“Susan,” Tony said.
“Who’s Susan?”
“She’s here with her mother at the hotel. Susan Nickerson. She’s fourteen years old. She has three fathers. Her mother was divorced twice. She knows a lot of things.”
“Is that why you asked me to come up here, Tony?” Oliver asked. “Is that the only reason?”
Tony paused. “Yes,” he said.
“Tony,” Oliver said, choosing his words meticulously, “in a place like this in the summertime there are often idle women, women of bad character, women who have nothing else to do but sit and play bridge and make up stories about their neighbors, stories that a decent person mustn’t even listen to. And often little girls of fourteen who are just beginning to become interested in boys hear bits and scraps that are not meant for them and build them up into … uh … colorful fairy tales. Especially a little girl whose mother has gone from husband to husband.”
“I hit her,” Tony said. “I hit Susan when she told me.”
Oliver smiled. “I don’t think you should have hit her. But I don’t think you should have listened to her either. Tony, will you do me a favor?”
“What?” His voice was suspicious.
“Don’t say anything about this to your mother,” said Oliver. “Or to Jeff. We’ll just pretend that I suddenly found out I could have some time off and I jumped into the car and came up here. Don’t you think that’s a good idea?”
Tony moved away as though he were in pain. “No.”
“Why not?” Oliver asked.
“Because Susan wasn’t the only one.”
Oliver put his arm around the boy’s shoulders. “Just because two or three or a hundred people gossip,” he said, “doesn’t mean they’re saying the truth. Do you know what gossip is?”
“Yes,” said Tony.
“It’s one of the worst things in the world,” said Oliver. “It’s a grownup disease. And one way a good man remains a child all his life is that he doesn’t gossip and he doesn’t listen to gossip.”
Suddenly Tony pulled away from his father’s grasp. “It’s me! … It’s me! I went down to his sister’s house yesterday and I looked through the window and I saw with my own eyes.” He turned and, almost running, went across the room and flung himself into the easy chair, burying his face away from Oliver, into the wing. He was crying, racked by the effort of pretending he was not crying.
Oliver ran his hand wearily across his eyes and walked over to the easy chair and sat on the arm. “All right, all right now.” He stroked the boy’s head. “Tony, I hate to have to do this. But I don’t know what else I can do. You’re very young. I don’t know what you know and what you don’t know. You might see something you think is very wrong and it could be completely innocent. Tony,” he said, “you must tell me exactly what you saw.”
Tony spoke without turning his head, into the crease of the chair. “She said she was going to the movies. But Susan was right. She wasn’t in the movies. I went down to his sister’s house. She’s not here this week and there’s nobody in the house. There’re Venetian blinds on the windows. They don’t come all the way down. There’s a little space at the bottom and you can look in. They were in bed together and they … they didn’t have any clothes on. And Mummy was kissing …” Tony swung around and faced his father. “I want to go home … I want to go home.” Now he wept, inconsolably and openly.
Oliver sat on the arm of the chair, rocklike, taut, watching his son weep. “Stop crying, Tony,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “You haven’t cried since you were a little boy.” He stood up and pulled Tony out of the chair. “Go in now and wash your face,” he said in a colorless voice.
“What are you going to do?” Tony asked.
Oliver shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said.
“You’re not going away, are you?”
“No,” said Oliver. “I’ll just sit out here for a while. Go ahead, Tony. Your eyes are all red.”
Slowly, his feet shuffling along the floor, Tony went into the bathroom. Oliver watched him go and shook his head vaguely. He walked heavily and pointlessly around the chilly room. There was a straw handbag with a bright orange scarf tossed over it that Lucy had left on a chair. He stopped in front of the chair and picked up the scarf. He put the scarf to his face and sniffed the perfume that Lucy had put on it. He bent again and opened the bag and rummaged in it. There was a small compact there and he opened it. The powder was spilled all over the mirror. He put the compact on the table and neatly took out all the other things from the bag and with absent precision arranged them on the table. There was a tiny bottle of perfume, a bunch of keys, a comb. A clipping from a newspaper of a recipe. The recipe was for angel-food cake. He took out a small coin purse. He opened the purse and took the coins out of it and made a neat little pile of the coins. They came to seventy-eight cents. Then he methodically put all the things back into the bag, one by one. He heard voices, Lucy’s and Jeff’s, outside the cottage, and their footsteps on the porch and he composed his face and turned toward the door as it swung open. Lucy came in, followed by Jeff. She was laughing. When she saw Oliver standing in the middle of the room, the shadow of a frown crossed her face. Then she said, “Oliver,” sounding pleased and surprised, and ran across the room to throw her arms around him and kiss him. Tactfully, Jeff waited at the door until the embrace was over.
Oliver kissed her on the cheek. “Hello, Lucy,” he said pleasantly.
“What are you doing here?” Lucy bubbled on. “Why didn’t you telephone? How long are you going to stay? Have you had your dinner? What a lovely surprise! Have you seen Tony?”
Oliver chuckled. “Easy now,” he said. “One thing at a time. Hello, Bunner.”
“Welcome, Mr. Crown,” Jeff said with boyish politeness, standing very straight.
Lucy took Oliver’s hand and led him to the couch. “Come over here and sit down,” she said. “You look tired. Can I get you something? A drink? A sandwich?”
“Nothing,” said Oliver. “I ate on the road.”
Jeff looked at his watch. “It’s getting late,” he said. “I guess I might as well be moving on.”
“Oh, no. Please stay,” Oliver said. He wasn’t sure whether Lucy glanced at him uneasily or not. “There are a few things I’d like to talk to you about. Unless you’re busy.”
“No,” said Jeff. “I’m not busy.”
“Have you seen Tony?” Lucy asked.
“Yes,” said Oliver. “He’s inside. In the bathroom.”
“Doesn’t he look marvelous?” Lucy asked.
Oliver nodded. “Marvelous.”
“Did I tell you he swam a hundred yards this week?” Lucy asked. She seemed to Oliver to be speaking more quickly than he remembered, like a pianist who is suffering from an attack of nerves before an audience and to make up for it finds himself going faster and faster through the difficult passages. “Way, way out on the lake,” Lucy said. “With Jeff following him in a boat. My heart was in my mouth and …”
“I just talked to him for a minute,” Oliver said. He turned pleasantly toward Jeff. “Are you taking all your meals at the hotel now?”
“This week,” Lucy broke in hastily before Jeff could reply. “His sister’s away this week and the poor boy was faced with two cans of salmon and we took pity on him.”
“Oh, I see.” Oliver smiled. “You both look as though the summer has agreed with you.”
“It hasn’t been too bad,” Lucy said. “It’s rained a lot, though. Now what about you? How’d you manage to break away? Did all those charming people in the plant go on strike all of a sudden?”