The Trespassers (20 page)

“I know, but please do. We’ll take more time over cocktails. It looks so skimpy this way, don’t you think so?”

Dora looked unsympathetically at the gleaming cake. “Yes, I guess so,” she said. She took off her apron energetically. “She’ll do anything to please that man,” she thought to herself, “makes me sick to see her.”

But even Dora admitted that the cake looked really right when the other nine candles were added around the rim.

Vee admired it too, and then went into the living room to arrange gladioli in two tall vases. She checked the cigarette boxes herself; it irritated Jasper to reach into a cigarette box and find it empty. She went around the room, stopping at each small table, rearranging the small objects there, taking them out of the precise, neat placing that was Dora’s way of introducing rigidity into any room. Now she shoved them about into a more carefree pattern, and did the same thing with the neat, hard row of magazines on the coffee table. She liked a room to look lived in, and easy, not as if it were an army standing for inspection. Jasper liked it, too.

She put the package on the dining-room table, to try it there. It looked festive in its silver wrapping and crisp cellophane bows. She could imagine his face, as he walked into the room, and saw it, waiting for him, the bland, indecipherable face of a done-up package piquing his curiosity. She decided to leave it there.

Suppose when he opened it, he didn’t truly like it? Two months ago she had begun to think and puzzle about what to give him. She had discarded a dozen conventional ideas; it had to be something Jasperish. It was fortunate she had begun on it so long ago. It had taken nearly two months to get this made to order.

She went in to rest before bathing and dressing. She undressed partly and lay down in a happy sprawl, waiting for six-thirty when she would get ready. Something had changed between them since that night three months ago when Jas had told her his tormenting secret. He didn’t like to reopen the subject, and yet he seemed to be glad he had told her about it.

“You don’t think differently about me now, do you, Vee?” he had said a week or so later. “Now that you know the worst?” He struck the attitude of a lawyer pleading before the bar. “The worst, the whole worst, and nothing but the worst?”

“Don’t let’s ever joke about it, Jas.”

“I wasn’t. I just meant do you maybe feel—”

“The only thing I feel is what a shame it is that you don’t go to somebody and see if perhaps now—”

“No, let’s don’t go into that.”

But he himself had broached the thing again, two or three times, tentatively, and always briefly. She was particularly careful never to introduce the subject. But in her own thoughts, it remained alive.

A few weeks back, she had come across a brief piece in
Time
magazine about new scientific data in the matter of childless couples, and she had suddenly found herself eager to learn whatever a layman could learn about the whole subject. Soon after that she came down with a strep throat and old Dr. Burton, who cared for her on the rare times when she was ill, came several times to see her. The last time she asked him if he had read the story in
Time
, and then asked question after question on the matter. Dr. Burton pointed out that he was not a specialist in the field, but everything he said confirmed her impression that researchers and specialists in it had learned much in the past years.

“It’s for two friends of mine that have been so unhappy,” Vee suddenly offered.

“Tell your friends to get to a specialist,” he said. “The wife probably has her own gynecologist, he can tell her who’s best for her. The husband might go to Dr. Martin Gontlen. I know him myself, he’s about the best there is.” He told her something of Dr. Gontlen’s work, and her mind blazed with excitement she tried to conceal.

“Thanks, Dr. Burton,” Vee said. “I’ll try to talk to them. They suffer so about the whole thing, but still they never
do
anything about it.”

“Well, maybe they don’t want to have children as much as they say they do,” he said comfortably.

“Maybe so. It’s pretty hard going, even talking about it to them.”

“Nonsense. Make them see that if they had sluggish livers or low hemoglobin, they’d go to doctors without embarrassment, so why not go and see if anything can be done to fix up their reproductive systems? Same old human body, you know.”

“Of course. Well, I’ll try.”

She had never reported any of this to Jasper. Now, as she rested, Vee unaccountably became absorbed in remembering it. Sometime when their moods were serious enough, she would tell Jas what Burton had said. It would not be easy.

She glanced at her watch. It was time to start her bath. The telephone rang on the bedside table, and lazily she reached for it.

