Turret Room Page 9

“And I could take care of him.”

  “Yes.” She groped to touch him and as she did, he went sagging down upon the pillow. “We must be quiet,” she breathed.

  “Yes.”

  Edie thought, Well, I won. Did I win? But I will win. And all I said is true.

  She was wild to help him, now. She felt so fond of him, and such pity. And such partisanship. She thought he deserved his child and the poor little child deserved this father.

  And Wendy deserved to be beaten.

  She got to her feet, wondering what was to be done, now, except wait for morning. She thought of the quilt, left behind them. She didn’t want somebody helpfully bringing it to this door. She whispered her purpose to the boy and left him.

  Everything seemed quiet in the Whitman house. There was no sound from upstairs, where Wendy had her nest. Edie flew down the lower flight, feeling lighter and freer, now that the boy was safe in the turret room. She wondered, briefly, about making another phone call, in the middle of the night, very urgently, to that Doctor Wesley. No. But she had glimpsed something there, on the chest where the phone was.

  She went to look closer. It was a paper napkin. One that belonged to the house. There was the name on the corner, in that reddish brown. The Whitmans. She picked it up, to make sure, and a pin pricked her finger. Pins? Edie took the thing over to the end of the sofa into the lamplight. The paper napkin had been folded and pinned. Had someone been making a boat? Or a hat, for a child? What child?

  She heard Mrs. Beck coming.

  Edie put her hand down and the thing it held slipped between the soft folds of her peignoir. Mrs. Beck was coming from the kitchen, carrying a cup of chocolate. In order not to spill it, Mrs. Beck was staring at it, steadily. The housekeeper came, placing her feet carefully, straight into the big room and then on a curve to the stairs, and then she went—up, across the balcony, up the higher flight. She had not turned her eyes, even once. She had not spoken. She had not even seemed to notice Edie there.

  Edie embraced the big puff of the quilt in both arms. She would wrap herself in it and sleep on a chair, on the floor, somewhere inside of her door where she could guard and yet be hidden. She was terrified.

  Edie had heard of tunnel vision. That woman had a tunnel mind, she was thinking. She scampered up to hide, not understanding why, after such hairbreadth escapes, she was so frightened, now.

  Wendy, in her ivory bed, would not, of course, drink the chocolate. Mrs. Beck knew that. Mrs. Beck would pretend to be hurt. After all Becky’s trouble? No? Good night, then. Very hurt. But, of course, not really, because Wendy had to hurt her sometimes. Mrs. Beck understood that very well.

  Conrad, on guard, stood in the moonlight and looked up at the tree. Sure, it could be done. He could do it himself. Swing hand-over-hand along that one big branch and you’d come right to the window. Your feet would hit the sill, just right, with enough spring left in your knees, and then you could take ahold. He could see where. A casement window. Say it was open? Easy as pie. Or even if it wasn’t open. Then, would this nut have taken off his shoes? Might. Some of these lunatics were pretty sly, or thought they were. The guard looked behind him at the darkest thicket. No wind. If a leaf moved, you’d know it, on a night like this.

  Harold Page did not move. He lay quietly, living the whole thing—with a difference—over again.

  It had been a bloody night in the small seaside city. Cars had moved, unluckily. A drunk had run head-on into a carload of merry widows. A man had had a flat and stopped too close to a curve. A sports car had glanced off his rear and rolled over into the path of a bus. Sirens had haunted the distances.

  At the hospital, speakers had called out doctors’ names. People had run in the corridors. But now, late, the town settled.

  Myra Whitman did not move.

  As if she had been hit on the head, Edith Thompson fell a thousand miles into sleep, on the floor of the turret room.

  The guards on the outside of the Whitman house shuffled their feet; they yawned.

  The moon moved and went down; the sun came up.

  Chapter Eight

  MRS. BECK was never tired. She was up and bathed and attired in a spotless fresh uniform, ready for what the day would bring. It had brought nothing, yet. Well, too early, she supposed. She crossed the big room to open the draperies, noting that there was dust in here. Well, Angie would be back on Saturday, which was tomorrow, and maybe Selma, too, so Mrs. Beck would give it a lick and a promise later on. Maybe, she thought.

  She peered out to see whether the guard was there, wondering about breakfast for three of them. She would wait for orders. Probably there would be no such orders.

