The Carousel (30 page)

A thick powder dusted her shearling jacket as she walked the short distance between the car and the front door. When she rang the bell, she still had no idea what she was going to say.

To her surprise, the door was opened by Oliver himself. A gentleman in a velvet smoking jacket doesn’t answer his own front door! His eyebrows rose in surprise.

“Sally! You came alone? What is it? Is everything all right with Dan?”

“Yes, he’ll be home tomorrow.”

“You scared me. You’d said you’d come out with Dan, so I wasn’t expecting you. And in this weather! Well, come in to the fire. I’ve a good one going. Just right, just right for a night like this.”

She followed him up a few steps into the great central room. Deer heads hung over the rough stone fireplace, while above the mantel at the other end of the room hung the painting of this very house that had been last year’s birthday present from the family. Indian blankets were flung across sofas and chairs. A long sawbuck table was strewn with metal objects, statuettes, old pistols and brass loving cups, mementos of past tennis matches and gymkhanas.

“I’ve been polishing all this stuff,” he explained. “I enjoy doing it myself. It’s a nice occupation on a lonesome evening, don’t you think?”

She didn’t answer, but stood there looking at him. Not seeming to notice, he went on polishing and talking.

“There’s nobody here but the caretaker. The cook’s coming up tomorrow with the dessert. She doesn’t like the oven here for pastry baking. I don’t know why, but then I don’t know anything about cake baking. Do sit down,” he said, for she was still standing with coat, hat, and gloves on. “Take off your things and tell me what the trouble is, if any.”

“I won’t be long,” she said.

He put the polishing cloth down. “What’s the matter, Sally? What is it?”

She was staring at him, at silvery hair, a ruddy tan from the ski resort near Chamonix, a gleam of white collar against black velvet, a slightly quizzical tilt of the noble head. Brains. Charm.

“What on earth is the matter, Sally?”

“I saw Amanda this afternoon.” She had not planned to begin with Amanda, had not actually planned anything.

The eyebrows went up again. “Amanda? Here in town?”

“She came to my house looking for Dan. Her lawyers will be here on Monday.”

“Ah, that business again.” Oliver shook his head. “I wish you young people would settle your differences. This has been going on far too long. But I don’t want to be involved, Sally. You know that. It’s not my company anymore—”

She interrupted. “We’ve heard all that before.”

No one ever interrupted Oliver, or spoke so rudely to him, and he looked his astonishment. When she did not flinch, he continued, “And how is Amanda?”

“How do you expect her to be after what you did to her?”

“I did? I don’t understand you.”

“You understand me, Oliver.” Her entire body was burning, her head swam as with a fever, and she took a deep breath. “You’re a devil, Oliver, a savage, a criminal. You’re filth.”

He asked calmly, “Are you sure you’re feeling all right, Sally?”

“Meaning, ‘Am I sane?’ Yes, I’m quite, quite sane, Oliver. Whether I’m in good health, though, is another matter after what you did to Tina.” She began to cry, and with a heavy glove, wiped her eyes. “I wish you were dead. In your grave and forgotten.”

“Well now, Sally, that’s quite a statement. What’s this all about?”

“Don’t play games with me! You molested my baby! Took off her clothes, put your hands on her and God knows what—your dirty hands on her!” Her voice was shrill and piercing. “No games, Oliver. A doctor told us what was wrong with Tina, and we didn’t believe it, but now I’ve heard in that baby’s own words—oh my God!”

Oliver nodded. His eyes spoke tolerance, wisdom, sympathy. “She’s seen too much television, Sally. That’s all it is. These lurid things make a
deeper impression on a child’s mind than we realize. I’m surprised that you let her watch them.”

“We don’t allow it, and she doesn’t watch it, do you hear me? She showed me what you did. In her innocence, her ignorance, she showed me. But she knew it was wrong. ‘I’m a bad girl,’ she said because you told her she was, and—and you gave her that damned carousel so she would keep quiet. ‘It’s a secret,’ she said. And if she told, you’d take back the carousel.” Now Sally’s voice died in exhaustion. “You bastard. You disgusting old man.”

