“Oh, thank you, Taylor. They’re on the desk. You’d better hurry. It’s after ten.”
“Bertha only want to see the Ingmar Bergman picture. She don’t care about the first feature.”
“Well, enjoy yourselves,” Sheila said, amused. “Good night,
Taylor. Now—oops, that’s enough brandy for me—where were we?”
“Your girlhood in Evanston with a governess in a sitz bath.”
“Oh yes. Well, I went to Sunday School at St. Luke’s Church. I was a Girl Scout. I took dancing lessons from Mr. Bournique and then Miss Pocock, had all the usual childish diseases and went to Roycemore School from kindergarten all the way through. I still wear the skirt, but the middy blouse looks a little skittish.”
“Private, I’m sure.”
“Yes,” she said, sensing his disapproval.
“College?”
“No, Mother was sort of toying with Sarah Lawrence, but she wanted me to come out first. So I did and somebody—I don’t remember who—brought a dashing older man to the party.”
“George Arliss?”
“No,” Sheila laughed. “That man was Richard Sargent—a glamorous foreign correspondent, the Evanston boy who made good away from the Athens of the Middle West. Well, I stopped thinking about Sarah Lawrence right there on the dance floor and concentrated on becoming Mrs. Richard Sargent.”
“And?”
“And we were married the following spring. I’m a good concentrator.”
“I figured that.”
“So for a couple of years we knocked around the world to
gether—those were the days of Franco and Chamberlain and Hider and Poland, fascinating times. Well, you know, just the two of us. Then something told me every morning that Dicky was on the way, so we moved out here and I settled down to being wife, mother and hostess.”
Peter looked into his brandy inhaler and realized that he was a little drunk. He reviewed his intake for the day: a scotch and water on the plane, which he had ordered of his volition; two drinks before lunch with Malvern and offers of liqueurs; a beer
before dressing and three whiskies before dinner; two different kinds of wine at table and now his second brandy. She’s trying to get me plastered, he thought, both this dame and her cohort,
Malvern. “One of the slickest little hostesses in the business, I’ll
bet,” he said unkindly.
Not understanding, Sheila went right on. “Well, I couldn’t have been too bad. Once we had Colonel McCormick and Colonel Knox at the same table without bloodshed. Oh, Dick
always knew a lot of interesting people. Well, then Allison came
along and well, life just sort of happened until—until Dick was killed during the war.” Peter said nothing, wrote nothing. There was a slight pause. Sheila cleared her throat and went on. “So after a while Howard Malvern rustled up something to
keep the wolf away from the door—all of Dick’s friends were
wonderful to me—and, oddly enough, the column caught on. And so here I am, telling you the story of my life, which I have just finished.”
“Very nicely done,” Johnson said. “My congratulations.”
“For what?”
“For the way you’ve done it. The way you’ve produced this whole evening.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I do. The stage all set. The star makes a late entrance. Applause. A pretty confusion among the bit players. The star changes into this devastating bathrobe, or whatever you call it. There’s an elegant little dinner with two faithful old darkies hovering. . .
”
“Please! They might hear you! They’ve been with me since. . . .”
“Us house niggahs all done gwine to de minstrel show wiv you kine permission, massah,” Peter said. “Then the Lake Forest
Lochinvar comes to drag the popular daughter off to the ball. That Falstaff, Mrs. Flood, exits laughing to watch TV and young Hamlet mysteriously disappears. Who do you think you’re kidding?”
With considerable control Sheila said, “Just what did Howard Malvern give you for lunch, lemons?”
“What?’
“I’ve been entertaining people in this house for twenty years-social people, G.I.’s from Fort Sheridan, writers, editors, publishers—but I’ve never seen one as truculent and rude as you. Remember, you’re not doing
me
any favor by being here. I didn’t ask your pallid little imitation of
Time
to interview me.”
“And I didn’t ask for the assignment. They should have sent the drama critic.”
“Perhaps they should. He could hardly be more difficult.”
“Difficult?”
“No, not difficult,
impossible.
You came here determined to despise me, didn’t you? Oh, yes. Don’t give me those wondering
eyes.” Even in her anger, Sheila noticed his eyes, the lashes. Where did a man named Johnson ever get such
Irish
eyes?
“Howard Malvern suggested that you might have a chip on your
shoulder. Well, he was wrong. You’ve got a Yule log!”
