Return to Peyton Place by Grace Metalious Page B

“Steve Wallace and David Noyes came up for the holidays.”
    â€œDavid again?” asked Brad. “Every time I see or talk to you, I seem to trip over David Noyes.”
    â€œDoes that annoy you, Brad?” asked Allison stiffly.
    â€œNot particularly.”
    â€œWell, it doesn't annoy me, either. I enjoy having David around.”
    â€œWhy not get a French poodle?” asked Brad. “At least you wouldn't have to listen to him chatter.”
    Allison slammed down the receiver.
    David's and Stephanie's visit had been a joyful interlude for Allison, breaking the monotonous ritual of her days. She took long walks with David and talked to him about her work. They held hands as they walked, they drew closer together; but it was, Allison felt, the closeness of friendship, nothing more.
    She invited Seth Buswell and Matt Swain to come on Christmas Day. Allison wanted these old friends to meet the two people who meant so much to her now. It was her attempt to tie together her old life and the new. It bothered her that there should be such a high wall separating the two parts of her life. She wanted it not to be so, she wanted to be able to move easily from Peyton Place to New York City without being assailed by a sense of strangeness.
    The old friends and the new took to each other well. Seth talked literature to David for hours, talked as if he might never have the chance again. To Allison's amazed delight, Matt Swain sat on the sofa beside Stephanie and listened for hours to her stories of life among the TV actors. He never took his eyes from Stephanie's bright young face.
    When they had gone back to New York, Allison met Matt Swain on Elm Street coming out of the pharmacy.
    â€œAllison,” he said, “I liked those friends of yours.”
    â€œEspecially Stephanie,” said Allison, smiling at him.
    Doc Swain looked over Allison's head to the bleak, wintry hills that ringed the town. “There's something about her face, Allison—I don't know what it is—there's something about her face that breaks my heart. When I look at her I feel young again—and, at the same time, I feel very old. I guess she makes me remember my youth, and that gives me a greater awareness of my age.” He smiled at Allison, almost apologetically.
    â€œYou're not old, Doc.”
    â€œI wish I thought so,” he said. “Dear God, how I wish I thought so.”
    Now, having just hung up on Brad, Allison pushed the phone away from her and turned unseeing eyes toward the window. She knew without really looking that gray, gaunt winter stood just outside the window.
    By now, everyone was tired of the winter; it had lost the charm of newness. But everyone continued to talk about the weather, because there was very little else to talk about that winter in Peyton Place.
    â€œGot us a real, old-fashioned winter this time.”
    â€œAyeh. Ain't been this much snow in fifty years.”
    â€œThat's what everybody says every winter,” said Clayton Frazier. “Every damned year it's the most snow in fifty years.”
    â€œWell, it's true this year. Them fellers up to Mount Washington got it all figured out. When the thaw comes there's gonna be two hundred and sixty inches of snow that's gotta melt. Gonna be floods all over the place.”
    â€œThere won't be no flood,” said Clayton.
    â€œThe hell there won't. With all that snow meltin’, the river'll go over its banks sure.”
    â€œThe Connecticut ain't a floodin’ river,” said Clayton Frazier. “And that's the end of it.”
    â€œYou'll see, you pigheaded old bastard. You'll see.”
    But Clayton Frazier was right. There was no flood. An early thaw set in at the end of January, and the snow began to melt gradually. In February nearly all the snow was gone, and by the end of the month the ice in the river had begun to loosen around the edges. When March was half gone, people began to look around and