Random Winds (47 page)

He knew what she wanted to say: “Claire’s headstrong and obstinate. She always has been and you ought to be used to it by now.”

Jessie must be in a fury! Or would she have swallowed
her wrath and grown silent instead? As though it were yesterday, he remembered that Jessie could do just that.

He tried to recall the boy: sensitive, decent, thoughtful and pitifully young in the RAF uniform. Yes, but that was ten years past! And anyway, what difference did all that make? What difference could anything make beside the fact that he was
her
son?

Suddenly Hazel’s hovering presence annoyed him. He wished she would go inside and leave him alone.

“What are you staring at, Martin?”

Controlling himself, he answered evenly, “There’s a gull on that balcony. It’s been there all afternoon.”

“Perhaps it’s got a nest.” She kept standing there, troubled and hesitant “I hope you’re not going to grieve too much over this business with Claire.”

“Let’s fly home in the morning,” he said abruptly.

“But we were going down to Carmel and Big Sur!”

“I don’t feel like taking another week. I’ve got a hundred things to do at home, anyway.”

“You mean you’ve got to see Claire.”

“Well, what if I do?”

Her lips trembled. Then he thought: She asks for so little … And he felt torn, pulled this way and that.

“Let’s compromise,” he offered. “Four days at Carmel. We’ll go to Big Sur another time. I really want to get back sooner, Hazel.”

Her eyes softened. “Fair enough. I understand.” She put her arms around him. “Let’s dress for dinner, shall we? And try to take your mind off things a little? I’ve heard so much about Trader Vic’s.”

They were eating chicken in coconut sauce when a couple came to sit at an adjoining table. The man hailed Martin.

“Colonel! Colonel Farrell! It is you, isn’t it?”

“Why yes,” Martin said, hesitating.

“Dickson. Floyd Dickson, Don’t tell me you don’t remember?”

“Of course I do. For the moment I couldn’t think.”

“Yeah, I’ve put on thirty pounds since then. Meet my wife, Dot.”

“And my wife, Hazel. Dr. Dickson and I were stationed together in England.”

“I was a crummy lieutenant. Used to hang around and watch the colonel stitch the boys together.”

Martin sighed inwardly. He was especially in need of a quiet dinner on this night! And of all people now, he’d had to encounter this loud, restless individual whom the years seemed to have made louder than ever.

But he inquired politely, “Living in San Francisco?”

“No. L.A. We come from Minneapolis, you know, but I got sick and tired of shoveling snow, I’ve got a pediatrics practice in L.A. Dot likes ’Frisco, so we run up now and then. You been to Carmel?”

“We’re going in the morning for a few days.”

“Where you going after that?”

“Home. I’m due back in New York.”

“What you should do is, you should hop on a ship or a plane and go off to Hawaii, as long as you’re this far. After that, the Orient. Say, waiter, how about pushing these two tables together so we don’t have to shout? That is, if you don’t mind?”

“Well, no,” Martin said.

Scraping and shoving, the Dicksons settled down.

“I hear you’re making a name for yourself,” Dickson remarked. “I always thought you would.”

“Thank you.”

“I met a fellow in the hotel lobby this noon who’d just come from your speech. He was telling me something about you heading a new institute in New York. Neurological research, he said.”

“Yes,” Martin said quietly, “it’s underway.”

“Well, they all say you’re the man back east! But seriously now,” Dickson addressed Hazel, “you ought to make him have a little fun, too.”

She smiled. “I try.”

“Sure. Take a couple of months off. You’re a long time dead.”

Dot Dickson asked whether they had children.

“Three,” Hazel answered. “Two of them are only seven and eight. We can’t leave them yet for any length of time.”

“We went to Greece last year. Left the kids with my mother-in-law. Took the cruise around the islands. Beautiful, beautiful,” Dickson said.

“I’d like to do that sometime,” Martin admitted. “Greece is the place I’ve most wanted to see. All my life.”

Mrs. Dickson assured him he would love it. “And the shopping’s incredible,” she told Hazel. “You can get gold jewelry for practically nothing. Oh, I adore traveling! Two years ago we took a fjord cruise out of Copenhagen. I almost bought a silver service. They’re handmade, you know. But then I thought it probably wouldn’t go with our dining room—it’s French provincial. What do you think?”

