Barbara Greer (26 page)

Preston's plan, of course, involved a considerable sum of money. As Barbara remembered, it was around fifty thousand dollars. Connecticut had been harder-hit than most states by the depression, and the Woodcock Paper Company had fared only a little better than others. Though they had been able to keep their doors open, production had been cut and the mill was operating on only a fraction of its normal labour force. Fifty thousand dollars, at a time like this, was a lot. And yet Grandfather Woodcock had never turned down anything that promised to bring him a profitable return. He had studied the map for several days, tracing and retracing the two alternate routes that his son had mentioned. At last he called Preston into his office again and told him to go ahead with the plan.

The property was purchased in the name of the Woodcock Paper Company. Preston handled all the details. When the purchase was completed, some months later, Preston had said to his father, ‘You won't regret it. Wait and see what happens to West Hill when the parkway goes through.' He had been confident; it had been one of the most supremely confident moments in his life.

But, several months later, when the engineers' plans for the Merritt Parkway were published, the route chosen through Burketown was to the east, across the river. East-side property owners made tidy sums of money.

Afterward, Grandfather Woodcock said nothing. He refused to discuss it. He withdrew into a silence that, through the years, shadowed their whole relationship. He never trusted Preston's judgment again. To be sure, the West Hill property eventually became valuable. As the town grew during the war and after it, streets were built across its slopes and the little look-alike houses that Barbara had passed again this morning had been scattered along them. Soon the section was shorn of its covering trees and contained a shopping centre, a drive-in movie theatre and a roller-skating rink. But this, to Grandfather Woodcock, did not help exonerate his son. This had come too late, and it had come as an accident. His son had promised him a parkway. And he had faulted on the promise.

Grandfather Woodcock mentioned the West Hill incident to Preston only once, many years later. Barbara remembered it clearly. It was a few weeks before her grandfather had died and she and Carson had been at the farm and had heard her father tell her mother about it. Preston had visited his father in the Prospect Avenue house with another business proposition. Grandfather Woodcock was eighty-eight years old, and the proposition was not actually Preston's idea but was the result of urgings from the law firm that represented the company. Preston had tried, as tactfully as he could to remind his father that eighty-eight was not exactly young and to explain to him the tax benefits that would be realised if his father would begin, now, to disburse his estate to younger members of the family. Grandfather Woodcock had stared at him coldly for a long time. At last, he had asked, ‘What time is it?'

Preston looked at his watch. ‘It's half-past three, Father,' he had said.

Then Grandfather Woodcock pulled out his own watch from his pocket and looked at it. ‘Your watch is wrong,' he had said. ‘Just as everything about you has been always wrong. You have always been a little off. A little fast, or a little slow. Now get out of here.'

Preston had taken his scolding humbly. Edith, when they discussed it that evening, told him that he was right not to get angry. That was the only way to be. Humble, subservient, take the old man's punishment, cater to his wishes, do what he said, take the tongue-lashings he administered with a grain of salt. That was wisest now, at this point. After all, the old man was very old. He was eighty-eight. He could not refuse to retire much longer. Look at him! He hadn't been outside his house for over six months. He had even been mistreating Preston's poor old mother, accusing her of trying to steal from him! He was impossible, but after all he was old, so old. One did not wish him dead, of course, but he was old; he had had a rich, full life. His mind, much as Edith hated to admit it, was often blurred. He faded in and out like an image on a television screen, one minute clear as a bell, the next minute far away in another century! Edith and Preston nodded sympathetically over their cocktails as they talked about him. The poor old man.

Best to humour him now, Edith counselled. Let him have his little tempers. Let him scold. After all, one day Preston would be president of the company and make his own rules. There was no doubt about that, no doubt at all.

But, as it happened, it did not work out that way. Two days later, at 1045 Prospect Avenue, Grandfather Woodcock rose from his chair and ordered his car brought around. He put on his hat and overcoat though the day was warm and ordered Roger, his chauffeur, to drive him to the mill. The arrival there of the old Chrysler with its incongruously dressed passenger, after so many months' absence, caused quite a little stir. What was the old man up to? In his office, Grandfather Woodcock picked up the telephone and personally called each of the nine company directors and ordered a board meeting for two o'clock that afternoon. At the farm, Edith took the message. She relayed it to Preston and her daughters, saying, ‘The poor old dear. I'm afraid his mind is really failing now.'

