“Maybe it only happened once.”
“Really? What?”
“Something I saw. Last Friday. He was sitting in the summer house, in his rocker, and there was a woman there sitting beside him. I could see she had her hand in his trousers, fondling him.”
“Who was the woman?”
“I didn’t know her. I’d never seen her before. But she had her hand all the way in.”
“I’ll be damned. Right out in the open? Where were you?”
“In the bay window, the second-story bay window. I didn’t know he was expecting company, and I was surprised to see he had someone with him.”
“Is that all she did?”
“All I saw, but I watched them for at least five minutes and they went right on talking while she fondled him.”
“He do anything to her?”
“No, not a thing. She wasn’t a young woman, by any means. But she was stylishly dressed. It could have been someone he’d known a long time ago, but I never knew people that old carried on that way.”
“I didn’t think they could.”
“Well, it was quite a shock to me, to see those two old people laughing and talking and the woman with her hand in your father’s trousers.”
“I wonder who it could have been. And yet I don’t suppose I’ll ever know. Unless she comes back. Would you recognize her if you saw her again?”
“Oh, I think I would,” said Agnes Wynne.
“My father is an old rascal, and no semi about it.”
“And you’re tickled to death. You’re so proud of him.”
“I’ll sing you a song we used to sing in college. It’s very naughty, mind you.”
“That shouldn’t stop you,” she said.
“Here goes : ‘I dreamt that I tickled my grandfather’s balls/with a little sweet-oil and a feather/but the thing that tickled the old man the most/was rubbing his two balls together.’ “
“ ‘I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls,’ “ said Agnes. “It’s from an opera, I think. Such pretty music and what a nasty thing to do with it.”
“Oh, don’t be a prude, Agnes. It’s no more than what you’ve been telling me, made into a song.”
“You don’t understand, George, honestly you don’t. What I’ve been telling you about your father—the way he affects me, and the thing I saw—they don’t shock me. Well, they do shock me. But I’m only shocked because … I guess I don’t know why. Or I know why but I can’t explain it.”
“If it happened to your father—”
“Exactly! I couldn’t in a hundred years imagine my father having that effect on a girl. And as for the other! What shocks me is that I can’t think of any of that in connection with fathers, mine or yours. And I’ve gotten to know your father, the past year. He’s old, and not very well, and dignified. And it’s so undignified to sit in a rocking chair and enjoy a woman fondling your private parts. You must admit that.”
“Undignified, but I give the old boy credit for having some spark left. I hope I do at his age.”
“How old is he?”
“He’s about sixty, I guess. They never tell you their age, parents.”
“Well, when I’m sixty I hope I can keep my hands to myself. It doesn’t really matter what men do.”
“It does to men. And your father—”
“I’d rather we didn’t talk about my father.”
“I don’t mind talking about mine.”
“Because you’re proud of him, gloating over it. And you do want to be like him when you’re old. Well, you probably will be, if that’s what you want. And you can find some woman to entertain you.”
“Why shouldn’t that woman be you?”
“That wasn’t your mother with your father in the summer house. That was some woman out of his past.”
“I have no women in my past.”
“Don’t lie to me, George. That’s such a foolish lie, too.”
“Well, they’re all forgotten, Agnes. All forgotten, all in the dim distant past.”
“I sincerely hope they are.”
Agnes Lockwood had not protested when she found that Abraham Lockwood was to continue to live in the house. It was a big house, with servants and a big yard. On the second story there were five bedrooms and a sitting-sewing room, and a bathroom at one end of the hall. On his own initiative Abraham Lockwood had the bedroom adjoining his converted into a second bathroom, thus giving him— and them—as much privacy as they needed. The old man (as he referred to himself and as he was referred to behind his back) had his breakfast tea in his bedroom every morning at seven o’clock, but it took him a long while to shave and dress, and now George Lockwood went to the office without him. On some days Abraham Lockwood did not arrive at the office until shortly before noon; on some days he did not go to the office at all. He had no diagnosed illness, he had not been to see a physician, and he did not complain of any localized pain. But he was tired, physically tired, and he informed George that it was going to be up to him to instruct Penrose in the complexities of the business when the young brother graduated from Princeton. “I have to rest,” he would say after noon dinner, having rested all morning. George Lockwood had full power of attorney, and in a few months after his marriage he was recognized by the business community as the de facto head of Lockwood & Company. Older men in the business community saw in George an unpredictable combination of the characteristics of Moses Lockwood’s secretiveness and Abraham Lockwood’s ostensible approachability. In the latter case they had been deceived by the contrast between Moses Lockwood’s methods and those of his son, but the deception—or self-deception—had become a fixed belief and as good as a fact. They never knew that Moses Lockwood was candor itself compared to the intricate secretiveness of his son; that Moses Lockwood was forced by his record of violent anti-social acts into a life of unsociability, or that Abraham, with his dedication to the Lockwood Concern, calculated the efficacy of all his human contacts in the perspective of the Concern.
Agnes Lockwood became accustomed to the presence of her father-in-law in the morning hours, when she would be busy with her household duties but never so busy that she could not take the time to exchange small talk with him. Her fear of him, which was self-consciousness on her part, vanished and with the growth of self-confidence she found that curiosity had taken the place of fear. He was tired, undoubtedly; his physical resources had diminished, but his mind was fully active and even in brief exchanges his conversation was entertaining, as though he were deliberately setting out to be good company for her. Here she saw a similarity to her husband’s strange charm, which finally had attracted her more than it repelled her and that consisted—when she thought of it—of making his personality felt and remembered. Primarily it did not matter if the personality or the charm created hostility; the basic motive was to be felt and remembered, and this, of course, was a highly complimentary strategy.
Thus Agnes Lockwood progressed in her relationship with her father-in-law, so that in the second year of her marriage and once again pregnant, she got closer not only to him but to the secret of the Lockwood Concern. Abraham Lockwood could say to her, as he did one morning, “Agnes, are you expecting again?”
“Why—yes. Does it show?”
“Not in your tummy, but in your eyes.”
“My eyes?”
“Yes. Your color eyes change a lot more than brown do. Brown stay the same, but blue change to grey, or deeper blue. All depending on how the person feels. You show anger and pleasure by the color of your eyes, from one minute to another, sometimes. You can’t keep any secrets, Agnes, and this one is one I don’t want you to keep from me. George knows, of course.”