The Trespassers (36 page)

I must confess to be deeply moved when your unexpected cable came, and also my wife felt so, too. It was like a hand reaching out across the sea, to hold us up once more. On the very day of Munich, I went myself to the American Consulate to plead, to insist on a speedy rehearing. All summer I had no hope for America any more—that is why I did not put any new requests to you, to bother you needlessly. But now I know that it is after all the only hope left to us. But better, I go back to the refusal of the visas and sum up everything that happened since then…

She read it to the end. This Vederle must have plenty of grit and guts to go back to the Consulate after such a story. She folded the pages together, and noted the new address. “Ascona, Tessin, Switzerland, October 29.”

That, at least, was one piece of luck—the Consulate had been precise for once and told him that personal visits were unnecessary until the final examination for visas was formally scheduled. “If that beautiful day should ever arrive,” he had written. So they had decided quickly on a change to a warmer climate, and had moved to the charming little town on the Swiss border of Italy. The happiest part of his letter were the paragraphs about their new life there. They had found an inexpensive but pretty little cottage, there was a small private school for the children, and a colony of refugee artists, writers, and musicians had received them with open arms. It would be pleasanter to wait there, among friends and in the warm sunshine…

“Hello, Vee, I’m sorry I’m late.”

“Ann.” She looked up eagerly at the husky, mannish voice. “It’s good to see you again, you.” It was always this way when they met after a separation. “Did you like the Coast?”

They talked ravenously about everything that had happened in the two months Ann had been away. During Vee’s recital of the network’s opening and its sensational success, Ann made no comment. But at the end, she reported that everywhere she’d been, dinner-table gossip always worked around to “this Jasper Crown.” People would start with the European crisis and inevitably switch to the new and astounding reporting of it by the Crown Network. “How’s he bearing up under all this fame?” she asked, but Vee only smiled. From anyone else, she would have resented the implication, but there was too much that was close and good between her and Ann.

“I had a note from Beth Crown. While I was at Pasadena. She wanted me to stop off at Reno on my way home.”

Vee was startled. Ann so rarely mentioned Beth to her.

“Oh. You hadn’t known she’d gone out there?”

“Not till then. I wasn’t here when she left. I’d have liked to see her, but Fred had appointments in Texas and wanted me with him. I phoned her.”

“Is she taking it hard? I have the damnedest feeling that—”

“She’s all right. She couldn’t say much on the phone, of course. She’s thinking of staying West awhile after she gets the decree. That’ll be in a couple of weeks now.” Vee remained silent. “Skip it, Vee, you had nothing to do with it. She’s well out of that marriage, anyway.”

Ann hesitated, and then took an obvious breath. “Look, I don’t butt in much. But just this once, to keep my conscience clear later, I’m going to warn you—”

Vee looked at the plump face, the ample bosom. Ann looked like a stern mother who was about to lecture a beloved child.

“Don’t say it, darling.” Her voice held no snub in it anywhere. “I know you don’t like Jas. I know it perfectly well. But honestly, there are some things about him I
do
know that you can’t—and they explain so much. If those things were to change, I’m so sure—”

Ann leaned back in her chair. Her heavy shoulders rose and fell.

“O.K. It’s none of my business. Maybe he’s going to be right for you. Different shake of the dice, and all that.” She busied herself with her coffee.

“Does she—does Beth know about me?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve never even said your name. And she’s dropped most of the people who know Jas.” She looked more closely at Vee. “Why, would you mind?”

“No, I’d a little rather she did. I’m not sure why.”

They fell into a brief silence. Then Vee pulled out Vederle’s letter and handed it over. She watched Ann’s face as she read page after page. She waited for the look that would come over it when she read that so far the result of reopening the case was the report from the Consulate, “Your personal resources as stated are insufficient to ensure your independence in the United States for more than a short period.”

Ann’s changing expressions satisfied her all through the reading. When she finally looked up, her eyes snapped with irritation.

“Forty thousand Swiss francs is about ten thousand dollars—what do they want, millions?”

