The Trespassers (30 page)

“Let’s go up, and talk there, darling,” Jasper said finally. It was barely nine o‘clock.

“Oh, lovely,” Vee answered. “You have a cool shower, and I’ll have a cool shower, and it will be fine.”

Jasper’s room was across the hall from Vee’s. When he went in, he saw the bed already turned down for him and smiled at the routine fakery that Vee still insisted upon following. He would have to wake in the early morning and go back there. Vee would never learn that Dora or any other maid could tell at a glance whether a bed had been honestly slept in all night, or whether it had been occupied only for an hour or so. But there was no arguing with women about things like this. He had tried it, with Vee, once or twice at the beginning of the summer, but she had been shy and charming in her stubborn refusal to give up the attempt at deception.

He showered quickly and went into Vee’s room. She was still in her bathroom. She was taking a tub, not a shower, his ears told him. He lay down on the wide bed. The light from the bedside table lamp hit his eyes, and he reached out and turned it off. He heard and interpreted every sound that came from beyond the closed door. The brisk toweling, the slap, slap of a large powder puff, the squishy sound of mouth rinsing—it was pleasant to lie in the dark waiting, resting at last when every yelling nerve cried out for rest and sleep…

Several minutes later, Vee came out. She was wearing a new chiffon nightgown; it was gray, the pale, silvery gray of a morning fog.

There was no word from him, and in silence herself she reached under the shade of the bedside lamp and clicked on the light. Then she straightened and looked at him expectantly.

He was asleep. His eyelids fluttered under the impact of the light, and he gave his head a brief shake as if to rid it of an offending touch. But his eyes remained closed.

She was taken aback. Blood rushed in tumult to her throat and face. A strange, embarrassed feeling stole over her, as if at a rebuke.

She stood, looking down at him. Slowly the feeling changed to concern for him. Poor, tired Jas. Let him sleep for a bit—he would wake in half an hour and be refreshed and grateful for the rest.

She turned the light out and crossed the room to a small slipper chair near the window. She sat looking out at the night, listening to the wind spring up over the water. For half an hour she remained there, then she walked back to the bed and leaned closely over him. His breathing was deeper, his body in the complete relaxation of deep sleep.

She watched his face as she once more switched the light on. This time there was no stir. She slipped into bed beside him, propped herself up against the headboard, reached for a book, and began to read. Each time she turned a page, she did so with watchful care, lifting the page up between thumb and index finger, carrying it quietly over to the left and depositing it on the preceding page.

For an hour she read. Once he stirred, and she looked over toward him quickly. But he only turned further away from the light and slept on. She persisted in her reading. At midnight, she closed the book and lay back, thinking. She knew what exhaustion could be, she knew how it could blanket every other need, every other purpose. That’s all this was.

“But it wouldn’t have happened a year ago,” her mind slyly noted for her.

Jasper shifted position. She turned to look at him. He had rolled over on his back. His lips parted. He began to snore.

She reached out to the lamp and the room was in darkness. She slid down into bed, turned on her side, her back toward him. She had heard him snore many times. She had never been kept awake by it before. Now her attention was riveted by it.

Endlessly she lay, seeking drowsiness and sleep. Her thoughts sharpened and sped. Something ached somewhere—she could not soothe it away. She stretched her hand out for a cigarette; the brief flare of the match showed her Jasper’s face, the lips open, the muscles slack. She turned quickly away.

Two or three times more she reached for a cigarette, smoking in the dark. Each time she ground out the butt, she lay back relieved, sure that now she would sleep.

Finally she reached her hand out to the lamp, turned on the light, and looked at her watch. It was nearly three.

She got up, moving gingerly lest she disturb him. With no sound, she crossed to her bureau, opened the bottom drawer. She drew her filmy new nightgown over her head, folded it neatly, and put it away. She closed the drawer, reached into her closet for the nightgown she had worn the night before, and put it on.

Then she crossed the hall to the other bedroom and lay down in the neatly turned-down bed.

The pale gray of dawn slowly whitened into morning and then yellowed into sunshine. Through her lids Vee responded to it as to an agreed-upon signal. She sat up and looked sleepily around the room.

