“You’re welcome,” she drawled. “Any little thing I can do.”
I watched her curiously. “Why did you say they were fiends this afternoon?”
“Because they are fiends. They weren’t treating you like a human being. To them you were just a hunk of flesh they were pushing around for their own advantage. I was sorry for you.” She grimaced. “I’m being like Mimsey now—making a good story. I wasn’t all that Christian. I was scared too. I knew you were getting suspicious. I’d seen you telephoning. I was afraid you might get panicked and call the police and ruin everything. I thought if I dropped the right sort of hint, you’d force the truth out and we’d have a much better chance at the money with you as an ally instead of a victim.”
I grinned. “Looks like you were smarter than they were.”
“Maybe.”
“And certainly franker.”
Her cool eyes watched me, unwinking. “After what you’ve been through, I should think a little frankness would go down well.”
“It does,” I said. “Then you’re not sorry I decided to forgive and forget and help them?”
“Them? Don’t be silly. You’re helping me as much as them. Of course I’m delighted. I want that money more than I want anything in the world.” One of her straight long legs was dangling over the edge of the bed. She swung it restlessly. “God, how I want that money. And when I get my share, I’ll lam out of this place so fast you won’t see me for dust.”
“What have you got against it?”
“Against it?” She stared at me as if I was crazy to ask such a question. “I’ve got everything against it. Always, ever since I can remember, home’s been the place where you get trampled on. First it was Father. Father—he didn’t trample, he oozed. He was like a great, godly slug crawling over my life, turning everything brown around the edges. I was fed wickedness, lusts of the flesh and damnation every day like oatmeal. While I was still wetting my diapers, I was sure I’d committed the sin against the Holy Ghost. Later, when he joined the Clean Living League and went for healthy romps with Mr. Moffat in God’s sunshine, he was still as bad when he came home. You should have seen me. Until a few weeks ago, I was a little grey frightened mouse, scurrying into the wainscot to hide if anyone raised their voice.” She lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply, her eyes reminiscent. “The only fun I had was hoping Father would die. For years, every night after I’d gone to bed, I’d lie awake thinking of him dying.” She laughed. “That and sex, of course. I was never alone with a man till I was twenty-one and that was only three weeks ago. Boy, what a dirty mind I worked up.”
She stared down at her leg gloomily. “And then Father did die. For a while I thought Life had Begun. I painted my face. I bought the smartest clothes, the sheerest stockings, I had a cocktail before every meal, I smoked like a blast furnace. I even had a
date with a man
.
This was it, I thought. Then I started to realize that it was all just as bad as it ever had been—worse really.”
It was quite new for me to think of this girl with her flourished cupid’s bow mouth, her brash exhibition of leg and her cynical chatter as a transformation, only three weeks old, from a mousey frightened child under Mr. Friend’s thumb. Even at their most ominous, the Friends had seemed the epitome of sophistication. This was the first time I saw them as they must really be—three women who had had only a few heady weeks’ emancipation from an almost incredible Victorian tyranny.
I asked: “And why was life just as bad after your father died, Marny?”
She looked up quickly: “Mimsey and Selena, of course.”
“Mimsey and Selena?”
“Ever hear of the word ‘stifled’? You try being a woman in the same house with Mimsey and Selena.” She kicked out savagely with her leg. “It was almost better with Father. At least he wasn’t sinister.”
“Sinister?” I reacted instinctively to the word.
“Oh, they don’t know they are.” She pulled her legs up onto the bed and sat cross-legged, her hands on her ankles. “It’s just that they’re both terrifically forceful characters and all that force was bottled up by Father. Now, with him gone, they’re expanding—blossoming like those monstrous South American man-eating plants. They suck everything in, including me. They swallow everyone. Oh, they’d do anything, absolutely anything, however callous. And just because it’s fulfilling them, they’ll be able to sugar it all over with a pretty word and make it seem oh so charming and sympathetic.” She was staring at me fixedly now, the glossy hair swinging free around her shoulders. I had the strange feeling that somehow between the lines of what she said there was a warning.
“Tell me,” she asked suddenly. “Why are you going through with this plan? There’s nothing in it for you.”
“There’s nothing in it against me, is there?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then why shouldn’t I do it out of general chumminess?” She shook her head. “You’re not doing it for general chumminess. You’re doing it for Selena.”
