Summer Storm (9 page)

She didn’t linger on shore but slipped into her sandals, pulled her dress on over her wet suit, and headed for her cottage. This was the second day in a row she had fled from the lake because of Kit, she thought, as the screen door closed behind her. How on earth was she going to manage three weeks of this?

She was afraid of him. She was afraid of what the sight of him did to her, afraid of the memories his presence stirred in her mind and her heart and her body. It would be so easy, so fatally easy, to slip back into their old intimacy. It had happened this afternoon. When he had rowed her to that beach she hadn’t murmured a protest. It had been so natural—he had always been interested in exploring places he hadn’t seen before and she had always gone along. When they had been at the cape. . .  God, she mustn’t think of the cape.

She stripped off her wet suit and got into the shower. When she got out she put on a white terry-cloth bathrobe and went to lie on the bed. Why was she reacting this way, she asked herself desperately. Come on, she thought, you’re supposed to be smart. You’re not just a quivering mass of hormones; you’re supposed to have a brain. Use it.

She stared at the ceiling and she thought. She thought of what he had said to her this afternoon and of how her hostility toward him dissipated the moment they were together again.

Together again. The last time they had been together had been before he went to California. They had not had a long marriage, but it had been a deeply intimate one. She understood what he had said this afternoon about no one really touching him. She had felt that way too. Quite probably she was the single human being who knew him best in the world. In California he would always feel he had to guard his tongue. He had not guarded it with her.

That was the problem. They had lived together so closely, had filled each other so completely—and then he had gone away. Except for that brief moment at the hospital she hadn’t seen him again. All her bitterness had been directed at him in absentia. She had no experience of being around him and being hostile, or even indifferent. Her experience in being with him, the relationship she was so afraid of reprising here at Yarborough, had been profoundly close and satisfying.

He had chosen the life he had, she thought stubbornly as she dressed. At one time she had been willing to share it with him, but no longer. No longer was she willing to give up her gentle world of literature, scholarship, and teaching. She was not willing to surrender her happiness—happiness based on security, familiarity, understanding, respect—for the harsh, publicity-hungry world of film, for marriage to a man she loved but did not trust. He had ridden roughshod over her once; she could not bear it if he ever did that to her again. No. Better to keep one’s hand from the fire if one did not want to be burned.

* * * *

The conversation at dinner was mainly about Margot Chandler and her amazing decision to come to Yarborough to play Gertrude. None of the professional cast had ever worked with her; they were mainly theater people and Margot Chandler’s success had been solely in films.

“I’ve never met her,” Kit offered at one point, “but I’ve heard she’s inclined to be somewhat temperamental.”

“Most big film stars are,” said Alfred Block with a sneer. Mary looked at him closely. It really was a sneer.

“I didn’t think anyone actually did that,” she said in amazement. “I thought it only happened in books.”

Everyone at the table looked puzzled, except Kit, who chuckled.

“Did what?” asked Frank wonderingly.

“Sneered,” replied Mary. “He really did sneer. Curled his lip and everything. I thought it went out with Dickens.”

George started to laugh and Alfred Block looked uncomfortable.
“Chris
certainly isn’t temperamental,” said Carolyn Nash both earnestly and adoringly.

“No, he’s not,” replied George, sobering. “Not that he can’t be damn stubborn when it suits him.” He stared across at his star who regarded him imperturbably in return.

“Too much stage business is distracting,” Kit replied calmly. “I don’t have to be constantly doing things in order to keep people watching me.”

It was true and George knew it better than anyone. He smiled. “Stubborn,” he repeated. “And—sometimes—right.”

Mary kept to her plan of the evening before and stayed by George when they went into the recreation room. “You don’t,” she asked with tentative hopefulness, “happen to play bridge, do you?”

Melvin Shaw, the veteran English actor who was playing Polonius, jerked his head around. “Bridge?” he inquired. “Did someone mention bridge?”

“Yes,” said Mary. “Do you play?”

He did. And so did George. And so—surprisingly:—did one of the students who was working on costumes. She was an attractive no-nonsense girl who had impressed Mary in class with her intelligent questions; her name was Nancy Sealy.

