Читать книгу Peyton Place - Grace Metalious - Страница 18

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Little Norman Page hurried down Elm Street and turned into Depot Street. When he passed the house on the corner of Depot and Elm, he kept his eyes on the ground. In that house lived his two half sisters Caroline and Charlotte Page, and Norman’s mother had told him that these two women were evil, and to be avoided like mad dogs. It had always puzzled Norman that he should have two such old ladies for sisters, even half sisters. They were really old, as old as his mother.

The Page Girls, as the town called them, were well over forty, both big boned with thick, white skins and white hair and both unmarried. As Norman walked past the house, a curtain in the front room window quivered, but neither a hand nor a figure was to be seen.

“There goes Evelyn’s boy,” said Caroline Page to her sister.

Charlotte came to the window and saw Norman hurrying down the street.

“Little bastard,” she said viciously.

“No,” sighed Caroline. “And that’s the pity of it all. Better if he were a bastard than what he is.”

“He’ll always be a bastard as far as I’m concerned,” said Charlotte. “The bastard son of a whoring woman.”

The two sisters bit off these words as crisply as if they had been chewing celery, and the fact that these same words in print would have been an occasion for book banning and of shocked consultation with the church did not bother them at all, for they had the excuse of righteous indignation on their side.

Caroline dropped the curtain as Norman moved out of sight.

“You’d think that Evelyn would have had the decency to move out of town after Father left her,” she said.

“Humph,” said Charlotte. “Show me the whore who knows what decency means.”

Little Norman Page did not slow his steps or sigh with relief when he had passed the house of his two half sisters. He still had to go by the house of Miss Hester Goodale before he could reach the sanctuary of his own home, and he dreaded Miss Hester every bit as much as he feared the Page girls. Whenever he encountered his half sisters on the street, they merely fixed him with dead looks, as if he were not there at all, but Miss Hester’s coal-black eyes seemed to bore right through him, looking right down into his soul and seeing all the sins hidden there. Norman hurried now because it was Friday afternoon and almost four o’clock, and at exactly four on Fridays Miss Hester came out of her house and walked toward town. Although Norman was on the opposite side of the street from the one on which Miss Hester would walk, he was nonetheless afraid, for Miss Hester’s eyes, he knew, could see for miles, around corners and everything. She could look right into him as clearly from across the street as she could have if he stood directly in front of her. Norman would have run except that if he arrived home flushed and panting his mother would think he was sick again and put him to bed. She might even give him an enema, and while Norman always got a bittersweet sort of pleasure from that, he had to stay in bed afterward. Today he decided that getting the enema was not worth the hours alone that were sure to follow, so he forced himself to walk. Suddenly he saw a figure ahead of him, and recognizing it as Allison MacKenzie he began to shout.

“Allison! Hey, Allison. Wait for me!”

Allison turned and waited.

“Hi, Norman,” she said when he reached her side. “Are you on your way home?”

“Yes,” said Norman. “But what are you doing over here? This isn’t the way to your house.”

“I was just taking a walk,” said Allison.

“Well, let me walk with you,” said Norman. “I hate to walk alone.”

“Why?” asked Allison. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.” She looked hard at the boy beside her. “You’re always afraid of something, Norman,” she said jeeringly.

Norman was a slight child, built on delicate lines. He had a finely chiseled mouth which trembled easily, and enormous brown eyes which were filled with tears more often than not. Norman’s eyes were fringed with long, dark lashes. Just like a girl’s, thought Allison. She could see the lines of blue veins plainly beneath the thin skin on his temples. Norman was very good looking, thought Allison, but not in the way that people thought of as handsome. He was pretty the way a girl is pretty, and his voice, too, was like a girl’s, soft and high. The boys at school called Norman “sissy,” a name with which the boy found no quarrel. He was timid and admitted it, easily frightened and knew it, and he wept at nothing and never tried to stop himself.

“I’ll bet he still pees the bed,” Rodney Harrington had been heard to say. “That is, if he’s got a dink to pee with.”

“There is too something to be afraid of,” said Norman to Allison. “There’s Miss Hester Goodale to be afraid of, that’s what.”

Allison laughed. “Miss Hester won’t hurt you.”

“She might,” quivered Norman. “She’s loony, you know. I’ve heard plenty of folks say so. You never can tell what a loony person will do.”

The two of them were now standing directly opposite the Goodale house.

“It is sort of sinister looking,” said Allison musingly, letting her imagination take hold.

Norman, who had never been afraid of the Goodale house before, now felt his fear spark on the edge of Allison’s words. He was no longer looking at a rather small and run down Cape Cod, but at a closed-looking house whose windows stared back at him like half-lidded eyes. Norman began to tremble.

“Yes,” repeated Allison, “it has a definite sinister look.”

“Let’s run,” suggested Norman, forgetting his mother, the enema, everything, for Miss Hester’s house looked suddenly to him as if it were about to sprout arms, ready to engulf children and sweep them through the front door of the brown shingled cottage.

Allison pretended not to hear him. “What does she do in there all day, all by herself?”

“How do I know?” asked Norman. “Cleans house and cooks and takes care of her cat, I suppose. Let’s run, Allison.”

