The Houseguest (23 page)

But she stepped back and waited for Lyman to emerge, which he proceeded to do as if he had acquired another hundred pounds of flesh since last seen. It was perhaps unfair of her, considering his current state, in which the chief was obviously incapable of giving more than a symbolic performance, but that was the pleasure of it: she kicked him in the groin with all her force. She was amazed at how effective this blow proved: she had never previously delivered one except against a soft dummy in a two-session female self-defense course at college.

Lyman actually howled in anguish, clutched himself, and sat down heavily in the gravel.

Figures emerged from the jeep, but before they reached her Lydia had claimed the chief's revolver from his holster. It was much heavier than she had assumed it would be, took both hands to hold and was not so steady even then.

“Lydia,” Chuck said, coming from around the rear of the vehicle, “do you realize what you've done to an officer of the law?” He was by far the smallest of the four standing men. The others were submissively holding their hands in the air, as if victims of a stickup.

“Now you guys,” she said, in a voice that started uncertainly but grew more steady as she spoke, “you guys pick up Lyman and put him in the jeep.”

Chuck slowly advanced. “Lydia,” he said, “can't you see it was just a joke? You're going to get into trouble if you keep this up.”

She waved the pistol at the largest of the big men. “Get going.”

He made a little bow of acquiescence and bent to take the crumpled chief under one shoulder. Another man took the other side, and the third seized the ankles just above the hightop shoes. The task looked heavy even for three large porters: Lyman hung between them like an overfilled sack.

Chuck said, “So he goes a little far, but he
is
the duly constituted authority. He can't be deposed just like that, at
your
convenience.”

Lydia kept the gun on him. “Why is your name Burgoyne and not Finch?”

“My mother got married.” He stepped closer. “I'm glad to see you're coming to your senses, Lydia. Now put that gun down.”

Lyman uttered a new groan of pain. His hat had fallen off: perhaps the men had banged his head trying to insert him into the jeep.

“Don't come closer,” Lydia warned Chuck. “I know how to shoot a revolver. My uncle showed me.”

Chuck said knowingly, “And who would know better than a mobster?”

“He's a veteran police lieutenant,” :she lied.

“Go on,” said Chuck, but he stopped where he was. “Put the gun down, Lydia. Let's talk this over.”

“I want you out of here. You've become an embarrassment.”

“You can't mean that. We saved each other's lives today. That must signify something.”

“One person naturally helps another in an extreme situation: that's only human. It doesn't mean anything else.”

“I just wish you could bring yourself to admit it,” Chuck said, in a wheedling tone. “You're in love with me. God knows, you've done everything you can to show that, but you simply can't say it. Okay, then don't! But just put the gun down, and we'll forget this little incident ever happened. Am I right, boys?”

The other men had by now installed Lyman in the back seat of the jeep and were presumably awaiting instructions. They grunted inscrutably in response to Chuck's question.

Lydia waved the pistol. “You guys get in.”

Chuck pretended to be part of the current directorate and added his own orders as the men were complying with hers. “Go on back to the village. This is it for tonight.”

“You're going with them,” said Lydia. “Get in.”

“Naw,” he said in a lowered voice. “That wouldn't work at all. I don't have anything in common with these guys. I left and made something of myself. I didn't come back to
them.
I've got an education. I've got good taste. I know how to act. I can go anywhere.”

“That's what you think,” said Lydia, waving the gun at him. “Get in the jeep. We don't want your kind here.”

Chuck hung his head for a moment. When he brought his eyes up, he said, “You think your fancy in-laws give you the right to take the law into your own hands?”

“Yes.” Despite the complexities of reality, or perhaps because of them, the simplest answers are often the most effective: she was learning that. “I could give lots more in the way of justification, but it would probably come down to that simple fact in the end.”

Chuck stared at her. “You're my biggest disappointment. I can't really see you getting, any where in the long run. You're living in a fool's paradise. You think you're clever now, but they'll eventually destroy you.”

“I was hoping I wouldn't have to do this,” Lydia said, “because it sounds so phony, but unless you get into the jeep before I have counted to three, I'm simply going to shoot you.
One.”

Chuck shrugged, said, “You're in charge,” turned and took a step towards the vehicle.

Lydia felt ridiculous, but she went ahead and said,
“Two.”

At this point, Chuck whirled around and leaped at her. She had no choice but to fire.

“Good God,” said Doug, at the kitchen windows. “Who's been shot?” He had seen nothing yet but the shadowy figures of the men who had deboarded from the jeep on the side facing him. The action was on the far side.

“Put on the lights out there!” cried Bobby, though he made no move to do so himself.

“Would that be wise, with guns being fired?”

“This is
exactly
what I feared,” Audrey moaned. “Just
exactly.”

“Well,” Bobby said, “I think my place is with Lydia.”

His father asked, incredulously, “Unarmed?”

“There must be something we can do!”

