The "disturbed woman" who "responds to frustrations through aggressive acts, among them nymphomania, cruelty, chronic complaining, killing, or even suicide (aggression toward the self) " is discussed under "Frustrations and Aggressions" in the Encyclopedia of Psychology. Such a woman's aggressive drives are first directed toward those she secretly hates, and if further frustrated, may be turned against herself, the treatise continues. This is the violent story of Claire Rush, driven by hatreds, frustrations and needs she cannot understand or control. Like a growing tide, it sweeps in shame across the lives of those involved with Claire because of their own remembered guilts-it sweeps, degrading those who try to aid or love, taking everything along with her on her depraved race to self-destruction.
CHAPTER ONE
"Lenora!" The young intern stepped from the doorway of room 60S. Tall, lean and hungry-looking, his face was troubled.
"Yes, Doctor?" Lenora paused in the antiseptic hospital corridor.
"Could you step in here please?" the intern asked, his voice carrying urgency. He reached out and caught her arm and tugged her after him.
"What is it, Doctor?" she began, and then stopped when he pushed the door closed behind them and turned the small knob, locking the door.
Lenora's high-planed face turned red to the roots of her auburn hair. Her squared chin tilted and her deep violet eyes flared. "What's the idea this time, Doctor?" she inquired.
He grinned. "It's an emergency, I had to see you alone."
"Why?" Her voice dripped ice.
"I have something I wanted to show you," he said, giving the words all sorts of not-too-subtle meanings
"Carl, just because you think you're God's answer to student nurses, and I happen to be a nurse, that doesn't mean every nurse is fair game."
He grinned, unperturbed, leaning against the door. "I'm just trying to be impartial," he said. "Want to spread myself around. I don't like to think about a lovely doll like you turning to vinegar inside."
"You turn me to vinegar inside."
He grinned, still unperturbed. "That's just because you don't know me."
"Dr. Sigert, I am on duty. I do know you. That's why I wake up nights, screaming."
He moved as if to step aside and she walked toward the door-but when she was in range, he advanced suddenly, grabbing her. She hit at him, kicked at his shins. He only laughed and wrestled her to the bed.
"Stop it!" she raged. "I'll scream."
"You'll love this," Carl panted. "Just relax, baby. Relax."
His hands covered her breasts and his fingers tightened on her firm, upthrust nipples. With expert movements that foretold a successful career as a surgeon, Dr. Sigert flipped open her nurse's smock, baring her breasts in their nude-look bra. His hand moved in an expertly swift and sure motion and her matching panties were revealed to him. He caught his breath in astonished delight and reached for her panties with his searching hand.
His mouth smashed down over hers and he forced her back on the bed. She felt his body move against her. A shudder ran through her! She had never supposed that rape could be accomplished so hurriedly.
He was panting against her mouth, fighting to keep his lips upon hers as she rolled her head from side to side.
"Please," she begged.
"You'll be begging for more, doll, any minute now!"
"Don't! Oh, don't!"
"Stop fighting. I don't want to get rough but I will!"
"I'll get you fired!"
Panting, he laughed. "A Phi Beta intern? You'll get me fired? Nurses they can get, but not top rank talent like me. Oh, no. It'll be your word against mine, and you know who they'll believe."
"I hate you."
"Don't sweat it, it's purely temporary. You'll worship me soon."
Lenora stared up at him, her violet eyes swirling and crawling with hatred. Her breathing was as ragged as his now, and her superb young breasts rose and fell as she panted beneath him.
"Relax!" His voice raged at her. "You don't have to get hurt. That's up to you!"
She watched his face. His hand moved away from her thighs to prepare himself. She sagged back against the bed as if unable or unwilling to fight him any more. His mouth widened with a wolfish grin of triumph.
He relaxed slightly, his hand working at his trousers. In that split second, Lenora brought her knee upward.
He growled, moaned, then cried out in agony. He clutched both his hands to his body and sank to the floor on his knees.
He gasped for breath and couldn't breathe. He sucked in air, his body swaying with the pain wracking it.
She glanced at him without sympathy. She stepped around him, repairing her uniform, straightening her cuff cap. She heard his mewling on the floor behind her. She glanced at herself in the mirror. Her face was flushed, her hair disarrayed, but she would pass.
She did not look at Dr. Sigert again, but walked past him, going toward the door.
"Damn you!" Carl gasped. "I'll get you for this. So help me, I'll fix you."
"Sure you will. Another dedicated doctor, thinking first of others!" Her mouth pulled. She turned the knob, opening the door.
"Go ahead," he sobbed, still gasping for breath. "You save it for the worms. Carry your torch for what'shis-name-"
"Even if I weren't carrying a torch for what'shis-name," Lenora told him. "It wouldn't be anything to you. I still wouldn't want you."
Going along the quiet corridor, she straightened her hair, touched her clothing. She shuddered at the compulsive lusts she had seen in Carl Sigert's eyes in that vacant room. It annoyed her that she'd trusted the minor-league wolf enough to allow him to get her inside a room that she would have remembered was empty except that there was such urgency in his face.
She shook her head, wanting to laugh at his elaborate attempt to get her into that room. There was amusement in it now, but there hadn't been.
Still her hands shook when she pressed the down button at the express elevator. The elevator arrived almost at once and she was thankful. She didn't want to see Carl again just now, or ever.
The doors slid open and she recognized Dr. Benton Swain. In his fifties, he was trim, slender and tall, his soft hair completely white, only his gray eyes retaining their youthful glow, despite the hurt reflected there from his long years of service. If there was one doctor Lenora revered above all others, it was Dr. Swain. She knew that while he'd had an incredibly successful medical career, his private life had been a kind of private hell for him.
He scrutinized her now, grinning. "You look like you've been in a fast game of ping-pong, playing the part of the ball."
"I've been busy," she lied. She would not mention Carl to Dr. Swain. No matter how she revered the older doctor, and she was sure he liked and respected her, she'd long ago learned that a nurse never tattled on one doctor to another. It did no good, and it could lead to serious trouble for the nurse.
He drew a spotless handkerchief from his breast pocket. He caught her chin in his antiseptic, mint-smelling hands. He wiped off the touch of lipstick remaining on her mouth. It was not that there was more than a suggestion of color, this was an old ritual between them from her student-nursing days.
"Just a patch of color, doctor," she said. "I'm so sun-tanned my lips look pale without it."
"Can't wear lipstick," he said.
"I'm not in training any more, Doctor."
"No. Of course you're not. Now, you're a nurse, loved by everybody, as beautiful as a model. More reason for setting an example for the student nurses." He smiled. "Besides, you wouldn't rob me of my pleasure of touching your mouth the only way permissible for an old man like me, would you?"
"Oh no, Doctor," she said smiling. "Any time. Be my guest."
The elevator stopped and they emerged at the Emergency Out Ward on the main floor. He stepped out with her and she paused a moment, hospital protocol demanding that she remain until the physician walked away or excused her.
"I'm always surprised to find you here every day when I arrive," Dr. Swain said. "Surprised you're still with us."
"Shouldn't I be?"
"I never count on seeing girls as lovely as you as nurses for very long. Somebody is sure to marry them away. Patients. Doctors."
"I'm still here."
"Can't understand it. Doctor's aren't what they were in my day."
"There's no one like you, and it's still your day."
He smiled and touched her cheek gently with the back of his hand. "How nice. I guess it's true that when a nurse loves, it's forever, her man or her career. I really suppose that's why nurses stay on in a profession that doesn't pay them nearly enough, and stay married to men who often live off them."
He shook his head, givin,, her a warm and loving smile. He walked away.
She stood a moment longer beside the elevator before she walked along the corridor. She was thinking about what Dr. Swain had said, "when a nurse loves, it's forever."
She sighed, supposing this must be true. The inborn stupidity that caused them to be nurses in the first place. Once love was given, it was forever. Right or wrong.
The nurse at the duty desk called out to Lenora, "Hey, Comstock. Special delivery here for you."
The white-smocked woman held out the letter. Lenora took it, seeing the postmark first: San Francisco. Without looking any further she knew it was from Paul. Why had he written to her here? Why had he written to her at all?
For a moment she was weak. All duties were forgotten, all vows pushed back into the deepest crannies of her mind. She had to read Paul's letter, until she did, the world could stop for all she cared.
She turned back toward the elevator. A handy broom closet was what she needed just now.
"Lenora!"
She recognized Dr. Mark Whalen's voice, but she pressed the call button, as if she had not heard him. She offered up a hasty prayer: Let the elevator be waiting. It was. The doors whispered open and she ran inside.
She pressed the button, aware that Dr. Whalen was striding along the corridor trying to overtake her before the doors closed.
"Nurse Comstock!"
She watched the doors slap together in his face, but she was not really seeing him. A letter from Paul. After all this time and all that had happened to them, all the hurt he had heaped upon her in his careless and casual way.
She didn't feel hatred now. She even laughed a little, thinking, even a broken heart can mend.
Lenora sat with her aunt on the veranda of their beach house. Two-storied, frame, flicked by palm fronds, shaded by pines, it overlooked muddy Boca Ciego bay on the east and the gulf on the west. The island was narrow here, a spit of sun-whitened sand between the brown bay and the green open sea.
"What is it?" Aunt Henrietta said. "Don't sit staring at that letter. Tell me what's in it."
Lenora glanced up. "Just a minute. I haven't finished reading it yet."
"You could have read a book in the time you've been sitting there," her aunt said. "If there's something wrong, face it, tell me. Nothing gained by sitting there pale as death. Who is it from, Lenny?"
Lenora drew a deep breath. "Paul," she said.
"From Paul?" Aunt Henrietta looked as if she might rise up in wrath from her confining wheelchair.
Lenora's chin tilted. "Why not? Why shouldn't Paul write to me if he wants to? If someone's made a mistake, must they pay for it forever? If he wants to write to me he can."
She bit her lip. Mistake was an unfortunate and cruel word to use before Aunt Henrietta. Contritely, she apologized. But her aunt stared at the lawn, crisp and scorched red down to the brink of the bay.
Aunt Henrietta had made her mistake many years ago, and barring an un-likely miracle, would go on paying for it, forever.
"Let Paul pay," her aunt said after such a long silence that Lenora thought Aunt Henrietta wasn't going to say anything more. "Paul left you two years ago, Lenny. You were heartbroken. He left you for a trouble-making little tramp, so man crazy that only the blind could fail to see it. Paul was blind. And now I suppose Claire has broken his heart, and opened his eyes. Well, you stay out of it, Lenny. In two years, you've put Paul out of your mind, and that's where you'd better leave him."
Henrietta's mouth formed a taut line, marred with creases.
Lenora's eyes clouded. "Yes, I got Paul out of my mind. But-" she stared at the scrawled letter. "I don't know."
"Has Claire left him?" Henrietta inquired. "Has she run off with some richer man, some handsomer man, or some drunk she met in a bar?"
Lenora shook her head. Her voice was low. "She hasn't left him at all."
"Then why does he write to you? I know he's contemptible, vacillating, undependable. He did walk out on you to marry Claire." She brandished her cigarette lighter. "Give me that letter, I'll burn it!"
"They're coming back here," Lenora said.
"Back to San Grille Island? In the dead of summer? Why?" Henrietta's lips whitened. Her eyes were dry and bitter. "For two very good reasons-good in his mind! He wants to be near you, does he? And he wants to dash Clair off to some Florida island where she won't be chasing after every man she sees, like a dog chasing cars."
Lenora shook her head. "Claire won't be chasing any men," she said. "Not for a long time. Claire is very ill. She may be losing her mind."
Henrietta's lips moved, but she was speechless for the moment. She sat tall in her chair, with thin armr, and wide shoulders, a long neck, and a narrow, lined face, gently patted with veins. Her hooked nose, penetrating brown eyes and unhappy mouth robbed her of all the softness age can bestow upon the gracefully aging. She would have been the first to admit she was not graceful and she'd never asked to grow old. She'd prayed often for the mercy and release of death, but this had been denied her and only her brother's daughter gave her life any meaning at all.
Her gaze softened when it touched Lenora. Lenny, at twenty, was just beginning to laugh again, to consider men as human beings. It had been a long withdrawn time for her.
Lenora was an only child. Her childhood, serene and calm, had not prepared her for the flaming automobile accident that killed her parents when she was twelve.
Before the tragic accident the family had come down to San Grille Island every winter. Lenny had attended the Sunshine School, played in the bay, swam in the Gulf.
After the death of her parents, Lenora had lived in this house. A sunburned, freckle-nosed little native, cared for and watched over by Henrietta and Mallie Kenyon, her woman of all work. Mallie loved Lenny almost as deeply as Henrietta did.
The first two or three years of her teens, Lenora had spent in a reserved, sad little world of her own, but then she'd fallen in love with Paul Rush and she radiated happiness. She was eighteen, and in nurses' training when Paul, four years older, asked her to marry him.
Henrietta knew without being told that Paul and Lenora had made violent and passionate love for many years. Lenora was of the nature that once committed to a man, she was his without pretense or reservation. Henrietta had ignored the fiery romance, praying that Lenny would not get hurt.
Henrietta sighed. She'd never forget when Rush came to this house one morning just before dawn, still reeking of gin, to tell them he'd eloped during the night with Claire Myer.
And she would always see Claire as she stood clinging to Paul's arm, her face twisted into a fixed smile of triumph as she awaited Lenny's tears.
But Lenny hadn't cried, Henrietta remembered, not then. The tears had come later, long empty days before Lenora was able to lose herself in her work at Memorial Hospital in Porto Ciego. It had taken all these months to put Paul out of her mind. Lately, she'd even mentioned the names of men who had been attentive. It had seemed a hopeful sign to her aunt.
Now, after two years, Lenny was busy and they loved her at the hospital. At home she fretted over Aunt Henrietta, and her aunt and Mallie still worried over her.
Henrietta swore under her breath. Naturally Lenny hadn't forgotten Paul. But Lenny had been hurt enough: the tragic death of her parents, the way she gave herself completely to Paul, the shock of losing him. She had to forget the past.
How could Lenny forget when Paul was bringing Claire back to San Grille?
"Why is he bringing her back here?" Henrietta said. "Does he need to torture you with it? Or does he hope that he can cry on your shoulder, the way he always did?"
Lenora breathed deeply. "He's lost his job. He's confused. One hospital out there refused to admit Claire without payment in advance. Of course he didn't have it. He couldn't borrow it anywhere. He had nowhere to turn. His father won't even speak to him since he married Claire-"
"Rawls Rush was always a man of his word," Henrietta said. "He swore he'd let Paul starve after he married Claire, and he'll stick to it."
"I don't admire that kind of stubbornness. Hasn't he ever heard of forgiveness?"
Henrietta glanced meaningfully at the legs upon which she would never stand again. "I know nothing about forgiveness," she said.
"But Paul's desperate. Claire urgently needs attention. He can't find work because Claire demands all his time." Lenny tried to keep her voice level. "He has nowhere to turn. He asks if he can bring her here."
The breath exploded from Henrietta as though she'd been struck sharply.
"Here? To this house? To this island? After all this time, and all he's done to you? Lenora, is the man insane?"
Lenora lifted her hand. "No, Aunt Henrietta, I don't think so. But if he doesn't find someone to help him soon he may well be?"
"That's his wagon. Let him pull it. It was great when everything was going well." In her mind, Henrietta could see Paul as he'd been-handsome, drunk, spoiled, self-centered, arrogant-that night he'd come two years ago to tell Lenora good-bye. "A ride on a ferris wheel, a new jet, free-falling from the sky-no one could even warn them."
Lenora's eyes filled with tears. "They were in love."
"Can you forgive them that easily?"
"I can understand how they felt."
"Yes. The man who'd asked you to marry him, whose ring you wore. Laugh at them now, Lenora. Tell them to go to the devil. But don't bring them here to torture you. You can't throw your house open to people who've treated you as badly as they have. Didn't you see Claire secretly laughing at you that night? Claire enjoyed your heartbreak. It was part of the excitement for her. You think it wasn't her idea to come here that night? Lenny, you've suffered enough for him. I won't let you bring them here."
Lenny stared at the letter, saw the heartbreak, the confusion in that scrawled handwriting.
"But you'll have to let me, Aunt Henrietta," she said finally. "After all, this is my house."
Henrietta's head jerked back.
"Yes of course. It's your house." Her voice was stark. "I'm sorry I said anything. Of course you may bring them here. Nurse Claire back to health. Break your heart again for as you say, this is your house, and only your charity keeps me here."
Lenora jumped up and ran to the wheel chair.
"It's your house, too, Aunt Henrietta. You know that. I didn't mean to hurt you. It's just that I'm worried. For Claire and Paul. How can I say I don't care? How can I turn my back?"
Henrietta withdrew as far as she could in the narrow confines of her chair. Taking up her faultless needlework, she ripped at it with the long thin blades of her scissors, the way she always did in moments of stress.
She shook her head. "You've got to be selfish, Lenny. You've got to think about yourself. Haven't you been hurt enough?"
"I must ask them here," she said. "There's nothing else I can do."
Henrietta stared across the muddy shallows of the bay.
"I don't believe that, Lenny."
"Yes, you do. Inside."
"No. Ask Mallie to pack my things. I'll leave." Henrietta looked about her. The only peace from the continual pains flaring through her body was found here in the sun of San Grille Island. The only two people who would tolerate her at all were Mallie and Lenora.
"Don't be foolish, Aunt Henrietta."
"I'll leave in the morning."
'Where would you go?"
"I don't know. All I know is that I can't stay here and see you suffer."
Lenora caught Henrietta's arm. Before she could protest, a sleek gray Chrysler convertible pulled up into the drive beside the veranda. Behind the wheel, a swarthy man in his early thirties, hair-line deeply indented like a raven wing on his high forehead, grinned at them.
"I called to you, Lenny, at the hospital. You gave me a brush."
"I'm sorry, Mark."
Dr. Whalen shrugged. "Am I early? It's not every day I'm invited to dinner at the Comstock's. Most of the time I think you're unaware I'm alive. But I see you treat all other men with the same unconcern, so that helps my ego slightly."
His green eyes moved devouringly over Lenora.
"Don't say anything to Mark," Lenora whispered to her aunt, "please."
"You must tell him," Henrietta said. She ripped feverishly at the fine needlework in her lap. "You must."
"Then I will," Lenora whispered. "But let me tell him in my own way."
CHAPTER TWO
Paul Rush walked into the bedroom and closed the door after him.
"Hello, love," Claire said. Sitting at her vanity mirror in a transparent pink negligee, she tested varying shades of lipstick.
Studying her when she turned, Paul was shaken again at what illness had done to her.
Her cheeks were drawn and in them was a haggard tautness that pulled down at her eyelids. The brilliance of her lips accented the pallor of her face. She looked ten years older than her twenty-two.
Only her body had not yet succumbed to the wrath of whatever disease attacked her. Doctor after doctor had assured him it was all emotional, neurotic Her breasts were full and had begun to sag slightly, but her slender legs were shapely and gleaming with smoothly-toned ankles and high insteps that Claire insisted was the mark of the aristocrat.
"Come here, love, and kiss me," Claire said. She held out her arms, the negligee parting. "I've been so lonely all day. Baby needs some loving."
When Paul hesitated, Claire shrugged and turned her back to him. She seemed to lose interest in him at once and gave all her attention to the reflected face in her mirror.
Paul tried to smile and said to her reflection, "Feel like going out on the town this evening?" He waited while she continued to line her lips. "New play at the Geary. I could call Kilanger and get tickets." J! She shook her head impatiently. Her blonde hair shimmered in the lights. You know T hate plays. I'm too tired to concentrate. Even on plays." She turned and smiled across her shoulder. "We could hit some of the Watusi joints though, couldn't we?"
He shook his head. The doctors had warned against the emotional upheavel engendered in Claire by these places; something was roused in her that did not subside until she had been drunk for three days, or lost herself in some strange man's bed.
"Afraid not. Paid the rent today and I'm broke."
A sudden change erupted through Claire.
She lunged up from the bench, upsetting it. Her mouth twisted and her eyes widened, dry and wild. She glanced at the lipstick tubes in her hand and screaming hurled them at him as hard as she could.
She stood, shaking uncontrollably, looking about for something else with which to vent her rage.
"I know!" she screamed. "It's all my fault you're broke, isn't it? Say it! I bate you so!"
She ran at him and threw herself upon him, arms flailing, her close-clipped nails glinting as she pawed at him like an enraged cat.
Paul caught her arms and twisting her around, held her against him. For a moment she writhed and fought, gasping raggedly.
After a moment of fighting, she abruptly stopped and stood taut and still. She shook her wavy hair back from her pallid cheeks. She twisted her head around and gazed up at him like a child.
"You're hurting me, love," she said. But he had been fooled too often; now he was aware of the craftiness in her narrowed blue eyes. "You don't want to hurt baby, do you?"
"No, I don't want to hurt you." He added with a faint smile of disillusionment, "And you don't want to hurt me, either, do you? Not much."
She laughed throatily, agreeing she would kill him if she found a way. "Not much," she repeated. "Not much more than I want to breathe. You're mean to me. Like a keeper. I do want to hurt you, but I can't because you're bigger than I am."
Claire struggled again, trying playfully to free her arms, but for the moment Paul didn't release her.
He exhaled heavily, holding her against him, glancing about at the thrown lipsticks, the overturned vanity bench, the incredible disarray of the bedroom. He said under his breath, "What are we going to do, Claire?"
"You are hurting me," she said, sweetly. "I'm all right now, Paul. I wouldn't do anything to you. You know I love you. Let me go, please. I want to kiss you."
He released her and she slowly turned and pressed her body against him. She slid her long, thin fingers up his cheeks, pulling his head down and crushing her mouth cruelly on his.
She tightened her hands on his head, holding his mouth to hers. She opened her mouth and pushed her tongue between his teeth, probing thrusting.
When he did not respond, she went tense, a shiver going through her. Before he could snag her wrist, she dragged her nails down his face. Although they were kept clipped too short to inflect a gash, his face stung and burned.
She hurled herself away from him and fell across her bed, sobbing.
Paul absently fingered his cheek and stood looking down at her. He drew a deep breath and walked slowly to the bed. He sat down beside her.
"Please don't cry," Paul said.
She shook her head and kept her face buried in the rumpled covers. "Go away. Please, Paul, let me alone. You know what I want, what I must have, and you won't give that to me. You're driving me crazy. That's what you're doing!"
"Darling, I'm sorry if I hurt you."
"You always hurt me," she accused him. "You don't love me any more, and that kills me. Oh, Paul, why don't you let me die?"
Paul caught her shoulder and tried to turn her over on her back. She fought free of his hand and pressed her face into the covers, shaking her head wildly.
"You don't want me," she wept. "Other men do, but not you. You don't want me to know anyone else, but you don't want me."
"I don't want you hurt, Claire. You could get hurt-"
"You think I'm not hurt, living like this?"
"Claire, I loved you this morning. Before we got out of bed. Remember how nice it was? The way you cried out and-"
"This morning!" she said in contempt, as if it were ancient history without bearing on the moment. "I need loving. That filthy psychiatrist gave it an ugly name but it's not true. I only need love. I need to be wanted. And I know you don't want me! So why don't you let me alone?" Her voice rose, wailing.
"What would I do without you?" He spoke in a soothing tone. "I've always loved you, from the first."
"Yes," sobs shook her, "you used to love me, but you're cold to me now. You think I'm sick, and I repell you because you think I'm sick. You think I spent all your money and made you lose your job."
"No."
She turned over on her back then, her naked body gleaming goldenly in the light. Her eyes were as empty as cat's eyes, reflecting light. She gazed at him reproachfully.
"Oh, yes. You think I teased that funny Mr. Kramer until he tried to make love to me. But I didn't. Honestly. You should never have hit him. Oh, if only you hadn't. Why did you?"
Paul smiled. "I didn't hit him. I just told him I was going to."
Her eyes narrowed and her voice hardened.
"Yes, and all he did was to be nice to me." She stirred restlessly. "He wanted give me a mink coat, a car of my own, anything I wanted. Oh, Paul," she wept in an agony of self-pity, "you spoiled everything."
He shook his head. She was ill, there was no point in trying to reason with her. But hoping against hope, he said quietly, "But you're my wife, Claire, and I worked for Kramer. You couldn't take gifts from him, and give him nothing in return."
"I could have."
"No, you know better. You know what he wanted, even if he did talk about it's being all right because you were so much younger than he."
"He just wanted someone to be nice to him."
"Those were words, Claire. You weren't fooled."
