And now, a tale well calculated to keep you in...
Suspense.
In a moment, Act One of Weekend at Glebe's, written especially for suspense by Elspeth Erick.
Yes? Miss Trowbridge? Young Wallace's mother? You mean to say Lady Pancorce, don't you?
Miss Trowbridge married Lord Pancorce, you know. Oh dear me, I hope nothing's wrong there. Well, ask her to come in.
Oh, why, here she is.
Come in, Lady Pancorce.
Mr. Henshaw, what is this Lady Pancorce business? They kept calling me that outside.
Well, you did marry Lord Pancorce, didn't you? No, no, it wasn't you, was it? I've never seen you before, actually, have I?
I've never even heard of Lord Pancorce.
But Wallace assured us he went home for the wedding. Home? To Glebe's.
Wallace's home is in New York City. It always has been and still is. Oh dear me. What, for heaven's sakes, are Glebe's?
Glebe's is one of the historic homes of England in Sussex. Are you really Wallace Trowbridge's mother?
Of course I am Wallace Trowbridge's mother.
Well, at Denbridge we'd never actually seen you, you know. Two months back Wallace said you'd married Lord Pancorce and moved to Glebe's.
And you believed him? I am Mrs. Warren Trowbridge of New York City and the mother of Wallace Trowbridge.
I sent my son to this school believing that he'd be looked after, but I find instead...
He hasn't been looked after, Mrs. Trowbridge, if that's who you are.
Would you care to see some identification? Oh, you must have some records. My signature must be on something.
Oh, we have indeed.
Bring in all the records on Wallace Trowbridge, will you please?
Thank you.
Mrs. Trowbridge, do you happen to have a picture of Wallace? That might help.
I'm just not the sort that carries about pictures of a child.
Wallace didn't even have a letter from you, Mrs. Trowbridge, until six weeks after he arrived here.
He's had very little mail of any kind except from his friend, Billy.
Billy who?
My his pal, his great pal in the States, Billy.
I don't know any Billy.
You don't know Wallace's closest friend? Well, though Wallace did say you'd been ill.
I haven't been ill.
Yes. Would you say that again, please? That's not possible.
You're sure? Well, look again. Look anyway.
It's most embarrassing. There must be some mistake.
What now?
Mrs. Trowbridge, the truth is Wallace's records seem to have disappeared.
I'm looking for Lord and Lady Pankos. This is Gleves, isn't it?
Yes, madam. However, the next tour is not until tomorrow.
I'm not interested in the tour.
Who's that? Oh, that's the young master, madam.
The young master? Yes, he takes the tours during the weekends.
He does it quite well for a boy of twelve. Do you know him, madam?
Rather well, yes. Would you have him step over here, please? I'd like to talk to him.
In a moment, madam. You see, they're all leaving now and he'll be here directly.
Have you known him long, the young master?
Oh, I've been with Lord and Lady Pankos for all their married life, madam.
That's not what I asked. And with Lady Pankos' father as well.
Neither is that what I asked you.
Ah, the last one's gone. And here comes the little fellow.
Shall I tell Lady Pankos you're here?
Oh, hello, nurse.
Oh, you were young Wallace's nurse back in New York.
I'll tell Lady Pankos straight away. And, Master Wallace, you have a letter from your friend Billy.
Oh, good. I'll fetch it for you.
Wallace, what is this ridiculous game you're playing?
What game, nurse? You mean the tours? I relieve Burton on weekends. Burton's our butler.
He's a very good chap. Been with the family for years.
Wallace, you know I'm your mother, don't you?
How long are you planning to stay at Glebe's, nurse?
Just long enough to pack your things and get you out of here.
How is Mr. Hines? I thought you were going to marry him. How is he?
I've no idea. Now look, Wallace, why...
Oh, here comes Mommy. You're like Mommy.
Wallace, I want you to drop this pretense. Do you hear me? This instant.
How do you do? Are you Lady Pankos?
Yes, yes I am. Burton tells me you're Wallace's nurse from the state.
No, I'm not Wallace.
Oh, Wallace, here's your letter.
Thank you, Mommy. May I read it now?
Of course, darling. I want to have a nice talk with your good nanny here.
Lady Pankos, I am not Wallace's nanny. I am not anybody's nanny.
It's just an English expression.
I am his mother. You know it, Wallace knows it.
I suspect even the butler knows it. Oh, this masquerade has got to stop.
Oh, my dear Mrs. Trowbridge, let's not quarrel.
