Treasures (20 page)

He had very quick perceptions. Too often he saw men’s glances at her quickly turned away when Eddy intercepted them. And then there were all those casual invitations, like the one last Sunday when they were coming from the movies.

“Hi, Pam! Can you make a fourth at tennis tomorrow?”

The man had had a supercilious look on his dark, vivid face. He’d had a swagger, and his arrogant eyes would appeal to women. Mean men attracted some women, absurd as it seemed. Eddy recognized the type. He probably crawled out of one soft bed into another, a different one every night. A man like him wouldn’t stop at tennis.…

To think that on first meeting her he had thought she was “cool”! Under the correct, the “preppie,” exterior, she smoldered. How Pam loved sex! Sex, the imponderable and unexplainable. Who could say what she might do or might not do during the long week while he was working in the city? Suddenly, he was furious.

The sight of a police car pulling a motorist over to the side of the road sobered him, and he slowed down. Ah, but I am probably making a mountain out of a molehill, he began to assure himself. I’m imagining. I’m exaggerating. Pam cares about me. There can’t be any mistake about that, about the way we are together, and not only in bed.…

As he turned into the long gravel drive, past shaggy bushes that brushed his fenders, he thought with a secret smile how Pam’s mother was dying for him to marry Pam. Oh, in the beginning it had been different! He wasn’t in the
Social Register
; he might well have been just another Wall Street fly-by-night, spending everything he made and as likely as not to lose his job with the toss of a coin. By now, she knew otherwise.

He parked the car and got out, reaching for a magazine on the seat. It was a popular business weekly. This issue, which had come out only yesterday, contained the long-anticipated article about himself, the “Young Prince of Wall Street.” A few years ago he would have bounded into this house waving it in his hand, but now he thought carefully before acting. Yes, he decided, there would be far greater impact if people were to discover the article for themselves, as they were sure to do. He walked up the porch steps without it and knocked on the screen door.

When Mrs. Granger’s cool voice called, “Come in,” he followed it to the dining room, where he found her on a step-stool changing bulbs in the chandelier.

“Oh, Eddy! It’s good to see you, Pam’s upstairs showering,
and I’m struggling here. If only I were three inches taller, it wouldn’t be so impossible—”

“Here, let me.” He took off his jacket, revealing smartly striped braces and a shirt pocket with a small, tasteful monogram.

“What three extra inches can do!” he said gaily as Mrs. Granger handed up the bulbs.

“A good deal more than three. Oh, I don’t care what women’s lib people say, a woman needs to have a man around. A husband.” The tone was wistful.

Deciding to keep the talk light, he answered with a laugh, “What for? To change light bulbs?”

She was shrewd. At once her retort became equally light. “Oh, to mix drinks and cope with the plumber. All that sort of thing.”

They were onto each other. Yet he liked the woman. Her prattle, while it was so obvious, was both amusing and interesting to him.

“It must seem foolish to you that two women live alone surrounded by so much empty space. But my great-grandfather built this house, and the best parts of my life were lived here. The house was always filled with cousins and guests; we used every inch of it. It would crush me to walk away from it. Besides, Pam loves it as much as I do. She’s got her horses just down the road and, well, you know.”

He knew. He could imagine the house in its heyday. The wicker chairs on the porch would have been newly cushioned and the greenhouse, now fallen into neglect, would have provided flowers enough to fill every nook
and bay window. Even now the place had its charm and dignity.

He looked over to the sideboard—original Sheraton, he was pretty sure. On it stood a George II tea service. Old silver acquired a special soft gleam, and it felt like silk in the hands. These pieces must have been in the family for five generations. It would feel nice to be part of such a family, he was thinking while he screwed in the last of the bulbs. It would make you feel solid, rooted, as if you really belonged somewhere.

“Hey!” Pam came clattering down the stairs and into the dining room, waving a magazine. “You there with your secrets! Mom, look what they’ve written about Eddy!”

The two women leaned over the magazine, reading the double-page spread. Evening light sifted through the screen and passed through Pam’s pink silk housecoat, outlining her long legs to the hips, and giving rise in Eddy to certain very warm anticipations and recollections. He stood waiting modestly until they had finished reading and then modestly listened to their astonished praise.

