The Rose Garden (12 page)

“I'm going to take a nap,” Lady Ailesbury-Rhode announced. Then, to Bridie, “I'll have my tea in here. You can bring it up at four-thirty—and, mind you, I'll know instantly if the water is not boiling. You don't use those disgusting tea bags, I presume.”

Before Bridie could answer, Leona spoke for her: “Of course not, Aunt Amelia. Why, Bridie would no more consider using a tea bag than—than I would. Would you like some toast with your tea?”

“One slice of very thin bread, lightly buttered, please. Nothing else. Well, this all looks very nice, Leona. Charming house—I was out here once or twice when poor Tommy's mother was alive. We must have a long chat after I've had my nap. Now, there's just one thing, my dear. I see you've put no hot-water bottle in my bed. Perhaps you forgot. But I really would like it. Would you have your maid bring it here as soon as possible? I shudder to think of those icy sheets.”

There were several hot-water bottles in Leona's house, but her thoughts flew naturally in the direction of only one.

“Bridie will fill it at once, Aunt Amelia,” she said penitently.
“How thoughtless of me. Bridie, fill the olive-green velvet bottle. Aunt Amelia, Bridie will have it here in just a minute. How careless of me to forget it.”

“An olive-green velvet bottle? My dear girl, haven't you anything else? It sounds unsafe.”

“It's a rather special hot-water bottle, Aunt Amelia. I'm sure you'll approve of it when you see it.”

The old lady's words of pleased surprise when she saw and felt the pretty object sent Leona into a daze of pleasure that still possessed her when Charles arrived at the house at five-thirty. Leona met him at the door. George was putting the car away.

“A drink and news before you go up to change or afterward, Charles?” she asked.

“Afterward, if you don't mind,” Charles said crisply. “Did Lady Ailesbury-Rhode arrive?”

“She's in her room, taking a nap. She had tea at four-thirty, so she should be down quite soon now. Do hurry, Charles, darling, so that we can have a little moment together before she comes. I've so much to tell you, darling.”

Half an hour later, Charles came downstairs and joined Leona, who was sitting in front of the living-room fire, waiting to pour the first martinis of the evening. The martinis were in a tall crystal shaker, and on the tray beside them stood two tiny glasses, frosted from their sojourn in the refrigerator. Leona's air of anxiety as she poured the martinis was genuine. Charles had been known to make an ugly scene over an inferior martini. He sat down and sipped his drink before he spoke.

“Leona,” he said suddenly, setting his glass on the table beside him, “where is my hot-water bottle?”

The shock, the violent realization of what she had done, cleared Leona's brain miraculously, and in one instant she saw her dreadful mistake and began, almost calmly, to think of a way to recover herself.

“Why, it's in the kitchen, Charles,” she said. “Bridie noticed a loose thread in the quilting yesterday, and she actually offered to repair it herself. Now, there's proof that she really adores you. She never offered to mend anything for me. Quite the opposite.”

Charles sighed, smiled, lay back in his chair, and took his glass in his hand. “Wonderful Bridie,” he said. “And wonderful Leona. This martini is perfection, darling.”

“The Maitlands are coming for dinner,” Leona said. “And Tom and Liza. I didn't ask anyone to come in afterward. I thought we'd better have an early night tonight. I don't want to wear Aunt Amelia out. After all, she's not so terribly young.”

“Stop worrying about this evening. I'll shoo them all home myself, if I have to. Now, tell me about your aunt. What was she wearing? I want to hear all about her.”

Leona wondered how she could go on talking so calmly. She was horrified at what she had done, and more horrified because of the stupid, useless lie. Why could she not have said honestly that she had lent the hot-water bottle, knowing he would understand? But he would never understand. And now I'm going to have to tell him before he goes to bed tonight, she said to herself, and how am I going to do that? Watching Charles's familiar gestures, seeing his mocking moves, his narrow, malicious smile, and his sharp eyes, which she knew could turn in an instant from tolerance to a destructive rage, she was terrified. How am I going to tell him, she wondered. How in God's name am I going to tell him?

But it never occurred to her not to give the velvet-covered hot-water bottle to Lady Ailesbury-Rhode again at bedtime.

