B.F.’s Daughter, page 48
Damn him, she was thinking, he was not kind last night; but she knelt on the floor beside him and kissed his forehead.
“Bob,” she said, “you’d better wake up, dear.”
His eyes opened very quickly and he looked up at her without any expression of surprise.
“Hello, Poll, darling,” he said. “What time is it?”
“It’s a quarter after eleven,” Polly said. “We’re right back where we started. I’ll do some more bacon and eggs and coffee.”
She was still kneeling beside him, and he raised his hand and touched her hair.
“Poll,” he said, “do you know what you look like?”
“Yes,” she said, “so don’t repeat yourself.”
“All right I won’t,” he said. “Did you sleep well, Poll?”
“Yes,” she answered, “and I don’t know why.”
“I’d better get a bath and shave,” he said. “Is it all right for me to go in there and get some clothes? What are you laughing at, Poll?”
“At you,” Polly said. “Why shouldn’t it be all right? Darling, I know what I’m doing this morning. I thought you’d like to know.”
Bob Tasmin sat up.
“Do you?” he asked. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to pack my overnight bag,” Polly said, “just as soon as I’ve cooked your breakfast, and get to hell out of here. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
He always did the right thing. He leaned over her where she knelt beside him and touched her hair with his lips.
“No, it isn’t,” he said, “but it’s a pretty good idea. Then what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to New York and see a lawyer,” Polly said. “I can’t go back to Tom.”
“Think it over first,” Bob said. “That’s what we always tell them at Barstow, Barstow and Bryce.”
“You needn’t be so austere,” Polly said. “Oh, Bob, can’t we both be natural? I’m not going to try to break you down. I want to make a little speech … We’ll call it a Washington Farewell Address.”
“Don’t you think we said enough last night?” Bob asked.
“I’m going to make my speech.… Darling—we should have got married, shouldn’t we?… And I want to say I’m awfully sorry we didn’t.”
Bob Tasmin shook his head.
“I’m sorry too,” he said, “but it wouldn’t have worked, Poll. It was all bad timing.”
“Well, it would work now,” Polly said, “or we wouldn’t be able to talk this way.”
“Well, we’d better stop talking this way then,” Bob Tasmin said.
“I’m going to finish, darling,” Polly said, “because I know what I’m doing.… I really know. I just want to say—”
“Poll,” Bob Tasmin said, “please stop.”
“I told you it was a Farewell Address, darling,” Polly said, “and no matter what happens, I’m glad about something. I’m glad I’ve known someone once in my life who can make me feel the way you do, someone I can honor and obey.… I should have known I wanted that.”
Her voice broke in a sharp sob, and she brushed the back of her hand across her eyes. Bob Tasmin was staring down at her, and she dropped her head on his knee.
“Poll.” His voice made her look up and she saw him bite his lower lip. “Poll, if I were only just a little different. I wish to God I were … but, Poll—”
“No,” Polly said, “I don’t wish it. I wouldn’t love you if you were.”
Then the telephone was ringing.
“That’s Mildred,” Bob Tasmin said.
The telephone stood on the little table in the corner with bars of sunlight coming across it through the Venetian blinds. When she saw him turn and take a slow step toward it, she was grateful that he belonged to her even in the way he did. He was himself. He did not have to pose, like other men she knew; he did not have to dramatize himself in little ways like Ouerbachs or Bretts. He did not have to be conscious of externals, because he was himself. The telephone rang again.
“I’d better go and pack, dear,” she said.
“Don’t go,” he said. “There isn’t any reason.” She was glad there was no reason, but she did not want to listen. She hurried down the hall. She did not want to leave anything of hers in that bedroom, and she had the list of her possessions carefully in her mind, her comb and brush, her face powder, the Chanel No. 5, the diamond clip that B. F. had given her, the toothpaste, the aspirin, her nightgown, her wrapper, her mules. She was laying them all in her suitcase very neatly and efficiently, because if there was one thing she understood it was packing. She had left the door open though she had not intended to, and now it would look obvious to close it. Even when she tried not to, she could hear his voice, with a pause for Mildred’s voice and then his own again.
