An Air That Kills (4 page)

“The situation isn't exactly genteel either.”

“Listen, Ralph. About telling Harry. I was wondering, you're such a good friend of his . . .”

“Kindly leave me out of it.”

“I only thought, you can be so tactful when you choose . . .”

“On this occasion, I don't choose.”

“Very well. But
I
won't tell him. I can't. I don't even want to see him again.”

“For God's sake, woman, you owe him that much, an apology, an explanation.”

“Why should I apologize? I'm not sorry. As for an explana­tion, how can I explain something I don't understand myself? I didn't know it was going to happen to Ron and me. If I had, maybe I would have asked Harry for a pill or something, a love-preventative pill.” She laughed briefly and bitterly. “He's got every other kind.”

“When did it all begin?”

“A couple of weeks before Christmas. I went into town to buy Harry's gift and I met Ron in Eaton's by accident. We had lunch together at the Park Plaza and afterwards we went out on the terrace in the snow and looked down at the city. It was so pretty. I'd never cared much for Toronto before, I was brought up in the West, Vancouver. Well, that's all, we just stood there. There was no flirtation, no hand-holding, we didn't even talk personally or look at each other much. But when I got home I didn't tell Harry. I had no reason not to. But I didn't. I even made up a lie for him, told him I had lunch with a nurse I used to work with at the Murray Clinic in Hamilton. The next day I took a bus into Toronto again because I'd forgotten to buy Harry's Christmas present. At least that was the excuse I gave myself. I went back to the same store, at the same time, and hung around the Yonge Street entrance for nearly an hour. I had this terribly strong feeling that Ron would show up. He didn't, but later he told me that he'd wanted to very much, that he'd thought of me all morning but he couldn't get away because Esther was giving a luncheon party at the club.”

A couple of dimwits, Turee thought contemptuously, dramatizing themselves, out of boredom, into a situation that neither of them was equipped to handle. He said, “And Harry hasn't suspected a thing?”

“No.”

“For your information, Esther has and does.”

“I thought as much. She was very cold when I called her last week and invited her to go to a séance a friend of mine was giving. I was only trying to be affable.”

“Why?”

“For Ron's sake. I don't want him cut off from Esther's children the way he was cut off from his first wife's. It's not fair.”

“The courts seem to think so.”

“The courts in this country, yes. Oh, this place is so stodgy and provincial. I wish we could live in the States, Ron and I and the baby.”

The front door opened and Harry came back into the hotel lobby walking unsteadily and with his feet wide apart like a newly debarked sailor bracing himself against the pitch and roll of a ship that was no longer under him. Although the night air was still balmy, his lips were blue with cold and his eyes had a glassy stare as if unshed tears had been trapped there and frozen.

“. . . some place where they don't have these long terrible winters,” Thelma was saying. “Oh, how I hate them! I've reached the point where I can't even enjoy the spring any more because I know how short it will be and how soon fall is coming when everything is sad again, everything dying.”

“Let's go into that some other time,” Turee said brusquely. “Now tell me, was Ron driving the Cadillac when he came to your house tonight?”

“I think so.”

“Did it have the top down or up?”

“Down, I think. Yes, definitely down. I remember waving out the window to him and wondering if he might catch cold with all that draft on the back of his neck. He com­plained of feeling ill anyway.”

“I can believe it.”

“No, I mean he complained about it
before
I told him any­thing about the baby. Really, Ralph, you're in a nasty mood tonight.”

“I wonder why.”

“After all, it's not
your
funeral.”

Harry walked slowly but directly toward the telephone booth and in spite of Turee's restraining hand he forced open the door. “Let me talk to her.”

Turee said, “Thelma, here's Harry. He wants to talk to you.”

“I don't want to talk to him. I have nothing to say.”

“But . . .”

“Tell him the truth or give him a story, I don't care. I'm going to hang up now, Ralph. And if you call back I won't answer.”

