Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (109 page)

She pounded a fist on a table.

Why?

A new pain flamed through her, as the self-inflicted blow sent shivers up from palm to shoulder. A new pain … and this one cleared her brain. There was a brilliant flash of insight.

Why, naturally
, she thought, reaching for another cigarette.
Why, naturally!

John.

John, should the house revert to the Historical Society, would almost certainly be named curator. Any reason why not? None. Yet every reason why he should be, considering his knowledge of the house’s history, his long tenure in it, his lifetime association with its owner, Victoria Brand.

Certainly the house couldn’t be left untenanted. In which case it was only reasonable that John would go on living here. It would add to his stature. He would be better off than he had ever been while Aunt Vicky was alive.

And the telephone calls. John hadn’t heard them? Only a floor above her and he hadn’t heard them? Suppose he had
made
them, quietly dialing the number of the phone, one story below … and then, perhaps smiling, a hand over his mouth and the other dashing back his thick, dark hair, listened to her impassioned protestations, meanwhile breathing into the instrument …

She went to the door and listened. Utter quiet, not a sound, not a breath. She turned on another lamp. Oh, if there were only
locks
on the doors! But there were only tongue-in-groove latches in these old, old houses. Very pretty, very decorative, but no protection against intruders in the night.

And anyway, say there
was
a lock on her door … there was no such thing as a foolproof lock, and John had lived in this house since boyhood. Doubtless he had access to every room in the place.
So it’s come to that; I’m afraid of him
, she thought,
afraid of what he might do next … or if not him, then, for God’s sweet sake,
who?

She lay awake, every nerve strained.

But the telephone didn’t ring that night.

In the morning she could scarcely get out of bed.

I can’t
, she thought flatly. The slightest move was agony. She rolled over slowly, and just as slowly raised herself. She
had
to get up. The worst thing, under the circumstances, was to lie in bed. Get the circulation started, that was the ticket.

The first few hours would be the hardest.

“Okay, okay,” she said aloud, and eased herself up. “It’s only exquisite pain; who cares about a little pain?”

Somehow she was able to sponge her body; reaching her back was the worst, and at one point she thought she might pass out. She sat down on the edge of the tub and put her head between her knees. And when she was finished with her ablutions tossed off a brandy from the bottle she had brought up last night.

It helped.

She pulled on blue jeans, got into a shirt, dabbed on some cologne, went to the bathroom and did her eyes nicely, and went down the stairs cautiously, holding on to the railing. Pompey saw her slow progress into the kitchen. “What’s your trouble?” he asked.

“I fell down last night.”

His eyes popped. “You did
what?
”

“I thought I heard you calling me in the night, and I started down and then fell the rest of the way.”

He stared at her. “I don’t sleep downstairs,” he said, his mouth hanging open.

“I know that!”

“Then what you mean?”

“Someone was downstairs, calling out, someone crying for help.”

“Now this I gotta get straight,” he said, sitting her down in a chair.

“Don’t sit me down so
fast
,” she said, wincing.

“All right now?”

“All right, you say? Lord, I can’t find a comfortable position, there
is
no comfortable position. But I’m all right, don’t you fret. I don’t know why, but I am.”

“Now you talk. What happened?”

“I woke up. I had a horrid dream and I woke up from it and heard someone calling me. It was the reason for the dream, I imagine. I must have heard that voice and in my sleep was uneasy.”

“And then?”

“I could hear someone saying ‘Help.’ “

“Who?”

“First I thought it was Aunt Vicky and then I thought it was you.”

“What would I be doing downstairs in the middle of the night?”

“I was half asleep! I heard the voice downstairs and I didn’t stop to think. I just wanted to get down there, and help you.”

His voice was soft. “Thanks, dearie, thanks, Miss Margo. All right, so you went downstairs, crazy girl … and then?”

“And then there was an obstacle. It tripped me up. I fell all the rest of the way down those long stairs.”

“What kind of obstacle?”

“A length of twine. Stretched across from one banister to the other. I fell over it and plunged to the bottom.”

“Twine?” he repeated, and she saw his instant comprehension.

