The Rose Garden Page 4

  “No river view here, I’m afraid,” Liza said in a tone of bright apology.

  Betty walked to the window and looked out. “I’m not much for looking at the water, m’lady,” she said.

  “My mother’s room is just down the hall,” Liza said. “She’s resting now, so we won’t disturb her. Your bathroom is downstairs next to the kitchen, as you saw. There’s only one on this floor, and my mother shares it with us. These old houses—all fireplaces and no bathrooms, you know.” She waved her hand in a gesture that was friendly but not, she felt, familiar.

  “Thank you, m’lady,” Betty said.

  Alone, Betty moved first her arms, to lift her hat from her head, then her legs, to walk to the closet, which she opened, displaying no curiosity about it. She hung her hat by its elastic from a hook on the closet door. She then hung her coat on a hanger, sat down in her sling chair, tested it a minute, and, satisfied, bent over to unbutton her boots. Her house slippers were downstairs, locked up in one of her bundles, so, with the boots open and flapping, she clumped down the back stairs to the kitchen and set about making tea. When the kettle was on, she built a fire in the huge open fireplace, using paper towels and three logs from a beautifully geometrical pile that lay in a white basket against the wall. She was sitting in front of the fire having her cup of tea when the door opened and Mrs. Conroy shuffled in. Mrs. Conroy’s face was immensely lined, but whether the lines had been put there by a life of goodness or by a life of badness it would have been hard to say. She simply looked very old. Her manner would have been called obsequious in a younger person, and her hands were gathered nervously around a large white handkerchief, which from time to time she pressed against her mouth, perhaps to hide a tremor—of age, or of amusement, or of malice.

  Betty regarded the intruder bleakly. I could buy you and sell you, she thought as she got up.

  “I’m Mrs. Conroy,” the old woman said beseechingly, “Mrs. Frye’s mother you know. I see you have the fire going. I dearly love a fire, but Mrs. Frye won’t permit them in the house, although she won’t object to you having one, I’m sure. She doesn’t approve of open fires. She tries to keep me in my room. I dislike my room. I hate the furniture. I expect you do, too, coming from England. My room is exactly like yours, except that I have that unwholesome view of the river. I like to watch a street and see what the people are up to. I thought, being English, you might be having a cup of tea, and I thought perhaps you might permit me to join you here. Mrs. Frye won’t permit me to have tea.”

  “I’m sorry, m’lady, but I don’t permit ladies in my kitchen,” Betty said.

  “Only for a minute, to get the heat of the fire on my legs.”

  “It’s out of the question, m’lady. I must ask you to leave my kitchen at once.”

  “I’m not let have tea, and I’m not let have a fire,” Mrs. Conroy said. “I notice you give yourself tea and a fire, though. I notice you have a fire and a nice cup of tea there beside you.”

  “What I do for myself and what I do for other people are two entirely different things, m’lady,” Betty said.

  “I only wanted to get the heat of the fire on my legs a minute,” Mrs. Conroy beseeched. “Radiators aren’t the same thing at all. Don’t you think I’m right? Radiators are no good, are they? . . . Well, you might at least answer me.” In the doorway, she paused and said, without looking back, “You’re just the same sort she is! Just the same!”

  When the door closed, Betty sat down by the fire to finish her tea. As she brought the cup to her lips, she raised her eyes and saw Mrs. Conroy’s handkerchief lying crumpled on the floor. She rose, picked up the handkerchief, and, boots still loose and flapping, went up the stairs and knocked on the door next to her own. A voice answered faintly. When Betty opened the door, Mrs. Conroy was sitting in her wing chair, which she had turned so that her back was to the window. One of her account books lay open on her lap. “Oh,” she said. “I was hoping it was my daughter. She hates me to turn this chair around, but I’d rather look at a dry door than at that wet view any day of the week. She hates to have anything in the house changed, you know. You’d better remember that. She’s very set in her ways.”

  “I’m returning your handkerchief, m’lady,” Betty said rudely, and dropped it on the bed.

  She was about to leave when she saw the shabby books on their shelves. The word “Accounts,” inked on the back of each volume, sprang out at her. “Excuse me, m’lady,” she said. “May I ask you a question?”