We're so grateful to you, you know, for taking care of Wallace all those years.
I often regretted sending him to the states. The more you know...
Wallace was born five years after the war ended.
Oh, well, shortages lasted much longer than that.
Oh, well, we did think of sending him to Ireland.
No rationing there, you know.
Sometimes I wish I had, but my husband, he said no.
The states would be better.
Was it I who said that? Well, none that of wonder.
Lady Pankos, this ridiculous fabrication has got to stop.
Whatever do you mean, my dear? Finished your letter, darling?
Almost. You know very well what I mean.
He loves to get a letter from his friend Billy in New York.
Billy who in New York?
Well, I never thought to ask. Don't you know?
He has no friend Billy in New York.
Oh, but he does. He hears from him quite regularly.
My husband and I assumed it was someone he'd known while he was living with you.
Could I meet your husband, Lady Pankos?
Oh, well, you can't have entered into Wallace's life very well, Mrs. Trowbridge,
if you don't know who Billy is.
Please, please, I should like to talk to your husband, if you don't mind.
No, no, I don't mind. Oh, he's been quite ill, you know.
Nevertheless, I should like to talk to him.
If that's impossible, I'll have to talk to the police.
The police? Oh, whatever for?
Which is it to be?
Well, my husband, Lord Pankos, is in Invalid at the moment, Mrs. Trowbridge,
confined to his room.
We have every expectation that he'll soon be up and about,
and everything will be as it once was.
May I see him, please?
Wallace, run upstairs and ask your father if he feels up to talking to Mrs. Trowbridge.
Yes, Mommy.
Are you married, Mrs. Trowbridge?
My husband died a year ago.
Well, so Wallace told us, but he said you might be marrying again soon.
He did?
Well, I hope it works out.
That is, if you want it to work out.
I think I'd rather like you after all.
I don't think it will work out.
At least it hasn't.
Oh, I'm so sorry.
Go with Burton, Mrs. Trowbridge.
Lord Pankos will see you now, madam.
I'll show you the way.
Oh, thank you.
Oh, Burton.
Yes, m'lady?
See that a room's made ready for Mrs. Trowbridge, will you?
I think she'd like that nice, sunny room next to Cook's.
Next to Cook's?
Oh, it's quite a nice room, madam.
You don't say.
It leaves us over 400 years old, you know.
There's a story that Henry VIII once stayed here for a whole weekend.
Really?
Perhaps you could have his room,
except that we don't know which one it was.
As a matter of fact, we don't know for sure that he stayed here at all.
But I'd like to think he did.
The tourists like it too.
Oh, it's a story you made up for the tourists, is it?
Oh, sort of.
You know, it's rather fun to think of old Henry stomping around with Anne Boleyn.
He could have thrown her into the dungeon here.
We have one, you know, a dreadful one.
Damp and dark and all that.
Is that so?
Oh, yes.
I'll come back to you tomorrow or sometime.
How long do you think you'll stay here?
Not long, nor will you, young man.
Well, the weekend anyway.
Here's Daddy's room.
Yes?
Daddy, this is my old nurse from New York, Mrs. Trowbridge.
Oh, come in, Mrs. Trowbridge.
Do sit down.
Forgive me for not rising to greet you.
No, that's quite all right.
We'll have a nice talk.
I hope so.
Perhaps you can...
Can I go to the village with Burton, please?
To do the marketing.
Well, if Burton's willing to take you, yes.
Oh, he is.
All right, then.
Don't stay too long.
I won't.
Well, now, Mrs. Trowbridge.
Lord Panko, I am Wallace's mother.
Are you now?
I think you know I am.
I know nothing of the sort, actually.
At least you know that your wife is not, don't you?
I must confess, I do know that, yes.
Oh, well, that's a relief.
Lord Panko, is your wife...
Oh, how shall I say it?
Is she...
Well, Mrs. Trowbridge, I think in certain ways,
in some areas, one might say that my wife is not quite as she was.
Yes?
Yes, I think one might say that.
But in a really delightful way, don't you really think so?
Or don't you?
But Lord Panko, if you know your wife to be insane...
Insane?
Oh, I don't know. I'd go that far.
She has fantasies, yes.
She even imagines that I shall be well one day.
Fancy that.
I shan't, of course.
But her dreams hurt no one.
They enhanced life rather, to my way of thinking.
Hers, mine, Wallace's.
Well, this particular reverie, that Wallace is her son,
is not enchanting my life, I can assure you.
No, I imagine not.
