Bread Upon the Waters (29 page)

“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.

N
ATURALLY STRAND THOUGHT, AS
he listened to the doctor, who was talking to them in his brisk, best-man-in-the-business manner, naturally it was worse than it looked. It was a period when things were worse than they looked.

“The bone’s pretty well smashed and the left septum is blocked,” the doctor said to Leslie and Strand in the elegant Park Avenue office into which he had called them after he had looked at the X rays and completed his examination of Caroline, whom he had left with an assistant in another room where the assistant was putting on another bandage and drawing samples of blood. “I’m afraid that it will mean an operation,” the doctor said. He didn’t look afraid, at all. The English language, Strand thought, with all its polite ambiguities. “We’ll have to wait a few days until the swelling goes down. I’ll reserve the operating room. That is, if you agree.”

“Of course,” Leslie said.

Strand nodded.

“She’ll only have to stay overnight,” the doctor said. “There’s really nothing to worry about, Mrs. Strand.”

“Mr. Hazen tells me she’s in the best possible hands,” Leslie said.

“Good old Russell.” Dr. Laird smiled at this reported vote of confidence. “In the meanwhile, I advise putting the young lady to bed and keeping her quiet. She’s too brave for her own good. Will you stay in New York or do you plan to go out to Russell’s place on the Island?”

“We’ll be in New York,” Leslie said quickly.

“Good. The less she moves around the better.” He stood up to show that the interview was over. The best man in the business had no time for idle talk. “I’ll call you after I make the arrangements at Lenox Hill Hospital, that’s just around the corner from here on 77th Street, and tell you when to bring the young lady in.” He accompanied them into the waiting room, where Linda and Hazen were sitting, Linda thumbing nervously through a magazine and Hazen staring, his face set, out the window.

“Russell,” the doctor said, “might I have a word with you in my office?”

Hazen got up and followed him out of the room. Linda put down her magazine and looked at Strand inquiringly.

“There’re some complications,” Strand said. “He’s got to operate.”

“Oh, dear,” Linda said. “The poor girl.”

“There’s nothing to worry about, the doctor told us,” said Leslie. “I’m sure he knows what he’s talking about.”

“Has he told Caroline?”

“Not yet.”

“I hope she won’t be too upset.”

“When she learns that if she wants to breathe normally from now on she has to have an operation, I’m sure she’ll be reasonable,” Leslie said calmly.

They were still waiting for Caroline when Hazen came out. There was no indication from his expression of what private communication the doctor had had with him. “Is there anything Dr. Laird told you that he didn’t tell us?” Strand asked.

“Nothing important,” Hazen said. “He hasn’t got time to lie. No—all he said was that in a case like this with young girls, when he has to operate anyway, there’s always a chance that at the same time, if the patient wants it, he can easily do a little cosmetic job.”

“What does that mean?” Strand asked suspiciously.

“Make the nose more esthetically pleasing to the eye is the expression he used. He does a lot of plastic surgery and from what I hear he has a satisfied clientele.”

“Why didn’t he tell
us
that?” Strand asked.

“Sometimes, he said, parents are apt to get angry at the suggestion. Their vanity is touched. He’d rather that you get angry at me than at him.”

Strand glanced at Leslie. She was looking at Linda. Linda was nodding her head vigorously.