Barbara Greer (18 page)

He had never told Barbara about the system. It wasn't just because he was ashamed of it, though that was part of it. It was mostly because he knew that the system would give her just one more reason to resent Locustville. And so, as far as even Barbara knew, he was always at the Dorchester in London … the Georges Cinq in Paris … the Excelsior in Rome.

But the thing was, of course, that Barbara was right. At least partly. The trouble—most of it—came from working in, and out of, the town where the company's main office was. It was the town, more than the company, that had put them in the peculiar situation they were in. Everyone knew, apparently, that Carson and Barbara—as the Locustville friends would put it—‘had money from somewhere else.' And they did—inheritances, a couple of small trusts, stock that brought them a small income. They did not have as large a private income as Locustville probably thought they had but they had some; enough to make Locustville suspicious, God knew he had heard a few remarks made—not pointed ones, but little, casual, half-smiling, half-resentful remarks about them, about money, about things the Greers could afford that the others couldn't. A small mistake, an oversight, like staying at the Georges Cinq that first time, was enough to confirm the suspicions. After all, everybody connected with the company knew pretty much—or could guess—what he earned. Asked to estimate the size of Carson's semimonthly paycheque, any one of their friends could have come within ten dollars of the exact figure. And his semimonthly paycheque was not large.

Locustville permitted the Greers to have their private income. But it did not permit them to show it. Barbara had managed to collect, on birthdays and anniversaries, three good fur coats, a diamond cocktail ring, an emerald bracelet, two pairs of diamond earrings. None of these could be worn in Locustville. An exception was having Flora, their maid. Barbara had insisted on that, even though the other salesmen's wives did not have maids. Still, she had lied about it—telling the others that she paid Flora much less than she actually did. In fact, both Carson and Barbara had become accomplished poseurs, skilful liars; they nodded sympathetically when their friends complained about the size of their monthly car payments. ‘Yes, of course, we know,' they said, as they sat at cocktail parties discussing mortgages, pay-as-you-go plans, interest rates on personal notes, freezer-plans and endowment policies that would one day assure their children of a college education. Actually, Barbara had never worried about paying a bill and foresaw no time in the future when she ever would worry. At least there was no need to worry as long as they lived in Locustville, where they were forced to live on less money than they had. Carson smiled. Life in Locustville might be inhibitive, but it was economical.

He kicked the bedspread to the foot of the bed and swung his legs over the side. This put him in view of a crazed and yellowed door mirror and he examined himself, dispassionately, in its reflection. Hair receding perhaps, but neatly, in two even arrows above his temples, but not on top. And there was, he knew, an invisible roll of stomach under his shirt that appeared when he sat down, but otherwise he was in good shape. He decided to get up, finish dressing, and get some breakfast. He did not like to lie around in bed too much, even on a Sunday. But the trouble was, after breakfast what could he do? This was one reason he hated to start a trip on a Sunday. Sundays, in the selling business, were solitary days, especially the very first, the arrival Sunday. Later on, if you were lucky, you met someone who asked you to Sunday dinner, or one of the distributors asked you out to his house for the afternoon. But today, this Sunday, loomed blankly ahead of him with nothing to do but walk around, looking in the windows of closed stores, walk in the park, walk to the Thames embankment and look at the excursion boats. Or else sit in his room and look at the walls. Barbara had packed a couple of books, but he didn't feel like reading. Still, he thought, perhaps that was what he would do—carry a book out to breakfast with him and, afterward, take it to Hyde Park or to the Thames embankment, find a bench and read it. He stood up beside the bed, feeling at loose ends, thinking: where do I go from here?

He walked to the window and stood in his shirt, shorts and socks, looking out. Opposite him was a blank brick wall. Below, the passageway—a street, really, but too narrow for traffic—ran a short cobblestoned distance, then turned the corner of the building and went out of sight. It was empty and he rested the heels of his palms against the window sill and looked down at the emptiness. A boy—tall, golden and oddly flowery—appeared from around the corner and suddenly, unexpectedly looked up and saw him there. Surprised, Carson noticed that the boy looked remarkably like Woody deWinter. And the boy stopped, tilted his head and smiled at him. Blushing, Carson stepped quickly back into the room. (Christ, a fairy! he thought.) He went back to the bed and sat down upon it, staring at his stockinged feet.