  “Of course you may ask me a question, Betty.”

  “What sort of books are they you have, m’lady?”

  “They belonged to my poor husband, Mr. Conroy. That’s all he left me in the world, what you see there. He kept them himself; every stroke is in his own handwriting. He ran a little stationery shop in Brooklyn the last nineteen years of his life. We lived behind the shop. We didn’t make a fortune out of it, but we got along. He had no head for business, but he enjoyed keeping his books. I look into them when I’m in the dumps. They remind me of so much; it’s like as if I was reading his diary. He put down everything pertaining to the shop. Ah, it brings it all back, reading these old books.”

  “Might I see one of them, m’lady? I enjoy sums.”

  “Indeed you may, indeed you may!” Mrs. Conroy cried. Betty made a step toward the case, but the old lady was there before her, and lifted out a volume, dated Nov. 1899–May 1900, and handed it to her.

  “The first year we were in the shop,” she said. “Liza wasn’t born then. She appeared in 1913, the only one we had.”

  Betty turned the pages of the book. “I always had a fancy for a little shop of my own somewhere,” she said. “If I ever got enough money saved. Ah, I suppose I’ll never have it, but it does no harm to think of it. I’d like to look at these, Mrs. Conroy. It’s not hard, he has it all down nice and easy.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t mathematics that interested my poor Alfred,” Mrs. Conroy said. “Only, he liked to feel he was being businesslike. He loved marking things down. ‘My simple arithmetic,’ he used to call it. ‘I’m doing my simple arithmetic,’ he’d say when I asked him what he was up to.”

  “I do like working sums, m’lady,” Betty said. “I was always a great hand at addition and subtraction. I often thought I’d have been good in a bank, only I never got the chance. Would you let me borrow this for a day or two? I’ll bring you up a cup of tea, if you like.”

  Mrs. Conroy regarded her for a moment. “Of course I’ll let you borrow it,” she said at last. “But I’ll come down for the tea, if you don’t mind.”

  Betty touched the bookcase. “Maybe I’d better take the first two or three, m’lady,” she said. “That way I wouldn’t have to be disturbing you so often.”

  A strong old arm came up and knocked her hand away. “One at a time, Betty. This room isn’t going to feel the same with even that one missing. Mr. Conroy spent six months of his life on every one of these books. There’s two to a year. It’s going to take you a month anyway to get through that one. Now we’ll go down and have our tea, nice and cozy by the fire. I won’t bother you. I’ll just enjoy the tea and you can enjoy your book, but mind you make no marks on it. And maybe you’d better make a fresh pot of tea. It’ll have got cold, standing there all this time.”

  They had been sitting in the kitchen for some time when Betty looked up from her book. “You opened the shop November 15th, m’lady. That’s the day Mr. Conroy starts here. And on December 22nd, m’lady, you went into the shop, went through all the Christmas numbers of the magazines, and left blue marks all over them.”

  “Indeed, I remember the day,” Mrs. Conroy said cheerfully. “I had just finished making a blueberry pie for his dinner, and I didn’t take the time to wash my hands. Oh, he was angry when he came to sell one of those magazines and had to mark down the price!”

  “With good reason he was angry, m’lady,” Betty said grimly. “And the place just started and not making money yet. Do you know how much mone
y he lost with your blueberries?”

  “Oh, I know, I know,” Mrs. Conroy said, laughing. “Don’t reproach me about it, Betty. He never let me forget about it. Turn over the page and never mind about it.”

  Betty bent to the book. A few minutes later she raised her head again. “Who was Miss Rorke, m’lady?” she asked.

  “A poor old retired schoolteacher, Miss Rorke was. She lived up the street from us. Never had a penny, but she loved to read. Mr. Conroy let her take what she liked. He had a soft spot for her. She died then, and we never got a cent of it back. She ended owing us thirty-two dollars and seventeen cents.”

  “So far, she owes us two dollars and three cents,” Betty said.

  “Poor old Miss Rorke,” Mrs. Conroy said contentedly. “Betty, I’ve been thinking. I’d like a cup of tea in my room first thing in the morning. As soon as you make your own. Say eight-thirty. That’s fair, isn’t it?”