She drew a taut breath, tilted her chin. "No, I wasn't fooled at all. But he was. I could have had anything I wanted, just for letting him hold my hand once in a while. But you had to get noble, you had to lose everything, then blame me because you lost your job and getting another one is impossible for you."
"I'll get another job, Claire. I nave to stay with you while you're ill. You'll get well, and I'll get another job. Kramer's a fool if he thinks he can stop me in a town as big as San Francisco. The only thing is, you've got to get well."
"Get well?" She pushed away from him and stood up. "I am well. Why do you listen to these fool psychiatrists who give all this such evil-sounding names. Psychoneurotic anxiety. Guilt complex. Nymphomania! What do they know? Spent their lives in books and laboratories and nut houses, and never met a dozen ordinary people in their lives! I'm all right. At least I would be all right, if you'd just take me out dancing somewhere-anywhere. I've got to be around people, Paul. I've got to have fun. I can't stay in a room like this all my life."
"Be patient, Claire," he said, although his own patience had cracks all through it. He thought about Dr. Miller, the latest pronouncement.
Miller's theory was interesting, at least. He said that Claire loved Paul above all others, and in moments of stress and tension her love turned to rage and centered on him because he was the single object of her most intense emotions.
Living with Claire now was like living in a small cage with a wounded lynx. At the least word, the most unexpected moments, she flew into a turmoil of passions and tried to kill herself or Paul, or both of them.
She toppled down on him now, working her nude body upon his in a violent effort to stir his old needs for her. But Paul winced. It was as if she were a pa tient in a hospital. He could never get excited over a sick body.
She kissed him, whispering every word and phrase and suggestion she'd ever heard. Her hands moved on him. Her breathing quickened, and she was lost in overpowering drives. Her hands trembled as she caught his hand and pulled it to her. He loved her with his hand, and she used every known trick to excite him. It had to work. It did. But how much longer, he wondered?
"Oh, Paul," she whispered when she was locked upon him on the bed, "we're all right now. Aren't we?"
He didn't say anything, but he admitted they were all right once they started making love like this. He could forget her sickness, her faithlessness that the doctors named nymphomania, her sudden rages, the way she aged before his eyes.
Loving her, he found himself thinking about Lenora, wondering what their lives would have been if Claire had not come along.
"You are wonderful! Wonderful" Claire was chanting in the wild rhythm that matched the flailing of her body.
He stared through the window at the fog-frosted afternoon sky, the far harbor, the hill beyond, everything a dismal gray. He heard her mewling and her wailing as he pleased her, and he wondered if he loved her any more, and if he ever had. He had wanted her, she was something wild the first time he saw her, un like anything he had ever seen, and he wanted her and he told himself he loved her. Maybe I still do, he thought.
He put his arms around her and pressed her slender body closer to his. His hands slid along her vibrating back to her hips. His fingers dug into her buttocks and she wailed out her excitement and her pleasure.
She moved faster, in a savage rhythm. She pressed her mouth over his lips, mewling. She couldn't wait any more and she screamed in release and pleasure.
She would not release him. She kept him there until he was sweated down and she trembled with exhaustion.
She lay still, finally, going almost instantly asleep.
He gazed down at her, grinning helplessly. She would sleep like this for three or four hours, and then gobble down pills for her insomnia tonight. She'd waken drugged tomorrow morning, take pep-up pills to get going, through the same vicious cycle again. He had been over it with her a hundred times now. The Claire Rush treadmill.
He got up slowly, showered and dressed. She slept, snoring slightly, her mouth parted, her breathing deep and regular and undisturbed as he moved around the room.
At last, locking the door behind him, he went out of their apartment. He walked the streets looking for a job. He hit the employment offices he had not already contacted. There was nothing in this town except for those with definite skills. What could he do? Al most nothing.
His shoulders sagged with the helplessness that swept through him. Claire's treatments were long and costly. The last of his money was gone. Not even Dr. Miller held out any hope for Claire's recovery, even a social recovery, which meant she'd be fit for ordinary society. If he didn't get an answer soon from Lenora his last hope was gone.
He shook his head. He did not know what he would do.
A car horn blared and Paul leaped back to the curb hardly aware of where he was.
Claire woke unwillingly, recalled from sleep by some persistent sound she could not place at once.
The doorbell rang. She lay there and stared at the ceiling, listening to the sound it made, ten, eleven, twelve times.
At last she called out, "I'm coming"
She got up, tucking the transparent negligee about herself. Going to the mirror, she stared at her reflection. She repaired her lips and brushed her hair slowly.
The bell rang again, with fierce impatience. She called out languidly and walked through the apartment to the corridor door.
She turned the knob. Anger flared. Paul had locked her in again.
"Who is it?" she said.
"Special delivery letter. And I ain't got all day."
"I'm locked in," Claire said. "You'll have to push it under the door."
She sank to her knees as the thin, scented letter was pushed under the sill.
She took up the letter, rage gorging up in her stomach at the sight of the return address.
Her hand closed, crushing the long envelope out of shape. Lenora Comstock. She couldn't leave Paul alone, even after two years.
"I suspected it all along," she said aloud. That sneaky little Lenora had been writing to Paul all these months. Lenora was the sweet, innocent type that never let a man go, not really. Not as long as they could sneak around and cling to him, for one high-sounding reason or another. So Lenora had been writing to Paul at Kramer's office, or maybe general delivery, or perhaps Paul had rented a post-office box for those dear, scented little notes of heartbreak yearning!
Clutching the letter in her trembling fist, Claire laughed. "Now Paul has told her I'm too ill in the head to notice the mail! So she writes to him right here under my nose! How sweet and sickening! Here's one letter her darling Paul will never read!"
She ripped it across again and again. Her heart throbbed exultanly and she felt better than she had for weeks. She scattered the torn bits of paper about the room. They fluttered to the floor. What fools they were to think they could put anything over on her!
Paul stopped on his way out of the apartment house at the door of the super's rooms. When the janiter's wife saw who it was, her face set coldly and she began to shake her head before Paul said a word.
"Please," he said, "just look in on Claire, won't you? Just see that she's all right?"
"I'm too busy!"
"I won't be gone long."
"No, I hate looking in on her. I'm always scared to death what I'll find. I've a bad heart, Mr. Rush, several doctors have told me that. I'm not likely to survive many clashes with your wife. Nor could I stand to find her with her throat cut."
"She'll be all right," Paul said. "You know I wouldn't ask you if-"
"You need a trained nurse for her, Mr. Rush."
Finally, unable to resist the troubled urgency in his face, she agreed. Thanking her, Paul went out and began the long walk up Pacific Street then downhill toward Market.
He walked swiftly along Hyde, unaware of the crowds passing on both sides, the cars, the horns, the sudden cry of brakes. He no longer turned toward the offices in the Union Square district. He stalked toward the hotels, the small business places south of Market because he no longer hoped to find work where Kramer's influence was felt.
When he crossed Market, he straightened his tie, pulled his felt hat a little more rakishly on his head and entered the lobby of a hotel south of the Golden Gate Theater on Sixth Street.
The manager stared at him. He asked for a job as clerk, night clerk, anything. But his anxiety and desperate need worked against him. Talking to the manager, he told himself he'd work at anything if he could get money enough to keep up treatments. She should be in the hospital, but this wasn't possible. He'd have to find a hospital where they'd take her without advance payment. He spoke urgently, trying to remember to smile, but he hardly knew what he was saying. He saw only the way the man shook his head. "I'm sorry. Sorry."
He didn't go back toward Market, but instead walked along Sixth, crossed Mission to where the stores were darker, names more informal: Rose's, Jim's, Hank's, Sam Lee's Chinese Laundry.
He paused a moment before a frosted, fly-specked window that displayed Mexican food, a leg of lamb turning on a spit.
Almost instanty a panhander materialized out of nowhere. He smelled of cheap wine and sour clothing. His fingers shook.
"Buddy, how about a dime for a cup of coffee for an ex-service man?"
"Sorry. I haven't got it."
"Okay, Mac. You don't have to get snotty with an ex-service man."
More depressed and helpless than ever, Paul turned doggedly north. The next two hours were spent fruitlessly in search of work, but there was nothing for him and he stalked tiredly toward the apartment house on Pacific Street.
He entered the apartment and threw himself morosely into a chair.
Claire watched him like a cat from the divan.
"Do you miss her?" she asked.
"What?"
"Oh, don't play games with me, love."
"Forget it, Claire, I'm too tired. I won't fight with you now."
"No, you'd rather sit and dream about her, wouldn't you?"
"Claire, what are you talking about?"
"You. You and your sweet little Lenora!"
"Shut up, Claire. I'm too tired."
"You're always too tired for me. Would you be too tired for her?"
"What are you talking about now, Claire?"
"You! We used to have such a high time. Remember when we were married, you told everybody it was riding ferris wheels, or jet planes. You don't talk like that any more."
He slumped deeper into his chair. Defeat and anguish rutted his face but Claire was too self-involved to see it.
"I've always loved you," he said.
She peered at him narrowly. "Remember the night we ran away and married, Paul? Were we crocked! I had such a good time. Remember the fat old County Clerk who married us? She must have weighed three hundred pounds."
Paul held his breath. Claire wasn't interested in the fat clerk who'd married them at three in the morning. She was driving swiftly toward the only topic that interested her any more. She hurried in her hoarse, shrill voice to the part where they told Lenora good-bye.
Claire chattered but Paul shut her out of his mind as she was now, in an unbelted sack dress, her arms too thin, her cheekbones prominent, her hair wild about her shoulders.
He tried to remember the way Claire had looked the first time he saw her. She'd been fragile then, but glowingly alive. She kissed him and he forgot any woman ever lived before her. She was like a goddess in her evening gown.
He and Lenny had been at a dance at the big winter hotel on San Grille Island. Lenora had been accepting duty dances, wearing his ring. But when Paul'? glance encountered the exciting little blonde, he'd seen she was designed to stagger reason and imagination of man.
It was true, he never really saw Lenora again after that night with Claire.
He and Claire had danced. He'd told her he had to take Lenora home-a friend, he'd called her-but he'd come back to meet her, if she'd wait. She'd waited. There were dozens of men around her when he returned, but somehow he got her alone.
Alone, they sank into the back seat of his car and he undressed her. She hurried him because he didn't move fast enough to please her. She struck him with the impact of a hurricane off the open gulf.
And now he'd had to write Lenora for help. He exhausted all other means but he'd known from the first that Lenora was the only one on whom he could count. He had no right, but right no longer had anything to do with it.
It seemed to Paul he'd known Lenora forever. His mother died when he was a baby and his father reared him haphazardly, indulgently. Paul had been Lenny's first date when she was fourteen. She made no effort to hide her adoration for him. He'd been eighteen then, first year at the University.
He'd taught her plenty. She'd known nothing, that was for sure. She'd been wide-eyed and anxious to learn. There had been something ego-building about knowing he could tell her to do anything, and she would do it.
He'd asked her to marry him because it had seemed to him a man could do worse than have a wife that hero-worshipped him, never questioned any desire or whim.
Sitting now on the chair, tuning out Claire's chatter, he wished he hadn't mailed that letter to Lenny.
His eyes touched at the bits of paper strewn about the floor. Puzzled, he looked up to find Claire watching him, her smile crafty.
"What have you been doing, Claire?" He nodded toward the scraps of paper littering the rug.
"You got a letter," she told him defianty. "And it so happened I didn't want you to have it. You're my husband and I have some rights-"
"And some obligations," he said. "If you can overlook the obligations so easily, you ought to cancel out the rights. "What letter was it?"
She laughed at him. "I didn't read it. I didn't want to. I only wanted to tear it up. I won't have her sneaking after you, even out here."
He jumped up. "That was from Lenora? Do you know what you've done?"
"Yes!" Claire wailed. "I've kept her from writing to you behind my back. I won't have it!"
Mark Whalen walked close beside Lenora on the beach. The gulf lay dark, fringed with scalloped moonlight. His arm around her drew her nearer, moved under her arm and closed over the firm upthrust of her breast.
He sighed in pleasure and anticipation. She had made no effort to dissuade him. This in itself was progress, or that was what he thought until he realized her mind was not on him, or on what he was doing to her. He had an impulse to squeeze her nipple mercilessly just to remind her that he was beside her on this lonely stretch of dark land.
"If I don't help them," Lenora was saying, "who will?"
His voice mocked her, though he felt rage against himself. "Do you want to help them, or is it just that you want Paul back?"
She caught her breath. "You always think the worst of everybody, don't you?"
He shrugged. "They do say that we see in others what is in ourselves. I'm a bad egg and so to my mind, all other eggs are bad."
"Maybe I do want Paul back. But if you'd read his letter-"
"Oh, does he write often?"
"Stop it. He'd never written at all until the other day. You heard his long-distance call tonight-"
"Yes, reluctantly."
"Doctors and hospitals out there have refused to aid them unless Paul can pay in advance, and of course he can't."
"They seem to know him very well," Mark said. "How can you say that? You don't know him at all."
Mark laughed. "How can you say that? I know you don't I? I've known you a year and I can truthfully say I know Paul Rush as I've known few of my own patients. The elephant and I have infallible memories. Rush majored in commerce of some kind at the university. He was about to set the world a fire in California when suddenly and inexplicably he was fired, blacklisted, and in general put upon most cruelly-"
"I had no idea I talked about him so much!"
"I never complained, as long as you talked. A lovely girl with a lovely voice. It mattered very little that his hair is thick and wavy, and his eyes are dark and mysterious and his shoulders a half a mile from port to starboard-"
"Make fun of me. I deserve it."
"If I laugh it's because I can't stand to cry in public. I'm perverse enough to laugh at what I can't have." He tightened his hand on her breast. "I never minded your talking about him as long as he was in California. But now he's coming here. Has he bothered to wonder what you'll live on if you take over caring for his wife?"
"He expects to find work and pay me," Lenora said "Oh, Mark, don't you see, he has no one to turn to, his father has refused even to talk to him. He can't find work out there. What should I do?"
"Well, we might find some lonely place and pretend we never heard of Paul Rush."
"And what would that solve?"
"Nothing probably, but I guarantee it would give you something to tell your grandchildren." He stopped walking suddenly. His jaw-line tautened, but his voice remained level. "I won't tell you what to do, all I will say is that you and I could have been very happy together-"
"Would have been?"
"You can bang your heart around as much as you like, but you can't ask me to stand and watch. In fact, if you'll forgive me I have a call to make. I find the prospect of spending the evening with Paul Rush between us very uninviting."
CHAPTER THREE
Christine Morris smiled up at Mark. She put her hands against his chest and pushed him up away from her.
"Not tonight," she said in an odd, flat tone. Mark frowned absently. What's the matter. Chris?"
Christine straightened the straps of her bra. settling the lace over the golden globes. She shook her head.
A moment earlier she'd tried to tell herself she was being held close in passion and need, with the desire that she dreamed of Mark's holding her. But even as excited and aroused as she became, with his mouth on hers, his hands caressing the sensitive fields of her breasts, she couldn't go on fooling herself. Mark was fondling her body, but he was thinking about something else.
All the desire burned inside her.
Mark pretended, but he didn't really feel any of the things he wanted her to believe he felt for her. She was being used.
Christine pushed him away. She shook her head again and, though she told herself it was foolish, tears stung her eyes.
"Not any more," she said at last.
"Why not?"
"I guess all this time we've been on different wave-lengths. I've been thinking marriage and you've been thinking about somebody else."
"Are you some kind of a nut?"
"No, I suppose I'm more sensitive because I love you so," she said.
"I do want to marry you, Chris."
"No, I won't marry you, and I won't play your games any more, it costs me too much. You drive me wild, and I'm not the same for days after."
"Is that any excuse for refusing me?"
"It is for me. The best I know. Being in love is a fool's reason for marrying nowadays, but it's even kookier as a reason for refusing to marry, or to give yourself. I can't do it any more, Mark, as much as you make me want you."
"Chris-"
"No, I won't turn it on and off. Even for you. I'm just not made that way."
"If I married you, I'd be faithful-"
"I know. If you made a vow, you'd keep it. That's why I can't let you marry me when you don't love me."
"What's love got to do with it?" He moved his hand along the inside of her upper leg, feeling the way she quivered at his touch, the way goose pimples prickled her golden skin.
She pulled away from his hands, shivering. "I'm thirty, Mark. I never married for any of the other reasons men gave me, so at least let me marry for love"
He sighed. "A moment ago you said you loved me."
She smiled and pressed her cheek against his. But when his hand reached for her breasts again, she moved away.
She shook her head, loving him but staying at a safe distance. He could manipulate her almost at will: she had no defenses where he was concerned. Going to bed with Dr. Whalen wasn't getting her anywhere. It made her feel cheap and used-not at the moment, but later when she realized that love was all a one-way street between them.
She did love him though. He was thirty-four, handsome in a rugged way, and successful. She was proud of his accomplishments, knew that he'd had a poor boyhood and had gotten through medical schools on grants and scholarships. Sometimes the hunger still showed in his swarthy face, his angry eyes, the resolute set of his jaw. But he had come a long way. As much as she loved him, and as un-likely as her unselfishness seemed to her, she felt Mark deserved the best of everything, and marriage to a woman that he didn't truly love might be a disaster.
Now she touched his arm. "Why would you want to marry me?"
"Because you suddenly refuse to let me touch you unless I do. Is that cold enough to meet your approval?"
She laughed. "And I suppose you'd like a large family?"
"No, thanks. I had one. I was one of nine, all hungry." He reached for her. "I don't like to be hungry any more, for anything."
She allowed herself to be pulled back against him. She could feel the excitement she stirred in him and her heart quickened. She dampened her lips with the tip of her tongue. But it was the same old trap. She couldn't go on falling into it.
"You'd never be sorry, Chris."
She tilted her head, watching him. "But I would. I know because a few moments ago you were kissing me, you were undressing me with one hand, loving me with the other-"
"Just about par for the course-"
"Yes, except your mind wasn't on the game. I don't know where it was, but it wasn't on me, or what you were doing. I like men to think about me when they push me over. In fact, I won't settle for anything less. Especially not with you."
"Chris, you're talking like a school girl."
"But I'm not, and that's the whole point."
"What do you want from me, Chris?" His hands slowed on her body, and his voice had desperation in it.
"I've never truly been in love before. Oh, I've been through the motions. Many times. A few times I begged myself to be in love because the man was so perfect in every way, except I just didn't love him. Then I met you and, like the schoolgirl you just accused me of being, I knew why I had waited."
"Then why are we fighting?"
She shook her head again. She'd been born in an exclusive hospital, later went to exclusive schools. She made her debut at seventeen, was partied, entertained, proposed to. Later on the proposals became propositions, and she rejected them all. Chris wanted to accomplish something on her own. If she loved a man he'd have to be capable of accomplishment.
She traveled, in many climates and under different moons, and listened to more persuasive male voices. At 25 Chris decided the fault was her own, and by the time she was 28, her family agreed with her.
However by that time Chris was financially independent. Her business was odd even to Florida. Her company was called Taste, Inc. And she admitted Taste, Inc. was for people born without it.
For exorbitant fees, Taste, Inc. would decorate a home, choose music masterworks, paintings or books. Christine wasn't an interior decorator, though she included interior decor in her package. Her customers told Christine's story: rich farmers, newly wealthy contractors, manfacturers, or suppliers, people who had come suddenly into overwhelming amounts of money, with an urge to spend it lavishly but tastefully. They came directly or finally to Christine and Taste, Inc.
Her service was worth every cent she asked, and customers rushed to her door. She'd been busy, she'd kept men put aside as a hobby. Then one day she was ill with an unreasoning, inexplicable fever. She'd called a doctor, and his friend Dr. Whalen had come instead.
Her pulses had hastened the first time she saw the young doctor. The second time he called was to hire Taste, Inc. to decorate a small two-bedroom apartment for his mother. After that Chris saw him often, and soon he was in her bed with her, and she never quite knew how it happened, only that it was like a tropical storm, and she began to see what she'd been missing all these years.
She sighed, stirring restlessly on her couch. The air-conditioning seemed suddenly inadequate. Her fever was higher than it had ever been in any illness. She lay back, staring at the ceiling, her ice-blue gown glimmering across the eye-swept planes and rises of her slender, well-formed body.
She knew that Mark appreciated her beauty. This was plain enough to see when his mind was completely on her. He loved the smooth complexion, the fullness of her breasts, though she was as slender as a model. Her hips were supple, her legs long and beautifully rounded.
But the whole evening had gone wrong, it had even started off on the wrong foot. He'd called about eight-thirty, asking if he could come over. She'd said yes, and in the thirty minutes it took her to dress he was there. But there had been anger in his voice when he asked for the date, and his mind was preoccupied, even after he'd had two martinis with her and had slipped her dress and bra down below the stunning up-rise of her breasts.
He was angered, but she didn't know why.
He asked her to marry him, but the tone had been wrong, the desire lacking. She admitted they were sophisticated people, but still there ought to be some romance in a marriage proposal, shouldn't there?
She kissed his cheek lightly. "It's all right, Doctor. You've asked me to marry you. And I'll remember that you asked me at least. Maybe I won't see you again, but I'm glad you asked me. Even if I can't figure out why."
"Because I love you!"
"Then why are you so full of rage?"
"It has nothing to do with you!" he said.
"That's just the way I feel about your proposal. I feel as if that has nothing to do with me, either, and I'll just wait until it does."
Rawls Rush opened his front door while the chimes still echoed. He stared, his eyes widening when Paul gave him a bleak smile and walked past him into the house.
Rawls Rush was fifty-one. All his life people had known him as stubborn, immovable, but just and honest.
His thick white hair, his black eyebrows and squared jaw framed unrelenting brown eyes in a leathery face. His nose was craggy and his mouth large and humorless. His ties and his suits were conservative and expensively tailored.
He glanced past Paul, looking for Claire, and at the same time hoping that perhaps she and Paul had separated permanently.
He did not smile though he hadn't seen his son since just after Paul and Claire married. The argument between them that day rocked the huge old house. It had ended with Paul's listening in stunned disbelief while Rawls told him to take his silly little wife and get along as best he could.
Paul had vowed never to come back. He'd walked out raging with anger.
"What do you want, son?" Rawls said now.
Paul shook his head. In San Francisco, separated from his father by three-thousand miles, he'd forgiven him. But when he'd written, outlining Claire's illness and explaining his need Rawls hadn't even answered his urgent letters. The old rage was rekindled.
Now Paul was back in Florida.
"Maybe I was hoping for a miracle," Paul said. "I came directly here from the airport. I know we don't see eye to eye, but I am your son, and I do need your help. I am desperate enough to put everything else aside."
Paul's hands shook. He still hated the idea of taking Claire to Lenora's house. His father would re lent, he'd give him money for immediate medical attention for Claire. He would offer to repay the money, with interest. It could be as business-like as hell if that was the way the old man wanted it.
He sighed. Claire was waiting unwillingly in the taxi outside his father's imposing home. She'd been complaining about the heat even before Paul got out of the car.
Paul put out his hand, but his father apparently did not even see the gesture.
Paul exhaled, and said, "I came to see you, sir, on a matter of business."
"It must have been urgent," his father said without meeting his gaze, "to bring you back here when I'd asked you not to come under any circumstances."
Paul scowled. "Didn't you read my letters, Dad?"
The white-haired man shook his head. "I didn't read them," he said. "I expected all along that your wife would break your heart, spend you into ruin, and that you'd come begging to me. I resolved from the first not even to open your letters."
"I'm your son!"
"So?"
Paul clenched his fists, trying to hide his growing rage. How could his father forget that they were flesh and blood? That they had been closer than any other father-and-son he knew? How could his father forget the hours they spent together sailing and fishing? Hunting? How could his father forget that he'd idolized him from boyhood? If there was anything his father didn't know, couldn't do, it wasn't worth much. His father could handle guns like a gunsmith, bring in tarpon from the gulf on line that wouldn't hold a small shark for anyone else. Didn't anything matter with Rawls except his prejudices and his stubborn will?
Paul held his breath. He reminded himself, as he had on the plane, that Claire needed aid. This was his only objective. He didn't care how much dirt he ate if he got that aid for her.
Still, his father hadn't taught him to be weak or humble.
He couldn't keep the faint edge from his voice. "I came here to beg you for help, sir."
He saw a flicker of anguish in his father's brown eyes. Bit il it flared, it immediately died.
"It isn't easy for me to beg," Paul said, trying to smile. "I guess I'm too much like you."
"If you were like me," Rawls answered. "You wouldn't have come here at all."
Paul frowned, feeling the twist in his stomach. He wanted to rage out, to remind Rawls that no matter what had happned, what error he'd committed, he was still Rawls' only son.
