Rest and Be Thankful (8 page)

“Medicines we know and trust. Don’t forget poison-ivy rattlesnakes flies moths calamine lotion sunshade flannel nightgowns hot-water bottles.”

“Boots half-size larger and start breaking them in. Socks too.”

The last telegram did full justice to Margaret’s ten-line editorialising: “Skiing underwear.” This put Sarah in a better humour, even while shopping in New York’s most blistering mood, when the sight of wool was enough to cause a third-degree burn. Some Telemark undervests and Schneider crouch panties, please. Her private joke was abandoned, however, before the eighth store had lifted its eyebrows at such an unseasonable request, but managed to retrieve some wool objects for her from its bargain basement. They looked tent-like, but they would shrink: you could depend on wool. She scored off the last memorandum on her crumpled shopping-lists, and prayed that she would be safely in the ’plane for Wyoming before the next telegram arrived.

* * *

On the last evening Sarah was to have dinner with Prender Atherton Jones. She had her third cold shower, changed her clothes again, and put on her hat and lipstick most carefully for Twenty-one. Just as she was almost ready to leave Prender ’phoned to say that they might have dinner instead in a little French restaurant around the corner: it was so much easier to talk there. Poor Prender, his intentions for dinner were always good, but they invariably flinched two hours before the bill was presented. Now, if she hadn’t answered that telephone call! But she stopped feeling amused as she entered the hot street, and felt the warm waves of air surge up from the sidewalk. The little French restaurant “just around the corner” was too near to justify a taxi, too far for pleasant walking in this weather. It would probably be having difficulties with its air-conditioning.

It was, for it relied on a fan. Prender’s face, she was glad to see, was already having its difficulties too. This would be a dripping, oozing, brow-mopping evening.

“How well you look!” he said truthfully, and then he added a trifle too truthfully, “Years younger! What have you been doing to your hair? Most attractive that way.” He guided her to the tight little seat behind a small table with a checked cloth. “Isn’t this very Left Bank? Reminds me of the days when I used to visit you in Paris.” His voice became suddenly practical. “And what’s this new adventure you have engineered? We are all dying of curiosity. My ’phone has been ringing for the last three days.”

There was no need to answer his question, for Margaret Peel’s telegram to Prender had been remarkably explanatory. So Sarah smiled and said, “Thank you for sending me the list of writers who might be interested in coming to Wyoming. I’ve spent today telephoning the names you marked specially.”

“I made that list as soon as I got the telegram,” he assured her. “I know how desperately urgent it was for you.”

Sarah felt her eyes widen. Somehow she had thought the predicament of the unhoused writers would have been a desperately urgent problem for Prender. He might even have said thank you to Margaret Peel. But at this moment, as he ordered red caviar and madrilène, to be followed by
sole amandine
(flounder with nuts on), it was obvious that he was Margaret’s benefactor. He finished his assault on the French language with a little domestic wine suitable for a lady, and then remembered that Sarah Bly had an excellent palate. He covered his confusion by firing off questions, amusingly phrased, in his crisp way. He had great charm, and used it as expertly as he managed his excellent hands. They pulled information out of you, Sarah thought: she was amazed at her own power of describing Rest and be Thankful.

“It sounds delightful,” he said. “I think we shall have a most enjoyable holiday. What other lecturers have you decided to ask? I’ll give ‘The Subconscious in the Novel.’ Or perhaps ‘The Approach to Kafka’?”

Sarah’s smile faded. “We hadn’t planned any lectures.”

He was incredulously amused. “But you must have lecturers, Sarah!”

“Frankly, we cannot afford their fees. This is an expensive undertaking—much more so than we had imagined, I’m afraid. Wages and prices in America are so much higher than in Europe, you know.”

Ridiculous nonsense, he thought. Margaret Peel could easily have afforded to finance his Literary Festival; and she could certainly now offer her Rest and be Thankful to him for the summer. Instead she had financed her own idea and stolen his writers. He was deeply wounded. He passed his hand over his thick white hair, lightly enough not to disarrange its carefully encouraged wave. This was a sign of distress. His light grey eyes, rather too closely set together in an otherwise handsome face, looked at Sarah reproachfully. “My own summer was all built around the writers,” he said.