“Eddy!” Pam cried. “I never dreamed what really big things you were doing. You never talk about yourself.”

“Because Eddy is a gentleman,” said her mother.

“All these articles exaggerate,” he said. “Writers have to make them startling, sensational. It’s their livelihood, after all, so I suppose one can’t fault them. Anyway, everybody has a talent for something and should try to live up to it. And that’s all I do, for whatever it’s worth,
and it’s the whole story,” he concluded with an easy smile.

Mrs. Granger complained, “If I’d only known, I’d have had a celebration for you. Now we’re just having hamburgers and salad.”

“Sounds great enough to me, Mrs. Granger.”

“I think you two had better eat without me. I’m invited to my cousin Mona’s, and I’m not dressed yet. I’m running late.” At the foot of the stairs she turned around. “As a matter of fact, I’m going to spend the night there. It’s too far to be driving home by myself. Just don’t forget to turn on the burglar alarm, Pam.”

“I’ll be staying at the club,” Eddy said, “but I’ll make sure to see that she does before I leave her.”

So, he had just been handed a nice little present, a welcome comfort for the night instead of the porch swing or the blankets in the rear of Pam’s station wagon, which were their only choices in between her infrequent stays in the city.

Pam’s eyes beamed straight toward his. “Let’s eat and then go change. Have you brought your riding stuff? On second thought, you won’t need it. We’ll ride Western, in jeans.”

“How come?”

“Somebody’s boarding a pair of pintos, and I thought it would be fun to ride along the beach tonight. They need exercising, anyway. Are you game?”

“Sure am.”

“There’s a moon, and it’ll be gorgeous.”

Night riding was one of the exhilarating pleasures she had taught him. The beach was usually deserted, and
the quiet, except for the sound of waves and horses’ hooves slapping the hard sand or splashing in the shallows, was an amazement to a New Yorker’s ears.

“Okay, I’m for it,” he said.

This time, however, they were not to have the night all to themselves. In the paddock were two young men getting ready to mount.

“Hi, Pam, what’s up?” one called.

“We’re going to take the pintos out. These are my friends, Alex and Marty. They’re horse crazy like me. This is Eddy, Eddy Osborne.”

“Know how to put on a Western saddle?” inquired the man called Alex.

“I think I do,” Pam said.

“I think you don’t. Come on, I’ll show you.”

Don’t do us any favors.
Eddy felt another twinge of anger. He despised the man’s very walk, the nonchalant sway of his shoulders.

The stable was fragrant with hay and the natural smell of clean, well-tended animals. In two stalls, facing each other, stood a pair of identical brown-and-white mares. Pam stroked their long cheeks.

“Aren’t they lovely? The owner’s starting a Western ranch upstate.”

“Take this one,” Alex advised. “She’s a might narrower in the seat.”

Standing behind Pam, he had laid a familiar hand on her shoulder, while Eddy watched. He watched while the other man adjusted the Western saddle on Pam’s animal and then copied him. They led the mares outside and mounted.

“There’s something funny about this stirrup. It doesn’t feel right,” Pam said.

Eddy moved to dismount and help her, but Marty, still on the ground, got there first. And again, Eddy watched a man’s familiar touch, this time on Pam’s leg.

Who the hell did they think they were? Damn their hands, damn both of them! But Eddy knew he had to smother his anger. The night was too wonderful, the opportunity too splendid, to ruin it. Later, later he would solve this, find out once and for all whether—

They rode. A wind came up, blowing the sounds of speech away off over the water, and they rode without talking. They rode in single file with Pam at the head. When she put the mare into a gallop, her hair flew out behind her. The total effect of girl and animal, both of them so lean and agile, was as graceful as any spectacular ballet at Lincoln Center. Pam’s strength and beauty fired Eddy. Then he tried self-analysis. He knew he was the most competitive of men; he knew he was affected by the rivalry, real or fancied, of every other male. But he had never before been so bothered, so possessed.

He said nothing until they were back home and having coffee in the kitchen. There, more abruptly than he had planned, his words came out.

“Have you ever slept—seriously and steadily, I mean—with anybody but me?”