Leona had been working as a secretary in a bank when she met Tommy Finch, and she had never really recovered from the incredulous elation she felt when he married her. Secretly, she was still as impressed by Herbert's Retreat now as she had been the
day he brought her out to show her the house, just before their wedding. She had never forgotten her first sight of the Retreat, when Tommy turned in to the narrow private road that meandered from the highway in toward the river. The thirty-nine beautiful houses it connected had been built here and there at random, two hundred years ago, in a fine, thickly wooded glade that remained wild and green except for the smooth grass lawns and rims of grass that the householders claimed for themselves. Leona had never even heard of Herbert's Retreat until she met Tommy, but from the first she became fiercely attached to it. She loved the fact that it was a restricted, protected, rigidly exclusive community. During her first days there, she was timorously happy that Tommy's neighbors so easily accepted her. As she settled down, her pride stiffened. She began to take her own presence in the Retreat for granted and to feel she belonged naturally, not just by acceptance. Still, at the bottom of her heart, deeper even than her dependence on Charles, lay an irresponsible, unreasonable fear, carefully smothered most of the time, that someday some distant relative of Tommy's would turn up and take the house from her. It couldn't happen, she knew; she had her rights. But the rights, as she held and counted them, seemed slippery in her hands. She was not really very sure of herself, and Lady Ailesbury-Rhode's title only intensified her desire to get down on both knees and say to the old lady, “See? I'm the same sort of person, really, that you are. I belong here. See how naturally I fit in? See what a good job I do? Isn't the house charming? And beautifully appointed? No one else could do things so well. There can't possibly be any question that I belong here. Please say that you approve of me.”

All during the familiar, laughing flurry of the Maitlands' and the Fryes' arrival, and during the decorous, excited interval that marked Lady Ailesbury-Rhode's descent into the company, and while poor George, who came downstairs very late, was fumbling
at the bar for one of the warm, sweet Manhattans he loved, Leona's thoughts were with her titled guest. Even while her head seethed with distress over her predicament with Charles, she was judging the effect on the old lady of the room, the service, and the other guests. Charles was doing splendidly. Suave, humorous, attentive, he was showing quite plainly that he and Lady Ailesbury-Rhode belonged to the same world and that they were at home together. Lewis Maitland, tall, blond, and with a heavy, conventional handsomeness, spoke very little. Dolly, his thirty-year-old baby-girl wife, bubbled mutely, holding her cocktail glass carefully and casting inquisitive, delighted glances in all directions. Willowy Liza Frye was silent, too, her graceful, high-held head immobile in a halo of conscious poise. Tom Frye's plump face swelled with diffidence as he recounted some affectionate anecdotes of days spent in London as a schoolboy and as a young man. Lady Ailesbury-Rhode's clear, clipped voice dominated the cocktail hour and the dinner table, and after dinner she invited Charles to sit next to her on the sofa, where they engaged in a companionable, witty exchange of views on the deterioration of polite society since the beginning of the First World War.

Before meeting Leona, Charles had been the prey of any woman with a guest room for an extra man who would pay for his weekend in smiles and talk. Now he told a few reminiscences of those days, transfiguring the women, the houses, and the occasions until Leona was sick with the thought that she might lose him. Lady Ailesbury-Rhode's descriptions of the old, leisurely days in England entranced her hearers, and they all murmured protestingly when, at ten-thirty sharp, she stood up to go to bed. Leona offered to see her to her room, but the offer was refused, and after walking with her pleased, flushed guest to the foot of the stairs she slipped out to the kitchen, where Bridie, bathed in a blinding white light from the ceiling, was sitting on a chair that was all but invisible
under her great, starched bulk. A cup of tea steamed on the table beside her. At her back, the window was uncurtained against the night. She was holding her spectacles against her eyes with one hard red hand, and reading the morning obituaries. Seeing Leona, she lowered the spectacles.

“The dinner was perfect, Bridie,” Leona said. “The other maids went home, I suppose. You must be very tired.”

