LESLIE WALKED STEADILY, ALMOST woodenly, her makeup streaked but her expression cold and artificially serene. Linda stumbled as they started up the stairs toward their rooms and Strand caught her by the arm. She was trembling. All the color had drained from her face, the touches of rouge on her cheeks standing out like small wounds. When they came to their door Strand knew that he couldn’t let her go to her room and face the rest of the night alone. “Come in with us for a while,” he said gently. “What we all need is a drink.”
Linda nodded numbly.
In the room, Strand telephoned down for a bottle of whiskey and some ice. He didn’t know about Linda but he and Leslie had never drunk out of despair before. Linda fell limply into a chair, as though her bones had liquefied. Her hands shook on the chair’s arms. Leslie went into the bathroom, saying “I’m going to repair the ravages of the soirée.”
“That awful woman,” Linda said, her voice quivering. “And I’ve always tried to be her friend. I knew she was having a dreadful time after her son…” She dabbed at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. “I made sure to see her every time I came to Paris and had her as my guest at Mougins. Those nasty insinuations!” Now she was indignant. “There was never anything like that between Russell and me. Good God, I’m not like that. Allen, tell me, did you ever think for a moment…?”
“Of course not,” Strand said, not quite honestly.
“That poor Mrs. Harcourt,” Linda said. “Don’t you think we ought to ask her to come in here and…?”
“I don’t think she wants to see any of us anymore,” Strand said. “Or at least, not tonight.”
“You don’t believe I ever shared any of Katherine’s sentiments about Russell and the friends he invited to the house, do you, Allen?” There was a desperate appeal in her voice. “I couldn’t stand it if you thought…”
“Linda,” Strand said, going over and holding her hands, “listen to me. I think you’re one of the most decent women I’ve ever met in my life.”
“Thank you,” Linda whispered.
“You mustn’t take it so hard. The woman’s deranged. No one in his right mind would believe a word she says.”
“She never was a good wife,” Linda said. “She made his life hell. I don’t know how he stood her as long as he did. She was constantly putting him down. She has a tongue like a razor. At a party, when somebody would ask him about a case he was working on—you know, he’s in the papers all the time, he’s in tremendous demand, some of the biggest people in the country, in business, in the government, come to him for advice—well, when he would explain some legal technicality that somebody had asked him about she would sneer at him openly and say ‘Stop boring our guests. They all know you’re the greatest fixer in the profession.’ Fixer! A man like Russell. Of course, you had to feel sorry for her, losing a son like that and seeing how those daughters turned out, but there are such things as human limits. Once there was a senator at the house for dinner, a most respected man, but he belonged to the wrong party as far as Mrs. Hazen was concerned and she said, ‘You’re a damned, bleeding-heart fool,’ right to his face after he said he’d voted for a bill she didn’t approve of. How can you expect a man to live with someone like that? And even so, no matter what she says, she was the one who walked out, not him.”
There was a knock on the door and Strand opened it to let the waiter in with the whiskey. He poured stiff drinks into three glasses and handed Linda hers. She drank half of the drink in one convulsive gulp. “I’ll tell you something,” she said. “I don’t blame him for Mrs. Harcourt and whatever others there were. In spite of everything, Russell was the soul of discretion. Whatever he did, he kept to himself. I was absolutely dumfounded when he appeared with Mrs. Harcourt. He must have been at the end of his patience. Although even in just this short time I’ve gotten to like her, really like her a lot. She’s so pretty and considerate.” She finished her drink and held out her glass and Strand refilled it. “Frankly, I was pleased for Russell and I never saw him so gay before.”
Strand heard the sound of laughter from the bathroom and turned, puzzled, as Leslie came into the room, giggling, her face rearranged. “What’re you laughing at?” he asked, trying not to sound angry. With Linda in the state she was, laughter seemed callous.
“I was thinking about my hitting that woman,” Leslie said, still giggling. “It was one of the most satisfactory moments of my life. I broke a fingernail on her, too. I didn’t know I was going to hit her. It was automatic. Deliciously automatic. Ah, whiskey. Just the thing to make the evening perfect. I may get drunk tonight to celebrate. I’ll depend upon you, Allen, to put me safely to bed. I knew Europe was going to be interesting, but I never thought it would be that interesting.” She raised her glass. “To my fingernail,” she said. “And to amateur painters and piddling schoolteachers and their brood and to the Jews. I’m getting to love parties among the upper classes, I really am, they’re so refined.”
“Are you all right?” Strand asked anxiously.
“Tip-top,” Leslie said airily. “Tonight has made my summer.”
The telephone rang and Strand picked it up. It was Hazen. “Allen,” Hazen said, “I’d like to talk to you if you don’t mind. Can you come to my room? Just you, please. Are the women okay?”
“I think so. They’re drinking.”
“I don’t blame them. I’d drink too if I weren’t afraid my ulcer would kick up, if it hasn’t already.”
