The Houseguest (22 page)

Suddenly his father was sad. “I am not as I was in the reign of good King Hugo.”

“Why do you say that, Doug?” Bobby's mother asked sympathetically.

“Please,” said his father. He dropped the blanket, knelt, picked up a rock, and threw it at the sliding door before them. But the missile merely bounced off the stout plate glass, almost striking Bobby on the return flight. “How do you like that!” his father said bitterly. “Now I can't even break my own glass door with my own rock!”

“Well, Chuck's not to blame for that,” said Bobby. “It's just a matter of physical laws. You shouldn't take it personally.” With his fingertips he prized up one of the flagstones from the walk—they were set in loose sand—hefted it, then hurled it against the door. This action was effective. The large pane became several wicked-looking shards that shimmered briefly in the available light before plunging to the earth.

The destruction was so uncompromising that the Graveses were chastened for an instant, and the sound too was startling. They took
ad hoc
places of concealment behind the ornamental trees that grew from round islands of soil near the pool, though these were for the most part slender saplings. But when a few moments had passed without response from the house, visible or audible, the trio reunited and advanced on their home, the control of which had been taken from them and not really by force.

Bobby kicked out the remaining fragment of plate glass and led the way through the now vacant frame of the door. Once inside, he illuminated his flashlight, even though Chuck would thereby be given an easy target.

When they reached the utility room, Bobby's father found the main electrical switch and threw it on. The house was alight once again, and they proceeded to search its entirety, growing bolder as, room after room, Chuck failed to appear. But what should have been a satisfying experience was not, for neither could Lydia be found. Which meant one of two things, each sorrier than the other: either Chuck had taken her prisoner or once again, in her perverse way, she had joined him—perhaps temporarily, as usual, and would later on return to the fold with still another argument that she would insist was plausible.

Bobby made no reference to his wife until they had completed the search of the semidetached guest wing and he could at least put aside his dread that she and Chuck might be discovered in bed back there—which of course she would subsequently explain as having been a means to distract the houseguest while the others recaptured him.

“I'm worried about Lyd,” he said as they were passing Chuck's room on the way back. “Do you think he could have kidnapped her?”

“Let's hope not,” his father said curtly.

“No,” said Bobby's mother. “He's gone. I know it. I feel it. He finally got the idea that he was not wanted. At long last. But what a struggle it was!” She chuckled. “I've heard of persistent guests whom you couldn't get rid of, but this was a special case. I know people who will find it hard to believe.” She sighed. “We never should have let him talk us out of the annual season-opening party. Now no one will have met him. Nobody will be aware of how charming he could be when on his good behavior.”

His father grimaced. “I find this whole thing humiliating in the extreme. I'm glad no one's met him. That is, no one we
know.
Of course the Finches are only too well aware of Chuck Burgoyne, but they really don't matter if we can emerge unscathed. In fact, they will be taught a lesson.”

“Which is?” asked Bobby.

“That there are limits,” his father said soberly, “and you must know what they are if you expect to be taken seriously in life.”

“Well, we don't really know how far Chuck represents the Finches as such, do we?”

“But you see, Bobby, we must proceed as if he does. It's not our job to puzzle out every subtle discrepancy. Look, it was he who invaded our property, not the reverse. The burden of proof's on him.”

“Good grief,” said Bobby's mother, looking at her wristwatch. “Look at the time. This Sunday's certainly been a waste from start to finish.”

“You know, Dad,” said Bobby. “I wonder if maybe we're being too smug too soon. We might have missed him in this search. Maybe he's just stepped out one of the many exits and has been watching us through the windows as we went around.”

“But,” said his mother, “that would contradict this very definite feeling I have that he is no longer on the premises. You know, he does exude a certain energy when he's around: that much must be granted to him.”

His father snapped, “Are you still enamored of that little rodent?”

Bobby stepped in quickly to prevent a squabble. “All I'm saying is it might be too early to declare unconditional victory for our side.”

