Return to Peyton Place (33 page)

Roberta was, as she had always been, clever about sounding out people and when, within two weeks after the reopening of school in September, she discovered that the town was more than displeased with the man who now acted as headmaster of the Peyton Place school, she began to agitate for the return of Mike Rossi to his rightful position. Behind the back of her best friend, Marion Partridge, she let Charles know that when the school board considered the contracts for the next year she, Roberta, would be behind Charles one thousand per cent in his campaign to rehire Mike.

“The whole thing has given this town a terrible black eye,” she confided in Charles. “I mean, firing Mike just because of Allison's book. I was never really for it in the first place.”

And Charles Partridge, the town pacifist, forgot that Roberta had been one of Mike's sworn enemies and accepted her new attitude gratefully.

“It'll take a while for people to get over the way we acted about Mike,” said Roberta. “We've managed to make ourselves a laughingstock in educational circles. But it's nothing that can't be patched up.”

“And the sooner the better,” amended Charles Partridge.

Roberta began to make frequent visits to the Thrifty Corner where she not only made purchases, but became very friendly with Connie and Selena.

“I'm so very glad for you and Peter,” said Roberta to Selena. “He's certainly a lucky man.”

“I wonder what ails her,” said Selena when Roberta had gone. “I've never known her to be so sweet. It's almost sickening.”

But Connie, the incurable optimist, said, “Perhaps she's mellowing. After all, Roberta's no teen-ager any more. She's getting on.”

“I still don't believe that the leopard changes its spots,” said Selena.

But, as the weeks went by, even Selena had to admit that Roberta Carter had changed. In October, Mike Rossi was offered, and accepted, on terms he had made clear to the school board, his old job as principal of the Peyton Place school. The whole town with a few diehard exceptions, had been overwhelmingly on Mike's side of the fence. One of the exceptions was Marion Partridge, and in the interests of, as she put it, doing the right thing, Roberta Carter broke with her lifelong friend.

To various women in town Roberta said, “I'm sorry that Marion feels as she does, but I wanted to do what was best for the school.”

The women carried the word into their homes and practically everyone agreed that Roberta Carter was the soul of unselfishness. They sympathized with Roberta, too, for Roberta let it be known that what she wanted more than anything was a grandchild, but Jennifer, so far, had not conceived.

“It's a shame,” said the women of Peyton Place. “It isn't as if Ted and Jennifer had to worry about money or anything. Heaven knows Roberta and Harmon are more than generous.”

Then Roberta let it be known that her son, Ted, wanted to come back to Peyton Place to practice law when he graduated from Harvard, and if there had been any doubt at all in the minds of the town, it was now assuaged. Peyton Place loved a local boy who went away and obtained the best education money could buy and then returned home to put what he had learned to use.

“Ted always had a good head on his shoulders,” said the town. “A good boy, Ted. And a smart one.”

“Old Charlie Partridge ain't gonna last forever. We'll need somebody like young Carter to take over when Charlie goes.”

Roberta counted heavily on the quality in her son that kept him from hurting anyone if he could possibly refrain from doing so. When anyone in Peyton Place mentioned Ted's eventual local practice, rather than answering flatly that he had no intention whatsoever of coming home to set up an office, Ted merely smiled and said modestly, “I've got to get through school first, and that's not going to be easy for a dull fellow like me.”

By the end of the summer, Roberta knew that the time had come to act. Jennifer's parents had begun to talk of a trip to Europe for “the children,” and Ted was obviously enthused at the prospect.

I've got to find a way, Roberta thought, with the beginning of panic.

Day after day she stayed in her house with her murder mysteries and her notebook. She worked out all the drawbacks to her plan, the risks, the clues she must not leave behind; and she planned a meticulous timetable of the day when it would happen. At last, she locked her notebook away in her desk and breathed a sigh of relief.

Now it was over except for the actual act. She had found a way to get rid of Jennifer that was simple, safe and foolproof. She sat at the desk for a moment, her hands clenched into tight, avenging fists, her mouth compressed into a thin determined line. In her head, Jennifer's terrible words still echoed, the horrible things she had told Ted on their last night in Peyton Place.

