Hours to Kill
True, Philip and Margaret had been as good as engaged before Cornelia came to his attention—but Margaret was an adult and knew that those things happened. She was, Philip would urge, very attractive, went about a good deal, had probably forgotten him long since. She might even be congratulating herself on a narrow escape.Pause here; Margaret did not fill it even in imagination.
Then Philip: “Darling, you’re sick. It’s not as though we were asking her to take over while we went on a jaunt we could have some other time just as easily.” He would have started to get indignant, just listening to himself. “Sure, I wish there were someone here we could ask—but I’ll tell you this, Margaret wouldn’t thank you, nor me either, if this flu turned into pneumonia and she weren’t told . . .”
This strain of flu had been developing into pneumonia, all over the Southwest; Margaret, who had never paid much attention to any New Mexico dateline before, had read it with a kind of absent concern. Lucky that Cornelia was strong, and all but immune to anything but a head cold. Philip—but after the wedding and the reception, and the scald of Philip’s light kiss because people might think its omission odd, she had stopped thinking about Philip.
“I’ll put the call through,” he would have said to Cornelia, “and you talk to her. If she’s tied up and can’t come, that’s that and we unpack. But at least let her know.”
And Cornelia had. It was only the second time that Margaret had talked to her since the wedding and their departure for the Southwest, and she was so steeled to an off-hand exchange of news that she was totally undone by Cornelia’s dangerously tight, almost breaking voice. The bruising memory of Philip retreated; there was only Cornelia, four years older than she but now in unfamiliar need of her.
The fact of the child, Hilary Reverton, wasn’t really surprising. People liked Philip and he liked them, and he had a host of startling friends: chairmen-of-the-board, jazz musicians, Village couples with zoo-like names, proper Central Park West families. Once she had had tea in Philip’s apartment, in company with a hen he was boarding for someone . . .
There was a TWA flight from New York to New Mexico early the next afternoon. After maneuvers with her office, Margaret was on it.
Philip met her at the airport at shortly after midnight. Margaret had napped since Amarillo and any sense of reality was queerly suspended; she got off the plane, body still humming slightly with vibration, and instead of throwing her arms around someone, like most of the other passengers, shook hands with Philip.
She said, “How’s Cornelia?” and Philip, dim in the dark, said, “Better, but I wouldn’t let her come out. Margaret, you’re an angel to do this for us.”
Strangers. No, worse than strangers: people who had exchanged rash intimacies at a party and had to face each other the next day. It was probably more difficult for Philip, who had exercised the man’s initiative and knew how well aware she was of it. He said when they were in the car, “Oh, Lord, this kid, this Hilary . . and Margaret only half-listened.
I won’t like him at all, she had told herself comfortingly; I’ll look at him from this distance and think, How could I ever have thought I was in love with him? And he was, taken apart, no more flawless than any other man. He needed a shave at this late hour, and he got out a cigarette and lit it without offering her one. He swept past a line of cars and dived in to safety just as Margaret shut her eyes before a glare of oncoming headlights. She might—mightn’t she?—have been wretchedly unhappy married to him, but would this ride, so sharply different from remembered rides, never end?
Cornelia’s letters had prepared her for the house, long low white adobe behind a sweep of wall; the porch light reached out to bare boughs and a faint lacy glimmer of lawn chairs. Neither Cornelia’s voice on the phone nor Philip’s obvious concern had prepared her for the house-coated girl who opened the door.
Cornelia had been promising to diet for as far back as Margaret could remember, but although she wasn’t tall a faint plumpness became her; she had looked, with her corn-colored hair, like a radiant milkmaid. The radiance had gone now, along with at least ten pounds, and there were shells of shadow under her eyes. She said hastily, “I’m better, really—all I need to do is lie around and soak up some sun for a few days. And don’t look at me like that, Phil, I’m not going to bed until we’ve all had a drink. Margaret, that chair is hard as rock, try the couch. How was the flight out. . . ?”
They were obviously happy, both of them, Margaret thought; already, with the prospect of getting away alone with Philip, Cornelia was reviving. She described their desperate house-hunting—“There’s nothing in town at this time of year, absolutely nothing”—and their relief when Mrs. Hadley Foale, sojourning in Europe, had decided to rent her house. It was much too big for them, but there were trees and lawns, indispensable to Eastern eyes, and beggars couldn’t be choosers.
The arrival of young Hilary Reverton had posed a problem. They could hardly refuse an appeal from old friends of Philip’s; on the other hand, the real estate agent had let it be known that Mrs. Foale was fanatical on the subject of children and pets in her home. Cornelia, coming down with flu, had spent most of a day moving ornaments to high closet shelves, putting away the good glasses, cautioning Hilary about Mrs. Foale’s property.
“Every time I opened my mouth, Mrs. Foale came out,” said Cornelia wryly. “In fact, I’m sure Hilary thinks Mrs. Foale created the world, but whether she’ll . . .” Her voice stopped, her gaze stilled on a point to