Turret Room Page 8

  Wendy said, brutally contemptuous, “I’ll say I saw him do it, then. I’ll leave a note.”

  “Never mind. Go to bed.” Edie bent her head. She dared not look behind her at the sofa. She had made another bad mistake. She ought to have let her cousin go.

  She heard Wendy say, “Don’t you tell me what to do.”

  Wendy had turned and was coming down.

  “Let’s skip the whole thing,” said Edie, trying to smile. “I don’t understand you.”

  “I’ll say what I want.” Wendy’s voice was loud and it became louder. “And I’ll do what I want. What”—now she was screaming—”can’t you understand about that?”

  Edie took care to back away toward the fireplace. She was terrified, now. But she said, valiantly, “You don’t care what you do to somebody else?”

  “Hah, neither do you! You’re the dopiest—If you weren’t so busy fooling yourself, you’d know that nobody does.” Wendy was not quite screaming but her voice was very loud. “Nobody gives one damn about anybody else, not really. Or ever has.”

  It seemed to tear out of her as if this were the truth, as Wendy saw it, and Edie gasped. “Look, that is … just not so,” she said, with a pang that was almost pity.

  “It is so.” Wendy was screaming, again. Her face was flushed. Her neck was ugly. “It is so. Don’t try to sell me your stupid ideas! They’re lies!” Her head went back and the neck looked almost deformed. “Don’t you think I know,” said Wendy gutturally, almost strangling herself, “that Ronnie Mungo was your dream boat, when you were young? And you came back, looking for him. Hah!”

  But Edie could not take this in. She was pierced now by alarm and enlightenment. “I wish I could help you.”

  She said it and did not think she would be heard but Wendy shouted, “You—do—not! Just remember! Ron is not for you. He’s mine. Oh, I’m so tired—”

  “What the devil,” said Cousin Ted, irritably, “is the matter out here?”

  Edie whirled. There he was, in his bathrobe, a brocaded garment with a satin sash. His back hair stood up. She whirled again. Wendy had backed up against the lower balusters and seemed to be plastered there. Edie didn’t know what to do. She went sidling toward the sofa. She didn’t know anything better to do than to slip into her corner, and hide her feet, and feel the presence of the boy. Her brain seemed to stop; the last image that faded from its screen was the remembered sight of the gun in Ted’s pale hand.

  When Mrs. Beck heard that raving, she bit her lips and began to trot. Just as she was, having just come in at the kitchen door, she hurried through the rooms.

  She saw Wendy backed against the stair railing and her father crossing the carpet, sliding his feet, approaching her as he might approach a thornbush.

  Wendy said, “Oh, go away … everybody.…”

  Mrs. Beck heard the hysterical note. This would not do.

  Her father said, “Sweetheart … Now, sweetheart … What’s the trouble?” But he couldn’t do anything with her, and he knew it. So did Mrs. Beck know it.

  Wendy put her head back and shrieked. “Just … please … everybody … I don’t care. …”

  No, no, thought Mrs. Beck. Can’t have this. She was in the big room now, and she put her purse and the paper napkin out of her hands, upon the top of the chest. She said to Mr. Whitman, who looked goggle-eyed in his helplessness, “I’ll take her.”

  Wendy twisted and ducked away from her hand.

  “Not a thing to worry you, my lamb,” said Mrs. Beck softly.

  The girls bright eyes blazed. “I am not your lamb. I am nobody’s lamb.”

  But Mrs. Beck could handle her. She summoned up her powers and began to do so.

  Edie, twisted to look over the back of the sofa, could see the housekeeper’s black back, in that coat, but she could not see Wendy now, nor what Mrs. Beck was doing, with her right hand raised. She heard the housekeeper begin to croon, “Who was the prettiest girl at the party? Who was the prettiest one?”

  A sound came out of the girl; perhaps Wendy said ‘No’ but it was very weak.

  “Come, love, Becky will take you up to bed and make you cozy and she’ll fix some chocolate.”