He forced his tone to match his father's. "I didn't come here for myself, sir. It's a matter of business, as I just explained. I want to return to this house to live-"
"What?"
"I want to find work here. But just now I need a considerable amount of money, although it wouldn't seem a large sum to you. If you would make me a loan, I'd repay you, with interest."
"If I make any loan," Rawls said, "it's always repaid with interest. And it's always backed with collateral. When I lend money the first thing I ask is what security can be offered."
Paul exhaled heavily. "You have my word, sir, that I'll repay you on demand. Also there's my name."
His father's jaw hardened. "Why do you need money? Have you separated from your wife? Did she leave you broke after squandering more than you could hope to earn in ten years?"
Paul shook his head. He kept his voice low. "Claire is very ill, sir. She needs medical attention, trained nurses, constant care. Unless I can get the money to pay for all this, I can't hope to find work or to keep a job."
"You want this money for Claire, then?"
"No, sir. I want to borrow money on my signature, on whatever terms you demand, for good reasons."
"But you expect to waste-spend it on her?"
"I'll repay you, sir. With interest."
Rawls turned away and walked to the large windows overlooking the bay.
"Paul, no matter what our dealings, no matter how impersonal we tried to keep them, they are intensely personal-"
"I am your son."
"Since the last time you talked to me, in a drunken condition, I've tried to ignore that fact. You ranted about being in love, traveling faster than sound. You seem to have landed badly, and now you've come running back to me."
"Where else should I go, father?"
Rawls shook his head. "I haven't a short memory, Paul, or a convenient one. I bought you out of scrapes that I told myself were part of your growing up, just boyish pranks. I bailed you out of jail for fighting in a night club. I paid for a man's automobile you wrecked. I bought you a plane when you wanted to fly. I tried to give you every thing you wanted, things I'd never had. I asked very little of you."
"I appreciate all that-"
"You were always wild. I kept telling myself it was because you were like me. I'd have been as wild with your advantages. But I hoped you'd grow up."
Paul waited, but Rawls stopped talking abruptly. Paul's heart sank. He recalled the gray shock in his face when he'd told his father he'd married Claire.
"I had to do what was in me, Dad," he said. "I couldn't live your way just because you were sure it was right for me."
"When you said you were marrying Lenora, I was pleased. She was lovely, yet sane, I might have known the whole thing was too good to be true. I wouldn't want you to marry her if you didn't love her. But I hoped you would love her, and stop being too self-centered to love at all.
"Well, you fell for a girl that undressed for you the first night she met you."
"How do you know that?"
"When you're drunk, Paul, you boast. You're one of those men who should never drink."
Paul winced. He sighed, wondering how much he had told his father while crocked.
"You took the ride, Paul, so it seems to me you're on it the whole way. That's the way I felt two years ago, Paul, and that's the way I feel today. I won't hand over money to squander on that girl."
"She's ill!"
"I don't care if it's to be spent on medicine or mink, I won't contribute one cent."
Paul trembled. He felt as if the last rug had been jerked from under him. He had been sure that once he saw his father, let him know how urgently he needed help, Rawls couldn't turn him down.
He felt suspended in space, and then as if he were tailing. He'd depended on his father, even when he got no answers to his letters. Rawls was stern, but just. Rawls loved him. How could he reject his plea for help when he was drowning? It didn't make sense.
Claire was between them, as if she stood there physically His father could see nothing else.
"If anything happens to Claire," Paul said at last, "I swear I'll never speak your name again."
He clenched his fists to hide their trembling. Tears burned his eyes.
"I'm sorry," Rawls said, his voice flat.
"In two years I forgot what you are like," Paul said. "It won't happen again. I won't forget this time."
Rawls turned from the window. He seemed about to speak, but his mouth hardened into a taut, set line. He shook his head and turned his back on Paul. Breathing raggedly, Paul walked slowly out of the house. He saw Claire sitting in the front seat of the taxi with the driver, but he tried not to look at her.
CHAPTER FOUR
Lenora called, "Mallie, could you come help me prepare the guest room, please?"
The servant woman shuffled toward the foyer stairs from the kitchen, complaining inaudibly.
Lenora smiled at her, exasperated. "What's the matter, Mallie?"
"I got enough to do around here with you and your sick Aunt without taking on anything more."
Lenny started up the stairs ahead of her. "Oh? What else do you have to take on now, Mallie?"
"Miss Henrietta told me about that woman coming here, and her a mental case. I'm scared of crazy people, Lenora, and you might as well know it before that woman gets here."
"She's not violent, Mallie. She's only disturbed."
"Are you using different words to mean the same thing? Who knows when a disturbed nut might become violent?"
Lenny glanced over her shoulder, shaking her head.
Mallie Kenyon had worked in the Comstock household for more years than she cared to admit. Almost sixty, she knew the secrets, the triumphs and the sorrows of the Comstocks as if she were a member of the family. She knew why Henrietta was confined to a wheelchair though Henrietta had never spoken of that faraway summer.
Mallie was short and thin and wiry, and slightly deaf. She'd served in the home of Lenora's parents when there was a cook, a couple of maids, a gardener and herself as servants. But now, as she'd tell anyone who'd listen, she cooked, cleaned, washed, marketed and served, and until now no one heard her complain.
"I got too much to do," Mallie said now, laboring up the steps. "No time to take on another room in this big old house. You open up that big room, Lenny, I can't tell you not to, but I can tell you to get another girl to care for it."
Henrietta, in her wheel chair at the foot of the stairs, called after them, "I agree with you, Mallie. You've enough to do without taking on two spoiled human beings like-"
"Stop it, both of you," Lenny said. She felt an unreasoning dread as the moment for Paul's arrival approached. Their opposition wasn't helping. She was afraid of that first awful moment of meeting Paul again.
Too, she felt the threat of disaster, without knowing why she should.
She tried to work harder, and put it all out of her mind.
She turned at the head of the stairs. Her voice was sharp. "All right, never mind, Mallie. I'll get the room ready."
"No you won't," Mallie said. "If you're dead set on doing it, I'll do it, but I don't like it."
Lenora nodded, thanking her. Neither of them spoke again until the beds were stripped, remade, the room aired, dusted, everything in readiness.
Lenny walked downstairs, got her pocketbook and went through the front door.
Henrietta rolled after her to the screen door. "Where are you going, Lenny?"
"They've asked me to come to the hospital."
"I thought you had resigned from it?"
"I have."
At the wheel of her convertible, Lenora felt chilled in the warm afternoon. Paul and Claire were on the way here. She found herself remembering the night they were married, the stunning, numbing hurt. She'd tried to forget the smug smile in Claire's face. Paul's father told her Paul wasn't worth the hurt, but it had taken her a long time to forget.
She had somehow gone on working, dated Mark Whalen, but nothing made her forget the way Claire had watched her that night.
Sometimes in the past two years, she'd waken from dreams seeing that crafty, watchful look in Claire's face. She'd hoped she'd never see Claire again, but things were never that easy.
What was it going to be like having Claire, ill, in the same house night and day?
She sighed. She was already running from that house at the least excuse.
She parked outside Memorial Hospital and went along the walk to the physicians and nurses' entrance.
The duty nurse smiled. "Dr. Whalen's in the chief's suite. He's expecting you."
Lenny frowned because the call had come from the hospital super, she had not mentioned Mark.
He stood up when she came into his office. "Thanks for coming."
He locked the door behind her and she watched him oddly because he did not smile. He indicated a chair for her, sat down behind the littered desk. "I hope you understand I would not have called you here except on a business matter, and it is important."
She smiled, puzzled. "Aren't you being awfully formal?"
He grinned. "I guess I just don't know how to act around women who have rejected me."
"Have you been rejected by anyone before, she asked?"
He shrugged. "A couple."
She got up and went around the desk to him. "I haven't."
He stood up, his cheeks taut. "Haven't you, Lenny?"
"I don't want to. You've come to mean a lot to.
He put his arms around her and drew her to him. He was thinking there was never anything lovelier than this long-legged, full-breasted girl. Her complexion glowed. Her mouth begged to be crushed. He found himself respondng to her, even in this hospital office. He laughed inside, thinking it would be a hell of a thing to take her down on this carpeting, wouldn't it? Or maybe they could use an examination table?
He stepped back and walked away from her.
He shook his head. "There's too much to fight."
"What are you talking about?"
"About Paul Rush. His coming back here. I know he taught you how to kiss, and he took your pants off the first time. I am sure as you say, it's all over, but I just don't think so."
"I need you now, Mark."
"What for? Somebody to stand between you and Rush when he decides he wants to take you to bed again"
"Is it? Well, I don't care to be her physician, either. I'm sorry, Lenny. I'm afraid it's business between us from here on."
She made her voice match his.
"Why did you wish to see me, Doctor?"
He exhaled heavily, returned to his chair. She stared down at him a moment and then sat down again across his desk from him. The sound of the air-conditioning, the remote pulse of life through the building, filled the room.
He picked up a pencil, tossed it to the desk pad. "Miss Grantham said that although she asked you to reconsider your resignation, you've refused."
"I had to. You know that."
"They've asked me to try to get you to stay. They hate losing competent nurses without making some effort-"
"Mark, I'm sorry." Lenny stood up. "I wouldn't have left here, but I had to. You didn't have to call me back to know that. Why did you call me?"
"I think you should reconsider. Upsetting your life is your problem, I admit, but why should you? What do you owe them?"
"They haven't anywhere else to go."
He shrugged. "All right, Lenny, I'm sorry I called you back. Sorry I prolonged it."
He stood up, dismissing her. She stood up, too, and met his gaze, "Can't we still be good friends, Mark?"
He swore. "Whatever gave you the idea I was a friend?"
Lenny winced. "Aren't you?"
"If I'd known at any minute in the past year that you considered me a friend, I'd have walked out on you."
Suddenly he advanced on her. His hands caught her arms and he pulled her against him.
"It's open season on you now, Lenny. When I think about you I'll think about what that guy's doing to you-"
"Then you're a fool"
"Am I?"
"Yes, let me go."
"Not yet. I like holding you against me. You haven't even time for it, I know. Your mind is busy looking ahead to your old lover. Well, honey, maybe it's true that you can't go back. Maybe you've outgrown him. Maybe you need a man."
"Let me go."
"A man will hold you like this, Lenny. His mouth will cover yours as if he owns you. He'll reach for your breasts because they'll ache with need that only a man's hands can relieve. You'll feel needs that only a man can fulfill. I think I'm doing you a favor to let you know now where you can find a man when you wake up and realize you need one!"
His mouth smashed over hers. His tongue pressed her full lips apart and thrust between her teeth, probing her tongue. His left hand covered her breast, and he felt the sudden rigidity of its nipple. His right hand moved down the supple line of her spine to the rise of her hips and he closed his hand fiercely upon the firm cheek, driving her against him. He held his body fiercely upon hers and his mouth refused to release her even when she struggled.
After a moment Lenny stopped struggling. He felt the throb of her heart through the resilent rise of her breast. Her hips answered his urgent movements in a motion that seemed unwilling, instinctive and involuntary.
Desire erupted through him. He heard the way she whimpered his name, her lips parting to receive his tongue, to share his passionate kisses.
He did not know how much time passed. He held her against him, feeling her body quiver with the tremors he stirred in her with his hands and his lips.
"Mark, Mark."
His breathing was ragged. His hand moved against her buttocks, pushing her closer. She cried out, the sound a protest, but she did not move away.
The thought burned through his brain. He had her completely at his mercy. He could have her now, for the first time and perhaps for the last. He knew her. She could no longer fight him now, but if he took her, she'd run away from him and he wouldn't see her again.
Wild, unbridled longings wracked him. He no longer cared that he was a doctor, this was a hospital, somebody else's office. There was no past, no future, only the unrestrained present. He was drunk with desire for her, a need he was unable to suppress.
What expectation was there except to take the earthly delights as they presented themselves? What did you truly regret except what you had left undone? Don't be a fool, Whalen, he warned himself, you've wanted her forever. You can have her now. She has no will to resist you. Your hands can loosen that skirt, find the readiness of her, and you can have her body.
Abruptly he released her and stepped away.
She toppled back against the desk. For a moment she glanced around as if her eyes did not focus and she was not sure where she was.
He kept his voice savage and low. "I'm sorry, Lenny," he lied. "I had no right to do that."
But inside he was laughing in a savage way. He was gambling. He would risk this moment of having her once and losing her against her being unable to forget the way he had aroused her, even with Paul Rush back in her life. It was the biggest, most reckless gamble he had ever taken, and against terrible odds, but if you won in a big way, you ran big risks, didn't you?
His body felt like a mass of hot coals, but using the discipline he'd had to learn even to get through medical training, he ignored the savage fires tormenting him. He would have her, and when he did it would be his way, on his terms.
Lenny was far out on the causeway returning to San Grille Island before she truly realized where she was.
Her hands gripping the steering wheel trembled.
The trembling coursed along her arms and washed down through her body. What was the matter with her? She had simply dissolved in Mark's arms. It had never happened to her before. She always managed to stay in control.
She shivered. If he had not stepped away from her, coldly ushered her out, what would have happened?
She licked at her lips with the tip of her tongue. She would have lain down on that floor for him. She would have permitted him to strip away her clothes in an office in the hospital! What was the matter with her?
What had happened to her? It was as though when Mark touched her she had no will to resist him.
Was it because of Mark, or because she was confused and disturbed because Paul was coming back?
She had no answers.
Suddenly she remembered the chilled way Mark had told her good-bye. It was as if he felt contempt for the way she had offered her body to him, and shame for the way he had gone along with her. There was finality in that cold good-bye. He had made it impossible for her to go back to him.
Or had he?
If she went back after the way he sent her away, it would be admitting she was throwing herself at him. She was returning to him on his terms.
Otherwise, he was out of her life.
Her eyes filled with tears. Everything was suddenly wrong. In the past year she'd almost recovered from Paul, she'd been almost happy. Now it was worse than ever. She knew with dread that it would worsen with Claire and Paul in the same house. If she had been like wet putty in Mark's hands, what would she do if Paul touched her? Of course, he wouldn't, but suppose he did, and with a disturbed Claire watching every movement?
She had never felt so alone in her life.
Lenora drove into her driveway going too fast and slammed down hard on the brakes. She cut the engine and sat a moment in silence, instinctively aware something was wrong in the big old house.
There was no outward sign of this tension, there was only quiet, a brilliant sun and a faint rustling of palm fronds in a bay-breeze.
She got out of the car reluctantly, still aware of the excitements that Mark had aroused in her, the protesting because those needs had gone unfulfilled.
Crossing the veranda, she heard their voices from the living room. Something was unusual, Paul and Claire had arrived.
She hesitated, glancing around as if caught in a trap of her own devising.
She wasn't prepared to meet them yet. She had agonized over what she'd say, how she would look, and her anxiety over that first dreadful moment was making her ill.
They turned, watching her as she crossed the foyer.
She could' not see them clearly at once, and she told herself it was because she came into the darkened house from the bright sunlight.
Aunt Henrietta crouched in her wheel chair near the tall windows, Mallie in the dining room doorway. Claire stood in the center of the room as if she owned the house. She turned and glanced at Lenny with a mild smile.
Lenora was aware of the others but she saw Paul first. He smiled and her gaze seemed magnetized by his uncertain smiling.
Lenny stood a moment beside their suitcases and trunks stacked near the door. Sunlight streamed through the door behind her, warming the house, but she felt stricken by raw winter cold.
Paul walked forward, his smile wavering his eyes glistening wetly. He took her hands in his.
"I can't ever thank you, Lenny," he said. "If you hadn't taken us in I don't know what we'd have done."
She saw the misery and defeat in his face. He looked tired and beaten and older-older than two years should have made him. The devil-may-care boy she'd known was lost somewhere in those troubled eyes, behind that taut mouth.
Before Lenora could answer him, Claire crossed the room, slipping her arm possessively through Paul's.
"You're looking so healthy, Lenora," she said. "You must spend all your time in the sun."
"Hello, Claire." Lenora's face felt as if the smile were cracking it. "Welcome home."
"We can only stay with you a while, dear, " Claire said. "Until we can find something suitable, of course."
Paul winced, Lenora said, "I hope you'll be comfortable."
"We can endure a few discomforts, can't we darling?" Claire said, pressing Paul's arm tighter. "So tiresome. The way Paul's father acts, as if we had no right to money that's plainly Paul's."
"Mr. Rush was always a little difficult when he made up his mind," Lenny said.
"He's a vicious old man" Claire flared. "It's not a matter of being stubborn. It's dishonest and vile, the way he behaves!"
She trembled with the passions darting through her like the flaring of short circuits. Watching her, Lenny saw Paul hadn't exaggerated Claire's illness.
She frowned slightly, hardly able to believe the changes mental disturbance had caused in Claire. Claire was thin and haggard, her nerves raw. Her eyes settled nowhere, and there was nervous pain in them that had no real basis. Her hands moved continually, fingers like talons twisting a cigarette lighter, grinding out a freshly lit cigarette, picking at her dress.
"Would you like to see your room, Claire?" Lenora asked.
"I saw it, thanks," Claire said. "I'm sure it will be adequate. There are a few-"
"Claire!" Paul said.
Lenora glanced at Mallie. "Did you prepare their room, Mallie?"
"I fixed everything," Mallie said. "But wasn't any of it right. She wanted it different, so I'm for letting her fix it herself."
Paul said, "I'm sorry about this ... misunderstanding, Lenny."
"Why there was no misunderstanding, sweet!" Claire said. Her hands flexed, relaxed. "There was dust on the dresser, love! And I only asked the servant woman if she'd changed the sheets on the bed."
"And then she ripped off the covers to see they were clean," Mallie said.
Claire laughed sharply. "If you don't want to do the work you're paid for, girl, why don't you go somewhere else?"
Mallie gasped in rage. Paul closed his fingers tightly on Claire's arm.
Lenora tried to laugh it off. "I'm afraid Mallie's too old to go anywhere else, Claire. Mallie raised me."
"Oh, it's all right," Claire said. "I simply can't endure slovenly domestic help!" Then she yelped. "Love, you're hurting my arm!"
"Why don't we go up to our room, Claire?" Paul said in a conversational tone. "Time for your nap anyhow, doctor's orders."
He didn't wait for Claire to protest. Still holding her arm firmly, he walked her across the foyer toward the stairs.
Lenny stood and watched them ascend the stairs. She felt a sense of relief that they were upstairs for the moment. Was this a preview of the tensions ahead? She glanced at Mallie. "She's ill, Mallie. You've got to remember that and not let her bug you."
"This is only the beginning," Aunt Henrietta said. Her lips were set in a gray line. She wheeled her chair forward. "She's just like her father was before her. He was a wild one while he lived."
"She's ill, Aunt Henrietta," Lenny said, sitting on the arm of the divan as if prepared for instant flight.
Paul stood in the doorway. "Came down for our bags, Lenny. Maybe later you and I could talk while Claire is taking a map?"
"Of course, Paul."
"I'd better stay with her until she sleeps. She's upset The trip was tiring."
"Would you like me to look in on her, Paul? Maybe I could see what sedatives she has, check on her medicine?"
He nodded, and she saw the relief that flooded into his face. He was helpless. It wasn't like Paul to back down from trouble, but clearly he was glad to let her take over with Claire.
"It's not that I'm a coward," Paul said with a self-depreciating smile. "At least no more than always. It's just that Claire's kind of illness makes you see there's nothing you can do."
When Paul was gone, carrying three suitcases up the stairs, Henrietta sighed. "They've come back to torture you. I couldn't even have thought up such torments."
"I'll keep remembering that you told me so, Aunt Henrietta," Lenny said.
"You do that!" Henrietta spun her chair around and rolled herself away.
On the causeway to the mainland, Rawls Rush slowed his car, looking for a place to turn around. Two years ago he'd sworn he was through with Paul, and when Paul had returned to him now, he'd said it again.
But other considerations had nagged at him since Paul walked out of his house, broke, with an ill wife, with nowhere to turn. Paul was his son, no matter how he'd turned out. He did need help, whether he deserved it or not.
He prowled his house, fighting it out inside his mind. He'd vowed he was through. He reminded himself of the scrapes he'd bought Paul out of. He remembered the way Paul had thrown himself away on a flighty girl who set the oldest known trap for him and caught him.
He even remembered the day he rode down to the old Comstock house, thinking he'd have to tell Lenora that Paul and Claire were married. But Paul and Claire had already been there, drunken and brazen, and had gone casually away leaving Lenny heartbroken. To hell with them both.
That day with Lenny in San Grille village had hardened him against Paul. Still, he could look at Paul standing with hat in hand, begging-not for himself, but for his wife-and see how great the need was. It bad taken all his will to refuse him. The boy looked, haggard, gray, tormented.
"Maybe he's been tempered by his troubles," Rawls said aloud.
Anyhow. Rawls hoped so. Finally when he couldn't get Paul and Claire out of his mind, he decided to make one last effort in Paul's behalf. Then, he told himself, he'd be through with them forever.
He parked his six-year-old Edsel in front of Taste, Inc. He pushed open the heavy glass doors, casually glancing at the window displays.
A crazy business, Rawls thought. These people would cater and plan a party for you, formal dinners, weddings, receptions, even funerals, he supposed. They'd buy a gift for your boss's wife, create your trousseau, furnish your house, select your vacation destination, wardrobe and transportation, as well as suggest your menus while you were traveling.
"Hello, Mary," he greeted a receptionist. "I suppose Christine is too busy to see me?"
"Why don't we find out?" The blonde smiled at him. He reminded himself he was old enough to be her father, but it seemed a waste to be related to high-standing breasts, supple legs revealed in flesh-tight skirts above the knees, a mouth that begged for violence even when she spoke of the most casual things. "If she's busy, couldn't you chat with someone a little lower in command?"
"Not about business. I've found out in my misguided life that the people at the very top know little enough."
He wandered about amusing himself with the thought of inviting Mary out for the evening. The only approach would be the direct one, out of place in Taste, Inc. You'd offer her a hundred dollars for the evening, double or triple it. Young women had their price. One had only to find it, to come straight to the point. At his age, you saved time, you didn't waste it. A positive no was bad, but a smiling yes could be rewarding.
Mary knocked lightly on the thick door marked private.
"Come in, Mary," Christine said. She bent over sketches on a drawing board beside her low, tear-dropshaped desk.
"The man who never buys anything is here again," Mary said.
"Mr. Rush? What can he want now?"
"I know what he wants," Mary said. "I keep waiting for him to make his proposition."
Christine laughed. "Did he say what else he wanted?"
"He never discusses business with underlings. Will you see him?"
"How can she squirm out of it?" Rawls asked from the doorway. "She knows that an old goat like me, completely without taste, could yet be her biggest account."
Christine smiled. "I'm not going to bank on that."
She nodded and Mary withdrew, feeling the way Rush's gaze followed her.
He exhaled, thinking it was better to be rejected when he'd offered money, the rejection was less personal when it was the cash being turned down.
Christine placed her art pencils along the tray ami turned to face Rawls across her gleaming desk.
"Is your business really as good as it seems?" he asked.
"Business is always a little better than we allow it to seem," Christine told him. "One doesn't like to appear too commerical, or too well patronized. That's why we actually have conference rooms so we can hide the fact that likely you're waiting in line."
He nodded, peering at the artwork on her board. "You'll admit, Christine, I've been interested in this racket of yours from the first."
"Yes, ever since you invested the money five years ago that kept me going until the suckers, as you called them, came. But you'll also admit that I paid you back, quickly and fully."
He nodded. "That's why I want you to know you can refuse me this personal favor, if you wish."
"You? Needing a favor from anyone? What could I do for you? What could anyone do for a man as self-sufficient as you?"
He shrugged "I am self-sufficient and I dislike asking favors. I think, Christine, that you have too much to do, so maybe the favor I want won't be one-way after all. It could relieve you of some responsibility. I think you'd be wise to hire a business manager. If you hired one, you could spend more time doing the work you really want to do."
"I've thought about it, Rawls. But where could I find someone I could trust, smart enough?"
He hesitated. "I think I have someone for you," he said. "Anyway, if you'd care to give him an opportunity, I'd underwrite him, and between ourselves, bond him for any loses to you, for eight or ten months, and agree to repay any loss you might incur if he turned out to be less than I represent."
Christine smiled. "How could I lose on a deal like that? Who is this business genius?"
This time the hesitation was longer. "My son."
"Your son? I thought he was in California."
