The Incredible Charlie Carewe (5 page)

Jeff spoke first. “I don’t think I ever came up here before. If I did, I don’t remember.”

“We used to picnic in the little meadow back toward the river—we were all so
little
then.” We were all so young—so innocent, so far from tragedy. It was a starchy world of nurses and eating and being tucked into bed—all loving arms and smiling faces—so safe, safe.

“You come here often, Virginia? Or have I butted in on something private?”

“Well—no . . .” Virginia hesitated. “Maybe you’ll think it’s silly, but I come up here to think, sometimes—lately a lot.”

Jeff threw a handful of pebbles over the edge, and they rattled briefly and were lost.

“That’s a long way down, isn’t it?”

“Sometimes I get so I can’t figure things out, around people. There’s so much
talk
—about who we are, and how we must behave and——”

“Well, we’ve got good families, Virginia—I guess we’re supposed to sort of live up to what we
are
—I guess. It’s better that way.” And then she felt a tightness in her chest, remembering.

Jeff said, “Where’s Charlie now? What’s he doing?”

“I went to his room, just before we talked to your dad. I thought he’d be needing me, feeling awful or something. But he was all right. He was in bed, cramming down some oatmeal cookies, and the radio was going.”

“What’d he say?”

“He was mad at
me!
”

“Why—for Pete’s sake?”

“I don’t know. He said, ‘Hi, Virge, where’ve
you
been! Fine pal you are, letting me take this all by myself.’ I don’t know, I couldn’t say anything. I just turned the radio down and left the room. And as soon as I did I heard him turn the radio up again—real high. I just didn’t feel like fussing about
that
.”

Jeff said it for them both: “Maybe Roger is dead.”

“We’ll know pretty soon, I guess.” She was gulping, trying to hold back tears. Jeff continued to throw pebbles, avoiding speaking about the scene that had etched itself on both their minds in that moment of inaction. Charlie was her brother and there were limitations on what he could say. But with all his heart he wanted to reassure this new friend that he was not judging, not accusing. He had liked them both. They had proved to be the swell kids his parents had talked about to him. They were closest to his age of any one of the families nearby, and as yet he had not had the opportunity to make new school friends. He had felt they would fill the gap of loneliness that was still with him for the friends he had left in London and Switzerland. But now it was more than friends—he had been forced into an intimacy of relationship that was difficult beyond his years. It was too soon to be forced to take sides. What he had seen had shocked him, but he also felt that Virginia was bearing some burden of knowledge about Charlie, and he wanted to tell her that he would help her share it. He had taken her cue in the library, he knew she wanted to protect her brother. They both had told the strict truth, just putting what they knew ahead in time. Of that moment, how long had it been? Five seconds, maybe, when they had watched Charlie and simply could not speak. How could they describe the odd emptiness of emotion that Charlie had shown, the lack of guilt or fright or remorse, when he saw them, and went
on
——

Virginia suddenly spoke. “Jeff—tell me—how did you feel? Did you think Charlie was some kind of monster gone crazy or something?”

Jeff took a deep breath. “I had a funny feeling. I don’t know whether it was at the time or later, when I thought about it. Later, I guess. But I think I felt pretty much the same as if I’d seen a four-year-old child with a knife in his hand, poking somebody’s eye out. That’s awful sounding, I know, but what I mean is that Charlie didn’t even seem to
be
guilty—it was like maybe we were the guilty ones, but of just what, I don’t know.”

Virginia raised her head till it tilted back a little on her neck; the moonlight spread over her face, making her eyes luminous and sculpturing the faint smile. “Why, Jeff, you really do understand——” For a while the sheer fact of understanding was more important than what it was he understood. The months of gnawing uncertainty, the frustrating lack of experience that had made it impossible for her to find a touchstone for being “right” or “wrong”; the attempts to reach her father without being able to say, “Do you see what I see?” because there was no real answer to “What
do
you see?” had left her with nothing but a weight of apathy and fatigue. But now another human being had mentally taken her hand and said, “Yes—there is something there—it is real, it is no product of your imagination, and you and I will take a good look at it together.” The fatigue lifted, the sweet air poured into her lungs, she felt keenly awake and aware. The beauty of the panorama of moonlit sea, the organ notes from the surf—it was all
there
in an indescribable at-once-ness. There seemed no incongruity that in the moment that lapsed between her last words Jeff should say:

“Can you see the ship out there?” It was not a changing of subject, it did not emerge from schoolboyish embarrassment at the intimacy of their sudden rapport.