By two o'clock, all nine were there. In addition to Grandfather Woodcock and Preston, the others were Cousin Billy, his mother, Victoria Woodcock—whose husband, William Woodcock, Junior had been killed with the 36th Division in Italy in 1943; Billy's younger brother, Talcott, fresh from his desk as vice-president in charge of marketing; his aunt, Mary-Adams Woodcock deWinter, annoyed at having to leave a hair appointment early, before her hair was dry; her son, Woody deWinter, and Barbara and Peggy. Although the two girls owned, at the time, only token amounts of stock that had been given to them on birthdays and Christmases, they were board members automatically since, by tradition, all stockholders were considered directors.

Grandfather Woodcock had an announcement to make. He was retiring, he advised the board, after sixty-four years with the company. The fact had evidently been overlooked, he told them, that today, July second, 1953, marked his sixty-fourth anniversary with the company. The rest of the board looked uncomfortable; a few members protested that they had, indeed, remembered, but had not thought that their president would be feeling up to a celebration. In connection with his retirement, he announced, it would be necessary to hold an election for a new president.

It was a family company, with its shareholder-directors all members of the family. The election of officers was done by ballot on the basis of shares held, each share representing one vote. The distribution of shares of stock was unequal; Grandfather Woodcock personally owned seventy-two per cent of the shares outstanding. This inequality had existed since 1907 when his brother William had needed cash in connection with a Mrs. Sylvia McCarthy, a housekeeper, whose threat of a lawsuit had been only a genteel form of blackmail. Grandfather Woodcock had supplied his brother with the money by purchasing roughly half of his brother's stock in the company; (the McCarthy woman, it was understood, was still alive, an old lady living comfortably in Hamden, though old William Woodcock, her benefactor, had been dead for many years.)

As the voting began, pencils and sheets of yellow paper were passed around the room. Preston, as executive vice-president and secretary, quickly read off the list of shareholders, advising each member of the exact number of shares each owned. Then they voted.

The results were surprising. The position of president was given to William Dobie Woodcock the Third. Preston—to whom the job fell of counting the ballots—read off the results in a queer voice. Grandfather Woodcock merely nodded, satisfied. Then he turned to Cousin Billy, shook his hand, and said, ‘Congratulations.' Billy, who looked pale and a little glassy-eyed, jumped slightly in his chair, taking his great-uncle's hand, and mumbling, ‘Thank you, sir.'

The mood of the little group as they stood up and started out of the room had been a curious one. There were no exclamations of surprise, no congratulations. Cousin Billy fixed his eyes upon the floor. There were no admonishments, no expressions of regret or sympathy. In fact, there had been nothing at all, only silence. Outside a few faces broke. There were a few nervous smiles. Mary-Adams deWinter lighted a cigarette, patted the damp curlers in her hair. Then, briefly, she squeezed Barbara's and Peggy's hands, but said nothing. What had happened, of course, they all understood. Grandfather Woodcock had simply lifted control of the company from his side of the family, from his son, and placed it firmly with the other side—with his brother's son's child, the grandson of the brother who had been the ne'er-do-well, the black sheep, the fornicator and disgracer. Preston, who stood among them looking astonishingly composed, had been passed by. At fifty-two, he had been placed second in command of a company whose president was his second cousin, Billy, only thirty-one years old. And the same thought instantly occurred to all of them: it was all right for the old man to do this now, perhaps, awful though it was; but what would happen at his death? Where would his stock go then?

In the little anteroom, a few more cigarettes were lighted. There began to be quiet murmurs of conversation. ‘Are you driving into New Haven tonight, Talcott?' ‘Woody, is your car in the parking lot?' ‘Yes, Mother.' ‘Mind if I take it, dear? I came by taxi and it's so
hard
to find one going back …'

Grandfather Woodcock, standing in the centre of the group and yet, at the same time, apart from it, turned to the person next to him who happened to be his grandnephew, Woody. His chin was cocked and his bright old eyes flashed. He said, ‘Well, Woodcock? What do you think?'