“I really don’t know,” Hazel said. “I’m afraid I’m not very good at things like that.” She fell silent.

And Martin thought how much he appreciated a quiet woman. Even a woman like Flo Horvath, who was otherwise dear to him, he couldn’t have tolerated for a week. All that chatter and twitter!

Then Hazel, apparently feeling a need to be more sociable, remarked, “I’ve always wanted to see England, but Martin doesn’t want to.”

“Oh, really? I just love England,” Mrs. Dickson said enthusiastically.

“I guess the men saw enough of it during the war,” Hazel responded.

“I feel that way,” Martin agreed.

Two years ago, flying to a conference in Geneva, they had come down through clouds; England had lain on the left, with the sun just setting over it, and he hadn’t wanted to look. He had turned away and got a magazine.

“I wouldn’t mind going back,” Dickson declared. “In fact, that may be our next trip. Dot here is wild about antiques, old houses and all that. Of course, we don’t have much of that here in California. Say, Martin, speaking of old houses, you remember that place you used to visit out past Oxford?”

“No,” Martin said, startled. “I saw a lot of places and it’s a long time since.

“Sure you must! I drove you there a couple of times and picked you up in the ambulance on the way back. Talk of
Old! That house must have been three hundred years old if it was a day.”

Martin asked Hazel, “Would you like a salad? I forgot to order one. Waiter, may we have two green salads, please?”

Dickson turned to his wife. “You would have flipped over that place, Dot. Martin said somebody said Oliver Cromwell slept there once. I never got to go inside, though”

There was no malice in the man. Martin himself had covered so skillfully, had made his
visits
appear so innocent, that Dickson could have had no idea what he was doing.

“What did they call it again? lion House? Cockeyed names, all their places have names. No, what am I saying? Lamb House. That was it. Lamb. Wasn’t it Lamb, Martin, where you used to go?”

Martin raised his eyes. The anguish in them must have communicated itself to Dickson, bringing a sudden, terrible comprehension.

“Maybe I’m thinking of somebody else,” he said quickly. “I rode around with so many guys, you get mixed up, your memory goes back on you.”

A flush like a scald rose in an even horizontal line from the man’s throat to the hairline. It looked like water rising in a glass. And strangely enough, Martin felt sorry for him.

A queer silence fell over the table. Martin looked back at his plate, moving the rice around with his fork.

Presently, in a flat voice, Hazel spoke.

“Ask for the check now, Martin, please.”

“No dessert?” Mrs. Dickson remonstrated. ’ “You don’t know what you’re missing! They have the most fabulous desserts! The pineapple—”

But Hazel had already risen. “I don’t want any,” she said steadily. She walked to the door. Martin excused himself and followed her. They got into a taxicab.

“Hazel,” he began.

“I don’t want to talk,” she said.

In the hotel elevator, she faced forward. He tried to
place himself where she would have to look at him, so that by some expression, perhaps, he might convey to her what words could not But she did not let him meet her eyes.

In their room she took off her coat and hung it in the closet. Then she went into the bathroom. Martin walked to the window. Lights festooned the great bridge. Lights quivered on the bay, where little boats moved festively and people were all free of care. He turned back into the room, the quiet, pearl-gray room that spoke of money and the serenity that can go with it. His lips were dry with dread.

Hazel came out of the bathroom. She stood leaning against a table. It shook, and her purse fell to the floor. She didn’t pick it up.

“So you did see her when you were in England,” she said at last.

“Yes.”

“Why did you lie to me?”

“I didn’t lie. We just never talked about it.” And immediately he was ashamed of the cheap evasion. “You made love to her.”

He had a sense of standing at a crossroads. With one syllable, “yes,” he would take a turning from which there could be no retreat. Also, he had a feeling of déjà vu, as if he had always known that this might happen, although really that made no sense. The chances of its happening must have been one out of a thousand, at least. Yet here he was.

“You made love to her,” Hazel repeated.

“Yes,” he said.

“It wasn’t just one time. You stayed together.”

“Yes.”

She clapped her hands to her face and dropped them.

“I wouldn’t have minded other women, prostitutes least of all! Believe me! I understand that a man can’t be away for three years without—But her! Why did it have to be her?”