She had been listening to them through the air vent, lying in her own sweat on the cot in the storage room. She had heard them make love, had heard Jennifer torture Ted and tease him into doing all sorts of perverse and evil things. She had writhed in anguish for poor Ted.

Then she had heard Jennifer's salacious whisper.

Ted said, “You're insatiable, darling.”

“More,” Jennifer said. “I want more. Oh, goddamn men, anyway!”

Ted laughed. “We're badly designed,” he said. “You'll have to wait for next year's models.”

Roberta heard the bed creak as Jennifer sat up and rested her back against the headboard.

“I think I'll get myself a seventeen-year-old boy,” Jennifer said.

Ted laughed. To him, talk like this was part of Jennifer's smartness and sophistication. In Ted's eyes, being born to money and high social position gave her the right to say things like this.

But Roberta was so shocked that her body went numb. She could not bear the thought that her Ted would be a cuckolded husband, laughed at and pitied by his friends. She thought of Doc Quimby. For a moment, she believed in divine retribution and that her sins were being visited upon Ted.

Jennifer's cool voice went on. “Or maybe I'll get myself two or three young boys. Yes, that would be even better.”

“Where do you buy young boys these days?” Ted asked.

“Oh, you can pick them up cheap anywhere,” Jennifer told him, a ring of authority in her voice. “There's that sweet curly-haired boy who delivers the groceries. I can tell by the way he looks at me that he wouldn't have to be bought. It's dull being alone in the apartment all day, Ted. Wouldn't it be nice if I whiled away an hour or two with him in the morning?”

Ted did not answer.

“It would be, Ted. It would be very nice. The idea of corrupting an innocent boy is the most exciting thing in the world. And then, in the afternoon, I could have a daily arrangement with that handsome young Italian who runs the elevator. He goes off duty at two o'clock. How would you like to have a man in uniform come every afternoon to service me?”

Ted laughed, but it was a forced, uncomfortable laugh.

“Teen-age boys are so full of energy,” she said. “They have to be taught how to use that energy, of course. I read in Kinsey, Ted, that they can do it four or five times in an hour. And some of them can do it more than that. Isn't that marvelous, Ted?”

She did not wait for him to answer. “I don't think I'll wait for the new models, Ted. I think I'll just buy a couple of those untried, young boys. You wouldn't mind, would you, Ted?”

“Oh, go to sleep, Jennifer,” Ted said.

“No, Ted, you wouldn't mind at all. Oh, maybe you'd mind because it would hurt your male pride, whatever that is. But you wouldn't do anything about it, would you, Ted? Not you. As long as you can get your name on the door, as long as you can have success, you'll put up with anything. And I mean
any
thing, Ted.”

“Go to sleep, Jennifer. You're talking like a child,” Ted said.

They were silent then. After a while, they fell asleep. Everyone in Peyton Place was asleep except Roberta Carter. She lay on the cot with her hands pressed tight against her mouth, her eyes staring at the dark ceiling.

I must kill her, she thought. I must kill her. She wasn't just talking. She's going to do these things. Maybe she's already started doing them. I must kill her.

T
HE MEN OF
C
HESTNUT
S
TREET
gathered at the home of Seth Bus-well for their usual Friday night poker game. Seth put a bottle of liquor on the sideboard and filled four glasses with ice while Leslie Harrington began to shuffle the cards for the first hand.

“Another winter is here,” said Matthew Swain as he sat down.

“Yep,” said Seth. “Ephraim Tuttle's got his stove set up and his bolts of material put away.”

“Where did the year go?” said Charles Partridge. “Seems as though it was only a few weeks ago that we were sitting here talking about Allison MacKenzie's book, and that was last April.”

“That's because we're getting old,” said Matthew. “Time goes by quick as a wink for us nowadays. But I can remember how it used to drag by when I was a youngster.”

“You ain't got that good a memory to remember that far back, Matt,” said Leslie Harrington.

“Neither have you, Grandpa,” said Matt. “Although I must say, you've looked better this past year than I've ever seen you look.”

