“I said it wasn’t.”
“You could have another one today. Perhaps I’ll even be invited to join in for once?”
“It’s your house.”
“All right, I’ll invite myself. We’ll all sit around and be jolly until His Nibs decides to reappear.”
“You think it’s that simple?”
She turned and addressed him very slowly and distinctly, as if she were talking to someone quite deaf or stupid. “Ron has complete identification papers in his wallet and his car registration fastened to the steering wheel. If there had been any accident I would have been notified. Isn’t that correct?”
“I suppose it is.”
“There’s no supposing about it, surely. When an accident happens, it’s reported immediately. That’s the law.”
It hadn’t seemed to occur to her, and Turee didn’t mention it, that laws could be broken.
Sounds of rattling and crashing from the kitchen indicated that MacGregor was at work making breakfast. This was not part of his regular duties, and Turee knew from past experience that MacGregor would make himself as objectionable as possible; the coffee would be like bitter mud, the bacon burned and the eggs unrecognizable except for bits of broken eggshell that would crunch between the teeth like ground glass.
“MacGregor’s in a sour mood,” Turee said lightly. “We’ll probably all be poisoned.”
“At this particular moment I wouldn’t care.”
“Esther, for Pete’s sake...”
“Oh, I know — you think I’m a drag and a droop. You think I always go around with a long face, spoiling for a fight.”
“I don’t...”
“You’re Ron’s friend, naturally you’re on his side. I have to admit, I guess, that Ron makes a pretty good friend. But he’s a lousy husband.”
“Spare me the details.”
“I wasn’t going into details,” she said flatly. “I was just about to make a generalization.”
“Go ahead.”
“Oh, I know you loathe generalizations, Ralph. You prefer intimate statistics like how many tons of mackerel were shipped last month from Newfoundland.”
Turee’s smile was wan. “Let’s have the generalization.”
“All right. Some men just shouldn’t get married, they have nothing to give to a woman, not even the time of day. Oh, they can bring her an expensive diamond watch so she can tell the time of day for herself, but that’s not sharing anything.”
She sat down on the leather hassock in front of the unlit fire as if the sudden release of emotions had exhausted her, like a blood-letting. “I wanted very much to come up here with Ron this week end. Not that I’m particularly keen on fishing or even outdoor life, but I thought it would be fun to do the cooking and eat in front of the fireplace and take walks in the woods with Ron and the two boys. I asked him if I could come along and he didn’t even take me seriously, the whole idea was so incredible to him.”
She paused to take a long breath. “Why, the boys hardly know this place. They’ve only been here three times. Ron keeps making excuses — the boys might fall over the cliff, they might get bitten by a snake, they might drown, etcetera. But the real excuse he never mentions — the boys might interfere with him, they might want something from him that can’t be bought with money, they might demand two or three ounces of Ron’s very own self. They might even take a bite of his precious hide, not knowing, as I do, that it’s quite unpalatable and indigestible.”
“Esther...”
“That’s all. I’ve finished.”
“I don’t mean to shut you up.”
“You do, of course. But it’s nice of you, anyway, to say you don’t. I blab, don’t I? But not to everybody. I wouldn’t dream of saying any of these things to Billy Winslow or Joe Hepburn or even to Harry. They’re a pretty stupid lot.”
Turee was inclined to agree but he didn’t care to encourage her in a new subject. He said, “You need some hot food and coffee, Esther. I’ll go and see how MacGregor is getting along.”
MacGregor was getting along exactly as Turee had anticipated. The bacon was already burned, the eggs were having convulsions in the skillet, and the odor of coffee was sharp as acid. MacGregor, wearing a chef’s apron over his grease-stained overalls, was trying to sedate the eggs with liberal doses of salt and pepper.
“I’ll take over,” Turee said.
“What say, sir?”
“I’ll carry on from here. You go and set the fire in the main room.”
“Things got a mite burned,” MacGregor said with satisfaction, as he removed the apron and handed it to Turee. “It’s the will of the Lord.”
“It’s a funny thing that whenever the Lord picks something to be burned He chooses you as His instrument.”
“Aye, sir, it’s peculiar.” He headed for the main room, whistling cheerfully through the gap between his two remaining front teeth. He had scored a victory, not just a personal victory, but one on behalf of all employees over all employers, and while Turee was not exactly an employer, still he was lined up on the same side. That was good enough. Let the bastard eat burned bacon. It was the will of the Lord.
After breakfast they sat in front of the pine-wood fire MacGregor had built and drank the bitter coffee out of heavy stone-ware mugs. Food and warmth had improved the situation. The pinched look around Esther’s mouth and nostrils disappeared, and the uneasy little animals that Turee had felt moving around in his stomach were temporarily placated.
There was no sound at all from the upper rooms. Either Billy Winslow had gone back to sleep, or else his own prediction had been accurate and he had died. In either case, Turee didn’t much care at the moment. The heat and color and movement of the flames held him in a kind of pleasant stupor. He listened to Esther talking the way one listens to background music, recognizing the songs but without paying any real attention. Esther’s songs were about her two boys, Marv and Greg, and their latest pranks, and such was Turee’s state of mind that he was able to listen without even wanting to cap her stories with stories about his own children.
“... are you paying attention, Ralph?”
“Eh? Oh, certainly, certainly.”
“Well, don’t you think I’m right?”
“Absolutely.” This was safe enough. Every woman wanted to be told she was absolutely right, especially if she had some doubt of it.
“Well, she got quite unpleasant about it. She said I shouldn’t spank either of them, no matter what they did. She said I shouldn’t even threaten to spank them, that it would destroy their confidence in me, and that I was simply indulging my own anger. Now I ask you, how can you bring up two normal, lively boys without a spanking now and then?”
“I wouldn’t know. I have four girls.”
“That’s a different matter. Girls are more — well, you can reason with them.”
Turee was extremely surprised to learn this. “You can, eh?”
“Besides, she’s got her nerve telling me how to bring up my children when she doesn’t even have any of her own.” Esther paused long enough to take a sip of coffee. “It’s funny about that.”
“About what?”
“She’s so crazy about children,” Esther said, “why doesn’t she have some of her own?”
“Who?”
“The who we’ve been talking about.”
“I must have missed the name.”
“Thelma. She’s so crazy about children, it’s funny she doesn’t have any of her own.”
Turee rose and went over to the fire and kicked one of the logs with his foot. The pleasant stupor had vanished; the background music had turned into a loud cacophonous modern symphony, and he was compelled to listen to it carefully, to make sense out of it, distinguish the parts and players — Harry moaning on the trombone, Esther nagging at the drums, Thelma crowing through the clarinet, Ron off-stage with a silver whistle waiting for his cue. And the conductor out to lunch.