Vee shrugged helplessly.

“Do you think he’s right, that there’s nothing I can do on it?”

“As long as he’s already written back and listed those friends who had lots less money—” She thought it over. “They just
do
take their time, Vee, unless you’re very famous, or so broke and obscure that you can go to the refugee agencies.”

Vee nodded. Once Ann had thought the Vederle case would be easy and Rosie Tupchik’s hard. But the visa for Bronya’s mother had been the simple one.

“When these things start going sour, they stay sour,” Ann went on. “What about Bronya’s mother? Isn’t she about due here?”

“Poor Bronya.” Vee pressed her lips against her teeth. “The London office got me a report. ‘Shot while trying to escape custody’—that’s all they could get from the police at Karlsbad. I—I had to tell Bronya.”

They sat perfectly still. Ann lit a cigarette finally, inhaled deeply, and blasted the smoke out from her lungs.

“Let’s get out of here. I’ll walk you back to the store.”

When they parted at Ralsey’s, Vee felt tired. She guessed why. Scarcely anything about her work seemed important in comparison to the other things in her life. She had certainly changed in her secret attitudes toward her job. She didn’t think anybody there had guessed it as yet. They seemed as pleased as ever with her special “promotions” of this fashion or that, the steady rise in sales of the departments she managed, her general executive performance. But she knew that some emphasis had departed. It had been oozing out in an imperceptible trickle, while she gave her real self to her own problems.

Without phrasing it in words, she knew that her whole being had become a waiting. The daily things she did were merely time-passing devices to make the waiting easier.

For it was not easy. Each week that went by made it harder. July, August, September, October, November. She counted off the months on her fingers, and then because of what the counting usually meant, she winced away from it. Five months since she had been so relieved and sure at the sight of Jasper’s face outside Dr. Gontlen’s office. And still it all remained “just a theory, just a medical opinion.”

She did her work mechanically throughout the afternoon. Just before she left, Jasper telephoned and before he spoke the words, she knew what his voice would say. It happened so often now. It had to be; the network came first.

She went home and straight to the telephone. After two or three tries, she found one of her old friends with no engagement for the evening. They had dinner together and went to a neighborhood movie. Later she read in bed until two.

The days slipped by, the weeks added their slower tread. To have an evening with Jasper now was an event. His very success was eating up his mind and his energy as failure could never have done. People kept telling him that he had “opened a new chapter” in the history of communication, that a world responsibility was now his, that he was brilliant, gifted, great. And that he had a golden genius for making money.

Sometimes he told her, half apologizing as he did so, the handsome things people said about his network, about him. She listened eagerly, and felt pride in the praise, too. But she felt easier when the subject shifted again to other things.

Against the widening tapestry of his success and fame, her personal needs seemed puny and almost in bad taste. He himself avoided talk of his private feelings. One evening he said, without preamble, “It’s all over; Beth got the decree yesterday.” But he warded off any comment about it, and told her instead about the tremendous hurdles in the way of his South American plans for his company. His voice ratcheted with exasperation—he was absorbed in the problem to the exclusion of everything else.

Yet she knew that he too was waiting, that he too was aware of the passing weeks, aware, that summer had slipped into fall, into winter, without the one inner triumph he sought. He rarely talked about that either. But a sarcastic dig about medical research, a sardonic smile when he spoke of the new Giles Craven baby—every once in a while, Jas showed that the need still gnawed.

When, for the sixth time, she knew nothing had happened, she was actively glad that he was away on a week’s business trip.

Back home again, he told her, half facetious, half defiant, that he had missed an appointment with Dr. Gontlen. It was the first time. Then he looked at her, silently asking a question, and she shook her head. His face remained expressionless, but he crushed out a cigarette with quick vigor.

“Oh, well, there are lots of ways to live a life,” he said. “I told you that once.”

“No, oh, don’t say that any more. You
know
you care, and I care, too.”