“Thelma, wait.”

The click of the receiver was unmistakably final. “She hung up,” Turee said.

“Why?”

“Didn't feel like conversation, I guess. Don't let it worry you, old boy. Women can get pretty flighty at . . .”

“I want to call her back.”

“She said if you did, she wouldn't answer.”

“I know Thelma,” Harry said with a wan smile. “She can't resist the ringing of a telephone.”

Once again the two men exchanged places and Harry put in a collect call to Mrs. Harry Bream in Weston.

The operator let the telephone ring a dozen times before she cut back to Harry. “I'm sorry, sir, there's no answer at that number. Shall I try again in twenty minutes?”

“No. No, thanks.” Harry came out of the booth wiping his forehead with the sleeve of his fishing jacket. “Sonuvabitch, I don't get it. What's the matter? What did
I
do?”

“Nothing. Let's go back to the lodge and have a drink.”

“What were you and Thelma talking about all that time?”

“Life,” Turee said. Which was true enough.

“Life,
at three o'clock in the morning, long distance?”

“Thelma wanted to talk. You know women, sometimes they have to get things off their chest by talking to somebody objective, not a member of their family. Thelma was in an emotional state.”

“She can always count on me to understand.”

“I hope so,” Turee said softly. “I hope to God so.”

“It's this uncertainty that gets me down. Why won't she talk to me? Why did she keep saying Ron's name over and over again?”

“She's—fond of Ron and worried about him. We all are, aren't we?”

“My God, yes. He's my best friend. I saved him from drowning once when we were in school together, did I ever tell you that?”

“Yes,” Turee said, not because it was true but because he'd had enough irony for one day, he couldn't swallow any more; his throat felt tight and raw and scraped. “Come on, Harry, you look as if you need a drink.”

“Maybe I should stay in town for the night, take a room here and get a couple of hours' sleep and then try to reach Thelma again.”

“Leave the woman alone for a while. Give her a chance to collect herself.”

“You may be right. I hope she remembers to take the orange pills I left for her. They're very good for relieving tension. I'm told they're the ones that cured the Pope of hiccoughs when he had that bad spell.”

Turee felt, simultaneously, a certain sympathy for Thelma and a twinge of impatience with Harry. He would have liked to point out that Thelma's ailment was quite remote from hiccoughs and that it would require more than orange pills, or blue, or pink, to cure her. “There's nothing more we can do here,” he said, “unless we inform the police that Ron is missing.”

“He may not be missing anymore. By the time we drive back to the lodge, he'll very likely be there. Don't you agree?”

“It's possible.” But not, Turee added to himself, very probable. If I were in Ron's shoes, the last thing in the world I'd want to do would be to come up here and face Harry. Ron may have taken a room at a hotel for the night. Or gone down to his cottage near Kingsville. Or maybe he's just driving around alone the way he does sometimes when he and Esther are on the verge of a quarrel. Ron can't stand scenes, trouble of any kind makes him sick. The time Bill Winslow and I had the big argument about politics Ron simply disappeared, and Esther found him later, retching behind the boxwood hedge.

Harry looked at his watch and the very sight of it made him yawn and brought water to his eyes. “My God, it's nearly four o'clock.”

“I'm well aware of it.”

“In another hour or two the fellows will be up and raring to go. We'd better start back, don't you agree?”

“I agreed some time ago.”

“By Jove, you know something, Ralph? I feel better, I feel much, much better. I don't know what you said or did exactly, but you've given me a little perspective on things.”

Turee forced a feeble smile. “Good.”

“Yes sir, you've given me a new slant. Why should we worry over two perfectly mature adults like Ron and Thelma? After all, neither of them would ever do anything foolish.”

“That's the spirit.”

“Let's go back to the lodge and have a drink to celebrate.”

“Celebrate what?”

“I don't know, I felt so bad before and now everything's fine again and I feel like celebrating.”