“We're doing it, Bobby,” said Doug. “We're here. We're standing fast. We're not running. It would make no sense to go out there and get killed. How would that help?”

“Still,” Bobby said, “I don't see how anybody else is going to understand afterwards.”

Audrey spoke. “If we emerge from this unscathed—and I think it's possible that we will, if what they really did want all the while was
her—
we have no business in mentioning anything about this episode to anyone else. Not even, for example, to Mrs. Finch when she comes tomorrow morning.”

“Uh-oh,” said Bobby. “The jeep is leaving.”

“Is someone on the ground?” Doug asked eagerly. “I can't see a thing.” Except of course the parallel shafts of the headlamp beams as the vehicle swung around, and then its red taillights as they diminished in departure.

Bobby said, “I'm going out there!”

“An ambush may be just what Chuck has in mind,” Doug told him. “Better wait.”

Suddenly someone entered the kitchen and authoritatively threw the switch that illuminated the ceiling light.

It was Lydia. She held a large revolver.

“Now just think this over,” Doug said urgently, holding up vertical palms. Both he and she were squinting in the bright light. “Don't do something you'll be sorry for.”

“Lyd!” Bobby shouted, but he kept his distance from her. “Did you get him? Is the body out there?”

“I take it you mean Chuck?” Her hair was tousled and she appeared otherwise the worse for wear, sweaty, soiled, scratched. She was not the kind who looked good without grooming, was nowhere near being a natural beauty, but then Doug had never had a taste for dark brunettes. On the other hand, this was the first time since seeing her in the swimsuit that he had been sexually stimulated by looking at his daughter-in-law. Perhaps it was the gun. “No,” she said in answer to Bobby. “He left.”

“Did you shoot
anybody?”
Bobby sounded as though prepared to be disappointed.

“I fired once between Chuck's feet. That's all it took. He won't be back.”

Doug peered at the weapon. “Is that Lyman's gun?”

“He won't make any trouble. He won't want the world to know it was taken away from him by an unarmed woman he and his male relatives, four of them, were going to rape.”

Bobby turned away with an expression of disdain.

“Go get some brandy,” Lydia said to Doug.

“Hadn't you better put the gun down?”

She waved it at him. “Get going.”

“You're a real heroine, dear,” Audrey said. “This is your moment.”

“Sit down right there,” said Lydia, pointing the pistol at a chair.

Doug fetched a bottle of cognac, as ordered, and included a balloon glass: just one. He intended to drink nothing, for he saw a need to keep his wits about him.

But having directed him to pour—which he did, generously, on the assumption that it would be swallowed by her—Lydia asked him to drain the glass into his own throat. He had no intention of denying the request of an emotionally overwrought young woman holding a firearm. He complied.

On her command he poured a second glassful of brandy and gave it to Bobby.

“Oh,” Audrey said, reaching, “I believe that's mine.”

“No,” said Lydia. “We're going to cure you. We're going to make good use of the rest of the summer, despite this bad start.”

Bobby took the glass. “All right, I'll drink it for your sake, Lyd. There's no need to keep holding that gun, for God's sake. We're just family now, and we're proud of you.”

“Drink the brandy, Bobby. You've just had a narrow escape.”

“Me?”

“Just think what would have happened to you if Chuck had stayed.”

Doug thrust his chin forward. “Now aren't you going a little too far? It's true that for a while we assumed you were in some sort of conspiracy with Chuck against us. We were wrong. What more can I say? But look at it from our perspective. No offense, but you both were strangers.”

Bobby lowered the globular vessel and said, “Wait a minute, Dad.”

“I'm just admitting our error, Bobby. We've got to clear the air.”

He looked at Lydia and was surprised to see her burst into tears.

“I'm not used to violence,” she said. “I never did that kind of thing before. I never even really believed it would work.”

Now was the moment Doug should have gone for her gun: he knew that, but he failed to act.

“There were a whole lot of them,” Lydia said, still weeping off and on. “I beat 'em! I won!” More tears. “You know what really made me mad? That hog of a Lyman claimed he heard me using foul language in the village. That's not true.”

Audrey said, “He was thinking of the sightseers, tourists. He was wrong to include you, dear. Now may I have a sip?”

Lydia stopped crying. “Don't you understand that now it's up to me to make something of you people, now that I've saved you from Chuck?”

“But can't we begin that tomorrow?” asked her mother-in-law. “Bright and early on a Monday morning? And by the way, there's no point in mentioning any of today's events to Mrs. Finch. If Chuck is really related to her, then no doubt she'll have heard
his
version. But let's leave it at that. It would only demean us to plead our case with someone who works for us.”

“You see?” asked Lydia. “You forget about drinking as soon as you have something else to occupy your attention.”

“No, I don't,” said Audrey.

Lydia disregarded the statement, if she heard it at all. She said, “But don't concern yourself about Mrs. Finch. We're going to fire her. And we're also going to turn away those women who come to clean. There's no need to hire anybody: all of us are here, doing nothing of value as it is. You can cook. Bobby will wax the floors, and Doug can handle the yardwork.”

