Росс Макдональд - The Three Roads

“They precipitated his condition, but they’re not the basic explanation. Taylor’s mind was vulnerable, you see. Other men have endured similar shocks without resorting to mental blackout.”

“Resorting?” She picked out the word and threw it back like an insult. She was beginning to hate him again; and she had an impulse to brush the inert and hairy hand from the arm of her chair.

“You’re letting words bother you again. I used that word advisedly and without prejudice. He had several years of arduous sea duty, much of it under combat conditions. He took it standing up, like thousands of others. Then he was bombed into the water at Kerama. No doubt that weakened his resistance, both mentally and physically. But he came out of it without any overt mental condition. It was the second shock, coming on top of years of strain, that broke the camel’s back.”

“You mean her death?”

“Evidently. The murder coincided with his final breakdown. That camel’s back isn’t a good metaphor. Really his whole image of the world and of himself was strained by a series of hard blows. He finally withdrew from a situation that was too much for him. I can’t help feeling that he wanted to escape from it even before she was killed. There’s his complete refusal to remember her at all.” He looked sideways at her from under his thick brows. “He wasn’t happy with her, was he?”

“He hardly knew her. He married her on a three-day furlough and went to sea immediately afterward. He married her in the fall of 1944 and never saw her alive again.”

“How on earth did he come to do that?”

She paused to take charge of her feelings. This memory was as painful to her as it must have been to Bret. “He married her when he was drunk. He picked her up in a bar in San Francisco and married her the next day.”

“Good Lord, what kind of a girl was she?”

“That kind,” she said.

“You knew Taylor at that time, did you?”

“Oh, yes, I knew him.” She lit a cigarette in a series of quick, nervous movements and said: “I suppose I’d better tell you about it if you think it might have any bearing. Perhaps I should have told you long ago.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“It’s not an anecdote I tell around for laughs,” she said harshly. “When his ship came in to San Francisco I thought he was going to marry me. So did he, I think. I flew up from Hollywood to meet him. He’d been at sea for nearly a year that time, and in spite of his letters it was almost as if he’d risen from the dead. Does that sound romantic? I am a romantic, I suppose, or I was. I was crazy with happiness when he came back. But it turned out that he wasn’t. He quarreled with me on the first night and left me flat. The next I heard of him he was married to this girl Lorraine. I thought I was going to be the object of a whirlwind courtship, but it turned out to be somebody else.”

“It seems strange that you should quarrel so suddenly and finally. Had you known him long?”

“Less than a year, but it seemed longer. I’d met him in La Jolla the winter before, the winter of ’43, when he was on leave. We spent nineteen days together before his ship went out, and then there were his letters. He was my personal stake in the war, and I had the feeling that I was his stake in the future. I counted too heavily on that, I guess.”

“What was your quarrel about?”

“It was his quarrel, not mine. He resented my having more money than he had, but it wasn’t money that made the trouble. He was looking for an occasion for a fight, and that happened to be it. He called me a few names and walked out. It’s occurred to me since that his actions, even then, were a little – a little abnormal. I suppose that’s nothing but hindsight.”

“Is that why you’ve forgiven him?”

“Did I say I’d forgiven him?” She threw away her cigarette with a gesture that was unnecessarily fierce. It curved over the veranda railing in a steep parabola and lay smoldering in the grass.

“You evidently have, Miss West. Is it because you feel he was not, shall we say, quite master of himself when he left you?”

She noticed the change in the doctor’s tone from the personal to the professional, and it pleased her. His hands had forgotten her and were busy filling his pipe. She lit a new cigarette before she answered, and blew out a cloud of smoke as if to veil the clarity of her thoughts.

“Oh, he was master of himself, all right. He carried on his naval duties for another six months. He even won a commendation off Iwo. My head was bloody but his head was unbowed.”

“But you yourself suggested that his conduct was abnormal.”

“Maybe it wasn’t for him,” she said quickly. “I knew from the first that he was terribly shy. He was shy of love, and I may have tried to rush him.”

“You must love him very much.”

“Because I tried to throw myself at his head?”

“Because you’re being so honest,” he answered soberly, “telling me of your humiliation because you think it might help him.”

“I do seem to be a bear for punishment, don’t I? Do you suppose I’m a masochist?”

“I doubt it.” His answering smile withdrew his eyes far under the thicket of his eyebrows. “About your theory that he was afraid of love – how does it fit in with this whirlwind courtship of his and his marriage to this girl?”

“I don’t pretend to have a theory, doctor. But don’t forget he went on a binge when he left me. It may be that alcohol put his inhibitions to sleep. His natural sexual impulses broke through and fastened on the first object that was handy. He didn’t come right out with it, but that’s what I read between the lines of his letter.”

“You corresponded with him afterwards?”

“He wrote me one letter. It came about a month after he left San Francisco again.”

“I’d like to see that letter.”

“I can tell you what it said. He was too proud to admit that he’d acted like a fool, but that was the general idea. He was sticking with the marriage and doing his best to convince himself that he liked the setup, but he didn’t like it at all. There was a false, brittle cheerfulness in the letter that really got me down. He was so obviously unhappy and remorseful and apologetically defiant, if you know what I mean.”

“I think I do – one of those letters it’s hard to answer.”

“I didn’t try to answer it. He asked me not to, so I didn’t. It was pretty hard for a while. I’d got into the habit of writing him everything I did and thought. Then suddenly he belonged to another woman, and I wasn’t even hearing from him any more. I finally broke down and went to see her.”

“All the way to San Francisco?”

“She’d bought a house in Los Angeles, and I found her in the phone book. It gave me a queer feeling to see that name in print: ‘Mrs. Bret Taylor.’ ” She paused and lit another cigarette from the butt of the one she had been smoking. When she spoke again, her voice had lost its emotional depth:

“It wasn’t curiosity about her so much, but I had to know what was happening to him, and she was the only one who could tell me. He’d been gone for nearly four months, and I hadn’t heard from him for three, not since the letter I told you about. I’d taken to lying awake nights. And I suppose one of the things I wondered about was the kind of girl that he’d preferred to me.”

“I’ve been wondering about that myself.” He accompanied the indirect compliment with a slow and calculated look that slid from her bosom down her body to her naked legs.

She was too preoccupied to notice. “I had a mean sort of triumph when I saw the girl for the first time. She was pretty enough – I’ve got to acknowledge that – but she used too much make-up, she didn’t know how to dress, she didn’t know how to wear her hair. Those are trivial things, but they can mean a good deal to a jilted woman. She wasn’t even a good housekeeper. There were used glasses and full ashtrays on the tables and chairs. I shouldn’t be catty like this, should I? Nil nisi bonum.”