  Now, Edie could tell that Mrs. Beck was touching Wendy’s nape, stroking it softly with bare fingers. Wendy seemed to be almost falling. Suddenly, the housekeeper knelt on the floor. Edie could see Wendy’s head hanging. Her hair had fallen over her brow. “Let Becky take your shoes, lamb? It was the shoes. Nasty shoes. Pinched you, didn’t they?”

  And Edie thought, appalled, She’s talking to a child—a child of three!

  Wendy answered, like a spoiled child of three, “I hate them.” She kicked off one shoe. It slid on the carpet. Mrs. Beck made crooning noises and gently removed the other shoe. “We’ll throw them away. That’s what we’ll do.” She gathered up the other one.

  “Throw them away,” said Wendy. “I don’t want them anymore.” She was turning, docilely, as Mrs. Beck, now standing, was gently pressing her to turn.

  “Come, lamb, come, love. Up we’ll go, now.”

  They went up the stairs. Wendy went up in her stockinged feet, quietly, docilely, and Mrs. Beck went up beside her, touching her, stroking her. Edie had time to think, in wonder, Who is enslaved to whom?

  Then Cousin Ted sighed, deeply. He walked in a small circle, sighing, “Oh, dear. Oh, dear.” Then he glared at Edie. “Why do you cause such trouble in this house?”

  Her mouth opened, and closed.

  “What are you doing there, anyway?” he said, beginning to bluster. “It’s after midnight. Go to your room.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Edie meekly. She did not move.

  “And try,” the man blustered, “to be a little more considerate of your cousin, and all of us, in this very difficult …” He spotted the quilt and turned down his mouth as if he had tasted something rotten. “What is this?”

  There was a loud knocking, somewhere. Edie’s heart had leaped once, lurched, and leaped again.

  “Oh, what now?” said Cousin Ted crossly, and he went trotting to the two steps, up them, across the foyer. Somebody was knocking loudly on the door.

  Edie slipped all the way under the quilt herself, with one arm over the boy’s shoulders, and breathed, “A little longer. We can’t give up now.…”

  He did not even move.

  He didn’t care too much, for himself, if it was now or later. He knew very well that he would be found. The floor was hard against his knees. He was perspiring. He noticed his discomfort. But it didn’t matter, either.

  He was thinking that once you had learned to suspect yourself, you did that first. Psyche and soma. Once you found out that your emotions could make you sick, you got into the habit. You blamed them. Like his foot. Plain old soma, but here he had walked on it, much too long and far, telling himself more than half of the way that it was mostly in his mind. Yes. He supposed that once you’d found out how some unknown part of you could make you do or feel what you didn’t know you wanted to do, or feel—and it could just take you over—once you’d learned how to watch out for that, then you tended to blame it first, every time. Was that why he hadn’t suspected? Kept blaming himself?

  He was trying to figure out why it was that he had never thought, in all this time, that Wendy might have forces loose in her, and taking over, that she couldn’t control. But now he could look back. Nobody had helped her. He hadn’t helped her. He hadn’t even known about such things in those days. Nobody had helped her at all. Not then. Not since?

  He shuddered, then he tried not to shudder because of Edie, who was so scared and trying so hard to be kind to him. He realized that it would be better for Edie if he were not found now, here, where he was. For himself, it didn’t matter. He would have to face up to it all, before long. To it all.

  The guard was the same man who had been in the house during the afternoon. “I heard some screaming?” His air apologized.

  “Ah.” Cousin Ted was trying to recover the rol
e of the master. “Shows you were alert. Good. But that was my daughter, poor little girl—very upset. Sensitive child. Her stepmother in the hospital and this wild man running loose. No sign of him?”

  Edie, arranged against the arm of the sofa, half cov-ered by the quilt again and ready to scream herself, thought, I won’t. She beat down her need to scream. No, I will not. I will not turn this boy over to such a fool as Cousin Ted. And his gun.

  She was suddenly brave and bold. Boldness was the safe way. “Cousin Ted?”

  “What? What?” Cousin Ted wanted everything smooth now, so that he could go to bed.

  “Would you please ask him to search my room? Because I’m afraid …”

  “Nonsense,” said Ted, with his usual confusion.

  “Which is your room, miss?” the guard said, sounding happy to have something to do.