“This is the most preposterous thing I have ever heard in all my life, and I’ve heard a great deal.”

In his dignity, a dignity that could be formidable and was so now, he stood with one hand in his velvet pocket. His air of imperturbable superiority was maddening.

“You’ll be hearing a lot more when Amanda tackles you. You abused her, too. She told me what you used to do to her.”

“Oh, so it’s Amanda now. She’s only a little bit crazy. Just a trifle. Always has been.”

“There’s nothing crazy about Amanda, though if she were crazy, it would be no wonder. But you know she isn’t, and that’s why you have no opinions about the business. Oh, how nobly you remove yourself to ‘let the young people take over,’ ” Sally mocked, “when the fact is, you don’t dare offend Amanda, don’t dare come near her. All these years you’ve lived in terror of her.”

A small, lopsided smile played across the man’s mouth, as with nonchalance he jingled coins or
keys in his pocket. He means, she thought, to show me how unconcerned, even how amused was Oliver, and how weak, how powerless was Sally.

“It’s too bad you can’t see how ridiculous you are,” he said.

“You think so? You’ll find out how ridiculous Amanda is, too. You, creeping into her room at night.… You gave her presents, you gave her the same carousel. Until your wife found out and sent her away to safety. And afterwards killed herself. Lucille killed herself, didn’t she, Oliver?”

On his cheeks the muscles tightened, and on his lips, the smile died.

“She went out that day when the fog was thick and drove her car off a road that she had traveled all her life, drove it into the river. Because of you, Oliver.”

There was a pause, an eerie silence. When Oliver broke it, his stance had changed. And she knew that her last words had struck to the heart.

“I don’t know what you want, Sally, other than to make these cruel accusations. I really don’t,” he said.

“I want to let the world know what you are. I want to expose the great benefactor, the scholar, the gentleman, for the phony, sick, fake mess that he is. That’s what I want.”

“You can’t really think that anybody would believe your lies.” And with hard, stern eyes, he tried to stare her down

Through a cloud of tears, she looked up at him.
There he stood among his treasured possessions, saved all these years by them, by his reputation and his good works, while within this cocoon, unspeakable crimes had been committed.…

She didn’t recognize herself. The screaming voice, the very words, were not hers. “You’ll see! The smell of you will rise to high heaven.”

“I doubt it.”

“Wait till Amanda talks, and I—”

“Go ahead. You think I’m afraid of you? I’ll deny everything, and that will be the end of it. Go ahead.”

“Your disgrace,” she began.

“… will boomerang upon you.”

“Not when Tina’s doctor hears me out.”

“Nonsense. Everyone knows you can coach a little child to say anything.”

“What motive would the doctor have? She doesn’t know you from Adam. What reason would I have? There’s nothing I ever wanted from you. I thought—I admired you, but tonight when Tina—” For a moment the room went reeling. “My baby. Oh my baby!” she cried, hiding her face in her hands.

Suddenly she felt that she had gone as far as, mentally and physically, she was able to go. And she looked up at him, saying quietly now, “More illustrious people than you have been found out, Oliver. Some of them have had the decency to confess and be sorry.”

“Quite right. Most laudable behavior, provided you have anything to confess.”

“You’ll feel better if you do. You can make it easier for yourself.”

He did not answer. “You claim to be a religious man.”

“I am one.”

“Then let me ask you: Will you take an oath that you never did anything to my Tina that you shouldn’t have done?”

“I don’t need to take any oaths. My word as an honorable man has been enough wherever I go.”

“Honorable men take oaths in court.”

He did not reply. She saw the blood rising into his cheeks, and knew that he was in terror. There was sweat on his forehead, and his knees buckled.

“Swear to the God you worship every week. You never miss a Sunday. Swear that you never touched my baby in a sexual way. I’ll get the Bible out of the library. Swear.”

“No.”

They were confronting each other, Oliver against the wall with his hands flattened on it, as though to support him, and Sally behind the littered table.

“You refuse,” she said.

“I refuse.”