It was the first time Strand had heard that Hazen had an ulcer. He was gathering a great many new facts this evening. “I’ll be right over,” he said. “Leave some of the booze in the bottle for me,” he said to Leslie and Linda.
“Give my regards to the lovebird,” Leslie said. Her tone was not friendly. “We’ll be here, waiting for the next bulletin from the front.”
He was finding out some new things about his wife, too, Strand thought as he walked down the corridor to Hazen’s room. There was a streak of toughness in her that he hadn’t suspected was there. It might be useful in facing up to the shocks that life had in store for her, but he wasn’t sure that he liked it.
Hazen’s door was ajar and Strand knocked and went in. Hazen was sunk deep in a chair, scowling. He still had all his clothes on, jacket and vest rumpled now. He had unbuttoned his collar and pulled it open and loosened his tie as though he had had trouble breathing and he didn’t look as he usually did, ready for a board meeting or an address to the jury. He glanced up as Strand came in and ran his hand wearily across his face, the scowl vanishing, replaced by a twitch of embarrassment.
“I want to apologize for this goddamn evening,” he said. His voice was still hoarse.
“Forget it. I’ve been through worse.”
“I haven’t,” Hazen said. “That woman’s demented. Will you ever forget that crazy scream?”
“She was in good voice.”
“She loves to make scenes. With me, especially. It’s her favorite form of amusement.” Hazen stood up and pulled at his collar, loosening it further. He began to pace. “Mrs. Harcourt’s packed and left. God knows where she’s going at this time of night. I wouldn’t blame you if you’d all done the same thing. Well, there won’t be any visiting vineyards tomorrow. It’s good of you to keep me company in my dark hour. After all those hideous insults. I don’t know what I’d do tonight if I couldn’t talk to you. First of all I owe you some explanations.”
“You don’t owe me anything, Russell.”
Hazen shook his head, still pacing. “It’s true about Barbara. Maybe I was unwise to bring her along. I noticed Leslie didn’t take kindly to her presence.”
Barbara, Strand thought, finally I know her name.
“I’m very attached to her. And there was some legal work we had to get out of the way.” Hazen sounded defiant. “And we weren’t hurting anybody. She’s a fine woman and I don’t know how I’ll ever make up to her for what happened tonight. She came over to the States last year on business and she spent a couple of weekends at the beach. But, Christ, there were at least six other people in the house all the time. My goddamn nosy neighbors. ‘And of course friends in America are quick to let me know of your activities.’” He mimicked his wife’s voice. “‘Legions of friends.’ And all that stuff about you and your family. How anybody could make something evil out of my befriending people like you and lending a little helping hand here and there is beyond mortal comprehension. There’s no purity left in the world, Allen, none, and no belief in goodness. Just malice. Endless malice. The sharks who’ve drunk my wine and feasted at my table’d tear a man to shreds for the pleasure of ten minutes’ gossip about something that is no business of theirs at all, something as innocent as a newborn babe’s first breath. Christ, maybe it’ll be a good thing if I have to give that damned house to her. Fuck the legions of friends.” He was ranting now and pacing faster and faster.
“Are you going to give her the house?”
“What else can I do? That wasn’t an idle threat about suicide. After you left me alone with her she told me she was already in touch with some lawyer in New York—I know the man and wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole—and had written out everything, chapter and malicious verse, and instructed him to make sure it got into the papers after she’d done herself in. My name’d be dragged in the mud and so would that of a great many other people and there’d be some perfectly working marriages on the rocks. I’ll have to give in. I’ll be honest with you—I hate the bitch and I’d be glad to see her dead but I’ll feel guilty for the rest of my life if she dies because of me just for a few lousy dollars and a ramshackle old house that’ll be swept out to sea in a couple of years anyway. I’ll give her what she wants even if it leaves me penniless. But it won’t. She’s been rich all her life but you ought to see the gleam in her eye when she talks about money. I’ll put a tough young lawyer from my office on her and she’ll bargain. When she sees the goodies dangling in front of her, suicide won’t seem so attractive to her even if it could ruin me. She’ll bargain, all right.”
“I wish I could help,” Strand said, shaken by Hazen’s torment.
