12

William Dobie Woodcock the third stood in front of the library window, holding a copy of the Atlantic that he had picked up from the coffee table, and absently turned the pages. When Barbara came into the room, he turned and smiled. He put down the magazine. ‘Hello, there, Barbara!’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘How are you?’

‘Hello, Billy,’ Barbara said.

‘You’re looking fine, just fine,’ he said.

‘And so are you, Billy.’

‘Well, I can’t complain!’ he laughed.

He was a short, heavy-set young man, just six years older than Barbara. He had started losing his hair in college and was now completely bald; only a thin fringe of sandy-coloured hair above his ears was left to explain the nickname he had hated in his youth—‘Carrot Top’—and now his round, pink and shiny face gave him more the appearance of a wax cherub than a vegetable. Still, his soft fleshiness and comfortable roundness (Cousin Billy often boasted that he was both a gourmet and a gourmand) gave him a singularly edible look. Unlike most plump men, he was extremely fastidious about his clothes. Today, though his face and forehead were aglow with perspiration, he wore an immaculately pressed seersucker suit, a crisp, small-figured bow tie, and white buckskin shoes that were unmarred by even the slightest smudge of dirt. He squeezed Barbara’s hand between his soft, moist palms. ‘I was glad to hear you’d come up this weekend,’ he said. ‘Sit down, Barbara.’

They sat on the brown sofa and Billy Woodcock crossed his legs carefully, hitching up his trouser knees to preserve their crease. ‘How does the old place seem?’ he asked her.

‘Just the same as ever,’ she said.

‘Well, good, good. That’s good, Barbara. Yes indeedy,’ he said and rubbed his hands together. ‘It’s a grand old place, this farm.’

Barbara smiled. She had grown used, over the last few years, to Cousin Billy’s jolly paternalism and his occasional pomposity. After all, he was president now of the paper company, and as a young man who had been given vast responsibilities in the family, he took these responsibilities with great seriousness.

‘Well, Barbara,’ he said. ‘I suppose you’re wondering why I wanted to have this little talk with you. Why I wanted to see you alone this afternoon.’

‘Well, frankly, I am,’ Barbara said.

‘Don’t blame you, by golly!’ he said. ‘Don’t blame you a bit. By the way,’ he said, looking around, ‘where is Peggy?’

‘She’s out,’ Barbara said. ‘She went somewhere in the car. I don’t think she said where she was going—’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s just as well. Just as well. I want this little talk to be strictly entre nous, Barbara. After all, you’re the older of you two girls and on business matters, I’m counting on you to assume responsibility.’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’ve always felt kind of sorry that you and I were—well, that we were never closer. And well, I guess I’m to blame for that. You know how it is with this company, Barbara. I eat, sleep and drink the paper business—not much time for socialising with the family. But it’s too bad. We’ve never got to know each other the way we should because I’ve just been too busy with the company.’

‘Yes, I know,’ she said, and remembering that Cousin Billy responded quickly to simple flattery, she said, ‘Everyone’s so grateful, Billy, for all you’ve done.’

He smiled modestly. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ve done my best. That’s all I can do—my best.’

‘You’ve certainly done that, Billy.’

His face grew serious again. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘this little matter I want to talk to you about today concerns your sister, concerns Peggy. Now, you know that nobody has got a higher regard for your sister than I do. I’m very fond of Peggy, extremely fond. And I like her husband, too, Barney. Much to my surprise he’s worked out pretty well down at the office, and I’m real pleased, all things considered. I think he’s fitted in pretty fairly well, and that’s a pleasure. Of course he’s still got a lot to learn. This is a family company, always has been and always will be, and some of our—well, our methods—probably seem a little funny and strange to him. But what he’s got to learn is that our methods, the way we do things, are based on experience and know-how, over a hundred years of experience and know-how. They’ve been time-tested you might say. However—’ and he hesitated, holding up his hand, ‘that doesn’t mean we’re not receptive to new ideas when they come along, either. If the ideas are good ones, that is. Now, Barbara,’ he said, ‘how much do you know about human nature?’

‘What do you mean?’ she asked him.