“Looks like a freighter—lumber probably,” Virginia replied. “Do you like sailing?”

Jeff seemed to hesitate, stuttering slightly. “Very much, did some racing on Lake Lucerne in Switzerland.”

Virginia said, “You sounded as though you were going to say you didn’t like it.”

Laughing, Jeff said, “No, I just almost said, ‘Oh, rather.’ I’m trying to knock out my English speech habits before school, so I won’t sound funny——”

Virginia laughed with him—“Jolly decent of you, old boy”—and then they both subsided quickly, remembering. Virginia slapped at her forehead in compunction. “Gosh—we’d better get back.”

As they rose from the ground it passed through Virginia’s mind that she ought to say something to thank Jeff, but there was nothing in the thank-you form that could express what she felt in gratitude. There was no need for form, for once in her life all the drilled-in “Please” and “Thank you” words and their many variations were completely and surprisingly unnecessary. The fact that she was in good spirits, that she felt strong enough to face tragedy, was rewarding to Jeff, she knew. Without half trying, he had moved a mountain. So instead she offered him her continued confidence: “Do you think there is anything we can do, Jeff?”

“Well, nothing about poor Rog, except to hope that he lives. As to our families—your mother and father and mine—we could only mix them up by what we could tell them.”

“They’d never understand, would they!”

“I don’t see how they could. They weren’t there. I don’t really know
why
Charlie acted the way he did, and I don’t think he does, so maybe the best thing is just not to act as if there were something goony about him, and maybe we can help him that way.”

They walked back slowly, talking easily, about their young lives, about the strange confusions and sense of alienation in the stage between being children and being grown up. “Seems like there’s always something that I’m not old enough for, and other times I’m
too
old,” Jeff had said, and Virginia replied, “Maybe that’s the way it’s going to be—always—only someday we’ll know the difference ourselves.” Once they stopped, thinking they had heard a car way below in the driveway. But there were only the night sounds, a scurrying in the thicket of sumac, an owl’s insistent questioning, the wind in the tops of the pines. They talked with the ease that shy people find only in each other; they skipped from subject to subject, from Switzerland to Maine and back to London, from generalities about “all boys” and “all girls” and around to Charlie and themselves, the “whys” and “what is its” that never in their short lives had been satisfied in superficial explanations.

The talk lagged as they approached the end of the path, their “free floating” meshed into the patterns and emotions of the troubled household, and for a second Virginia turned a panicky look to Jeff.

He grinned and said, “Steady on, old girl,” and they swallowed their giggles at the apt Britishism.

They walked tall and poised into the living room, looking again like proper children of proper parents.

Alden Shelley, a handsomer, fuller edition of Jeff, smiled faintly in welcome from where he stood in front of the fireplace, a brandy glass in his hand. “Roger’s all right,” he said. “Concussion and scalp abrasions—be in hospital a few days——” Virginia sank down in relief on the divan beside her father and put her head quietly on his shoulder. Walter stroked her head.

“Where you kids been?” he asked. “Things get too thick for you around here?”

Jeff buried his superfluous hands in his pockets. “Virginia felt kind of nervous—we’ve been talking it off——”

Alden put his drink down on the long coffee table. “It’s been a rough day; we must go home, son——”

After they left, Walter went around locking up, putting out the lamps, and joined Virginia at the french windows where she stood staring out to the sea. “There seems to have been so much moonlight this summer—I guess because I love it so.”

“It’s a beautiful night—beautiful,” murmured her father, and then he gave a long heavy sigh. “That’s a fine boy, that Jeff, he’s all right.”

The following morning Charlie bounced down the free-hung stairway, setting up a protesting jingle of glass in the chandelier; Gretchen von Wiegand II followed as fast as her four short legs allowed. Charlie pushed open the front screen for her. “Beat it, Sassie, that’s the girl.” Whistling aimlessly, he strode toward the breakfast room through the long formal dining room, its shades pulled together against the sun. In the big mirror above the buffet he looked quickly at himself, passing a hand in front of his face, wiping off the whistle and leaving a solemn expression on his face. He slowed his walk, lowered his eyes, and entered the bright enclosed solarium where his mother and sisters still sat over the remains of breakfast. “Morning, Mum dear,” he said, kissing her. “Sorry I’m late—didn’t get to sleep till about five, I guess it was.” He caught Virginia’s quick look over Beatrice’s head and gave her an athletic wink. Beatrice tinkled the hand bell as he slid into his chair. Taking a long draught from the chilled fruit juice, he asked chattily, “What’s the news on Roger? Did he die?”

