When Betty Jo Atkins left the Sea Trout at five, Phil was waiting for her on the pavement outside. She said, “I’m sorry, but all the other girls are busy tonight.”
“Thanks for trying,” he said. He felt awful. Somehow, he had built up the idea that she surely was going to get him one of the girls.
Betty Jo was surprised by the impact of her words. He looked pathetic. She really ought to do something for him, it being just before Christmas and everything. She could ask him to her house. There wasn’t anything wrong in that, was there? Stan couldn’t very well get sore. Besides, this boy’s company was better than no company at all. Saturday nights were for fun. “Phil,” she said, “how would you like to come out to my house for dinner?”
“I’d like to,” he said.
“Car’s parked around the corner. Can you drive?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, let’s go.” She took his arm. He was somebody to talk to, anyway. He could be worse. 6
After the lodge was in order, Raoul Walback checked what he now called the “survival list” with his mother. He had been able to convince her of the necessity of leaving for Front Royal largely, he felt, because she was a compulsive shopper. Henrietta went on buying sprees the way some people went on alcoholic binges, and often for the same reason, boredom. Her closets were filled with dresses she had never worn, and she collected shoes the way a lifelong philatelist buys stamps. She was a devotee of auctions, and fancied herself an expert on Oriental rugs and English bone china. As a result, the house on Massachusetts Avenue, except for Raoul’s bedroom and study, was slowly but inexorably solidifying, like the dreary interior of a museum.
Flight to Front Royal gave Henrietta a valid excuse for wholesale buying, far beyond the necessities Raoul had contemplated. While she didn’t really believe it was necessary to leave Washington, it was an exciting game. She said nothing to her friends, except to cancel her engagements. She maintained this extraordinary silence only because she didn’t wish to expose herself, and Raoul, to ridicule. She embarked upon the game with the same enthusiasm as when planning a large dinner party. On Thursday she had sent a preliminary load to Front Royal with the chauffeur, thereby salvaging the family plate, a magnificent service of flat silver, and objets d’art which she judged would have value, no matter what the future. She raided an expensive Connecticut Avenue food store, buying tinned hams, imported cheeses, chutney, olive oil, dates, English toffee, and teas and Bovril by the case.
Henrietta was sorry about the Hume girl. Raoul had told her that Katharine had decided, at the last minute, that her place was with her brother in this time of danger, and so the Hume girl had not come to Front Royal, but gone to Florida. Henrietta didn’t believe Raoul had told her all the truth. But if the Hume girl was too stupid to appreciate Raoul’s offer of their safe haven in the mountains, then she was too stupid to be Raoul’s wife.
Now, in Front Royal, Henrietta discovered discrepancies in Raoul’s list of staples. He had forgotten, of all things, soap powder and detergents. How on earth could he expect her to have the laundry done unless she had soap powder? Neither had he considered a reserve supply of dust clothes, dish towels, furniture and silver polish, and roach powder. She detested bugs and she knew the old lodge. It would be overrun. And somehow she simply had to find a maid.
So on Saturday afternoon Raoul had driven to Winchester, where there were larger markets, to supplement their purchases. While he was loading the grocery cart with soap powder, he noticed a man whose face was familiar plucking jars of condiments from the fancy food shelves. The man was buying enough pepper, relish, mustard pickles, and horseradish to last a family for a year. Raoul was sure he knew this man, knew him from Washington, had chatted with him at diplomatic parties. The man bent over to inspect a lower shelf, and his posture stimulated Raoul’s memory. It was Svirski, First Secretary at the Polish embassy. Svirski, he remembered owned a summer cottage near Riverton. But this was not summer, not the season for the diplomatic colony to be stocking its country house larders. Svirski had remained eight years in his post in Washington despite the periodic purges within the Polish government. After Raoul had paid for his purchases and a boy had carried them to his car, Raoul considered Svirski’s presence and his actions. Then Raoul went back into the market and bought an extra supply of salt and pepper. It was going to be a long winter. Svirski was no fool, and neither was he. 7
Stephen Batt usually spent his Saturday afternoons in the garden of his house on the Severn. The house was old-fashioned, with frame wings and extensions tacked on to the central brick nucleus which had been built by his grandfather, the Admiral. Steve himself had converted the cellar into a game room and home workshop. On this Saturday, instead of rooting in the garden, he worked in the cellar.
From the sounds that came from down there, you would think he was tearing the house apart. Before dinner, Laura, his wife, decided to go down cellar to see what he was doing. Her first impression was that he was tearing the house apart, or at least he was digging at its foundations. Batt was wearing old suntan trousers, souvenirs of the South Pacific, now grimy to the hips. He had been wielding a pick and shovel. In the center of the game room rose a pryamid of stones and dirt. In the game room wall was a dark hole, or tunnel. Her husband obviously had just crawled out this hole. Laura asked, “Have you gone mad?”
“It’ll hold four of us,” Steve said, rubbing his arm across his face.
“It’ll hold four of what?”
“People. You, me, and the boys.” The Batts had two sons, four and seven.
“Why should it hold us? What are you planning to do, bury us all alive?” Laura was not actually alarmed. Steve was the most sensible of men. Still, it was most unusual that he should be tunnelling under the house without telling her about it first.
“Now just a minute, dear,” Steve said. “Let me explain.” She had been in Crabtown, on a last-minute Christmas shopping expedition, when he returned from Washington at one o’clock. He had immediately gone down cellar and started digging, and had become so engrossed in the excavation that he had forgotten both the time and Laura, and hadn’t heard her re-enter the house. “You’ve heard about the Civil Defense recommendations, haven’t you?” he asked. If he put it on that basis she might not get too excited.
“What’s Civil Defense got to do with you ripping out that lovely panelling?”
“You know. Civil Defense recommends that every home have a shelter with three feet of solid earth over it. Protection against fallout. I thought that with just a little effort I could dig us a real shelter.”
She said, “I think you really are mad! A few years ago when things were critical, before all the conferences and everything, you never paid any attention to Civil Defense. I was the one who talked about a shelter then. Now, all of a sudden, you’re behaving like a mole. What is it, Steve?”
“I’ve changed my mind.”
She walked across the room and put her hand on his arm and said, “Steve, what are you driving at?”
“I thought we’d better have a shelter, that’s all. Isn’t safe, being so close to Washington and Baltimore. With a north wind we’d even get fallout from New York and Philly.”