The Rose Garden (6 page)

“With good reason he was angry, m'lady,” Betty said grimly. “And the place just started and not making money yet. Do you know how much money he lost with your blueberries?”

“Oh, I know, I know,” Mrs. Conroy said, laughing. “Don't reproach me about it, Betty. He never let me forget about it. Turn
over the page and never mind about it.”

Betty bent to the book. A few minutes later she raised her head again. “Who was Miss Rorke, m'lady?” she asked.

“A poor old retired schoolteacher, Miss Rorke was. She lived up the street from us. Never had a penny, but she loved to read. Mr. Conroy let her take what she liked. He had a soft spot for her. She died then, and we never got a cent of it back. She ended owing us thirty-two dollars and seventeen cents.”

“So far, she owes us two dollars and three cents,” Betty said.

“Poor old Miss Rorke,” Mrs. Conroy said contentedly. “Betty, I've been thinking. I'd like a cup of tea in my room first thing in the morning. As soon as you make your own. Say eight-thirty. That's fair, isn't it?”

Betty sat up straight. “Now then, m'lady, that's out of the question, so it is—morning tea in your room!”

Mrs. Conroy continued to watch the fire. “It was you who reminded me,” she said. “Miss Rorke was a great strain on the regular book, the one you have there. There was too much of her, she was always in and out, so Mr. Conroy had an extra little book, for her and one or two others like her. I'm not saying you need it, but it would be a great help to you.”

“All right,” Betty said without rancor. “Half past eight you'll get your tea. Sugar and cream, the way you have it now.”

“No cream in the morning,” Mrs. Conroy said. “Cream makes me queasy in the morning. Just sugar, thanks, Betty.”

They exchanged a glance. Betty's eyes were wary and calculating.

Liza burst into the kitchen. “I looked everywhere for you, Mother!” she cried. “You've turned your chair around again. And why aren't you up in your own room? What are you doing here in the kitchen?”

“I'm having my tea,” the old woman said calmly.

“You know the doctor says it isn't good for you, Mother. Now please go on upstairs, and I'll get Betty to bring you a glass of hot milk. I see you've lighted the fire, Betty. I don't approve of open fires, but I suppose you're accustomed to having one. Go on, Mother.”

“I don't want hot milk, Liza,” Mrs. Conroy said, pressing her handkerchief to her lips. “Tea never did me any harm before, and I don't trust that country doctor of yours anyway. Of course, if you insist, I'll go upstairs. I'm dependent on your charity now, I know that. But first I'll take my book, please, Betty.”

Betty snatched the book from the table. “No harm in Mrs. Conroy having a cup of tea, m'lady,” she said.

“I'm the best judge of that!” Liza cried. “And what is that stupid old book doing down here? It doesn't belong down here.”

“It does now,” Mrs. Conroy said. “And another thing. I'd like you to put a nice, old-fashioned stuffed armchair in here by the fire for me. These pipe things of yours are hard on my back.”

“We've had that all out before. I absolutely refuse to allow one of those atrocities in my— Is this a joke, Mother? Is this some terrible kind of joke? A kitchen is not the place for an armchair, and there's no room anyway, and people at Herbert's Retreat don't sit around having tea in the kitchen with the servants. And I would like to point out, Betty, that you are here to work, not to entertain guests at tea.”

“I have my contract, m'lady,” Betty said.

“And you can't very well afford to let her go anyway, can you, Liza?” Mrs. Conroy whispered. “Think how they'd love to laugh at you around here. And think how you'd feel if one of them got her instead. There are plenty of your friends who'd love to have a woman like Betty working for them. And you'd still have to pay
her for the full term.”

Liza stared incredulously at Betty for a minute, and then at her mother. “Very well,” she said with difficulty. “Finish your tea. Perhaps it will make you sick. I hope not.”

The derision in their eyes frightened her, and she started for the door.

“And one more thing,” her mother said good-humoredly. “From now on, I'm going to leave my teeth in the bathroom at night.”

“Oh, my God,” Liza said, and left the kitchen.

“I cannot abide the sight of those things in the room with me,” Mrs. Conroy went on. “This way, nobody will have to look at them.”

They were silent for a while, Betty absorbed in her book, Mrs. Conroy peacefully watching the rise and fall of the flames. “I think I'll get a cat,” she said suddenly. “Liza hates cats.”

In the living room, sitting in sepulchral silence, Tom and Liza were first startled, then appalled, by the sudden screeches that came at them from the kitchen—screeches of laughter that was rude and unrestrained, and that renewed itself even as it struck and shattered against the walls of the kitchen.

The Gentleman in the Pink-and-White Striped Shirt

A
t one minute before nine on a May morning, Charles Runyon opened drowsy eyes to the high-walled, sunless reaches of the Murray Hill hotel room that had been his home for nearly thirty years. Always, awakening in that room, Charles thought with satisfaction of the legend that had grown up around it. Charles's room was a mystery to the world. None of his friends—his present friends or those of former years—had ever entered it. There had been a period when columnists had conjectured almost weekly about its shape (it was long and narrow) and about its color (its walls, once pearl gray, had hardened to stone gray and chipped during Charles's tenancy, but he refused to allow it to be repainted) and its furnishings. The furniture, massive and shabby, contrasted curiously with the almost dainty elegance of Charles's personal appointments—his silver-backed brushes and hand mirror, his gold-topped bottle of sandalwood cologne, his leopard-skin slippers. His desk held a large pad of thick white paper, a crystal inkwell, and a feathered pen. It also held the porcelain tumbler from which he drank his morning coffee. His bookcase contained twelve copies of each of his own six books, the latest of
which was ten years old, and on the lowest, deepest shelf he kept issues of magazines and newspapers in which articles by him had appeared.