‘Well, let me put it this way. I’m quite a student of human nature. In this business, I’ve had to be. And human nature is a funny thing, a very funny thing. And yet if you size it up correctly you can pretty much predict what it will do. Now take this Barney character. I’ve been studying him and I think I’ve got him sized up pretty fairly well. What he is, is a misfit. Now, Barbara, don’t interrupt. You may like him and so do I, we all do. Liking is one thing, but human nature is something else again. He’s a misfit, he’s a dissenter and he’s a very unhappy and mixed-up fellow. Why? It’s easy enough to see why. He walked into this family—off the street as it were—and found something pretty big. We’ve been big in this town for over a hundred years and he didn’t expect that kind of bigness, didn’t understand it. It’s outside his realm of understanding, what we are and the way we do things. Still, he’s no dope. He’s come out of that Harvard Business School with a lot of smart-aleck ideas. ‘Decentralisation’ he said to me the other day, or some other fool thing. Because he’s no dope he tries—rather than to fit in—to make his presence felt by trying to switch things around, overturn the apple cart. That’s what I mean by a misfit. He’s a trouble-maker and if he doesn’t decide to shape up pretty soon, I’m—no kidding—going to have to take a few steps. But anyway, the interesting thing about these misfit types, if you understand human nature, is that they’re misfits wherever they go. What I mean is that if he’s a misfit in this company, chances are he’ll be a misfit in the next one—and the next one after that. It’s too bad, really, but that’s what it amounts to. It’s according to the laws of human nature. Now the only unique thing about this company is that it’s a family company, our family. In other words, the family is the company and vice versa. So what I say about him not fitting into the company applies to the family, too, don’t you see? Which is what makes it too bad. Now I’m telling you all this because I think you’re mature enough to understand it. Peggy isn’t. She doesn’t understand it—not yet. So she’s pushing him along in his smart-aleck schemes and what she’s doing is riding for a great, big fall. Barbara, has Peggy asked you anything about the stock you own?’

Barbara said, ‘Well, Billy, I can’t lie to you. She has. She mentioned it this morning.’

He smiled, satisfied. ‘I thought she would. She’s been hounding all the stockholders—except me, of course. She’s smart enough not to try to hound me! What did you tell her?’

‘It came as quite a surprise to me,’ Barbara said. ‘I didn’t know what to say, really. I asked her to let me think about it.’

‘Did she ask to buy it?’

‘Either that or to let her have my proxy for a while.’

He nodded. ‘Well, Barbara, what you do with your stock is up to you. Entirely. It’s yours, you own it, and far be it from me to try to tell you one way or the other what to do. But I can tell you this: Whatever Peggy wants to do, she’s not being very smart about it. In fact, she’s being pretty stupid. Want to know why?’

‘Yes,’ Barbara said, ‘why?’

‘Well, let’s start out by assuming she can get her hands on a majority of the stock. What could she do with it? Vote herself head of the company, or Barney? That’s pretty ridiculous. We’ve got a couple hundred employees down there. Good, loyal and honest employees. Some of them like Sam Pike have been with us for over forty years. Do you know what the average length of service of our employees is? Well, the average length of service is a little over ten years, and that’s a lot. It’s one of the things we’re proud of. Do you think any one of these men would sit back and let a woman tell them what to do? Not likely! Do you think they’d sit back and let a holy Roman Catholic tell them what to do, a guy who gets his orders straight from Rome? Never!’

‘But Barney isn’t a Catholic,’ Barbara said. ‘Not any more.’

‘Once a Catholic always a Catholic, that’s what the Church itself says, isn’t it? That’s what my employees think, anyway. They don’t care whether he still goes to church or not. I know these men, Barbara. I know them inside and out. But anyway, that’s only reason A why she’s being foolish. Want to hear reason B?’

‘Yes,’ Barbara said. ‘What is reason B?’

‘Reason A is assuming she could get her hands on enough stock to have controlling interest. Reason B is that she can’t do it, anyway.’

‘Why not?’

‘Where would she get it? She has stock of her own, true—about a hundred and thirty shares as I recall. Then you have stock—roughly the same amount. It was left to both you girls by your grandfather. Now your father also has some stock, but most of his is held in trust—he can’t sell it, all he gets is the income from it. I’m one of the trustees and Mary-Adams is another. Your father owns a few shares outright—about twenty-five I think. If she could get your hundred and thirty, plus your father’s twenty-five, along with her own hundred and thirty—that would still add up to only two hundred and eighty-five shares, or not enough. And I’d frankly be surprised if your father let her have those twenty-five shares of his. He wouldn’t do it, not even in one of his most befuddled moments.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ she asked quietly.