“You are helping,” Hazen said. Suddenly he stopped pacing and in a clumsy gesture put his arm around Strand’s shoulders, then quickly pulled away as if embarrassed by this display of affection and went on pacing again, as though the only way he could alleviate the pain that had him in its grip was by movement. “Just by being here and letting me get some of this off my chest, you’re helping more than you could possibly know. God, I’ve been bottled up so long, keeping everything to myself, my wife, my worthless children, everything, I was ready to explode. My portable harem! Linda Roberts, for God’s sake! We could be on a desert island for twenty years and we’d never even think of touching each other. The bitch knows it as well as we do but she wants to destroy every human contact I ever had or could have. So—there were others. I confess that to you—there were others. What else did she expect? She stopped sleeping with me years and years ago and even before that, from the day we were married, it was like trying to make love to an icicle. It was different before we were married, when my father and her father—they were partners in the firm—decided it would be nice to keep the money in the family and winked at the fact that their upright son and debutante daughter were fucking practically under their eyes. Jesus, was she different then, you’d think she was the hottest thing between the sheets since Cleopatra. But once the ring was on her finger, when I came near her it was as though I was trying to rape a nun. How we ever managed to beget three children is one of the mysteries of the goddamn age. And that’s how they turned out, too, although maybe it wasn’t all their fault, with a mother like that, full of venom toward their father and insanely infatuated with her brats. Nothing was too good for them, all three of them were given Ferraris when they were eighteen. Three Ferraris parked in front of the door! Can you imagine anything like that? None of them ever finished college. They came running to their mother crying that the teachers were unfair to them or they were unhappy with the class of students they had to put up with or they wanted to go to Europe for the winter with their lovers. Lovers in the case of my beloved son were conspicuously of the male sex. And they just laughed at me when I tried to reason with them. And their mother would laugh along with them. And it wasn’t just the money. When I looked around at the children of friends of mine who had ten times the money we had and saw that they were ambitious, responsible citizens that any father would be proud of and then compared them to the children who bore my name I wept. And blaming me for the boy’s overdose! I had to go to San Francisco for a few days and I thought it would be good for him and asked him to come along, but he said he was busy, he couldn’t make it. Busy! Christ, all he did was loll around the apartment all day. He never bothered to get out of his pajamas or even shave. He looked like a hermit in the desert with his beard. It must be hard for you, with your kids, to understand how I felt, but I tell you it was like drinking acid day after day, year after year. And if you think for a minute that she let me alone even after she cleared out of the house and went to Europe you couldn’t be more wrong. She bombarded me with letters, full of all kinds of threats and accusations and the worst kind of filth, you couldn’t begin to imagine how degraded that lady’s mind is, it’s a sewer, that’s what it is. If the postal authorities ever opened one of those letters she’d’ve been arrested for sending obscene matter through the mail. In the beginning I answered them, trying to reason with her, but it was hopeless. Would you imagine even in your wildest dream that that flower of New York society, that graduate of a fancy finishing school in Switzerland would write in her own hand to her husband and the father of her children that he was a cocksucking, shit-eating liar who should have his balls cut off and stuffed into his mouth for supper? Finally, I just threw her letters away unopened and left word that I would not answer the phone when she called. Wait till I find out who it was in my office who told her I was in Tours. Whoever it was will be fired so fast it will take his breath away and I’ll make sure he’ll never get a job in the legal profession again.”
Suddenly Hazen stopped pacing and threw himself, sprawling, gasping for breath, red in the face, into the big chair and began to sob.
Strand had backed against the wall to keep out of the way of the bulky man careening like a berserk bull elephant around the pretty room with its old Provençal furniture and flower-patterned wallpaper. Now he stood, transfixed, staring, horrified, pitying, helpless, frightened, anguished, as the huge man delivered, in a mad torrent of words, his guilt, his hatred, his shattered hopes. For the moment Strand could not talk, found it impossible to stretch out a hand in friendship or rescue for the man who, he felt, might never be rescued, might be lapsing once and for all before his eyes into a mania as disastrous as that of the woman who had caused it. I’m paying for the summer, he thought. Why me? Then was ashamed of the thought. “Please,” he said. “It’s over.”
“Nothing is over,” Hazen said. He was moaning now, the sound choked, an eerie soprano. “It will never be over. Get out of here. Please. Forgive me and get out of here.”
“I’m going,” Strand said, relieved that he could leave the room, get away from the sound of Hazen’s grief. “You ought to take a sedative or a sleeping pill.”
“I don’t keep any of that stuff around. The temptation would be too great,” Hazen said without looking up, but in a calmer voice.
“I could let you have something. One pill.”
“One pill.” Hazen laughed harshly. “There’s a remedy. Cyanide. Thank you. And go.”
“All right.” Strand moved toward the door. “If you need me during the night, just call.”
Hazen looked up at him, his eyes red, his mouth just barely under control. “Forgive me, my friend,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ll be okay. I won’t call.”
Strand went out of the room and walked down the corridor toward his room, feeling weary and drained. The prisoners of Catherine de Medici were not the only ones tortured publicly in the valley of the Loire. Leslie had left the door unlocked and he let himself in. There was only one small lamp on and Leslie was under the covers, sleeping, snoring softly, which she did only when she was ill. He undressed silently, but even in her sleep she felt his presence and opened her eyes. He was just about to climb into his own bed when she stretched out an arm.
“Please,” she whispered. “Tonight.”
