The passing, when it had come, had been swift, almost as sudden as the attack that had struck Claude a low blow.
He’d returned to the supervision of his small plastics manufacturing plant for want of something better to do. It gave him escape from the house, from windows that seemed to draw his gaze toward a certain spot on the front walk. He came and went, a tall, rawboned giant of a shadow.
And then one afternoon Hester came in from her flower garden and heard Claude humming in the bedroom. She let the basket slide from her hand to the kitchen table. A tremulous expression crossed her faded, wrinkled lips. A light struggled for life in her tired blue eyes. Claude’s humming was off-key, but to Hester, it filled the house with a sweeter sound than the singing of the birds who flitted about their bath at the edge of her flower garden.
Controlling the emotion that surged up in her, Hester went casually to the bedroom. Claude was at the dressing table mirror, bending slightly as he knotted a bright, striped necktie, one she had never seen before. He was impeccable in a freshly pressed suit, the iron gray hair brushed against his temples. There was even color in his face, making him look twenty years younger. Something about his appearance and manner disconcerted Hester. She felt drab and old.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” she said. “Do you want an early dinner?”
His humming broke off. He looked at her reflection in the mirror. He didn’t bother to turn, and she had the feeling that the mirrored reflection of her was enough for him.
“I won’t be here, Hester,” Claude said. “I’m hiring a new man at the plant, a junior exec, and I’ll be taking him to dinner. A man reveals himself, you know, in his choice of manner of food and drink.”
She didn’t know, but she supposed it was true. For thirty-five years she had waxed floors, pressed draperies, seen to the plentiful supply of snowy white shirts, paired socks, and, in accordance with his wishes, left the running of the business to Claude.
Hester drifted to sleep over a book that night, and was awakened by the hissing sound of the shower the next morning. Maudie, the cook-maid, was putting breakfast on the table when Hester went into the nook off the kitchen.
Claude entered, looking fresher and more agile than he had in years. With a nod toward the room in general, he sat down and spread his morning paper.
“Did you hire the new man, Claude?” Hester asked.
“What?” he said behind the paper.
“The fellow you took to dinner.”
“Oh. Him. No, I don’t think he’ll do. Have to keep looking.”
“Claude...” she hesitated.
“Yes? Well, what is it?”
“Why don’t you bring them home? For dinner. The applicants for the executive position, I mean.”
The paper rattled as he lowered it. He gave her a brief look, as if she had gone slightly daft. Then he shook out the paper and turned to another page.
“You might think about it,” she said.
“Sure,” Claude said. “I will. But it would be a lot of bother.”
“I wouldn’t mind.”
“Well, all right,” he said shortly. “I told you I’d think about it.” During the morning, Hester kept herself desperately busy plotting a new flower bed. But her thoughts kept returning to Claude’s disdainful impatience with her.
In their long marriage, disagreements had been inevitable. But never before had Hester been ridden with this feeling of being shut out, of being a mere nothing in Claude’s eyes. The husband she’d known seemed to have passed from her, really, during that frightful heart attack.
Hester looked toward the house, realizing that Maudie had been calling her name.
“’Phone for you, Mrs. Bennett,” Maudie said.
Removing her heavy cotton gloves with their earth stains, Hester went into the house. From the living room came the whirr of the vacuum cleaner under Maudie’s guidance.
The kitchen extension phone was dangling from its cord, as Maudie had left it.
Hester lifted the phone and said, “Mrs. Bennett speaking.”
“You don’t know me,” a thin, taut, male voice said, “and my name’s not important. What I’ve got to say concerns your husband — and a girl.”
“I don’t believe I understand.”
“She was my girl. At least I thought so, until a well-heeled old leech came along.”
Hester clutched the phone in a nerveless hand. The sound of the vacuum cleaner seemed to swell to an intolerable roar that filled the house, reverberated from the walls.
“What are you saying?” she said. “How dare you say such a thing!”
“Okay, lady, keep your head in the sand.”
“I don’t believe you!”
“So don’t. But her name is Marylin Jordan, and the leech is fixing a hideaway for her right now on Taculla Lake. The real cool pad on the point.”
“You must have made a mistake,” Hester said desperately. “My husband is old and dangerously ill. You’re suspecting the wrong man.”
“It’s more than suspicion, lady. She’s a hungry, predatory cat and he’s the rat she’s been looking for.”
“But he—”
“You know the saying, lady. No fool like an old one. Maybe he’s just got to burn big before the wick sputters out.”
Hester closed her eyes, swayed. “This is the cruelest kind of joke.”
“Joke?” the voice became a shallow, humorless laugh. “Maybe so. On the both of us.”
The line went dead. Hester lowered the phone slowly and looked at it as if it were a dream substance that would dissolve from her hand.
Stirring finally, Hester turned and walked to the living room. Maudie was rattling Venetian blinds with a cleaner attachment and made no sign of hearing when Hester spoke her name in her soft, normal tone.
“Maudie!” Hester repeated in a louder tone.
An amply-fleshed pouter pigeon, Maudie looked over her shoulder.
“I have some shopping to do,” Hester said. “I may be gone a good part of the day.”
Maudie nodded and returned her attention to her work.
In her light car, Hester drove out of the city without haste. She didn’t enjoy driving. And this was all so silly and useless. She really should turn back, she told herself. But the car seemed to have a will of its own. The city limits dropped behind.
Taculla Lake was a full hour’s drive, away from civilization, over a secondary road of macadam. While a few families maintained year-round residences there, the lake mainly provided weekend retreats for those who could afford it. The lodges, widely separated to provide privacy, were mostly of an architectural design in keeping with the setting, with vaulted ceilings and long, railed galleries overlooking private docks for cruisers and small boats.
Hester reached the small village above the lake. There was a large store handling general merchandise, a filling station, a glass and brick building, jarringly out of place, that displayed boats and marine gear. And a small log building with a sign on the roof that read: Hiram Hyder, Real Estate.
Hester parked her car on the graveled area beside the real estate office. She got out, crossed the small porch, and entered a pleasant office paneled in wormy chestnut. The lone occupant was a heavyset man of middle age. In shirt sleeves, he was bent over a slightly cluttered desk. With the forefinger of his left hand he toyed with the few wisps of hair on an otherwise bald head, while he checked figures on an adding machine tape with a pencil in his right hand.
As the screen door sighed closed behind Hester, he glanced up, rose immediately, plucked a suit coat from the back of his chair, and put it on.
“Mr. Hyder?”
“Yes, what can I do for you?” He came around the desk to offer Hester a chair.