‘I mean—I’m sorry, that wasn’t a very nice thing to say,’ he said. ‘But you know as well as I, don’t you, that your father these days sometimes gets a little—well, confused.’

‘You mean he drinks too much?’

‘I didn’t say that! I didn’t say that, Barbara. But, well, he has been warned about the drinking. A couple of doctors I know have warned him, and I’ve warned him. But, far be it from me to tell him how he should live his life. How he lives his life is his business and nobody else’s.’

‘If he’s killing himself, it’s our business, isn’t it?’ she asked. ‘It certainly is my business. Is it that serious?’

‘Nobody says it’s that serious,’ Billy said. ‘Nobody says that. I’m sorry we got on this subject, on this chain of thought, because it has nothing to do with what we’re talking about.’ He removed a handkerchief from his pocket and swabbed his damp brow. ‘Well, anyway,’ he said, ‘to get back to cases. Peggy can’t get enough stock anyway, to do what she wants. Mary-Adams and I each have over five hundred shares and needless to say we’re not going to turn anything over to Peggy, nossirree! But anyway, there’s a third reason which we can call reason C.’

‘What is reason C?’ she asked him.

‘Reason C is—’ he paused significantly, ‘reason C is that any arrangement such as Peggy and her husband want, or any attempt to make an arrangement like that, would be out of keeping with the terms of your grandfather’s will. Don’t forget that it was your own grandfather, not even mine, but my grandfather’s brother, who set things up the way they are. He’s the one who established the status quo. And it was his express desire, expressed in his will and even long before he died, that control of his mills should rest in my side of the family, not your father’s. But you’ve heard all about that before. You know that story, and why things are set up the way they are. There’s no need to go into all that story again.’

She did, indeed, know that story. She had not thought about it for some time, but it came back to her now with the realisation that it was the story, undoubtedly, that her father was planning to tell in the book he was writing. She had heard it—not all at once, but in fragments. Most of it she had heard from her mother, but some of it had come from Woody and some from her other cousins, Jeffrey and Talcott. She remembered it all. She remembered, too, her grandfather’s old office at the mill, where most of it had happened.

For the president of a company whose net worth was then estimated to be in the neighbourhood of two and a half million dollars, Grandfather Woodcock’s office had been austere. It was small, barely twelve feet square, and its furnishings were Spartan. In addition to his desk and tip-back chair, there were only two other pieces of furniture—a gaudily decorated Mosler safe of ancient vintage and a large, leather-cushioned chair with flat wooden arms, facing the desk, for visitors. Beside the chair stood a brass spittoon. The floor was uncarpeted and the single window was undraped. The amount of sunlight in the office could be regulated by raising or lowering the brown paper shade. No decorative touches had been supplied except, resting against the wall on top of the safe, Grandfather Woodcock’s framed diploma from Yale on which the year 1887, in Roman numerals, was barely distinguishable, and on his desk, facing him, an autographed portrait of President Herbert Hoover. In one corner of the office, a high pile of shoeboxes contained samples of various Woodcock Paper products. One wall of the office was glass, permitting Grandfather Woodcock a clear view across the main floor of the mill; the other three walls were painted a muddy shade of brown. The office had no door so that his secretary, Mrs. McGraw, could hear every word spoken in the office from her desk, just outside. Though the office was gone now, replaced by more modern quarters, it was to this dusty and frowsty place that her father had gone that morning in the early 1930’s, shortly after he had been given the title of executive vice-president, with his idea. She imagined her father, a young, handsome man, sitting opposite her grandfather in that cracked and sagging, leather chair.

A parkway was being planned, a modern superhighway that would extend from the Connecticut-New York border at Greenwich to the outskirts of New Haven, across Fairfield and New Haven Counties. There had been rumours from the State Legislature in Hartford, and the rumours were rapidly becoming fact. Preston had studied the map of the area. It was clear to him that the parkway would pass through Burketown.

As he saw it, there were two possibilities. One, that the parkway would pass through the west side of town, through the section known as West Hill. Two, that the parkway would pass to the east. Preston asked his father to consider the general terrain of these two areas. West Hill was a gentle, sloping, uncleared rise with no physical obstructions; to build a parkway across West Hill would require little more than cutting a clearing in the woods. On the east side, however, was the river and the hilly, rocky river bed. To direct a highway through this section would require, Preston was sure, building at least one and possibly two bridges across the winding little river; bridge-building, as everyone knew, added enormously to the cost of constructing a highway. Did it not—he asked his father—seem clearly logical that the parkway would thread its way across West Hill?