Sarah tried to murmur something about accommodation being limited, but he waved that aside.

“If you aren’t having lecturers”—he looked at her unbelievingly—“what
are
you providing for my writers?”

“Wyoming,” Sarah said. She was angry now.

He noticed the expression on her face. He counter-attacked. “You know, Sarah,” he said, with a smile, “it isn’t exactly fair to ask writers to be your guests so that you can have intelligent companions to brighten your evenings. Is it?”

She was silenced. He made it sound so painfully true. He had certainly succeeded in killing her enthusiasm. She wished she had never heard of those writers, never seen Wyoming. She wondered suddenly how someone like Jim Brent would handle this situation. And surprisingly she regained her courage.

She said quietly but decidedly, “We aren’t trying to take away your writers, Prender. If you feel we are, then let’s call the whole thing off.”

He hadn’t quite expected that. He passed his hand over his hair once more, straightened his dark blue tie, and took a sip of his Californian Chablis. He had never seen Sarah in such a difficult mood. She was usually very amenable. It had been a grave mistake to cancel the table at Twenty-one. “Now, Sarah,” he said, even managing a smile, “that would be very disappointing for the writers, wouldn’t it?”

And after that he set out to charm. Dinner ended on a friendly note with a dissection of their acquaintances in New York, Paris, and London. Everyone knew Prender, if they were celebrated enough; and he knew them—if they were especially celebrated—by their pet names. Twiddles, Dickie, Booboo, and Bibi came slipping into the conversation as easily as allusions to Tom Wolfe, Lorenzo, Gertrude, and Alice. Sarah’s alarm subsided. She even began to feel a little ashamed of herself for her suspicions.

But when they parted, “I’ll write and let you know when to expect me,” he said. “I’ll draw up a programme for you. I know Merrick Maclehose would lecture without a fee if I asked him. He’s due for a Pulitzer Prize any year now. And Aubrey Brimstone—he’s starting a new magazine, didn’t you know?— he would be another good man to have. We ought to have a publisher, and perhaps a literary agent, to visit us too. Good for morale. Of course, we need only have
them
for a few days.”

* * *

But Prender Atherton Jones would stay all of August and more, Sarah Bly thought dejectedly, as she walked back to her hotel. And he would plan everything, unless she saw that he didn’t. And that would be unpleasant too.

She looked at the rows of lighted windows, shining high above her in the warm dark sky. The tall narrow silhouettes of the mid-town skyscrapers were outlined clearly by the glow from the bright canyons at their feet. But even the view of New York by night couldn’t comfort her. By next winter Rest and be Thankful would be another of Prender’s discoveries. Next summer it would even be his Literary Festival. Forever and ever.

“We’ll see about that,” she told herself grimly, by the time she reached her room. Then her words startled her. Few rebelled against Prender, and they were cast into the wilderness of the unmentioned. She could hear Prender pronounce her own obituary: “Poor Sarah, of course, always did have reactionary tendencies.” Reactionary, the damning word. The word that implied that new ideas must always be better than old, that progressive thinking—good in itself—couldn’t have bad results. How easily we can be blackmailed by a word, she thought.

She undressed quickly, had her fourth shower, climbed into bed, drew a sheet over her, threw it off again, and settled patiently to endure a sleepless night. She began to compose a letter to Prender which would make everything quite definite. No fees. No lecturers. No guests except the writers. And Prender? She could hardly refuse him, after all.

She stared up at the shadowed ceiling, circled by dim bands of light as the procession of taxis and cars came from the closing theatres. She listened to the street noises, to the hum of engines, the roar of an accelerator, the protesting scream of brakes, the ebb and flow of rushing wheels as the traffic lights changed. Her irritation increased. She became angry with her own weakness.

She found herself wishing she had Jim Brent’s independence: he didn’t give a damn for anyone. Then she found herself smiling as she thought of his probable comment on some of the prize exhibits in Prender’s circle. That cheered her up considerably. In a way it would be amusing to see Prender Atherton Jones trying to dominate Wyoming.