“Yes?”

“Darling, I might be a bit late.” He always recognized her voice even if she spoke only one syllable.

“Hello, Jas, happy birthday to you. It doesn’t matter; don’t hurry too much.”

“It’s not so happy so far,” he said. “All hell’s bust loose on a big deal.”

“Oh, darling, not seriously, not that you can’t fix?” Anxiety was in her quick voice. Anxiety not only for him over whatever had gone wrong, but also that his mood would be ruffled, angry, and that therefore the birthday evening would be strained, disappointing. She wanted so much that nothing should mar it.

“I guess I can swing them around again,” he said. “The swinish opportunists. Never mind that now, though, I’ve only a minute. I left them just to phone you—might be half an hour late. That O.K.?”

“Oh, of course. Really, don’t rush yourself and be all frazzled.”

“Right. I’ll make it as fast as possible.”

He hung up; a moment later Vee did so too and then sank back onto the bed. She thought of the beribboned package and the flowers and the candles on the birthday cake, and a sudden wave of embarrassment went over her that she had spent so much care over getting them just so. As if Jasper Crown, busy with global networks, busy with raising the last three of his ten million capitalization, busy with interstation deals, with intercontinental contracts—as though that man could really care about a birthday cake’s perfection or whether his present was to be opened before dinner, or during dinner, or only, with delicious suspense a-building all the time, after dinner…

She went out to the kitchen and told Dora that dinner would not start until eight. Dora’s face twitched disapproval, but she only nodded.

“Has the paper come, Dora?”

“Yes, ma’am. Over there.” Vee took it in to her room, headline-reading. She was uninterested in everything—June 30, 1938, was an uneventful and unimportant day except that it was Jasper’s birthday and she wanted to make him feel planned for, and pleased and contented. She tried to read. The time passed heavily.

The telephone rang again. This time she reached for it quickly; her heart jumped a beat. Let it not be Jasper again, saying…

“Darling, listen, this is getting nowhere,” he began. His voice, always deep and big, was now fined down with exasperation. “I wondered if you’d mind if I stayed right with it till it was done.”

“Oh, Jas.” She simply could not keep the hurt tone out. He shouldn’t—he oughtn’t to have asked it.

“Wait a minute, I just thought I’d
ask
if you’d mind…”

“Well, you know, I’ve planned…o” She broke the sentence. The hurt or disappointed voices of women—how men hated them. How “married” they sounded, and so, how binding and possessive. Yet this was unfair, that she should have to guard her very voice from displeasing him when it was a situation of his own doing that—“It’s nothing, really. Of course, go ahead if it’s important.”

“You mean you’ve planned anything that won’t keep till later? I thought we were going to be alone, so it wouldn’t matter if—”

“Oh, it’s nothing. I just—oh, you know, a special sort of dinner and a gadget for a present and—but never mind. About when do you think…?”

There was silence. Maybe he would understand that she wasn’t just lacking in sympathy for the pressure he was under, but that any woman, indeed any human, who had planned a special evening would feel a wound of disappointment if at the last moment…

The silence continued. “Jas, are you still there?” she asked at last.

“Yes, sure.” His voice had changed; it was deeper again. “Look, darling, I’m a thoughtless pig, I guess. I get so damn wound up, you know. Of course I’ll quit this and be along right off.”

“Darling, oh, how nice.” Warmth rushed back into her voice. He didn’t mean to hurt her, probably he never meant to.

“Well, don’t think I
wanted
to sit around with these three babies.” He laughed coldly. “I’ve been nursing them for weeks, anyway. But if they come through with a million, it’s over the hump and I could practically forget the rest of the financing.”

“A million? Oh—well maybe—”

“No, no—it’s out. Tell you what—Vee, maybe we could meet them again about eleven. You might like to sit in on one of these sessions I have.”

“Yes, I would, I’ve never seen you in action, Jas. It’d be excit—”

“O.K., that’s the way. We’ll have all the birthday stuff, and we can maybe wind this up, too. I’m on my way.”