By now they had returned to the kitchen, which had without formal declaration become their headquarters.

“There's something in what you say,” his father told him, with obvious concern for his sensibilities, “but what we need most at this point is something that builds morale. We've suffered one reverse after another, all day long. If occasionally we had a little success, it's been short-lived. This is the longest period yet in which Chuck has been out of power. That might be worth celebrating. If you'll get a
blanc de blancs
from the cellar, I'll provide the ice.”

The wine cellar was not subterranean in this house without a basement, being rather a long cabineted series of shelves beneath the bar in the butler's pantry. Several hundred bottles were maintained there at a constant temperature of 55 degrees. One of the many things Bobby did not share with his father was a special taste for wines, but he knew where the different kinds were kept, and he went now and pulled out champagnes until he found the appropriate label.

When he returned to the kitchen, his father had at last discarded Hugo's blanket. Both of them had forgotten the matter of exchanging their wet clothes for dry. Bobby was about to remind his father when he saw, through the windows over the sink, that the headlights of a car were just entering the parking area.

“Dad,” he said, lowering the bottle to the counter, “I think Lyman's come back.”

Lydia was still trying to find a means by which she could reenter the house when to her surprise the lights had gone on and she saw the three Graveses on their inspection tour. It would have been natural for her to go knock at the nearest door to their current position, but before she could do so, she saw a shadowy figure emerge from one corner of the building and steal out through the parking area and onto the gravel lane that led to the public road.

Chuck Burgoyne was making his departure, slinking off like a whipped cur. She found it difficult to abstain from sounding derisive applause, perhaps even a raspberry. He was the type to whom it would be heaven to rub it in, and now that she had evened the score by saving his life, she had no motive for restraint. But what revenge
would
be appropriate for what he had done to her? All she could think up was something obsolete, like public shaming in the pillory.

But her sense of triumph was soon moderated by the realistic reflection that it would be utterly unlike the Chuck she knew to leave permanently at this point. He had not long before won exclusive possession of the house, having, in a way that might seem magical to him, survived a savage attempt on his life. Why, when things had again turned his way after a short-lived reversal, would he make a surreptitious exit into the night woods?

Lydia saw it as her duty to follow him as far as the road, if such was his destination, but she could not walk on the gravel, for, though at the moment the sound of her footsteps would be obscured by his own, if he stopped without warning she would be audible at a great distance. She therefore took the verge, in this case a terrain in which parts of dead trees, pine cones, and boulders were routine, and scratchy, even stinging bushes not uncommon. Mosquitoes too were at home in places. A hundred yards of this course left many marks upon her, and soon after leaving the car-park she encountered dense darkness as the lane became a corridor through the woods, too narrow to be penetrated by such feeble light as the sky offered. Yet every time she halted she continued to hear Chuck's regular crunch up ahead. He had no flashlight. If she quit now, he would have proved he was the more competent night navigator. She had long since determined she would never again surrender to him in any area of human enterprise.

The lane may have been as long as a quarter of a mile. Every time Lydia stubbed her toe on an invisible obstacle, or was again slashed by a thornbush or bitten by another insect, she told herself that this would be the last, that she had earned an easy passage from here on, and on each occasion she was immediately proved wrong. Once she fell outright, and her
hair
caught in a spiky bush. It was only after her hopelessness had been established that relief arrived.

The lights of an oncoming car became visible, silhouetting Chuck's figure in the lane. Lydia now plunged to the ground on purpose. It was a nasty place for this, and her right hand encountered a soft, damp mess of something with the texture of excrement though fortunately with an odor no worse than that of mildew.

Chuck was waving in the jovial style in which vehicular friends are hailed, and when the car stopped, he went out of sight behind the headlamps and, as the slam of the door would indicate, climbed on board.