A dull, metallic thud sounded somewhere. She jumped awake now and ran to the window in sudden fear. Jasper’s car stood in the gravel driveway; Jasper was not there. She leaned against the window sill, jeering at herself. The thud was the door of the refrigerator downstairs, Dora starting breakfast. Nerves, sleepless hours, nameless apprehension—last night
had
put her in a state.

She went into her own room. She leaned over Jasper, shook him gently. “Hey,” she whispered, “time to shift gears.”

He opened his eyes, looked at her, and smiled drowsily. “That’s quite funny,” he said and sank into sleep once more. But she persisted. This part had to be, it was routine. “Darling, wake up. You can go back to sleep in there.”

Obediently he sat up. He put a hand up to his chin, pulled his jaw down, and yawned. Then like a sleepy child he went uncertainly to the door.

“It was lovely, darling,” he said slowly.

‘What was, Jas?”

“You.”

He was gone. She lay back, uncertainly laughing. He thought—

Suddenly the laughter wiped out of her heart. No, oh, no, it couldn’t be that it had become so casual to him, so damn ordinary that he merely assumed it had been. What in God’s very name, was happening?

She was springing angry. She wanted to go in to him, call him names, hit out at him any way she could. Instead she buried her face in the pillow.

After a bit, she broke one of her own rules and smoked a cigarette before she had brushed her teeth. “It tastes fine,” she said defiantly and half aloud. She watched the smoke rise straight up in the still air and then feather out at the top of its own steady gray column. Her anger began to feather out into an intangible shape also.

She decided to dress and go downstairs. She breakfasted alone on the porch. The morning sun felt benign, and she was comforted. When Jasper came down to her, she rose to greet him and her smile was open and without constraint. He looked sheepish.

“God, darling, I sure did run out on everything, didn’t I?” he said. ‘Were you angry?”

“You were pretty done in, weren’t you?”

“Lord, I was plumb beat.”

“Beaten.”

He laughed. There was gratitude in it, and relief. He ate enormously, glancing at the newspaper headlines, keeping up a line of running comment on the growing crisis over the Sudetenland. “Another Nazi Party rally next week at Nuremberg—Hitler and Göring going to scream
Lebensraum
in public again.” …Oh, God, more plebiscites.”…“How about your Vederles, Vee? Any news about them?”

It was the first time he had ever asked for news about the Vederles. He always seemed interested if she herself spoke of them, but for him to take the initiative was a surprise.

“Nothing much seems to be happening,” she said. “I worry about them.”

“No use, I guess. These things always take time.”

“I suppose so. I haven’t heard from them for weeks. His last letter said there was some peculiar ruling about which quota Frau Vederle would go on, he wasn’t sure how that would come out. He might even have to come over ahead of them, so he was proceeding anyhow with the new applications. I suppose that’s cleared up by now, or I would have heard.”

“One of these days they’ll be cabling from a boat to meet them at a dock.”

“I hope so. But it’s nearly six months now. They must be pretty miserable, just the waiting and wondering.”

He made no answer. He had turned to the radio column in the newspaper and was examining it, frowning, completely absorbed.

“Damn, there was a thing I meant to listen to last night—” He broke off with a grin. “Better not mention last night again, I bet.”

Vee reached a hand across to his.

“Jas, dear, I
was
a little put out when I saw you were gone for good,” she said in the reluctant voice of confession. “But I’m glad that you rested. This is another day.”

He took her hand and kissed it. He squinted up at the clear, deep sky. He waved at the universe.

“And it’s ours, and made to order. We’ll swim, and lie around on the sand, and drink swizzles, and I won’t think about my troubles for one minute.” He lit a cigarette, handed it over to her, and lit another for himself. “And tonight’s ours, too.”

An hour later, while they were swimming, the telephone rang in the house. Out in the water, they both heard the shrill insistence of it. Dora appeared in the doorway, nodding to Jasper.

“Oh, damn everything,” he said. “That’ll be Giles or Ken.”

Vee followed him out, and sat down on the big beach towel on the sand. It was nearly ten minutes later that he came out to her.

“I’ve got to get on a plane to Cleveland,” he said abruptly.

“Oh.”