  So she pointed, and the guard went cautiously up the lower flight, his gun drawn, with Cousin Ted, fussing and jittering, on his heels. The guard turned up the light in the turret room and both men went in.

  Edie peeled back the quilt to let the boy breathe a moment’s cooler air. “Don’t move,” she whispered. “Sssh … another minute, now. They …”

  He turned his head and his face was flushed but composed. He whispered, “My shoes.”

  She swung the quilt back to cover him, knowing that he had remembered what she had forgotten, and wondering at the steadiness of his nerves.

  Mrs. Beck came hurrying down the whole stairs, glancing in at the open door of the turret room on her way, but only briefly. She said to Edie, too absorbed in what she was doing to be surprised that Edie was there, “She’s fine, now. It was just a little nerve-storm. Best leave her to herself, Miss Edith. I know what she needs. I understand her.”

  Mrs. Beck sailed off to the kitchen. Wendy was quiet, now. Looking at nothing. She was often so, after an outburst. Trancelike. And a good thing, too. Mrs. Beck would take care not to stir her up again tonight. But all was well. Mrs. Beck had come in good time. She took milk from the icebox, thinking, I’ve always been lucky.

  Edie, waiting for what would come next, felt weary. But almost calm. They would find Harold’s shoes, no doubt. But they would not find Harold. Not in the turret room, of course, and not where he was, either. There was something to be said for the set of their minds. They were so sure they were keeping him out.

  The guard came down first and spoke to reassure her. “Nobody up there now, miss. I guess, though—”

  But now Cousin Ted bounced out of her room, waving the shoes. “Look! Look!” He was beaming. “Edie, how was it that you didn’t see these? No wonder you were frightened.” He made no more sense than usual.

  “Best to let Chief Tyler have those, sir,” said the guard respectfully. And added, “They were under your bed, miss.”

  Edie was looking terrified enough, she felt sure.

  “And here’s proof!” Cousin Ted brandished the shoes, delighted with himself. “Oh, I’ll keep them safe. And Charles shall have them, in the morning. He did get in by the tree. Well! I always thought so. I said so, don’t you remember?”

  The guard mumbled a ‘Yes, sir,’ although he remembered nothing of the sort.

  “Now, you … you will keep your eyes open and your gun ready,” Ted was admonishing.

  The guard said stolidly, “Sure will, Mr. Whitman.” He saluted and went up to the foyer. Cold air crept in from the wagging front door and touched Edie’s cheek again.

  Cousin Ted circled happily. “Well, I’m certainly glad that I had the foresight … Imagine, by the tree?” He stopped to look at her.

  Was he going to ask her, again, how it had been possible that she hadn’t seen those shoes? “The doctor phoned.” Edie spoke quickly.

  Ted was diverted. “Oh? Oh, dear …”

  “Myra is in for surgery at six A.M. But Wendy said they don’t think it is necessary for you to come down now.”

  That diverted him. He said earnestly, goggle-eyed, “They would know. They are the experts. I am exhausted. I’ll simply go down very early. Yes, that’s wise. Oh, dear …”

  His eyes darted this way and that. He wanted in the worst way to get back to his bed.

  Edie said, as kindly and as warmly as she could, “You’ve had so much to worry you.”

  “Yes, I have,” he said nobly. “Some rest, yes. You, too. Good night.”

  Edie watched him go. You get to be a liar in this house, she thought. You get to handling people.

  She breathed long and free for a moment before she peeled the quilt away. The boy lifted himself up, stiffly. His face was flushed. Heat radiated from his body. The skin around his eyes looked bruised blue.

  “Are you all right?” breathed Edie. “Oh, listen … never blame yourself for being afraid of Wendy.”

  “I know. I could hear. I’ll … just go out and speak to the guard …” His foot failed him as he put weight on it. He managed to twist and fall, sitting …“in a minute.”

  She said, “I think you had better not. My room is safer than ever. Now, they have searched it.”

  “I can’t hide like this anymore.”

  “I know it’s not a very honest position,” she babbled, “but we were lured into it, you might say, and now—”

  “I can’t, Edie.”

  “You’ll have to, Harold,” she said, severely.

