The Mulberry Bush
Authors: Helen Topping Miller
A Romance
Helen Topping Miller
To Don and Aileen
To bigger oranges on little trees, and bigger fish on little minnows.
Teresa Harrison's apartment had wide windows looking down over Washington, over the wild greenness of the park and out across the misty expanse of roofs to the still more misty silhouette of the monument.
The walls of the apartment were hung with good pictures that Teresa had bought and seldom looked at, there were deep chairs which Teresa's guests seldom sat in, preferring the small affairs that could be pulled up to a card table. In one corner was an expensive, inlaid radio cabinet, ready to bring in from afar the symphonies of the Masters, but almost never turned on; and there was a long ivory-finished piano where occasionally somebody sat down to strum out a few bars of the newest swing chorus.
The rugs were expensive, but to Teresa they were symbols onlyâsymbols of the success she had fought for and won. The windows were useful, in that they let in enough light on this September Sunday afternoon so that she could estimate her hand without putting on her glasses, and the view from them, to Teresa, was just a view. All windows had some kind of a view, and why did Virginia Warfield want to stand there, mooning down at a lot of roofs, when somebody ought to be putting more ice in the cocktail shaker?
Virginia was Teresa's assistant in her profitable tourist's-bureau business. Virginia was Teresa's achievement. She had been made into a fairly successful businesswoman under the brisk lash of Teresa's deadly cold and adequate mind. Teresa's mind was as competently turned out as her forty-five-year-old bodyâmore competently, because her mind did not depend upon expensive corsets, workouts by clever masseurs, and frocks combining severity, style, and smartness, to meet life capably. Teresa's mind, so Michael Paull said, was made up of equal parts of razor steel, nitric acid, and chain lightningâall these laid over a cool grimness, a slashing wit, and a metallic practicality that resented dreams and emotionalism.
It was Teresa's mind that was glaring at Virginia now, standing there at the window, dreaming down. Teresa's voice held no quality of resentment. It was smooth as ever, suave as Teresa's white skin, her graying, sculptured hair, as her long hands that riffled a deck so expertly. Too smooth, Virginia came aware, snapped out of her misty mood by that voice. Six years of working for Teresa Harrison had taught the girl all about the cadences of that voice.
“This, angel child,” she drawled, flicking her cards into a fan and running a disapproving eye over them, “is not spring! She knows,” she added with' a touch of dry malice, “how nicely that light shines through her hair! Don't bother to pose, Designing FemaleâMike isn't looking at you.”
Mike Paull slid along the piano bench and banged bass chords in savage percussion.
“Let the gal moon,” he snapped, thrusting his elbows out and jerking his head in time to his tom-tom rhythms. “Moon away, Ginny. Lots of roofs down there. Lots of people under those roofs.”
Virginia seemed to pull herself away from the window with a visible wrench. She was a tall girl of twenty-five, a little too slender with an ivory-pale face, arching, bright-brown brows and fine, flyaway hair of an exciting red-gold shade. Her eyes were hazel and surveyed the group with a withdrawn, cool appraising, as though she looked at objects instead of people. Except when her glance moved to include Mike Paull. Catching his whimsical regard, a light stirred behind the champagne-color of her irises briefly, warm at first, then cooling defensively. Mike jumped up.
“Lift off those roofs and you'll see them squirming down there,” snapped Teresa, irritated by what she had glimpsed in Mike's face, “like worms! Revolting! Open some more Bacardi, Virginiaâand please, less lime!”
“I qualify as a swell Bacardi-opener,” Mike announced, “How about some music, you people? This place feels like a cellar entirely inhabited by pale-green funguses.”
“The word, me lad, is fungi.” Teresa was bland. “And turn the thing down, for heaven's sake!”
Mike spun the dial, impudently turned the volume to a blast, and ducked through the kitchen door, following Virginia.
“Listen,” he closed the door carefully, “let's shake up enough soporific to keep 'em subdued for a while, and then we'll beat it down the back stairs, and go somewhere else.”
Virginia looked at him. Not tall, though he carried himself like a tall man, head high, black, unruly hair disciplined by backward jerks, long arms, and eyes very blue and audacious, eyes that believed only what they saw, and that with reservations. His lower lip was curved, mobile, shaped to the cynical, young amusement with which he viewed life, and with which he wrote about it. Wrote with such clever, vitriolic impact that already his daily column was syndicated in more than fifty important papers. Untouchable as mercury, unpredictable as the wind, that was Mike Paull.
