After dinner Vera and I wandered toward the parlor, talking idly.
“I noticed you called Mr. Cranford ‘Papa Joe,’ ” she said. “Why is that?”
“With my own parents dead,” I explained, “I felt that I shouldn’t call him ‘Papa.’ childish notion. So I tacked the name ‘Papa Joe’ onto him, and soon everybody was using it, including grown-ups.”
“He doesn’t like the name, does he?”
“I don’t know. Now that you mention it, I suppose he doesn’t.”
She laughed. “I’m glad I’m getting to know you, Steve. You’re refreshing. You accept things at face value, in perfectly good faith. You’re resilient. You keep right on acting in good faith even when life lets you down.”
“I really appear that way to you?” I was surprised.
“Of course. Did I say something wrong?”
I grinned wryly. “You might have done something easy, like swatting me with that vase over there. I’ve acted with less faith than anybody I ever had the displeasure to meet. Sometimes I think I’m the most decayed one of the whole tribe.”
“You mustn’t think such things about yourself!” she chided.
“It isn’t healthy, normal, is it?”
“No,” she said distantly.
I was sorry our talk had been routed into this channel. She was a nice kid. She loved Harold. If she would bear the selfishness I knew to run deep in him, she would enjoy a nice life as the wife of a successful artist.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You know I have a wife, don’t you? Harold told you what I did to her?”
“No, I didn’t know. Now it’s my turn — I’m sorry.” She offered her hand and I shook it. We were friends again, and I was glad.
From upstairs, Harold called to her. After she had gone, I lighted a cigarette and went out on the porch to smoke it.
I was finishing the cigarette when the stranger came. I was instantly almost sure it was the same man I’d seen watching the house. Short, blocky, dressed in a baggy suit.
When he stepped on the front porch I got a look at his face in the light spilling from the hallway. A heavy Irish face. Eyes of cold slate. A red stubble of beard. A mouth that could be either generous or tough as they come.
I hadn’t moved out of the shadows. “Cranford,” he said, “I hope you didn’t think I would give up so easily.” His voice was deep, rumbling in his chest, his words spoken with a clipped Yankee accent.
His belligerence annoyed me. I said, “I’m not Cranford. I’m his foster brother. Would you like to give him a message?”
“I’d like to talk to him.”
“I could see if he’s in.”
“He’s in. He hasn’t left the house since he drove back an hour or more ago. His car is here, and he hasn’t left the house walking unless he went out the back way.”
“You’re saying you’ve been watching us?”
“I’m saying that I’ve been trying to see him. Now will you tell him I’m here?”
Harold himself stepped out on the porch. “I’ve nothing more to say to you, McGinty. Except that this has got to stop! You understand?”
Harold was deeply shaken, facing this man he called McGinty as if the act required every ounce of courage-he possessed. He was in a dangerous mood, his back to whatever wall McGinty had erected.
McGinty said, “We can’t talk here.”
“There’s no more talking to do!” Harold said flatly. “You’ve been wrong from the beginning, McGinty. You’d do well to make yourself scarce.”
McGinty stood with his hands jammed in his pockets, a thin smile on his face. “I’m getting you just about where I want you,” he said. “Just about to the breaking point.”
His words reacted on Harold like short, hard punches to the mid-section.
“We’ll talk,” McGinty said.
Harold dropped a glance at me. I interpreted it as resignation. He wished to speak to McGinty alone. I went in the house.
The door of Harold’s room was open when I passed down the upstairs hall. Vera was alone in the room, sitting rigid beside the bed, as if waiting for something to happen, something beyond her control.
“Hello,” she said, attempting a smile as she saw me stop in the doorway.
“Hello.”
“Harold is down there now talking with a strange man, isn’t he?” she asked.
“Yes.” I stepped inside the room. “What’s it all about?”
“It’s that damn painting.” Falling from her lips, the invective stunned me.
“One of Harold’s?”
“Yes. Now and then he decides to do a serious piece of work. Occasionally he even manages to get around to it.”
“This man — this McGinty — is after the painting?”
“No, nothing like that. McGinty cares nothing for the painting. The painting in itself is worth little. Two hundred dollars, I should say. Harold calls the painting The Wharf Girl. It’s supposed to express a mood of... well, a very dark, morbid mood. We saw the girl in a waterfront spaghetti joint one night. She had tried to jump off a dock. A big Irishman had seen her and had stopped her. He had brought her into the café and bought her coffee. She was still sobbing.”
“The man was McGinty?”
“You catch on quickly.”
“He’s Irish — at least he looks Irish. I was just guessing.”
“I wish we had never seen the girl,” Vera said, a note almost of desperation in her voice. “She was a tiny thing who looked as if she’d always been underfed. She had lovely white skin and her eyes were the largest and darkest I’ve ever seen. When they turned on you, their gaze seemed to jump at you. They were eyes so morbid and pathetic it was hard to look at them and not shudder. Harold wanted to paint her.”
She stopped speaking. I let the silence hang. She didn’t break it.
I said, after a moment, “You haven’t told me anything really.”
“I haven’t intended to. Why should I mix you up in our troubles?”
She was listening. For Harold’s footfall returning up the stairs. Then the footfall sounded and her shoulders sagged faintly in relief. She practically forgot I was there. I picked up the cue and crossed the hallway toward my own room. Harold brushed past me. His face was cotton-white; his eyes blazing.
He entered his room, and I heard his sharp, angry voice speaking to Vera, without being able to distinguish individual words.
Chapter III
A few moments after I closed my own door behind me I heard Papa Joe’s door slam, heard his footsteps resound in the hall. Then the slam of another door. Papa Joe had joined his son and daughter-in-law.
McGinty, I thought, whatever it is pushing you, you’d better have your game well-planned. You’re dealing with a high-strung man. Like TNT Harold might go off in your face if you shake him a little the wrong way.
The pint of Old Seaman was still on my bureau. I picked it up. The amber fluid brought back a quick memory. A party. Year 1945. Just the two of us having a party because war had ceased to be my mistress and I was home with my wife.
It was almost a solemn party. She had been unutterably dear and desirable sitting across the-table from me. The long agony of waiting was mirrored in her eyes, eyes that were dark pools of feeling that night. As we danced, her arm across my back clutched me. We didn’t talk as we danced. I think we were both afraid because of the dammed up feelings inside of us. Not afraid of the feelings themselves, understand, only afraid that an untoward gesture might spoil the mood.
We went back to our table and drank highballs. She looked at her drink and said, “You’ll never be sorry, Steve?”