Mortal Friends, page 26
“I know,” Colman said, “Edwina Booth, Trader Horn!”
The woman smiled in spite of herself. The Australian jackets had been the fashion a couple of years before, when the film had come out. She’d forgotten.
When she smiled her face cracked into lines, and Brady was disappointed to realize she was older than he was, thirty-five at least. Her brows were pencil thin and the lids of her eyes were dark and heavy. Her makeup had the peculiar and opposite effect, given the setting, of dispelling the woman’s glamour. She seemed like a rancher’s wife or a pioneer lady.
“This is private property, mister.” Her voice was raspy and deep.
“Is it? Aren’t we in the reservoir?”
“What reservoir? This is Pride’s Crossing. You’re trespassing.”
“Is it someone’s estate?”
“Mine.”
“It’s very nice. Lovely woods.”
“So you thought you’d help yourself to some of it, eh?”
Colman shrugged. “Well, you know . . .” He winked, half at Collins, half at the woman. “It’s Christmas.”
“Oh my God!” she said. “A Christmas tree!”
“Indeed.”
“Of course,” she said, looking at the wounded pine. “A Christmas tree. God, it’s December already?” She paused. “You’ve an accent,” she said.
“I was just thinking the same about you.”
They both laughed.
“I’m from Ireland. This is my son, Michael Collins Brady. He’s from the States.” Brady draped his arm over the boy’s shoulder.
“The Irish,” she recited, “are a fair people. They never speak well of one another.”
“Samuel Johnson,” Colman said.
“Yes. To Boswell.”
“Who else?”
They nodded at each other, a mutual bare acknowledgment.
“I am Madeline Gardner Thomson. No i and no p.”
“Sorry?”
“There are the blind Gardners and the one-eyed Gardiners. I am blind. That is to say, there is no i in my father’s name. In like manner, there are the peeless Thomsons and the peed.”
“I get it. Nop in your husband’s name.”
“Peeless the peerless.” She laughed in what Brady thought was a most charming way.
Collins was blushing, mystified by the talk of eyes and urine even while intrigued by the obvious game of it.
Brady stepped toward the woman’s horse, a large chestnut thoroughbred, and ran his hand along the horse’s withers. “You’ve a beautiful horse. Come here, Micko.”
Collins joined his father in stroking the horse, which responded with a set of three broad shudders. Collins forced himself to keep stroking the animal, although, truthfully, it frightened him.
“Was your horse like this, Dad?”
“Not nearly so fine, son. Though there was a mare in the village . . .” Brady thought of McClusky’s mare and then of Jack and Marie—his first thought of them in years. “. . . A fine horse, Mrs. Thomson.”
“Do you ride, Mr. Brady?”
“I did.” Brady laughed when he realized they were not talking about the same thing. “Not for the sport of it, though. Simply to go from one end of the field to the other. We used the ‘hang-on-tight-and-you’re-alright’ method of horsemanship, if you know what I mean.”
“Perhaps I do.” She watched Collins stroking and was pleased to see him growing less tentative about it.
“I’ll tell you what, Mrs. Thomson. If you’re agreeable, I’ll pay you for the tree, since we already cut it half through.”
“Nonsense. I’d forgotten about Christmas. Feel free.”
“I insist.” Brady handed her a five-dollar bill.
“Well, I can’t accept that, can I? Five dollars, goodness! You’d pay no more than one for that tree at the market.”
“Call it five. It’s all I’ve got.”
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll take one dollar for it. Which means you have to come up to the house while I get change.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“And perhaps your son would like to ride Freddy.” She swung off the saddle and down.
“Wow! Could I?”
“Well, Collins, we . . .”
“It’s perfectly safe, Mr. Brady. Freddy accommodates children quite nicely.”
Collins winced at that—children!—having begun already to think of himself as Tom Mix.
Brady picked the boy up and hoisted him onto the saddle. Mrs. Thomson kept the reins and led the horse along the path, clucking as she went.
Collins looked back at his father, excitement and pride in his eyes. But he displayed also the nagging discomfort that came with the knowledge that his father had not quite fully approved of this adventure.
Brady was watching the woman. She was tall and full-bodied. The belt of the bush jacket gave accent to her figure. She wore knee-length leather boots, which made her seem even taller. She led the horse off with easy authority. Brady could see why the animal would follow her.
He picked up the ax, swiped twice at the base of the pine, and took the tree down. He put it on his shoulder and followed his son on the horse, which followed Madeline Thomson.
The bridle path soon became broader and more beaten, wide enough to accommodate a motor car. The pine woods thinned and gradually opened out onto a rolling white field. On top of a knoll, dominating the scene, was a mock-Tudor mansion. Several small outbuildings stood between the threesome and the house itself; they were approaching from the rear.
Though it was just midafternoon, the sky was already thickening up with signs of evening.
“More snow, Mr. Brady?” the woman asked over her shoulder.
“It’s a fat sky, I’d say.”
“I love the snow.”
Brady increased his pace and drew even with her. The horse’s head was between them, just to the rear.
“It makes me feel like singing,” she said.
“I know what you mean.”