  Mr. Whitman said, behind her, “At his post, is he?”

  “Oh yes, sir. He is there.” Mrs. Beck turned her head and gasped. Mr. Whitman had a gun in his right hand. He was fully dressed for the day, in his dapper fashion, and his small feet in their shining shoes trotted firmly.

  “Oh, this,” he said. “I’ll scarcely need it at the hospital, mad as he is.” Mr. Whitman was making for the chest under the balcony, to put the little gun away.

  Mrs. Beck said, agreeably, “No, sir. I’ll have your breakfast, sir. Coffee is made but I hadn’t expected … You are early, sir.”

  As he lifted his hand, Mrs. Beck caught a glimpse of motion and saw Wendy coming down the stairs. She was in her blue pajamas and her short peach-colored quilted robe. Mr. Whitman was saying, “No, no. No breakfast. They may have Mrs. Whitman on the operating table right now. I must get on. It wouldn’t do. After all, there is a coffee shop.” Now he looked up and saw Wendy on the balcony.

  He shut the top drawer and looked at his wrist.

  “Has my watch stopped?”

  “Ronnie’s coming,” Wendy said.

  “This early!” Her father goggled.

  “Maybe.”

  Mrs. Beck, listening carefully, widened her lower lip and felt her chin flatten. She willed Wendy to look at her. Wendy glanced at her and said, “I don’t want too much, Becky, but I want it now.”

  “I’ll fix breakfast right away, Miss Wendy,” said Mrs. Beck, in soft submission. She went around Mr. Whitman and into the dining room. She went no farther.

  “I don’t understand,” Mr. Whitman was saying. “Oh. You are coming to the hospital?” (Mrs. Beck rolled her eyes, he would never learn.)

  Wendy said bluntly, “What for?”

  “Oh. I thought perhaps you were going to stand by … Of course, it isn’t necessary, sweetheart. If it would upset you. Well …”

  (Mrs. Beck could almost hear the slow turn of his brain.)

  “But why is Ronnie coming so early?” he exclaimed.

  (Mrs. Beck listened hard for this answer.)

  “Maybe we’ll get our blood tested.” Then Wendy added impatiently, “so that we can get a marriage license, Daddy.”

  “But there’s no hurry about that, surely. Myra won’t be out of the hospital, at the very best, for some time yet.”

  “I know. But we could have a ‘little’ wedding or a ‘quiet’ wedding. Or something.”

  (Mrs. Beck jerked up her chin. Oh no, she thought. Oh no, you don’t!)

  Mr. Whitman was talking. “Sweetheart, mind you—I have not said that you may not marry Ronnie Mungo.”

  “That’s good. Because I’m of age, now. And you can’t say it.” It was sullen and there was latent anger and Mrs. Beck took a step.

  “But I must say,” Mr. Whitman was going on, “that both Myra and I were very much surprised by your announcement and we feel that this man, while he is of good family and has money—”

  (Oh no, groaned Mrs. Beck to herself, he will never learn how to handle her. He will always make a mess of it.) She was not at all surprised to hear Wendy’s jeering voice cut in, “Had money.”

  “No, no, but as Myra says, he is older, he has had so much experience …”

  “Myra,” said Wendy mockingly, “should be careful what she says.”

  Mrs. Beck ste
pped briskly into the big room.

  “Now, please.” Mr. Whitman was turning around, walking in a little circle in the way he had of doing when he didn’t know what to do. “Let us not … I haven’t the time,” he said.

  Wendy said, “I’m not asking for any of your time.”

  “Well … tell Ronnie that I want to talk to him.” Mr. Whitman was starting for the foyer.

  “Why should he talk to you?” Wendy called after him. “I don’t even have to talk to you.”

  She was spoiling to quarrel with somebody and Mrs. Beck guessed who would do. She walked farther into the room, smiling and nodding.

  Mr. Whitman saw her and was relieved. “Now I must go,” he said fussily (as if it mattered where he went or when). “Now I must be off. Now, I am late. I hope you won’t do anything too …” His eyes were asking Mrs. Beck to take care.

  “That’s all right, sir,” she said to him reassuringly.

  He went away, reassured. Leaving things to her. Where they belonged.

