Authors: Jacqueline Briskin
“For God’s sake, Honora, stop blaming yourself. I’m blaming
myself
and that’s enough.”
She looked at Vi’s roses. Wilting already, the sweet perfume of their dying battled with the hospital disinfectant.
“I knew you were out of a fairy story, too good for the real world, I knew better than anyone that people take advantage of you.” He was speaking in a peculiarly remote tone she’d never heard him use. “And what did I do? Leave you without friend or family and go off on a job where you can’t reach me.”
“Is the road finished?”
“A week ago Wednesday,” he said. He bent over the bed, and she could feel his breath. “Honora, this is a promise. From here on in, I’ll be with you always. I’ll look after you, I’ll kill anyone who hurts you.”
His face contorted, and he sat heavily in the straight chair, hands over his face, his body shaking with hoarse sobs. He had wept once
before, when he’d told her about his dreadful childhood, but those had been quiet tears.
After Crystal woke from her afternoon nap she lay drowsily admiring the transformation that she and Baynie McHugh had wrought on her bedroom. Those puerile slipper chairs she’d prized last year were replaced with a large, low-slung, creamy-beige, silk sectional couch that matched the velvety wall-to-wall carpet, the gingerbread paneling revered by Matilda Talbott had been demolished in favor of pale, sleekly unadorned ash: instead of the dinky leaded windowpanes, sheets of plate glass admitted the view of the Bay.
Delicious
, Crystal thought. And the most delicious aspect of the room was sleeping alone in it. Until five weeks ago, Gideon had shared tenancy with her.
Those jokes about the inadequacies of elderly husbands didn’t apply to Gideon. Once—often twice—nightly he lowered himself on her. She lay passive. Wasn’t this nocturnal warfare part of the marital bargain she had struck? (Gideon never realized they were pitted in battle. Rather, he viewed his gorgeous young bride’s acquiescence as ostentatious proof of affection.) Shuddering beneath her husband’s thumping aggression, she loathed him bitterly. The odd part, though, was that by morning her resentment
had faded, and when he kissed her goodbye, she would tweak his ear fondly. By late afternoon she found herself anticipating his homecoming. He would tell her about big doings at Talbott’s while he drank his ten-year-old scotch and she sipped a companionable Coca-Cola. Since her pregnancy even a drop or so of sherry upset her stomach.
Pregnancy was also the reason she had this room to herself. Gideon, his eyes small beacons of jubilant pride, had decamped to his old room as soon as he learned of her condition.
Crystal arched her back like a satisfied little Persian cat, poising in midstretch as the front door chimes sounded.
The household used the side entry, servants and tradespeople the back. Only guests used the front door.
Must be Imogene dropping over for a cocktail
, Crystal thought. Left at loose ends without Honora, she had joined forces with the thin, sophisticated heiress. The loss of Curt Ivory had turned Imogene into a sharp, flesh-rending piranha of gossip, but this made her wittily amusing.
Irritated with the servants for not summoning her Crystal jumped up from the bed, descending into the vast, dim, entry hall, now a pale monochrome. In the music room, Joscelyn banged out scales as if she had a personal vendetta against the keyboard.
Gideon’s office door was ajar and she heard the gravel of anger in his voice. “If you don’t leave my house this instant, I’ll call the police!”
“Call every cop in the whole goddamn Bay
Area. I’m not leaving until I get to the bottom of this.
Did
she or
didn’t
she ask you for a loan?”
With the sound of the piano thumping, Crystal didn’t immediately place the voice, but after the second sentence she realized that the low, menacing sarcasm belonged to Curt Ivory.
Her long red fingernails clenched into her palms.
How dare he show his face here?
Crystal felt wretched whenever she thought of Honora running off without a note or telephone call. So much for near-twin closeness, so much for
just us.
In the beginning she could console herself with the thought that living with a man was too consummate a shame for Honorable Honora to confess, but later she had to live with the draining wound that Honora
had
written to Joscelyn. Despite this overt rejection, Crystal had never been able to rouse up an honest animosity toward her sister. It was Curt whom she hated, that smooth wolf, that licentious seducer. He had cut them apart. And the day she had seen Honora at Talbott’s, she had been aghast. Actually speechless with distress. The cheesy rayon maternity smock, those sad smudges under the beautiful dark eyes, the timid extension of hand, then the realization that sweet, guileless Honora was bluffing out an illegal pregnancy with a wedding ring.
