Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“Well,” Willard began, “Linda and I were talking on the phone after you sent the telegram, and we began to add up—What’s this, the third job you’ve given up since you left college?”

“Fourth,” Martin said.

“First in New York,” Willard said, doing his duty as a brother-in-law and as a friend and as a solid citizen who was still with the same firm he had joined when he finished law school fifteen years before. “Then in Chicago. Then California. Now Europe. You’re not a kid any more and maybe a little stability would …”

“Don’t lay it on too thick, now,” Linda said, worried by the way Martin’s face was closing up as he sat there, listening, playing with his glass. “I mean, don’t make it sound like a commencement address at M.I.T. or General Patton addressing the troops, John. What we were talking about to each other,” she said, addressing Martin, “was that all of a sudden one day you’re liable to find out you’re thirty and your life is sliding away.…”

Willard grinned at her. “Have you found out you’re thirty and your life is sliding away?”

“Like sand through the fingers,” Linda said. Then she giggled, and Martin’s face began to open up again.

“But it is important,” Linda said, grave once more. “It’s so easy for the good-looking ones to wind up bums. Especially in France.”

“I don’t know enough French to wind up as a bum,” Martin said cheerfully. He got up and touched the top of his sister’s hair and then went over to the low table in front of the window which they used as a bar, to put some ice into his drink.

“The idea was, Martin,” Linda said, “just to give you a carefully modulated warning. We don’t want to …”

“Say,” Martin said, staring out the window, “are you expecting guests?”

“Guests?” Willard asked, surprised. “At this hour?”

“There’s a man out there, looking in,” Martin said. He twisted his neck to look toward the corner of the house. “And there’s a ladder up against the balcony.… Now he’s gone.…”

“A ladder!” Linda sprang up. “The children!” She ran out of the room and up the staircase, with the two men racing after her.

There was a lamp in the hall outside the children’s bedroom and by its light Martin could see the two small boys sleeping quietly in their beds, ranged against the walls on opposite sides of the room. Through the half-opened door which led into the next room came the steady snoring of the maid. While Linda and Willard reassured themselves about the children, Martin went to the windows. They were open, but the room was closed off from the balcony by full-length shutters, still hooked in place. Martin undid the shutters and stepped out onto the balcony, which ran along the front of the floor of the house, supported by the porch columns. The night was raw and dark and the mist had grown thicker and the light from the downstairs windows reflected back confusingly. Martin went to the edge of the balcony and peered down. He heard a sound to his left, off to the side of the house, and looked in that direction. He got a glimpse of a patch of white moving swiftly against the dark background of tree trunks and he turned and ran back through the boys’ room, whispering to Willard, “He’s down there. On that side.”

Willard came after him as he took the steps four at a time and flung open the front door and ran across the driveway gravel, and around the side of the house, past the ladder. Willard had picked up a flashlight in the front hall, but it wasn’t a strong one, and its beam flickered meaninglessly across the sloping, overgrown wet lawn and the tangled mass of shrubs and trees into which the intruder had disappeared.

Without much hope of success, Martin and Willard pushed their way some distance through the woods, scratching themselves on bushes and ploughing through drifts of soaked dead leaves, flickering the searchlight beam around them in sudden, prying movements. They were silent and angry and if they had found the man he would have had to be armed and ready to use his weapon to get away from them. But they saw nothing, heard nothing.

After five minutes, Willard gave up. “Ah, it’s no use,” he said. “Let’s get back.”

They walked back to the house in silence. When they reached the edge of the lawn they saw Linda out on the corner of the balcony with the light from the now opened shutters of the children’s room outlining her form in the darkness. She was leaning over and pushing at the ladder and finally it teetered and fell to the ground.

“Did you find him?” she called to Martin and Willard.

“No,” Willard said.

“Nothing’s been touched in any of the rooms,” Linda said. “He never got in. It’s our ladder. The gardener was using it this afternoon and he must have left it out.”

“Get inside,” Willard called to her. “You’ll freeze up there.”

Martin and Willard took one last look at the dark lawn and the looming black wall of the woods. They waited until Linda had stepped back into the children’s room and locked the shutters. Then they went into the house. Martin stayed downstairs while Willard went up to look at the children once more. The living room didn’t look as gay and pleasant to Martin as it had before.

When Willard and Linda came down again Martin was standing at the window from which he had seen the man on the lawn outside, and the ladder.

“What an idiot,” he said. “‘Are you expecting guests?’” He shook his head ruefully. “At this hour of the morning.”

“Well, remember,” Linda said, “you’ve just come from California.”

They laughed then and everybody felt better and Willard poured them some more whiskey.

“What I should’ve done,” Martin said, “was pretend I hadn’t seen him and just acted natural and gone out a side door.…”

“People are only as clever as that in the movies,” Willard said. “In real life they say, ‘Are you expecting guests?’”

“You know something,” Martin said, remembering, “I think I’d recognize that fellow if I saw him again. After all, he was only five feet away from me and the light from the window was right on him.”

“Did he look like a criminal?” Linda asked.

“Everybody looks like a criminal at one o’clock in the morning,” Martin said.

“I’m going to call the police and report this,” Willard said and got up and started toward the telephone, which was in the hall.

“Oh, Johnny,” Linda said, putting out her hand and stopping him. “Wait till morning. If you call, they’ll just come over and keep us up all night.”

“Well, you can’t let people climb all over your house and try to break in and do nothing about it, can you?” Willard said.

“It won’t do any good. They’ll never find him out there tonight,” Linda said.

“That’s true enough,” said Martin.

“And they’ll want to go up and look at the children’s room and they’ll wake them up and scare them.…” Linda was talking rapidly and nervously. She had been calm enough before but the reaction had set in and she didn’t seem to be able to sit still or talk at a normal speed now. “What’s the sense in it? Don’t be pig-headed.”

“Who’s being pig-headed?” Willard asked, surprised. “All I said was that I thought we ought to call the police. Did I sound pig-headed to you, Martin?”

“Well,” Martin began judicially, wanting to placate his sister. “I think …”

But Linda interrupted. “He didn’t do anything, anyway, did he? After all, he just looked in the window. There’s no sense in losing a night’s sleep just because a man happened to look in the window. I bet he wasn’t a robber, at all.…”

“What do you mean?” Willard asked sharply.