“Not if she’s loony,” said Allison. “She wouldn’t be doing plain, everyday things like that if she’s loony. Maybe she stands over her stove cutting up snakes and frogs into a big black kettle.”

“What for?” asked Norman in a shaking voice.

“To make witch’s brew, silly,” said Allison crossly. “Witch’s brew,” she repeated in a weird tone, “to put curses and enchantments on people.”

“That’s foolish,” said Norman, striving to control his voice.

“How do you know?” demanded Allison. “Did you ever ask anybody?”

“Of course not. What a question to ask!”

“Don’t you visit Mr. and Mrs. Card next door to Miss Hester’s a lot? I thought you said Mrs. Card was going to give you a kitten when her cat has some.”

“I do and she is,” said Norman. “But I’d certainly never ask Mrs. Card what Miss Hester does. Mrs. Card’s not nosy like some people I know. Besides, how would she be able to see anything? That big hedge between the two houses would keep everybody from seeing into Miss Hester’s house.”

“Maybe she hears things,” said Allison in a whisper. “Witches chant something when they stir up a brew. Let’s go visit Mrs. Card and ask her if she ever hears anything spooky coming from Miss Hester’s.”

“Here she comes!” exclaimed Norman and tried to hide himself behind Allison.

Miss Hester Goodale came out of her front door, turned carefully to make sure that it was locked behind her, and walked out her front gate. She wore a black coat and hat of a style fashionable fifty years earlier, and she led a huge tomcat along on a rope leash. The cat walked sedately, neither twisting nor turning in any effort to escape the length of clothesline which was tied on one end to a collar around his neck, and wound several times around Miss Hester’s hand at the other end.

“What’s the matter with you, Norman?” asked Allison impatiently as soon as Miss Hester was out of sight. “She’s just a harmless old woman.”

“She’s not either. She’s loony. I even heard Jared Clarke say so. He told my mother.”

“Phooey,” said Allison disdainfully. “If I lived on this street like you, I’d sneak around and find out what Miss Hester does when she’s alone. That’s the real way to find out if people are loony, or witches, or something like that.”

“I’d be scared,” admitted Norman without hesitation. “I’d be scareder to do that than I would be to go up to Samuel Peyton’s castle.”

“Well, I wouldn’t. There’s nothing spooky about Miss Hester Goodale. The castle’s full of spooks, though. It’s haunted.”

“At least there’s nobody loony living in the castle.”

“Not any more,” said Allison.

They had arrived at Norman’s house and were standing on the sidewalk in front of it when Evelyn Page came to the front door.

“For Heaven’s sake, Norman,” called Mrs. Page. “Don’t stand out there in the cold. Do you want to get sick? Come in the house this minute! Oh, hello Allison, dear. Would you like to come in and have a hot chocolate with Norman?”

“No, thank you, Mrs. Page. I have to get home.”

Allison walked toward the front door of the house with Norman.

“Mrs. Page, is Miss Hester Goodale really crazy?” she asked.

Evelyn Page folded her lips together. “There’s some who say so,” she said. “Come in the house, Norman.”

Allison walked down Depot Street the same way she and Norman had come. Now that she was alone, she walked on the same side of the street as the Goodale house, and she stopped directly in front of the gate to look at the small place.

Yes, she thought, it does have a definite sinister look. If Mr. Edgar Allan Poe were alive, I’ll bet he could make up a swell story about Miss Hester and her house.

She began to walk again, but she had not moved more than a few steps when a brilliant daring thought stopped her in the middle of the sidewalk.

I could, she thought exultantly. I could write a story about Miss Hester and her house!

The idea sent cold shivers of excitement crawling up and down her back, and in the next second she felt hot all over.

I could. I’ll bet I could write a story every bit as good as Mr. Edgar Allan Poe ever did. I could make up a real spooky story just like “The Fall of the House of Usher.” I could have Miss Hester be a witch!

Allison ran all the way home and by the time she reached there the first lines of her story were already framed in her mind.

“There is this house on Depot Street in Peyton Place,” she would write. “It is a brown shingled Cape Cod house, and it looks out of place on that street because it sits right next to a lovely little white and green Cape Cod owned by some people named Mr. and Mrs. Card. Mr. Card is big and handsome and does not come from around here, but from Boston or somewhere like that. Now he owns the print shop downtown. Miss Hester lives all alone in her brown house with her cat, Tom, and she is as loony as they come.”

Allison wrote these words that same night. She locked herself in her bedroom and set them down in a notebook on white, blue-lined paper, and when they were written she sat and gazed at them for a long time. She could not think of anything else to say. A new respect for Mr. Edgar Allan Poe and for everyone else who had ever written began to take form within her.

Maybe being a writer isn’t so easy after all, she thought. Perhaps I shall have to work very hard at it.

She picked up her pencil and made big, impatient x’s through the words she had written, then she turned to a fresh page in her notebook. The blank white sheet stared back at her, and Allison began to chew at her left thumbnail.

I can’t write about Miss Hester because I don’t know her, thought Allison. I’ll have to make up a story about somebody I know about.

She did not know it then, but she had just taken the first step in her career.