Margaret Millar - An Air That Kills

In the back seat Harry began to snore, rather gently and apologetically, as if he expected to be told to turn over and shut up. For some reason the sound exasperated Turee. It was like a sick puppy whimpering in its sleep.

“Harry,” he said sharply.

“Umph,” Harry said, as if he’d been prodded in the stomach by an elbow. “Aaaah. What? What?”

“Wake up.”

“Must have dozed off. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize all the time. It gets on my nerves.”

“Nearly everything does,” Harry said with a patient sigh. “I don’t intend that as a criticism, old boy. Far from it. You’re too high-strung, that’s all. You ought to learn to relax. Say, you remember those orange pills I told you about, the ones that cured the Pope of hiccoughs?”

“They’re quite difficult to forget.”

“I happen to have a few in my pocket. You could take one now and let me drive for a while.”

Turee had as little faith in Harry’s driving as he had in Harry’s ministrations. “Thank you, no. I prefer to remain tense.”

Harry climbed back into the front seat and then, out of a habit that was becoming almost a compulsion, he began to talk of Thelma again, of her rare and various virtues. Harry didn’t claim that all other women were clods, he merely let it be implied.

“... so Thelma took the old man in the house and made him a cup of tea. Thel’s like that, opens her heart to everyone...”

“Harry.”

“... even a total stranger. Then she got in touch with the old man’s daughter-in-law...”

“Harry, I have something to tell you.”

“All right, old boy, I’d practically finished anyway. Go ahead.”

“Don’t expect Ron to be at the lodge when we get there.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t think he’s going to show up at all, either at the lodge or any other place he’s likely to run into you.”

“What have I got to do with it?”

“I believe Ron may be trying to avoid you.”

“Avoid me? Why?”

“Because he’s become quite fond of your wife.”

“Why, he’s always been fond of Thelma. They hit it off fine, right from the start.”

“Now they’re hitting it off finer.” Turee took his eyes from the road for an instant to glance at Harry’s face in the dim light from the dashboard. Harry was smiling. “Did you hear me, Harry? Ron’s in love with your wife.”

“That’s Thelma’s story, of course?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t let it worry you, there’s nothing to it,” Harry said firmly.

“You seem pretty confident.”

“Listen, Ralph, I wouldn’t tell this to anyone else in the world, but you’re my friend, I can trust you with a secret.”

Turee opened the car window. He had a sensation that he and Harry were stationary and the night was moving past them swiftly, turbulent with secrets. To the right the bay was visible in the reflection of a half moon. The waves nudged each other and winked slyly and whispered new secrets.

“The fact is,” Harry said, “Thelma daydreams. Nothing serious, of course, but once in a while she gets the notion that so-and-so is in love with her. There’s never anything to it. A week later she’s forgotten the whole thing.”

“I see.”

“This time it’s Ron. Once, it was you.”

“Me. Why, for God’s sake, I never even...”

“I know. Thelma imagines things. She can’t help it. She’s got a romantic streak in her nature. It gives her satisfaction to believe that someone is hopelessly in love with her, makes her feel glamorous, I guess.” Harry sighed. “So she thinks Ron is in love with her, that’s what she was upset about? That’s what she told you?”

“She told me that among...”

“Poor Thelma. This daydreaming — well, it’s like the séances she goes to. Thelma doesn’t really believe in them and she hasn’t anybody dead she’d like to communicate with. It’s just she wants to be different, exciting, ah, you know, don’t you, Ralph?”

“I suppose so.”

“I’ve never talked about my wife like this before,” Harry said solemnly. “I hope you won’t think I’m being disloyal.”

“Of course not.”

“The séances, they’re new, a neighbor of ours got her interested. But the daydreaming started when she was a girl and she’s never managed to get over it. It makes up for some of the things that are missing from her life, romance and excitement. I try to provide them but I’m afraid I’m not the type who — put it this way: I sell pills. That’s not very glamorous, I guess. Thelma makes up for it by daydreaming a little.”

Or a lot, Turee added silently. “You don’t think daydreaming can be dangerous?”

“Not to Thelma and me. How could it?”

“A prolonged dream can become mixed up with reality.”

“Now, look here, Ralph, you have this tendency to be critical. I know you mean well, but it’s not always wise. Thelma and I are perfectly happy as we are. If daydreams make up for certain inadequacies in her life...”

“You’re contradicting yourself.”

“All right,” Harry said, with the first sign of irritability he’d shown all evening. “That’s my business. I can contradict myself to hell and gone if I feel like it.”

“Certainly. Do that.”

Harry lit a cigarette before he spoke again, in a softer tone. “You’re smart, Ralph, you’re deep, you know a lot of things me and the other fellows don’t on account of your advanced education and so on. Only...”

“Only what?”

“Just don’t start analyzing Thelma. I love her the way she is. Let her have her dreams.”

“She’s welcome to them, as far as I’m concerned.”

“My marriage is the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me. I wouldn’t do anything in the world to undermine the relationship between Thelma and me.”

“You won’t have to,” Turee said, but the noise of the engine and the sound of the water below the cliffs submerged his words. He didn’t try to dredge them up. Well, that’s that, he thought. Harry wants to stay on cloud seven. Let him.

They covered the remaining miles, not in silence, since Harry had begun to whistle very cheerfully, but at least without conversation. Turee shut his ears to the whistling and busied himself sorting out the various images of Thelma that had flashed across his mind throughout the night.

First there was, of course, the Harry’s-wife Thelma, a short, placid, pleasant-looking woman in her early thirties. An excellent cook and skillful housekeeper, she seemed to have few interests outside the small red-brick house she and Harry had bought in Weston. Turee had always found her a little on the dull side since she seldom made any observations or remarks of her own, but instead, chimed in her agreement with Harry, in a kind of wifely echolalia: Harry’s perfectly right — as Harry was saying only yesterday — Harry told me and I agree that... She appeared, on the surface, to be a woman unwilling to make any decisions by herself, and incapable of originating any plans or ideas. Even her recent addiction to séances, and the ensuing psychic feelings, had been instigated by a neighbor.

But Turee’s mind was getting ahead of itself, because the séances belonged more properly in the second picture of Thelma, Thelma the daydreamer, who fed her mediocrity with meaty chunks of dreams until it was fat beyond her own recognition. Under this system of mental dietetics Thelma became a woman equipped with great psychic powers, as well as femme fatale with whom men fell hopelessly in love. It was girl stuff, this daydreaming, and Thelma was no girl. Perhaps she was no daydreamer either; the possibility occurred to Turee that Harry might have invented the whole thing to protect himself from the truth, that Ron Galloway actually was in love with Thelma.