“What shall we sing, then?”
“Something for Christmas!” Collins put in from the horse.
“My God, yes! Look at us!” Madeline Thomson stopped and surveyed the boy on the horse and man with ax and tree. “Currier and Ives! All we need are the bells!”
“Hey!” Collins cried suddenly, “my hatchet! I left my hatchet!”
“Oh, damn, Micko! All the way back there!”
They had just drawn even with the house.
“I’m sorry, Dad, but I . . .”
“Forget it,” Brady said a bit edgily. “We have to go back that way.”
“Where’s your car?” Madeline asked.
“On the road from Beverly.”
“That’s just over there. You needn’t go all the way back through.” She lifted the reins over the horse’s head and gave them to the boy. “Here, Michael, take Freddy back for your hatchet.”
“Oh, I don’t . . . !”
“Are you afraid?”
“No! No! But . . .” He looked at Brady, who dramatically rolled his eyes to heaven.
“Alright, Tom Mix,” Brady said. “Hang on tight and you’re alright.”
“Thanks, Dad. Thanks, ma’am. But what do I say if he . . . ?”
“Just hold the reins tightly, dear, as your father says. That’s it. How’s that feel?”
“Good.”
“Go along then.” She turned the horse for him and stepped back.
Freddy sauntered down into the field again, already back on his customary trail.
“You’re very kind, Mrs. Thomson, which, I must admit, wasn’t my first impression.”
“Well, you startled me. How was I to know you were Father Christmas and Joy Noel? Come inside. I’ll get you your change.”
She entered the house. Brady leaned his ax and the tree outside the door and followed her into a large warm kitchen. A black woman was peeling potatoes in a corner.
“Hello, Maybell.”
“’Day, Miz Thomson. How you?”
“This is Mr. Brady, Maybell.”
“’Day, Mr. Brady.”
“Good day,” he said.
“Oh, the Transcript came.” Mrs. Thomson peeled her gloves while crossing to a big stainless steel counter in the middle of the room.
“Yes, ma’am. Henry, he just left.”
“Oh, my God! Look at this!” Madeline picked up the paper and walked back toward Brady, reading.
Brady saw the huge print beneath the masthead of the Boston Evening Transcript.
It read, “Prohibition Repeal Is Ratified. Roosevelt Asks Nation to Bar the Saloon. Boston Celebrates with Quiet Restraint.”
Smaller print under the banner read, “City Toasts New Era. Legal Liquor Is Scarce. FDR Sees End to Big-Time Crime.”
“What do you think of that?” Madeline asked.
Brady cracked noncommittally, “Better to bar the saloon than grill the tavern, I say.”
“Well, this calls for a toast! Good for Utah!” Madeline led the way down a parquet corridor. “Come along, Mr. Brady. Don’t make me drink my first legal drink alone.”
Brady followed, feeling somewhat like Collins on the horse.
They entered a large room that was dark and stale; the low-beamed ceiling hung on it like a weight. There were paneled walls and bookcases, a baronial fireplace, and several arrangements of stuffed furniture. Mrs. Thomson went directly to a window and slashed the blinds open. The field they had crossed lay before them, sloping down to the pine forest. Light poured in, but succeeded only in heightening the mustiness of the room. Its use in daytime was apparently rare and somehow inappropriate.
“What will you have?”
“Is that a bottle of Bushmills I see there?”
“It is.”
“May I?”
She poured an inch of the whiskey into a plain glass and handed it to him. She poured her own drink from another bottle.
Her hand shook slightly as she poured, the only hint that her composure was not complete and real.
“Here’s to Utah,” she said, raising her glass. “Isn’t it strange the Mormons should be the ones to give it back?”
“John Barleycorn. Here’s to him.” Brady sipped the whiskey, savored it, the first Bushmills he’d had since coming to the States.
Madeline Thomson tossed her drink down without flourish. “No,” she said, “they didn’t give us back the liquor, just good citizenship. Another?” She poured her own.
“Doesn’t taste nearly so well, does it? When it’s legal.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She sipped at her glass. She was not downing the second. She leaned back against a solid oak table, on which a dozen bottles and glasses were spread.
The idea of the woman’s accessibility was clutching at Brady, and it made him nervous.
When he was younger the habits of work and his driving compulsion to pull together a career with possibilities had withstood not only the periodic catastrophe of a short-lived painful affair, but also the increasing infrequency with which his affairs occurred. He was still nominally an assistant to the mayor, but access to Curley was impossible without going through Brady. The Depression, which had given absolute national power to Roosevelt, gave a similar local power to Curley, but its exercise depended on Colman Brady. Its exercise had consumed Colman Brady.
And now here was this woman looking at him with frankly parted lips, with defiant, self-assured allure. Clearly there was something jaded about her. Her brightness had waned the way the lights of the city wane after two in the morning. Brady saw the woman before him suddenly as an aging flapper. She had the modish slouch. She had the contrived extroversion. She had the pagan eye. Brady pictured her reading contraband James Joyce by flashlight under a blanket at some fancy college. He could see her snapping a string of pearls for the hell of it, spreading out her arms and saying she wanted to live, live, live! She took lovers at will and discarded them without qualms. She had wiggled through the Charleston on table tops. She passed out night after night from booze. She burned her candle at both ends; it shed such lovely light. She believed in salvation by fun alone. The world that self-expression made would be a better one.
