The Rose Garden Page 2

  “And then she bought the cottage?”

  “Not at all,” said Bridie, rudely. “She couldn’t afford to buy the cottage. There were dozens of them around here after it, but she got herself on the inside first. Mr. Harkey inherited the cottage from his aunt. That was the old one who died. Miss Harkey. An old maid. They were all after that cottage. That’s why she married him in such a hurry, apart from the fact that she knew Mr. God would never show his face in the house till she had a new husband.”

  “Mr. Harkey got the cottage from his aunt, and then this one married him and made him pull it down.”

  “Pulled it down and carted it away as fast as I’m saying the words. Oh, she was in a terrible hurry about it. She had them out there marking the place for the lawn and planting the grass and putting up the statues before you could turn around. He never said a word, but I think he was sorry to see the cottage go. He said to her that it was the only thing he’d ever owned in his life.”

  “I would’ve thought he had money, from the looks of him.”

  “Not that fellow. Oh, he likes to look as if he was somebody, but he hasn’t a penny except what he gets from his job. The old aunt didn’t leave him any money, only the cottage. I don’t think she had much else to leave. She kept very much to herself. She hadn’t much patience with the crowd around here. Well, Mr. Harkey was all pleased. He came down here, just weekends, and began settling in, cooking little meals for himself and all, and the next thing you knew, there she was, charging down the road with little housewarming presents for him—little pots of patty de fwa, and raspberry jam I’d made, and a tin of green-turtle soup she paid a fortune for. She thought he might like the unusual flavor of it, she said. Oh, she’d never have looked at him, only for his view. It would have matched him better to have sold up the place and taken his money and run. She just took it out from under him. He never had a chance, once she took after him.”

  “The poor fellow.”

  “Oh, I’d waste no sympathy on that fellow, Agnes. Do you know what his job is? Well, now, I’ll let you guess. The lowest thing, about the lowest thing you can think of. Go on, guess. I’ll give you three guesses.”

  “An undertaker?”

  “No.”

  “A pawnbroker?”

  “No, but you’re close.”

  “A summons server?”

  “No. He’s a credit manager.”

  Agnes emitted a low, prolonged shriek and sat down on Bridie’s chair by the stove. Bridie smiled her satisfaction.

  “A credit manager!” cried Agnes. “A credit manager. Oh, my God, the lowest of the low. A credit manager. And to think I’m going to have to put his dinner in front of him. Oh, the dirty thing.”

  “At Clancyhanger’s,” Bridie said.

  “Clancyhanger’s. The worst bunch of thieves and knaves in the country. The persecutors of the poor. Oh, the way they hop off you when you haven’t got the money. Bridie, I’ve heard enough. I hope she cuts him up and eats him.”

  “Of course, she doesn’t say he’s a credit manager. That’s not good enough for her. She makes out he’s a junior vice president, if you don’t mind. But I heard him talking to her the first time he came in here for a drink, and that’s what he told her. He’s a credit manager, and that’s all he is.”

  “One of the ones that does the dirty work. When our Blessed Lord was crucified, he was standing there holding the box of nails.”

  “That’s the sort he is. No real good in him. Although to look at him you’d think butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Oh, he was all full of himself that first day he came in here. He had a girl he brought with him.”

  “A girl?”

  “She was staying with him in the cottage. And there was only the one bed in the place, because I saw the furniture when it was carted out. She was staying with him all right, in the full sense of the word.”

  “Imagine doing the like of that, and probably not engaged or married or anything. Isn’t it disgusting?” Agnes said enviously.

  “This one may not have been married, Agnes, but she had the experience of being married, I’ll guarantee you that much. Oh, I think she thought he was going to marry her. She was all busy, making curtains and cushion covers and all, and cleaning up the weeds in the garden down there where the old one had let it go. She was a nice enough girl, too, I’ll say that much for her. All excited about the cottage. But she didn’t last long after the Madam got to work.”

  “Tell us, Bridie, what did she do to her?”