Grandfather Woodcock considered this for several minutes. Yes, he had finally agreed, perhaps it did, but what of it? He saw what Preston was driving at, but how could Preston predict the precise path of the parkway in the hundreds of acres on West Hill? Preston had a simple answer to this. It was not necessary to predict the exact route. If the parkway were to go through West Hill the entire surrounding area would quickly increase in value. A parkway meant roadside restaurants, gasoline stations, new sites for industry and housing developments. It was not, in other words, a ribbon of land that Barbara’s father proposed to buy, but the entire area that the coming parkway would affect. It was roughly fourteen hundred acres and the average price of West Hill acreage was temptingly low.

Preston’s plan, of course, involved a considerable sum of money. As Barbara remembered, it was around fifty thousand dollars. Connecticut had been harder-hit than most states by the depression, and the Woodcock Paper Company had fared only a little better than others. Though they had been able to keep their doors open, production had been cut and the mill was operating on only a fraction of its normal labour force. Fifty thousand dollars, at a time like this, was a lot. And yet Grandfather Woodcock had never turned down anything that promised to bring him a profitable return. He had studied the map for several days, tracing and retracing the two alternate routes that his son had mentioned. At last he called Preston into his office again and told him to go ahead with the plan.

The property was purchased in the name of the Woodcock Paper Company. Preston handled all the details. When the purchase was completed, some months later, Preston had said to his father, ‘You won’t regret it. Wait and see what happens to West Hill when the parkway goes through.’ He had been confident; it had been one of the most supremely confident moments in his life.

But, several months later, when the engineers’ plans for the Merritt Parkway were published, the route chosen through Burketown was to the east, across the river. East-side property owners made tidy sums of money.

Afterward, Grandfather Woodcock said nothing. He refused to discuss it. He withdrew into a silence that, through the years, shadowed their whole relationship. He never trusted Preston’s judgment again. To be sure, the West Hill property eventually became valuable. As the town grew during the war and after it, streets were built across its slopes and the little look-alike houses that Barbara had passed again this morning had been scattered along them. Soon the section was shorn of its covering trees and contained a shopping centre, a drive-in movie theatre and a roller-skating rink. But this, to Grandfather Woodcock, did not help exonerate his son. This had come too late, and it had come as an accident. His son had promised him a parkway. And he had faulted on the promise.

Grandfather Woodcock mentioned the West Hill incident to Preston only once, many years later. Barbara remembered it clearly. It was a few weeks before her grandfather had died and she and Carson had been at the farm and had heard her father tell her mother about it. Preston had visited his father in the Prospect Avenue house with another business proposition. Grandfather Woodcock was eighty-eight years old, and the proposition was not actually Preston’s idea but was the result of urgings from the law firm that represented the company. Preston had tried, as tactfully as he could to remind his father that eighty-eight was not exactly young and to explain to him the tax benefits that would be realised if his father would begin, now, to disburse his estate to younger members of the family. Grandfather Woodcock had stared at him coldly for a long time. At last, he had asked, ‘What time is it?’

Preston looked at his watch. ‘It’s half-past three, Father,’ he had said.

Then Grandfather Woodcock pulled out his own watch from his pocket and looked at it. ‘Your watch is wrong,’ he had said. ‘Just as everything about you has been always wrong. You have always been a little off. A little fast, or a little slow. Now get out of here.’

Preston had taken his scolding humbly. Edith, when they discussed it that evening, told him that he was right not to get angry. That was the only way to be. Humble, subservient, take the old man’s punishment, cater to his wishes, do what he said, take the tongue-lashings he administered with a grain of salt. That was wisest now, at this point. After all, the old man was very old. He was eighty-eight. He could not refuse to retire much longer. Look at him! He hadn’t been outside his house for over six months. He had even been mistreating Preston’s poor old mother, accusing her of trying to steal from him! He was impossible, but after all he was old, so old. One did not wish him dead, of course, but he was old; he had had a rich, full life. His mind, much as Edith hated to admit it, was often blurred. He faded in and out like an image on a television screen, one minute clear as a bell, the next minute far away in another century! Edith and Preston nodded sympathetically over their cocktails as they talked about him. The poor old man.