However, until you discovered this little charade,
you'd not been hurt in any way, now had you?
I don't see what that has to do with it.
Oh, everything, it seems to me.
You shipped Wallace off to a good English school,
and considered you'd done your duty.
Well, a bright boy is not a piece of furniture, Mrs. Trowbridge.
He can't be stored and then ignored.
He just won't sit still for that kind of treatment.
Wallace didn't.
Are you trying to place the blame for this fantastic situation on Wallace?
Well, he did pick my wife for his mother before she accepted him, you know.
Well, I don't know anything about any of this.
I wish you'd explain. Where on earth do they meet?
Ah, Kensington Gardens.
A magical spot.
My wife goes up to London once a week, sees a friend or two,
and then often takes a stroll in Kensington Gardens.
Wallace was there this fateful day with school chums
to see the statue of Peter Pan.
He hadn't the remotest idea who Peter Pan is.
Your wife enlightened him, I suppose.
Yes, she did.
And for a while he had a grand time imagining himself to be Peter.
Every child alive has done that, I imagine.
I think it's the flying part that's irresistible.
Then your wife was Wendy, wasn't she?
Yes, yes. They did enjoy themselves.
He asked Wendy, Lady Pankost, to come and see him at the school
in case he shouldn't be allowed to fly to her.
And she said she would.
And she did.
She couldn't stay away, Mrs. Strowbridge.
Our two sons were killed in the war.
I'm sorry.
Yeah. Well, when my wife arrived at the school,
she was quite prepared to be Wendy to his Peter.
But Wallace had recast the play.
She was greeted as Mummy.
Not Wendy anymore, but Mummy.
She was also confronted with the fabrication
that his Mummy was going to marry a titled Englishman.
This fabrication had been rather firmly established at the school.
She never denied the story. They never questioned it.
That was very naughty of her, I know. And naive of them.
But schools do love titles for some reason.
So do little boys.
And now your wife has persuaded herself that Wallace really is her son.
I'm never absolutely certain, my dear.
But it's such a lovely fairy tale, she can't resist acting it out.
When Wallace said you were his nurse,
I imagine she thought she could continue the play a while longer.
Or perhaps over the weekend.
Do be a little patient with her if you can, Mrs. Strowbridge.
We all fall into these little traps from time to time.
We all twist the truth a bit, don't we?
We try to reshape the reality of things,
just to make the reality a bit more bearable.
Only the very, very strong can accept things precisely as they are.
I wouldn't know. I'm not strong.
But I know I can't accept this unreality.
So if you'll give me a little time, I think I can persuade my wife gently
that she has made a miscalculation.
Lord Pankhurst, give me one good reason why I should wait around
while you disabuse your wife of the idea that my son is her son.
Give me one solid reason why I shouldn't pick up the phone
this very instant and call the police.
I don't know that I have any solid reason, Mrs. Strowbridge.
It's just that I wish you wouldn't.
I can charge you with abduction, you know.
Yes, I suppose you could.
Well, shall I phone the police?
Wait a moment, Mrs. Strowbridge.
I do have a solid reason why you shouldn't do that.
You see, we have no telephone here at Gleves.
You have no telephone?
Well, nobody ever calls us, you see, and we have no need to call anybody.
If we really need to, we use the phone in the village.
Then I'll go to the village and use the phone.
Your wife's fantasy that she's my son's mother, it's intolerable.
Well, just as soon as Burton comes back, I'll have him drive you there.
Thank you.
Meanwhile, let's just sit and talk.
Lord Pankoest, you, you and your wife, you've seduced my son, and I want him back.
Seduced? Yes, I suppose that's what we've done.
But he seduced us too, Mrs. Strowbridge.
It was, or so it seems to me, a meeting of two lonely people in Kensington Gardens near the statue of Peter Pan.
My wife was lonely because she'd lost two sons during the war.
Why was your son lonely, Mrs. Strowbridge?
Why was there an ocean between you and him?
Why did he receive only messages from you through your lawyer?
Why did he go to such lengths as to steal his own records from the school files?
Was it to complete the separation from you? Was that it?
Oh, yes, he stole them. We found them in his room here.
Now, why hasn't he written to you since he started weekending here at Kleebs?
Why does he write only to someone named Billy? And why does he write to Billy every week?
For heaven's sake, who in the world is Billy?
Don't you know?
Well, it could be some school chum back in New York. I didn't know them all.
But you wouldn't know his full name, would you, this Billy?
Uh, it's Hines, I think. Billy Hines.