  “She didn’t have to do anything. Not that one. She was all nice to the girl. All advice on how this should go in the cottage, and how that should go, all over her, she was, sweet and nice as you please. But then one night he came up by himself, and the first thing you know, she was on the phone asking him over for a drink. ‘I love your girl,’ she says to him, ‘a dear girl. What does she do?’ she says—as if she didn’t know, I heard her questioning the girl myself. ‘She works in the advertising department in the store,’ he says. ‘Isn’t that interesting,’ she says. ‘But isn’t it a pity she’s not more at ease here,’ she says. ‘We’re such a select little group, you know. A lot of artists and writers, creative people. We see each other all the time,’ she says. ‘It’s so important to fit in, as you do,’ she says. ‘I want to give a little party for you, and introduce you to everybody. And there’s my friend Charles Runyon, the critic—you know his name, of course.’ That’s Mr. God. ‘You must meet him the minute he gets back from Europe. He’s so charming,’ she says. ‘I know you’ll adore him, as we all do.’ And then she invited him to a dinner party she was giving, not mentioning the girl, and he didn’t mention the girl, either, and he never brought her near the place again. Of course, he didn’t know what he was getting in for, with this one. He thought she was all interested in his cottage. And all she was thinking about was how fast she could get it out of the way so she could have her precious view.”

  “And now I suppose all she’s thinking about is how fast she can get him out of the way.”

  “Ah, no, she doesn’t mind him, as long as he behaves himself and doesn’t cause her any trouble. He’s not a bad-looking young fellow, you know. And now she has Mr. God coming around again, paying her compliments and inviting her in to New York to see the new plays, and all. You’ll see—he’ll be out here every weekend, just the way he used to be. He has his own room here, even. He told her the way he wanted it, and she had it all done up for him. He hasn’t even got his own car, but they fall over themselves around here to see which one of them will give him a lift out from the city. They think it’s an honor, having him around. He’s supposed to be very witty. A wit, he is. He never opens that narrow little mouth of his but they all collapse laughing.”

  “The way they carry on, it’s not decent.”

  “Oh, the things I could tell you about their carrying-on,” Bridie said ominously. “It would curl your hair.”

  “You mean her and Mr. God.”

  “No, no, nothing like that there. He’s the sort that just pays compliments. I heard him telling her she has a face on her that belongs to the ages. What do you make of that?”

  “Is that a compliment? What sort of a compliment is that? Isn’t that a queer thing to say to a woman!”

  “She liked it. She says she’s in love with his mind.”

  “In love with Mr. God’s mind?”

  “She’s in love with Mr. God’s mind.”

  “In love with his mind. Well, that’s a new one. I never heard that one before.”

  “Neither did Mr. Harkey, by the look of him.”

  “There he is now,” said Agnes, who had resumed her stand by the window. Bridie came to look over her shoulder.

  Flashlight in hand, George was making his way timorously over the darkened lawn. He passed the naked woman, at whom he did not glance. Passing the clown, he turned the light briefly on the painted face, and proceeded on. He walked slowly over the place where his cottage had raised its walls, and reached
at last the edge of the river, where he stood stabbing convulsively with the flashlight out into the blackness. The path he lighted across and around and over and above the water was ragged and wavering. His hand seemed to be shaking.

  “What’s he up to now, I wonder,” said Bridie.

  “Maybe he’s looking for his view,” Agnes said, and grimaced nervously at her own smartness.

  “Well, he’s not going to find much down there,” Bridie said, and gave her a companionable nudge in the ribs.

  Emboldened, Agnes thumbed her nose at the window, and immediately collapsed on the table in a heap of shuddering, feeble giggles, with her hands covering her face. After a second, she moved one finger aside and peered up to see how Bridie was taking this demonstration.

  Bridie winked at her.