“I got this third-hand, and I prefer the record straight,” Curt was saying. “Did she drive up here to borrow a few bucks?”
“In February or March, yes,” Gideon retorted.
“And I turned her down. It’s time she learned exactly how far her kind of behavior will get her.”
“As part of the educational process why didn’t you shove her down the stairs?”
“What right have you to accuse me? You’re the one who turned the poor, stupid girl into a tramp. After she went to stay openly in your apartment, I explained to her that I’d washed my hands of her.”
“Yes, she told me.”
Gideon drew a sharp breath. “Was taking advantage of a young girl under my care the way for you to repay me?” His voice rose again. “And since you’re talking obligations, what about you? It
is
your child, isn’t it?”
Crystal had pushed open the door, but neither man noticed her.
They remained tensed like prizefighters, Gideon, his short legs flexed and pugnacious jaw thrust forward, a massively squat strength, and Curt, arms bent at the elbows, thick, tawny hair windblown, eyes narrowed, a dangerous savage.
Terrific looking
, Crystal thought. If she’d had a bottle of sulfuric acid handy, she would have hurled it at his face, destroying his good looks as he’d destroyed her tender gullible sister.
She moved into the room. “What’s happened to Honora?” she asked.
Both men jerked.
“Go on back upstairs, dear,” Gideon said, his voice suddenly tender. “This is between Ivory and me.”
Crystal smoothed the striped taffeta skirt of her hostess gown over her shapely hips, staring at Curt. “Is she all right?”
“She’s wonderful,” Curt said. “Terrific. Is that what you want to hear?”
“She’s my sister.”
“Where was that relationship a few months back? Christ, when I think of her slaving in that hash joint so you could prance around in new clothes! And the minute she’s desperate for a few measly bucks, you’re nowhere in sight.”
“How is she?”
“She’s alive, the baby isn’t.”
Crystal felt her throat clog, but she refused to show her sorrow to her enemy. “I’ll never forgive you,” she said coldly.
He gave a discordant laugh. “That goes double for me. I’ll never let myself off the meat hook, either.”
“Couldn’t you at least have given her enough to see her through?” Crystal demanded.
“That part I
did
take care of. But your father dropped in for a visit. I assume he came to you first?”
Langley had dropped by the house to request a “small loan, I’ll pay with interest, of course,” so he could return to London, but Gideon had told him point-blank that it was better that he stay in San Francisco, where he had a family to keep an eye on him and his drinking problem.
“So you turned him down,” Curt said. “Smart move. She, of course, gave him almost every cent she had, and then tried to get in
touch with me, and couldn’t.” His hands balled into fists and he strode to the window, staring into the gathering darkness. “Being naive, she figured families help each other—the way she’d helped you.”
She never came to me
, Crystal thought bleakly. “This was hardly Gideon’s responsibility,” she said.
“Right, right, he couldn’t be expected to lend a large fortune of a hundred bucks to a sister-in-law in desperate need, not when he had his own necessities to pay for.” Curt glanced at the wall that Baynie had extravagantly covered with pigskin. “She managed handily on her own, stuffing herself into a corset and waiting tables. In the end, she found somebody with means, a well-to-do waitress.” The sarcasm was clotted. “There’s a possibility she can’t have any more children, but thank God she doesn’t know
that
yet. If there’s any justice, the same’ll happen to you.”
He said it like a curse, and Gideon moved to Crystal, resting his hand protectively on her shoulder. “All right, Ivory,” he said. “I’ve taken just about enough.”
Curt was staring at Crystal. “How could you be such a bitch to her?”
Crystal’s beauty made her appear impervious to the emotions twisting like snakes within her, but she was trembling.
“Leave my wife out of this,” Gideon snapped. “Ivory, I’m giving you fair warning. From here on in, I’ll do anything I can to hurt you.”
Another discordant laugh. “How are you
going to top this one?”
“You make me ill,” Crystal burst out. “Blaming us because you left Honora in the lurch.”
“Is that it?” Curt asked. “Set your minds at rest. We were married the day after she left here.”