“I'm not in love with himâI couldn't be. I have too much sense,” Virginia had been telling herself fiercely, lately.
But his nearness at the sink, thawing out ice cubes, made her uncertain, made odd flashes of stinging warmth burn her cheeks and her fingers. He saw this, she knew, his eyes teased and appraised her, and then grew gentle with the swift, incalculable charm that made Mike a favorite with older women. Virginia found her fingers trembling a little as she slashed a green lime, but she controlled her voice sternly.
“Teresa would be furious if we went.”
“She won't miss us for hours.” Mike measured ingredients quickly, gave the silver shaker a few jiggles. “Get some clean glasses. I'll carry this in. And you get your hat.”
Five minutes later, he steered her through the door to the service stairs, holding her arm tightly. The warm air, fresh and exhilarating with the first leafy smell of autumn, surged up the round stairwell to meet them. Heels pounding the metal stairs, they pelted down, stopping breathlessly at a landing.
“Safe to take the elevator from here,” Mike said, pushing a door open. “My legs are getting elderly, though my brain sparkles with youth.”
“Mine doesn't. It's dull with smoke fumes and fagged from listening to inane talk. I don't know how Teresa lives through her Sundays.”
“The woman's tough. She's made of laminated steel.”
“She has had to be tough. It isn't easy to build up a business out of nothing in these days, and Teresa has done it. She has been awfully fine to me.” Virginia was loyal.
“She should be. Teresa's smart. She's capable but decidedly on the brusque side, and she knows it. She smacks the public in the eye and gets what she wants out of it, but she's clever enough to know that she needs some finesse and something pleasant to view, and that's where you come in. Not having any charm of her own, she buys someâat the lowest market price, I'll bet a hat.”
“Oh, noâshe's very generous.” They walked out into the sun-washed quiet of the avenue, on a drowsy Sunday afternoon. “Now,” Virginia inquired, “where, do we go?”
“How about your place?” Mike asked coolly. “You wouldn't have a doughnut and a cup of coffee concealed on the premises, would you? Haâ” he laughed delightedly, as an uncomfortable flush warmed the pale pillar of her throat. “Still the small-town gal from Tennessee, aren't you? Don't be frantic, Elsie Dinsmore, we'll call the janitor's wife in to chaperon us.”
Virginia bit her lip. Her inhibitions, her reservations were unconscious. Even after six years in a more or less flexible sort of social life, she had been unable to get rid of them, could not outgrow them. But she could not endure being mockedânot by Mike Paull, could not bear to have him laugh at her uncertainty. Her voice took on the coolness of Teresa at her deadly best.
“Don't be ridiculous. There's no janitor where I live. And no doughnuts. But I'll make some coffee.”
“Elegant. Black, knock-your-teeth-out coffee-to take away the taste of Teresa's foul cocktails. I hate liquor, though not a newspaperman in these United States would believe that.”
“I hate it too,” said Virginia. “I hate the things it does to peopleâthe way Teresa's neck gets red and her eyes begin to smolder. A lot of people hate it but they go on drinking stupidly, for fear they'll be thought smug and queer. I'm always at a loss at parties since the decorators abandoned potted ferns and umbrella stands.”
Mike laughed delightedly. She was a funny kid, this bright-haired Ginny, with her yellow-green eyes that could change so swiftly from mature wisdom to the naive wistfulness of a little girl. He was crazy about her, he realized with somewhat startled surprise. Right now he wasâit might last. He sighed because for him things so seldom lasted.
“Derby hats went out, too,” he said. “They were very useful. This age gets tougher and tougher for the nice people.”
“We take the bus here.”
“Gee gosh, where do you live anyway?”
“Over in old Georgetown, up two flights of proud old stairs, under a moldy roof.”
“Why,” Mike demanded of a bronze general, “do I pick out girls who live in weird places?”
“What was the name of that townâTarragona?” Virginia countered, impudently, “the place where the Spanish blonde hung out the window to dry her hair? You do rather go in for odd spots, don't you?”