The trip was beginning all wrong. All the auspices were wrong. It had started wrong as long ago as Friday night with Nancy Rafferty arriving, getting tight, acting like an ass. He tried to be tolerant of Nancy; after all, she was an old friend of Barbara's. Barbara felt sorry for Nancy and so, he supposed, did he, but somehow—to him—feeling sorry for someone was a pretty fruitless occupation. You could spend your whole life, he supposed, feeling sorrier and sorrier for someone. He could feel sorry for that boy in the alleyway just now, for instance, the boy who had looked like Woody. Or he could feel sorry for Woody. In fact, at one time, he had felt sorry for Woody.

He thought: Ah, poor Woody.

It was through Woody that he had first met Barbara. He and Woody had been in the same class at Princeton. And for the first semester of their freshman year, they had been roommates—not through choice, but as a result of one of those arbitrary room assignments made by the dean's office. They could not have had less in common.

They had tried, of course, to be friends during the first few weeks of college. They had tried because all roommates were supposed to be friends. But it soon became clear to both of them, in one of those subtle understandings that only two young men can reach with one another—understandings that evolve wordlessly, without rancour, that call for no explanation or apology—that friendship was not destined for them. They planned to join different clubs. They allied themselves with different groups of friends. Carson, who that summer before going off to college had been fattening himself and muscling himself with exercise, eight hours of sleep every night, and three quarts of milk every day because he wanted to make the football team, got on the freshman squad. When he and Woody met on campus, they smiled pleasantly and called ‘Hi!' to each other. Studying together, in their room, they exchanged a few pleasant, casual remarks, then lapsed into silence, each retreating carefully into his own book. If they spoke at all during these quiet, studious evenings, it was with elaborate politeness.

‘Mind if I open the window, Woody? It's getting a little smoky in here.'

‘Sure, Carson. Go ahead.'

‘There. How's that? Too much air for you, old man?'

‘No, no, that's fine, Carson. That's perfect.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘Sure.'

And then, a little later: ‘Carson, would you mind if I lowered that window about an inch? It's getting a little chilly in here.'

‘No, I don't mind, Woody. Go right ahead, please.'

‘There. How's that? Is that all right for you …?'

And like any two young men who must live together and yet acknowledge, mutely, that some design, biological or celestial, has set them for ever at variance to one another, they were fiercely loyal to each other in the company of others. ‘You know what I think?' one of Carson's friends had said. ‘I think your roommate deWinter is a queer.' And of course there were jokes made about Woodcock deWinter's somewhat dandified name.

‘It's a damned dirty lie,' Carson had said. ‘Woody's a great guy.'

Woody was an inch or two shorter than Carson, blond and slightly built someone had told Woody once that his face resembled one of the faces of the Sistine ceiling—the face of the young Adam stretching out his fingertips to God: it was not an ascetic face, but it was pale, soft and brooding. At seventeen, Woody liked to fancy himself both intellectual and musical, although, for some reason, he was poor at his studies and only mediocre at music. He dreamed, too, in those days of becoming an actor. ‘I want to contribute,' he told Carson earnestly. He had come to Princeton with a phonograph and a large collection of records. He studied better, he said, while listening to music. Often at night, he would turn to where Carson sat—they had desks at opposite sides of the room and sat back to back—and ask, politely, ‘Mind if I play my Vic, Carson?'

Without turning, keeping his eyes focused on the page of the book in front of him, Carson would reply, ‘No, I don't mind. Go right ahead, Woody.'

‘I'll keep the volume low,' Woody would say.

Listening to his records, however, Woody would not appear to be studying. He would sit, tailor-fashion, on the floor in front of the record-player, staring into space with a rapt expression, his hands moving to the rhythm of the music, as though he were conducting the orchestra. Carson continued to study. Sometimes one or two of Woody's friends dropped in and together they would listen to the music, whispering occasional words of conversation until Woody said, ‘Ssh! Carson's studying.' Then it would be quiet in the room except for the strains of—almost always in those days—Ravel.