Gideon’s thick fingers dug into Crystal’s flesh. “No license was issued in your names,” he said. “Not in California, Nevada or Arizona.”
Curt’s fists went up, as if he would deliver the old one-two to the jaw of his former mentor, the man he had revered and loved. “You shit!” For the first time he raised his voice. “You pious, sanctimonious shit!”
The shout appeared to cut some vital wire holding him erect. Abruptly his shoulders slumped, his hands dropped to his sides and he stared around the room, dazed and punchy-looking. Blinking and silent, he left the office. A few moments later, they heard the front door open and close.
Crystal began to weep. Gideon, usually solicitous of her moods—beyond the bed—didn’t comfort her. He sank into his desk chair, leaning his head back, his expression showing hurt and bewilderment.
* * *
Joscelyn had been desultorily putting in her daily half-hour stint of practice at the new beige piano.
As her skinny fingers arched and banged, she thought of Honora. After her father had slipped her the original letter, she had not
heard from her again and for this—as well as for her inner tumult and the omnipresent whispers of abandonment—she blamed Gideon.
Joscelyn no longer admired her uncle cum brother-in-law. She saw him as Crystal’s patsy, the aggressive jailer who had cut her off from Honora and usurped her father—another abandonment there.
Her days were a harrowing jumble since Honora had departed. She lived in terror of people, animals, machines, even inanimate objects—a window cornice could topple on you. Her unhappiness showed as arrogant cussedness. She rarely combed her fine, mouse-brown hair, she shoved her uniforms on the closet floor, wearing rumpled blouses and skirts with mussed pleats to her new school, where she earned straight As.
The front door chimed. So
they
had guests. She banged the keyboard antagonistically. As she turned to the page with Minuet in G, she heard Curt’s voice.
Her hands hovered, falling with a clashing of notes.
He’s come to get me
, she thought.
Rising impatiently, she toppled the piano stool and it fell almost soundlessly to the new beige carpet as she ran to the door.
Gideon boomed angrily. Though she pressed her ear to the crack, entire sentences eluded her. Crystal’s high voice joined in the furious conversation. Soon Joscelyn realized that Curt was not here to redeem her but to curse Gideon for not helping Honora.
Honora had had a baby!
The baby was dead.
Joscelyn cringed against the bleached paneling, shivering. A niece or nephew, whose very existence startled her, had died. Her mother had died. Were the Sylvanders as doomed as the inhabitants of Elsinore?
The voices fell silent, the front door opened and closed. Cautiously Joscelyn peered into the hall. Gideon’s office was open, and she heard a peculiar, muffled sound. She tiptoed across the space as quietly as possible, opened the side door. From here one could leave the house without being visible from either the office or the kitchen. Easing out, she quietly closed the door behind her.
The blackish blue fog that groped through the dusk blurred Curt’s outline as he strode up the hill. Afraid she might be heard inside the house, she didn’t call out but charged up the grade after him.
When she reached the crest the fogbank had swallowed him.
Racing helter-skelter downhill through the obscuring dampness, she shouted, “Curt! Curt!”
He turned, halting beneath the aureole of a streetlight. She stopped a couple of feet from him. “Hi,” she panted.
His face was slack, and though he nodded she had the sensation that as far as he was concerned, the fog hid her.
“It’s me—Joscelyn.” She attempted to mimic his easy sarcasm. “Remember? Your esteemed sister-in-law.”
“Yeah, sure, Joss.”
“It’s horrendous, the way they treated Honora.”
He shrugged.
“How is she?”
“Dazed.”
He looked that way himself, his eyes not quite focusing on her, his mouth lax and vulnerable.
She drew a breath of wet air. “Honora sent a letter inviting me to visit. It seems to me that now’s the time to accept. A familiar face would cheer her up.” She tried not to sound pleading.
“You know there was a baby?”
“Yes, and I’m very sorry . . . .”
“She hasn’t accepted it emotionally.”
“Is she in hospital?”
“For another week at least. I’ve rented a furnished house in Beverly Hills for her to come home to.”
Joscelyn shifted her weight from scuffed shoe to shoe. “How many bedrooms?”
“Two.”
“Nothing like inviting myself—but don’t you agree having somebody in the family around would help bring her out of it?”