The car stayed where it was; the occupants sat there plotting their tactics for the final assault. Now what she had to do was return to the house as quickly as possible and sound the alarm. Secrecy no longer had a point. She took to the middle of the lane and ran full speed through the gravel, expecting to be immediately pursued by the car and in danger of being ruthlessly run down.

But whether or not the men had seen her, her backward glance when halfway home told her they were staying in place.

At the parking area, the end of her run, she checked again, but now the headlights could not be seen at all. This could have a sinister implication; maybe they had launched an invisible, silent advance. She could identify all three members of her adopted family through the kitchen window, could easily have picked them off with a target rifle. They were more vulnerable than she.

Both screen and inner doors were locked. She banged on the frame and loudly identified herself. Bobby answered the summons, after having peered out apprehensively under a horizontal hand. Yet when he let her in, he pretended to have difficulty in recognizing her.

“Don't bother with how I look,” she said, gasping from her expenditures both physical and emotional. “They're coming! Get these lights out!”

“More divided loyalties?” he asked skeptically.

His father came forward. “Let's get this straight,” Doug said. “Has Chuck really decamped? By coming back like this do you mean you've broken with him for good?”

“I was never with him!” she shouted. “Will you listen to me? They're out there, in a car with the lights out. They're probably all armed to the teeth.”

Doug's expression changed from dubiety to fear. “Oh, my God,” he muttered, and then, in a louder voice, “By ‘they' you mean his gang?”

“Tedesco was one name, I believe,” said Audrey, “and then you claim to have spoken with a Mr. Perlmutter.”

“When Lyman left, he threatened to come back with a carload of other relatives who have been drinking all day,” said Lydia, looking for the light switch that ought to have been on the wall near the door. “I haven't had time to tell you that.”

“And ransack the house?” asked Audrey. “I
thought
we were getting off too easy.”

Doug nodded. “Those Neanderthals who hang around in the back room of the gas station. They've been doing that for years, generation after generation.”

“Goddammit,” Lydia said.
“Will
you turn the lights off!”

Doug went to more or less the same place where she had been looking in vain, found a switch, and put the kitchen into darkness.

In the dark he said, “We've got floodlights out there in the car-park.”

“No,” said Lydia. “Lights will keep them away from where they can be seen. They'll just keep the car out in the lane, or they'll shoot out the bulbs. In a minute when our eyes get adjusted, we'll be able to see as well as they, and they might not know at first that we're onto them.”

“I think we might suffer less damage in the long run,” said Audrey, “if we simply surrendered at least some of the items they want. Make a deal of some sort. It has been determined that some of the worst people will often negotiate. Compromise seems to come naturally to human beings.”

“Not to Chuck. I begged him at the pool!” Doug said with emotion, and then turned hard. “If they come for me, they'd better be ready to shed blood—their own as well as mine.”

Bobby's voice came from near the door. “I agree. For everything they are given, they'll want something else. This is war.”

“They don't want your possessions,” Lydia said to the others, whose presences were becoming discernible. “They want me.”

“You?” Bobby asked, in the kind of voice that could be taken to imply the unspoken question:
For what reason?

“I'm hardly making it up,” she said testily. “Chuck told me.”

“They want
you,”
said Bobby, putting it as a statement of dubious authenticity.

“I don't intend to stand here in the dark repeating it. That's what I was told.”

“You mean to say …” Audrey began to speak, her voice falling away.

“Look here,” said her father-in-law, in almost a parody of the avuncular tone, “look here, Lydia, we're certainly not going to expect you to make such a sacrifice for the family. Why should you? You've just joined it. Please believe me, you can rely on us to stand back of you one hundred percent on whatever course you choose. That's what a family's for.”

Even after the experience of this half a day, she remained shockable. “But you
are
asking me, aren't you?”

“He just said he wasn't.” Bobby was speaking. “What more do you want, Lyd? Why make any more trouble than we've got?”