The four settled down happily for the evening. Safe, thought Mary, as she raised George’s bid by a heart. Kit did not play bridge. It was not one of the accomplishments highly valued in the Philadelphia neighborhood where he had grown up.

“I’ll walk you home,” George offered when the second rubber ended and Mary, remembering last night, accepted with a smile. Kit had left the rec room some time ago, but she couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t lying in wait for her somewhere on the path to her cottage.

She wasn’t exactly free of him, however, as George apparently wanted to talk about his star. “Chris is a bit of an enigma, isn’t he?” he said as they walked slowly up through the pines. He’s not at all what I expected him to be.”

“Oh?” said Mary.

“To be frank, I wasn’t sure I wanted him. We’ve worked hard here to establish a reputation as the best summer theater in the country and I didn’t want to risk it on the whim of a Hollywood star who fancied he could do Shakespeare.”

“Why did you take him then?” Mary asked curiously.

“Timing, for one thing. When Adrian Saunders backed out I had to replace him fast.”

“You could have gotten someone from the legitimate stage without too much difficulty.”

She saw George’s teeth gleam in the darkness. “Yeah. I know. I guess I just couldn’t resist it.”

“Having a superstar, you mean?”

“No. His voice. I just couldn’t resist that voice. I went to see his last film again and that was what got me, that beautiful, flexible voice. He’s the only American actor I know who really has the voice for Shakespeare. It seemed such a waste to hear it shouting ‘Shoot, goddamn it’—which seemed to be his biggest line in that very unliterate film.”

Mary laughed. “He did a lot of Shakespeare at drama school, George. I wouldn’t worry.”

“We’re going to have every major critic in the country here for opening night, Mary,” he said rather grimly. “As you said earlier, Chris isn’t just an ordinary Hollywood actor. He isn’t even an ordinary Hollywood star. He’s a superstar. They’ll be here to see if he really ought to be taken seriously or to see him fall on his face. It’s his face, after all, that has been his ticket to success so far, not his acting.”

“I always thought he was quite good in his films,” Mary said quietly.

“He was. But they were hardly demanding.”

“No, I suppose not.” They had reached her cottage by now. “I have a bottle of Scotch tucked away,” she said. “Would you like a nightcap?”

“Sounds good,” he said, and came in after her. She got ice from the small refrigerator in the sitting room and poured two drinks. The night air was chilly on the porch so they sat down inside, Mary on the Early American sofa and George in a chair facing her.

“How are rehearsals going?” she asked, sipping her drink and drawing her legs up under her.

“Not bad at all. He won’t fall on his face, if that’s what you mean. He does know his stuff. In fact, I find him surprisingly professional.”

“Why shouldn’t he be professional?” she inquired frowningly.

“No reason. I suppose I thought he’d be rather the way he described Margot Chandler—temperamental. But he’s not. And he has surprisingly little vanity. That probably amazed me most of all.”

“He grew up in a tough Philadelphia neighborhood,” said Mary with a small smile. “His looks were more a handicap than anything else. In order to hold his own he had to learn to do everything better than anyone else. And the two things they did in that neighborhood were fight and play basketball. He never learned to value his looks, that’s for sure.”

“Basketball?” said George on a note of inquiry.

“He went to Penn State on a basketball scholarship.” She held her drink between her two palms and looked down into its amber depths. “He broke his thumb and was out for half the season in his sophomore year. That’s when he tried out for a part in the college play.
He got it and he was hooked. He threw up the basketball scholarship and went in for acting.”

“I see,” said George quietly. Then, unexpectedly, “You still wear his ring.”

“Yes.” A slight flush warmed her cheeks. “Technically we’re still married. And a wedding ring is good protection.”

“Hmm.” George looked at her speculatively. “Half the women in this country would give their eyeteeth to be married to Chris Douglas.”

“Well, I belong to the other half,” she replied lightly.

“He still loves you. You must know that. He watches you all the time.”