What he wanted to ask and could not bring himself to ask was:
Do you ever sleep with anybody now when I’m not here?

“What makes you ask such a question?”

He hesitated. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but
sometimes I get the feeling that men are too intimate with you. Like tonight, for instance. The way those guys had their hands on you.”

“Oh, Eddy, that’s ridiculous.”

“No it isn’t. You’re a very, very sexy lady.”

“Putting a hand on a woman doesn’t mean anything.”

“That depends on how it’s done. It often means that the man wants a lot more from the woman.”

“Well, if I’m as sexy as you say I am, it’s not strange that men would want to. For goodness’ sake, Eddy, are you going to be jealous?”

“I don’t like to see men so intimate with you. Is that jealousy? I don’t know. I’ve never been jealous before. But I sense something when men are around you, that’s all. Frankly, I sense that you enjoy it.”

“I’ll be frank too. It’s fun to be admired, Eddy, especially when a whole week goes by sometimes without my seeing you.”

There was a pause before he brought forth another bold question. “How many men have you had besides me? If you don’t want to tell me, I’ll understand that I don’t matter to you, and that will be that.”

Pam stood up and laid her face against his. “You matter very much to me, and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. I’ve had two men, only a few times each, and they were before I met you. Of course, I was afraid of pregnancy and disease. But even if there were no such thing, I’d never be promiscuous. Why bring all this up now, Eddy?”

He felt that she was being truthful and, moved, reached up and took her hand.

“We’ve never talked seriously about things, have we? I just felt that the time had come for us to do so.”

She smiled. “I’ll talk about anything you want.”

He smiled back. “Later. I’d rather go upstairs. Shall we?”

“Just let me get ready. I’ll call you.”

He had never seen her room or even been upstairs in the house. When he heard her call to him, he entered a blue-and-white bedchamber, all summer sky and silk clouds. On a little couch at the foot of the canopy bed, Pam sat naked among white lace pillows. Her expression as she looked up at him was absolutely serious in a way that was different from anything he had ever seen upon her face before. Startling impressions and sensations raced across his mind in seconds. Even this room of hers was something he would not have imagined, it was so soft and womanly; it might well be the place where Lara slept with Davey. It was matrimonial.
Our bedroom is the most important room in the house
, Lara said when they moved into the new home. And a queer yearning ran now through Eddy’s veins and through his very bones at the recollection. He had never felt such a yearning. To come home every night to a lovely woman, to share this bed with her, to belong to each other in a total trust!

He felt a little catch in his throat, a little stab near his heart, and he held out his arms.

“Would you—” he almost stammered. “Could you make this permanent, do you think? What I mean is—marry me?”

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, oh, yes, I could. Yes, yes, I will. I want to.”

She was laughing, she was crying. She was live and perfect. Almost as tall as he, she fitted into his arms. She was right for him.

Laughter, their familiar mood, took over again in the morning.

“Do you suppose you’d better clear out before my mother comes home?” asked Pam.

“Lord no, she knew I was going to stay here. She practically invited me. She’s probably figuring out the wedding date.”

Pam looked out over the lawn where sprinklers were showering drops as bright as sparks.

“Whenever I thought about it,” she said slowly, “and not being in a hurry, I never thought about it often, but whenever I did, I pictured a huge reception on that lawn. A dance floor under a marquee. The ceremony at St. John’s of Lattingtown. A marvelous dress, six bridesmaids, the works. You know.”

“Fine with me.”

“Darling, my mother couldn’t possibly afford it.”

“I’ll pay! What’s the difference?”

“A lot of difference. She wouldn’t hear of it, a matter of pride, much, much pride, darling.”

“I think it’s silly, if you want to know.”

“Maybe so, but that’s the way it is.”

“So what shall we do?”

“We could elope.”

Disappointed, Eddy replied, “That’s not very festive.”

“I know. Well, let me think a little.”

“Okay, think. But I want you to meet me in the city this week. Somebody was telling me about a grand apartment for sale, twelve rooms, prewar with high ceilings, a beauty. Let’s take a look.”

“I can’t believe it! You talk as if money didn’t matter. Are you really that rich, Eddy?”