Best to humour him now, Edith counselled. Let him have his little tempers. Let him scold. After all, one day Preston would be president of the company and make his own rules. There was no doubt about that, no doubt at all.

But, as it happened, it did not work out that way. Two days later, at 1045 Prospect Avenue, Grandfather Woodcock rose from his chair and ordered his car brought around. He put on his hat and overcoat though the day was warm and ordered Roger, his chauffeur, to drive him to the mill. The arrival there of the old Chrysler with its incongruously dressed passenger, after so many months’ absence, caused quite a little stir. What was the old man up to? In his office, Grandfather Woodcock picked up the telephone and personally called each of the nine company directors and ordered a board meeting for two o’clock that afternoon. At the farm, Edith took the message. She relayed it to Preston and her daughters, saying, ‘The poor old dear. I’m afraid his mind is really failing now.’

By two o’clock, all nine were there. In addition to Grandfather Woodcock and Preston, the others were Cousin Billy, his mother, Victoria Woodcock—whose husband, William Woodcock, Junior had been killed with the 36th Division in Italy in 1943; Billy’s younger brother, Talcott, fresh from his desk as vice-president in charge of marketing; his aunt, Mary-Adams Woodcock deWinter, annoyed at having to leave a hair appointment early, before her hair was dry; her son, Woody deWinter, and Barbara and Peggy. Although the two girls owned, at the time, only token amounts of stock that had been given to them on birthdays and Christmases, they were board members automatically since, by tradition, all stockholders were considered directors.

Grandfather Woodcock had an announcement to make. He was retiring, he advised the board, after sixty-four years with the company. The fact had evidently been overlooked, he told them, that today, July second, 1953, marked his sixty-fourth anniversary with the company. The rest of the board looked uncomfortable; a few members protested that they had, indeed, remembered, but had not thought that their president would be feeling up to a celebration. In connection with his retirement, he announced, it would be necessary to hold an election for a new president.

It was a family company, with its shareholder-directors all members of the family. The election of officers was done by ballot on the basis of shares held, each share representing one vote. The distribution of shares of stock was unequal; Grandfather Woodcock personally owned seventy-two per cent of the shares outstanding. This inequality had existed since 1907 when his brother William had needed cash in connection with a Mrs. Sylvia McCarthy, a housekeeper, whose threat of a lawsuit had been only a genteel form of blackmail. Grandfather Woodcock had supplied his brother with the money by purchasing roughly half of his brother’s stock in the company; (the McCarthy woman, it was understood, was still alive, an old lady living comfortably in Hamden, though old William Woodcock, her benefactor, had been dead for many years.)

As the voting began, pencils and sheets of yellow paper were passed around the room. Preston, as executive vice-president and secretary, quickly read off the list of shareholders, advising each member of the exact number of shares each owned. Then they voted.

The results were surprising. The position of president was given to William Dobie Woodcock the Third. Preston—to whom the job fell of counting the ballots—read off the results in a queer voice. Grandfather Woodcock merely nodded, satisfied. Then he turned to Cousin Billy, shook his hand, and said, ‘Congratulations.’ Billy, who looked pale and a little glassy-eyed, jumped slightly in his chair, taking his great-uncle’s hand, and mumbling, ‘Thank you, sir.’

The mood of the little group as they stood up and started out of the room had been a curious one. There were no exclamations of surprise, no congratulations. Cousin Billy fixed his eyes upon the floor. There were no admonishments, no expressions of regret or sympathy. In fact, there had been nothing at all, only silence. Outside a few faces broke. There were a few nervous smiles. Mary-Adams deWinter lighted a cigarette, patted the damp curlers in her hair. Then, briefly, she squeezed Barbara’s and Peggy’s hands, but said nothing. What had happened, of course, they all understood. Grandfather Woodcock had simply lifted control of the company from his side of the family, from his son, and placed it firmly with the other side—with his brother’s son’s child, the grandson of the brother who had been the ne’er-do-well, the black sheep, the fornicator and disgracer. Preston, who stood among them looking astonishingly composed, had been passed by. At fifty-two, he had been placed second in command of a company whose president was his second cousin, Billy, only thirty-one years old. And the same thought instantly occurred to all of them: it was all right for the old man to do this now, perhaps, awful though it was; but what would happen at his death? Where would his stock go then?