  He looked at her gravely, waiting to hear why.

  “Because of the baby,” she said. “Surely, you see that you’ll have to get him away from Wendy, and them, and bring him up yourself?”

  This was clear to her now. Very clear. Like a beacon. She wasn’t analyzing, she just knew, that in all the hullabaloo, this was the guiding light. The true consideration. The justification and the far sight.

  She watched his face as it softened to delight. “If I could …” She had touched a deep dream, a hope hidden.

  “You don’t dare not try,” she said flatly. “So come on. And quickly.”

  He went with her up to the turret room. Edie turned off the light at the door, fearing too many shadows on a blind. She closed the door behind them and helped him, in the darkness, until the bed creaked under his weight. Edie sank to the floor beside him. She heard his throat clear to speak and she hushed him.

  So he whispered, “Do you think it was Wendy? Do you think she had a … quarrel with Myra?”

  “I know it,” she whispered back. “I have known it. Oh, how do you know things? Tensions. Little looks. I was wondering … oh, long before you came. And I think Mrs. Beck knows it, too. Don’t you?”

  “But why”—he was gasping—”why don’t the Whitmans begin to wonder?”

  They were avoiding the mention of what might be wrong with Wendy, that ought to have been noticed.

  “Oh, because their version suits them and they never change. Not if they can help it.” Edie felt grim about this. “But—I don’t see how to prove she did it, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, she’s not going to get away with blaming you,” Edie whispered fiercely. “It’s too much. I won’t have it.” She was as good as saying to him, it’s not your business anymore. And it was not. It was Edie’s business, because there was a child, and Edie knew these people.

  “That woman is bad for Wendy. Oh, she is bad,” Harold mourned.

  “I know.” Edie was not ready to think of Wendy as a victim, of society or circumstance. “But I’ve known girls …” So-called “underprivileged” girls, Edie remembered, who had been physically and even mentally stunted by an environment. “… living in a world Wendy’s never even heard of,” she went on indignantly, “and doing better. Wendy’s like a newborn. She always has been, Harold. Just as if she never did find out that other people can feel at all. Not that she doesn’t care. She doesn’t know. I’m afraid of her.”

  (But I’ll beat her, Edie thought. Although not physically, I will beat her, this time.)

  “You’ll absolutely have to take that baby and you keep him and love hi
m and teach him,” she went on. “The courts are tough, though. It won’t be easy. You have too many counts against you, already.”

  She could sense that he stiffened. “Berserk, and all, you mean?”

  “And prejudice,” she raced on, “in favor of the mother.”

  “I guess some men …” He was whispering on breath that moved both in and out. “I can’t help it, about my baby … I do care.”

  Edie believed him. She didn’t call it innocence or naïveté, but a kind of normal decency. A kind that could get you hurt, however.

  “I’ve seen some women,” she said, truthfully, “who don’t care at all. Wendy doesn’t want him.”

  “What does Wendy want?” She heard him murmuring, “I wish I … ever knew.”

  “Ssh. Listen to me. What if Myra, after the operation tomorrow, is able to say that it was Wendy? Then, you’ll never be arrested for this trouble. There won’t be that on your record, too. And neither will Wendy qualify to keep the baby anymore. Everything will be easier. So shouldn’t we wait, and leave things as they are, a little while longer?”

  Edie was arguing with somebody. She wasn’t sure with whom. “I don’t want the police to put you through some miserable inquisition, now,” she went on. “You’re not feeling well. It isn’t fair. It isn’t—wise, either.”

  “For the baby?”

  (Yes, for the baby. For you, too. I care, thought Edie. Something, here, is all mixed up with what I really care about.)

  “The only thing … you ought to see a doctor.” Edie had begun to see that she was arguing with herself, and her conscience was stirring.

  “Oh, that’s nothing.” He dismissed the state of his health.

  “I know I’m busybodying,” she burst out. “I just can’t help it.” She waited for him to dispute her arguments.

  But he did not. “I understand about him being deaf, you know,” the boy was whispering. He seemed far away, in a dream. “My father was a—you know—useful man and we loved him and my brother.… It’s nothing so terrible.”

  “I know.”