He hesitated, but only for a second. If ever there was a time for the warmth of beloved, familiar body against beloved body, this was the time. He slipped off his pajamas and got in beside her. He lay with his arms around her in the narrow bed. “Don’t say anything,” she murmured, “not anything.” She began to caress him, softly. Then they made love, gently, soundlessly, allowing desire and gratitude, the enormous remembered gift of loving, of releasing sex, obliterate the chaos of the night.
Leslie fell asleep immediately after. He lay awake, unable to sleep, his heart suddenly an independent and unruly part of his body, racing wildly. No, he thought, it can’t, it would be too much. By an act of will he tried to control the thunder he felt inside his chest, but the heart went on in its unsteady drumming, guided by ominous signals of its own. Despite all his efforts, his breathing became louder and louder, rasping, and he felt he was choking. Unsteadily, he got out of bed, stumbled in the darkness, trying to get to the bathroom, where his shaving kit was, with the bottle of nitroglycerin pills. He tripped over a chair, fell heavily, with a groan, was unable to lift himself off the floor.
The noise awoke Leslie and a moment later the room was lit as she switched on a lamp. With a cry, she leaped out of bed and rushed over and knelt beside him.
“My medicine…” he said, between gasps.
She jumped up, ran into the bathroom. He saw the light go on, heard the rattling of bottles, water running. He pulled himself along the floor, managed to sit up, his back against a chair. Leslie knelt beside him again, held his head as she put a capsule in his mouth and tilted a glass against his lips. He gulped thirstily, felt the capsule wash down his throat.
He tried to smile reassuringly. “I’ll be all right,” he said.
“Don’t talk.”
Suddenly, the harsh sound of his breathing subsided. The attack, if that was what it had been, was over. “There,” he said. He stood up. He swayed a little, but he said, “I’m cold, I’ve got to get back into bed.” He felt foolish, standing there naked.
She helped him over to the bed and he fell into it. “Do you want me to call a doctor?”
“No need. I just want to sleep. Please get in beside me and turn out the light and put your arms around me.”
She hesitated for a moment, then put the glass and bottle of pills on the bedside table, switched off the lamp and got into bed with him.
When he awoke in the morning, he felt fine. He put his hand to his chest and was pleased that he could barely make out the orderly small pulse under his ribs.
He was having breakfast with Leslie when the phone rang. She went to pick it up. Standing at the table on which the phone rested, she looked refreshed and young, her hair long, hanging down over the shoulders of her dressing gown in the morning sunlight. Watching her, Strand marveled at the resilience of womankind.
“Of course, Russell,” she was saying, “I understand perfectly. Don’t worry, we’ll be ready in an hour.” She put the instrument down and came back to the table and buttered a piece of croissant. “We’re going back to Paris this morning,” she said. “I imagine the Loire valley has lost some of its charm for our host.”
“How did he sound?”
“Normal. How did he sound when you saw him last night?” She looked over the rim of her coffee cup at him.
“You don’t want to know,” Strand said.
“Bad?”
“As bad as could be. Ugly and sad. If you want the truth, it made me sorry we ever met him.”
“That bad?” Leslie said thoughtfully.
“Worse.”
“Did he attack you?”
“Not personally. Just the whole world.” He stood up from the table. “If we have to be ready in an hour I’d better start getting packed and dressed.”
The trip to Paris was grim. Leslie had turned out not to be as resilient as he had thought. The night had finally taken its toll. After breakfast she had begun coughing and looked feverish, her eyes and nose damp. She complained that she was freezing, although she was bundled up and it was a warm day.
Hazen, impeccably dressed in his business suit and outwardly composed, drove. They had barely passed the outskirts of Tours when Strand found himself regretting Mrs. Harcourt’s midnight flight. Hazen drove like a madman, going slowly at times but weaving the car across the road, then putting his foot down violently on the accelerator to pass trucks on blind curves, cursing under his breath at other drivers as if they were mortal enemies. He doesn’t need pills to commit suicide, Strand thought, holding Leslie’s sweating hand, he’s going to do it with the internal combustion engine. And he’s going to take us all with him. For the entire trip, as their heads snapped with the sudden and unpredictable accelerations of the machine and their bodies rolled from side to side when Hazen swung around turns, Leslie sat with her foot jammed against the foot rest, her legs rigid. Linda, dressed in a smart suit, next to Hazen on the front seat, slept the whole way, as if, knowing she was going to be killed that morning, she had decided to die mercifully unconscious. She had not slept a wink all night, she had told the Strands, and she seemed determined to go to her Maker well rested and looking her best.
Somehow they survived the ride and they drew to an abrupt stop in front of the Crillon with the smell of burning rubber accompanying their arrival and Linda saying, as she opened her eyes, “Oh, we’re here. What a nice ride, Russell. I had such a good nap.”
“French drivers,” Hazen said. “It’s a wonder any of them are still alive.”