In the little anteroom, a few more cigarettes were lighted. There began to be quiet murmurs of conversation. ‘Are you driving into New Haven tonight, Talcott?’ ‘Woody, is your car in the parking lot?’ ‘Yes, Mother.’ ‘Mind if I take it, dear? I came by taxi and it’s so hard to find one going back …’

Grandfather Woodcock, standing in the centre of the group and yet, at the same time, apart from it, turned to the person next to him who happened to be his grandnephew, Woody. His chin was cocked and his bright old eyes flashed. He said, ‘Well, Woodcock? What do you think?’

It was the words, ‘Well, Woodcock?’ that hushed everyone. It was a salutation that might have been addressed to all of them.

And Woody—Woody, the rebellious, the unpredictable one, the off-horse—turned his head sharply away, saying nothing. Then the others, conscious of this, increased the tempo of their talk just slightly to cover his silence. The weather: how odd these early-morning fogs had been, all week, drifting up the river valley from the Sound, chilling the mornings and then burning off by noon in the sun’s heat! Such weather! Had there ever, in anyone’s memory, been anything quite like it?

They all knew. They all understood. They were all family. They had always been and they would always be, in some way, bound together by ties of love and pride, bright old ribbons the colour of loyalty and courage. Ties that were truly stronger than either love or pride, for they could be so much more painful ties. They had been through so much together. Through William, Junior, at Salerno. (Too old for the Army they had told him; they had been right, he had been killed.) They had been through births, deaths, one divorce (Sally), a failure at Yale (Talcott), a curious marriage (Talcott), an attempted suicide (Woody), that awful thing that no one would ever completely understand, nor would anyone but the family appreciate the struggle that had followed, the heartache, the trying times. They had been through the uncertain war years that had been profitable financially but which had taken their toll in a darker and more tragic battleground. Through all this they had been family and they would always be. Through all this they had suffered as they were suffering now and would surely suffer again, beginning their suffering with silence, polite silence, for what else but silence could so surely comfort the bereaved and so swiftly heal the wounded? They would follow silence with a little polite talk, and then, in a few weeks’ time, it would all be forgotten; time for family parties again, little dinners, jokes and laughter. But forgetting was only an illusion of forgetting, they knew. Nothing was ever forgotten. Still, silence would bolster the illusion. Silence, politeness, and time.

Barbara sat, very quietly now, with Cousin Billy in the library, remembering it all. There seemed to be nothing left to say. At last she said softly, ‘Poor Daddy.’

‘Now, don’t say that, Barbara,’ he said. ‘That isn’t realistic. Don’t forget, your father’s been taken care of pretty fairly well all these years. Pretty fairly well.’

‘Yes, yes, I know …’ she said.

On the terrace now, outside, she could hear voices. The swimmers had left the pool and were gathering for talk in the cool shadows of the garden shrubbery, on the green-cushioned chairs, away from the sun. She could hear them, the family, and their bright Sunday afternoon laughter.

Two and a half weeks after the board of directors had met, at 1045 Prospect Avenue Grandfather Woodcock spilled his milk. He had refused, somewhat testily, the curved glass sipping straw that Binky Zaretsky had offered him, and when he lifted the glass of vitamin-fortified milk to his lips, it fell from his fingers on to the floor. Tiger, his yellow cat, leaped from his lap for the milk. His wife, sitting next to him, said, ‘Binky will mop it up, dear,’ but old Mr. Woodcock bent, reaching apparently to pull Tiger back to his accustomed place on his lap (‘He wasn’t the kind to care about milk spilled on the rug,’ Mrs. Zaretsky explained as she told the story later), and bending in his chair, his fingers clutching for the cat’s fur, his heart stopped. A rich, full life was ended.

The night before the funeral, Edith and Preston talked.

‘There’s one thing you can be sure of,’ Preston had told her. ‘I won’t stay here. I’m not going to stay here and work for Billy. We’ll take whatever money comes and move away. We’ll go to Florida. Or California. Would you like that, Edith? I’ll either retire completely or—well, maybe just try retirement for a while and see how I like it. If I don’t there are dozens of companies that would be glad to take me on. The thing is, we won’t have to worry any more! We can do exactly as we please, go where we want. Oh, I know how you love the farm. I love it, too. I love everything we’ve done here, all the work we’ve both put in on it. But now that he’s gone, we won’t have to worry, we’ll be secure. When that stock of his comes to me, sure, I could elect myself president! But I won’t do that! I won’t stoop to that. Let Billy take it. If he wants the stock I get, I’ll sell it to him. I just don’t give a damn about the company any more. You and I will be secure, that’s the big thing. We won’t have to wait for those pay-cheques of his! We can go anywhere we want, Edith. We’re not going to stay here.’