He went ahead to open the door. He was smiling and his step was jaunty.

“By Jove, it's a glorious night,” Harry said. “Smell that air, will you?”

Turee had little choice. He smelled the air. It carried the scent of wind and water, delusion and betrayal.

FOUR

The ride back to the lodge began quietly enough. After a brief spurt of conversation Harry climbed over into the back seat, folded himself up and went to sleep.

Turee drove slowly, his mind oppressed by the problem of telling Harry the truth in a way that would cause him a mini­mum of shock. Pain was inevitable—there was no way of sparing him that—but it might be possible to break his fall and lessen the concussion.

Until tonight Turee had always considered Thelma as something of a birdbrain. He now began to realize how cleverly Thelma had maneuvered him into the role of cus­todian of the secret. It was like finding himself custodian of a fissionable mass of uranium; if he didn't get rid of some of it, the whole thing might blow up in his face. The prob­lem, then, was to unload it a little at a time, with due respect for its explosive powers.

“Tell him the truth or give him a story,” Thelma had said, but it was clear that she intended him to tell Harry the truth, not because she felt he could do it in a more kindly and tactful way, but because she wanted to save herself the trouble. Thelma could no longer be bothered with Harry, she had no compunctions about hurting him, no apologies to offer him, no explanation to give him, no intention of ever seeing him again. This final fact seemed somehow more in­credible to Turee than any of the others. For three years the Breams had been regarded as a model couple. They did not argue or correct each other in public, take verbal pot­shots at parties or confide their mates' failings to friends. Turee had always envied them a little, since he and his wife, Nancy, engaged in frequent and spirited arguments which usually culminated in a series of glib psychological terms:
Your Uncle Charles has that same paranoid streak—you're a cyclic depressive, that's all—it's no wonder
the kids are going
through a manic phase
. . . Instead of throwing ash trays at each other, the Turees, in the modern manner, threw Oedipus complexes, father fixations and compulsive neuroses.

In the back seat Harry began to snore, rather gently and apologetically, as if he expected to be told to turn over and shut up. For some reason the sound exasperated Turee. It was like a sick puppy whimpering in its sleep.

“Harry,” he said sharply.

“Umph,” Harry said, as if he'd been prodded in the stom­ach by an elbow. “Aaaah. What? What?”

“Wake up.”

“Must have dozed off. Sorry.”

“Don't apologize all the time. It gets on my nerves.”

“Nearly everything does,” Harry said with a patient sigh. “I don't intend that as a criticism, old boy. Far from it. You're too high-strung, that's all. You ought to learn to relax. Say, you remember those orange pills I told you about, the ones that cured the Pope of hiccoughs?”

“They're quite difficult to forget.”

“I happen to have a few in my pocket. You could take one now and let me drive for a while.”

Turee had as little faith in Harry's driving as he had in Harry's ministrations. “Thank you, no. I prefer to remain tense.”

Harry climbed back into the front seat and then, out of a habit that was becoming almost a compulsion, he began to talk of Thelma again, of her rare and various virtues. Harry didn't claim that all other women were clods, he merely let it be implied.

“. . . so Thelma took the old man in the house and made him a cup of tea. Thel's like that, opens her heart to every­one . . .”

“Harry.”

“. . . even a total stranger. Then she got in touch with the old man's daughter-in-law . . .”

“Harry, I have something to tell you.”

“All right, old boy, I'd practically finished anyway. Go ahead.”

“Don't expect Ron to be at the lodge when we get there.”

“Why not?”

“I don't think he's going to show up at all, either at the lodge or any other place he's likely to run into you.”

“What have
I
got to do with it?”

“I believe Ron may be trying to avoid you.”

“Avoid me? Why?”

“Because he's become quite fond of your wife.”

“Why, he's always been fond of Thelma. They hit it off fine, right from the start.”