“Russell,” Strand said, as they all got out of the car, “that’s the last time I’ll ever ride with you.” Hazen stared blankly at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
It was time for lunch, but Hazen said he was sorry, he had to get to his office immediately. He waved to a taxi and jumped into it without saying good-bye. Leslie told Strand that she felt ill and just wanted to lie down for the afternoon. Strand, not willing to face lunch alone with Linda that day, said that he was feeling a bit off-color himself and would have lunch with Leslie up in the room. The morning three days ago when they had set out so gaily from the Place de la Concorde now seemed a foggy memory from a distant age.
When the Strands stopped at the desk to get the key to their room, the concierge gave Strand a cablegram. Feeling that any information it would contain could only be disastrous, Strand hesitated before tearing open the envelope. He was annoyed that his hands trembled as he did so. A death would not surprise him. He read it once. Then again. It was from Eleanor, “MARRIED THIS MORNING STOP HAVE QUIT JOB STOP AM HONEYMOONING WITH GIUSEPPE STOP ECSTATIC STOP SO FAR STOP BLESS US IN FRENCH LOVE MR. AND MRS. GIANELLI”
Mechanically, without emotion, Strand looked at the date on the cable. It had been sent from Las Vegas and had arrived the night before. It must have come in at just the moment that Mrs. Hazen had come into the dining room in Tours. Marriages end, Stop. Marriages begin, Stop.
“What does it say?” Leslie asked, worried.
Strand gave her the cable. The print on the flimsy page was pale and Leslie had to hold it close to her eyes to read it.
“Oh, my,” she said in a low voice, sinking into one of the lobby chairs. “Las Vegas. What could they have been thinking of? It doesn’t sound like Eleanor at all. It’s so tacky. And why did they have to run off like that? Do you think that boy has something to hide?”
“I doubt it.”
“Why didn’t they at least wait until we got home? Good Lord, it’s only a few days.”
“Maybe they wanted to do it while we were away,” Strand said. “So they wouldn’t be under any pressure from us to make a big fuss. Marriage is different from what it was in our day.” Leslie’s parents had insisted on a church wedding and a wedding luncheon and he still remembered the whole day as an ordeal. For days after his face had seemed stiff from the effort of smiling falsely at a hundred people he hoped never to see again. Still, he was a little disappointed in his daughter and he could see that Leslie was hurt. She had been an open and forthright girl and there was something secretive and mistrustful in what she had done. And he shared Leslie’s dismay at the idea of the garish marriage mills of Las Vegas.
“And we don’t even know where she is,” Leslie said, her eyes, already red from her cold, filling with tears, “so that at least we could call them to congratulate them. And no word about Caroline or Jimmy. It’s as though she’d completely forgotten she had any family at all.”
“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it now,” Strand said. “And they’ll undoubtedly explain what it was all about when we get home. Let’s go upstairs. You look as though you’ve got something more than a cold. I’ll call for a doctor.”
“It must have been a premonition,” Leslie said, as she stood up and they started toward the elevators. “Every time something upsetting is going to happen I come down with something.” Usually, Strand smiled when she talked about her premonitions. He didn’t smile today. “We should never have come on this trip,” Leslie said. “Things would’ve been different if we’d been there.”
Upstairs, he helped her out of her clothes and into a robe, and shivering now, she got into bed.
Just as the doctor was leaving, after telling them he thought Leslie was suffering from a severe bronchial infection and advising that she stay in bed for a few days and take the medicine he was going to prescribe, the telephone rang. It was Linda. “Allen,” she said, “I’m flying down to Mougins this afternoon. Do you think Leslie is well enough for the two of you to come with me? The sun would do her good.”
“I’m sorry,” Strand said. “The doctor’s ordered her to stay put.”
“Oh, isn’t that too bad.” But from the tone of her voice, Strand guessed that she was relieved. He felt that way, too. It was almost as though what they had been through had left ugly scars on them that would remind them too vividly of a scene that all of them were trying to forget. “I’ll stay,” Linda said, “if you think it will do any good.” But from the way she spoke he was sure that she wanted to get away—alone.
“Thanks, Linda. That won’t be necessary. Have a nice peaceful time down south.”
“I’ll keep in touch,” she said. “If you see Russell before he leaves for Saudi Arabia, tell him where I am and that he’s not to worry, I’ll be in Paris in plenty of time to fly back to the States with all of you.”
As Strand hung up, he was sorry that the airplane had ever been invented. As a fitting end to the holiday he would not be surprised if they wound up in the middle of the Atlantic.
The medicine the doctor had ordered seemed to be working and the fits of coughing became fewer and fewer and after twenty-four hours Leslie’s fever had abated and her temperature had returned to normal. Hazen did not call to say good-bye. Strand tried to call Jimmy in New York and Caroline on Long Island, but there was no answer at their apartment even though, with the time difference, he had called Jimmy at seven in the morning, New York time. Mr. Ketley answered the phone at the beach house and said that Caroline had been gone all day and had told him that she was invited out to dinner. If Mr. Ketley knew about Eleanor’s marriage, he said nothing about it.