“The biggest damn tire account on the air—Giles thought they were signing tomorrow for a daily quarter hour for the first thirteen weeks. They said they would, the agency said they would. Giles celebrated all Friday night. So now they tell their advertising agency they think they’ll wait awhile and see how we make out.”

She listened to every word; at the same time she was telling herself that not one sign of anything must show in her face, voice, eyes.

“And you have to go and persuade them yourself?”

“God damn it, a year from now, I’d kick them off the network for even trying this on. But now—sure, I’ve got to go out and kiss their God-damn behinds.” He ground his teeth so that she could hear the sound.

“I’m sorry, darling,” she said. “It’s a shame you can’t have a day for fun.”

“Damn being polite, anyway,” he said angrily. “You’re angry, and it’d be better to admit it.”

“Why, I—”

“Sure you are. All women are. They can’t understand that a man’s work comes first, that it’s got to,
got
to come first, always, and forever first.”

“Oh, Jasper, don’t. I do understand. Of course I’m sorry that we can’t have today, but I do understand.”

“You say you do. Sure. Then you’ll confess you were ‘a little put out’ and I’ll feel like a brute. You
hate
having your day spoiled; that’s all you’re able to see.”

“Jasper, you’re being impossible.
That’s
what I hate.”

“That’s not what you hate. You hate the network, you hate it because it’s bigger than you and me being together, because it takes everything I’ve got and that’s what
you
want.”

“That’s not true. I don’t hate the network. I never thought of hating it.”

“You think I don’t know. Women live by love, and men by work, and God damn any man who forgets it.” He glared down at her. “Or any woman.”

She stared up at him. His rage was Gargantuan; his strange forehead with the protuberant arcs of bone over his eyes menaced her. The eyes were dead and cold wrath.

Slowly she rose to her feet, looking up into his face all the time. Erect, silent, she stared at him. He stared back. Then she turned away and began to walk up the beach. A low stone wall separated her strip of shore from the next one. She climbed over it and went on. Beyond the next wall, the land curved inward and she was out of sight. She flung herself down and bent her face into rigid hands. She forced herself to sit there for a long time. When she went back to the house he was gone

The Cleveland plane would not leave for two hours. When Jasper arrived at his apartment and discovered that, he gritted with exasperation at Giles. To have just driven down at top speed and then to find a note saying that Giles had confused the Sunday and daily air schedules—in his present mood of feeling baited and angry the wait seemed insupportable.

He did not want to think. Since he had left Vee he had not wanted to think. The drive had helped him, for he had had to clamp his entire attention to the physical problem of sending the car at headlong speed in and out of the sluggish Sunday traffic.

Now he was faced with two hours of thinking. He poured himself a drink, took a cold shower, and dressed again. An hour and a half. He reached for the telephone, and then pushed it from him. Time enough to discuss things with Giles on the plane.

He reached for a stack of correspondence, memorandums, reports, that had piled up. He read the top sheet and then his arm swept the whole stack slithering across his desk. He was sick of reading reports and letters. He was sick of everything. He sat motionless.

Yes. By God, this was the time for a final showdown. He was always too pressed for time when he talked it over with Beth. Now he would have a full hour; they could make some headway. He dialed her number.

She was at home. Yes, alone. Within ten minutes he was pressing a bell under which a strip of engraved card said, “Mrs. Jasper Crown.”

Beth opened the door of her small apartment.

“Hell, Beth. I have about an hour, so—” She nodded. For a moment, she stood square in the doorway, looking at him closely. Then she moved back and he could enter the small, beautifully furnished room behind her.

She was almost as tall as he was. She had dark-brown hair, loosely threaded with gray; her eyebrows made very black and delicate crescents over her sharply brown eyes. Her skin was pale and her mouth scarlet. She was Jasper’s age and looked older, because she was too thin, too fined down in mouth and neck and body.

She seated herself and looked at Jasper. She had not yet said one word. He stood before her, watching her. There was something at once spiritless and stubborn about the way she sat. Vee’s face came to him, so vivid and responsive. He felt a torment of longing to be with her that very moment, to make up their quarrel, to behave as other men behaved. He meant to, he wanted to, yet…