Hines? Oh, it can't be.
Oh, why can't it be?
William Hines? He's a grown man. Wallace doesn't even know him.
We met him once, but he doesn't know him.
He writes to him. And Mr. Hines writes to Wallace.
Why? Why would either of them write to the other?
My, this is a good puzzle, isn't it? Well, let's try to figure it out together, shall we?
Now, this Mr. Hines...
He's a man in New York.
Yes.
A man I'd hope to marry.
Yes.
When my husband died a little over a year ago, I was desperately lonely.
Of course you were.
I was only 35. I had friends. I met several men.
They seemed interested until they discovered I had a child.
I see.
I'm not sure you do. I don't think any man would.
You dreamed of marrying again?
No, it's all I dreamed of, I'm afraid. It's all I know. All I'm good for.
Six months ago, I met William Hines. I really loved him. Loved him.
I was terrified of losing him. I didn't want the same thing to happen again.
I'd been through it and I didn't want it to happen again. I kept Wallace in the background as much as possible.
Finally, oh, finally it wasn't altogether possible. So I said, I said that Wallace was my sister's child.
My dead sister's child.
I see.
I haven't a sister, dead or alive. I made it all up.
I see.
Then I sent Wallace to England, to school.
Did you think he could stay here forever?
No, no, but for a while. Until things were settled.
Well, they're settled now. He left me anyway. I got what I deserved.
Oh, no, no, no. I don't think, I don't know, I don't know. That's the case.
Oh, there's no use making any excuses for me. I tried to for a while until I realized.
You don't object to my trying, do you?
No.
Now, you wanted so badly to be a young, childless woman, starting out in life, all fresh and eager to interest this Mr. Hines and marry him.
Yes.
Because if it were all true, it would help to wipe out the fact that you'd already married a man and lost him.
Yes.
You could go back in time, as it were, to your girlhood and somehow become a young woman again. Wasn't that the fantasy?
Perhaps.
So instead of being a woman in her thirties with a growing child, you could pretend you were a girl in her twenties, embarking on a career of marriage for the first time.
Yes.
Ah, but the fantasy had to end, didn't it?
Yes.
I think Wallace was trying to end it for you when he first wrote to Mr. Hines.
I think he knew a good deal more about what was going on in your mind than you did.
His very first weekend at Glebes, he asked me to find out where Mr. Hines lived in New York.
I did find out, and Wallace wrote to him.
But what could he say to him?
I don't know. I don't know, because he never told me and I never asked.
But I could make a pretty shrewd guess if you'd like me to.
I would like you to.
I think he wrote, Mr. Hines, that it would be quite all right to go ahead and marry you, because he'd found for himself a substitute mother and father. That's what I think he wrote.
Oh, I must have been insane.
Oh, no, at least not hopelessly so. Come in.
Daddy, I'm back.
Wallace, my boy, back from the village?
Yes.
Marketing all done?
No, sir.
Oh, why not?
Burton said I should tell you right away. I used all the money he had with him. I made a phone call.
That's so. What sort of phone call?
To New York.
I see. And whom did you call in New York?
Billy.
Billy, eh? Well, I think that was a very fine thing to do.
Was it?
And what did Mr. Billy Hines have to say?
He was glad I called.
Oh, I'm glad. What else?
I told him you were here, nurse.
You did?
He sent his very best. He's taking a plane in about an hour, a jet plane. And he's coming here. He's coming to Glebes. He'll be here this afternoon. He's coming to see me.
I see.
Well, to see you too.
Really?
Actually, he said to give his love. His best love, he said.
Coming here? Billy? Wallace, you're positively ingenious. A really excellent solution to our dilemma.
Thank you, Daddy.
Really, the absolute best I could come up with was, completely unthinkable, of course, was our dungeons. But I like yours far better, Wallace. Indeed, I do.
Bless me, I believe you've made your mommy very happy. Both of them.
Suspense.
You've been listening to Weekend at Glebes, written especially for suspense by Elspeth Erick.
Suspense is produced and directed by Fred Hendrickson. Heard in tonight's story were Raymond Edward Johnson, Grayson Hall, Neil Fitzgerald, Tommy Leap, Hillary Holden, and Christopher Carey.
Music supervision by Ethel Huber. Sound patterns by Walter Otto. Technical direction by Michael Shoskis. This is Stuart Metz speaking.
Listen again next week when we return with Run Faster, written by Lois Landauer. Another tale well calculated to keep you in...
Suspense.