“Hello, Mildred,” he was saying. “How are you, dear?… Don’t give it a thought.… I’m fine, I couldn’t be better.… Yes, it was quite a surprise. She’s just packing.… Is Neddie there?… Well, get the suit in at Brooks. You know the one to ask for. He always looked after Will and me.… I’m going down to the Pentagon at two.… Get something on the Congressional. I’ll meet you at the station if the Old Man lets me off.… I don’t think anything of the kind, dear. You’d just have been here sitting with your knitting.… Yes, I’ll tell her. Now let me speak to Ned.”
His voice changed to a tone that she had never heard.
“Hello, Neddie,” he was saying, “how’s the boy?… It was a C–54. We’ll ride in one some day, and I was on a B–24 too. Do you know that one?” Then she heard him laugh. “I didn’t. I didn’t have a gun, but I saw a few.… Wait till you see what I’ve brought you.… I’ve got a lot to tell you.…”
He had finished with the telephone when she came back into the living room. She set down her suitcase beside his valpack and tossed that mink coat over it.
“That was Neddie,” Bob Tasmin said. “He’s up in New York to buy a suit. He hasn’t got measles. Neddie’s quite a boy.”
“He looks like you, darling,” Polly said. “I hope he’ll be just like you.”
“Don’t wish that on Neddie.”
“Darling … I guess I’d better be going now.”
It was the only thing to do.
“Don’t go,” Bob said. “You haven’t had any breakfast.”
It was just what he should have said, but he looked so terribly alone.
“Please don’t ask me,” Polly said, “please, darling. I’ll get a taxi.… I’ll get some breakfast at the station.”
Bob Tasmin nodded. “Give me that suitcase,” he said, “and I’ll go down with you and whistle for a cab.”
Polly picked up her suitcase and coat.
“No,” she said, “please, I couldn’t stand it now, and I’m used to carrying this damn bag. Don’t you know there’s a war on? Good-by, darling.”
She did not want to come nearer to him or to touch him. She just wanted to say good-by.
“Well, good-by, Poll,” Bob Tasmin said, and then just as she was turning away his voice stopped her. “Poll.”
“Yes, dear,” she said.
“Thanks again for telling me what you did. It makes the whole damned show worth while.”
“Does it, dear?” Polly said. “Well, don’t forget a word of it. Good-by.”
He did not speak again until she was at the apartment door fumbling with the knob.
“Poll,” he called.
Her back was to him, and she did not dare to turn around.
“Just one thing more. You and I.… I wish—but we’re going to be all right.”
“Good-by,” she said, “darling.” And the door was open. She wished that there were some other word besides “darling,” some word that she did not use indiscriminately in badinage, in anger or in love. She was out in the stuffy corridor, and she had closed the door tight shut. She was walking to the elevator very fast carrying her coat and her suitcase. She was sure that she had not forgotten anything.
About the Author
John P. Marquand (1893–1960) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, proclaimed “the most successful novelist in the United States” by Life magazine in 1944. A descendant of governors of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, shipping magnates Daniel Marquand and Samuel Curzon, and famed nineteenth-century writer Margaret Fuller, Marquand always had one foot inside the blue-blooded New England establishment, the focus of his social satire. But he grew up on the outside, sent to live with maiden aunts in Newburyport, Massachusetts, the setting of many of his novels, after his father lost the once-considerable family fortune in the crash of 1907. From this dual perspective, Marquand crafted stories and novels that were applauded for their keen observation of cultural detail and social mores.
By the 1930s, Marquand was a regular contributor to the Saturday Evening Post, where he debuted the character of Mr. Moto, a Japanese secret agent. No Hero, the first in a series of bestselling spy novels featuring Mr. Moto, was published in 1935. Three years later, Marquand won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Late George Apley, a subtle lampoon of Boston’s upper classes. The novels that followed, including H.M. Pulham, Esquire (1941), So Little Time (1943), B.F.’s Daughter (1946), Point of No Return (1949), Melvin Goodwin, USA (1952), Sincerely, Willis Wayde (1955), and Women and Thomas Harrow (1959), cemented his reputation as the preeminent chronicler of contemporary New England society and one of America’s finest writers.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1946 by John P. Marquand and Adelaide H. Marquand
Cover design by Andy Ross
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1577-6
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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John P. Marquand, B.F.’s Daughter