“Will there ever be a way out of this whole thing?” Audrey asked rhetorically. “Short of total ruin? That's all I'm saying. I just wish I had the answer.”

Lydia asked bitterly, “You really want me to go out there, don't you?”

Doug said, “I don't know how I could put it in any other way than I already have. I specifically stated I didn't expect that of you. If something's beyond someone's capacities, it's unfair to criticize them: that's always been my policy.”

“Now you can't say that's not fair,” said Bobby.

Lydia tested them. “Okay, I'm going.”

“Uh-huh,” murmured Bobby.

“No,” said Doug.

“Excuse me?”

“I said I wouldn't ask it of you, and I'm not.”

“Is that your response?”

“You're really being a pain, Lyd,” said Bobby. “Just let me ask you: Do you really want to go? Because that's what it seems like when you keep asking the same question.”

“Do you know what a shit you are being?”

“Sure,” Bobby said, “you can abuse me. That's always one way of avoiding the issue.”

Audrey came to her side in the darkness. “Don't let them bully you, dear. They can't take away your dignity.”

Lydia suddenly understood she was speaking of the gang in the car, not her son and husband. “You're a traitor to your own sex.”

“Sex has nothing to do with this,” said Audrey, in apparent, perhaps even genuine innocence. “Survival is what's at stake.”

“Your
survival.”

Audrey sighed. “I could hardly speak with authority on anyone else's.”

“What gets me,” said Lydia, “is that earlier you kept suspecting me of being in collusion with Chuck. Now you are urging it upon me.”

“Lydia,” Doug said, coming nearer, “the situation's always changing. You'll learn that when you get a few years older. Nations soon go to war with their former allies. After acquiring power, revolutionaries invariably begin to execute their old comrades, and starving persons cannibalize their nearby friends. This is beyond right and wrong: it is simple reality.”

“No it isn't,” Lydia said with more conviction that she felt. Indeed she suspected he might well be correct, but it would have been unconscionable for her spinelessly to acquiesce, and anyway, just because something is true is not sufficient justification for it to be stated in so many words, thus discouraging those souls who live on hope. “Oh, maybe it is for you,” she went on, “and for them out there. But I'm better than you. I'm better than them.” Having said which, she realized she would now have to make her claim good, else be disqualified forever.

She breathed deeply and left the house. She was halfway to the parking area before the men in the darkened vehicle were aware of her approach and turned on not only the headlamps but also a row of spotlights mounted on the roof of the jeep. It would have shown a weakness if she had covered her eyes, but she could not help wincing.

To show disrespect for Chuck, she went to the driver's side and spoke presumably to Lyman. She would continue to be blind for a few moments.

“Chief,” said she, “I want to file formal charges against someone for criminal trespass, malicious injuries, possession of a concealed weapon, sodomy, and
mala in se.”
She impulsively threw in the last, so to speak a catchall, because the penultimate charge was more than a bit doubtful, Chuck's not having performed unnaturally in bed, and in fact the previous one had slim support, for she had never seen his gun if indeed he had one.

The window was rolled squeakily down. With it closed, he had probably not heard her statement of charges, and she had now lost the fine edge of energy that had produced it. To make one good attack is within anybody's power, but consistency is the mark of the champion.

Before the window was fully open she could smell, in the clean air of the shore, the stale booze-fumes emanating from the interior of the vehicle.

“Lady,” said Lyman's voice, “you think you can come up here and do anything you damn please, shake your little ass around in shorts without any underpants under them, wear shirts with the nipples of your knockers sticking out, you talk worse filth than any of the hardworking men I know, I've heard your kind in the village, with your
fuck-this
and
fuck-that
and
shit-on-it
and so forth, and we're supposed to clean up after you and bow down like you're royalty or something, but I tell you we get sick of it. We're gonna teach you a lesson you'll never forget.” He threw the door open, and had not her vision by now improved sufficiently to see it coming, Lydia might have been struck.