She went to him, put her arms around him. Through tears, now, of joy, she saw him unchanged, youthful, the man she had married. ‘Oh, my darling!’ she had said. ‘Is it any wonder I love you? Is it any wonder? Of course! I’ll go wherever you want, to the ends of the earth!’

But, of course, they did not go anywhere.

The terms of his father’s will, when they were revealed, precluded it. It was a beautiful will, the lawyers said. They had to admit, begrudgingly, that he had made a beautiful will, which was surprising, since he had not consulted them at all but composed it himself. It went to show, they said, that old Mr. Woodcock had been a remarkable man with a brilliant, remarkable mind, a kind of genius, right up until the very end.

There were the usual charitable bequests, including a sizeable gift to Yale University, gifts to servants, nurses, a gift to the hospital in the name of his brother, a gift to the Dobie C. Woodcock Memorial Library, which he had founded in his father’s memory, to be used to purchase books for a new reference section. Of his stock in the paper company, a third went to his widow. The remaining two thirds were divided four ways. There was a bequest of stock to Barbara and an equal bequest to Peggy. There was a sizeable bequest to Cousin Billy, to give him ownership that befitted his title. To Preston, also, there was a stock bequest but it was directed to be held in trust. And the income from the trust, which gave Preston no voting privileges, was to be paid to Preston contingent upon his continued association with the company. Should Preston at any time leave the company, the will directed, the trust would pass directly to Cousin Billy. Upon Preston’s death, the trust was to pass to Preston’s two daughters, Barbara and Peggy, who would share it equally.

‘It’s quite an ingenious arrangement, Pres,’ one of the lawyers had told him. ‘And quite a compliment to you. Obviously the old man didn’t like to think of what would happen to the company if you weren’t on hand to help guide things along.’

Cousin Billy stood up now and walked to the library window, puffing on his pipe. ‘So you see,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing Peggy can do. And the sooner she realises that, the better it will be for all of us. She’s wasting her time, and so is Barney. So what I thought was, Barbara—that if you could tell her, just sort of explain to her the way things stand, remind her, it would be a help to her and a help to me. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. It’s better if it comes from you than if it comes from me. Your sister, Peggy’s never cared too much for my advice, I don’t think. But if you remind her of all this, she ought to have sense enough to understand. What I want to avoid, what I want to forestall, is a big family ruckus, you know what I mean. If there’s one thing I’d hate to have, it’s a big family ruckus. It’s like the old maxim says—a house divided against itself cannot stand! So talk to her, Barbara. That’s really all I have to say.’

The sky outside had grown suddenly darker and a heavy stillness had fallen upon the air. Then a wind came up, turning the leaves at the window so that they showed their white undersides. ‘Looks like a storm,’ Cousin Billy said. ‘I’d better run. Didn’t bring an umbrella—’ He turned to Barbara, and Barbara stood up. ‘Well, good-bye for now, Barbara,’ he said, ‘and thanks for anything you can do. Drop by the house if you get a chance. Janet’d love to see you, and the kids would love it, too.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘Got to run before it pours,’ he said.

‘Good-bye, Billy,’ she said.

He walked hurriedly out of the room. She stood at the window and watched him as he ran down the front steps, across the driveway, to his station wagon. The sky grew even darker. There was a bright flash of lightning and then, a few seconds later, a deep rumble of thunder. She could hear the family now as they rose from the terrace and hurried into the house, carrying their cocktails in advance of the storm.

She turned and started out of the library. In the darkened hall, she met Barney. He stopped her with his hand. ‘They say you’re going home tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Are you?’

‘Yes, I must,’ she said.

‘But you came up here to see me,’ he said. ‘You know you did.’

She pulled away from him, suddenly angry. ‘That’s not true!’ she said. ‘Leave me alone, please! Can’t you leave me alone?’

And his face, as he stepped back, looked all at once so hurt, that she said more softly, ‘Please, don’t you see?’ Don’t make things so hard for me. Everybody expects so much of me! And I’m simply not up to it.’

‘Barbara?’ her mother called. ‘What did Billy want?’

‘He just stopped by to say hello, Mother,’ she said. And she and Barney walked toward the living room where the rest of the family were gathering.