Lucy Crown by Irwin Shaw Read Free Book Online Page B

he started the motor once more. Lucy stepped back. They waved at each other as Oliver drove the car up toward the hotel.
    Lucy stood in the shade of the tree, watching the car disappear around a turn, hidden by the grove of trees. She sighed and went back into the living room. She sat down heavily on a dark wooden chair. She looked around her, thinking, No matter how many flowers you put in here, this room is impossible. She sat there, remembering the sound of the car, moving away up the narrow, sandy road. She sat there, in the ugly, fragrant room, thinking, Defeat, defeat. I always lose. I am always the one who says, I’m sorry.

4
    S ITTING BESIDE OLIVER IN the sedate Buick as they drove through the white Vermont towns, Patterson settled back comfortably in the front seat, pleased with everything, pleased with the neat, efficient way Oliver drove, pleased with the weather, with the week-end, with the memory of Mrs. Wales, with his friendship with the Crowns, with the recovery of Tony, pleased with the image of Lucy, barelegged, with her white sweater loose over her bathing suit, stopping in the sunlight, leaning on Oliver’s shoulder, to shake out a pebble that had been caught between her toes and the sole of her wooden clog.
    He looked across at Oliver, sitting easily at the wheel, his face severe and intelligent, modified subtly by that touch of useless daring, that obsolete and almost military recklessness that Patterson had remarked when they were drinking their whiskies on the lawn. God, thought Patterson, if he were interested in other women, it would be a holy parade! If I looked like that … He grinned inwardly. He half-closed his eyes, and thought again of Lucy, caught in the sunlight, on the path up from the lake, her hair falling loose over her face as she bent over her bare, long leg.
    Well, he thought, if I were married to Lucy Crown I wouldn’t look at anyone else, either.
    Sometimes, when he had drunk too much or was feeling sad, he told himself that if he had permitted it, he would have fallen in love with Lucy Crown, who at that time was Lucy Hammond, the first evening he saw her, a month before she married Oliver. And there had been one night, at a dance at the country club, when he nearly had told her so. Or perhaps he had told her so. It had been confused and quick and the band was playing loudly, and Lucy had been in his arms one moment and out of them the next and there had been no doubt about it, that night he had drunk too much.
    The first time Patterson had met Lucy was in the early 1920s, when Oliver brought her back to Hartford to introduce her to his family. Patterson was older than Oliver and had already been married more than a year and had just begun to practice in Hartford. The Crowns had lived in Hartford for four generations and old man Crown had a printing business that had come down in the family and had kept the Crowns comfortably rich for fifty years. There were two daughters in the family, both older than Oliver and already married, and there had been a brother who had been killed in a plane accident during the war. Oliver had trained to be a pilot, too, but had arrived in France very late and had never flown in combat.
    After the war and after France, Oliver had settled in New York and started a small, experimental airplane business with two other veterans. Old man Crown had put up Oliver’s share of the money, and the three young men had set up a factory near Jersey City and some years they almost broke even.
    Patterson had known Oliver ever since Oliver had been a freshman trying to make the baseball team when Patterson was a senior in high school. Even then, when Oliver couldn’t have been more than fourteen or fifteen years old, Patterson had envied the tall, mannerly boy the dignity and quiet self-assurance with which he conducted himself and the ease with which he came off with the highest marks in his class, made all the teams and attracted the prettiest girls in the