  The Anachronism

  Tom and Liza Frye had an eighteenth-century brick house, painted white and filled with severely modern furniture, and two Jaguar cars, a white one for Liza and a black one for Tom. Both cars had governors on them so they could not do more than fifty-five miles an hour, for Tom and Liza did not believe in speed. They each had a flat gold cigarette case and a short gold holder, and their cigarettes were made specially for them. At night they slept in matching white silk pajamas. Their bed, wide and low, was as big as a small field. Actually, it wasn’t a double bed at all but twin beds locked together by the legs and made up with separate sets of sheets. The sheets, like the pajamas, were fresh every night. One of Liza’s favorite words was “immaculate.” The word she liked least in the language was “appetite.” Still, it was a word she often used. “I have no appetite for anything,” she would say, or sometimes, “I don’t believe in appetites. They’re so common.”

  Liza was tall and excessively thin, with long, beautiful legs. She was proud of her figure, and preserved it by eating almost nothing. During the day, she fasted, and at night she dined, with Tom, on cottage cheese and shredded carrot. Their dinner was served on a tray in their bedroom, which was immense and possessed of, and by, a tremendous picture window that allowed a magnificent view of the Hudson River. Their house was built on the edge of the river, and their living room, directly under the bedroom, also had a gigantic picture window and a handsome view. Liza disliked having the living room disturbed, and Tom didn’t mind dining in the bedroom. His real life was spent away from home anyway, and by evening he was usually too tired to want anything except sleep. Liza had pale-gold hair that she wore in a neat, caplike arrangement. Tom, a little shorter than she, was stout, and had a fat, glum face and large, suspicious blue eyes. He was suspicious because of his money, of which he had a great deal. Although it was safely stowed away in a trust fund, he lived in constant fear that someone would take it from him. Liza had had no money at all until she married Tom. She was thirty-nine, two years older than he. They had been married almost seven years.

  They lived at Herbert’s Retreat, an exclusive community of about forty houses on the east bank of the Hudson, thirty miles above New York City. It had been Liza’s decision to move to the Retreat. Tom had been inclined to stay on in his comfortable, velvet-hung apartment on Beekman Place, but Liza insisted on having her own way. Liza felt, and often said, that the only way to impress one’s personality on people is to deprive them of something they want. Shake them up. Make them see that what they have isn’t much. It was hard to do this in New York, where people had so many distractions, but at Herbert’s Retreat, that tightly locked, closely guarded little community, Liza made a strong impression. Right off, her modern furniture outraged all the other women, who had been concentrating on Early American. Liza called the furniture at the Retreat “country.” “Country furniture is sweet,” she said, “but it’s so sheeplike.” In the same way, she refused to share the other women’s enthusiasm for gardening. The narrow strip of ground that surrounded her house on three sides—the fourth side being almost one with the river—was given over to fine white gravel, which was raked and rolled every week by the Retreat gardener. When her neighbors chattered about their bulbs and seeds, Liza enjoyed saying, “I don’t approve of flowers, except in their proper place. They certainly don’t belong in the ground.” Her own cut flowers, always white, were delivered twice a week from a nearby greenhouse by a girl who arranged the new flowers and took the old ones away with her.

  Liza was a rigid housekeeper. Her furniture had all been designed for her, and she hated to see anything out of its appointed place. Her mother, Mrs. Conroy, who lived with her, had been begging for years for an old-fashioned cozy armchair, but Liza was adamant. Liza and Mrs. Conroy detested each other, but it suited them to live together—Liza because she enjoyed showing her power, and Mrs. Conroy because she was waiting for her day of vengeance. They were alike in their admiration for Tom’s money, but Mrs. Conroy felt she should have more say in the spending of it. The old lady’s only treasured possession was a set of nineteen shabby account books, records painstakingly kept by her dead husband, who had run a small stationery shop in Brooklyn. The account books read like a diary to Mrs. Conroy, who liked to pore over them when she was tired of counting up her grievances. Liza allowed her mother to keep the books so that she could threaten to deprive her of them. She had a special set of shelves built for them in her mother’s bedroom, with sliding panels that concealed their ragged backs from view and that were kept locked, the key being retained by Mrs. Conroy, who never let it out of her reach. When her mother became obstreperous, Liza would threaten to have the books destroyed, and the old woman always knuckled under.