They were days, as Carson looked back on them, that passed like an odd, unhappy dream. With music hovering behind them, he and Woody moved within the framework of the suite on tiptoe, as though each boy was treading cautiously, taking care not to brush against a raw edge of feeling or step upon an exposed and tender nerve. Nerves and feelings and little tendrils of pain stretched like cobwebs all about them, and when they were alone in the suite together, Carson began to notice a strange heaviness and thickness around his heart. The suite had two rooms, a common study and a common bedroom. One night Carson took a deep breath and said, ‘You know, Woody, I've been thinking. You like to listen to your music so much and—no kidding—I enjoy it, too. I really do, but—well—sometimes when I'm studying, with the music going and all—well, sometimes it's a little hard to
concentrate
. Do you know what I mean? Honestly, I don't want you to stop playing your Vic—hell, Woody, I enjoy it as much as you do—but, well, I've been thinking. After all, we've got the two rooms here. I could move my desk into the bedroom and you could move your bed out here, where your desk and Vic are. Then we could close the doors between …'

Woody was silent, his face grave. Woody had a nervous mannerism of reaching up, with the first two fingers of his right hand and tugging at the forelock of his blond hair, his two fingers working like scissors. He began to do this now. Finally, he said, ‘Sure, Carson. Sure. That's a good idea.' And then he said, ‘I hope—'

‘What?'

‘Nothing.'

They moved the furniture that night.

The door that closed between them, separating them more than physically, might have severed them completely from each other. They might have stopped speaking. They almost stopped speaking, but not quite.

That was how it happened that, one afternoon about a week before the Triangle Club dance, Carson returned from a lab and found Woody with his dinner jacket out across the bed, brushing lint from its midnight blue lapels. Carson said a polite ‘Hi,' and then, just before going into the other room and shutting himself off, he paused and said, ‘Who're you bringing down for the weekend, Woody?'

Woody shrugged. ‘My cousin Barbara,' he said.

‘Are you kidding? Your
cousin
?'

‘Yes,' Woody said. ‘She's my second cousin.' And he added, ‘I'll probably end up marrying her some day.'

Carson laughed. ‘You don't sound too pleased with that idea, old man,' he said.

‘Oh, she's all right,' Woody said. ‘She's not so bad.' He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. ‘I've got a picture of her. Want to see it?' he asked.

Looking at the picture, which showed Barbara in tennis shorts, her dark hair pulled back in a scarf, Carson agreed that she was not bad, not bad at all.

And so, at the dance, when Carson caught sight of Woody across the crowded floor of the Dillon Gymnasium, dancing with his cousin Barbara, he made his way through the moving couples and cut in on them. There were cheerful introductions and, for a moment, Carson and Woody were laughing, best-friend roommates. ‘Watch out for him, Barb!' Woody said. ‘He's a notorious masher. That's why he came stag.'

‘Oh, I doubt that,' Barbara Woodcock said, smiling. And a few minutes later when they were alone on the dance floor, she looked at Carson directly and smiled again. Her smile was the carefully developed, practised smile of a pretty girl, wide and lipsticked, and she knew how to make her eyes sparkle, but still it was a wonderful smile and she swept him with it. ‘You're exactly the way Woody described you in his letters,' she said. ‘Exactly!'

Carson laughed. ‘That's a loyal roommate for you!' he said ‘How did he describe me?'

She looked at him very seriously. ‘You're very good for Woody,' she said. ‘Did you know that? He hasn't been too happy at Princeton. But you've been one of the saving factors. He admires you so.'

They danced, and then—too soon for Carson—Ed Hill cut in on them.

Perhaps two hours later, going down the steps to the men's room, Carson met Woody, alone, coming up. Woody's hand gripped the stair rail. ‘Carson!' Woody said, reaching out with his free hand to stop him. ‘Carson—wait a minute.' His voice sounded strange and choked and his blue eyes were clouded. Woody held his face close and Carson could smell the faint, sweet odour of whisky.