“That’s not true,” Johnson said, angry because she was right. “As a member of the press, I . . .”
“As a member of the press! Oh my, but aren’t we pleased with ourselves! That may knock your other victims for a loop but it doesn’t cut any ice with me.
I’m
a member of the press. So was my husband. So are half the people I know. But there isn’t a one of those newspaper people from the copy boys on up to the publisher himself so mean and petty as to have his whole story written before he asks the first question.”
“Listen, I came here. . . .”
“You came here with your little red hatchet all set to do a
job on me. Because I tried to look decent for you, because I gave
you a good dinner, you’re furious. But if I’d put on an old house dress and dished up frozen chow mein with my hair in curlers you’d have been
outraged.
There’s just no winning with you, is there, Mr. Johnson?”
“Do you usually have two wines with dinner?”
“I usually have
three!
Be sure to make a note of that so all of
your
readers can tell all of
my
readers that Sheila Sargent is a rum
pot.”
“You’re pretty tough, lady.”
“Right both times. I am tough and I am a lady. I just hope that you’ll be gentleman enough to answer one question honestly.”
“What’s that?”
“Why did you come here hating me?”
“Hate you? I don’t hate you. It’s just that I . . . I don’t approve of you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t approve of what you write or
why
you write. I’ve seen too many talented and experienced newspaperwomen spending
their whole lives covering church suppers and dog fights for peanuts just because some rich dame like you switches into the boss’s office wearing a mink coat with the idea that she’d be
great at telling the other half how to live. Emily Post, Elsa Max
well, Abigail van Buren, Sheila Sargent-you’re all alike. And if there’s anything I can’t stand it’s the amateur society writer.”
“Well, if there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s the professional proletarian writer!”
“Very clever. Very pert. Just like your column, like your books,
like your house, like you.”
“You really do hate me, don’t you?” Sheila asked with a maddening calm.
“No, God damn it! I
don’t
hate you,” Johnson roared. “But I hate the
idea
of you. You’re all alike. A bunch of rich dames with time on your hands. You’re bored at home tending to your kids and so you use your old dinner partners to take the express elevator right up to the top. Messing around with other people’s lives is just a lark for you, isn’t it?”
“No, you arrogant young puppy, it isn’t a lark. Do you think I’d be writing this column for ten minutes if I didn’t have to?”
“Have
to?”
“Yes,
have
to. How do you think I’d be able to keep all this if I
didn’t work?” Sheila gestured around the room.
“Is all this so important?’’
“It is to me. All I ever was or wanted to be was Dick Sargent’s wife and the mother of his children. I didn’t know shorthand or typing or accounting or one other useful thing. And I never wanted to. When Dick was killed I was left with
two babies and enough money to last us for two—maybe three—
years. That’s why I became a career woman, Mr. Johnson, I went to work because I had to, in spite of what you think. And
now you’re angry because I’ve been a success. Would you rather
have another Flood?”
“Another what?”
“Another Flood. My incapable secretary, Imogene Flood. She’s
a perfect example of the indigent gentlewoman earning her bread
and butter. She’s ‘Society’ too, Mr. Johnson, and she’s got all the faults and foibles you despise. But she’s also got guts. Her husband jumped out of a window in the depression. He left her
with two hands, no brains and thousands of dollars worth of debts. She did all the things a woman in her position
can
do—
little jobs in shops, even selling door-to-door in a coat you’d be
ashamed to give to the Goodwill Industries. Now she’s here running another woman’s house, answering another woman’s letters, living on another woman’s bounty. She has nothing to
look forward to but a pay check and her silly television programs.
Is that the sort of thing you had in mind as suitable for me?
“Well, if you did, I’m happy to disappoint you. Without a little talent and a lot of luck, I could be my own Mrs. Flood—scrimping and saving to buy Allison a dress in the budget department, living on macaroni to put Dicky through school. Eighty per cent of the working women in this country work
because they have to—not because they want to. And I’m one of
that majority. But if I had to scrub floors, I’d do it to make Dick Sargent’s children the kind of lives he intended them to have.” With blazing eyes she stood up and faced him. “And now, Mr. Johnson, you can take out your poison pen and write anything you damned please for your trashy little magazine. I think that just about winds up our interview.” With a swish of her skirts she marched to the door. But he was there first. Before she knew what was happening, she found herself in his arms. She felt her face, her throat, her lips being devoured by
him. She struggled furiously. “Let go of me, you. . . .” Then she
said no more.