For some reason I felt uncomfortable.
“Of course you are. You’re just like all the rest. You’re letting her swallow you up. She swallowed Gordy up—what was left of him, poor guy. And she’s swallowed Nate.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Remember I told you I had my first date with a man three weeks ago? That man was Nate. I met him and brought him home. He was supposed to be my beau. No one ever mentions that now, do they? Selena took one look at him and gobbled him like a hippopotamus gobbling water-weed. And you…”
“Maybe I can take care of myself.”
“You?” Marny laughed again. “Just wait and see. Any minute now she’ll be walking into the room. She’ll be so gay and amusing about tomorrow. That’s what will happen first. Then she’ll start having a pain in her eyes and telling you how awful it was being married to a drunk. Then she’ll say Nate’s awfully sweet, of course, and she’s devoted to him, but what big muscles you have.” Her sarcasm was withering. “You take care of yourself? Water-weed! That’s what you’ll be. One big, green mouthful.”
My reaction was curiously mixed. Part of me said:
She's right. Watch out.
Another part strained to leap to Selena’s defense. It was checked however by Marny’s clear, ironic stare.
She said: “You think I’m jealous, don’t you, because Selena’s such a ravishment.”
“Do I?”
“Of course you do.” In a quick change of mood her face was deadly serious. “Please believe me, for your own sake. She’ll be poison to you. She’s bad—really bad. It’s not just Gordy, Nate. It’s every man that comes near her.” She paused and added harshly: “Jan, even.”
“Jan!”
“Yes, Jan. I saw Selena with Jan just before Father died. I… Oh, I suppose I shouldn’t have told you. It’s bitchy. But what difference does it make if only I can make you see?” A vision of Jan’s huge half-naked body swam across my mind. I thought of his gusty peals of laughter when I’d asked him why Mr. Friend had fired him. Then the image of him—still laughing—merged with Selena’s lithe, suntanned figure, struggling in the pool. Anger, of a violence that startled me, flared up in me.
Marny was still watching me. “Selena got bored with Gordy. Cynically, without raising her little finger, she let him drink himself into a sudden pulp. She took up with Nate just so she could use him. Soon she’ll be bored with him too. Soon she’ll throw him on the junk pile. And you’re next on the list for liquidation. She can’t help it, I guess. It’s the way she’s made. Without realizing it, she destroys people.”
Because I didn’t quite know at what my anger was directed, I focused it on her. “Aren’t you being rather goddam helpful? What’s it to you whether I make a fool of myself or not?”
“What’s it to me?” She gave a little weary shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I can’t bear to see Selena get away with things. She’s got some plan up her sleeve with you. I know she has.”
“Plan?” I was uneasy again. “What sort of plan?”
She sat there for a moment in silence. Then she shook her head slowly. “I don’t know. But there’s something. I can tell it in her eyes.” She leaned forward and touched my hand with a gravity that was almost naive. “Don’t trust her. Please, promise me you won’t trust her.”
It was a funny moment. This was the warning I had half been expecting. I should have been worrying about it. I should have been worrying too about the vision of Selena that rose, gorgeous and mocking, in my mind. But I didn’t worry about either of them. All that seemed to matter was that Marny was looking very young and tired and forlorn. I slid my arm around her, drew her close and kissed her on the lips.
“Thanks for the warning, baby.”
“You won’t pay it any attention.”
“Who knows?”
“But you’ll see. Sooner or later you’ll find out what she’s up to and you’ll come screaming to me to say how right I was.”
“Okay. That’s a bargain. When Selena poisons me, I’ll come screaming to you for an emetic.”
I kissed her again. For a moment her lips relaxed against mine; then they went tight and hostile. She wrenched herself free. “For God’s sake stop kissing me.”
“Why, Marny?”
“Because…” She stared at me, her mouth unsteady. Then she jumped off the bed. “Oh, God, you make me sick. All men make me sick.” She gave a savage laugh. “Didn’t someone say that before?”
“Marny, baby.”
“Oh, hell, I’ll go get Jan to put you to bed. You boys should get together anyway and form a club.”
As she ran to the door, I caught a glimpse of her face. It was white and stricken.
Suddenly I felt like a heel.