Everything, Mrs. Peel decided, was most satisfactory. She hadn’t had so many arrangements to make since her summer on the Dalmation coast in 1938. The house was almost ready for the invasion. The invitations had been sent out, and six writers had definitely accepted them. Additional help had been engaged. Friendly relations had been established with the storekeepers in Sweetwater, who were relieved to hear that the new owners of Rest and be Thankful weren’t going to order staples from Omaha or Chicago. A Mr. Milton Jerks had announced he could provide gasoline, a car, souvenirs of Sweetwater, a laundry, a Piper Cub, and movies changed once a week without fail. And all Sarah’s purchases in New York had turned out well, except the skiing underwear, which preferred to stretch. The new books were added to the shelves in the study, which now could be called the library. The radio-phonograph and records were installed in the large living-room for the use of their guests. The small sitting-room with the glass-enclosed porch would be their own retreat. (Even in her exuberance Mrs. Peel felt that retreat might sometimes be the better part of valour.)

Prender Atherton Jones had not yet announced his arrival. In fact, he had not even answered Sarah’s letter, sent by special delivery just before she left New York.

“I wonder when he
is
coming,” Sarah said, as she helped Margaret put up some pictures in their sitting-room. With magazines and books, flowers from the garden, where delphiniums and hollyhocks grew wild, and the little personal knick-knacks (with which Margaret always travelled as insurance against bleak hotel bedrooms), the small room was becoming definitely their own. Now the pictures (reproductions from the Museum of Modern Art) were being inspected, judged for size and colour to suit the shapes and lighting of the three available walls.

Neither of them had mentioned Prender for almost an hour, but Mrs. Peel, as she stood back to frown at a picture, could answer, “We’ll have a telegram any day now.”

“Perhaps we ought to have told him how to reach here.” Sarah felt that the responsibility somehow would be hers.

“He never asked us. Besides, it is all quite simple. First, you take the big ’plane to Denver, and then the little ’plane to Sweetwater. Then that very efficient Milton Jerks sends you here by car.”

“He may not fly.”

“Then that, darling, is his problem. There are such things as information-booths in New York’s stations. Now don’t worry about Prender. Why, anyone would think you really wanted to see him arrive.”

“I’ve been hoping for a telegram that said he couldn’t come.”

“You do jump from one extreme to the other, Sarah. After all, if he wants to come here, then that is that. We cannot offend him, you know.”

“Why not?”

“Sarah! You know we’ve never antagonised anyone! Except those Nazis in Paris. And then it did annoy me that we had to do it so secretly. Besides Prender isn’t a Nazi: he’s so much the opposite politically. You know how advanced he always is.”

“Yes, that makes him sure he is intelligent.”

“Sarah, what has come over you? I’m sure that when you met Prender in New York you must have been so exhausted by all that shopping that you became a little bit fretful. Now, you know you do, Sarah, whenever you are tired. You do get cross.”

“Only if people make me cross,” Sarah said determinedly, and reached for the hammer and nails. “Now, if anything, you are much too kind. I cannot understand how you always make such an effort to be nice to Prender. He did hurt you once, you know.”

Poor Elizabeth Whiffleton, Mrs. Peel thought. Ah, well!... She said nobly, “If someone hurts one, then one must try all the harder to be nice to that someone.”

Sarah, hammer in hand, looked down from the chair on which she now stood in stockinged feet. “Translate that, will you? And hold the rest of the nails meanwhile.”

Mrs. Peel said patiently, “You have to try all the harder to be nice to anyone who has hurt you.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s so tempting not to be nice.”

“It would seem easier to give into temptation just once, and even the score. Then you could all start over again.”

“But Prender knew nothing whatever about Elizabeth Whiffleton; at least, I hope not. If I had ever been rude to him he would have immediately wondered why. And he is very clever at finding out, you know.”

“In other words, we are afraid of him. Just as most others are. But why? I’ve kept asking myself that for the last few weeks. He has never done a thing for us, Margaret, except tolerate us or use us. In fact, that is what he does with everyone.”

“Sarah, you mustn’t talk like that.” Mrs. Peel was scandalised. “Besides, I
do
want a pleasant summer for a change. You know how upsetting last year was.”

Because we knew too many people like Prender Atherton Jones, Sarah thought, and banged the nail home. The plaster cracked, splintered, and fell.