“But that girl was nothing but copy!” A flustered warmth changed the cool assurance in Mike's eyes. “Stuff like that has to go inâvisual appeal. People forget how many Loyalists died on that line but they remember the blonde girl drying her hair with the bombs bursting around her. You remembered her. Why? Because blondes are unusual in Tarragona. In Oslo she wouldn't have registered at all. That's salesmanship, Ginny me gal, I've got something.”
He was right, of course. He had something. Something that took him, roaring on silver wings, into the seething corners of the world's troubles, his yapping little typewriter on his knees; something that opened for him doors barred to other men, frontiers bristling with difficulties, lips frigid with the silences of protocol and diplomacy.
He had something, and with a small, sick heaviness she knew it for what it was, the thing women have feared and hated since time was, the restless audacity that has driven the adventurers of the world since the first bold spirit bent a skin upon a pole and saw it catch the wind, and incredulously saw his horizon widen and grow strange.
She said, “We get off here,” and pushed the signal. She said, “This shop is open. What would you like to eat, Mike?”
“Roquefort on ryeâand how about a pie? Like pie, Ginny?”
They shopped happily in the little Italian place, and Mike insisted on carrying all the bundles. One flight, two flights. The rooms at the top were warm and airless, all the windows catching the burning glow of the September sunset.
Virginia put water to boil on the hotplate, ran about flinging up sashes, to let the breeze come in. Mike turned on the radio, snapped it to the amateur band, sat hunkered down on a stool fiddling happily, getting a meaningless jumble of call letters, and unimportant conversation. Virginia buttoned a smock over her dress, spooned coffee into the pot, sliced the dark bread thin.
“Listen,” Mike called to her. “Fellow in Labrador talking to a forest ranger in the Cascadesâtelling him how he gets jigger fleas off his dog's ears! Five thousand miles of airâand they pull down a miracle out of the ether to talk about jigger fleas on a dog's ears.”
“And about Wednesday,” Virginia smiled dryly, “there will be a paragraph by Michael Paull, about five thousand miles of ether and a dog's ears.”
He made a flat, compliant gesture with open palms, grinned boyishly. “The poor columnist has to live. And they'll like dog's ears. You watch. Bet you a show that I get twenty suggestions for getting rid of jigger fleas. Bet you a new hat.”
“I wouldn't bet. It's a sure thing. Remember the time you longed for a russet apple?”
“And got nine bushels? Do I? But the orphanage kids enjoyed the apples. Wonder if dogs in Washington have jigger fleas? Maybe I'd better call the Kennel Club and the pound before the remedies start coming in. Something smells darned good. Hereâlet me do that. I'm the best card-table setter-upper this side of the Potomac.”
“I'm not bad myself.” She shook out the embroidered cover she had been saving for a great day. This was the day. Mike was here. Was this falling in loveâthis hot-and-cold, light-headed feeling? This hearing her own voice, strange and clear, as voices sound from the numbing of an anesthetic? She did not want to fall in love with Mike Paull. As well love a brash young eagle.
“This townâand every other town,” Mike had said to her once, “they're mulberry bushes. Here you go roundâround and roundâand when you get around, it's the same old bush. And I never did like mulberries.”
Fun, sitting across a little table from Mike. Letting him jump up to fill his own coffee cup, to rummage her tiny icebox, yelping triumphantly when he found a cold steak-bone.
“Hey, didn't you know I liked to gnaw bones? Boy, this is swell. That time in Polandâdid I tell you about that? I thought it was mutton, but it turned out to be goat. But did those goat bones taste great when the oil line broke and I had to spend twenty hours on a salt flat in the freezing cold, because somebody had to stay with the plane!” Mike scrubbed greasy fingers on his handkerchief, forgot the iron-cold bitterness of Baltic winter, remembered a little tavern on the dusty fringe of Antofagasta. “Ever eat parrot, Ginny? Not bad if you're hungryâand were we hungry? And broke. Three German lads from the nitrate mines had cleaned us clean. Never held such rotten cards in my life. Got to bed at six in the morning, and then the danged parrot screeched all day. But if ever you cook a parrot, don't try to broil him.”
“I know,” Virginia twinkled: “Boil him with a rock till the rock gets tenderâthen you throw away the parrot and eat the rock.”
“Gentle reader!” Mike made her a low bow. “I salute you, public! Honest to gosh, Ginnyâdo you read everything I write?”