“Ah, I'm used to that, Mrs. Harkey. You have to get used to being tired when you're in service. I was wanting to ask you—I put Her Ladyship's hot-water bottle in her bed at a quarter past ten, just like she said. Now, which hot-water bottle do you want me to leave up for Mr. Runyon? Or maybe he won't want one at all now, since the one he likes is in use.”

Bridie had been waiting for this interview since the afternoon. You're on the spot now, Ma'am, she thought, watching Leona's distress. Let's see you wriggle out of this.

Leona said nothing, and Bridie continued, “He never had one before, Ma'am. Before you got him the stone one, I mean. Maybe he won't miss it.”

Leona looked at her helplessly. “Frankly, Bridie,” she said, laughing in the way she knew a maid would understand—not being too friendly but showing that she understood perfectly well that Bridie was human, too, and that this domestic emergency must involve them both—“Frankly, I don't know what to do. Lady Ailesbury-Rhode would have thought it odd if we'd given her an ordinary hot-water bottle tonight. You heard what she said about the velvet one this afternoon.”

Bridie emitted a short, barking laugh. “If you'll excuse me for saying so, Ma'am, I think we'd all have heard about it if she hadn't found that same bottle in her bed when she went up tonight. All over it, she was, when I took the tea up in the afternoon. She had it hanging on the bedpost right beside her head. ‘Where did Mrs.
Harkey find it?' she asked me when I was fixing the bed tray. Well, I told her about how you had the little cover made for it and all, but sure she knew all that. You told her yourself this afternoon. She just wanted to talk about it. It's the sort of thing an old lady would fancy, you know, Mrs. Harkey. She took a fancy to it, right enough.”

“She hung it on the bedpost, Bridie?”

“Yes, Ma'am. Where she could see it. Now, about Mr. Runyon—”

“Wait a minute, Bridie. Let me think.”

Trembling, Leona sat down and patted her face nervously until her glance caught her own dim, ghostly reflection in the dark glass of the window. Then she put her hands in her lap and turned to Bridie and said, “I want you to help me. No, wait a minute, this is going to be difficult. You're going to have to be very, very careful.”

This is the best yet, Bridie thought as she listened to Leona's instructions. Wait till I tell the girls about this. Oh, Lord above, this is the best yet!

When Leona returned to her living room, she was greeted with a flurry of excited cries from Dolly, who was evidently determined to make up for her evening of silence. Charles was back in his own chair by the fire, and a glass of brandy stood at his elbow. He winked at Leona. Oh, how wonderful he is, Leona thought. I must not let this terrible thing come between us. In spite of their pleasure in Lady Ailesbury-Rhode, her presence had been a strain on all of them, and now they subsided easily into the comfortable, companionable idle chat that was familiar to them. Even Charles seemed less guarded than usual. Leona's mouth was dry, and she sipped her brandy, waiting till Bridie should judge the time had come to go upstairs. After half an hour, Leona heard her slow, heavy tread, and the pause as she reached the landing. Then there was no sound from upstairs. Bridie must be waiting for the chance to get into Lady Ailesbury-Rhode's room. Leona threw Charles a
glance of tremulous appeal, which he misinterpreted.

He stood up and clapped his hands gaily. “All right, boys and girls. Leona is much too polite and much too fond of you all to tell you so, but she has a big day tomorrow. And I want to go to bed.”

A minute later, she stood in the doorway with him, waving goodbye and nodding with frantic enthusiasm at Dolly's repeated promises to see her tomorrow, to call her up first thing, to run right around if she needed anything at all.

Charles closed the door and leaned against it, making a comical face. “My God,” he said, “I thought they'd never go. You don't think I was too abrupt with them? I don't think so.”

“Of course you weren't abrupt, Charles, darling.”

“Dear child, you're positively tottering,” Charles said. “Come and sit down, and we'll have one little nightcap before we go up. I'll get it, darling; you look all in.”

Leona wondered what in the name of heaven was keeping Bridie upstairs so long. Surely the old lady was asleep by now. All Bridie had to do was walk to the bedpost, take the hot-water bottle, take it to the kitchen, refill it, and have it in Charles's bed by the time he got upstairs. I'd better keep him here a few minutes longer, she thought.