She began to weep without changing expression. Her face was smooth and uncontorted, a fixed face, with streaming tears. And this strange control dismayed him more than a frenzy would have done.

“Why?” she cried.

He trembled. What could he say? He thought of something.

“I came back, didn’t I? Doesn’t that tell you anything?”

“Yes. It tells me that you loved your children. Especially Claire.”

“No, no. It was more than that.”

“Your career, then, your precious career.”

“I thought of you,” he said.

“Oh, I believe that one! I surely do believe that one!”

“But it’s true.”

Hazel began to speak rapidly, with mounting pitch and force. “You were my whole life, do you know that, Martin? You were what I lived for. And to think that all the time, every loving word you ever spoke to me was a lie! That everything, everything was an act and a rotten lie! Oh my God, I understand what that poor cripple went through! What is this woman, anyway? What sort of whore is she, that she couldn’t leave you alone? Not once, but twice?” She sobbed now, she pulled at her hair. Her mouth was twisted in the mask and grimace of grief. “A whore, that’s what, a whore!”

“Ah, don’t,” Martin said. “Ah, don’t.”

“First her sister. But it wasn’t enough to ruin one marriage, was it? Oh, I could tear her eyes out! If it weren’t for my children I would kill her. Oh my God, I hope she dies in agony with cancer! Cancer!”

“I want,” he began, “I want to tell you—” and stopped.

What did he want to tell? Had it been anyone other than Mary, some WAC or nurse or English village girl he might have said:
I couldn’t stand being alone anymore
, and might have expected to be half understood. But Mary was different, and more’s the pity, Hazel knew it.

Yet he tried again. “I can only beg you to understand my conflict. My weakness, if you like. Weigh this against our years. I’ve been a good husband to you, you know I have—”

“Claire’s marriage,” she interrupted. “I see it now. No wonder you can’t bear the thought of it! No wonder!” She flung herself on the bed. “Get out I want you to get out.”

“Be reasonable, Hazel. Please. I’ll get you some medicine, a pill, to help you get through this tonight.”

“I don’t want a pill. Do you know something, Martin? I hate you. I wouldn’t have believed a human being could change as I have in just five minutes. Whatever I felt for you all these years is gone. It left me at the table in that restaurant. Just left me.”

“You’re frantic and I don’t blame you. But can you try to put everything aside till the morning? We’ll talk it over more calmly, we’ll straighten it out, I know we will.”

“I don’t want to talk. In the morning I’m going home to my children.”

“All right, well go home, then. Will you lie there quietly while I go out for medicine?”

“I’m not taking any.”

“You have to pull yourself together. Never mind how you feel about me. You’ve got three children to think of.”

The crowded street was almost as bright as day. It was easy going down the hill. One almost had to hold back to keep from hurtling forward. Two prostitutes with crayon pink cheeks approached him. Except for their hard bright eyes, they looked like children. They couldn’t have been older than sixteen. Their scornful laughter followed him.

In a shop window he saw the bronze Kwan Yin which Hazel and he had looked at on their walk that afternoon. It seemed now to have been a month ago. It seemed to have been a month ago that he had read the letter about Claire. And he stopped again to study the merciful goddess, perhaps to find in her benign expression some comfort for his raging pain.

Ah, he would give anything, anything, even his precious hands, not to have done this to Hazel!

Mary, Mary, he thought then.

“That one’s had a bit too much,” the soldier had said when Martin passed that night in London, all those thousands of miles away and so long ago.

Too much.

When he had got the medicine, he walked back up the hill. Cable cars were still running, but he forced himself to climb. It took the last of his breath.

She was undressed, lying in bed, neither reading nor sleeping, just lying there. Her eyes were swollen. She looked ugly, and this moved him terribly, the fact that she looked ugly because of him. He came over to the bed and stood looking down at her.

“Is there anything I can do? Anything that can be undone?”

“I don’t see what.” She spoke quietly now. “You never got over her.”

“But I love you,” he said, not denying the other. “Can’t I make you believe me?”

“No, Martin, you never did.”

“You’re wrong. I did and I do.” He knelt down at the side of the bed so that his face was level with hers. “Please, Hazel. Please.”