Soon Jan came. He was in pajamas. His blond hair was ruffled and, from the droopiness of his lids, I imagined Marny had waked him up. But he was as amiable as ever. Mechanically, he went through the routine of preparing me for the night. I’d never liked his touching me. That night, with the vision of him and Selena together in my mind, I felt an unbridled desire to lunge my own good fist into his broad suntanned face.
He carried me back to bed as if I were a baby, tucked me in, smiled with all the friendly sweetness in the world and loped out.
It was only after he’d gone that I faced the truth which I should have faced days before.
Marny was right, of course, about my obsession with Selena. I didn’t love her. It was nothing as fragrant and romantic as that. It was worse. Although she had cheated me and lied to me from the start, Selena was in my blood. That’s the way it was. For better or worse I was stuck with it.
From the beginning the violence of my reactions to the Friends had really been conditioned by Selena. I had half known it all along but it was as clear to me now as my memory of Selena’s dark blue eyes. I had hated the Friends when I thought they were my enemies because I had hated to have Selena as an enemy. That evening I had ignored every instinct of self-preservation and joined their conspiracy simply because, by joining, I could have Selena on my side again. Even now, when vague suspicions of an even vaguer danger ahead preyed on me, I could still be excited because I knew that at any moment Selena would be coming.
The door opened and there she was.
“Hello, darling. Has Marny been warning you against me? I’m sure she has. I saw that predatory gleam in her eyes.”
She came to the bed and sat down. She took my hand in hers and tilted back her head, laughing out of sheer animal spirits.
“I’m sorry I’m so late, baby. I’ve been having a terrible time with Nate.”
I was happy now. “What’s Nate been up to?”
“Oh, he was seething without my sleeping in here. He said since I wasn’t pretending to be your wife any more, I ought to move over into one of those dreary guest bedrooms in the other wing. Really, my dear, he was so stodgy about it. I pointed out that you could hardly become a menace with that cast and, since you’d seen everything there was to see already, it was frightfully hypocritical to go stuffy at this stage of the game.” She leaned over me, kissing me on the mouth. “Besides, all those proprieties, they’re so dismal, aren’t they?”
“Terribly dismal.” Her shoulders were bare. I let my hand stray over the warm, smooth skin. Dimly, I thought:
Poor Nate.
But only dimly.
She slipped back against the pillows, wheedling her hand under the nape of my neck. “Baby, I’m so terribly, terribly glad about tomorrow. You really are an angel. Funny, it all turned out for the best, didn’t it? I mean, Gordy’d never have been sober enough to recite that poem himself.” Under their thick lashes, her eyes slid sidewise to glance at me. “Poor Gordy. I’m devoted to him. Honestly I am. But sometimes—well, it’s rather drab being married to a drunk. Can you understand that, baby?”
“I can’t understand life ever being drab for you. After all, there’s not only Gordy. Nate’s crazy about you.”
“Nate.” She gave a little throaty sigh. “Yes, I suppose he is. He wants me to divorce Gordy and marry him.”
“He does?” I asked sharply.
“That’s why he helped us. He didn’t want to at all until I pointed out how depressing it would be to marry him if I was penniless. After all, if I was going to divorce Gordy, it was so much more sensible to have Gordy rich, so’s I could get a great fat cash settlement, wasn’t it?”
She lay back, staring happily up at the ceiling. For a moment the shamelessness of that admission took my breath away. So that was how the Friends had got the invaluable assistance of Nate Croft. Selena had used herself as a lure to induce the young doctor to risk his entire professional career.
Poor Nate,
I thought again. Less dimly this time.
I said: “So after this is over, you’re going to divorce Gordy and marry Nate?”
“Oh, baby, it’s so bleak thinking of things way in the future like that. Of course Nate’s awfully sweet. But he’s a bit of a stuffed shirt. Don’t you think he is? Just a bit of a stuffed shirt?”
She rolled over onto her hip so that she faced me. Idly her fingers started playing with the sleeve of my pajama jacket. She pushed it back, staring down at my arm.
“Baby, such hands. I’ve always adored them. And the muscles—really, like a stevedore’s.”
It amazed me how separate my mind and my emotions had become. Clearly, as if she was in the room right then saying them, my mind remembered Marny’s cynical words. She had prophesied almost exactly the sequence of Selena’s conversation. But instead of acting as a warning, that knowledge gave me a strange exhilaration.