It was the words, ‘Well, Woodcock?' that hushed everyone. It was a salutation that might have been addressed to all of them.

And Woody—Woody, the rebellious, the unpredictable one, the off-horse—turned his head sharply away, saying nothing. Then the others, conscious of this, increased the tempo of their talk just slightly to cover his silence. The weather: how odd these early-morning fogs had been, all week, drifting up the river valley from the Sound, chilling the mornings and then burning off by noon in the sun's heat! Such weather! Had there ever, in anyone's memory, been anything quite like it?

They all knew. They all understood. They were all family. They had always been and they would always be, in some way, bound together by ties of love and pride, bright old ribbons the colour of loyalty and courage. Ties that were truly stronger than either love or pride, for they could be so much more painful ties. They had been through so much together. Through William, Junior, at Salerno. (Too old for the Army they had told him; they had been right, he had been killed.) They had been through births, deaths, one divorce (Sally), a failure at Yale (Talcott), a curious marriage (Talcott), an attempted suicide (Woody), that awful thing that no one would ever completely understand, nor would anyone but the family appreciate the struggle that had followed, the heartache, the trying times. They had been through the uncertain war years that had been profitable financially but which had taken their toll in a darker and more tragic battleground. Through all this they had been family and they would always be. Through all this they had suffered as they were suffering now and would surely suffer again, beginning their suffering with silence, polite silence, for what else but silence could so surely comfort the bereaved and so swiftly heal the wounded? They would follow silence with a little polite talk, and then, in a few weeks' time, it would all be forgotten; time for family parties again, little dinners, jokes and laughter. But forgetting was only an illusion of forgetting, they knew. Nothing was ever forgotten. Still, silence would bolster the illusion. Silence, politeness, and time.

Barbara sat, very quietly now, with Cousin Billy in the library, remembering it all. There seemed to be nothing left to say. At last she said softly, ‘Poor Daddy.'

‘Now, don't say that, Barbara,' he said. ‘That isn't realistic. Don't forget, your father's been taken care of pretty fairly well all these years. Pretty fairly well.'

‘Yes, yes, I know …' she said.

On the terrace now, outside, she could hear voices. The swimmers had left the pool and were gathering for talk in the cool shadows of the garden shrubbery, on the green-cushioned chairs, away from the sun. She could hear them, the family, and their bright Sunday afternoon laughter.

Two and a half weeks after the board of directors had met, at 1045 Prospect Avenue Grandfather Woodcock spilled his milk. He had refused, somewhat testily, the curved glass sipping straw that Binky Zaretsky had offered him, and when he lifted the glass of vitamin-fortified milk to his lips, it fell from his fingers on to the floor. Tiger, his yellow cat, leaped from his lap for the milk. His wife, sitting next to him, said, ‘Binky will mop it up, dear,' but old Mr. Woodcock bent, reaching apparently to pull Tiger back to his accustomed place on his lap (‘He wasn't the kind to care about milk spilled on the rug,' Mrs. Zaretsky explained as she told the story later), and bending in his chair, his fingers clutching for the cat's fur, his heart stopped. A rich, full life was ended.

The night before the funeral, Edith and Preston talked.

‘There's one thing you can be sure of,' Preston had told her. ‘I won't stay here. I'm not going to stay here and work for Billy. We'll take whatever money comes and move away. We'll go to Florida. Or California. Would you like that, Edith? I'll either retire completely or—well, maybe just try retirement for a while and see how I like it. If I don't there are dozens of companies that would be glad to take me on. The thing is, we won't have to worry any more! We can do exactly as we please, go where we want. Oh, I know how you love the farm. I love it, too. I love everything we've done here, all the work we've both put in on it. But now that he's gone, we won't have to worry, we'll be secure. When that stock of his comes to me, sure, I could elect myself president! But I won't do that! I won't stoop to that. Let Billy take it. If he wants the stock I get, I'll sell it to him. I just don't give a damn about the company any more. You and I will be secure, that's the big thing. We won't have to wait for those pay-cheques of his! We can go anywhere we want, Edith. We're not going to stay here.'