Strand stayed in the room with Leslie most of the time, content to read quietly and listen to the little portable radio Hazen had bought for them during the stopover at Shannon Airport. The chain that carried France Musique played fine music hour after hour—Beethoven and Bach and Schubert, remedies from other centuries, made the days pleasant for both of them. Leslie asked him if he thought they ought to try to get in touch with Mrs. Harcourt, but Strand said it would be wiser to give her time to let the wounds heal and wrote her a short note that he hoped was warm and friendly but feared was stilted. It was not an easy letter to write. Somehow, just from being at the table when the woman was attacked by Mrs. Hazen, he felt guilty. He sent the letter to Hazen’s Paris office, although it was possible that Mrs. Harcourt had already left it and would never put foot in it again.
By the third day, Leslie was well enough to go out and they splurged and had lunch at Maxim’s, around the corner from the hotel, and after that went into the Jeu de Paume Museum and were cheered by the sunshine of the Impressionists. Leslie said that it would be nice if they could bring the couple a wedding present from France. They looked in some of the shops but everything they saw was wildly expensive and they had to settle on going to Bloomingdale’s as soon as they reached New York.
When they got back to the hotel they found a message from Russell Hazen. He had phoned while they were out and wanted them to call him at his office. He had left the number.
Strand called from their room. Hazen sounded brusque and hurried. His business voice, Strand thought. “I got back a little earlier than I expected, Allen,” Hazen said. “I’d like to leave for New York no later than noon tomorrow. I’ll have to stay late tonight at the office but if you and Leslie and Linda don’t mind waiting, I’d like us all to have dinner together at the hotel.”
“That’s fine with us,” Strand said. “But Linda is down in Mougins.”
“That flighty woman.” Hazen was annoyed. “There’s no keeping her in one place. I’ll get her on the phone and tell her to get her ass back up here by noon if she wants a free ride home.” Hazen’s vocabulary, Strand noticed, had been affected, Strand hoped not permanently, by the flood of profanity, both his own and that of his wife, the night in Tours. “And I’ll call Conroy and tell him to tell your kids our estimated time of arrival, so they can be there to greet you.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Strand said. “But tell Conroy not to bother trying to reach Eleanor. She got married a few days ago in Las Vegas and she’s on her honeymoon and she didn’t give us any address.”
“Las Vegas, for Jesus’ sake,” Hazen said. “Kids will do anything for a kick these days. How do you feel about it?”
“Dazed.”
Hazen laughed. “I can understand why. I hope she’s happy.”
“Ecstatic, she said in her cable. So far.”
Hazen laughed again. “Well, anyway, give my felicitations to the mother of the bride. I’ll try to get to the hotel about nine tonight. That okay with you?”
“Nine,” Strand said.
“How is he?” Leslie asked, when Strand hung up.
“The Master’s back,” he said. “Taking charge.”
When Hazen came into the hotel dining room fifteen minutes late, he looked haggard, with hollows under his eyes. His clothes were badly creased, as if he had flown back from Asia Minor in them and had not had time to change. He hadn’t shaved, either, and there was a gray stubble on his cheeks and chin, which gave him an oddly disreputable appearance, as though a family portrait of a distinguished ancestor had been defaced by childish vandals. I wonder, Strand thought as he stood up to greet him, how many years an ordinary man could bear up under a timetable like his. But Hazen smiled warmly, baring his even strong teeth. He shook Strand’s hand vigorously and bent over to kiss Leslie’s cheek before falling back heavily into a chair facing them. “What I need is a drink.”
“Did you get hold of Linda?”
“She’ll meet us at the airport tomorrow. She dithered, but she’ll be there. A martini, please,” he said to the waiter.
“How was Saudi Arabia?” Strand asked.
“A waste of time,” Hazen scowled. “They’re even worse to do business with than the French. They may have clocks, but they don’t seem to be able to tell the time. And there’re dozens of relatives of various desert princes you have to go through, handing out money left and right, if you want to get anything settled. I’d’ve done just as well going down to the south with Linda. And how about you? How’re you taking the news about Eleanor?”
“Shakily.”
Hazen laughed. “He’s a nice young fellow.”
“That’s what I thought,” Leslie said. “Up to Las Vegas.”
“It’s not how a marriage starts that counts,” Hazen said sententiously. “It’s how it ends up.” He scowled again, as though remembering the end of his own marriage. He sipped gratefully at the martini the waiter had put before him. “I needed that. In Saudi Arabia they put you in jail or scourge you or cut off your hand, whatever little pleasantry occurs to them at the moment, for a single cocktail. Try and do business with people like that. And everybody from the so-called civilized world—Americans, English, French, Japanese—are falling all over themselves to get in on the act. When the thing finally happens there it’ll make what happened in Iran look like a church bazaar. Mark my words.” He drank again, morosely. “I’ve already warned my clients to lay off and invest their money in something safe, like a patent for a perpetual motion machine.” He laughed at his own conceit. “Enough about my affairs. Have you any idea what the newlyweds plan to do, where they’re going to live, etcetera?”
