Love & Mrs. Sargent (11 page)

WEDNESDAY

I.

Sheila put out her hand and felt that the place next to her in the bed was empty. She sat bolt upright. “Peter,” she whispered. Then she heard the sound of water running into the basin in her bathroom. She lay back again. It was six o’clock, the sun was beginning to pierce the blinds.

She smiled as she remembered the terrible shock she’d had yesterday to wake up and find a naked man in her bedroom. Too stunned even to cry out, she had tried feverishly to collect her thoughts and then they had all come tumbling down upon her and fallen more or less into place—the brandy, the furious quarrel, the wordless, violent grappling down in her office and then her submission, her allowing Peter to lead her to her bedroom. No, that wasn’t quite true.
She
had led
him
to her bedroom. On Monday Peter hadn’t even known where her bedroom was.

“
Well, he certainly knows now,” she said aloud.

At this time yesterday morning she had been in a perfect frenzy of embarrassment and fear. She had been just smart enough to keep her mouth shut, her eyes half shut. Through her lashes she had observed Peter getting hastily, shakily into
his rumpled clothes and tiptoeing out. Come to think of it, he’d looked rather shattered, too.

Yesterday had been perfect hell. The only thing good about it was that it had been a Tuesday and the work had been especially heavy. She had gone into her office at ten, lunched there on a tray and hadn’t left it until six, Peter, in the service of
Worldwide Weekly,
had sat in the office all day long, mad
deningly silent, not looking at her, just listening, listening, listen
ing and making occasional notes.

And the letters! It had seemed that every one of Sheila’s millions of readers was conspiring against her. “Dear Mrs. Sargent,
I have been living with a man who is not my husband. . . .” “Dear
Sheila, For the past two years I have been having an affair with a married man. .. .” “Dear Sheila, Two weeks ago I allowed myself to be seduced by a strange man and now. . . .”

Nor had Mrs. Flood been any help at all. In fact, Floodie had nearly driven Sheila insane what with gibbering like a chimpanzee at one moment—”This heavenly orchid evening dress at Martha Weathered’s in 1926. . . my late husband and
I gave this beautiful party at the Villa Venice
. . .
as John Alden Carpenter once said
. . .
the old Crane house on . . . my Auburn
runabout. . . not the Pump Room, but the old Venetian Room”—and then falling into ghastly, strangulated silences, deeply flushed and clearing her throat five, ten, fifteen times a minute.

“Troubled by catarrh today, Floodie?” Sheila had asked acidly.

“I? Oh goodness no, Mrs. Sargent. Heavens, I’ll never forget that one Silver Tassel Day at the North Shore Club. My late husband was a great golfer, Mr. Johnson. Now let me see, it was either in 1928 or ‘29. No, it was ‘29 because that was the year Pansy Walker had this stunning dinner dress with the whole back cut out. Well, my late husband had just bought this
robin’s-egg blue Wills-St Clare phaeton and I was driving out
to. . . .”

“Floodie,” Sheila had said pointedly, “we have a
great
deal of
mail to get through today. Would you mind reading the next letter?”

“Oh, goodness, no. Let’s see.” Mrs. Flood had put on her great black spectacles which she wore like an albatross around her neck, cleared her throat nervously and dived in. “This one is from Port Huron, Michigan. It says: ‘Dear Mrs. Sargent, I am a widow in my forties and I have fallen in love with a man who is my son’s age. . . .’” It had proven too much for Mrs. Flood. With a terrible paroxysm of coughing she had fled the room. It had been pretty much of a much for Sheila, too.
Could
Mrs. Flood have guessed anything? Impossible, she had told herself. Floodie slept at the other end of the house, nowhere near her room or Peter’s room. Besides, Floodie was so stupid that she couldn’t guess her own age.

With remarkable stage presence, Sheila had said, “Floodie seems a little
hors de combat
today. If you don’t mind, uh, Mr. Johnson, I’ll fetch the portable typewriter and answer some of these myself. You get the general drift, anyhow.”

The rest of the afternoon had been less painful. Sheila could type twice as fast and three times as accurately as her secretary and yesterday she had really put her mind to her task. Mrs.
Flood, however, had seemed too undone for words. Every few
minutes she had cried, “Oh, fudge!” yanked the paper out of her machine and crumpled it into an untidy ball. Six o’clock,
with the work finally signed and sealed, had found the office
wastebasket full to overflowing.