Unexpectedly she raised her eyes and he found himself thinking that he had never seen such utter blueness before; there was not a hint of gray or of green in those eyes. They were clear and darkly lashed and absolutely blue. “I know,” she said tensely. “He follows me, too. And I don’t want him to. I would never have come to Yarborough if I thought Kit was going to be here.”

“Is that why you’ve been so attentive to me?” he asked wryly.

The blue gaze never wavered. “Yes,” said Mary candidly. “I need protection.”

“From your husband?”

She hesitated. “Yes,” she repeated finally. “He is my husband, that’s true. But we haven’t lived together for over four years and I’ve told him I will never live with him again. If he wants a divorce he can have one. I just want him to leave me alone.”

“I don’t think he will, Mary,” George said. “In fact. I think the main reason he came here was not to play Hamlet but to see you.”

“I’m beginning to think so too.” Mary suddenly felt very tired. “I was fool enough to tell him where I’d be for the summer, so I suppose part of it is my own fault.”

“Why are you so afraid of him?” George asked innocently.
“If you mean what you say, all you have to do is say no and keep on saying it. Chris can hardly kidnap you.”

Mary sighed, put down her glass and stood up. “I suppose you’re right. But sometimes I feel like King Canute standing on the sand and forbidding the tide to come in. Nothing that I say will make any difference.” She smiled. “Good night, George.”

“Good night, Mary. And thanks for the drink.”

She stood at the screen door and watched him go off down the path. As she turned to go in the house she noticed a figure on the porch of the cottage next to hers. It was too dark to see anything but his outline but she knew he was watching her. Childishly she stuck her tongue out at him and slammed the cottage door as she went inside. Good God, she thought as she unzipped her skirt. I’m really regressing if I’ve descended to this. Wearily she undressed and went to bed.

The next day Margot Chandler arrived at Yarborough. Mary first saw her at a cocktail reception George hastily threw together for the professional staff and the cast that afternoon. It was held in a lovely elegant old room in Avery Hall. Mary put on a white linen suit with a hot-pink blouse and walked uncomfortably on high heels down through the pines. She was frankly curious. She had only seen one or two of Margot Chandler’s films, but over the course of the years, and the course of numerous husbands, the star had become something of a national institution. She represented, to Mary’s mind. The Hollywood World. What would she be like?

She was, to begin with, exquisite. Small and delicately made, she wore a simple black dress that Mary realized must have cost the earth. She may have been forty-five but she most certainly did not look it. Her pale hair was soft and shining, her skin was fresh and unlined, her figure slim and flexible. “Good heavens,” said Mary, as she was introduced by George, “no one is ever going to believe you’re Hamlet’s
mother.”

The perfect Chandler teeth showed in a charming smile. “I was a child bride, of course.” she said delicately. Kit was standing next to her and she raised her famous green eyes to his face. “I don’t think I had expected such a large son, though.” The top of her blond head came only to his shoulder. She put her hand on his arm. “Darling, I should so like to introduce you to my secretary. He is a great admirer of your films and is quite
longing
to meet you.” She cast a brief smile in Mary and George’s direction before she deftly steered Kit off toward another corner of the room.

“Well,” said Mary in some amusement as she watched the small feminine figure tow Kit’s six feet three skillfully away. “So that’s Margot Chandler.
It
was a brief meeting, of course, but most interesting.”

George chuckled. “God help me. I have to direct her.”

“Darling,” Mary purred, putting her arm on his sleeve and looking up at him through her lashes. “Would you mind terribly getting me a drink?”

“Cut it out,” said George inelegantly. They walked together toward the table that had been set up as a bar. “She’s not living on campus, you know. Too terribly rustic.”

“Oh dear. Where is she staying?”

“The Stafford Inn. It’s the poshest place in the area. Not posh at all by her standards of course—she called it ‘rather a hole,’—but the best we can do locally.”

Mary sipped her drink and smiled absently at Adam Truro, the boy who was playing Horatio. “Will she be eating with us?”

“Tonight she is,” George replied. “Somehow I rather doubt that the college cuisine is going to be up to her standard, but I did emphasize our atmosphere of family coziness here at Yarborough.”

“I’ll bet she’s just going to love it,” Mary said dryly and George made a comic face.