  Wendy stood lacing her fingers and looking at them. Mrs. Beck said, “Honey lamb …”

  But she wouldn’t look. She went skipping to the telephone. “If Ronnie is going to be here, he won’t be there.”

  Mrs. Beck went after her. “There is no hurry,” she crooned. “There really is no hurry. I told you—”

  “Oh, be quiet!” Wendy tossed her head and her eyes flashed defiance. “He should have left—”

  Then the phone rang, under her hand.

  Mrs. Beck took three steps backwards, folded her hands, and waited quietly.

  In the hospital, when they had found her, they had made some gestures, in the interest of opening the way for a miracle. But they had expected none, and none came. Myra was not to be resurrected. In the midst of this activity, however, a nurse had discovered the little scrap of torn pliofilm and now came grave and secret conferences among the staff. It was not until almost six in the morning that Dr. Sturdevant, Myra’s physician, asked whether the family had been notified.

  It turned out to be his duty to notify them. Someone else would call the police.

  By the time the good doctor reached a telephone, he had missed Theodore Whitman, the daughter told him. Mr. Whitman was on his way to the hospital now. So the doctor told Wendy that he had some very sad news, that Mrs. Whitman had died during the night, that he knew this must be a great shock—

  Wendy cut in on him. “Well, thank you, I guess,” she said in a voice that was both tense and forlorn.

  When she hung up, he let it go. He went down to the lobby to wait for the husband.

  Wendy hung up and looked at Mrs. Beck and the housekeeper looked deep into the brilliant eyes to see what might be stirring. She said softly, “I told you.” She thought she could read in the eyes that Wendy had not taken her meaning, until now. Ah, Mrs. Beck had thought not. But now, surely, Wendy would see that all was well and there was no need to do anything precipitously.

  Edith Thompson startled them by calling down from the balcony, “Was that for me?”

  Wendy said “No” sharply and turned her back. “It was nothing.”

  “Was it the hospital?”

  “Miss Wendy said it was nothing, Miss Edith,” said Mrs. Beck reprovingly.

  Edie came running down the stairs. “How could it be nothing?” she challenged.

  “A wrong number is nothing,” said Mrs. Beck, haughtily. Then she said to Wendy, “Come, lamb. Have your breakfast?”

  Wendy did not want to come. “I was going to make a phone call.”

  Mrs. Beck did not want to go. “Miss Edith?” She suggested where Edie should go. “Will you have breakfast?”

  “Oh, Becky,” said Wendy, almost gaily, “don’t fuss!”

  So their eyes met and one of Wendy’s brows flew up and Mrs. Beck thought, That’s all right. Still she did not want to leave these two together. Everything had to be watched, everything. And listened to. So the housekeeper drew apart, but she did not go.

  The one sound that penetrated to the turret room was the shrilling of the telephone. Edie had been sure it was Dr. Wesley, calling back. She had been ready. Dressed in her cheap green-and-white cotton check, and the little green flat slippers she had found, for two dollars, and wore so proudly, she had been brushing her hair.

  The boy sat in a chair because, he said, to lie on the bed too long was tiresome. His foot was better. Edie thought he seemed listless, but his fever was, at least, no worse. He was patiently waiting.

  Edie herself felt bold and strong this morning because, by her watch, Myra was already being prepared for the surgery that was going to make her able to tell the saving truth. It was a question of waiting patiently. Edie knew that it might be hours yet. She must smuggle him some food.

  They were talking. They had developed a muted way of speaking that was better than a whisper.

  “I’ve got it figured out, you know,” said Edie. “That is, if you said in your letter that you might come here.”

  “I said I wanted to see the baby. I said I could come.”

  “That’s a part of it, then. But listen. You were notified that the divorce was final? Then, Wendy must have been notified at the same time. All right—that’s why she announced her engagement on Sunday.”

  Edie stopped the motion of the hairbrush. Was it?

  “She’s hell-bent to marry Ronnie Mungo,” Edie kept on, aloud. “I don’t understand her. Or him, either. She—told me that money was the thing.”

  “Money?” The boy straightened and he looked as bewildered as she had felt by such a thing.