And had Sheila’s own household come to her rescue? Indeed it had not. It hadn’t even come to cocktails! Mrs. Flood, the
pleased recipient of a last-minute summons to fill in at a dinner party, had hustled upstairs to get into one of many sequin-trimmed evening blouses, her home-made felt skirt and Sheila’s
old mink, Allison, who had spent the livelong day in her room
painting or else just mooning, had dusted out at five with the announcement that she was going into town for spaghetti and dago red with a young art student of whom Sheila tacitly dis
approved. Even anti-social Dicky, muttering something about a
reunion at the Academy, had deserted her. Sheila could have killed him. Dicky’d always despised Lake Forest Academy and had begged to leave it just prior to the headmaster’s suggesting much the same thing. That had left Sheila with Peter and no one else.

The very notion of having drinks alone with him, of dining in anguished silence at the enormous table, of making empty conversation about every subject in the world except the one that was on both their minds had been enough to drive Sheila mad. And so she had grasped at the only possible way out.

Living nearby in a hideous pink cantilevered house was a couple named Mill, the man a balding, colorless millionaire with bad breath and a guilt complex, his wife a loud, brassy
macaw of a woman who, it was rumored, had once been a model
at Saks and/or an Oak Street call girl. (Sheila had known the
first
Mrs. Mill—a woman wronged if ever there was one.) At any rate, Mrs. Mill II, culminating a five-year campaign to rise socially in the Lake Forest Jet Set and to lionize Mrs. Sargent, had blanketed the community with invitations to cocktails on Tuesday. In desperation, Sheila had put in a call and, after being patronized by a Chinese houseman, had got through to old cockatoo herself. . . . “So terribly afraid I wouldn’t be able to come to your nice party. . . . Wonder if I could ask an enormous favor. . . . House guest from New York—another writer. . . .
Could
I bring him?”

Mrs. Mill had screeched her surprise and delight. “Sweetie! Surest thing you know. Come early and stay late—the both of you. G’by now.”

They had done just that. Sheila, anticipating what Mrs. Mill and her coterie would be wearing, had put on black, a large hat and no jewelry. Driving Peter to the party she had chattered
too brightly about the ordeal and what might be expected, feeling
sure that he would hate it even more than she. “Rather garish woman but so good hearted.” Mrs. Mill had all the kindly
instincts of a chicken hawk. “Awfully interesting modern house.
. . .” The place combined the worst features of a Sears, Roebuck pre-fab and the Guggenheim Museum, and Sheila had never been in it. “Fairly amusing crowd.” A crowd, indeed—all the people who would never be asked to any of the better Lake
Forest houses—people who were dull and common when sober,
loud and impossible when drunk.

The house, the party, the flowers, the get-ups, had been a nightmare of vulgarity. There had been flaming canapés, two bars, a deafening trio and a trampish blonde suffering a bout
of projectile vomiting in the hostess’s escalette marble bathroom.
Naturally Sheila, combining in one both Celebrity and Society, had not lacked for admirers. Nor had Peter. Mrs. Mill, in a flurry of gold lace and emeralds, had whisked him off at the beginning of the evening. Smiling mechanically, Sheila had stood miserably, the center of attention, with the noise bellying and swelling around her, the trio thumping old show tunes in her ear.

You
bump-
um
-bump
are
bump-bump
the promised kiss of spring
time
bump.
That makes the lonely win-terrr
bump
seem lo-o-o-ng.

“Betchou could give me a few good names and addresses from some of those lovesick babes. Hell, what mostovem need is a good. . . .”

“Muss be simply fascinating. All those problems. Like I was saying to Ralph, one never knows when you’re well off, do they?”

“No but, sincerely, Mrs. Sargent—mind if I call you Sheila?—
I would like to have a talk with you sometime. You know, ontray
noo.”

“Nu?
That reminds me . . . kinda cute story . . . it seems this old Jewish rabbi is on a bus, see, and. . . .”