“All we know is that in her cable Eleanor said she’d given up her job.”
Hazen nodded soberly. “I thought that might happen when I sent the boy down to Georgia.”
“Georgia?” Strand asked. “What has Georgia got to do with it?”
“You knew he kept talking about how he wanted to quit his father’s business and set himself up publishing a small-town newspaper and that his brothers were funding him up to a point to get rid of him.”
“I remember something like that,” Strand said.
“Well, there’s a town called Graham in Georgia, used to be a small place, but two big businesses, one an electronics company, the other a packing plant, have moved there from the north and the town’s growing in leaps and bounds and my firm represented the editor and publisher of the little daily newspaper there in a libel suit. I went down and pleaded the case myself because it was a freedom of the press issue and important and we won. I got friendly with the fellow, he was a native Georgian, went to college at Athens and all that, but he was a good tough old bird and I grew to like him. He feels he’s getting a little age on him and the daily grind was beginning to get to him and he called me out of the blue and asked me if I knew some smart young ambitious fellow with a little cash, not too much, who could take on the daily responsibility and share in the profits. And it just happened that a couple of days before I’d had drinks with Gianelli and Eleanor and he’d told me again how he’d like to take over a small-town newspaper if he could. Eleanor had said she’d take in washing in New York first, but love conquers all, as the Romans put it, and I guess that’s why she’s quit her job. My friends in Graham must have been pretty impressed with your new son-in-law.”
“Georgia!” Leslie said in the same tone in which she had said “Las Vegas” when she read the cablegram.
“It’s a nice neat little town,” Hazen said. “You’d like it.” Then he smiled. “For a week.”
“I doubt that Eleanor will last that long,” Leslie said, her face gloomy. “I can’t see her in the piny woods of the South after New York.”
“We northerners have to get used to the idea that civilization doesn’t stop at the town line of Washington, D.C.,” Hazen said. “Don’t look so glum, Leslie. It isn’t the end of the world. If it doesn’t work out, they’re both young and strong and they’ll try something else. At least they won’t go through life thinking, We had our chance and we were too cowardly to risk it. Speaking of chances, a month or so ago Mrs. Harcourt was offered a job teaching international law at George Washington University and she has now decided to take it.” Hazen spoke matter-of-factly, as if he were passing on a piece of news about a casual acquaintance.
“I’m sure she’ll be very popular at all those government parties,” Leslie said.
Hazen squinted at her suspiciously, guessing cattiness. Leslie merely smiled sweetly.
The waiter, who had been standing next to the table hoping for a break in the conversation, handed them the menus. Hazen glanced at his, then threw it down and stood up. “Forgive me,” he said, “I’m too tired to eat. And if I have a second drink they’ll have to carry me out. I’m going up to bed. It’s been a long day. I think you’d better be ready by about ten thirty tomorrow morning. There’s a weather front moving in, they tell me, and the field may be closed in the afternoon. I’m glad to see you looking so well, Leslie. You were a little peaked the other day. Good night and sleep well.” He walked, his shoulders bent and looking old, toward the door.
They ordered dinner and ate it in silence.
They met Linda at the airport. She looked well, with a new tan, but flustered. “I’m just no good at changing schedules,” she complained. “I’m sure I packed all the wrong things. It’s not like Russell at all. He’s usually as dependable as the Swiss railway system.” After kissing her briskly in greeting and saying “I’m glad to see you made it,” Hazen had gone off to make a last call to his office.
It was a raw day, with a little drizzle of rain and irregular gusts of wind sweeping the field. As they walked across toward the airplane Strand looked doubtfully up at the overcast sky. The weather fit his mood. A front moving in, Hazen had warned them. It would probably be a rough voyage. Sunshine would have been inappropriate for the end of this particular holiday. As they got into the gleaming small plane, Strand was afraid that Leslie would pick that moment to say that she was having one of her premonitions. But she was chatting cheerfully with Linda and there was no sign that the thousands of miles of wild sky ahead of them held any fears for her at all.
The trip was bumpy, but no more. Leslie and Linda dozed, Strand read and Hazen drank. When they stopped to refuel at Shannon, Hazen didn’t offer to buy them any presents, but Leslie bought a pink wool shawl for Caroline, although Strand didn’t think Caroline would have much occasion to wear it in the balmy climate of Arizona.
They arrived in New York on time and Hazen got them through customs quickly, the inspector deferentially waving them through without asking any of them to open their bags. Conroy and Jimmy and Caroline were waiting for them. Leslie gasped when she saw Caroline. She had a bandage on her nose and her face was swollen and one eye closed and black and blue.
“My God, Caroline,” Leslie said as they embraced, “what happened to you?”