“So I care. Of course I care. God damn it, I told you it would just tear that old scar wide open—”

“Darling, darling, stop it. Gontlen warned you not to expect any thing overnight.”

“December isn’t exactly overnight. Tomorrow’s the first of December.”

He underlined “December” as if it were a challenge. He sprang to his feet and began to walk back and forth, back and forth. She watched him, apprehensive and miserable. He stopped and faced her.

“Damn it, I’m too busy to get upset about all these personal things all the time. My feelings get all snarled, then I can’t work. I’ve got on right to get so I can’t work. That company of mine is bigger than—”

He saw her face, and slashed his words off sharp. In the next moment, he tried to comfort her in his arms.

But the magic didn’t work this time. She pulled away instantly, turned on him, the gray of her eyes darkened and burning.

“Then work. Give this idea up. It bothers you, it interferes with you. Let’s quit it now. You don’t really want everything it stands for, you just want to know for sure you’re all right. Well, you are, a famous specialist says so. Let that be enough until you really want—”

“Vee, stop, quit it. You know damn well I want it to happen.”

“I know you wound everything in me a million times without knowing it. There’s something in you that runs away, back to the work, back to the work. All right, it
is
a big thing, it is a great weapon of communication and the world needs it. Better give it everything—that’s what you really want to do.”

“Wait, Vee, listen.”

She would not listen. She was frightened at her own tearing words, but she was glad they were rushing out of her. Something was wrong, had been growing more wrong between them for weeks. It was no good trying to stay blind and deaf to it.

“When you got your divorce, I was all set to say ‘No, Jas, you said you couldn’t see any sense in marriage unless there are children.’ But I didn’t have to say it—you never once mentioned the fact that now you were free to marry. You don’t want me as your wife, you don’t want a baby because it’s a baby—you just want to
know.
I hate it—I hate it.”

He watched her in bewildered silence. She flung herself into a chair, buried her head in her arms, and sat motionless. She was not crying, her body was too still. For long minutes he stood, looking down at her. Then she lifted her head, ran her hands quickly over her hair, and let them fall inert to her sides.

“Darling, my darling, please don’t,” he said. “I don’t want to wound you, I didn’t mean to.” He sat on the arm of her chair, put a tentative arm around her shoulder, and this time she did not shake herself free. In another moment, he rose and pulled her to her feet after him, and took her into his arms. He begged her to be patient with him, to understand his moods as she had always done. He said that she, at any rate, was not to let this waiting make her feel harried and driven. She knew he didn’t want to quit it now, but if it were after all a failure, it was his failure, not hers. There was time—if it took another year, what did it matter after all the years?

She listened, and slowly her heart filled with relief and assurance again. After a quarrel, he was always so dear, it was not in her to keep the anger intact.

“Oh, Jas, I’ve been too worked up maybe,” she said at last. “I tell
you
not to expect anything overnight, but I guess I’ve been expecting it. I think of it so much, and want it so much.”

“I want it too, Veery. Let’s don’t get all tensed up. That’s supposed to make it even harder.”

“I know. It’s an occupational hazard, I guess.”

They laughed uproariously, relieved to have the crisis done. The rest of the evening had the quality of their first hours together. He asked, almost uncertainly, whether she would like him to stay all night. It touched her. She fell asleep in his arms.

The next morning Vee woke with a determination to hold tight to actual things and stop dreaming ahead to the future. At the store, she turned to her immediate problems with something of her old concentration. The Florida pinks and whites and yellows which were her chief concern now seemed scarcely gripping in importance, but everybody at Ralsey’s predicted “the smartest Palm Beach line on the Avenue.” She kept a more insistent watch on the daily Christmas business in her departments, and as the shopping days grew more hectic, she knew that she was ringing up a new sales record for Accessories.

A few days before Christmas she heard once more from Franz Vederle. Her own answer to his long letter had urged him again to call on her if there were any single thing she could do, and to keep her informed in any case. Now, before she was halfway through this new letter, she knew that she would take things into her own hands, no matter what he or anyone else thought.