"He's back," Rawls said. "And perhaps if you inquired of his former employer, you'd be told he is back here under a cloud. Under the circumstances, asking you to trust your business affairs to ,him is asking a great deal. That's why I agree to underwrite his probation. He's been wild, but I'm sure he isn't dishonest. He's my son and I can't believe he's crooked."
Christine nodded. "He's your son, and I don't believe he's crooked, either. He may have a shell three-feet thick, and a stubborn streak, and a will of iron, but I'd believe in his honesty."
Rawls smiled. "He's not that much like me, Christine. He's like his mother was in some ways. Will you give him a chance?"
When she hesitated, Rawls added, "He majored in business administration, Christine. You'd have nothing to lose in giving him a chance at the decent salary I'll make certain you're able to pay him."
She stared up at him. "You must love him a great deal, Rawls."
His mouth tightened. "As every father loves his children, I suppose. But no more. You might think my asking you to hire Paul was the favor I wanted of you."
"Isn't it?"
He shook his head. "Not at all. "I'm willing to gamble on his succeeding when I underwrite him. The favor I ask the vow I require of you, is that he never know I had anything to do with your hiring him. Unless you can promise that, I don't want you to hire him at all."
"You mind telling me why you're taken this stand? Christine fumbled with a letter opener on her desk.
Rawls stood straighter. "I've told him I'm through with him. And I meant it, Christine. But just now he's going through an evil time. I was wrong because when he was young I never prepared him for the adversities that tempered me. I want him changed and straightened, but I'd hate to see him broken before he got a decent chance. It's my fault he can't meet trouble head on yet. But he'll have to work hard here, and make his own way, and the fact that he's my son will carry no strength after I tell you that as long as he remains married to the woman he's with, he's not my son."
"You are really stubborn."
"That's the way it is."
At last Christine nodded. "I'll hire him, Rawls. I'm sure he'll be the sort of manager I've needed. I promise I won't mention your name to him."
"Thank you."
"You're a good man, Rawls. But you'd kill to keep the information from getting around, wouldn't you?"
He smiled tautly. "I hope I never have to," he said quietly.
CHAPTER FIVE
Claire prowled the guest room. Paul had loved her, fondled her, lain beside her silently for more than an hour. Lenora had been in with sedatives. Nothing soothed the raw edges of her nerves.
Mallie called them to dinner. Claire walked downstairs with Paul. The meal was eaten in tension and silence.
It began to rain about six o'clock, beating at the windward windows. Lenora, Mallie, and Paul went through the house, closing windows against the squall. Rain drummed against the panes. Paul brought in cord wood and built a fire against the damp chill in the living room fireplace. Even when the dampness was gone there was a chill that had nothing to do with the rain.
Claire paced about the living room. Henrietta said finally, "Light somewhere, girl! You make me as nervous as you are!"
Claire shivered. She glared at Henrietta. "Love, don't let that old woman talk to me like that. She has no right." Claire straightened. "I won't stay where I'm not wanted."
Henrietta took up her long-bladed scissors and ripped at the intricate handiwork she'd been doing all day, needing to vent her rage on something.
"It's been a long day, Claire," Paul said. "Why don't we go up to bed now?"
Claire flung away to the fireplace. "Must we, Paul? I want to go out. I can't sit around here like this. I want to have some fun."
Henrietta struck flame from her cigarette lighter to the cigarette in its long holder. Claire watched the small blue fire, fascinated.
Paul put his arm round Claire. "We'll go to bed early tonight, I'll take you out tomorrow night, anywhere you'd like."
Claire struggled petulantly for a moment, then her eyes lighted, fixed on Lenora's face. Claire took Paul's arm. "Will you come to bed, too pet? Will you love me until I sleep?"
Paul nodded. He said good night to Lenora and her aunt, and led Claire from the room.
Henrietta sucked at her cigarette, exhaling thick clouds. "There's nothing wrong with that girl. Nothing that wasn't wrong with her father. Claude Myer was spoiled, and she is. She needs to be beaten three times a day, that's all."
"She's ill," Lenora said.
Henrietta ripped at the needlework in her lap. "I'll tell you what I know about her. You'll see she's rotten spoiled. She's obviously been denied something by Paul, and whether she's conscious of it or not, she's putting him through hell to get even with him. Maybe because he didn't earn money enough to buy her mink, or he may have resented her running after every man she met. In some way he's frustrated one of her desires, and she loses weight, has tantrums, refuses to eat, lives on pep drugs and sleeping pills. No wonder she's ill."
"I had no idea you were a consulting psychologist."
"Don't have to be. The best psychologist I ever knew said he was guided as much by common sense as by Freud's best theories. I knew her father. His father bought him several cars a year, because Paul wrecked them as fast as he got them, almost a death wish. Every girl chased him, but he wanted only those he couldn't have."
Lenora stared through the window. The squall had passed as quickly as it came. Swollen clouds hid the moon. "We'll have to be patient," was all she said.
"They've no right to do this to you."
Lenora said she was going for a walk. She pulled on an old slip-over sweater and walked through the quiet village to the bay. Calm, chilled air touched her, the night was strung with reflected lights. She strolled along the broken sea-walls, past yacht slips, and went out on a rickety dock where she and Paul had long tied up his cat boat. She sank to the edge of the wharf and let her feet dangle over the water.
She had no idea how long she'd been sitting there when she heard footsteps on the planking behind her. She recognized Paul even in the darkness.
Her heart hammered strangely.
"Thought I'd find you here," he said. "I could always count on that."
"That was a long time ago."
"Everything was."
He sank to the boards beside her. He was only inches from her and Lenny felt over-warm in the sweater, her hands trembled waiting for him to touch her.
She said, "Is Claire all right?"
"She's asleep. I wanted to talk to you."
"Should you have left her?"
He shrugged. "I locked her in. Besides, I don't think she'd do anything without an audience."
"She seems very ill, Paul."
Paul nodded. "But there's no way to explain it, Lenny. Even the psychiatrists only shrug when I ask them why. We were getting along all right. I wasn't making too much money, but enough. She began playing the horses, that's half the life of people who live out there. She lost three times my salary in a few weeks. She lied to me. She'd do anything-including bedding down sailors, strangers, anybody-for money to gamble with. She drank all the time." He shook his head. "You've no idea what it's like trying to find someone in San Francisco bars."
"You've had a bad time,"
"And I know I've no right to bring my woes here to you, Len. I know how rotten I treated you."
"You fell in love with somebody else. You couldn't help that."
"Do you believe that, Len, or are you just saying it?"
"What difference does it make?"
"It makes all the difference," Paul said. "I never really got you out of my mind, Lenny. What we had together...."
She shivered. "Don't talk about it, Paul?"
"Why not? We loved each other. Have I got to forget the way I undressed you out in my cat boat that first time? The way I stared at you, and played with you, almost sick at my stomach because I wanted everything at once? And the way you watched me, with your eyes wide open, never saying a word."
"I don't want to talk about it."
He drew her against him. She struggled, but it was as if two years had been erased and they were out on the dark bay, alone in the world.
"We've no right, Paul."
"No, but I need something, Lenny. I'm married to an invalid, and I can't get you out of my mind. Don't lie to me, Lenny. Have you forgotten all the things we used to do, right here on this dock?"
"No, I haven't forgotten."
"Let me hold you, Lenny. Please"
"Nothing's the same, Paul. I don't want you to!"
"Now you're lying."
She tried to pull away. "Even if I am, we can't do this. It's over, and that's the way it's got to be."
He caught both her arms and pushed her down beneath him on the boards. She stared past his head toward the star-strung sky and time lost its meaning. It was two years ago, five years ago.
"We both need something, Lenny. Something we'll never find with anybody else."
"Oh, Paul, please don't. Please let me up."
"You know I can't." His hand moved from her arm to her breasts. She shuddered as the excitement burned through her. Her eyes closed.
"Oh, Paul, you can't just walk back here and do this!"
"Why not? It's what I've been dreaming about, what you've wanted. Say it, Lenny. Tell me how much you've wanted me!"
"No!"
He laughed. "You don't need to say anything. Your whole body is saying it!"
He pulled her hand over on him. She clutched him, loving him as he'd taught her years ago. She thought that he had been most interested in his own satisfaction then, and he was now. But her hand moved on him and her legs responded when he pressed on them, removing her panties along her legs. She kept whispering "no, no," but she could not stop him, and she couldn't want to stop him.
Her legs were wide, her toes pointed toward the dark sky. She gasped as he moved to her and her ankles locked about his as though she'd never release him.
"Oh, Paul, I hate you so!"
"I know, darling, I know."
He moved for her, and she remembered the way he had moved before, driving her past the last wisps of reason, forcing her to go wild. And she felt herself going wild for him. She had never been able to resist him, she could not now.
"Faster," he told her. "Faster, Lenny."
She gasped, breath rasping across her mouth. Her fingers dug into his back.
"No one like you!" he whispered in a frenzy of desire. "No one could ever love like you, Lenny!"
"You-taught-me!" she wailed, pulling him tighter.
He crushed his mouth to hers, and she felt his tongue move between her teeth.
"Now!" he whispered. "Now!"
But she shook her head, wailing. "Not now, Paul! Wait for me!"
"I can't! You know that!"
She knotted her fists, pounding his back in wild, unrestrained passion. "You've got to!"
But he was moving faster and faster, and though she was wild with her overpowering desire for him, he could not wait, and she could not hurry. It ended suddenly for him, and she shuddered, trembling, remembering how often it had been like this two years ago.
He exhaled, exhausted. "You all right, Lenny?"
Her teeth chattered. He held her close and after a moment a shudder went through her and she sagged away from him. He was a boy still, she thought, concerned first with his own pleasure, not yet learned that exalted passion had to be shared.
She sat up and fixed her clothing. Gradually the trembling in the pit of her stomach subsided.
He put his arm about her. "There never was anybody like you, Lenny."
She did not answer.
Paul said, "Don't hate me, Lenny."
"For what?"
"For what I just did. For bringing Claire back here."
"I want to help you. I guess we had to do-that. Even if we don't have to again."
"Don't sound so cold, Lenny."
"It's true, Paul. I want to help you, but not like this."
"I only came here, Lenny, when there was nowhere else to go. In the past two years, a hundred times I've prayed I could come back to you alone But I wouldn't have brought Claire here except I had to. I was out of work, broke, my father won't have us in his house. I had nowhere to turn."
Lenny shook her head. "I don't want to hear you beg, Paul."
He sighed. "I only want you to understand. I never stopped loving you, but I never wanted to come back like this, either."
"We'd better get back," she said. "It's late."
He stood and put out his hand to help her to her feet. When she clasped his hand she was conscious of no excitement. Once the touch of his hand had meant so much. Now she didn't love him any more. There was only the memory of what they had once known left now.
All the lights in the downstairs of the house were brightly burning when Lenora and Paul came across the yard from the bay.
Leonra saw Henrietta in her wheel chair on the veranda. A slash of light from the open door illuminated her.
Lenora ran to her. "What's the matter?"
Henrietta could barely speak. "Where have you been?" She clasped Lenny's hand. "I don't know what it is, but something is going on upstairs."
"What's Claire done?" Paul said.
"I haven't been up there," Henrietta said. "I haven't been off the ground floor of this house for twenty years. I tried to call Mallie, but she can sleep through a hurricane."
"What is it?" Paul insisted. "What's the matter?"
"I dozed off. I had a splitting headache. When I woke up I couldn't find my cigarette lighter."
"I was only in the front room. I'm not careless with my cigarette lighter, not in my condition."
Paul strode through the doorway into the house and went up the stairs three at a time.
Lenora followed, running up the steps.
Paul turned his key in the guest room lock and swung the door open. Lenora, at the head of the stairs, saw the first wisps of smoke plume past him.
"Close the door!" Lenora said. "Stop the draft through there."
Paul entered the bedroom, closing the door after him. Lenora opened it and sidled through. Paul snapped on the wall switch.
The room was a shambles. From a bookshelf Claire had piled magazines and books on a pyre of window curtains, shades, and newspapers, setting them afire in the middle of the room.
Claire stood in her gown, staring at the blaze.
"Claire!"
She didn't hear him. She laughed hysterically, the fires reflected in her eyes. When Paul shouted her name, she turned slowly toward him.
Paul slapped her and her laughter stopped. She stared up at him a moment and then burst into screaming sobs. She would have fallen, but Paul supported her.
He swung her up in his arms. Claire bit and scratched at him. He half-threw her across the rumpled bed. Then he caught up a heavy blanket and toppled to the floor, trying to smother the fire.
Lenora beat at scattered bits of fire with pillows.
Claire sat up calmly in the bed. She watched them with detachment.
Paul suffocated the fire and removed the blanket. Charred residue made a black heap in the middle of the floor. He stared down at it.
Claire cried out. "I hate it here, Paul. Take me away. I won't stay here, I can't."
Lenora brought two sedative tablets and a glass of water from the bathroom. She told Claire to take it, but Claire refused to touch it until Paul handed it to her.
Paul said, "All right, Claire. As soon as we can leave. Will you be good until then?"
"You left me alone."
"I won't leave you again. All right?" Over Claire's bowed head, Paul nodded toward Henrietta's cigarette lighter at the rim of the fire.
Lenora picked it up silently.
Paul said, "I'm sorry, Lenny."
"I was lonely!" Claire said. "I was afraid."
Lenora closed the door after her and went along the upstairs hall to the stairwell.
When they were alone, Paul and Claire sat silently on the bed. At last Paul spoke as if to a backward child, "Len has taken us in." He tried to make her eyes meet his. "We have nowhere to go, Claire. You've got to stop acting like this."
"She hasn't taken me in," Claire whispered fiercely. "Not at all! I know her game. She thinks she can get you back here, show you what a fool I am, and you'll run back to her."
"Lenora is trying to help us."
"Why? Because she's in love with you?"
"Because she loved me once, and she's sorry for you."
"I don't want her pity! Or her charity!"
He laughed. "Looks like we don't have much choice, Claire. If she hadn't asked us here, I don't know what would have happened."
Claire's voice hardened. "You thought I was asleep. You sneaked away to meet her."
"I had to talk to her, Claire."
She laughed in sarcasm. "Did you talk about me? Did you even mention me?"
"She wants to help, Claire," he repeated.
"She does not!" Claire raged. "Why do you take her side against me? You're always against me! She doesn't want me well! She wants me out of the way. I can see that. She wants to get even with me for taking you away from her."
Paul got up and began to remake the bed. His face was gray and his jaw set in a hard line.
Claire sat watching him. He worked silently, replacing blinds at the windows, retrieved what books he could from the ashes of the fire, returned the room to tattered order.
"You're mad at me," Claire said. When Paul did not answer, her voice rose. "You haven't treated me so cold in the two years we've been married. It's because we're back here where you can have her, that's why!"
He sighed, but did not speak. She screamed a; him. "I know why you're mad at me! You're outraged because I dared say one word against your wonderful Lenora."
He glanced at her, but went on working.
"Oh, you think I don't know why you wanted to come back to Florida. It had nothing to do with Kramer being nice to me, or even that so-called blacklist you said he put you on for hitting him." She waited but tonight Paul did not deny hitting his former boss. "It had nothing to do with my getting well, either!"
Her hands shook. She clenched her fists. "We're here for one reason! You wanted to come back to your precious Lenora!"
Paul went on working, cleaning up the room around her.
She wailed at him. "Why don't you answer me?"
"I've nothing to say, Claire."
"No. Because it's the truth. That tramp downstairs is the reason you came running back."
She shivered, pressing her clenched fists against her stomach. "You don't love me any more! Maybe you never did! You thought I was cheap right from the start, didn't you? Letting you undress me the night we met." When he did not speak, she shouted at him. "You weren't the first one! Don't think you were. You weren't the best, either! But I took you away from her, didn't I?"
He dropped the trash and ashes into a wastebasket and set it near the corridor door.
"Where are you going?" Claire cried out.
"You're not sneaking out of here to meet her again. Just because you two gave me sedatives. Just because you're so mad at me you won't speak."
"Try to rest, Claire."
"How can I rest in this house? Oh, I know why you're mad at me. You never say, but I know. You're thinking about the night you found me with that sailor. Aren't you?"
He straightened the bookshelf.
Her voice lashed out at him. "Those horrible things you called me just because I tried to be nice to poor Mr. Kramer when he was so nice to me. Gave me gifts and all. What did you ever give me?"
"Lie down. Rest."
"No hint of scandal about that little tramp downstairs, is there? Are you so sorry you married me, Paul? How pure she must seem to you compared to me! Well, just wait, I'll show you that she's no better than I am! I'll find out the truth about her. And when I do I'll be sure and tell you, love, so you can stop grieving over her."
There was a knock at the door. Paul answered it. Claire saw Lenora beyond his shoulder. Bitterly she waited to see Paul's face light up at the sight of Lenora.
Paul's gray face did relax into an apologetic smile. "We'll clear out in the morning, of course, Lenny."
"I want you to stay as long as you need to, until Claire is well. That's why you came, that's what I expected you to do."
"You ask her to forgive me and I'll kill you!" Claire screeched from behind him.
Lenora laughed. "No, I won't forgive you, Claire. But maybe you'd talk to Dr. Whalen if he came out to see you tomorrow?"
"I have no money for a doctor until I get a job," Paul said.
"Dr. Whalen will come if you explain how urgently you need him," Lenora said. "And you'll find work."
The door closed and Paul turned back to the room.
Claire laughed. "Oh, that smile! How sick you make me!"
Paul laughed in helpless exasperation.
"Why don't you smile, Paul?" she taunted. "Smile at me. Nothing to smile about now Lenora is gone, is there?"
"I've seen pleasanter moments, Claire."
"I'll fix you two," Claire told him. "Think you can carry on an affair under my nose. What was the secret message she gave you, Paul? Where are you to meet her as soon as I'm asleep?"
"On the roof," Paul said tiredly. "Didn't you see the way she lifted her left eyebrow? That was her secret signal."
"You're so funny. Charming Paul Rush. Sneak out, go ahead. You both will be sorry you ever saw each other before I'm through with you."
Paul went on cleaning up the room. Finally Claire lay down on the bed, exhausted by the very fury of her anger and hatred. "I'll get even," she whispered tautly toward Paul's back. "You'll be sorry."
CHAPTER SIX
Dr. Whalen pushed open the door to private suite 116 and forced himself to smile at the stout woman propped up in bed. She wore a transparent gown in the flower-decked, book-littered, candy-sweetened room.
"You sent for me, Mrs. Grace?" Mark said. It required an effort to keep his tone civil. The funny part of it is, he thought, she's been here for weeks and it's only in the last two days I've lost all tolerance.
"Poor Dr. Whalen," the stout woman cooed. "Does he just have so much to do, and the ladies won't leave him alone for five minutes?"
"That's about it," Mark said.
"I need you, Doctor. You know I'd never call you away from other patients if T didn't."
"Yes, I'm very busy. Suppose you tell me what's the matter, Mrs. Grace."
"Well, I've no wish to burden you, or take up your time if you're too busy!" Her cheeks burned pink. "I didn't know it pained you to be pleasant and civil to your better paying patients."
"You don't have to remind me that you're quite generous, or that this hospital is indebted to you for grants and gifts," Mark said. He saw how her breasts quivered like watermellons through the green transparr ency of her gown.
He drew a deep breath. Lenny had walked out on him. He'd tried to remain professionally oriented, and he'd always been able to take pampered, self-centered women in his stride. Once he could have laughed at her in a way that would have convinced her he was smiling with her.
Despising himself as a professional, he laid the backs of his fingers none too lightly against the inner rise of the woman's massive left breast. He kept his voice casual as he stroked it. "Is your heart acting up again, Mrs. Grace?"
She had closed her eyes at the touch of his fingers upon her sensitive flesh. Now she opened them and smiled.
"Well, I must say I like your attitude much better now. I only asked you to come because I've been neglected." She closed her eyes again. Her voice remained complaining. He continued to stroke and probe the inner hillock of her left breast, thinking that all this old fake needed was a young lover, one with a strong back, a strong stomach, and a weak conscience.
He could earn himself a fortune, and she could forget about hospitals. Of course he said none of this. Doctors infrequently said what they thought. Most of them liked to eat too well for this. He saw the thumb-sized nipple growing taut. He withdrew his hand.
"None of these nurses seems to understand me lately," Mrs. Grace was saying, though she had difficulty with her breathing. "In the last few days I haven't even seen that nice little Miss Comstock. I asked particularly for her."
"Miss Comstock is no longer with the hospital." Mark failed to keep the sharpness from his tone.
Mrs. Grace stirred, upset by his voice again. She rolled the covers down over her gross belly. "I have pains right here, Doctor. Terrible. I don't know what it could be."
He glanced at her, rage flaring inside him again. He wanted to tell her where to go, but he said nothing. Instead he exhaled, knowing what she wanted. He did it for her, stroking her mound-like stomach, drawing his hand far enough to make her gasp with pleasure and whimper like a neurotic poodle. Her breathing became labored, and finally she gasped, "Oh, Doctor, that's so much better now."
His jaw tightened. Sure, it's better. Eight years of study, two years of internship, seven years of practice, so I can do this for a fat woman on a hospital bed.
He shook his head and turned away to hide his disgust. Her voice snagged at him. "Why isn't Lenora here? Where did she go? Why wasn't I told? You know I dislike unexpected changes. And Dr. Zaidenburg will tell you, my heart isn't strong enough-"
"Your heart is strong enough to plow with." He had taken all he could for the moment. "If you'd get out of that bed and find some work to do, you'd be all right inside a week, and you'd forget all about your frustrations and your heart murmur!"
"Well! Are you denying that I have a heart murmur?" Her eyes were hostile. "Are you saying Dr. Zaidenburg doesn't know what he's talking about, either?"
Mark shrugged.
"I don't know what I've done to make you act like this, Dr. Whalen. But the board of directors shall certainly hear about this-this insolence. And I shall send for Dr. Zaidenburg immediately."
He bowed slightly. "Please do."
He remembered that his mother, with nine children to care for, had been unable to get any doctor to care for her in serious illness because she didn't have enough money to lure them from their plush offices, from their golf games. Good men all.
And here lay Agnes Grace, completely well and lazy and indulged in this private suite, with three or four doctors, six or eight nurses, no farther from her than the buzzer beside her freshly fluffed pillow.
"Please do, he said again. "Send for the board of directors, Dr. Zaidenburg. Hut in the future, please do not send for me unless you're too weak to press that buzzer."
Mrs. Grace's soft flabby hand dropped over her palpitating heart. Her jowls drained of color, and if he hadn't known her physical condition so well, he would have seen in her all the symptoms of a coronary. But after a moment in which he did not move, she merely glared at him, speechless, until he withdrew from the room.
Returning to his office, he cursed his rashness. After all, he had no quarrel with Agnes Grace. She wasn't ill, she occupied a hospital suite, but it was an expensive luxury item no poor soul could afford anyhow, and she paid well for the luxuries in which she indulged herself.
And anyhow, it would not help. In a few hours she would have forgotten that he was brusque with her. Her flatulence would return and she would press a buzzer and ask them to send in her dear Dr. Whalen before those terrible pains around her heart finished her off.
He was sorry he'd spoken sharply to her. Rich and generous patronesses like Mrs. Grace were hard to come by. A few minutes stroking away her gas pains was small cost for all she gave.
And he hadn't been angry with her, only disgusted with himself. He had let his emotions overpower his deeply-ingrained self-discipline. He was no longer a schoolboy. If Lenny chose to walk out on him, he couldn't afford to let it alter his reaction to professional matters.
Besides, he and not Lenny had decided he wouldn't see her again. He wanted to beg her to come back to him, but he couldn't. He wasn't her "good friend" and he never wanted to be.
There was work on his desk, but he could not concentrate on it. He'd thought Lenny had put Rush out of her mind. Obviously she had not. The first time she heard from Paul, she wrote begging him to come back to her.
He brought his fist down hard on the top of his desk. The trouble with you, chump, is jealousy.
Christine had let him have it good when he asked her to marry him. What a moment to demonstrate her independence! If he married Chris, he'd put Lenny out of his thoughts and get back to work.
Only Chris had turned him down. She would not even share her bed with him suddenly, though she had done this all the time he had been seeing Lenny.
He hadn't fooled anybody but himself. He had believed he could say Lenny no longer mattered and she would be gone. Now he knew better.
Time, the only prescription now, Doctor. He had to stay too busy to think. Only he didn't feel like working.
He had no idea how long he'd been sitting there when his office nurse announced Dr. Zaidenburg.
The mild little doctor sidled into the room. "What have you done to our water buffalo, Mark? Why have you upset her like this?"
"She's your patient. Why does she keep asking to see me?"