Virginia’s and Elsie’s mouths opened in twin gasps and Beatrice shook her head in quick irritation. “No, Charlie, thank God, he did not die.”

“I told you. Could’ve happened to anybody——” He flashed his beautiful smile at Lela as she slid a plateful of eggs and bacon in front of him.

“Charlie dear.” His mother spoke sweetly, patiently. “Roger is not out of danger. He has a severe concussion and is still unconscious—you don’t seem to realize——” Her voice thickened.

Charlie patted her hand. “Mum dear, what
are
you crying about—he isn’t your son. I’d expect you to cry about me if I had been hurt, but why Roger? And it was just an accident!”

Beatrice rose, touching her lips with her napkin. “You had better be thinking about what you are going to say to your father. He’s coming back from town early this afternoon, and I would like to suggest that you begin to think in other terms than ‘just an accident.’ ”

Charlie shivered elaborately as she disappeared into the kitchen. “Br-r-r, the icebergs are thick today.” Elsie started to say something in indignant protest.

“Forget it, Elsie,” said her sister, getting up. “I’ve got to scrape the
Vee Cee
’s hull today,” she announced.

Elsie made a sound of disgust. “Eeee-ugh!”

“All I want is for both of you to get on the end of a rope and help me beach her. The tide’ll be high in about half an hour. I can do the rest.”

“Can’t,” stated Charlie. “I’m biking into Nelson to get new grips.”

“Forget your bicycle,” said Virginia. “You couldn’t get back in time.”

“Time for what?”

“You heard Mum. You were let off easy last night, because everybody was tired and worried and upset. But there are going to be some funny rumors going on around town about Walter Carewe’s young son and his apparently dangerous temper—and Dad doesn’t care for it—at all.”

“Dangerous, huh?” Charlie preened a little. Virginia flew from the room, fearing her own loss of control.

Elsie got up to follow and, turning, looked at her brother as if she had never seen him before. “Charlie—you’re being so funny——”

But Charlie was absorbed in his breakfast.

The list of “thou shalt nots” in Charlie’s mental card index was increasing. Whenever he wanted to, he could refer to them as something to be avoided because they interfered with the pleasures of living. Thus, “Thou shalt not steal—money from the cash box in the kitchen because it will be missed more quickly than a dollar or two from Mum’s handbag.” And “Thou shalt not swim too soon after a meal—it will cause bellyache” was catalogued ahead of “Thou shalt not remove a book from Dad’s library—he raises an awful row.”

That latter was just too silly. He had been keeping a scrapbook of famous people with the name of “Charles” and in a volume of French history there was a painting of a certain Charles IV, which he fancied because he was called “Charles the Fair.” He had thoughtfully used a razor blade to cut it neatly out of the book. Unfortunately the razor had cut through several pages which he had put into the wastebasket, and his care in returning the volume to its proper place on the shelf had gone unappreciated. In his father’s mind this was inexplicably cross-filed with another, quite different and very funny episode. It amused Charlie to write his initials in the sand at one end of the beach when he was urinating, but it took much more skill and was infinitely more satisfactory to do the same thing neatly in the center of the white oval rug in front of Mum’s dressing table. With his legal lingo, his father had lumped both things together as “Wanton defacement of personal property.”

But there was a difference as anybody with any common sense could see, because the “defacement” of Mum’s rug had precipitated one of the rare sound thrashings he was often threatened with but rarely dealt. The sound thrashing was not nearly as bad as it sounded, either. His father cuffed him around for a while, and then, because it tired him, Charlie supposed, he would go over and put his head in his hands on the desk and tell Charlie to “Go on now, and remember this as a lesson to you.” It did make things sticky around the house for a while, so it was a good idea to avoid such consequences. And nothing cleared the air so quickly as those magic words “I’m sorry” and everybody positively beamed if one said, “How could I be so stupid?” or seemed to brush away a tear. Boy! What fools people were.