He was trying to get hold of himself. She actually saw the process going on in the man, this man so reasonable, kindly, and correct, whose mask had dropped, had been stripped away. Slowly he drew himself up to his natural height, and raising his head, defied her.

“What more do you want, Sally? I’m getting quite tired of this.”

“I told you. I want to reveal you as you are, and I’m going to do it.”

“You try and you’ll regret it.”

“I don’t think so, Oliver.”

“You do that and I’ll accuse Dan of molesting his own daughter.”

She was stunned; it was a moment before her brain received the full impact of what he had said. Then the enormity of this consummate evil drove her completely mad. And yet, in spite of it, she had enough control to keep from flying at his throat. Instead, her hands moved, seizing whatever they touched on the table, to destroy whatever was precious to him. She would have pulled the walls of his house down if she could. Her strength, like his, filled her veins and surged back. Blindly, in the seconds it took before he could cross the room to prevent her, she ripped the pages from an antique leather book and smashed to the floor a silver statuette and a silver presentation bowl with his name engraved on it, and a silver-handled revolver …

It went off. The crash almost broke her eardrums. She heard Oliver cry out; she saw him stagger back and slump against the wall.… She fled.

The first thing she was conscious of was the road. Somehow she had gotten out of the house, although she did not remember how. Then she
thought she remembered banging the front door shut behind her. She must have started the engine because here she was, guiding the car with utmost caution into the flying snow. She was already past the bend where the road forked toward Red Hill before she was able to come awake.

I’ve killed a man. I’ve committed murder. Oh God.

Under the sheepskin jacket she was sweating. There were pulses all over her body, things beating and quivering. And she knew she must quiet down to think.

Her brain began to work. Like a little dynamo, fueled by panic, it began to click. The caretaker’s wing was at the rear of the house with no view of the driveway. So far, only two or three cars had passed on the road; in the dark and in this tumult of snow and wind, it was impossible for them to have seen her license plate. People didn’t ride around memorizing license plates, anyway. Then suddenly she realized that she had never removed her gloves while in the house, and a tremendous relief washed over her.

The car slid, tracing a figure
S
on the treacherous road. All she needed was to slide into a drift and be stuck; how then to explain what she was doing out here at night?

She gripped the wheel. God, don’t let this car slide, she prayed. God, get me home, please. My babies are there.

It was so cold that the snow seemed to freeze on the windshield almost as soon as it struck. The
snow danced in front of the headlights so that she could see barely a few yards ahead. The snow was an enemy. During the few minutes she had spent in that cursed house, the storm had tripled its power, no longer a storm but a full-blown blizzard.

Something touched her thigh as she moved in the seat. She had actually run out of the house with the revolver
still
in her hand. And it was loaded.

Now panic gripped her again. It crawled up her back as it does when, in the deserted darkness, you feel someone coming behind you. With enormous effort, she kept herself from stopping the car to see whether anyone might be crouched on the floor in the rear. Every few seconds she searched the road through the rearview mirror.

Then she cried out to herself: “You’re driving. You’re heading toward home, you fool, with the revolver in the car!”

It was not far from the river. So came the logical common instinct to dispose of it there. The slope from the road was steep, the slope down which that poor woman had raced into the water. It would be impossible to climb down and climb back in these mounting drifts. She could slow the car, lean over and throw it out the window. But if it should miss and lie there on the road or bury itself in the snow, only to be discovered when the snow was gone? No. She would have to stop the car with the risk of not regaining traction enough to start it again, get out and stand on the bridge to
drop the thing safely into the river. There was always the risk that some lone driver out on this night would see her there and would of course remember the woman parked on the bridge in the midst of a blizzard. But she would have to try.

No one came. So far, so good, she thought. You have been lucky. Lucky! If you thought you had troubles before tonight, think again.

Her mind was unusually wide-awake. In a case like this, the authorities would question everyone, family, friends, and employees. You will be asked where you were this evening. Nanny will say you told her you were going to the movies. Therefore you must go to the movies.

But perhaps she should go to the police now, right now, and tell them about the accident? After all, she was Sally Grey, a decent person who had never even had a ticket for speeding. They would surely understand it was an accident, wouldn’t they?
Or would they?