He was roused finally by the sound of voices floating up through the warm, still air from someplace in the backyard. He dragged himself over to the window seat and gazed down, expecting to see Ethel and Murphy chatting in the patio, making up a grocery list perhaps, or discussing men in general, and him, Willett, in particular. He was well aware that they discussed him frequently, and he often wished he had the nerve to eavesdrop.
There was no one in the patio. It was a windless day; the lily pool was as tranquil as a mirror and the pointed leaves of the oleander, which swayed with the slightest breeze, were still. Yet the glider, where Ethel usually sat with her knitting, was moving slightly. Willett parted the pink ruffled curtains to make sure he was right. Yes, it was certainly moving, as if someone had recently been sitting there or had brushed against it in passing.
The voices were barely audible now, no louder than the buzzing of insects and with the same persistent and threatening defiance.
He was on the point of calling Ethel, whose eyesight was better than his own, when his attention suddenly focused on the lathhouse, a yard or so beyond the wall of the garage. The lathhouse was in direct sunlight and in the spaces between the laths Willett could see two men standing facing each other. One of them was Ortega, the gardener. The other, half a head taller and looking even at that distance completely in command of the situation, was Dalloway.
14
Willett crossed the hall, hugging his bathrobe around him as if it was a protective coat of armor. The door of his mother’s bedroom was closed and he stood there looking at it for a moment. It seemed to him not like a door but like a high, impenetrable wall which he could neither scale nor break down.
He said, at last, in a feeble voice, “Are you there?”
The answer was a grunt, which Willett rightfully construed as an invitation to enter.
She was sitting on the bed playing solitaire and listening to a ball game. But it was obvious that she was bored and in a bad mood. She gave Willett a sour glance and made no attempt to turn the radio down or off.
She talked above it. “I’m getting damn good and sick of these four walls.”
“Yes, I know. I know, but—”
“Why can’t I come downstairs?”
“You know why.”
“Oh, you make me sick.” She jerked her knees up and the table tray crashed on the floor and the cards scattered like confetti. “I can’t go on like this, I’d be better off dead.”
“Please don’t—”
“I’ve got to see people and do things. You can’t keep me shut up in here like a mummy in a case, I’m alive, I tell you, alive.”
Willett looked grim. “Will you listen to me for a minute?”
“All I do is listen, listen, listen.”
“Jack phoned. He’s coming here tomorrow. And that’s not all. Dalloway’s out in the backyard right now. God knows what he’s got up his sleeve.”
“Dalloway again,” she said thoughtfully. “What’s he doing?”
“Talking to Ortega.”
“It’s Monday, Ortega’s day off. What’s he doing here anyway?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t you think you’d better find out?”
“How can I?”
“Just go out there and ask him what the hell he’s doing.”
“I couldn’t.”
“You’re a big boy now, Willett.”
“I tell you I can’t. I... it’s against my principles, butting into other people’s affairs.”
“It isn’t other people’s,” she shouted. “It’s ours!”
“Even so.”
“You have every right to go out there and boot Dalloway off the property. Now go and do it. Boot him off.”
Willett looked down at his feet. They seemed singularly ill-equipped for booting people off property, especially rather large men like Dalloway.
The old lady was pink with excitement. “This namby pamby manner of yours — it’s no wonder Dalloway’s suspicious. Get in there and fight. Show him who’s boss. Fling your weight around a little.”
“Do you think that’s wise?”
“Listen, Willett, you can’t ask for respect, you’ve got to demand it, with bare knuckles if necessary.”
“You mean, hit him?”
“Naturally.”
“Well, for heaven’s sake, he might hit me back,” Willett protested. “Besides, a gentleman doesn’t go in for that sort of thing, fisticuffs and all that. I mean—”
“You mean you’re scared of him.”
“Well, what if I am? He’s bigger than I am.”
“He’s only got one arm.”
This fact, which Willett had forgotten, cheered him considerably.
The effect, however, didn’t last. By the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, the lathhouse loomed in his mind as formidable as a lion’s den, and the stabbing pain in his back had set in again.
Standing beside the highboy in the hall, he thought the whole situation over carefully and decided that what it needed was a woman’s touch.
He found Ethel in the kitchen stacking the luncheon dishes in the dishwasher. When no one was watching her, Ethel moved with speed and efficiency, but as soon as Willett entered the room she resumed her air of languor and her face took on its customary trancelike expression.
“I thought Murphy was supposed to do that,” Willett said.
“She wanted to read the morning paper. She says she missed yesterday morning’s because I used it to wrap the garbage. I did, too.”
“What do we pay her for if she doesn’t do anything?”
“She’s very helpful about giving advice and suggestions and so on.” Ethel closed the lid of the dishwasher and turned on the hot water tap. She wondered what was the matter with Willett, who was looking hot and fretful like an overfed baby, but she didn’t ask. That was one thing about Willett — you never had to ask what was the matter with him, he always told you.
This time was no exception. He explained that Ortega and Dalloway were conspiring in the lathhouse and something had to be done about it immediately.
“Why the lathhouse?” Ethel said.
“How should I know why the lathhouse.”
“It seems a funny place to conspire, doesn’t it.” She took a stick of gum from the pocket of her apron, unwrapped it and stuck it in her mouth. Chewing helped her powers of concentration, and they frequently needed help. “Does she know about it?”
There was no doubt who she was. Both Willett and Ethel always spoke of her with the same mixture of fear and appeasement.
Willett nodded. “I told her.”
“What’d she say?”
“She said” — Willett cleared his throat to allow the lie easier passage — “she said you were to go out there and — well, sort of investigate. Know what I mean?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea, and why me anyway?”
“She said you do that kind of thing so gracefully and all that.”
Flattery was such a rare treat to Ethel that she ate it up raw like caviar. “Naturally I’ll do what I can, though I must say I could probably do it better if I knew what it was I was supposed to do.”
“Just be firm. Tell them they have no right conspiring in our lathhouse. Get the idea?”
“Sort of.”
Willett retreated before she could change her mind. When he had gone, Ethel glanced at herself in the mirror over the sink, smoothed her hair and mentally studied her lines: you have no right, Mr. Dalloway, to conspire in our lathhouse, so kindly, no, better make it please, so please leave, or how about please vacate the premises. You have no right, Mr. Dalloway, to conspire—