  Edie began to pull the brush slowly through her blond mane. As soon as Wendy was free to marry, Wendy had announced her engagement. That was on Sunday. On Sunday evening, her cousin Edith Thompson had arrived. Had Wendy, perhaps, wanted Ronnie Mungo openly committed to her before Edie appeared? No, surely that couldn’t have been a factor.

  But it was true that Ronnie Mungo had been what Wendy so sneeringly called Edie’s “dream boat” ever since the day that he had chosen her, out of a bevy of young girls, giggling and squealing at the tennis matches. The day he had taken her into the clubhouse for what? A lemonade! Memory made her squirm. He had asked her for a date, Ronnie Mungo, the, rich, the charming, the older-man. But nothing had ever come of it. She had been forced to break the date. (Wendy had seen to that.) He had seemed to take this lightly, had never called her again. Edie had wept more than one night. As Wendy knew. But Wendy couldn’t have been afraid …

  The boy was saying, “Something bugging you, Edie?”

  He was leaning back and for the first time she saw him as he must have been before Wendy Whitman had chosen him to destroy. Nice-looking, easygoing, physically attractive, full of good humor, cheerful and slangy. Aware no doubt of the counter-moral world that boys know, in which to go to bed and walk away was the thing to do and as often as possible. But a boy who, for all of that, had taken his marriage seriously and no doubt more seriously than he had seemed to take it.

  Now, Edie guessed, what appeared to be his naïveté was candor. Having had to pick up the pieces of himself, he had put them back together differently. He had been trained out of the normal ways that the young have, of covering their feelings over with such thick layers of currently fashionable slang phrases that the sentiments often sounded like their own opposites. She knew how kids talked. It was a part of her job to probe through to the loneliness, the panic, or even the human yearning to be good, that they hid from the whole world, and often from themselves. But this boy had been probed and in the process stripped.

  “What’s up?” he said now.

  She smiled at him. “Personal tangent. Where was I? Oh yes. About Ronnie Mungo. Wendy hasn’t been dating him very long. The family was surprised at the engagement. Nobody said a word against it, of course, because what Wendy wants, little Wendy gets. But now I’m pretty sure that Myra must have been the exception. Well, if she did say a few ‘well-chosen words’ on Wednesday night, Wendy is perfect
ly capable of flying into a fit. She’s not used to being denied. So they fought, and Myra fell, and out she conked. It had nothing to do with you at all.”

  “I guess not,” he said quietly.

  “But, now hear this. Wendy or Mrs. Beck or both of them knew what was in your letter. So they used it. They simply fitted you in. They didn’t care what happened to you. They wanted Charles Tyler to waste his time and keep away from Wendy. Because he was furious.”

  It made Edie furious. It made her sick. The callous ruthlessness.

  “And then, you see, you walked right in,” she said.

  “I wonder why I came?”

  Edie’s mouth opened.

  “I said it was to find out about the baby. And it was. Truly. Partly. I also thought that since I was going to school, and going for a … well, a career, I guess you’d say … I ought to face them first and face them down. By ‘them,’ I guess I was meaning Wendy. I wanted to show her that I was still alive, and okay, and going places. But it isn’t any use, you know, Edie. I would just like to get out of here, now.”

  She understood him. “Sure, and I guess I came,” she told him, “to show them that I was somebody, all by myself. But they are not impressed.” She whacked at her head. “Why should I care so much whether they notice me or not? That’s what I’m wondering, now.”

  “It sure looks like you’re the last to know why you do what you do.”

  She looked at him sharply. He was slumped in the chair, not necessarily directing his remark at anyone.

  All right, Edie admitted to herself. Wendy almost got it right. I came to lay a ghost. Here I am, being courted … by two men, in fact … Simon Carr. Good, kind, gentle, long-suffering, and very like my father. The other one, Tony Lynch, is poor, but lively, and is not going to be poor forever. He couldn’t care less about the poor, as such. Although he is absentmindedly moderately generous. So what is my problem? I won’t know until I lay the ghost of Ronnie Mungo, and all that phantom fun, the rich and easygoing good times, the glamour and the leisure I never got to try and never will. With Tony, I’ll work until he makes it, and then what will I do with myself? It’ll be late, for glamour. With Simon, I’ll work until I die. Will it have a meaning? I don’t know. I don’t know. How dear to my heart is … anything? I don’t seem to be in love. But was I? Once? With Ronnie Mungo?