  Betty sat up straight. “Now then, m’lady, that’s out of the question, so it is—morning tea in your room!”

  Mrs. Conroy continued to watch the fire. “It was you who reminded me,” she said. “Miss Rorke was a great strain on the regular book, the one you have there. There was too much of her, she was always in and out, so Mr. Conroy had an extra little book, for her and one or two others like her. I’m not saying you need it, but it would be a great help to you.”

  “All right,” Betty said without rancor. “Half past eight you’ll get your tea. Sugar and cream, the way you have it now.”

  “No cream in the morning,” Mrs. Conroy said. “Cream makes me queasy in the morning. Just sugar, thanks, Betty.”

  They exchanged a glance. Betty’s eyes were wary and calculating.

  Liza burst into the kitchen. “I looked everywhere for you, Mother!” she cried. “You’ve turned your chair around again. And why aren’t you up in your own room? What are you doing here in the kitchen?”

  “I’m having my tea,” the old woman said calmly.

  “You know the doctor says it isn’t good for you, Mother. Now please go on upstairs, and I’ll get Betty to bring you a glass of hot milk. I see you’ve lighted the fire, Betty. I don’t approve of open fires, but I suppose you’re accustomed to having one. Go on, Mother.”

  “I don’t want hot milk, Liza,” Mrs. Conroy said, pressing her handkerchief to her lips. “Tea never did me any harm before, and I don’t trust that country doctor of yours anyway. Of course, if you insist, I’ll go upstairs. I’m dependent on your charity now, I know that. But first I’ll take my book, please, Betty.”

  Betty snatched the book from the table. “No harm in Mrs. Conroy having a cup of tea, m’lady,” she said.

  “I’m the best judge of that!” Liza cried. “And what is that stupid old book doing down here? It doesn’t belong down here.”

  “It does now,” Mrs. Conroy said. “And another thing. I’d like you to put a nice, old-fashioned stuffed armchair in here by the fire for me. These pipe things of yours are hard on my back.”

  “We’ve had that all out before. I absolutely refuse to allow one of those atrocities in my— Is this a joke, Mother? Is this some terrible kind of joke? A kitchen is not the place for an armchair, and there’s no room anyway, and people at Herbert’s Retreat don’t sit around having tea in the kitchen with the servants. And I would like to point out, Betty, that you are here to work, not to entertain guests at tea.”

  “I have my contract, m’lady,” Betty said.

  “And you can’t very well afford to let her go anyway, can you, Liza?” Mrs. Conroy whispered. “Think how they’d love to laugh at you around here. And think how you’d feel if one of them got her instead. There are plenty of your friends who’d love to have a woman like Betty working for them. And you’d still have to pay her for the full term.”

  Liza stared incredulously at Betty for a minute, and then at her mother. “Very well,” she said with difficulty. “Finish your tea. Perhaps it will make you sick. I hope not.”

  The derision in their eyes frightened her, and she started for the door.

  “And one more thing,” her mother said good-humoredly. “From now on, I’m going to leave my teeth in the bathroom at night.”

  “Oh, my God,” Liza said, and left the kitchen.

  “I cannot abide the sight of those things in the room with me,” Mrs. Conroy went on. “This way, nobody will have to look at them.”

  They were silent for a while, Betty absorbed in her book, Mrs. Conroy peacefully watching the rise and fall of the flames. “I think I’ll get a cat,” she said suddenly. “Liza hates cats.”

  In the living room, sitting in sepulchral silence, Tom and Liza were first startled, then appalled, by the sudden screeches that came at them from the kitchen—screeches of laughter that was rude and unrestrained, and that renewed itself even as it struck and shattered against the walls of the kitchen.