“Yes, the kind Ed Corliss uses.”

He sat down, his face dark and forbidding, looked at her, finally slapped a palm on the table. “This here is what you are going to do,” he said. “Go away for a spell. Stay with Mr. Douglas. These telephone calls and me supposed to be calling you from downstairs…. There’s danger here, I can’t hardly believe it, but there is. Why, I’d like to — ”

He turned purple: she was really alarmed.

“I sleep like a log,” he shouted. “Calling from downstairs … me? I got nothing on my conscience, I can sleep, which is more than some people can say.”

“Some people?” she asked curiously. “About whom are you talking, Pompey?”

“Just never mind,” he said grimly. “I got something to think about. Some ideas, you just let me work them out. Now you eat your eggs and shut up. I don’t want to hear another word from you until you finish that there breakfast.”

He left her and came back a few minutes later. “Mr. Doug is stopping by in a half hour or so,” he said. “Here, drink some more coffee. Then get yourself dressed. I told him what happened.”

“You called Doug, you shouldn’t have done that,” she said edgily.

He answered, “I do what I’m called on to do. Now you scoot up and put some clothes on, you hear?”

They drove hither and yon, stopping off once for coffee and pie. Doug kept saying, “Tell me again, and don’t leave out anything.”

“I told you.”

“Tell me again.”

“I had the dream and when I woke up I heard someone calling out for help. It was Pompey, I thought. So I went to the stairs and then there was the rope, the twine.”

“And while you were still downstairs you heard a sound?”

“Yes, there was someone there.”

“You
thought
there was someone there.”

“No. There
was
someone there.”

“Are you in much pain?”

She was able to laugh now. “Let’s say I’ve felt better in my life.”

“I don’t want you staying in that house,” he said. “I’ll take you back and then you put some things in a bag and stay with me at the farm.”

“I’m not leaving,” she said quietly.

“Now you listen to me …”

“No. I’m not leaving. Only now I won’t take any chances, that much I’ve learned. And the telephone can ring forever, so far as I’m concerned.”

“What does that mean?”

She looked away. “I guess I didn’t tell you about that.”

Patiently, he put both arms on the table. “Tell me now,” he said. “And if there’s anything else, tell me that too.”

“There’s nothing else, just that.”

She explained. “The first night, though, I was too weary to really have it register. And then the second night, and the next night. So I started leaving the receiver off the hook, sometimes, anyway.”

“And you didn’t think to say anything about it before this?” he asked, snapping a muddler in two.

“There was one furtive moment when I thought it might be you,” she admitted, and he flushed.

“Me?”

“I thought of everything,” she said calmly. “And I thought of that too.”

There was a rather long silence.

“I won’t apologize,” she said. “From the minute I came here unpleasant things began to happen. As I said, I had to think of everything … and everyone.”

He finally turned back to her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can see how you might have thought something like that. You never thought it again, did you?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

He reached over for her hand. She gave it willingly enough. He stroked it and kissed it and then gave it back. “More coffee?” he asked.

“Thanks, no.”

“All right, what would you like to do?”

“Something I haven’t done yet, it wasn’t the right time,” she said. “But now it
is
the right time. If it’s all right with you, Douglas, I’d like to visit her grave.”

“You’re sure you’re up to it?”

“Yes, quite sure.”

“Then, fine. We’ll stop for some flowers along the way. I usually patronize De Nyse; they know just about what I want.”

“Do you go often?”

“No rules and regulations about it. Whenever I can spare the time. I’m not a pious sort of guy, and she wouldn’t want it to be out of duty.”

He added, as they stood up, “She’d be glad, whenever someone had the chance, of a visit. That house was always open, you never had to schedule an appointment. I think it should be the same now. Drop over whenever the opportunity arises, not because it’s expected.”