Zaidenburg smiled. "You're better looking than I am. Younger. She can't resist the young ones." He sighed. "She says she asked to see you on a matter of hospital routine-"
"She had gas pains, thought they were heart pains. Still, she is your patient."
"But you're the handsome dog."
"I'm too busy."
"Too busy? For a million-dollar grant last year? Did you have to tell her so?"
Mark nodded. "I got fed up. Didn't you, ever?"
"I don't remember."
Mark didn't feel like smiling. "I need a rest, I guess."
"A rest! Of course, that's it. Mrs. Grace would love that. She'll understand your being ill. I'll tell her your nerves are shot. She loves people whose nerves are shot. They seem so worthwhile to her. She has so much in common with them."
"I'm not interested."
"We'll tell her you need a rest. Tell her you're going to take a vacation. That'll keep her from calling you. People whose nerves fail them seem aristocratic and tragic to Mrs. Grace."
"Tell her what you like. I've a lot of work to do."
Zaidenburg stood up. "Mark, what's eating you?"
Mark shook his head. "Nothing. It just so happens I never apologize. Not even to million-dollar grants."
"Mark, it's senseless to let her stir up the board-"
"Let her. If I'm no more to those people than that, if a complaint from a pampered old bag can ruin me, I can't mean much here."
"An apology to an old battle axe wouldn't mean anything to you, Mark."
Mark shook his head tiredly. "It's just something I can't do right now."
When he was alone again, Mark stood staring out of his office window. He was proving nothing by being unyielding, and yet he could not change.
His secretary opened the door. He heeled around, his voice sharp. "Yes, what is it?"
She stared at him, surprised and hurt. He softened his tone. "Who is it, Marsha?"
"Paul Rush to see you," she said.
Mark stood and waited silently until Rush was shown in.
When Paul entered, Mark studied him. Yes, Rush was as handsome as Lenny had represented him to be. Taller even than she said. Shoulders wide enough to grace a football hero. An appealingly youthful look known to be irresistible to women. It made them want to mother such a man, or something. He'd never had that look of naivety, thank God. He thus had no idea exactly what that appeal was.
"Dr. Whalen," Paul was saying, "I was sent to you by Lenora Comstock. My wife is very ill. Miss Comstock believes you can help her."
"Have you brought your wife to the hospital?"
"I can't afford to do that just now, Doctor. Perhaps when I've found work I'll be able to."
"If your wife should be hospitalized, you should have brought her here. Our policy is to admit the ill."
"But the cost-"
"If she is ill, you may as well stop counting the cost. It will be a slow and expensive process to make her well."
"I hoped maybe I could bring her to your office, or that you would visit her on an out-patient basis. I'd pay whatever you ask, given a little time."
"I'm afraid your wife needs a psychiatrist. I'd be pleased to refer you to one, and to ask him to arrange a delayed payment for you."
"You won't see her?"
"I don't now what I could do for her."
"Miss Comstock said you'd be sympathetic and helpful. That if you saw her first, you might be able better to say what she needs."
"I'm sorry."
"So am I, Doctor. I won't take any more of your time." Paul straightened. "You're like the rest of the doctors I've talked to. N'one can take Claire's case for every reason except that I have no money, but they are all so sure that any other doctor would be glad to take it."
He turned and walked toward the door. Mark's voice stopped him. "If you'll leave your wife's address with my office nurse, I'll have a competent psychiatris call upon her at once, and it won't cost you anything."
Paul met his gaze levelly. "I don't want your charity. And my wife is too seriously ill to trust to a charity doctor."
He walked out and closed the door behind him.
Mark sat down behind his desk. He shook his head. He had not even spoken with Rush, he had allowed his personal animosity to speak for him. There were plenty of other doctors. Let him find one.
Mark walked out of his office at five o'clock. He had gotten through the hectic day. He felt the need for a drink.
He got into his car and drove to a cocktail lounge on the waterfront. He sat alone at a table and ordered a double martini.
He drank it slowly and felt nothing, not even the desire for another drink. Gin wasn't the answer.
He paid his bill and returned to his car.
He turned toward the causeway and told himself he was astonished to find himself on San Grille Island.
He drove into the village, glanced down the tree-lined street toward the old Comstock house. He slowed the car, but did not turn.
He stepped on the gas and drove to Christine's apartment.
He sat outside for a moment, undecided.
He entered the lime-green building of glass and stone. He jabbed at the elevator button. When he reached the fifth floor, he went along the corridor and rang her doorbell before he could change his mind again.
Christine opened her door finally. She wore lounging pajamas. Her hair was loose about her shoulders. She tilted her brow as if surprised to see him.
He followed her in. "I came back," he said.
She smiled. "May I fix you a drink?"
He nodded and sank on the low divan. She brought him a martini in a chilled glass. She sank to the divan, watching him.
He said savagely, "Do you have a date this evening, Chris?"
She watched him gulp his martini. "Why, darling?"
"I want to sit around here. Comfortable. My tie off. I want to make love to you-"
"I thought we'd gone through all that."
"I don't believe you can turn me out, just like that," he said. "This has been a miserable day, and I'd like to forget it, with you."
"Christine Morris. For medicinal purposes. Take as needed. Shake well."
"Oh, shut up."
She shrugged and put her head back. "Then stay."
"But you don't want me to."
"No. I don't want you to."
"You had a bad day, too?"
"Nothing important. I hired a new business manager this afternoon. I've needed one for some time. Responsibility of administration was cutting into my time-" she broke off, "but you're not interested-"
"I am interested in you, Chris."
"Yes. As long as I've got my clothes off, and I dedicate myself to pleasing you, you're interested."
He sat up. "You do hate me, don't you?"
"No, I love you. That's why I let you stay. I know what you'll do, and I know I'll hate myself tomorrow And still I let you stay. But you don't have to listen to my talking business."
"I am interested."
She smiled. "Well, maybe you'll like meeting him? There was more than we could settle this afternoon, so he's coming over this evening-"
"Then I'll go."
"No," she placed her hand on his arm. "I'll call and tell him to come another time."
He stood up. "Why should you?"
She stood up, too and came near to him. He smelled the faint fragrance she used, something that got into you and stirred you up. There was the shapeliness of her body encased in those pajamas, the loveliness of her soft smile, the promise in those deep eyes. She said, "Because I want to. I know I sent you away, but you're right. I can't just break off like this. I guess I'm hooked. I'll have to go through the withdrawal agonies."
He touched her face. "I'll come back after he's gone."
"No, stay. When he comes, I'll take maybe twenty minutes getting rid of him. You can lie down on my bed while I talk to him. That will thrill me, knowing you're lying in there waiting for me while Paul is here."
"Who?" Mark felt something churn inside him. Of course it was a coincidence, there were many men named Paul. Paul Rush dogging his footsteps. Lenora. His office. Now Chris. He was torn between laughter and rage.
"My new business manager. Paul Rush, darling."
Now he did laugh.
"What's the matter, Mark?"
"Nothing. I'm just glad you hired him. That makes it all perfect. He'll make you a perfect manager, and I suggest you let him work in the display windows. He'll attract untold numbers of frustrated females."
Christine laughed. "Why, Mark, if I didn't know better I'd say you were jealous. Do you know Paul?"
He shook his head. "I never heard of him, and I want it to stay that way."
She came closer to him, strangely stirred by his puzzling behavior. It excited and warmed her to think that Mark was jealous of Paul, of anyone. It was incredible.
Her flesh tingled and she pushed up on her toes, kissing him. Her mouth parted and her tongue met his eagerly. His hands met at the small of her back. He pulled her closer, suddenly wildly driven by his need for her.
Her hand cupped at the nape of his neck and then slid upward into his hair. Her fingers tightened. She responded to the desire in him. She slipped her hips so her body pressed against his.
"No, don't go," she whispered. "Come here, darling."
She pulled him after her down to the divan. He toppled upon her and for a moment they lay still, their bodies tightly pressed. Her arms clung to him. He could feel the pound of her heart against his.
He covered her breast with his hand and she sighed in a kind of ravenous hunger.
"What about that guy?" he whispered.
She smiled faintly. "He'll just have to wait," she said.
"I feel like I'm wrecking everything," he said. "You always do," she told him. "Don't worry about it."
He loosened her pajamas, slipped them off. She lay nude against the dark brown of the fabric. Gold against the brown, and her ruby-tipped nipples rising brightly to view.
She reached for him and pulled him to her. She took him and led him closer. For a moment they stayed like that, their hearts pounding in unison. He kissed her mouth and then moved along her throat, nuzzling at her breasts until she trembled and suddenly began a frantic movement of her hips that she was unable to suppress.
She spoke, angrily yet excitedly, "You've got me now, haven't you? You know you have!"
He exhaled heavily, moving with her, knowing that it was as if he had the key. It happened this way every time he made love to her.
She had no will to fight him. Her mouth parted and her fingers dug into him. She thrust her heated cheek against his, whispering wildly in his ear, a kind of madness that inflamed him.
He talked to her, knowing the things she wanted him to say, the words, the phrases, the tone growing more savage as they grew wilder, rising to a fierce, burning eruption that left them shattered, clinging to each other.
It was only then that they realized the doorbell was ringing, and had been ringing for a long time.
Mark went slowly out the service exit, down the rear corridor to the elevator. He drove off San Grille Island, crossed the causeway and parked his convertible in the garage below the apartment house where he lived.
The attendant came running as Mark drove in.
"Looks a little dusty, Doc." The boy grinned. "We'll have it looking like a million bucks tomorrow morning."
Mark nodded and tossed the boy a five-dollar bill. He went up the elevator to his top-floor apartment.
He fumbled with the key ring, but when he'd located the correct key and pressed it into the lock, the door pushed open slowly under the pressure of his hand.
He paused, frowning.
Lights burned in his living room. He stepped inside, looking around. He recognized Lenora, and for a moment did not believe his eyes.
He closed the door behind him. "I wanted to wait in the lobby," she said. "But they insisted you seldom came through there. It was their idea I come up here and wait."
"I'm pleased."
He shook his head, thinking about the oddities of life. He went back and made his peace with Chris, and now here was Lenny whom he expected not to see again.
Lenora stared at him, seeing that he had been drinking. His clothes looked rumpled. She tried to tell herself what he did was none of her business. Still she was angered. He was too busy to visit Claire, though she'd asked him to, but not too busy to spend the evening drinking somewhere.
"Are you?" her voice was chilled.
"Pleased? I'd have you waiting here like this every night if I could."
"I've tried for hours to find you."
"Did you try Physicians' Registry?"
"I tried them first."
"Would you like a drink?"
"No, thank you."
"Do you mind if I have one?"
"I don't think one more will matter, one way or the other."
"You are in a delightful mood, aren't you?" He fixed himself a drink. Carrying it, he walked over to her and lifted her small, foolish hat from her hair. He stood studying it idly.
"It's not like you just to disappear, Mark."
"Do it every new moon, as a matter-of-fact," he said. "Just go up in smoke. Don't know where I am myself half the time."
Her voice shook. "Stop talking stupidly."
He laid her hat on a table, finished his drink, and turned to look at her. The world looked suddenly fine. He wanted her to share that loveliness with him.
"I sent Paul Rush to see you today," she was saying in anger. "I thought you were my friend."
"If I ever said I was your friend, Lenny, I lied in my teeth."
She drew a deep breath. "No! You said you loved me. You'd do anything for me."
"There was a moon at the time. I was full of passion."
"I know what you were. I know now you didn't mean it."
"That's where you're wrong. I meant every word of it."
"Yet the first time I ask anything of you, you refuse to help. Don't worry! We don't want you now. But I only came to tell you what I think of you."
"And you're doing it beautifully, too." He drew her to him, thinking he was glad Chris had tired him. He could be less than frantically anxious now with Lenny. "Is it against the law for a doctor to turn down a case? I think Rush's wife is a spoiled, self-centered woman. I've had my fill of the type. I'm sorry, but I didn't feel I could do her any good. And that has nothing to do with whether I love you or not."
"You could have come to see her!" Lenny tried to pull away from him.
He held her closer. "Now let's talk about us."
"Let's not. I'm not through talking about Claire."
"Oh, hell! She drank too much, ate too little, ran around too much, spent too much, and now she's got a mental headache. Is she worth curing?"
She caught her breath. "Isn't everyone?"
"I don't know. I asked you."
"I was sure you could help, or I'd never have sent Paul to you."
"You shouldn't have sent him."
"What should I have done?"
He smiled down at her, sliding his hands along the supple curve of her back. She tried to resist, but she felt herself pressed close upon him. She shook her head, but she could not move away.
"You should have come yourself," Mark said. "When Rush came, I saw a louse who didn't really know what need was, talking about his wife's needs. It may well have had all the urgency of a hangnail."
She struggled in his arms, her face darkening.
"But if you had come, Lenny, I'd have trusted your judgment. Bring her into the hospital. I'll take her as my patient."
She struggled again in his arms. "You know I can't do that. I've taken her into my home to nurse her because Paul can't afford the hospital."
"If she's ill, she should be in the pyschiatric ward under constant supervision."
"If you put her in a hospital now, she'd be certain everyone was against her. She feels persecuted, alone."
Mark shook his head. "She's living in a little ball of hate. I doubt she knows or cares where she is as long as she can hate. Things haven't gone her way, and she is wound up in hatred."
"And you won't help her?"
He moved her upon him. "What am I offered?" She caught her breath. "Are you a doctor?"
"Not right now. At the moment I'm a man trying to strike a bargain. Money doesn't enter into this. Nothing Paul Rush or anyone else could pay me could convince me I should touch her case. I'll do it for one reason, and one only. You will put your mouth to my ear and tell me what I will have, from you, for taking Claire as my patient."
"You're evil!"
"Maybe, but you heard my terms. You're wasting time. Say it. Tell me what I can have."
She drew a deep breath. She said, "All right."
He pulled her closer, smiling, pleased and triumphant. "No, you've got to say it."
"You crumb."
"The wrong word. Say it, Lenny."
"All right. You can have me. Whatever you want." He laughed and released her suddenly. She was so startled that when he let her go she almost fell.
She stared up at him, waiting for him to take her back in his arms, to lie with her on that divan, or to carry her in to his bed. She held her breath, waiting.
But he turned, moving across the room toward his medical kit.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"I'm going to see your patient?"
"Now?"
"Right now." He turned, grinning at the look on her face. "Oh, about our bargain. T'll have you, Lenny. I'll say when and where."
They drove in silence out of Porto Ciego and along the wide boulevard to the island causeway.
Lenny laid her head back on the seat, watching the summer stars race past. From the comer of her eyes she watched him, wondering why he had not gone to bed with her back up in his apartment when he'd known at last that he could have?
She drew a ragged breath. Maybe now that he did have her, he wanted her more deeply in his debt. She wondered what kind of lover he would be. Paul had been such a boy on that dock. She had grown away from Paul in two years. She realized that now.
Now she needed a man. Now she had said yes to Mark, and only partly because of Claire.
Her need was for a man who could fulfill her, not leave her frustrated and wild with yearning as Paul had. She remembered now that Paul had always left her like this, it had come to be a way of life with her. But she had been so infatuated, it did not matter that he left her always hungry.
Almost before she was aware they'd crossed the causeway. Mark parked his car beside her house. Crickets, frogs and night birds were loud in the hedges and in the low places at the bay line.
The lights were on downstairs.
They entered the living room and found Mallie Kenyon dozing in a club chair. Henrietta worked at the needlework in her lap. Claire stretched out on her back, staring vacantly at the ceiling. They looked as if they had been like this for hours.
"Claire hasn't moved since Paul went out," Henrietta said. "Something about he promised to take her out tonight."
"If you'd like to take Claire up to her room," Lenny said to Mark, "I'll make some coffee while you're talking to her."
Mark looked first at Claire, then at his watch.
"You may as well go to bed," he told Lenora. "I'll talk to her for some time, if she'll talk to me at all. If her handsome and earnest young husband comes in, throw a pillow on the couch for him, will you? I'll waken him when I go out."
Lenora nodded. "Claire, this is Doctor Whalen. He wants to talk to you. I think you could talk better in private, in your room."
Claire stood up and smiled at Dr. Whalen without giving Lenny a glance. Her predatory gaze raked him.
"Shall we go, Doctor?" she said.
"That spoiled woman," Henrietta said when Mark and Claire had gone up the stairs. "How is it going to end?"
"She has a lot to live for," Lenny said.
"You mean Paul?" Henrietta shook her head. "Claude Myer had Claire's mother to live for, too, but he wasn't satisfied, any more than Claire is."
"How did Claire's father die?" Lenora asked.
"In an automobile accident." Henrietta said.
Mallie Kenyon stirred, sitting up in her chair.
Henrietta glanced toward Mallie, then said, "Claude was driving, alone, he was speeding. He came to a bridge and a curve, but couldn't make either one of them. He smashed into an abuttment. He'd been drinking, they said. When they found him he was dead. Dead chasing after what he couldn't have, because what he was denied was the only thing he wanted, ever." She stopped speaking and Mallie sank back in her chair. Henrietta added, "And Claude's daughter is just like him."
CHAPTER SEVEN
Claire came down to BREAKFAST the next morning with her wan face rouged, her hair carefully brushed and combed. She wore a sheath dress, belted tightly at her waist. Her eyes glittered brightly and she spoke cheerfully, even to Aunt Henrietta.
Lenora frowned, watching her. Paul was already gone to his new job in Porto Ciego and Claire didn't ask about him.
When Mallie brought her poached eggs, toast and coffee, Claire thanked her politely, if absent-mindedly.
Claire's mind was turned inward. Dr. Whalen had promised to visit her this morning. She looked forward excitedly to seeing him again. The most compelling man she'd ever seen. How easy it had been for her to talk to him, to pour out her heart. He understood: he never censored or criticized her. She saw from the first moment that she had his complete sympathy. He under Stood how miserably unhappy she was.
Her face warmed. She'd told him a great deal about herself. This morning she could not even remember all she had said. He'd given her some kind of pill to take soon after he began talking with her, and she'd have to apologize when she saw him this morning. "I don't know why I went to sleep while you were talking with me," she said say laughing. "Ask Paul. He'll tell you I have insomnia."
She ate her food hungrily. She had an interest in life now. She was thrilled at the prospect of seeing Mark this morning.
As she finished her coffee, Lenora said, "Dr. Whalen said you and I should spend the morning on the beach, Claire. We'll sunbathe."
"I loathe lying in the sun," Claire said. "It's for idiots who don't care what happens to their skin."
"The doctor said-"
"I'll talk to Dr. Walen about it when he gets here."
Lenora shrugged. "He said you were to rest, and get plenty of time in the sun. Then he'd figure something for you to work at."
"Work?"
"He says work is the best therapy-"
"Therapy? Stop treating me like an invalid," Claire said. "Dr. Whalen said he'd be out to see me this morning. I'll just wait for him here. You go fry in the sun if you like."
"He isn't coming this morning," Lenora said.
"What do you know about it?"
"He called. He said he'd try to get out later this afternoon."
Claire shrugged. She was disappointed, her shoulders sagged and the pleasure went out of the morning. She'd wakened with the hope of seeing him. It put reason into her existence.
She pushed away from the table. The day lay dismal and empty ahead of her. She put on a bikini and walked with Lenora through the village to the beach.
She walked silently, a wide-brimmed straw hat pushed back on her head, carrying a bottle of suntan lotion.
She lay silently on the sun mat and ignored all Lenora's efforts to chat. The beach lay deserted, a few stragglers hunting shells along the shallows, gulls skimming the breakers.
At noon Lenora gathered up their things and they walked across the beach toward the shaded village street. Claire remained concealed behind the flat brown of her sun-glasses. Her mouth was a set line.
As they entered the short street where Lenora's house was, Claire recognized Dr. Whalen's convertible in the driveway. She spoke for almost the first time in two hours, raging.
"You lied to me!"
"Dr. Whalen said-"
"You like it that I look as bad as-"
"Of course not."
"Look at me. Covered with this gooey sun-oil. Sandy. My hair a mess. What will he think about me?"
"He's your doctor," Lenora said. "He'll think you look healthier than you did last night."
Claire paused in the shadow-splattered street. She stared at Lenny.
"You did this," Claire said. "You kept me down there so I would look like a slob when the doctor got here. Don't think I'll forget it."
She heeled around and ran across the side of the yard toward a rear entrance of the house. But when she reached the house, she saw Mark on the veranda.
She stopped, pulled her face into a smile. She trailed sand and oil across the veranda.
"Doctor, I'm such a mess."
"You look fine," Mark said.
"I thought you told the nurse that you wouldn't be here until late this afternoon. What must you think of me? Look at me, sandy all over." She drew her hands across her oil-slicked breasts. "Just look at me."
"You look fine," Mark said again, smiling, admiring her breasts because she wanted him to.
Claire's face lightened, and she came alive, glowing. She preened, pirouetting on her toes to show the rise of her breasts and the supple nudity of her hips to advantage in the wispy bikini.
"I'll just take a shower," she said, "and be right back down. Unless you'd rather-talk-in my room?"
"I'll wait here," Mark said.
"I won't be a minute."
She padded through the front door, leaving a trail of sand in her wake. She called back over her shoulder from the stairs, "Tell them to fix you a drink while you're waiting."
Lenora passed the veranda on her way to the shower outside the rear door. Mark said, "Lenny."
He walked along the shadowed porch to her.
He grinned at her. A smudge of white sand scarred her nose. She carried pillows and mats and bottles haphazardly.
"What are you laughing at?" she said.
"You."
She turned away, grabbing at a bottle. "You never looked prettier," Mark told her.
"Oh, go tend your patient." She walked away, feeling his gaze undressing her, caressing her, charging her mind with the bargain she'd made with him last night in his apartment.
Mark turned back, picking up his medical kit, and entered the house. He crossed the foyer and mounted the stairs. He knocked on the door of Claire's bedroom.
"Who is it?" She called. "Dr. Whalen."
"Come on in."
He opened the door and stepped inside. She came out of the shower scrubbing herself with a thick towel. She was naked and completely unself-conscious about her nudity.
She stood there, inviting him to look at her. She wanted him to see the swell of her breasts, the quick hardening of her pink nipples, the planes and shadows of her thighs. She knew she was lovely. She'd seen this confirmed in the eyes of men since she was twelve. Looking at Mark standing in the doorway brought the thought association of an uncle of hers-she had been twelve when he walked in on her like this. By accident? She never knew really. It did not matter. She had been a little frightened then, but he told her she was pretty, and almost grown despite her age. She'd been so pleased she had spent almost two hours in his arm, naked. He'd been older than Mark. He had taught her so much. He had shown her that she could never exist without the exalted pleasure of being adored for her beauty. Her beauty had stunned many men since her uncle. He'd had only one distinction. He'd been first. She had almost forgotten his name by now.
"Do you mind?" she asked Mark. "I'm much more comfortable like this." She gave him a flirtatious smile. "I imagine doctors see so many nude women they think nothing of it."
"There aren't many nude women who look like you do," he told her casually. "I'm afraid I could work better if you got into something more comfortable."
"Why, Doctor, you're afraid of me."
"I admit I'm that smart."
She laughed at him, feeling pleased and young again for the first time in months. She caught up a wispy negligee and slipped her arms into it.
"Is this better?" she asked, teasing him.
He glanced at the transparent gown, seeing the outline of her body accentuated through it. "I think that's perfect." He opened his kit and took out his stethoscope.
She went to the full length vanity mirror, took up a brush and stroked at her hair. Coming across the room to her, Mark listened to her heart as she brushed her hair. Then while she rouged her lips, he took her pulse
"I'm perfectly all right, Doctor," Claire said. "I've had just too much to endure, that's all."
He glanced up, thinking that if he closed his eyes he would think he was listening to Agnes Grace's whining complaints.
"No girl could put up with what I've been through," she said.
"You want to tell me about it?" Mark knew she did. And that she could.
"Oh, I've got to talk to somebody," she said.
"Why don't you just lie down there on your bed? ' he said. "On your back. Now, if you'll put your legs up like that-"
"Doctor, I think you're teasing me now."
He didn't answer. He got his speculum from his kit. "If you'll just lie still. Talk as much as you like. Try not to move."
"Oh, Doctor! Don't move. When you're doing that?"
His voice remained casual. "I thought you'd be more comfortable being examined here rather than in my office."
"Oh, I like it much better."
"Why don't you talk to me? You said you had troubles that you needed to talk about?"
"Paul never wants to take me anywhere any more," she said. "He promised he'd take me out last night. Then he went away without me. Said it was business. I know. He doesn't like to take me out because men look at me. He should be proud that men look at me. A man wants to be proud of his wife, doesn't he? But not Paul. He gets jealous if some man just looks at me.