Hell. All of it the sheerest hell, just as Sheila had expected. The event had held only one surprise and that was when Sheila, after untold hours of boredom with the Lake Forest Jet Set had glanced across the room to see Peter deep in conversation with
Mrs. Mill. A wave of something alien and mysterious had passed
over her. And then she had recognized what it was—jealousy,
the blackest most murderous jealousy imaginable. “Drunk. That’s
it. I’m just plain drunk,” but she had known at the time that that wasn’t the reason.

It had been after ten when she had driven him home in silence, parked the car expertly and entered the house with him by the kitchen door.

“Hungry?” Sheila had asked. “There may be something in the
ice box. I’m not sure.” She had known damned well there was—
the rock cornish hens for their uneaten dinner, not to mention a dozen other things.

“No thanks, I ate a lot at the party.”

“Well, then,” she had said, snapping off the kitchen light. And again, there in the dark kitchen, she had felt his arms around her, his lips hungrily on hers. Half an hour later had
found them right back in Sheila’s bedroom. That had been yesterday.

Sheila sat up again, put on a bed sacque to cover her nakedness. “Well,” she said. Then, having nothing better to say, she said again, “Well!” She knew she should be ashamed of herself but she couldn’t help being a little proud. “This is dreadful,” she said, and she giggled.

Sheila lived in the constant company of yet another Sheila Sargent. It was a kind of alter-ego, an inner voice that kept questioning the Actual Sheila as to the true reason behind every word, every action, every thought. The Other Sheila was gen
erally an outspoken, hard-boiled cynic, but she could take on a
number of distressing personalities. The Actual Sheila did not always care for the companionship of the Other Sheila, but she put up with her nagging presence because she liked to feel that she was completely honest with herself.

Now a whole procession of Sheila Sargents spoke to her.

“You know about the sixth commandment,” said Sheila-Never-
Absent-or-Tardy-from-Sunday-School.

“Well, it isn’t exactly adultery,” Sheila said. “I mean he’s single and I’m. . . .”

“I, for one, would call it fornication,” said Sheila-First-CIass-
Scout-and-Patrol Leader.

“You always were a perfect prig—you with your merit badges
and tatty green uniform,” Sheila said.

“And in the very bed you shared with Dick,” said Sheila-Widow-in-Mourning, “you slut!”

“I loved Dick,” Sheila said pathetically. “You know I did, I’m
not a
bad
woman. There was no one for all the eighteen years before I married Dick, no one else during the years we were
together and there hasn’t been anyone—not a soul, honestly—in the years and years and years since Dick died. I’m a normal, healthy woman and . . .”

“You could have had Howard Malvern any time you wanted him,” said Sheila-Realistic-Thinker.

“Oh, Howard!”

“Or that bachelor in Barrington who breeds boxer bulldogs,” said Sheila-Widow-at-Large.

“Snorting, slobbering, always licking at you—the dogs, I mean.
The man was quite nice but he was getting to
look
like a boxer.”

“Do you think this is quite playing the game, Sargent?” asked Sheila-Roycemore-School-Hockey-Captain.

“It’s some game,” Sheila snickered.

“And what of the children?” said Sheila-Mother-of-Two.

“Oh, dear,” Sheila groaned. “Except that they don’t know and there’s no reason for them to find out. And, after all, they’re
grown. Would they be so horrified if I were to fall in love? Even
marry again?”

“Marry again?” said Sheila-Woman-Past-Forty. “Marry Peter Johnson? And what are your plans for the Princeton prom this year, you old cradle snatcher? Just how old do you think he is?”

“I don’t know,” Sheila said, “but I intend to find out. Old enough to be in World War II, at least. That scar on his rear end is from Anzio and that was in 1944. Thank God he didn’t turn around.”

“You barely know this young man,” said Sheila-Social-Leader-
and-Club Member. “I mean, darling, who are his people? His background?”

“Oh, shut up, you bloody snob!”

“He’s getting one hell of an interview, cookie,” said Sheila-Member-of-the-Press. “I can’t wait to read it, can you?”

“You, too! He wouldn’t. Not Peter.”

“Just what would you tell another, uh, older woman who found herself in the same position?” said Sheila-Advice-to-the-Lovelorn-Column.

“Well, that would depend on
. . .
on. . . .”

“On the position?” said Sheila-Ribald-Wit-and-Wag,

“Sorry, but I do
not
happen to think that’s very funny—or—in every good taste.”