Peyton Place (59 page)

“Well, what would you like to be then?” she asked.

“Your lover,” he said bluntly. “But I don't have a set of pretty clichés to let you know this.”

They were sitting at a table in a Greenwich Village basement restaurant. The table was covered with the standard red-checked cloth and a candle, stuffed into the neck of an empty wine bottle, burned sulkily at its far side. David had leaned toward Allison and twined his fingers gently in the ends of her long hair.

“The only pretty thing I can think of to say, when I look at you, is that you have lovely hair.”

“Thank you,” said Allison staring down at her hands. A low-voiced compliment from David was something with which she was not prepared to cope. “Hadn't we best hurry? I've never been to the ballet before. I don't want to get there late.”

They saw
Les Sylphides
that evening and Allison had looked at the costumed dancers and thought of Peyton Place and April coming wetly through an open window. She shivered a little and David reached over and took her hand in the darkened theater. Allison had felt closer to David after that evening but still, when she thought of love at all, she thought of Bradley Holmes.

“Allison!” It was Constance's voice calling her from the foot of the stairs.

“Yes, Mother?”

“Tom is home. Come on down and have a drink with us.”

“Thank you. I'll be down in a minute.”

She washed her tear-swollen face and brushed her hair. David, she was thinking. David would have been gentle with me.

Several days later, on an evening during the first week in September, Allison sat on the back porch of her mother's house with Constance and Tom. Allison watched a moth try to battle his way through the porch screening and only half listened to Constance who was talking about Ted Carter.

“I don't believe that he ever loved Selena at all,” said Constance.

“I don't agree with that,” said Tom, stretching his long legs and sitting on the end of his spine. “It is true that love has different depths but deep or shallow, it is still love.” Carefully, he did not look at Allison. “When a man does nothing more than sleep with an available woman, he is still expressing a love of sorts.”

Constance snorted. “Next you'll be saying that a man is expressing love when he goes to a whore house.”

“Mother! For Heaven's sake,” protested Allison.

“Speak to Tom,” said Constance comfortably, fishing for an orange slice in the bottom of her glass. “He's the one who taught me to call a spade a spade.”

“A spade is one thing,” said Allison, “and a bloody shovel is something else again. Anyway, I don't see what all that has to do with Ted and Selena. He led her on for years, pretending that he wanted to marry her, and look at what happened the minute she was in trouble. He left her. For years, we all thought that Ted Carter was so much and in the end he turned out to be a miniature of Roberta and Harmon. Ted and his big plans! The coward couldn't find room in them for Selena.”

“But what does that have to do with whether he loved her or not?” asked Tom.

“If he had really loved her, he would have stood by her,” said Allison hotly, glad that it was dark enough on the porch so that she did not have to look at Tom.

“Not necessarily,” he said. “There is such a thing as love not meeting a test, but that does not mean that it was not a kind of love to begin with. Love is not static. It changes and fluctuates, sometimes growing stronger, sometimes weaker and sometimes disappearing altogether. But still, I think it is difficult not to be grateful for the love one gets.”

“It's not worth it,” said Allison. “You get too much pain for every little bit and scrap of love.”

“The thing to do, Allison, is to remember the loving and not to dwell upon the loss,” said Tom gently.

“What do you know about it?” cried Allison, jumping to her feet and starting to cry. “You never lost anything. You got what you wanted.” She ran from the porch and up to her room.

“Well!” said Constance, surprised. “What ails her?”

“Growing pains,” said Tom.

In her room, Allison lay face down on the bed. Remember? she thought desperately. Remember what?

Her shame when she thought of herself with Bradley Holmes made her wince and clench her fists and pray for forgetfulness. Remember the loving and not the loss, Tom had said. How could one forget altogether?

Oh, God, groaned Allison lying on her bed with her cheek hot against the crisp pillowcase, why did he have to mention love at all?

It had happened on the day when she had finished her novel. It was eight-thirty in the morning and she had been up all night writing and at last she wrote the two beautiful words
THE END.
She arched her neck and moved her shoulders, feeling the pain of weariness and strain, and then she glanced at the clock and lit a cigarette. It was almost nine o'clock and she could call Bradley Holmes at his office.