She stirred restively under the probing of his fingers. She drew a breath and held it a moment, her hips squirming involuntarily. At last she exhaled heavily.
"You know a girl must go places or she'll die of boredom. That's my trouble. I could die of boredom. Talk to Paul, Doctor. Make him promise to take me somewhere. I can't sit around this house like those old women downstairs."
"I think you should go out more, Mark said. "I'll speak to Paul."
She writhed in convulsive pleasure under his hand "Oh, I could kiss you. Doctor, you're driving me crazy! Oh, I know you're being very professional, but you'd drive a woman insane writing her a prescription."
"Just a few minutes more."
She laughed. "Don't hurry. Be my guest. You will tell Paul? Tell him sitting home is all right for women like Henrietta and Lenora. But I've got to have excitements?"
"Will you do me a favor?"
"You catch me at a perfect moment. I'd do anything for you right now."
Mark smiled. "For a little while. Until I get the answers to a few tests, will you take it easy on excitement?"
"Doctor, I thought you were my friend?"
"Drinking can be too stimulating. You should not be smoking, but we'll let that go temporarily. Night clubs are all right. A little dancing. Do you play tennis?"
Claire shuddered. "Now you are joking."
He stepped away from her. For some moments she remained lying there, her naked body laid out for his enjoyment. He busied himself putting away his gear.
Claire stood up. She paced the room, her transparent negligee unfurling in her wake. "Don't you see, that's where you're wrong? I need excitement to forget how bored I am. All my life I've loved excitement. Must I just give them up and live like an invalid?"
"If you'd just take it easy for a while."
"Well, I won't!" Claire's voice flared. She stood defiantly, facing him.
Mark shrugged and did not speak.
Claire's voice lowered, wheedling. "Last night T thought you were so different Mark. You understood. Or I thought you did. Now you sound like Paul and Lenora and the others. They're all against me. I need somebody. They think I'm awful because I like a little fun."
"While I make a few tests?"
"No I'm all right! Stop treating me like an invalid." Rage flared into her eyes.
Mark shrugged again and snapped his medical kit closed. As he straightened, she changed her tactics and came to him, purring. She pressed her resilient breast against his arm.
"I'm sorry I flared up, Mark."
He nodded.
She laughed. "I was only teasing. That's how I get my way with Paul. When I get mad, he gives in. But you're not like that, are you? I can see you're all man. You have to have your own way."
He waited, holding the medical kit, feeling her body working against him.
Her voice, wheedling. "If you could only see me out somewhere, a night club. It's like I come alive! You just don't know."
"You've gotten pretty run down."
"From boredom!" She pressed her hips closer. "From living caged by Paul. We could go out and you'd see." Her lips twisted into a smile. "Couldn't you take me somewhere-as my doctor, of course?"
"You think Paul would appreciate that?"
"Paul. He's jealous. That's what's the matter with me, Mark. Paul keeps me caged in, and never wants me to have any fun."
Her fingers dug into his arm, but he gently disengaged himself. He measured a drug into a syringe, wiped her arm with alcohol. He pushed the needle in to a vein. "We'll think about it, Claire. Maybe you and I could go out with Lenora and Paul some evening. Would you like that?"
She shrugged. "If that's your best offer."
He grinned at her. "You lie down and rest now. I'll have them send up a nice lunch. You take a nap and I'll drop by later this afternoon. I should have results on my tests, some of them."
She yawned and faltered toward her bed. She smiled over her shoulder. "Will you really come back?"
"You rest, I'll be back before you know it."
He took up his medical kit. She toppled on the bed, but sat up at once.
"Where are you going?" she cried. "Don't go. Not yet."
"All right." He smiled, and walked toward her.
She lay down drowsily. She patted the bed and Mark sat down on the side of it. "Come to bed with me," she pleaded, her eyes closing heavily.
"I'm your doctor."
"I know it isn't ethical. But who would know?"
"We would."
"If I beg you?"
There was a knock on the door. Through her drowsiness, Claire barely heard it. Mark said, "Come in."
Through a haze, Claire saw Lenora enter the room. She struggled up though she was deadly sleepy. She wrapped her negligee about her.
"What are you doing in here?" she asked.
She tried to sit up, but drowsiness flooded through her mind. She lay down, rolling her head on the pillow helplessly.
Distantly she heard their voices. They sounded far away though they stood beside her bed. "How is she?" Lenora said.
"I gave her a sedative. She'll feel better when she wakes up."
"I know I can't pay you for what you're doing."
Claire struggled, Lenora pay? What was it to her? She could not move, but rage swirled through the clouds of sleep encasing her mind.
"You'll get your chance to pay me," Mark said.
Claire struggled again against the engulfing numbness. So this was the wa)' it was between Dr. Whalen and that sweet little nurse. Paul thought Lenora wonderful above reproach. Paul should hear the suggestion in Dr. Whalen's voice when he spoke to her. There was plenty between them, all right. Maybe the truth about Lenora that she'd been looking for.
Claire writhed, trying to fight off sleep. She had to think! She'd fix them. The doctor who was so professional with her, and Paul's angellic Lenora! They hadn't heard the end of this. If they thought they could carry on an affair and use her illness as an excuse to be alone like this-well, she'd show them. There were plenty of people interested in a scandal like this. And they were going to hear about it. Claire would see to that.
Claire awoke after a long time. She opened her eyes slowly seeing late afternoon shadows in the room.
She lay there for a long time. Someone had spread a sheet over her. She kicked it off. She gazed down at her nude body, remembering.
She nodded as the memory swept back over her.
Lenora and the doctor. Giving her sedation, and making love while she slept. She wondered if Mark had carried Lenora into another bedroom. If they thought they could get away with this, they were stupid.
She stirred on the bed. She was hungry, but she did not get up.
The house was quiet. Paul would be home soon now, she thought without anticipation.
She smiled coldly. She'd be glad when Paul came in now; she had so much to tell him.
She wanted to get up and run downstairs to meet him the moment he came in the house. She couldn't wait to see his face when he heard the truth about his precious Lenora.
She forced herself to go on lying there. She was hungry. This thought pushed other considerations from her mind. Lenora had not even bothered to waken her to feed her. No doubt Lenora had been too busy in bed with Dr. Whalen to think about food or her patient.
She trembled, thinking about the way she would fix Lenora and Mark. She heard Paul in the upper hallway.
She wiped the smile from her mouth and forced a look of pain into her eyes when Paul came to the side of her bed.
What's the matter?" he said in alarm.
"Nothing. You could die in this house all day and no one would come near you."
"What are you talking about." He sat beside her on the bed.
"Oh, it's nothing you need to concern yourself with." She turned away from him.
Paul caught her arm. "What is it, Claire?"
"Let me alone. You're gone all day. What do you care what happens to me?"
"Claire, of course I care. What are you talking about?"
"Let me go."
"Not until you tell me what's wrong. Lenora said you had a fine day." He pulled her up so she faced him.
"Lenora said! You're hurting me."
"Claire, what is wrong?"
"How can anything be wrong? Lenora said T had a fine day. Mustn't say anything about dear Lenora, must I? That angel. She never loved anyone but you, did she? She'd do anything for you, wouldn't she?"
"All right. What is it?"
"I'm talking about your wonderful Lenora! But I'm afraid to say anything to you about her, you worship her so. You'll probably hit me if I tell you the way she and that doctor carried on in this room, mauling each other, when they thought I was asleep. That pure little thing! Her heart's been broken over you, hasn't it? It hasn't stopped her from going to bed with Dr. Whalen."
Paul shook his head, staring at her. His face was ashen. He didn't know whether he could believe her or not. Was this something she'd dreamed under effects of sedation? Something her mind had boiled up without reason? Or had she actually seen them when they thought she was sleeping?
"You don't believe me, do you?"
His voice was low. "I don't want to, what they do isn't any of our business."
"It's our business when she neglects me."
"She wouldn't-"
"Go ahead, defend her. I can just tell you, I know what went on while they thought I was asleep, right in this room! And he said she was to bring me food up here. She hasn't been near me since she and that doctor-"
She laughed and stopped talking, watching his face. It pleased her to see the shock registered there.
When he did not speak, she said scornfully, "Well, what are you going to do? Are you going to leave me in this house so they can drug me and carry on their affair under the noses of those stupid old women downstairs?"
"I don't know," Paul said at last. "I don't know what to do."
He released her an she sank back against the pillows.
She watched Paul, her eyes narrowed. Paul wouldn't be so sure Lenora was an angel from now on. And this was not the end. She wasn't through with them yet. People in Dr. Whalen's hospital would be interested in the conduct of nurses and doctors.
During the next two days, Paul was silent, grim and watchful, especially when Dr. Whalen was in the house.
He sat alone on the veranda. It hadn't taken him long to confirm the suspicions Claire planted in his mind.
Mark Whalen was in love with Lenora, all right. You saw that when he was around her.
His nights were sleepless and he knew his work suffered. If part of what Claire said was true, was all of it? Did Lenora ignore her needs?
He stood up, walked away from the house. He walked along the beach until he was tired enough to sleep.
On the third day after Claire's outburst, Paul sat and stared at the cost sheet spread on his desk. He heard Christine Morris enter his office.
"How's everything?" she asked.
She chatted casually a few moments and then said, "Is there something on your mind, Paul? Your work is excellent. But you seem preoccupied. Something wrong here? Say so."
Paul shook his head. "It hasn't anything to do with business, Christine. I shouldn't bring personal woes to work. If you'll be patient, it'll clear itself up in a day or two."
"I'm pleased with your work. I know your wife is ill, and I'm not trying to pry. I thought maybe I could help."
He gestured tiredly. "I'm afraid no one can. Claire's ill. It'll work out."
Christine nodded. "I didn't mean to pry."
"Thanks for talking to me. I guess it's worse trying to keep it all inside."
"Have you tried talking to your father?"
"You mean in the last day or so? He doesn't want to see me."
"Don't you know someone your father respects, trusts, whose opinions influence him? Perhaps such a person could talk to him for you?"
Paul shook his head. "I don't know anyone like that. He thinks I should have married Lenora."
"The girl at whose house you're staying?"
Paul nodded.
"Why not ask her to talk to him?"
"I'm not sure about Lenny. Maybe she took me in only because I had nowhere to go. She's changed since I knew her. I think she's in love, I'm glad about that, but I have no right to burden her with more of my woes. As I say, this will clear up. I'll find some place where Claire can be cared for properly."
"You're worried about Claire? The way she's been cared for at Lenora's?"
He sighed, spreading his hands. "Well, Lenora suggested I call in Dr. Whalen."
"Oh," Chris said.
"You know him?" Paul went on when Chris merely nodded. "But Whalen wouldn't come when I asked him. But he did come when Lenny asked. But Claire insists Dr. Whalen isn't interested in her, gives her barely a moment's attention when he comes out there. That he spends all his time, alone with Lenny. That they don't know Claire's alive, or care, except to keep her drugged."
"I can't believe that."
"I couldn't either, at first. I know Claire is ill. But then I remembered the way Whalen refused to see Claire, even when I begged him. He bluntly refused."
"But he's a fine doctor."
"That's what Lenora said about him, too. But maybe what you gals mean is that he's a fine looking doctor. Now it appears that he's in love with Lenny, and comes to see Claire simply as a pretext to visit Lenny."
Chris stood perfectly still a moment. Pieces of a puzzle that had bothered her for a long time fell quickly and easily into place. She went on standing unmoving, but she felt the nerves knot in her stomach.
She was silent for such a long time that Paul stopped talking and stared at her.
"What's the matter, Claire? Have I talked too much?"
She forced herself to smile. She shook her head. "Oh, no. I'm sure you are worried about Claire under such conditions."
"I hope I haven't said too much. I have no proof of anything except what Claire says, and that could be imagination, and what I saw."
"Perhaps it is her imagination. It's hard to believe a doctor would-"
"Have I shocked you?"
"No, I'm a big girl. I've heard about the birds and bees. But I can understand your worries more now." She reached out and touched his arm. "If there's any way I can help you work it out, please let me know."
She left his small office and Paul sank behind his desk again. Almost at once there was another knock on his door and he spoke savagely, "All right. Come in."
Mary, Christine's secretary, entered. She was tall and beautifully made, like a model.
"What do you want?" Paul said.
"What's the matter with everybody? I've an account to be okayed. The boss locked herself in her office and told me to go to the devil." Mary smiled. "I figured she meant you."
"All right. Let me see it."
She handed him the account. "We'll have to run a check," he said. He was unable to concentrate on it.
"You could rush it, couldn't you? Look at the total. We can't afford to throw away that kind of business."
"Tell them I'll get on it at once."
"All right." She took the paper and turned toward the door.
Paul said, "I'm sorry I growled."
She turned and met his gaze levelly. "I'm not afraid of you."
He studied her, the scrubbed cleanliness, the look of uncomplicated beauty. Such a contrast to what he saw in Claire, to what he knew went on under the surface with Lenny. It felt good to look at a girl who was alive and lovely, and uncomplicated. She looked like an escape from the agonies and intrigues awaiting him at Lenny's big old house on the island.
He said, "Maybe you ought to be afraid of me."
"Why?"
"You look good enough to eat. And I might try."
She didn't move. "I'm still not afraid."
He came around the desk. He was smiling but his heart slugged heavily. She met his gaze. She tipped her tongue across her lips.
He said, "Mary."
She reached behind her. He heard the snick as the key turned in the lock. He smiled. "You little devil."
"No, I came to the devil. I hope I did."
"I think you did," he said.
"Why don't you show me? I'll let you know."
"You mind saying what brought this on?"
"You did. By coming here. You're the biggest improvement in this place since carpeting. All the women are getting anxious. But I got here first, didn't I?"
"It looks like it."
"We all know about your poor sick wife. We're all so sorry for you. We'd like to help you forget."
"You can help me forget everything." Her eyes widened. "I can? How?"
"Come here."
She stepped forward, keeping her hands at her sides. He moved his hands upon her upthrust breasts. He loosened her blouse.
"What are you doing?" she said.
"Undressing you. I want to look at you."
"Can I help?"
He laughed and nodded.
Mary looked at him a moment as if deciding something. Then she removed her blouse, laying it carefully over a chair. Her tailored skirt followed.
Paul caught his breath, seeing that she was lovelier in panties and bra than a tailored skirt and blouse would permit you to believe. Her skin was rich gold, molded from trim ankles to firm hips.
"Enough?" she asked.
"You know better than that. I want it all."
Mary merely nodded and pushed her hands up between her shoulder blades. The move tautened the fabric of her bra across the rise of her breasts, making them jut out. He wanted to grab them and crush his mouth on them, but for the moment he did not move.
When the bra came away in her hands and her breasts spilled out milky white and fuller than he could have believed, Paul touched them, lifting them and kissing their nipples.
She whispered something to him and then caught her panties in her thumbs, rolling them down.
She was as unself-conscious as a child about her nakedness. She stood, her breasts quivering pridefully while he touched her with his hands, and loved her with his fingers.
"You're driving me crazy," she whispered.
"That's the idea," he said.
He pulled her after him around his desk. He sat down beside it. The phone rang but Mary beat him to it. She lifted it from its cradle and set it aside on the desk top.
He sat down in his swivel chair and pulled her down on him. "Take it easy!" she whispered.
"You like it," he told her.
"I love it," she breathed, moving closer.
She opened her lips for his kiss, moving on him. She moved faster when he kissed her, pushing his tongue to her mouth.
Paul felt a bittersweet deliciousness flood through him. He wanted to yell with delight, but he did nothing except to cling to Mary. This was good! This drove away all woes, all fears. This made him free.
He heard Mary gasping something in his ear.
He said, "What"
"I said, you wait for me or I'll kill you."
"You'll kill me anyway," Paul panted. But he waited.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Claire padded stealthily downstairs the following Sunday morning. She'd awakened alone, instantly sure that Paul was with Lenora.
She swung out of bed, her mouth twisting. No matter what truth Paul learned about Lenora. he couldn't resist her. Or, she thought, perhaps what he hears makes her more interesting to him.
She dressed hurriedly and left the room. She came down the stairs holding her breath. She slid her hand along the banister railing, listening.
She paused, triumphant. She did hear the murmur of subdued voices from the living room. Paul and Lenora! They were in there alone together, hoping for a few stolen moments while she slept upstairs, and right under the eyes of those old women who were too stupid to see or understand what was going on.
Claire stepped cautiously off the stairs and crossed the foyer.
She saw them sitting together on the couch, facing each other.
Claire stood still in the doorway, watching them. She admitted she'd expected to find them in an embrace. But the little scene was intimate enough. Too intimate. Lenora in a house-coat her hair brushed back from her face.
Paul glanced up beyond Lenora's head. His gaze struck Claire and she saw the confusion in his eyes. He looked like every trapped husband she'd ever heard of. Carrying on like this when she lay ill in the house!
This was all Claire needed.
Words raged into her mind, all the things she had been longing to say to Lenora. And she remembered how shocked and outraged Paul had sounded when he found her drinking with some other man in a San Francisco bar. It was different when he was looking for romance.
Her face contorted with the outrage washing through her.
"Well, isn't this just cozy!" Claire said, striding forward into the living room.
Paul jumped up, shaking his head at her.
"Claire, control yourself. You've screamed out enough of your wild accusations."
"Are you afraid the truth will embarrass you too?" Claire said, staring at them.
"Claire, what's the matter with you?" he said.
"I'm ill," she told him, tilting her head. "Isn't that why you brought me here?"
"Take it easy?"
"Is it, Paul?" she persisted. "Or is it because you wanted to come back to Lenora?"
"That's enough, Claire!"
"Oh, I've said all I intend to. I've seen all I need to see."
"You haven't seen anything!"
She laughed at him. "Carrying on a love affair with your old girl friend. Are you all excited about her, Paul, because I told you what I saw her doing with my doctor?"
"That's enough, Claire!"
She shrugged. "Isn't it odd. A woman goes for years with no one interested. Then one man looks at her and suddenly all men see something exciting in her."
"Claire!" Paul was helpless in his rage.
"Did you tell her how colorless you used to think she was, Paul?" Claire asked. "You told me. Remember? You said you were sorry to walk out on Lenny with me, but she was such a colorless, uninteresting little thing."
She turned quickly and walked out of the room.
Paul's face was bloodless, his eyes showing his embrassment. He looked at Lenora, then ran after Claire.
He caught her arm. "Where are you going?"
"What do you care? Go back to your little playmate, Paul. The doctor may have taught her how. She won't be as dull now as she was when you knew her, will she?"
He shook her. "Stop taking like that. I want to know where you're going?"
She shrugged. "To breakfast." She gazed at him a moment, let her eyes turn toward Lenora, standing beside the divan watching them silently. "Run on back to Lenora, Paul."
"Claire, you're making fools of us."
"Am I, Paul? Or, are you?" She shook her head. "It doesn't matter. I wouldn't think of interferring between you two. Not for anything. After all, you were childhood lovers, weren't you? Even if Lenora wasn't much of a lover, at least she was the best you had, wasn't she?"
Paul stared at her, unable to speak. He stood with his fists knotted at his side. His face was gray. Ht winced as though he could not bear to look at Claire and what she was willfully doing to them.
Claire turned her back on him and moved away along the hallway.
She paused, glanced over her shoulder, her smile poisonously sweet. "I'd advise you not to let Dr. Whalen catch you two like that when he comes in. He might be jealous. He's much more of a man than you ever will be, Paul. You look foolish enough now. I'd hate to see you with your eyes bleeding."
She heard Lenora catch her breath and her smile widened. She'd handled the whole situation expertly and perfectly. She had said just enough.
She went across the dining room to the breakfast nook. She heard the clatter of pans as Mallie prepared breakfast for Aunt Henrietta. She heard the low tone of their voices.
Her smile widened. She heard nothing, no taut whispering from the guilty pair behind her. She was satisfied. She'd left them speechless.
She let her smile die away as she entered the breakfast nook where Henrietta glanced up from her wheel chair without speaking.
Claire gave her a brief nod and sat down. She detested the older woman intensely. She disliked sharing a breakfast table with her. But she wouldn't return to the living room now. Let them carry on their little affair after what she'd done to them!
Claire said. "You may serve my breakfast, now, Mallie. And please hurry. I'm so tired of the slovenly way you mope around."
"When you get my age, Missy," Mallie said speaking loudly because she was slightly deaf. "You'll count yourself lucky if you can even mope at all."
"Just serve my breakfast."
Henrietta buttered a slice of toast. "I'm sorry you're so ill, Claire."
Claire straightened, put on guard by Henrietta's overly-nice tone. "What does that mean?"
Henrietta shrugged. "They worry about you so, don't they?"
"Suppose they do?"
"Suppose they knew you sneaked out of the house again yesterday afternoon."
Claire caught her breath. She felt the blood drain down from her cheeks. "That's a lie."
Henrietta took a sip of black coffee. "Of course it is. And a he that you ran out alone Friday afternoon, and Thursday. You poor, sick, little thing."
"And you're an evil-minded, spying old bag!"
"Well said. Still, I know what goes on around here, even when no one else does."
"You better keep your mouth shut."
"Why should I? You certainly don't suppose I'm afraid of you, do you? Anything you could do could hurt me?"
"I warn you. Stay off my back."
"And what could you say that would hurt me? There isn't enough evil in that cesspool you call a mind to discolor my little finger, no matter how you sling it. You might remember that when you start to threaten me."
Mallie set a plate of scrambled eggs, hash brown potatoes and bacon before Claire.
Claire did not glance at the plate, or pick up her fork. Her coffee steamed untouched. Her eyes narrowed.
"Do you watch everything I do, old woman?"
"I don't watch anything you do. My stomach isn't that strong. But I'm not blind."
"What do you want?"
"I don't want anything. I just want you to know that not much escapes my notice."
"What's the point to all this?" Claire was aware of the rapid acceleration of her heart. She'd been so sure she had escaped the house undetected after pretending to take the drugs Dr. Whalen prescribed for her.
"There's no point," Henrietta said. "Except that if you can think at all, you better think well about this. Nothing you can say or do will hurt me in the least, but the truth about you might destroy you."
Claire's cheeks paled. She gazed at the woman across the small table. She was away that Mallie was standing near the stove, a faint smile of pleasure warming her leathery old face. Hard of hearing Mallie might be, but she was not missing a word.
"Are you threatening me?" Claire whispered.
"You might call it that. I'm trying to tell you, keep your claws in. You try to hurt any one in this house that I love, and I'll tell what I know about you. You might lie out of it once, but you can't hide from the truth."
"Oh, shut up. Who would you tell? Your niece? Her handsome doctor? What about the way they're swinging around here?"
Henrietta winced. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't you?" Claire leaned forward, her eyes narrowed. "Then you don't see as much as you think. You're blind to anything you don't want to see."
"I think you're a liar."
"Do you? Well, keep your eyes open, old woman, and you'll see the way they sneak around."
"Sneak around?" Henrietta frowned, shaking her head. "Why should they? There would be no reason for them to sneak around. Dr. Whalen is a magnificent man and Lenora a lovely girl-something I'm afraid you don't even understand. If they wish to be together I'm sure they can do it quite openly."
"Oh? I see you don't know anything at all."
Claire exhaled, proud of herself. She permitted a faint smile and attacked her food ravenously.
"What is it I should know?" Henrietta persisted.
"Paul told me that Dr. Whalen asked Christine Morris to marry him. That's one reason for him to sneak-date your dear little niece."
Henrietta shook her head. "Sneaking is for people with minds like yours, Claire. I know Lenora wouldn't do anything wrong, just as I know you wouldn't understand anything that was right."
Claire's eyes flashed. "They sneak to bed together. I know what I saw. They thought I was asleep."
Henrietta stared at her. Her voice lowered. "Be careful what you say, what you accuse people of. You have no idea of the hurt you can inflict thoughtlessly."
Claire laughed. "I've given it a great deal of thought."
She waited but the older woman did not speak. Henrietta sat back in her chair, her appetite gone. "I've thought the whole thing over."
"I hope so."
"I'd never have said anything, but I don't like Lenora posing the all-american girl while she has swinging love sessions with a man engaged to someone else."
Henrietta leaned forward, gazing at Claire. Her voice was a taut whisper. "Look at me, Claire. I'm a wrecked, ruined old woman because of the thoughtlessness, the carelessness-"
"What's that got to do with me?"
"It has a great deal to do with you, Claire. I knew your parents before you were born."
Claire frowned, watching her.