In less than an hour he was there, shaved and changed. He came in to her in the living room, not looking about him, seeking only her face. He took her into his arms, wordless, held her so long without kissing her, held her so near to him, his face down against her hair, that she was moved by the strangeness and silence of him.

“Happy birthday again,” she finally said.

“Thank you, Veery.” He called her that when he was most drawn to her. Did he, secretly know that he loved her, too? Was this thing between them deeper than either of them would or could confess to the other?

“Come, have a birthday drink,” she said, and she pointed to the coffee table.

“I want thirty-six in a row,” he answered. “Hey, look at it.”

In a silver bucket, ice-filled, stood Moët et Chandon ’28. It was his favorite champagne, and she had remembered that. One handle of the bucket had an exaggerated large red satin bow; to the other was fastened, with a small length of picture wire, a single large red rose.

“You darling,” he said. “It looks like a party, all right.”

“It is a party,” she said happily.

He opened the champagne.

“ ‘Pling’ is what it says,” he told her, “not ‘pop.’ ”

She laughed. He poured the wine into the two crystal glasses, offered her one, raised his own. He made a swift gesture to the silver bucket.

“My love is like a red, red rose,” he said gravely.

“Oh, Jas. How sweet of you, how unexpected—to—to drink to
me
on your birthday…”

“You’re my love, aren’t you?” he replied.

He put his glass down, took hers, and set it down beside his own. He kissed her, softly, lightly. She felt that he was trying to say something and waited. But he remained silent.

At last he emptied his glass of champagne, set it down satisfiedly on the table, and looked all about the room.

“What’s the matter?” she said. “Who you looking for?”

“Whom.”

She laughed. This was one of their small jokes, intimate, confident. Whenever either of them made any grammatical gaffe, no matter how knowingly, the other coldly corrected it, like an ever-watchful schoolteacher.

Now Jas began prowling about the room, ostentatiously hunting, lifting magazines, opening cigarette boxes, even raising the piano lid and peering in at the strings.

“Where is it?” he said. “The gadget. I want it now; I can’t wait.”

This delighted her. He was acting up to the situation, to please her. He was making the business of his birthday gift loom larger than it would have normally; he was a playwright putting his minor characters through unimportant lines over the teacups to prepare for the entrance of the star. He knew there would be “the star” presently, and he was contriving extra importance for its appearance.

“You can’t have it, not now,” she said severely. “You mustn’t be so rude, either,
asking
for your present. You’re supposed to wait politely and see if there is one.”

‘Want it now.”

“Can’t have it. Here’s another glass of champagne instead.”

This raillery, this lightness, was the nearest he ever came to offering her an inner understanding, apart from the primitive understanding of passion. When she needed tenderness, warmth, when she reached toward him for the sustaining quality of deep emotion, she was always balked by the essential coolness of him—the tranquil eye, the calm voice. Then she knew loneliness, even lying at his side, then she was clutching for something that was not there to take.

But when she herself was festive and light, and when he, by some luck of timing, was also in the same mood, then she found Jas everything she could hope for. Like now. This boyish act of impatience for his gift, her prim scolding to subdue him—how light-hearted, how merry, it made her feel.

He accepted the second glass of champagne and for a moment seemed docile about waiting. Then he was off again. This time he went to the door of the dining room, poked his head inside.

“Whee. There it is. And it’s mine.”

“Jas, now really. Not till dinner.”

“Not a chance. It’s mine, isn’t it?” He lifted it. “Hey, it’s heavy as hell.”

She gave up. His impatience delighted her. He brought the package back into the living room with him, set it respectfully down on the low table, examined its wrappings minutely. Vee watched him. All her dilemmas and trilemmas were useless, as they always, with Jas, would be. In the end, it would be he and he alone who would decide the outcome of any problem that ever rose in their lives.

In a moment he looked at her questioningly, began tentatively undoing the package as he watched her. He looked young, relaxed, responsive. He could be such a happy person, if he could let himself—

He was taking the wrappings off carefully, handling the heavy package with gingerly regard for its unknown contents. She watched his face eagerly. Now he could see it under the sheets of tissue, could see the simple lines, the plain fine leathers…