“Now they're hitting it off finer.” Turee took his eyes from the road for an instant to glance at Harry's face in the dim light from the dashboard. Harry was smiling. “Did you hear me, Harry? Ron's in love with your wife.”

“That's Thelma's story, of course?”

“Yes.”

“Don't let it worry you, there's nothing to it,” Harry said firmly.

“You seem pretty confident.”

“Listen, Ralph, I wouldn't tell this to anyone else in the world, but you're my friend, I can trust you with a secret.”

Turee opened the car window. He had a sensation that he and Harry were stationary and the night was moving past them swiftly, turbulent with secrets. To the right the bay was visible in the reflection of a half moon. The waves nudged each other and winked slyly and whispered new secrets.

“The fact is,” Harry said, “Thelma daydreams. Nothing serious, of course, but once in a while she gets the notion that so-and-so is in love with her. There's never anything to it. A week later she's forgotten the whole thing.”

“I see.”

“This time it's Ron. Once, it was you.”

“Me. Why, for God's sake, I never even . . .”

“I know. Thelma imagines things. She can't help it. She's got a romantic streak in her nature. It gives her satisfaction to believe that someone is hopelessly in love with her, makes her feel glamorous, I guess.” Harry sighed. “So she thinks Ron is in love with her, that's what she was upset about? That's what she told you?”

“She told me that among . . .”

“Poor Thelma. This daydreaming—well, it's like the séances she goes to. Thelma doesn't really believe in them and she hasn't anybody dead she'd like to communicate with. It's just she wants to be different, exciting, ah, you know, don't you, Ralph?”

“I suppose so.”

“I've never talked about my wife like this before,” Harry said solemnly. “I hope you won't think I'm being disloyal.”

“Of course not.”

“The séances, they're new, a neighbor of ours got her in­terested. But the daydreaming started when she was a girl and she's never managed to get over it. It makes up for some of the things that are missing from her life, romance and ex­citement. I try to provide them but I'm afraid I'm not the type who—put it this way: I sell pills. That's not very glam­orous, I guess. Thelma makes up for it by daydreaming a little.”

Or a lot,
Turee added silently. “You don't think day­dreaming can be dangerous?”

“Not to Thelma and me. How could it?”

“A prolonged dream can become mixed up with reality.”

“Now, look here, Ralph, you have this tendency to be critical. I know you mean well, but it's not always wise. Thelma and I are perfectly happy as we are. If daydreams make up for certain inadequacies in her life . . .”

“You're contradicting yourself.”

“All
right,”
Harry said, with the first sign of irritability he'd shown all evening. “That's my business. I can con­tradict myself to hell and gone if I feel like it.”

“Certainly. Do that.”

Harry lit a cigarette before he spoke again, in a softer tone. “You're smart, Ralph, you're deep, you know a lot of things me and the other fellows don't on account of your advanced education and so on. Only . . .”

“Only what?”

“Just don't start analyzing Thelma. I love her the way she is. Let her have her dreams.”

“She's welcome to them, as far as I'm concerned.”

“My marriage is the most wonderful thing that ever hap­pened to me. I wouldn't do anything in the world to under­mine the relationship between Thelma and me.”

“You won't have to,” Turee said, but the noise of the engine and the sound of the water below the cliffs sub­merged his words. He didn't try to dredge them up. Well, that's that, he thought. Harry wants to stay on cloud seven. Let him.

They covered the remaining miles, not in silence, since Harry had begun to whistle very cheerfully, but at least with­out conversation. Turee shut his ears to the whistling and busied himself sorting out the various images of Thelma that had flashed across his mind throughout the night.

First there was, of course, the Harry's-wife Thelma, a short, placid, pleasant-looking woman in her early thirties. An excellent cook and skillful housekeeper, she seemed to have few interests outside the small red-brick house she and Harry had bought in Weston. Turee had always found her a little on the dull side since she seldom made any ob­servations or remarks of her own, but instead, chimed in her agreement with Harry, in a kind of wifely echolalia:
Harry's perfectly right—as Harry was saying only yesterday—Harry told me and I
agree that . . .
She appeared, on the surface, to be a woman unwilling to make any decisions by herself, and incapable of originating any plans or ideas. Even her recent addiction to séances, and the ensuing psychic feelings, had been instigated by a neighbor.

