peony or two, narrow beds of phlox—sedate, pastoral, faintly sad.

It wouldn’t be long now.

Already New York seemed infinitely remote, except, of course, for its exasperations. The “little talk” with Charlie Raines at the Barberry Room had faded completely. It had been so easy once the time had come to face it. Charlie was a nice guy. “I guess Linda got carried away on the phone. Of course I understand, Johnny. We’re sorry. I don’t have to tell you that. But good luck to you.” Over. End of Raines and Raines.

It was the frustrations that remained, the strain of having Brad with him on both train trips and at the hotel, so friendly, so concerned over the “misunderstanding” with Linda, such a constant temptation to break down and admit the truth which he knew he mustn’t admit. And then the frustrations around Bill MacAllister too. The nurse’s brisk voice on the phone that morning. “I’m sorry, but Dr. MacAllister’s away on his vacation … in Canada … No, I’m sorry. He didn’t leave an address. He doesn’t really have one. He’s out in the wilds, you see, fishing … Oh yes, he’ll be back around the end of the mouth.”

It always seemed to happen that way. When a chance came for things to get better, another chance stepped in and neutralized it. Perhaps he could find a psychiatrist in Pittsfield? Just look one up in the classified directory?

“I want you to help me with my wife. She drinks. Of course she doesn’t admit it. But for years now …”

His exhausted mind refused to plan any more. Soon he’d be facing her again. That’s all that had any reality for him. How would she be? A day and a half had gone by—over thirty-six hours, with her alone in the house, knowing what he was arranging for her in New York. Had she been genuinely panicked by his stand? Had she really reached a point where at last she was ready to let someone try to help her? Or had it all swung around? Would he return to find her on the war-path, full of ruses and stratagems— with him as the Enemy again?

She’d been all right when he’d left her. Or it had seemed to him, with the new optimism brought by a definite plan of action, that she had been all right. As the conductor called “Great Barrington next” and Brad, looking up from the puzzle, said “Not long now, thank God”, John forced himself to review every minute of his time with her from yesterday morning until he’d left her to drive to the station.

It had been she who had awakened him. He’d felt a light tap on his shoulder and had opened his eyes to see her. The sunlight was streaming through the window behind him. She was wearing a neat white dress with a kitchen apron over it. She was holding a tray and smiling brightly.

“I’ve brought your breakfast. I thought you’d like to be pampered once in a while.”

She was wearing sunglasses. Still confused by sleep, John wondered why. Then he remembered her eye.

“Sit up, darling. Do sit up properly.”

She arranged the tray, the pathetic peace offering, on his knee. She was very careful about it, proving how steady her hands were.

“There. Call me if you want anything.”

She walked, humming under her breath, out of the room. Later, as he was dressing, the phone rang. He went downstairs to answer it and it was Brad saying an important client had shown up in New York. Mr. Carey, who had to go off to Springfield, had given him a long briefing after the party the night before and was sending him to New York as his proxy.

“You going on the two o’clock train, John?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. So am I. I’m leaving the Buick for Vickie. Where are you staying in New York?”

“I don’t know. At a hotel, I guess.”

“Come to mine. That was Vickie’s bright idea last night. We can keep each other out of trouble, she says, and, more important, I can wangle you on to my expense account. Don’t tell Father.” His laugh was conspiratorial. “How’s Linda this morning?”

“She’s fine.”

“Not hung-over, I hope?”

“Doesn’t seem to be.”

“Fine. See you on the train. Vickie would send her love, I know, but she’s out on the lake teaching Leroy to catch bass. It’s her new mother routine. They were up at dawn.” Brad’s voice became serious. “Don’t worry about Linda, John. It’ll be okay. Women … It’ll all iron itself out.”

John dropped the receiver and took the breakfast tray into the kitchen. Through the window, he saw Linda strolling toward the studio. She skirted it and disappeared around the rear wall into the old cow-barn, which formed the basement of the studio, where the logs were stacked and where, in a recent spurt of gardening enthusiasm, Linda kept her tools. Soon she reappeared, dragging a plastic hose behind her. She pulled it up to the bed of zinnias she had planted in front of the studio and started to sprinkle them.

The sunlight was full on the flowers and she usually made a great point of only watering in the evening. It seemed an improbable thing for her to be doing at that hour, anyway. Then he realized. Of course. She had another bottle hidden in the cow-barn. She’d gone for a drink and was sprinkling the zinnias to justify the visit to the barn.