XVI.
The night had been a disappointment for Mrs. Flood. Her favorite television program,
Late Love,
had been preempted by
a presidential address dealing with one of the country’s knottier
problems, Mrs. Flood did not care to listen. She was a Republican and she intended to remain a Republican, as all Nice People were. No one on either side of the political fence was
likely to sway her in her opinions so she saw no point in wasting
time listening.
Nor was the sequin machine any solace. Having run out of jets, all work on the new little cocktail veil she was running up
for some indefinite engagement would have to be postponed until
she could get around to the notions department at Field’s.
She had taken a long time preparing for bed, bathing in a hot
tub with two extra dollops of Smootholine (’For Skin No Longer
Young”); creaming her face, her elbows, her hands, her heels. She had put her hair up and wound her skull with lavender gauze, put on the chin strap and drawn it a notch tighter.
Then she got in bed with her favorite book. Mrs. Flood was not much of a reader. Her favorite book—in fact, the only book
she possessed—was an out-of-date copy of the Chicago Social
Register. She never tired of it. As was her custom, she looked first at her own name, just to see that it was still there. It was:
Flood Mrs. Thos C (Imogene Otis) Jl.
The “Jl” made her a little nervous. She had gone inactive at the Junior League before she was forty and hadn’t sent them
a penny since then. She lived in constant terror that the treasurer of the Junior League would run across her name in the book, say: “Why, we haven’t had a check from Imogene Flood for almost thirty years!” and then create An Incident. But Mrs. Flood liked to have at least one club after her name. It lent such an air—just as Mrs. Sargent’s address and telephone number lent an air.
It was an exciting contest Mrs. Flood had with the Social
Register Association. She liked to see how many years she could go on being listed without having to fork over money for a new
issue of the book. The longest she had ever dared to go was three years. She had been awfully worried that they might drop her, but this year, regular as rain, a new blank had come in. She had filled it out, parted regretfully with a check and wondered now if she might not just push her luck over
four
years before she ordered again next time.
Having caressed her own page, she turned next to the S’s to make sure that Sheila and Dicky and Allison were still safe and sound. They were. Assured that her own brood was all right, she thought of Emily Porter. Poor Emily. With trembling hands she searched for “Porter Mrs. Stacy de V.” Alas, Emily—either through indifference or indigence—had flown. So, too, a glance at “Married Maidens” told her, had Emily’s daughter and the insurance adjuster in Detroit. It was a cruel world of change
and strife, Mrs. Flood decided. But, after all, it was probably for
the best. Why would a practical nurse want to be in the Social Register at all? Wasn’t the nurses’ registry enough?
For another hour Mrs. Flood cheerfully looked up old friends to see who was still in, who had been dropped, who had died, who had married into or out of the book. But this book was
three years old and she’d been over the same territory a thousand
times. It held no surprises. She couldn’t wait until next month
when the new book would arrive. Mrs. Flood quivered in antici
pation of the beautiful nights in bed with a brand new Social Register to thumb. Finally, after having looked up the names,
addresses and officers of all the better clubs, she snapped the book
shut and called it a day.
She hammered at her pillow, set her alarm for eight and turned out the light. But Café Dormé or no Café Dormé, Mrs. Flood could not get to sleep. She lay there for, well, goodness,
she didn’t know how long, trying to induce drowsiness and then,
just as she had planned the last sequin on Allison’s Christmas Juliet cap and felt slumber coming on, she was rudely awakened by a light suddenly flashed in her eyes.
Mrs. Flood sat up. The light was coming from Mrs. Sargent’s bedroom in another wing of the house. Really, Mrs. Flood thought indignantly, she’d have to speak to Bertha about lowering the upstairs blinds in the evenings. She got out of bed and went to the window to lower her own and then, staring across at the three lighted windows in Mrs. Sargent’s bedroom, Mrs. Flood gasped. Mrs. Sargent was in her room with that reporter man. The man had taken off his jacket and now
he
was closing
Mrs. Sargent’s
blinds.
“Well,” Mrs. Flood said, feeling her face flush in the cool darkness. ‘Well, I never!”