“I've got to keep healthy to keep up with that grandson of mine,” said Leslie. “He's a holy terror.”

“How's Betty?” asked Seth.

“Fine,” said Leslie. “I think she's finally made up her mind to stay right here in Peyton Place.”

“Good,” said Matthew and Seth almost simultaneously.

Charles Partridge did not say anything. Except for Leslie himself, Charles was the only man in town who knew what torture Leslie had suffered at the hands of Betty Anderson.

“Five pretty little black spades,” said Seth Buswell gleefully and raked up the coins from the center of the table.

Spades, thought Charles Partridge. That's what Betty Anderson paid Leslie back in. In spades.

Rodney Harrington, Junior, had been no problem, Charles remembered. The boy had taken to his grandfather as if he had known him all his life, and Leslie, of course, was overwhelmed with love. Little Roddy was the image of his father, and the lines of age and worry erased themselves from Leslie's face every time he looked at his grandson. His friends were not the only ones in Peyton Place to notice how much better Leslie looked. Betty Anderson noticed it, too, and she smiled a tight little smile at the man who had never been her father-in-law. She had been in Peyton Place for two weeks, just long enough for Leslie to begin to hope that she would stay forever, when she started packing to leave.

“I have a job to get back to,” she told Leslie when he protested.

“You don't have to work,” said Leslie. “There's more than enough money right here.”

Betty turned on him. “Listen, Leslie, I got along fine without your money when I was pregnant, when Roddy was born and ever since. We don't need you.”

Leslie humbled himself. “I know,” he said. “I need you.”

“That's just too bad,” said Betty. “You should have needed us when you threw me out of your office with a lousy two hundred and fifty bucks and a load in my belly.”

“Betty,” pleaded Leslie. “I'll make it up to you. I swear I will.”

“We don't need you,” said Betty and went on with her packing.

In the end, she promised that she would stay another week and Leslie breathed again. But at the end of the week, she started packing again.

“For Christ's sake, Charlie,” said Leslie in desperation. “Do something.”

“What do you want me to do?” asked Charles Partridge. “You have no legal claim on that child.”

“Goddamn it, he's my grandson!”

“Betty and Rodney were never married,” said Charles. “And you can't prove that Betty's been an unfit mother. There's nothing you can do except hope that she'll change her mind and stay on voluntarily.”

“Well, talk to her, then,” demanded Leslie. “Make her see that it's best for the child if he stays here. I don't give a damn what she does as long as she leaves Roddy with me.”

“She'll never leave him,” said Charles. “If you want the child, you'd better make up your mind to want the mother, too. But I'll talk to her.”

“What's in it for me?” asked Betty Anderson when Charles went to see her.

“You could be very comfortable here,” said Charles. “You could live in this house and you wouldn't have to work and you and Roddy could be well taken care of.”

“I can take care of myself,” said Betty. “I always have. And of Roddy, too. I don't mind working for a living. And as far as this house goes, it gives me the creeps. It's like a goddamn museum.”

“I'm sure that Leslie would be willing to let you do the house over,” said Charles, worried lest he bite off more than he could chew. “I can't see what objection he'd have to that.”

“I don't want to do Leslie's house over,” said Betty. “I want a house of my own.”

Charles's jaw sagged. “But Leslie wants you to live in the house with him. You and little Roddy.”

Betty shrugged. “In the words of little Roddy's father, that's tough titty,” she said.

“Will you stay until Christmas?” asked Charles.

“Nope.”

“Until the end of the month?”

“Nope.”

Charles went to Leslie and told him what Betty wanted if she were to remain in Peyton Place.

“A house!” roared Leslie. “What the hell's the matter with my house? It's big enough for an army!”

Charles spread his hands in a gesture of defeat. “I can't help that, Leslie. That's what she wants.”

“She can go right straight to hell,” yelled Leslie.

But the next day, Betty began to pack again, and Leslie ran to Charles.

“Get her a house,” he said wearily. “Any one she wants.”

So Betty Anderson became the owner of a cottage at the end of Laurel Street.