“Oh, Brad,” she said as soon as she heard his voice. “I'm finished with it.”

“Wonderful!” he said. “Why don't you bring it around on Monday?”

“On Monday!” cried Allison. “But Brad, I thought we could have dinner and read it over together later.”

“That would be nice,” Brad had said, “but I'm leaving early this afternoon to go up to Connecticut.”

“Oh?” Allison asked. “Are you going alone?”

“Yes.”

“Brad.” Allison was silent for what seemed a long moment. “Brad?”

“Yes?”

“Take me with you.”

He was silent for a long time in his turn. “All right,” he said at last. “I'll pick you up at about four.”

“I'll be ready.”

“And Allison.”

“Yes, Brad?”

“Leave the manuscript at home. We can talk it over if you like, but I've had a helluva hard week. I'd like to rest this week end.”

“All right,” she said and hung up slowly.

Steve Wallace came out of the bedroom, yawning. It was one of the rare mornings when she had no early appointments and she was enjoying it thoroughly.

“Hi,” said Steve, rubbing her scalp with her finger tips. “Coffee ready?”

“I'm going away for the week end with Brad,” said Allison.

Steve began to stretch her torso in a rhythmic exercise guaranteed to keep the waist trim. “Well, don't act as if you were about to die and go to heaven.”

Allison turned work-weary, red-rimmed eyes to look at her. “I've never been away for the week end with a man.”

“In the first place,” Steve had emphasized her point with an extended forefinger, “I don't think that what you are thinking will come to pass. Not with Sir Galahad Holmes at the helm. And in the second place,” this time she extended two fingers, “it sure as hell won't happen if you don't take a nap and get rid of those bloodshot eyes.”

“I've finished the book.”

“Eureka!” cried Steve. “Or gazooks! or something.” She ran to the bridge table which held Allison's typewriter and looked at the beautiful words typed on the sheet of white paper. “The End,” she said. “Thank God! I was afraid you'd have a nervous breakdown before it came to this. Oh, Allison, isn't it wonderful!” She did a few dance steps of joy, in her bare feet. “You're done!” She stood still and looked at her friend. “Oh,” she said, “that's why Brad is taking you away for the week end. To read the book.”

“No. He just wants me to tell him about it. And he wants to rest.”

“Nonsense,” said Steve. “If I ever saw a man sunk with love it's Brad Holmes. His problem is that he is over forty which makes him just about twice your age.” She was speaking from the kitchen and Allison was sitting in the living room. “Of course, a little thing like that wouldn't bother most men, but most men are not Brad Holmes.”

“I don't see what age has to do with love. Do you?”

“No, I don't. Why don't you ask Brad?”

“Maybe I will, later. Right now I'm going to bed.”

“I'll call you in plenty of time for you to make yourself gorgeous for the week end.”

Allison stood up and moved to the window of her room in Peyton Place.

How clever and cosmopolitan Steve and I thought we were that day, she thought. We were so blasé and nonchalant about my going off for the week end with a man. How daring I felt, and grown up, and unafraid.

“Doesn't it shock you a little that I am going off for the week end alone with a man?” she had asked Steve.

“Not if the man is Brad Holmes,” Steve had replied as she packed Allison's shapeless cotton pajamas into a suitcase. “The biggest favor that guy ever did you was to introduce you to David Noyes. He knows it and so should you. I've no doubt that you'll return to the city on Monday as virginal as when you leave.”

Allison moved restlessly away from her bedroom window and fumbled for a cigarette among the things on the night table. Her fingers found an empty package and she crumpled it in her hand as she made her way quietly downstairs. Constance and Tom had long since gone to bed and only one small light burned in the living room. Everything was still as Allison opened the front door and looked out into Beech Street; the night had turned off chilly as the September nights so often did in Peyton Place. She closed the door softly and went back into the living room. The hearth was cold and dark looking and Allison built a small pile of kindling wood on the andirons. When the fire was lit she sat down in an armchair and stared at the flames.