"I was almost thirty then," Henrietta said. "Unmarried. But I wasn't an old maid. I had refused man after man because I knew what I wanted. The man I wanted belonged to another woman. He promised to divorce her for me if I'd be patient. I was. I waited because I couldn't force myself to do anything else."
"What's this got to do with me?" Claire repeated, but her voice was lower, uncertain.
"Your mother was a tiny little thing. Like you are, Claire, nervous, high-strung. She loved your father with all her heart. He was thoughtless, uncaring, self-centered. He wanted to run around to spend the money his parents had willed to him. He had many women-"
"What do you know about it?"
"I was one of them, Claire. I was waiting for that divorce he promised to get. Later I realized he promised it everywhere. It made his conquests easier."
"So he had fun. I still don't see what this has to do with me." Claire moved as if to leave the table.
"I can see Claude in you, as if he were alive again, heedless, demanding, selfish-"
"Nice words will get you nothing with me," Claire said. "I don't want to hear any more."
"It might help you."
"Help me?"
"Something ought to open your eyes, before it's too late."
"I see plenty. I see that you're a troublesome, meddling old woman, and you bore me to tears."
She pushed back her chair and stood up. Henrietta's voice struck at her sharply. "Claire, sit down."
Claire lifted her head and for a moment their gazes clashed.
Claire's distaste for the old woman was clearly revealed in her face. Claire laughed.
"If you think you can blackmail me by threatening to tell I went into Porto Ciego yesterday-tell away, you old busybody. It will give you something to talk about."
"I think there has been too much talk."
"Well, you haven't heard the end of it. When you do, I don't think it'll matter whether I sneaked out or not."
She stared at Henrietta defiantly.
Henrietta started to speak but the hatred in the girl's bitter eyes stopped her.
Henrietta sighed, shriveling as if suddenly realizing she was old. She shivered.
Shaking her head slowly, she picked up the thin shears in her lap and ripped at the needlework.
Claire watched her for a moment. She laughed and walked out of the room.
She paused in the foyer. She was faintly astonished to find Paul and Lenora still deep in conversation.
She smiled. At least they sat half across the room from one another.
Whatever Paul was saying, he was deeply in earnest about it. His face was sweated.
Curious, intrigued against her will, Claire stared at them. What did they find to discuss so seriously? Were they talking about her? How dare Paul treat her like this? Didn't he realize yet how deeply she hated Lenora?
They did not look toward her. Seething with rage she watched them for a moment, undecided, then she ran across the foyer and slammed the front door after her.
Paul stared at Lenora on the divan. She seemed so cool, so calm.
"I've been wanting to talk to you, Lenny."
"We don't seem to talk well any more."
"If you're sorry about what happened on the dock that night, Lenny, then so am I. I guess it was something that had to happen after all that time. I had missed you, terribly."
"I'm not sorry, but I don't want to talk about it."
He frowned. "I've needed to talk to you, Lenny, but there's been no chance to get you alone like this."
He laughed ruefully. "I know you don't miss the fact that Claire rages if I speak civilly to you in a crowded room."
She nodded without speaking.
"Claire's so ill, I hate upsetting her any more."
"I understand all that, Paul."
He shook his head. "I wonder if you do. Still, if I seem to avoid you, that's why."
She said nothing, watching him.
"I've asked so much of you, Lenny, I know you won't even be surprised when I ask one more thing of you."
She looked at him. He was taut drawn, tired. He was depressed and confused. He looked young and dependent. Once he had seemed unbeatable. Now he looked only helpless, unable to fight his battles alone.
She shook her head remembering the way the touch of his hand had set her pulses racing, made her unable to resist him, no matter what he wanted. The very look and feel of him had enslaved him.
At first when he went away with Claire, the loss was like an incurable virus. All his virtues were magnified, her loss left her too empty to see anything around her, or to care.
She sighed, thinking that when he wrote, wanting to come back, she'd been unable to think anything except that soon she would see him again, even after all those months.
Now she looked at him and saw a helpless, frightened young man up against something that was too big for him. Something that diminished him. made him smaller even in his own eyes.
Could she have loved him so terribly, and be unmoved by his nearness now? It did not seem possible that she had changed this much. She watched him, troubled, trying to find some traces of the boy she had loved so overwhelmingly.
"I'm sorry we haven't been able to accomplish much with Claire yet," Lenora said. "These nervous letdowns are always slow. Dr. Whalen does think he can help her. He thinks ii we can build her up with rest physically, her nerves will improve. If not, there are shock treatments that may make all the difference. But he wants to wait and see. Of course that's up to you."
"I don't know what to do."
"Then why don't you leave it to Mark?"
He spread his hands. "It looks like I'll have to. But at least I can pay the bills."
"Mark doesn't want you worrying about that."
"I'll never be able to repay either of you," Paul said. "I'm upset and jumpy, almost as mixed up as Claire. I don't want to cause any trouble between you and Dr. Whalen, or to allow Claire to do so."
"We can take care of ourselves," Lenora said.
Paul laughed shakily. "It doesn't make sense. I used to be the strong man in this act. Now suddenly you're calm and competent and I've got the shakes."
"Let's give her a chance to get well."
"T just hope she doesn't destroy us all before that happens. I had no idea that Christine Morris knew Dr. Whalen. I talked too much there. How did I know that Mark was practically engaged to her."
"What?"
"I realized what a fool I'd been, telling her about the unfounded accusations Claire had made concerning you and the doctor. How was I to know? Then it was too late. Here she was almost ready to marry him."
"You couldn't have known," Lenora said. How could he have known? She'd dated Mark for over a year and this was the first she'd heard of Christine Morris.
"But, after the mess I've made of everything, I still must ask one more favor, Lenny."
"What is it?"
He frowned, watching her. She seemed inattentive suddenly, lost in thoughts of her own. She seemed barely aware that he was in the room with her.
Paul talked slowly, trying to explain the rift between his father and himself.
"It doesn't get better, Lenny. It gets worse. I went to him and tried to talk to him. Before we were through he was telling me to get out of his house."
"He loves you."
"But he's got to accept Claire! He can't live my life for me. I know I disappointed him. I'm something of a disappointment to myself. But Claire is my wife. That's why I hoped maybe you could talk to my father."
"Me?"
"He loves you. He'll listen to you. If anyone could persuade him to change his mind about Claire, Lenny, it would be you."
"I don't know. Maybe time is the best answer."
"He gets older and more set in his angers, not easier to live with. If we'd never meant anything to each other it would be different. We were very close."
She sighed, wondering what she could say to Rawls? Had he been more bitter than she when Paul and Claire eloped?
But she wanted to get out of the house. She wanted to escape Claire's voice, her own thoughts.
Lenora walked slowly along the beach toward Rawls Rush's home. She was troubled. Claire had run out of the house, slamming the door. Paul refused to run after her this time.
"She might hurt herself," Lenny said.
He shook his head.
"I'm not going on running after her like this. That's like indulging every one of her whims. She's got to see I won't do it."
"Maybe this isn't the time to start."
"There isn't any good time. But she's got to grow up. She'll come back."
Paul sank into a club chair and took up the newspaper.
Lenny left the house. The sun felt good and the wind from the gulf was stiff and fresh.
Rawls smiled and invited her into his study.
"Good to see you again, Lenny."
She sat in a leather covered chair near his. "I don't quite know how to put what I have to say into words."
He frowned. "Paul sent you?"
She smiled and bit her lip.
"Nobody fools you, do they, Rawls?"
"I've been wanting to visit you," he said, "bat Paul and Claire were there. I think you were a fool to take them in."
She smiled. "I wouldn't have had to if you had done it."
"I thought you'd get Paul out of your mind. I hoped you'd be happy. But you're not being very smart."
"Maybe you could help me be smart by asking them to come here to live."
"Hell, I gag at the idea. I couldn't live in the house with that empty-headed Myer brat."
"Claire is very ill."
"Is that the excuse they give for torturing you? Even so it doesn't explain why you permit it."
"What else could I do?"
"You ought to be able to think of something. Tell him to get out, take his wife, and stand on his own feet."
"That's what you did."
"Yes."
"And what's that gotten you? That hasn't proved anything except what we all knew, that you can be stubborn and unforgiving."
He smiled. "Not can be. I am stubborn and unforgiving."
"And it's costing you your son."
He exhaled. "You've really forgiven him, haven't you?"
"Even if I hadn't I couldn't turn him away when he was in trouble like this."
"After all he did to you?"
"What did he do? To either of us? He fell in love with a girl that excited him. He loved her and it hurt him, but he couldn't care that we didn't approve-"
"Good God."
"I know what it's like to love somebody so much you don't care what other people think."
He shook his head. "I wish I could forgive as easily."
"You can. You've got to. It's not good for you to go on living alone like this. Paul's done things you didn't approve of. He's married a girl you don't like. But you're hurting yourself. Paul would feel secure again if you took him back. He doesn't need your money now, he has a good job-"
"Good for him."
"A job you probably got for him secretly."
"A girl as pretty as you shouldn't think too much. It makes wrinkles."
"But being back here would give him his old confidence. He'd belong. Maybe he'd stop being afraid. I know what it would do for Claire-even if you never gave her a dime, she'd feel she had money behind her. That's part of her illness, she needs security above everything else. She has had none for the past two years."
"I'm sorry, but I can't see the three of us under one roof. It's bad enough in the same town. He's spoiled and willful, he asked for all this, and he's got it."
"You spoiled him, Rawls. I spoiled him. Everyone who knew him gave him everything he wanted and asked nothing in return. Now that he needs something for the first time, you refuse to see him because he's exactly the kind of person you made him."
Rawls was silent for a long time. Finally he grinned and shook his head. "You're pretty eloquent, and convincing. I keep wondering if it's because you're so anxious to get them out of your house?"
Lenora laughed with him. "Well, Claire and Henrietta don't hit it off well."
Rawls stood up. "I don't know. Let me think it over."
"In the meantime, Rawls, if anything happens to Claire you've lost Paul forever."
"I'll have to think."
Walking back alone, Lenny thought about the word she'd said to Rawls, about waiting until it was too late. Hadn't she waited with Mark until he'd asked Christine to marry him?
She was still deep in thought as she started across her lawn toward the big old house. She saw Paul, followed by a small boy, running toward the piers that lined the bay.
"Paul, what's the matter?" Paul glanced at her.
The boy called, "His wife, ma'am. She stole my cat boat. Headed through the pass toward the gulf. The current hit her and turned the boat over."
He turned and ran again following Paul across the beach.
CHAPTER NINE
Rawls prowled his library for a long time after Lenny was gone.
She was right. He wanted Paul back, and Paul's personality was partly his responsibility. But before Claire was ill he had disliked her and disapproved of her. Now Rawls couldn't see himself welcoming her into his home.
He finally slapped on an old hat, left his house and walked along the beach. He walked fast, as if trying to get away from his thoughts. He told himself that if Lenny could ask him to forgive Paul, after what Paul had done to her, he should do it.
He had no idea how far he walked, not even hearing the thunder of the breakers. Up ahead he saw a woman walking alone. Involuntarily he slowed. He had no time for idle chatter.
But there was something about this woman, even at a distance, something familiar that aroused pleasant associations in his mind. It was Christine Morris.
She walked slowly, head down, deeply in thought.
He called her name. She stiffened, obviously disliking any intrusion. When she recognized him, she smiled. "What are you doing out here, Rawls?"
"I take walks," he said. "But I never saw you here before."
"It's the first time I've ever felt so alone, Rawls."
He smiled. "You? That's funny, I was thinking that about myself. I've just been told that for the sake of my soul I should go to my son and tell him I forgive him."
"I think you should too. Why does that make you feel lonely?"
He shook his head. "Because for fifty-one years I've been following my own mind. It's not easy for me to do a thing like this. He hasn't treated me fairly."
"He did come to you and ask forgiveness."
"He came to me and asked for money."
"For a boy like Paul, that's the same thing."
Rawls swore.
"I'm not smart, Rawls. At least not in the wavs Paul is."
Christine paused beneath a grove of pines. She sat on a rock ledge and stared at the sun-glittering gulf. Rawls sat near her, looking at the shapeliness of her legs, the way her breasts seemed to fight the fabric of her blouse. He wished he'd either get so old he didn't look at women, or that he'd find some interest other than the beauty of their bodies.
He shook his head, forcing himself to talk about something else. "Why are you unhappy? I thought you had everything a woman could want, money, independence, success."
"Then you don't know much about women."
"You're fabulously successful."
"This doesn't sound like you at all. I thought you were smarter, thought you knew what made people tick better than this."
"Maybe I only know what makes them run. Or maybe it's because my interest in you has never been casual."
Now that he'd said even this much, Rawls held his breath waiting for her to laugh at him.
Christine turned her head, glancing at him as if she'd never seen him before.
"You? Interested in me?"
"Yes, that's right."
"You hid your interest very well."
"I never liked to be laughed at."
"Why would I do that?"
"An old goat like me?"
"You're not old. You're one of the youngest men I know."
"You're kind." He said, sharply.
"How little I know you," she said. "I borrowed money from you, picked your brain for business advice. I'd have thought there was nothing you didn't know. But you don't seem to know women at all. Do you really believe a woman would laugh at a man because he's interested in her?"
"An old character like me, a young lovely girl like you?"
"I'm flattered you thought about me at all."
Thought about you? Rawls sighed and glanced away so that she could not see into his eyes. If she only knew the fantasy world they'd shared. It seemed sometimes that she could not help knowing that he wanted her so terribly. In his fantasy he walked into her office and took her on the carpeting. He entered her apartment and she lay naked for him so he could spend hours contemplating her beauty. When he'd been young he'd hurried his romances, so eager for selfgratification that he had little time to appreciate the good that was laid out like a feast for him. He'd never make that mistake now.
He heard the things Christine said, and he made what he supposed were rational answers. But in his mind he was having her body for the nth time. She would lie down in the shade of these pines, the summer beach stretched empty and hot and silent around them. He would undress her, taking as long as he liked. He would bare her breasts and caress them until she whimpered pleading with him to love her. He would remove her skirt, her underpants and while she laynude for him, he would take her and find her different from all other women, lovelier, a repository of all earthly delights.
Mark sat straighter in the leather chair in the Chief of Staff Conference room. A dozen other doctors, ranging in age from thirty to seventy, sat about the mahogany table. He felt their eyes on him.
Dr. Swain read quietly from a sheet of paper, a list of charges against Dr. Whalen.
Mark listened silently at first, unmoving. He went from stunned shock to a violent rage that he could barely suppress.
The tensions tautened in the room as Dr. Swain read.
Mark moved his gaze across the faces of his peers. Only Dr. Zaidenburg showed any sympathy or understanding.
Mark stared back at the others. What's the matter with you imbeciles? he thundered inside his brain. Don't you have medical reason enough to recognize the rantings of two neurotic females? All right, you're so thankful it isn't you, you're not thinking straight, but tomorrow it may be you.
"Mrs. Rush brought this accusation directly to me," Dr. Swain was saying. "I would have thought very little of it, she seemed nervous, upset, in an emotional state. But on top of the charges made against Dr. Whalen by Mrs. Grace, I had to bring this paper before you gentlemen for some kind of action."
"Mrs. Grace is an ill woman, Dr. Swain," Dr. Zaidenburg said. "Scarcely rational. I'm sure if you went back to her with the charges she made yesterday, they would be different, or she would refuse to ac knowledge she had made them."
"Mrs. Rush charges Dr. Whalen with gross misconduct with a former nurse, of negligences. Mrs. Rush says Dr. Whalen neglected her while he made advances to Miss Comstock, both doctor and nurse thinking Mrs. Rush to be sleeping off the effects of sedation."
None of the other doctors spoke. Dr. Swain moved his gaze across them. He paused, staring directly at Mark.
"We'll have to ask for some sort of explanation, Dr. Whalen," Swain said. Mark did not speak.
Zaidenburg interceded. "You're making a mountain out of the flimsiest charges, Benton. I've seen this sort of thing before, but never in a gathering of honest physicians. I've seen this sort of charge made when a man or a group of men were out to get a fellow doctor."
"There's no such intent here," Swain said, flushing.
"Naturally, I hope not," Zaidenburg said.
All we ask is that we get some kind of responsive reply from Dr. Whalen. All we really want is to be able to answer these charges."
"Why do you dignify them with an answer?" Zaidenburg said.
"Will you let me decide what's best?" Swain said.
Mark sat straighter yet, looking about the familiar room, at the familiar faces set against him. He raged with anger inside. It was strange but his rage was not directed so much against the two women who had accused him, unstable females were not new in his experience His rage was directed against these men who seriously entertained these accusations, who asked an explanation from him despite the obvious mental instability of his accusers.
"We're waiting, Dr. Whalen," Swain said.
Mark stood up. His fists clenched tightly at his sides. "For what, Doctor?"
"We're waiting for an explanation from you." Dr. Swain said. "Of course there is one."
Mark stared at him. "Of course there is no explanation," he said, and walked out of the conference room.
Entering his office, Mark stood for a moment in the center of the room. Impossible to believe he'd be asked to give up his work at this hospital. He'd believed he'd accomplished something here at Memorial. And if he left the hospital under a cloud, what then?
Adverse public opinion could hurt bad. And it made him ill to think he'd worked hard for so many years to get here-in scandal.
What about those years behind him, didn't they matter, or carry weight with the Board, or the public? The years of struggling and slavery.
He supposed, pursuing the thought no further at the moment, that lie could start a practice in some other town. There was always a need for doctors, and many doctors had been removed from positions with hospitals without being completely ruined.
Somehow though, it was against everything he believed in to surrender like this. He'd never allowed himself to fail. As a kid selling newspapers, he'd hawked them in bitterest cold until the last paper was gone because in those last few papers lay his only profit. Anyhow, he had made a habit of fighting back.
How would he live with himself unless he fought these baseless charges? No matter what success he had, in what distant town, he could not run away from his memories.
Still, no matter how badly he wanted to stay on here, the thought of returning to that board room to face men who would give credence to such ridiculous t harges sickened him.
Besides, what was left here for him now?
He walked out of the office. People spoke to him in the corridors, but he merely nodded, not even seeing them. He got into his car and drove without direction.
He was almost surprised to find himself before the glass and chrome apartment building where Christine lived.
He didn't want to talk to Chris. It was Lenny he wanted to see, but he couldn't go back there. What would he say to her? That he was sorry he was dragging her name down with his by refusing to answer the Board?
He pressed the doorbell of Christine's apartment again and again. He was conscious of a sense of relief when there was no answer.
As he turned away, the elevator doors parted and Christine emerged, gazing at him, her face expressionless.
"Come on in," she said. "I've been out on the beach."
"Alone, I doubt," he said, trying to smile.
"No, as a matter-of-fact I wasn't alone." She closed her apartment door behind them.
He followed her into the cool living room. He sat tautly on the arm of the divan, his legs straight out in front of him.
Christine went about opening blinds, simply to have something to do. He'd never seen her so ill at ease, and in her own apartment!
"Been on a picnic with your new business manager?" he asked, teasing her.
"I wasn't," she said. I was with his father."
She mixed a drink and brought it to him. He caught at her hand but she eluded him, went to a distant chair and sat on its arm, watching him warily.
"Does the old man have that boyish look, too?" he inquired. "The helplessness that women find irresistible?"
"His father looks more like a pirate," she said with a faint smile. "And you know what pirates do to me."
"No."
"I lose all reason when I'm around them. The boyish type leaves me cold, but pirates-"
"Will you marry me?"
"What?"
"I know it's abrupt, but it's not new. I want you to marry me."
She stood up slowly and stared at him. Her eyes blurred with tears. She wondered in anger if he'd been rejected by the little nurse. Perhaps if she'd married Mark the first time he asked, she'd never have known about Lenora.
"Aren't you going to say anything?" Mark asked. He got up. He set his drink down untouched. He came across to her. His hands on her arms hurt her but she didn't flinch or try to draw away.
"I can't say anything," she said. "There's nothing to say."
"Then you will marry me?"
"No."
He released her. He stepped back from her, his jaw a hard line. "Why not? Have you heard the news already? Dr. Whalen getting the boot from Memorial? Afraid I won't be able to support you? Or is it you're not interested in a man who is a plain G.P., one who'll have to hustle for a living?"
Her face grayed, and her eyes showed the shock she felt.
"Mark, what are you saying? How could that hospital get along without you?"
"They plan to. I've been asked to resign and I certainly shall. A Mrs. Grace finds me a boor. Mrs. Rush says I made violent love to Nurse Comstock while Mrs. Rush watched, pretending to be asleep. Two neurotic women telling lies. The Board finds me un willing to answer such foolish charges. But that has nothing to do with us. I've made a living before, I'll go on doing so. But I won't dignify lies by answering them."
"Lies?" she whispered.
"Hell, you wouldn't believe anything like that about me, would you?"
"Oh, no," she said. She felt sick, afraid he would see in her face that she had believed them. It had never occurred to her that the scandal was the neurotic fantasies of unbalanced females.
"I'm asking you to marry me, Chris."
"Oh, Mark." She spoke so tonelessly, so emptily that he barely heard her. If only she had believed in him! "Oh, Mark, I'm so sorry."
"It doesn't matter." His hands slipped down her back. "All that matters is that you marry me, we'll get along, we'll be fine."
"Oh, Mark, I can't."
"Why?"
She tried to turn away, but he would not let her go.
"Mark, I'm already married."
For a long time he said nothing. He gazed at her, his eyes raging, black as any pirates. At last they softened and he released her.
"Why?" he said.
"Why?" Suddenly she laughed, almost hysterically. "Because Rawls is a man with a great deal of influence. A marriage license on a Sunday, and blood tests, and a county clerk, and the blessings from the governor of the state."
"Rawls?"
"Not because I love Rawls, but because I love you. Wild enough, Mark? I married him because you casually ask me to marry you, you casually make love to other women. I married Rawls because I wanted protection from you! From you and from myself."
"Why would you do a thing like that?"
She shivered. "I married Rawls so that when I saw you again, when you asked me to marry you again, I couldn't say yes to you. Because I found out I want you, even when I know you don't really love me. I've no pride, nothing. I want you no matter what I know. But now I'll never marry you. Because today I made up my mind. Rawls loves me and that will mean everything."
"Good for you."
"I love you and it broke my heart. Is it better, Mark, to love or to be loved? Well, I decided today, that I would rather be loved."
CHAPTER TEN
The small boy shouted at Paul, motioning toward a motor launch. Paul nodded and they leaped into it. The boat was reversed, turned and headed toward the pass channel.
Lenora stood transfixed on the pier, watching the launch race through the water.
Claire's cat-boat swirled and twisted, caught in the riptide where the bay merged into the gulf. She clung to it. Capsized, the small craft rode crazily, carried out for the moment and then driven in.
A crowd gathered along the point of the island and several small motor boats were fighting the current to reach her.
Lenora watched Paul remove his shirt and kick off his shoes as the launch faltered into the swift current near the cat boat.
The launch almost battered into the capsized boat.
Paul yelled at the boy who reversed. Paul dove into the water, swimming cross-current toward Claire. The sweep of the channel tide almost swept him past her. He managed to snag the keel of the catboat at the last instant and hang on.
The other boats pulled in around them, but the tide was too swift, coming nearer would endanger them.
Suddenly the whirling riptide released the overturned boat and it slipped swiftly toward the gulf, like a life carried outward. Claire screamed. The crowd on shore moved closer to the water's edge.
Hardly breathing, Lenora watched Paul work his way around the boat to where Claire was. The moment Paul touched Claire, she released her hold on the boat, clutching at him. They were almost ripped away from the boat. Paul went under but managed to cling to the keel.
Two or three motor launches rode parallel with them now, but the treacherous current made a rescue attempt too dangerous. A man tossed a life-ring to Paul, but he missed it by inches and the current flung it out from him.
Claire's terrorized screaming carried across the pass. She fought at Paul. He begged her to hang on.
She was in his arms one moment, her wan face haggard and bleak with terror, her hair plastered about her skull, and then suddenly she was gone.
Wildly, Paul yelled her name. He released his grip on the cat boat hull, swimming against the pull of the tide searching for Claire, The boat spun, abruptly bobbling away, propelled crazily through the pass. Paul tried to tread water, shouting at the men in the boat. He wanted to know if they saw Claire. As he yelled he was swept along like a cork.
One of the men in a power launch hurled out a lifeline to Paul. He grasped it, secured it under his arms.
The man on deck tried to reel him in, but Paul yelled at him, threatening to pull loose. The man understood then that Paul wanted to search for Claire.
Another man in a motor boat shouted, pointing to a place a few yards from Paul where Claire struggled through the swirling surface.