But that was the world they were living with now; and it revolved on full-blown, institutionalized despair. Brady was accustomed to feeling the defeat and malaise of his neighbors in South Boston, nearly all of whom were unemployed and therefore hopeless. It struck him as curious and remarkable that he should suddenly find himself in a lavish house with a cozy socialite behind whose languorous gaze he detected the familiar vacuous ennui. It seemed to Brady that the woman was not quite able to carry it off as sleek sophistication anymore. World-weariness is attractive and seductive, like many things, only on the young.
“Have a cigarette?” She offered him the silver tray.
“Thank you. I will.”
She unbuttoned the bush jacket and let the flaps of the belt hang. She wore a checkered man’s shirt under it. The ample cloth obscured her breasts.
“How ludicrous of Roosevelt!” she exclaimed, “Bar the saloon, imagine! Is it Repeal or isn’t it?”
“He has to say as much.”
“He’s a liar, don’t you agree?”
“Of course he is. Isn’t everyone? Take me; I steal Christmas trees.”
“You have the grace to admit it. Speaking of which, here.” She handed him his five-dollar bill.
“You were going to give me change.”
“I just did. A change of mind.”
Brady dropped the bill on the table.
“No!” she said, picking it up and stuffing it into his breast pocket. “I insist!”
He stared at her. She had moved close to him, close enough that her perfume filled his senses. He could easily have encircled her without moving.
“Thank you,” he said, placing his drink on the table. He crushed his cigarette, and prepared to make a move either away from her or toward. His impulse was strong and building, but it had not articulated itself. He looked at her. Her lily-like drooping delicacy impudently on display as she met his look was almost too much for him. He had never seen such rough-toned rowdy showiness in a woman. The pearly chasteness of Irish lasses, however counterfeit, was soothing and easy in comparison, which was probably why Madeline Thomson exercised such power over him. She held herself at that moment like a flare hung in the sky, having just achieved its apogee.
How silent the house had grown, as if it were suspended until their choice had made itself. And how cold it was, as if some virtue, the warmth of it, had gone from that house forever.
You can drink your booze legally now, lass, Colman thought. You can even read Ulysses.
He was going to do it, to step even closer, bend slightly, listen, listen and kiss her forehead. Was it marble? Indomitable woman; unbreakable, tireless. His eye went to the wrinkles at hers. They crept cheekward carelessly. Her dark eyes gave him not a quiver.
“Oh, my God!” he cried. His look had suddenly been wrenched from the woman. He stared for an instant across her shoulder, and then turned and bolted out of the room.
Madeline Thomson shivered as if a creepy silent wind had entered the room and turned it cold. As cold as it would be if her husband had walked in and cast his customary frigid look on her, his well-loved enemy. She dragged on her cigarette, drained her glass, and turned to the window just as Freddy galloped out of view, riderless.
She mashed her cigarette out, but in doing so dropped her glass. It broke into pieces. She turned and ran out of the room, down the parquet corridor, and through the kitchen.
Brady was in a near panic in the yard. The horse had returned without Collins and was poking its nose down onto the thin sheet of ice that covered the water in a low trough.
Brady was running his hand under the horse’s left foreleg, checking for perspiration. He had first to know if the animal had bolted and run, and how far.
“What’s the matter? Where’s the boy?” Madeline asked. She felt a merciful numbness coming over her.
Brady did not answer.
“Maybell!” she cried.
But before the servant responded, Brady ran down into the field toward the woods. Mrs. Thomson followed him, struggling with the flaps of the belt of her jacket as she ran. The day had turned very cold indeed. It was nearly over.
“Micko!” Brady yelled. “Micko! Micko!”
The sound of his voice carried back to Madeline Thomson, who felt a surge of terror spilling up through cracks in the numbing ice. Her own son, her only child, had fallen overboard the liner Excalibur on a trip to Italy three years before. He had been nine years old. His disappearance—she could not think of it as death; there had been no body—had ruined everything.
Brady felt as though he were in a vicious fistfight with an enormous opponent. The effort of running across the snowy field was like struggling to get out of the suffocating grip of the giant.
“Micko! Micko!” He darted into the woods. He hadn’t run like that in years. Once the terrain changed and the ground was solid underfoot, the rush downhill, for all the fear of it, was exhilarating. If he’d gone any faster he’d have flown.
While running he admitted to himself that he always expected it would end like this.
“I thought you were dying, Nellie.”
“I am. So are you. But another time. Not now.”
Now! Micko would be dead! Colman could see him with the spike of a sapling stump sticking through his chest. The horse would have thrown him and he would have flown and landed on the thin knife of the cut tree. Good God! Was it the stump of the pine that he had cut that killed his son? His breathing failed to keep pace with the frantic pounding; was it in his ears, his heart? Was the pounding on the earth, his feet? His head ached and the trees he was passing tilted this way and that.
“Micko! Micko!”