I should have run, she thought. I should have run from Brad and back to David. But did I really want to? In that minute when I could have turned away and said no, did I want to? Until now, Allison had made many excuses to herself. I
couldn't help it,
she had thought.
I did not realize. I loved him. It was all his fault. He should have known better.
Allison stared into the fire in the living room of her mother's house and for the first time since she had learned of her mother's defection she wondered about the heart and mind of Constance.

“It could happen to anyone,” Constance had said. “I was lonely and he was there.”

But I wasn't lonely. I had my work, and Steve, and David. I was not alone.

The fire made sparks as a log began to flame and at once Allison could feel the presence of Bradley Holmes. Strangely, where there had been a hideousness in remembrance before, she could remember now with curiosity.

He had stood in front of the fireplace in the living room of his
Connecticut farm and extended a glass toward her.

“It may be contributing to the delinquency of a minor,” he had said, “but a little sherry never hurt anyone. Here.”

“Here's to
Samuel's Castle”
he said, “and fifty-two weeks on the lists. If you have written it as well as you have told it tonight, well have an immediate best seller.”

Smeller, she thought, remembering David Noyes, but she did not say it aloud. She looked at him. “As long as you like it,” she said, “I don't care if it's rejected by every publisher in New York.”

“Don't talk like that,” said Brad, sitting down next to her on the couch. “How do you expect me to pay the office rent without a best seller once in a while?”

There was a long silence during which she sipped at her drink, smoothed the skirt of her dress and lit a cigarette. She sat and gazed into the fire as Brad was doing, and for the first time since she had met him she felt uncomfortable in his presence.

“You needn't, you know,” said Brad, and she was so startled that she nearly dropped the glass she held.

“Needn't what?”

“Feel uncomfortable.” He stood up and went to stir the fire, keeping his back to her. “I wonder if you knew what you were saying this morning when you asked to come with me, or whether you were leaving it up to me to figure out.”

“And what did you decide was the right answer?”

“I decided that a young lady who asks to spend the week end with a man is either after sex or well on the way to making a fool of herself. I am gratified that you showed enough wisdom to choose me as your companion. You must have known that no harm could come to you in the company of a man old enough to be your father.”

“David Noyes doesn't regard me as such an infant,” said Allison crossly. “He asked me to marry him a short while ago. I wish you'd stop using the words young and old as if they were our first names just for this one evening.”

“Well, I can't,” said Brad. “Not on this particular evening. If I put us on a basis of equal age this evening it might prove to be a provocative thought.”

“Perhaps I'd rather like to provoke you into having a few thoughts. A few thoughts about
me,
as an individual, instead of me in connection with my work.”

“Don't allow yourself to become piqued, my dear,” he said coolly. “Pique often puts words into the mouth of a woman for which she is heartily sorry afterward.”

“Well!” she exclaimed, with heavily underlined surprise. “Ring the bells, hang out the flags, close the schools. Bradley Holmes has come right out and said that Allison MacKenzie is a woman!”

He went to her quickly and raised her to her feet with his hands under her elbows. In the second before he kissed her, she had thought fleetingly that she was glad she had remembered to wear flat-heeled shoes. In flat heels, the top of her head came exactly to Brad's eyebrows.

He raised his lips but did not take his arms from around her. “Almost, but not quite,” he said softly.

“What?”

“Almost but not quite a woman,” he said. “You kiss like a child.”

In the firelight she could see her reflection in his eyes. “How do you do that?” she asked, her breath hurting in her chest.

“What?”

“Kiss like a woman?”

“Open your mouth a little,” he said, and kissed her again.…

Brad was practiced and polished, an expert who regarded the making of love as a creative art. He had led her well through the preliminaries of sex, undressing her deftly and quickly.

“Don't,” he said, when she turned her face away from him and closed her eyes. He put his fingers to her cheek and brought her face back toward his own. “If you are going to feel shame, Allison, it is not going to be any good for you, not tonight or any other night. Tell me what it is that makes you turn away from me, and I'll take care of it or explain it away. But don't begin by closing your eyes so that you don't have to look at me.”