Paul swam toward her. She flailed her arms. Paul snagged one of them and yanked her hard against him. For a moment they both disappeared.
But now the power launch motors were holding against the pull of the channel current and the men aboard were hauling in the line.
Cheers broke out from the other small craft and from the crowd ashore as Paul and Claire were pulled over the side of the powerboat.
It was as if everybody watching breathed in relief.
The power launch turned, inching into the bay against the swift tide.
Lenora stood unmoving on the pier as the launch plowed toward her.
As the launch pulled along the pier, men helped Paul up on it. He shivered, his clothing plastered to him. He watched as two men lifted Claire on a stretcher.
Paul walked beside the litter, going along the pier and across the beach toward the house.
Lenora walked along behind them. Claire lay still. She was pale, suffering from shock.
The men carried Claire into the living room and laid her down on the divan. Mallie called them into the kitchen for coffee.
Lenora checked Claire, seeing that she was all right.
"Do you want to call a doctor, Paul?" she said. "No, she'll be all right. She's only scared. The same thing happened to me once."
"If you want to be sure?"
"No, she'll be all right."
"I want to sleep," Claire said. "Leave me alone."
Claire was still sleeping on the divan when Christine and Rawls arrived five hours later.
Lenora stared at Rawls. There was a look in his face she had never seen there before. It was a gleam of pleasure, but there was a youthfulness about him. Lenora was shocked when she realized she'd always considered Rawls an old man.
She watched Christine. There was a serenity in her lovely face that was almost resignation, but she smiled warmly at Rawls, and Paul's father clung to her hand.
"Miami," Rawls was saying. "Miami and Bermuda-just the two of us, just taking it easy and lying in the sun, and getting to know each other. Isn't that right, Chris?"
"Yes, Rawls," Christine gave him her serene smile.
Paul sat in a club chair, watching them. His eyes still betrayed his disbelief.
"You look shocked, Paul," Rawls said. "Did you think your old man was too old to marry?"
Paul nodded. "I thought you were too old even to think about it."
"Just wait until you're my age," Rawls said. "You'll see how young your thoughts are."
"Rawls isn't old," Christine said.
Rawls laughed. "Not around you I'm not. You're all anyone needs to make 'em young."
Paul shook his head, still unable to believe it.
Rawls laughed. "Surprised, Paul? Well so am I. But I must say you're taking my marriage with better grace than T took yours."
Paul smiled. "I could do that," he said, "with one hand behind my back."
Rawls nodded. "I've learned a lot this weekend, Paul. About forgiveness. About how love can strike. And what it can do to you when it hits you."
"It's murder," Paul agreed, but he was not looking at Claire.
Glancing up, Lenora found his eyes on hers.
"Taste, Inc. is all in your hands for the next month," Christine was saying to Paul. "Of course you'll have Mary to help you run it. It should run smoothly. But anyway, you'll learn more than you would in a year with me there to annoy you."
Rawls stood up. "I don't want to seem impatient to leave," he said. "But I am."
Christine stood up and put her hand through Rawls' arm. "We're boarding the Miami plane in Porto Ciego," she said, "and we must go. But we wanted to see you, Paul and Claire, before we left. We didn't want anything on our minds."
"To mar our honeymoon," Rawls said.
Christine smiled up at him. And watching them, Lenora thought that they would be happy, but that somehow Christine would have to lose that serenity that was more like resignation. She was going to have to stop remembering, stop looking back, even in regret.
I know all about forgetting, Lenora thought, even to how impossible it is.
Mallie called them to dinner at seven.
It was not quite dark, reflected light from the beach out-lined the house, giving it a strange pink cast. Mallie turned on the lights, served the meal in the tension that filled the room.
"It's such a helpless feeling," Paul said for the dozenth time. "That current. It's incredible. You're helpless."
"I knew I was dead," Claire said, speaking as if to herself. "Even when I felt Paul's arms grab me I thought it was no use, the current was too strong for us."
"I found out one thing out there," Paul said, staring at his untouched food. "I was helpless. Nobody is anything without somebody to help him. I guess I've always been willing to have help, from anybody, but with those strangers trying to save us, I saw what a two-way street it is."
He shook his head. There was more he wanted to say, but he couldn't say it. Claire and he had been so selfish that neither was any more ill then the other. He even believed that if Claire could be made to see her obligations to others, she'd have made a giant step toward getting well. Selfishness was human, but it had possessed Claire, and him, until it drove her.
He glanced at her, thinking that after today maybe she would see. But looking at the petulant set of her mouth, hearing the way she talked only of her reaction, her terror, he felt empty and less than reassured.
"I wonder why I can't reach Dr. Whalen on the phone?" Lenora said. "I tried all afternoon. I'm sure Claire's all right, but I think Mark should be notified."
Claire stiffened across the table. "Why pretend you care what happens to me? Wouldn't it have been lovely if I'd drowned today?"
Paul spoke sharply, "We were all thinking that, Claire. That's why we ran out there-to watch you drown."
Oh, make your jokes, Paul," Claire said. "Try to laugh at me. With me out of the way, you and Lenny-"
"Me and Lenny?" Paul's face was gray. He stared at her. "I thought you told me that Lenora was in love with Dr. Whalen? Make up your mind, Claire, or drop the whole thing."
Claire stared at him. Her eyes were defiant, but under his unrelenting gaze they changed. She looked down at her plate.
The tensions pulled tighter. The sudden ringing of the telephone startled them in the silence.
Lenora got quickly to her feet, glad to escape the room. "Maybe it's Mark," she said over her shoulder.
It was not Mark, but Lenny was still at the telephone when Henrietta wheeled herself into the living room and silently took up her needlework.
She was followed by Claire who sank spiritlessly to the divan. After a moment Paul entered but he did not sit down. He stood near the front windows, the white curtains billowing lightly against him.
Lenora's face was taut, bloodless when she replaced the phone in its cradle. She walked into the living room, stood looking down at Claire on the divan.
Claire jerked her head up, gazed at Lenora a moment and then flushed, fidgeting with a pillow.
Paul watched them. It was Aunt Henrietta who spoke. "What is it, Lenny?"
Lenora answered Henrietta but she didn't take her level gaze form Claire's face.
"That was the hospital. I asked a nurse to call as soon as there was any word from Dr. Whalen. He did not leave a call at Physician's Registry today. The nurse just called. Dr. Whalen has left the hospital for good, the nurse said. Some on made heartless, shameful accusations against him, and he refused even to answer the charges except to say they were baseless."
Henrietta drew a deep breath. She peered at Claire. "So that's the answer. That's where you went when you sneaked out of the house?"
Claire's head jerked up. Her voice was strident. "I told the truth. The hospital had every right to hear about what went on!"
Paul heeled around at the window and walked across the room.
"What hellish thing have you done now, Claire?"
"The truth!" she wailed.
I'm sick and fed up with your lying. You don't care who you hurt, what you wreck. I put up with it-lying, deceit, faithlessness, because only I was hurt and I'd asked for it by marrying you.
"No matter what you did to me in San Francisco, I told myself I asked for it, and you were ill. But not now. This was vicious. I think there's nothing you wouldn't do, no one you wouldn't hurt to give yourself some kind of twisted pleasure.
"As long as it affected you and me, I could take it. But Lenny and Mark Whalen tried to help you. And this is the way you repay them.
"I've had it. Sick or just an evil woman, I'm through. You can pull yourself together, come out of this, make up your mind to live like a decent human being, and I'll do everything I can for you."
She started to speak but he swung his hand downward, cutting her off. "I don't want to hear any of your lies or alibis now, Claire. I don't want to hear your voice. One more whining lie and I might kill you. Do you understand that?"
Claire nodded, twisting her hands in her lap.
"You're going to begin by telling the hospital that you lied, that your lies were vicious and meant to hurt without any basis of truth."
"I couldn't do that, Paul!"
"You will! We're going in there and you're going to tell them the truth, the real truth, without any elaborating or lying or whining. After that, we'll see."
Claire stared up at him, her eyes wide with horror. She opened her mouth, then closed it. She gazed at his pallid face, the veins standing along his forehead, the tendons in his neck, the hard unyielding light in his eyes. She shook her head. He didn't look like Paul. He looked like his father, and she'd always hated and feared that old man.
She did not speak.
Henrietta sat motionless in her chair when she was alone in the living room.
After Claire and Paul were gone, Henrietta had tried to talk with Lenora, but she had been too preoccupied. At last she'd gone dispiritedly to walk on the beach.
Henrietta's fingers flicked over the needlework. She hardly gave it a thought any more. She listened to the distant rumble of thunder. Strong winds whipped the curtains at the windward side of the house.
She fell asleep over her work. She had no idea how long she slept. When she woke the house was dark and silent except for the small lamp they'd left burning to light her to her room.
The strong wind had the feel of rain in it, but she didn't pull down any windows, or move to go to bed. She was restless and nothing seemed to matter. She shook out a cigarette and lit it.
After a long time she took up her needlework, but then dropped it. She made mistakes. She took up her scissors and ripped at it. She yawned in exhaustion and depression, and fell asleep again. Her scissors slipped from her fingers and struck the floor, glinting in the light. She did not even hear them.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Claire closed the door behind her, locked it and stood in that hated bedroom, the long-bladed scissors clutched in her white-knuckled hand.
She looked about, the bed where Paul had left her alone. He'd given her sleeping pills and then walked out on her. His face was chilled. He hated her, and he had no right to do that.
She shivered, despising this place where they caged her. Curtains and blinds had been replaced. There was no longer even the scorched rug to remind her of the fire.
Her mouth twisted sourly. How careful they were with her! Everything changed so that there'd be nothing to remind her. Glancing at the new bookcase, the new books, the bed spread, she felt hatred surge through her, overwhelming her.
And now Paul walked out on her. Lenora had turn ed him against her. He didn't want her any more. They would be sorry.
She trembled, hating them all. She hated Paul because he had turned against her when she needed him most. She would never forgive his dragging her into that hospital, forcing her to say she had lied to them about Lenora and Dr. Whalen. She closed her eyes, shutting out the sickening memory. They had driven back to the island in silence, then Paul had walked out.
There was no one she could trust. At first she had been sure Dr. Whalen understood her. How she hated him. No matter that Paul had forced her to say she was lying, there were those who'd always believe what she'd said. She laughed at this idea.
And she'd thought Paul would be rich when a heart attack or stroke took off his wild-tempered father.
A dreadful picture flashed across her mind of Christine's standing downstairs with her hand on Rawls' arm. How sickening. A young girl pretending to love a man at least twenty-five years older than she was. Christine was marrying him for his money. What about Paul now? Christine would get what she deserved. How she hated her and Rawls and their simpering smiles.
But most of all, she hated this house because it was like a prison to her. They put her in this room as if it were a padded cell. They thought she didn't even have a key.
She moved deliberately, unhurriedly about the room. She ripped down the curtains, cutting them to shreds, flinging the lint and cloth about the floor. She dragged out the magazines, slashing them with the scissors and flinging the litter around her. She slashed at the overstuffed chairs, the mattress, anything that could be ripped.
She wanted to break everything, but the noise would attract Lenora. She didn't want her in here, not yet.
There would be plenty of time when she was through with all she was going to do. Let her come then. Let Paul come, too. They'll be sorry for the way they have treated me. Like a child, an invalid, like an insane person.
She stood panting in the center of the wrecked room. Smiling, she gazed at the scissors gripped in her fist. The long blades glinted in the light. How the gleam and shine of those blades had fascinated Claire from the first. She remembered watching them, the way the shafts caught the light in Henerietta's swiftly moving hands.
Claire wiped the back of her arm across her face, pushed her bedraggled hair from her eyes. She stared at the long, glinting shears.
She trembled. It would be quickly over. And when they find me like this, they'll be sorry.
For a moment with her gaze held by the light on the long thin blades, she thought what the sight of her body in this shambles would do to them.
They'd see how cruelly they had treated her. They'd know then that she'd died because she could not endure their neglect, their harsh treatment, Lenora's turning Paul from her, Henrietta's spying on her, Mark's visiting her only to be near Lenora, Paul's lack of understanding, his forcing her to make a fool of herself before those hospital officials. They'd know then how she hated them-she'd rather die than go on living with them.
She raised the scissors before her to the level of her eyes. She stared wide-eyed at them. Suppose I don't die right away. Suppose I can't drive it deeply enough, suppose the pain is terrible and lasts for a long time. I could never stand pain. She remembered the pleasure she got from tormenting cats and small dogs when she was a child, but she could never stand pain to herself.
She smiled suddenly and shook her head. I won't do it, I won't kill myself just because they want me to, just because they want me out of the way. Lenora thinks it would be so cozy with Paul if I were out of her way. Well, I won't make it that easy for her.
Slowly she let her hand sink to her side.
She exhaled a long, slow breath. For a moment she felt an upsurge of pleasure as she thought how she had just defeated Lenora in a cruel plot against her life. Of course it was Lenora's wish that Claire kill herself. She'd been sending her messages like that for days now. Well, she was too smart for Lenora. How pleased Lenora would have been if she had drowned. Well, this is one wish she won't see come true. Shell never have Paul, I'll never let her have him.
For a long time, transfixed, she stared blankly. Her thoughts darted swiftly, on tangents, like bats in a dark cave. Hadn't Lenora been the real cause of all her trouble? Hadn't Lenora stood between Claire and Paul from the very first? Hadn't she often seen in Paul's face the wish that he'd married Lenora? Hadn't she accused him of this in their quarrels? And what had Paul said? That he would have been happier. He came running back to Lenora the first chance he got.
In her mind she could see the guilty way Paul had looked up from his whispered conversation with Lenora in the living room this morning. This morning? It seemed a hundred years ago. Well, she'd flushed them out of their little morning rendezvous, hadn't she? She wasn't stupid, not so blind that they could get away with their affair under her eyes.
And tonight Paul had turned completely against her, raging at her, forcing her to humiliate herself at that hospital. And why had he behaved like this for the first time? Because Lenora had poisoned his mind against her.
She shuddered, the hatred for Lenora washing through her.
She'd always hated her, but now it was like something overwhelming her, possessing her very soul.
If only Lenora were out of the way. Everything would be all right between her and Paul then, wouldn't it? She and Paul had been happy, they could be happy again with Lenora out of the way.
She laughed suddenly. Why should she die? Why not Lenora?
At this thought her heart thudded so wildly that it was difficult to breathe. Her throat felt choked.
She straightened, licking at her dry lips. Her hand, clutching the scissors, trembled. Her knees trembled, threatening to buckle. Her legs seemed unable to support her. It was as though all the blood in her body had gushed into the pit of her stomach, making her ill.
But there was a painful anxiety in her illness, a need to see Lenora dead. I'll be all right then. If I can look in her hated face and know she can't touch me any more, I'll be all right.
She pressed her hand against her mouth. Of course she was ill. It was Lenora's fault. And she'd only be well when Lenora was out of the way.
Her legs faltered as she turned, scissors at her side now, toward the door. But nothing was going to stop her. Excitement and anticipation made her weak, and nothing was going to stop her.
Claire opened the door stealthily. She stared along the darkened upper hallway toward the door of Lenora's room. It would soon be over, and with Lenora out of the way, everything would be all right at last.
The wind was rising, billowing in the curtains like straining sails. Boughs of mango trees bent and whined in the gale and a branch scraped at the roof.
Sickening dread gathering inside her, Henrietta wheeled her chair along the hallway to the closed door of Mallie's bedroom.
She beat at the door-facing with her fists, calling Mallie's name. She hardly heard herself, the wind drowning all other sounds. She listened tensely, but she heard only the wind and Mallie's steady, muffled snoring.
Sweat beaded Henrietta's forehead and ran along her face, burning like tears. She gazed at the door of Mallie's room. She rattled the doorknob and then she gave up, wheeling herself back toward the stairwell.
She gazed up toward the upper floor. She wanted to call out for Lenora, but she was afraid to. It was for Lenora she feared. If she screamed and Claire heard her, she'd know she'd discovered the loss of her shears, and this would surely precipitate disaster.
Henrietta stared at the telephone. She sighed thankfully, and then shuddered. Who would come quickly enough to do them any good now?
She shook her head. There was no sense attempting to call outside for aid.
Sweated, trembling, she rolled herself to the foot of the stairs. She sat listening for any sound from above her. She heard only the moaning of the wind, the thunder of breakers on the gulf side.
Where was Paul?
She glanced up the stairwell. It might as well be Mount Everest. She remembered suddenly the night Claude's car had missed the curve and bounced like a small toy into the ditch. Twenty years ago. She'd dragged herself away, crawled home so that only Mai lie ever knew for sure that Claude hadn't been alone that night.
She dabbed at the beads of perspiration on her face. Not once in twenty years had she been on that second floor. She was helpless from the waist down and the thought of pulling herself up those stairs, dragging useless legs after her-unreasonable.
What else could she do?
She had to try. Slowly she tipped her chair by reaching forward as far as she could. She fell on the steps, face down.
The chair wheels spun and slipped, rolling away from her. She lay on the lower steps, panting. Her needlework had fallen to the floor. Her cigarette lighter and her holder lay out of her reach. Stupid, and yet she felt she ought to pick them up. It worried her that they were strewn across the floor.
She licked her tongue across her lips. At last, she drew a deep breath and stretched her arms as far as she could above her head. She caught the balustrade posts. Exerting all the strength she could, she pulled herself up one step.
She reached out again, going painfully upward, step by step.
She twised her torso, rolling her hips and useless legs upward on the steps. Four steps. Five. Nine. Her arms throbbed, aching with pain and tension.
Slowly she worked herself to the head of the stairs.
She clasped both arms about the uppermost post and clung to it. Thank God there wasn't one more step, she thought.
But she could call to Lenora now, make her hear above the wind and the thunder.
At that moment, Henrietta heard Claire's bedroom door opened stealthily.
Henrietta caught her breath. She watched the disheveled girl sidle into the hallway. She carried the long-bladed shears.
Reaching up to the top of the post, Henrietta pulled herself erect. She hung there, torturously, half-standing, half-reclining against the banister. She swayed crazily but hung on grimly, seeming to stand tall.
Claire cried out in horror. It was as if she thought at first she was seeing an apparition. It was no less stunning shock to recognize Henrietta.
Claire retreated a step, shaking her head, her face twisted with disbelief and fear.
"Give me those scissors," Henrietta said in a level voice. "I want them now."
"Get away from me."
"Did you hear me, Claire?"
Claire gazed at her in revulsion. "You lied," she whispered. "You can walk."
"I want my scissors, Claire." Henrietta panted, but kept her voice low. "Bring them here. You stole them."
Claire's eyes widened, wild with rage. "You're spying on me!"
She ran toward the older woman. She drew back her hand to slap at her.
Instinctively, Henrietta released her grip on the post to ward off the blow.
She cried out, realizing too late what she'd done. Without her arms to support her, she crumpled and sprawled out backwards.
She grabbed at Claire for support.
Claire missed as Henrietta fell away from her. She cried out, trying to catch her balance.
Henrietta's wildly swinging arms snagged Claire's hair as she fell. She dragged the screaming girl after her.
Claire wailed, fighting her. They fell, rolling and sprawling down the long flight of stairs. Claire struggled, thrusting Henrietta from her.
As they rolled, Claire was impaled by the scissors in her fist.
When Paul came in he found the house crowded with silent people. At the foot of the stairs, arms entwined, two women who'd found life so bitter had gone out of it together.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Paul sat alone in his office at Taste, Inc.
It was almost seven o'clock and he'd been there since seven that morning. He thought he was at last alone in the building. For the past hour he'd sat lost in bitter thoughts, memories, and the sound of knocking on his door startled him. Come in," he said.
Mary opened the door. Paul caught his breath involuntarily at the look of her, the memory of what he'd had with her one day in this office.
"It isn't going to help you to do nothing but work. You've been like this for a month now."
"Like this?"
She smiled. "A hermit crab, busily working, shutting everybody out. You need relaxation, too Paul. Working too hard is almost as bad as remembering too much."
"Work's all I have all I can do." Mary smiled. "Not quite."
He felt his heart quicken, but he said, "I better stay away from you, too."
"Why? You can enjoy yourself."
"What would people say, only a month after-"
"What do you care what people say? Anyone who condemns you is stupid. You've been unhappy for years, and now its over. No sense brooding about it."
He gazed at her. "Thanks for worrying about me anyway."
"I'm going to do more than worry about you," she said.
He stood up and she came around the desk to him. She did not take her eyes from his. Her smile faltered. She pressed close against him. His hands moved down to her rounded hips as if drawn there by the memory of what they'd shared. Her round globes were firm against his palm, the first reality in his life since that night of horror in Lenny's house.
He kissed her chin, moving his lips up her jawline into the fragrance and warmth of her hair.
"Oh," she whispered, "I feel that all over."
"You smell good."
"Do I?"
"You taste even better."
"I thought you hated me, the way you've ignored me.
"I couldn't hate you."
She held his face in her Hands. "You remember what we did that day in this office, Paul?"
"I remember some of our sins, but you'll have to reenact some of the others for me."
She laughed. "No wonder I love you."
"Why do you love me?"
"Because you sound as good as you feel. I love to have people talk to me while they're loving me. If I love their voice, I get goose bumps."
"You're gooseflesh all over."
"If you only knew."
"I know." He moved his hands under her dress. She shivered.
"I know this is crazy, Paul, but let me love you. I want to show you all the nice, special things I can do for you."
Somehow they were on the divan in Christine's larger office, the corridor light playing on Mary's bare skin, her taut nipples winking like gems on heaps of gold.
"How nice can you be?" he whispered. "You'll see," she said.
There were no sounds except the pleasant noises Mary made loving him. Paul lay back in exultant satisfaction. This was nice. Very nice, and it made him feel young again when he'd been afraid he was through being young forever.
He could forget with Mary ministrating to him like that.
He shivered, consciously putting everything else from his mind. There was only Mary. There was only what she was doing to him.
Lenora sat alone on her veranda. The night was loud with sounds, crickets, mocking birds, the surf, the slap of waves against anchored boats.
She saw Mark's car park at the end of the long porch. She went on sitting there, but her heart beat faster. It was the first time in more than a month that she had seen him.
The first few weeks after the deaths of Henrietta and Claire, she'd moved like a dream-walker, unable to credit what had happened, almost expecting to hear Henrietta call to her in the silent house.
Paul had gone to live in his father's house up the island. Almost at once it was as though he had never been here at all.
He was gone and out of her thoughts. She accepted him as part of her past, and she had long ago kissed the past good-bye. They had met again after two years, and perhaps it was too bad that when they met after all that time that they were no longer the same two people who had once been fiercely in love.
Now they were strangers.
Mark's car door slammed and he walked along the porch toward her. She got up and went to meet him. He said, "Lenny."
She waited but he did not take her in his arms. "I'm glad things have worked out for you," he said at last.
"What? For me?
"For you and Paul." Her voice sharpened. "Don't be a fool."
"I understand, Lenny. You can be together now and-"
"What are you going to do, Mark?'" Her voice was sharper now. Her face paled. "Will you practice in Porto Ciego?"
"Must you be so deadly polite?"
"I'll be polite as long as you're a fool."
"I came out to say good-bye, Lenny. Even as a kid I couldn't quit without trying one more time."
She smiled a little then, and her voice softened. "How nice of you."
And suddenly she was in his arms. He pulled her close to him and she felt the wav his heart pounded.
"Lenny."
"Why did you stay away so long?"
"I was afraid you didn't want me. I couldn't stand (o hear you say it."
"I thought you were such a smart doctor, but you're such a fool."
"Not about medicine, only about women."
She laughed, pressing closer. "I hope so."
"Doctors don't have time to learn much about romance. They're too busy. That's the sad part about doing anything to the exclusion of everything else. When you fall in love, you don't know any of the right words."
"Do you really think you need words?"
"I thought so when I got here. I'd been searching for all the right ones."
"You're hopeless."
"Not quite. Watch this." He swung her up in his arms. He carried her along the veranda to his car. Still holding her, he got in the car, keeping her on his lap.
"Where are we going?"
"We're not going anywhere. It's dark enough for what I want right here. Too dark, but I'll have to wait for light, I guess. I can't wait for the rest of it."
She gave a long sigh as his mouth claimed hers. She felt his tongue probe at her mouth, and she shivered with pleasure and anticipation.
His hands slid through the warmth under her arms to her breasts. He worked smoothly and expertly, his surgeon's hands making no mistakes. She found her blouse and bra gone almost instantly. Mark buried his face in the resilient fragrance of her breasts.
"What a perfect way to start a new life," he whispered.