But Turee's mind was getting ahead of itself, because the séances belonged more properly in the second picture of Thelma, Thelma the daydreamer, who fed her mediocrity with meaty chunks of dreams until it was fat beyond her own recognition. Under this system of mental dietetics Thelma became a woman equipped with great psychic powers, as well as femme fatale with whom men fell hopelessly in love. It was girl stuff, this daydreaming, and Thelma was no girl. Perhaps she was no daydreamer either; the possibility oc­curred to Turee that Harry might have invented the whole thing to protect himself from the truth, that Ron Galloway actually was in love with Thelma.

This led to the third picture, blurred and more distorted yet somehow more real than either of the others, of Thelma, the woman who wanted a child, and with single-minded determination and not a trace of moral misgiving, had gone ahead and found the means to conceive one.

Harry had stopped whistling and was peering out of the window for the turnoff to the lodge.

“Why do you feel,” Turee said suddenly, “that if I start to ‘analyze' Thelma, as you call it, something will happen to your marriage?”

“I don't feel that.”

“It was implied.”

“Oh, Ralph,” Harry said with sadness, “don't. Don't go on. Some things are better left alone. Analyze your students, if you like, or your family, anyone else but Thelma. Perhaps she isn't entirely happy, but I'm doing my best to change that. There are certain factors involved that I won't go into.”

“She wants a child.”

Harry looked surprised. “How did you know?”

“She told me.”

“Just tonight? On the phone?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, then that's what upset her. She must have gone to sleep and been awakened by another of her nightmares. She's had quite a few of them this spring. She dreams she's borne a baby, only something happens to it, it's deformed, or it gets sick and dies; once it was kidnapped by a Chinaman. She'd been to the laundry to pick up my shirts that day, that's how the Chinaman got into it, I guess . . . I haven't told Thelma yet, I want it to be a surprise, but I've visited two adoption agencies this week, making inquiries . . . The turnoff should be along here some place.”

The turnoff was months ago,
Turee thought.
You missed it, Harry.

The lodge had been built by Galloway partly as a wedding present to Esther and partly as a place to hide out in until the scandal of his divorce from his first wife had blown over. It turned out not as a hideaway but as a showplace the natives around the bay, all the way from Penetanguishene to Tobermory, came to admire and criticize. The structure was, in fact, too elaborate for its setting and its function. The lower story had been built of native stone and the second story was in English half-timbered style, with a shake roof angled sharply to shed the heavy snow that fell during the long winters.

The caretaker's quarters over the garage, which was an exact miniature of the house proper, were inhabited from spring to fall by an elderly, morose ex-mechanic named MacGregor. Theoretically, MacGregor's job was to keep the house and ground tidy, the woodboxes filled and the plumb­ing in order. In actuality, he spent most of his time down in the boathouse fussing over Galloway's Estron, a diesel­-powered launch.

MacGregor and only MacGregor operated the boat. He did not insist on this prerogative, he merely let it be under­stood that the Estron was high-spirited and temperamental, and, like any such woman, needed a strong and knowing hand if she were to avoid the disastrous impulses of her nature.

No one, not even his wife, knew why Galloway had bought the boat. Galloway hated and feared the water, the slightest swell made him seasick, and he had no talent for or interest in the Estron's mechanical aspects. When MacGregor was at the wheel, Galloway sat up front beside him, his fists clenched, his eyes moving uneasily in their sockets so that they seemed to be separately afloat, responding to every wave. When the trip was over and he was back on dry land, he always looked pale but exhilarated, as if he had proved himself by conquering an ancient enemy.