  The Gentleman in the Pink-and-White Striped Shirt

  At one minute before nine on a May morning, Charles Runyon opened drowsy eyes to the high-walled, sunless reaches of the Murray Hill hotel room that had been his home for nearly thirty years. Always, awakening in that room, Charles thought with satisfaction of the legend that had grown up around it. Charles’s room was a mystery to the world. None of his friends—his present friends or those of former years—had ever entered it. There had been a period when columnists had conjectured almost weekly about its shape (it was long and narrow) and about its color (its walls, once pearl gray, had hardened to stone gray and chipped during Charles’s tenancy, but he refused to allow it to be repainted) and its furnishings. The furniture, massive and shabby, contrasted curiously with the almost dainty elegance of Charles’s personal appointments—his silver-backed brushes and hand mirror, his gold-topped bottle of sandalwood cologne, his leopard-skin slippers. His desk held a large pad of thick white paper, a crystal inkwell, and a feathered pen. It also held the porcelain tumbler from which he drank his morning coffee. His bookcase contained twelve copies of each of his own six books, the latest of which was ten years old, and on the lowest, deepest shelf he kept issues of magazines and newspapers in which articles by him had appeared.

  Charles was a critic of the theater and of literature. He confined his efforts, these days, to a weekly column for a string of Midwestern newspapers. He said that this was the only regular writing he wanted to do, since the so-called novelists and so-called playwrights working today had made serious criticism impossible. Let the so-called critics have their little day, Charles said contemptuously. But he read the theater and book-review pages of the daily papers with fierce attention and held secret weekly sessions with Variety at the Quill and Brush Club, of which he was a member.

  Charles’s room had one tall, deep window, shrouded in ancient red brocade, which looked out on an air shaft. In his youth, Charles had been too much ashamed of his room to allow his friends to visit him there. In those years, it angered him that he had to be content with a cheap room hidden away in the back of the hotel, instead of being able to afford one of the splendid apartments in front. But his friends’ curiosity, which at first made him uneasy, with time became flattering, and he grew fond of the room, and increased its mysteriousness by his reticence about it, and then by his arch evasiveness, and finally just by continuing to live there.

  The years passed, and the old hotel changed hands and lost heart and dignity. The big front apartments were cut up into cubicles, the fine, long marble entrance hall grew dingy and was cluttered with soft-drink dispensers and a water cooler. The noble oak desk, discreetly placed at the rear of the lobby, was handed over to a cigarette vendor, who also dealt in razor blades and penny candy, and its functions were transferred to a sort of bathing box of varnished pine, built almost at the mouth of the elevator, in a position that flaunted the new managers’ distrust of their guests. Rundown and shabby though the hotel was, it nevertheless suited Charles very well. And it was very cheap. He never thought of moving.

  Besides, during t
he past few years Charles had spent nearly as much time away from New York as he had spent in it. He had formed a habit of going every weekend to Leona Harkey’s charming house at Herbert’s Retreat, thirty miles above the city, on the east bank of the Hudson. Charles occupied a unique and privileged position at the Retreat. Leona and her friends regarded him as their infallible authority on the rules of gracious living and on the shadowy and constantly changing dimensions of good taste. They were all a little in awe of him. Leona admitted, laughing, that she was afraid of him—but she adored him, too, she always added quickly, and she did not know how she had ever existed before she met him.

  Lying in bed, waiting for Leona to telephone, Charles smiled. She really was a dear child, although he sometimes wished she could have been a little less wholehearted and a tiny bit more intelligent. Today was the eighth anniversary of their meeting, and they had a delightful celebration planned, for just the two of them.

  At nine o’clock exactly, the phone rang. Charles laughed softly into the mouthpiece.

  “Is this the gentleman in the pink-and-white striped shirt?” Leona sang. “Oh, is this the—”

  “Not quite yet, my dear,” Charles said. “The pink-and-white striped shirt is still nestling in its birthday tissue in a box on my dressing table, with its five little brother shirts.”

  “He did deliver them, then!” Leona cried. “Oh, Charles, I am so glad. I was so afraid that man would disappoint you. Oh, what a relief.”

  “My shirtmaker has never failed me yet, Leona,” Charles said coldly.

  Really, it was a task keeping Leona in check.

  “Of course he hasn’t, Charles. He wouldn’t dare, would he, darling? But Charles, I want to tell you about my suit. It’s divine, and almost exactly like yours. It was so sweet of you to let your tailor make it for me. And from your special cloth, too. We’re going to look quite alike today, aren’t we? Almost like twins.”