• • •

It was a simple enough headstone, in the old family plot. Generations of Brands were buried here in this green earth, and if she so wished, so would Margo be, perhaps next to her father, Thomas Brand, the grandson of James Brand, who had fathered Victoria and Edward and whose seed had led, irrevocably, to the birth of a girl named Margo. Cemeteries in the large cities might be crammed to the last foot of earth, but here there was room to spare for others to come, for eons, perhaps. She looked at the names: Benjamin, Nathaniel, James, Lavinia, Arria, Lucinda. It was a little city of the dead, with small children struck down in their infancy lying beneath tiny mounds like caterpillar tracks. They slept peacefully, all of them, giving their dust to enrich the earth, one with the ages.

VICTORIA BRAND, the headstone read. BORN 1890, DIED 1973. BELOVED DAUGHTER OF JAMES AND SOPHRONIA BRAND. INTEGER VITA, IN SEMPERTINA SAECULA.

They arranged the flowers, magenta and white peonies with a potent scent. Then they went to the font for water. “They’ll last for a day or two,” Douglas said. “They look nice, don’t they?”

“They look beautiful, perfectly beautiful.”

They sat for a while, listening to the quiet, and then got in the car again and drove off. “Home,” Margo said, when he questioned her. “You have things to do, and I guess I’d like to be alone.”

“But you won’t be morbid?”

“No,” she said earnestly. “Everything has to die, I quite understand that.” And as he headed the car toward Brand Manor, she was remembering.

Integer vita.

A life of integrity.

In sempertina saecula.

To Him be glory evermore.

They had their picnic, Norma arranging it in her efficient fashion, phoning Doug, a cocktail in her hand, the evening before. “You are not to be late,” she said concisely. “Be here at ten, and no excuses.”

“Men are so
dilatory
,” she claimed, hanging up the phone. “I don’t trust Doug, but then I don’t trust any man, and never have.”

Pompey packed a lunch, sandwiches with ham and cheese filling, roast beef and chicken. There were artichoke hearts and olives, plum tomatoes, potato salad. John made a pitcher of martinis, pouring it into a thermos.

They went in two cars, John with Norma and Margo with Douglas. It was a magnificent day, all gold and blue and balmy, with the lake rippling gently, the sun like fire. They swam and rested, talked idly. At one they sampled Pompey’s basket, eating with appetite, and then uncorked the thermos of martinis. They had brought along a deck of cards, played gin rummy and then Casino.

It brought back the long-distant past, their common childhood, and filled her with nostalgia. When they tired of the card games she fell asleep, sated with food, fresh air, and the drinks. She dozed off, lying on her tummy in the sun, and when she woke the day had turned to late afternoon, with violet tints and birds twittering before their night’s roosting.

How quiet it is
, she thought,
how immensely quiet. Like an island in the mind’s imagination, scarcely real at all.

She had an abrupt sensation of being all alone in the world. A strange, eerie feeling, not peaceful or cozy, but somber, forlorn. She quickly turned over onto her back and raised her head.

She wasn’t alone.

John was there, in his swim trunks, with his head turned away from her as he gazed out at the peacock-blue lake. She didn’t say anything right away, just continued to watch him, with his tanned body and dark, rebellious hair. He seemed to be looking at something she was unable to see.

Where were the others, she wondered … why were she and John alone … and why did that fact disturb her, alert her? At that moment he turned, and their eyes met. There was a long, strange silence.

Then she collected herself. “Where are they?” she asked.

“Gathering driftwood for a fire,” he answered.

“Oh?”

For some reason her lips were dry. She didn’t like being alone with John. Reasoning with herself, she remembered that she and John had been children together; then why did she feel this profound distress at their proximity? This was John, John Michaels … what was
wrong
with her?

As if he sensed her unease, he bent and plucked a cattail from the moist ground. He held it for a moment and then, deliberately, and with malice aforethought, made a little loop in the stem and popped the head off.

The plumy, dry head went spinning.

It was a nihilistic act.

She thought of the guillotine and the garroe, looked away quickly as he plucked another cattail from the loamy ground. She heard the faint pop as the head spun off. The silence between them grew … and grew … and for the life of her she couldn’t think of one single thing to say. Befuddled, she slipped on her dark glasses and looked at her toes, pink-tipped with Elizabeth Arden Angel Blush, and another head popped off.