  “I’m just a poor, forsaken old woman,” she would wail in a tone of false anguish that hid rage.

  “You’re an invalid,” Liza would say firmly, and if her mother was not already in her bedroom, she would be taken by the arm and conducted there.

  Liza preferred to believe that her mother was an invalid. The fact was that the old lady was as strong as a horse, but Liza maintained that her mother had a delicate stomach and could eat only bland foods. Liza had discovered a preparation, quite expensive, that contained all the vitamins necessary to keep an old woman alive and healthy without putting any weight on her. This food, stirred into a bowl of skim milk, was what Mrs. Conroy got three times a day. It was delicious, with a vague flavor of vichyssoise. Sometimes Liza even took a dish of it herself. But Mrs. Conroy was tired of it. She continued to wolf it down, though, because she was by nature greedy. Liza, with memories of vegetable marrow, turnip, and porridge being squashed into her own rebellious mouth, enjoyed seeing her mother swallow this pap. My turn has come, she thought, congratulating herself on her life in general, because she had been sick with lack of money when she married Tom, having gone all her life without the things she felt were her due. It was not the things she enjoyed, however; it was the position they gave her. She loved the Retreat. She never left it, even for a night.

  Once, years before, when she was only a poor, lovely-looking girl in a flower shop, she had come to the Retreat for a weekend. The assured, amused attitude of the women there, and their indifference to her, infuriated her. She went away hating them. After her marriage to Tom, she had come back determined to make them sit up and take notice of her. She didn’t want to become one of them, she told herself. What she wanted was to keep them from being too pleased with themselves.

  Tom, on the other hand, found the center of his existence in New York. His days were spent sitting in a window in his club there. This club, a massive, majestic building on upper Fifth Avenue, had been in Tom’s heart since the day in his eighth year when his grandfather had brusquely interrupted a peaceful afternoon at home to rush him there in a taxicab. Tom, at eight, was already accustomed to being taken into splendid establishments, and he waited confidently for his grandfather to conduct him up the broad stone steps and through the great iron door, where respectful servants would bow and take their hats and coats. But his grandfather, instead of going forward, grabbed him by the hand and proceeded around to the side of the building, which overlooked
a narrow, luxurious street. There on the sidewalk, the old man stood beside his grandson and glared up at the second-floor windows, three of them, each framing a seated, apparently lifeless man. Heavy curtains hung about the windows, and the room within was lighted, but not brightly. It was a towering room. Tom could glimpse the dark, carved, curving ceiling and part of a glimmering chandelier. The men in the windows appeared very old to him, but perhaps they were only elderly. Two of them seemed to be drowsing. The third, a thin-faced, upright man with silver hair, stared icily into the street. Tom’s grandfather raised his stick and pointed upward in choler. “There he is,” he growled. “There’s the rascal who did me out of my rights. This is the only club in New York I’m not admitted to, thanks to him. He’s responsible. He got them to turn me down.” Turning his gaze on Tom, he shouted, “And you’ll never get in there, either, you little rat.” Tom loathed his grandfather, a self-made man who loved his grandson because he was his grandson but despised him because he was a rich little boy. When the old man was in a good humor, he liked to take Tom on his knobby knees and grin balefully into his plump, gloomy little face. “And what are you thinking now, dirty little boy?” he would whisper, and then, with a bellow of glee, he would part his knees and tumble his dejected burden rudely to the floor.

  Years later, Tom’s father became a member of the club his grandfather had been kept out of, and at twenty-one Tom, too, was admitted. The thin-faced old man Tom’s grandfather had pointed out to him no longer sat in the second-story window. Tom quickly appropriated his chair. He felt timid about doing this, but to his astonishment no one else seemed to want it. The elderly men and the middle-aged men had been seduced away, first by the club movie room and then by the new television room, and the younger men darted in and out, having no patience for anything. Tom felt with disappointment that club life had lost its grandeur. There was a rowdiness, unheard but felt, that Tom was sure was not consistent with gentlemanliness. He struck up no friendships with his fellow-members.