“It’s nothing, Mummy,” Caroline said. “It looks gruesome, but it’s just a few scratches. George was driving me home the other night and some idiot bumped into us from behind when we were stopped at a light and I hit my head on the dashboard.”
“I knew we never should have let you out with that boy,” Leslie said. “He drives like a fool.”
“It wasn’t his fault, Mummy,” Caroline protested. “We weren’t even moving.”
“Even so,” Leslie said.
“Don’t take it so big, Mom,” Jimmy said. “What’s a little black eye between friends?”
“Don’t be so debonair, young man,” Leslie said. “She could have been disfigured for life.”
“Well, she isn’t,” Jimmy said. “How was your trip?”
“Marvelous,” Strand said hastily, anxious to avoid a family quarrel in front of the others.
“Have you seen a doctor?” Hazen asked Caroline.
“There’s no need for a doctor,” Caroline said querulously, as though she felt she was being unjustly scolded.
“Conroy,” Hazen said, “we won’t be going out to the Island. We’re going to New York and we’re taking this young lady to see a doctor. The man’s name is Laird and he’s the best one in the business for this type of thing.”
“Why don’t we just get an ambulance with a siren and life support equipment,” Caroline said sardonically, “and get the horribly mangled poor beautiful young victim to a hospital where a team of experts at bone setting and open-heart surgery are waiting to save her life?”
“Don’t be smart, Caroline,” Leslie said. “Mr. Hazen’s right.”
“Everybody’s making such a fuss,” Caroline said, sounding like a little girl. “Over nothing. It happened almost twenty-four hours ago and I’m still alive.”
“That’s all out of you,” Leslie said to her. “Just keep quiet from now on and do what you’re told.”
Caroline grunted. “I hate doctors,” she said. But Leslie took her arm firmly and marched her toward the exit, with Hazen at her other side. Strand walked behind them with Jimmy and Linda. “What do you know about all this?” Strand asked Jimmy.
“Nothing. The first I knew about it was just fifteen minutes ago when I saw her. I came from New York and Conroy drove her in from the Island. Mom’s just blowing it up into something enormous. And Hazen’s just showing what a big shot he is and running everything, as usual.”
“Well,” said Linda, “at least she didn’t lose any teeth. That’s something to be thankful for. She’s got such pretty teeth.”
“I’ll ask Conroy to drop me off at the office,” Jimmy said. “I told them I’d only be a couple of hours.”
“Don’t you think you ought to stay with your sister at a time like this?”
“Oh, Pops,” Jimmy said impatiently. “For a little black eye?”
“How’re you doing at the office?” Strand said, switching the subject, not wishing to argue with his son. He hadn’t won an argument with him since Jimmy was twelve.
“Still feeling my way,” Jimmy said. “Ask Solomon. He knows better than I do. Anyway, whatever he thinks, I like the job.”
Strand was about to tell him that he didn’t like the way he dropped the Mister when he spoke about Solomon and Hazen, but suddenly remembered Eleanor’s cable. In the excitement over Caroline’s injury, it had completely slipped his mind. “Have you seen Eleanor?” he asked.
“No,” Jimmy said. “We talked over the phone last week.”
“What did she have to say?”
“Nothing much,” Jimmy said carelessly. “The usual. That I sounded as though I wasn’t getting enough sleep. Sometimes I think she believes she’s my mother, not my sister.”
“Did she say anything about getting married?”
“Why would she say anything like that?” Jimmy sounded genuinely surprised.
“Because she got married four days ago. In Las Vegas.”
Jimmy stopped walking. “Holy cow! She must have been drunk. Did she say why?”
“That’s not the sort of thing people put in cablegrams,” Strand said. “The family’s had a full week.”
“You can say that again.” Jimmy shook his head wonderingly. They started walking again toward where Conroy was packing their bags into the car in front of the terminal. “Where’re they now? I’d like to call her and tell her her loving brother wishes her many happy returns of the day.”
“You can’t call her. She didn’t tell us where she was.”
Jimmy shook his head again. “She’s devious, that girl. Devious.” He put his hand gently on his father’s arm. “I wouldn’t worry, Pops. She’ll be all right. He’s okay, Giuseppe. They must know what they’re doing. And you’ll have a little tribe of angelic bambinos to dandle on your knee.”
“I can’t wait,” Strand said gloomily as he climbed into the big Mercedes, where the others were already installed.
Caroline had a stubborn, set expression on her face and she looked grotesque with the bandage on her nose and the swollen, discolored eye. He leaned over and kissed her. “My dear little girl,” he said softly.
“Oh, leave me alone,” Caroline said, shrugging away.
It was not a happy group that drove away in the big car in the direction of the city.
As the car crossed the bridge into Manhattan it occurred to Strand that since the first night Hazen had staggered into the apartment, bloody and stunned, he had had more to do with the medical profession than at any other period of his life.