— Julia! Come quickly!
— I wouldn’t peer through the curtain that way, Anne. It puts me in mind of that awful woman who spread that gossip about Nellie and James, how the curtain would move when you passed her house and you knew she…
— But look! our hedge is gone!
— Why, it can’t be! It can’t be gone. I remember when Charlotte had it planted.
— See for yourself, it’s just not there you can look right out across the road on that field of dahlias and, that car going by! Just staring in at us as though, it’s like standing out in the yard stark naked we should call the police.
— What would we say. That they came at night and stole three hundred feet of privet hedge? so they’d have a place to park their cars for their bingo parties Wednesday nights?
— I’m afraid to think what James will say.
— James will say what he’s always said, that money buys privacy and that’s all it’s good for.
— I think he just meant the hedge kept noise out, it certainly didn’t stop those two dreadful women from the sisters of heaven knows what they called themselves. Marching right up here to the front door to say they’d heard the place was for sale.
— I don’t think they dreamed of paying a penny, the stout one said she thought it was vacant. She stood there with one foot in the door just gaping right in over my shoulder and said what a nice room this would make for their teenage dances, of all things.
— Yes that’s the way Father always put it, let them get one foot in the door…
— And the rooms upstairs could be used for games. They take such pride in being prolific, I imagine the sort of games they’d be. When I told her we had no notion of selling, she had the gall to go on and ask if we knew of any other old rundown houses they might fix up as a community project. I found it difficult even to be civil, it was all I could do to keep from asking how they’d like a troop of strangers prancing through their houses.
— I’m sure they’d like nothing better, Julia. From the pictures one sees of these pasteboard interiors they try to make every inch they own look as much like a public place as can be.
— Own! they don’t own the shirts to their backs. They make a down payment and stay just long enough to vote in every desecration they can think of before they move on to do the same thing elsewhere, to leave behind the mess they’ve made for the people here who’ve been paying taxes for fifty years. There’s hardly a tree left standing.
— I even miss the smell of cabbages there used to be this time of the year.
— I meant to order one yesterday, I thought we’d have that nice pork butt.
— It’s a shame that we can’t save it for Edward.
— We can’t simply save it forever Anne, I’ll just put it on. He might even appear, I think I heard a train just a minute ago… and clear the mile away the wind might bring its sound from the tracks when the wind lay right, blowing off the day and finally letting the darkness settle, and damp, for day to return like a rumor of day and lurk in the sky unable to break.
— Those acres of flowers, all of them black. Did you see what the frost did last night Julia?
— Well I wouldn’t peer out through the curtain that way, we’re naked enough as it is with the hedge gone.
— I still think it wouldn’t hurt to call the police.
— After the mess they left things in right back here in James’ studio? that night Stella’s what’s his name, Stella’s husband went in and turned everything upside down for a scrap of paper he never found? Edward said things were flung every which way.
— Yes I meant to tell you, he called again.
— Edward?
— No that, Stella’s husband, he sounded more confused than ever and finally put his little friend Mister Cohen on to say he’d heard nothing yet from Mister Lemp.
— I scarcely know what he expects to hear, he’s the one who’s making the difficulties with his prying questions about our shares, and all that talk about going public. Is that what they tried to start again?
— Selling some of Thomas’ shares yes, just selling them to total strangers. I’m sure Thomas is turning in his grave right now.
— Well I shouldn’t blame him a bit if he were, when that’s all they’d been waiting for. Simply sitting there waiting for him to die so they could sell it right out from under us, to people we wouldn’t even know in the street.
— I’m sure they’d know one another Julia. You never saw them in the trenches Father used to say, just let them have one foot in the door and…
— That name was changed from Engels somewhere along the way.
— Julia you don’t think, those stock powers we signed and mailed back to these Crawley and Bro people Edward found? that they might use them to sell our shares and James’? They were blank after all, and there were so many…
— I’m sure they don’t even know we have it. It’s right out there in the kitchen drawer, I don’t see how they could possibly sell it so long as it’s in the kitchen drawer, Anne? If you’re going out there you might turn the fire down under those beans. We’ll just let them simmer overnight… from there, and then from room into room their aroma moved slowly, taking on a near tangible presence, finally mounting the stairs with the ease of the night and remaining, long after it had descended and gone.
— Anne? I thought perhaps the mail had come.
— It’s on the shelf over the kitchen sink, I left it there when I tasted the beans. They do seem a trifle overdone but that was the way Father always…
— I thought I saw the newspaper somewhere.
— Yes that’s the only thing I opened, I put it right under the, here it is. Did you see this picture of the old Lemp home? It looks like they’ve torn off the porte cochere to put up a monstrous kind of chute that’s meant to serve as a fire escape now it’s become a nursing home. Here, it says it’s to speed the evacuation of residents who have trouble with stairs.
— Old Mrs Lemp walked with a stick of course, but I can’t see her leaving like a bundle of laundry.
— And I don’t see a word in here about Edward or the strike that woman called about, the one who calls herself Ann and told us to look in this week’s paper.
— She called again yes wanting to speak with him, I suppose those are the chances one takes, going to teach in a place like that. It puts me in mind of James and his asylums, she seemed quite eager to find Edward something right in music as she put it, music therapy to rehabilitate criminals and handicaps, of all things.
— From the way she sounds on the telephone I’m sure she knows a number of both. Is that who called while I was sewing?
— No, no that was Stella, asking for Edward. She said she’d just called to see how he was getting along, and not a word about anything else.
— It’s the things she doesn’t say that disturb me.
— Yes I don’t quite know why it is, I find even the sound of her voice disturbing, that almost languid, uncurious manner…
— I’m sure it’s just that languorous way that makes her seem attractive to men, I recall her as such a high-strung child but after her marriage to this what’s his name, he struck me as quite slow that first time I met him…
— And that scar of hers yes, now you speak of it someone said she’d had that thyroid operation simply in order to subdue, one might better say to match her pace to his…
— That does seem a lot of trouble to go to, why she wanted to marry him in the first place…
— I think it’s perfectly obvious Anne, if there was any doubt it’s quite clear now the reason he married her plain and simple was to gain this foothold in the company. Once he got those twenty-three shares out of Thomas he was in a position to step right in about the time Thomas became less active. Now with Thomas gone and no one to look after things we and James have only twenty-seven among us, and if Stella’s to have all twenty-five or so from the estate they can bring this gang of strangers in and run it all however they please. Why else would she and that husband of hers have come out here turning things upside down, hounding Edward to kingdom come. He’s just afraid that if Edward claims half they’ll end up with something like thirty-five shares, we’d have almost forty with Edward’s half and keep things in the family as Thomas intended.