She laid the pistol on the kitchen table, as if tempting her father-in-law to seize it, but of course he did not.

“You'll see,” Lydia went on. “You'll all have something to give you self-respect, for a change.”

“By doing housework?” Audrey asked, more in amazement than resentment.

“You shouldn't look at it that way. Anything can be disparaged. Law can be called merely the cynical means by which some people claim the right to dominate others. And do you think scientists consciously work for the good of the human race?”

“For the life of me, I can't see what's evil about giving people employment.” Audrey sighed. “I know that I'd be grateful if I needed work.” She sighed again. “You must be exhausted, dear. You won't mind my saying you could use a good cleanup after all your trials. You've got burrs caught in your hair, and your arms are all scratched. If you'd like to borrow some clothing—I know you haven't brought much along. And we're just about the same size.”

“No,” said Lydia, “you
can't
have anything to drink. I'm nailing the liquor cabinet shut, and when the secret supply you must keep in your room is gone, that will be it. But you won't need any, you see. Doug will be staying here all summer. And Bobby won't even be going to the club.”

“And
you?”
Bobby asked bitterly, having at last drained the brandy glass. “What are you going to be doing, Lyd? Just waving that gun around?” Already feeling the effects of the alcohol, he added, “You don't know how silly you look.”

“Me?” Lydia asked, smiling. Her face was dirty, but her teeth sparkled. “I'll be enjoying your flawless hospitality.”

“Oh, come on,” said Doug. “Aren't you being a little self-pitying? You're family, and you know it. This experience has brought us all closer together. In the years to come, we'll undoubtedly look back on it as something that worked for the good of all—even the Finches, or in any event, the more reasonable of them, who must surely appreciate that we all have to live together. Which doesn't mean we have to like one another.” He yawned and stretched. “Well, I don't know about you people, but
I'm
exhausted. I don't even want to think about any more problems. Tomorrow we'll deal with the cars. Maybe the phones will be back on by then. If not, someone can hike to the gas station: it's only about two miles.”

“Yeah, Lyd can go,” wryly said Bobby. “She's the one with the gun.”

“Mark my words,” said Doug. “No Finch nor anyone remotely connected with them will remember any of today's events. They've lost face, you see. That's mortal for people of their kind. You think they don't have feelings? They do. They don't want to be reminded of the trouncing we gave them out here.”

Lydia at last lowered the gun. “Yeah,” she said, “you really showed 'em.” She seemed to be running out of steam now, and therefore was once again not terribly attractive to Doug.

He said to Audrey, “C'mon, I'll walk you back.”

“Oh,” said she, as usual thinking exclusively of herself, “I'm not afraid.”

“Just be sociable,” said he. He bade Bobby and Lydia goodnight. He believed his daughter-in-law must eventually be persuaded to return the gun to Lyman, but that could wait.

He remembered all the disarranged furniture in his quarters only when he returned and saw it. On leaving the hastily constructed fortress they had merely moved the desk and thrown the mattress aside. Everything was still in disarray.

Audrey was just entering her own doorway.

“Look,” said he to her back. “Don't worry about what that kid was saying. She's all worked up. She'll be back to normal tomorrow.”

His wife turned. “I can't say I like her, but she's not all wrong. She's the only one of us who could have gotten rid of Chuck.”

“You mean she may be a necessary evil, like a policeman?” He grimaced. “Mind if I spend the night with you? I think we're all a little lonely after a day like this.”

“Speak for yourself,” said she. She entered her room and closed the door.

“Go on to bed,” Lydia told Bobby.

“Alone?” he wailed. “Are you still mad at me?”

“I can't sleep,” she said. “I'm too wound up.” She gestured at the pistol. “I feel like shooting this, but I don't know at what. I don't want to hurt anybody, but it seems unfinished, somehow.”

Bobby raised his hands and let them fall. “I really think you ought to get some rest, Lyd. Sleep with the pistol, if it will make you feel better. I'll take one of the couches.”

“Go away, Bobby.” Finally he did. Lydia wandered through some of the rooms overlooking the now invisible ocean. At last she sat down in a chair so soft and capacious as to be a complete environment, and she fell asleep… .

The first thing she noticed when she awakened was the revolver in her lap. In the light of morning it was an embarrassment, and she hid it within the chair. The sun was shining, but the sea, full of whitecaps, was obviously being agitated by an offshore wind. She was far from finished with that ocean, with which she had a score to settle.

All at once she smelled the delectable aroma of coffee, and went without delay to the kitchen.

Chuck Burgoyne was peeping into the oven, through a door slightly opened for the purpose. He was dressed in the same clothing he had worn since his first arrival: the chino trousers, navy-blue knitted shirt, and loafers, none of which seemed the least soiled by incessant use. Materially he was of a stainless character.