Charles was a critic of the theater and of literature. He confined his efforts, these days, to a weekly column for a string of Midwestern newspapers. He said that this was the only regular writing he wanted to do, since the so-called novelists and so-called playwrights working today had made serious criticism impossible. Let the so-called critics have their little day, Charles said contemptuously. But he read the theater and book-review pages of the daily papers with fierce attention and held secret weekly sessions with
Variety
at the Quill and Brush Club, of which he was a member.

Charles's room had one tall, deep window, shrouded in ancient red brocade, which looked out on an air shaft. In his youth, Charles had been too much ashamed of his room to allow his friends to visit him there. In those years, it angered him that he had to be content with a cheap room hidden away in the back of the hotel, instead of being able to afford one of the splendid apartments in front. But his friends' curiosity, which at first made him uneasy, with time became flattering, and he grew fond of the room, and increased its mysteriousness by his reticence about it, and then by his arch evasiveness, and finally just by continuing to live there.

The years passed, and the old hotel changed hands and lost heart and dignity. The big front apartments were cut up into cubicles, the fine, long marble entrance hall grew dingy and was cluttered with soft-drink dispensers and a water cooler. The noble oak desk, discreetly placed at the rear of the lobby, was handed over to a cigarette vendor, who also dealt in razor blades and penny candy, and its functions were transferred to a sort of bathing box of varnished pine, built almost at the mouth of the elevator, in a position that flaunted the new managers' distrust of their guests.
Rundown and shabby though the hotel was, it nevertheless suited Charles very well. And it was very cheap. He never thought of moving.

Besides, during the past few years Charles had spent nearly as much time away from New York as he had spent in it. He had formed a habit of going every weekend to Leona Harkey's charming house at Herbert's Retreat, thirty miles above the city, on the east bank of the Hudson. Charles occupied a unique and privileged position at the Retreat. Leona and her friends regarded him as their infallible authority on the rules of gracious living and on the shadowy and constantly changing dimensions of good taste. They were all a little in awe of him. Leona admitted, laughing, that she was afraid of him—but she adored him, too, she always added quickly, and she did not know how she had ever existed before she met him.

Lying in bed, waiting for Leona to telephone, Charles smiled. She really was a dear child, although he sometimes wished she could have been a little less wholehearted and a tiny bit more intelligent. Today was the eighth anniversary of their meeting, and they had a delightful celebration planned, for just the two of them.

At nine o'clock exactly, the phone rang. Charles laughed softly into the mouthpiece.

“Is this the gentleman in the pink-and-white striped shirt?” Leona sang. “Oh, is this the—”

“Not quite yet, my dear,” Charles said. “The pink-and-white striped shirt is still nestling in its birthday tissue in a box on my dressing table, with its five little brother shirts.”

“He
did
deliver them, then!” Leona cried. “Oh, Charles, I am so glad. I was so afraid that man would disappoint you. Oh, what a relief.”

“My shirtmaker has never failed me yet, Leona,” Charles said
coldly.

Really, it was a task keeping Leona in check.

“Of course he hasn't, Charles. He wouldn't dare, would he, darling? But Charles, I want to tell you about my suit. It's divine, and almost exactly like yours. It was so sweet of you to let your tailor make it for me. And from your special cloth, too. We're going to look quite alike today, aren't we? Almost like twins.”

“Almost like twins,” Charles echoed generously, because it did promise to be a very pleasant day. “You know, Leona, this is quite an event in my life. I've grown very fond of you in the last eight years, my dear.” He giggled gently. “How is the good George, by the way?”

“Oh, Charles, you know George. He trundled off an hour ago, just like a good little businessman. He's probably sitting behind his desk already, telling some wretched creature to bring back the dinette set or be sued, or something. What a job for a man to have.”

George Harkey, Leona's husband, was credit manager of one of New York's larger and less fashionable department stores.

“Well, we all must work,” Charles said briskly, sitting up in bed. “And I should have been at my scribbling an hour ago. We meet at the Plaza, then. At twelve-fifteen. That will leave us ample time to lunch and still get to the theater by curtain time. All right, my dear?”

“Twelve-fifteen,” Leona said. “And Charles, I have a most amusing surprise for you.”

“Splendid, Leona. I adore surprises. Now I really must go, Leona. Goodbye.”

He replaced the phone, slid out of bed, wrapped himself in a dressing gown of thin gold wool—a gift from Leona—and plugged in his electric kettle, after assuring himself that it held enough water to make two cups of coffee. Leona and her friends would have been astonished at the absence of grace and charm
in Charles's domestic arrangements. They might even have been outraged, considering the stringent demands he made on their establishments. He puttered about, fetching a bottle of cream from his windowsill, measuring powdered instant coffee into his porcelain tumbler, and unwrapping a large, sticky delicatessen bun. Then he looked around for his morning newspapers. They were nowhere to be seen. He searched the room carefully, and at last, growing peevish, he even peered under his armchair, shook the window curtains, and pawed through his bed coverings. No sign of the papers. He was in the habit of buying the
Times
and the
Tribune
on his way home every night, and leaving them unopened, to read while he breakfasted.