sour complexion and hair dyed a stunning silver blonde. The fact she was very fat made the scarlet slacks she was wearing seem even more remarkable than they were. I counted four folds in each leg from ankle to thigh which made it seem as though she had four knees per leg instead of the regulation one.
Next stop was the other side of the room where Mrs. Brexton, a small dark-haired woman with china-blue eyes, was examining a pile of art books. I got a brisk nod from her.
Brexton, who was supervising the tray of whisky, was more cordial. I recognized him from his pictures: a small, stooped man of forty with a sandy mustache, a freckled bald pate, heavy glasses and regular, ordinary features, a bit like his few representational paintings.
"What can I do for you?” he asked, rattling ice around in a martini shaker. Next to, “long time no see,” I hate, “what can I do for you,” but after his wife’s chilly reception I fell in with him like a long-lost brother.
“I’ll have a martini,” I said. “Can I help?”
“No, not a thing. I’ll have it in just a jiffy.” I noticed how long his hands were as he manipulated the shaker: beautiful powerful hands, unlike the rest of him which was nondescript. The fingernails were encrusted with paint . . . the mark of his trade.
Allie Claypoole then introduced me to her brother who’d been in an alcove at the other end of the room, hidden from us. He was a good deal like her, a year or two older perhaps: a handsome fellow, casual in tweed. “Glad to meet you, Sargeant. Just rummaging around among the books. Rose has got some fine ones; pity she’s illiterate.”
“Why don’t you steal them?” Allie smiled at her brother.
“Maybe I will.” They looked at one another in that quick secret way married people do, not at all like brother and sister: it was faintly disagreeable.
Then, armed with martinis, we joined the penwoman beside the fire. All of us sat down except Mrs. Brexton who stood aloof at the far end of the room. Even without indulging in hindsight, there was a sense of expectancy in the air that night, a gray still, like that hush before a summer storm.
I talked to Mary Western Lung who sat on my right in the love seat. 1 asked her how long she’d been in Easthampton while my eye traveled about the room, my ears alerted to other conversations. Superficially, everything was calm. The Claypooles were arguing with Brexton about painting. No one paid the slightest attention to Mrs. Brexton; her isolation officially unnoticed. Yet something was happening. I suppose I was aware of it only because of my cryptic conversation with Mrs. Veering; even so, without her warnings, I think I would have got the mood on my own.
Mary Western Lung was interminable; her voice was shrill and babyish but not loud; as a matter of fact, despite the 13
size of her person which could’ve easily supported a voice like a foghorn, it was very faint for all its shrillness and I found I had to bend very close to catch her words... which suited her just fine for she was flirting like a mad reckless girl.
“Except now, with Eisenhower, it’s all changed.” What was all changed, I wondered? Not having listened to the beginning of her remarks.
“Nothing stays the same," I said solemnly; hoping this would dovetail properly. It did.
“How clever of youl” She looked at me with faintly hyperthyroid eyes; her big baby’s face as happy and smooth as another part of a baby’s anatomy. “I’ve always said the same thing. This isn’t your first visit to these parts, is it?”
I told her I’d spent a lot of childhood summers here.
“Then you’re an old-timer!” This news gave her a great deal of inscrutable pleasure. She even managed to get her hand on my left knee for a quick warm squeeze which almost made me jump out of my skin; except under special circumstances, I hate being touched. Fortunately, she did not look at me when she administered her exploratory pinch, her attention addressed shyly to her own scarlet knees, or at least to a spot somewhere between two of the more likely creases.
I managed, after a few fairly hysterical remarks, to get to the console where the remains of the martinis were, promising I’d bring her back one. While I poured the watery remains from the shaker into my glass, Mrs. Brexton suddenly joined me. “Make me one too,” she said in a low voice.
“Oh? why sure. You like yours dry.”
“Any way.” She looked at her husband who was seated with his back to us, gesticulating as he made some point. There was no expression in her face but I could feel a certain coldness emanating from her, like that chill which comes from corpses after rigor has set in.
I made a slapdash martini for her and another for Mary Western Lung. Without even a “thank you” Mrs. Brexton joined the group by the fire, talking, I noticed, to Miss Claypoole only, ignoring the two men who were still arguing.
Since there was no place else to go, I had to rejoin Miss Lung who sipped her martini with daintily pursed lips on which sparkled a few long golden hairs.
“I never like anything but gin,” she said, putting the drink down almost untouched. “I can even remember when my older brothers used to make it in bathtubs 1” She roared with laughter at the thought of little-old-she being old enough to remember Prohibition.
][ then found out why she was a noted penwoman. “I do a column caUed ‘Book-Chat’ it’s syndicated all over the United States and Canada. Oh, you’ve read it? Yes? Well, isn't that sweet of you to say so. I put a great deal of myself in it. Of course I really don’t have to make a living but every bit counts these days and it’s a lucky thing for me it’s gone over so big, the column that is. I’ve done it nine years.”
I troweled some more praise her way, pretending I was a fan. Actually, I was fascinated, for some reason I couldn’t define, by Mrs. Brexton and, as we talked, glanced at her from time to time out of the corner of my eyes: she was talking intently to Allie Claypoole who listened to what she said, a serious, almost grim expression on her face; unfortunately their voices were too low for me to catch what they were saying. Whatever it was I did not like the downward twist to Mrs. Brexton’s thin mouth, the peevish scowl on her face.
“Rose tells me you’re a writer, Mr. Sargeant.”
Rose picked the wrong disguise, I thought to myself irritably, I could hardly hope to fool the authoress of “Book-Chat.” I stalled. I told part of the truth. “I used to be assistant drama critic on the New York Globe up until a few years ago when I quit ... to write a novel.”
“Oh? how exciting! Throwing everything to the wind like that! To live for your art! How I envy and admire you! Do let me be your first reader and critic.”
I mumbled something about not being finished yet but she was off, her great bosoms heaving and rippling. “I did the same, too, years ago when I was at Radcliffe. I just left school one day and told my family I was going to become a Lady of Letters. And I did. My family were Boston . . . stuffy people, but they came around when I wrote Little Biddy Bit . , . you probably remember it. I believe it was considered the best child’s book of the era . . . even today a brand-new generation of children thrills to it; their little letters to me are heart-warming.”
Heartburning seemed to me a more apt description. Then the career of Mary Western Lung was given me at incredible length. We had got her almost down to the present, when I asked what was keeping our hostess. This stopped her for a split second; then she said. “Rose is often late.” She looked uncomfortable. “But then you’re a friend of hers . . . you probably know all about it.”
I nodded, completely at sea. “Even so . . .”