A Season in Purgatory (22 page)

“What is it?”

“Don’t ask me to explain to you what that telephone call was all about.”

Harrison Burns started each day by writing in his journal. The morning after the encounter with Luanne Utley at Borsalino’s, he wrote:

He ended his entry. He put away his book. He began to go about the business of the day: Esme Bland.

It was when Harrison Burns was researching the life of Esme Bland, the madwoman incarcerated in a mental institution in Maine for shooting a young man who charged for his favors, that he met Rupert du Pithon. People in Esme Bland’s circle were reluctant to talk about her. She was, as Blanche Islington said, “one of us,” and the understanding was that people like them didn’t talk about one of their own, no matter what she had done. “Poor Esme,” they would say, “in and out of institutions for years,” and then clam up and say no more. Blanche would add only, trying to be helpful, because she liked Harrison Burns, “You must talk to Rupert du Pithon. He knew Esme. He could tell you a thing or two. He knows everything about everybody.” The subtle undertone was that Rupert du Pithon, for all his grandiosity, was not quite one of them, not born into it as they were, and would be more likely to talk about the unfortunate Esme, whom he knew, as he had known Esme’s late father, the distinguished Esmond Bland, who was known far and wide as the friend of presidents and other important people.

The name
Rupert du Pithon
was not unknown to Harrison Burns. For years it had appeared in society columns with such frequency that it retained a place somewhere in
the storage compartment of his brain, but he knew nothing specific about him.

“What does he do?” Harrison asked, trying to familiarize himself with the name.

“Do? He does nothing,” cried Blanche Islington. “Never has. That’s his whole charm. Or countercharm, depending on how he strikes you. Oh, he’s marvelous at
placement
, of course. He can seat a dinner party better than anyone I’ve ever known. He knows everything about precedence, that sort of thing. Adele Harcourt used to rely greatly on him when she entertained the mighty. Did the bishop or the governor go on her right—that sort of thing. He always knew. His greatest life accomplishment was a dancing party he gave for Lil Altemus. We are not talking about a serious person.”

“But why would he talk to me when none of you will?”

“It’s a good time to get to him. He’s somewhat out of fashion. He’s not asked out the way he used to be. He rubbed several of the right people the wrong way. And once you get him started, he can’t stop talking. He’s one of those—talk, talk, talk. I would suggest taking him out to a fashionable restaurant. He likes to be seen, especially now that he’s not much in circulation.”

In parting, Blanche Islington added one more bit of information about Rupert du Pithon. “Oh, never share a confidence with him. It will come back to haunt you.”

“Thank you.”

“Oh, and one other thing. He wears a little wig.” She held up her hands to her head, as if she were trying on a smart hat. “Sort of perched, like this. Pretend you don’t notice. He thinks no one does.”

Rupert du Pithon, or Rupie, as his intimates called him, became famous for knowing famous people. “You must call Rupie if you are in New York,” people in his set once said.
“He knows everyone.” But of late his position had changed. He was no longer sought after by fashionable society. He had quarreled with important people. He had overestimated his social importance. His gossiping had become indiscreet, and his loud criticism of the wedding dress of Sally Steers’s daughter, spoken as she was coming down the aisle of St. James’s, had infuriated all of Sally’s friends. “Paillettes? Her mother must be mad,” he had said. It was, they all felt, the last straw.

The tables of his overcrowded apartment were overflowing with silver-framed photographs of film stars, nobles, and the well-born who had achieved social fame or disgrace. “That’s Diana Cooper,” he would say. “She was heavenly.” Or, “That’s Lady Kenmare. You know her story, don’t you?” There were those who claimed the photographs were mostly of dead people who couldn’t deny that they hadn’t known him as well as he claimed they had. For years he was seated well in the best restaurants, although restaurant owners found him a difficult client; he often sent back his food, sometimes more than once, with loud complaints to the chef about the boeuf, or the soufflé, or the mousse. In waiters’ circles, he was renowned as a notoriously cheap tipper. The recent change in his social and financial circumstances had disobliged the same restaurateurs from seating him well, and rather than suffer the shame of public demotion, such as getting a table on the wrong side of the room, he no longer presented himself at their establishments. “I never go there anymore,” he would say. “Don’t you think it’s slipped?”

The number of his appearances at the best parties had also diminished. His popularity, if it ever was that, was in abeyance, and he now read about parties to which he was no longer invited. That he agonized and despaired over his exclusion was a secret he shared with no one. “I’m so sick of going to parties,” he would now say, shaking his head. “The
same people night after night. I simply declined. I said I wouldn’t go.”

His name and quotes on matters of taste and manners no longer appeared in fashionable magazines, as they had for years. “Oh, I never entertain on Saturday night. Everyone’s in the country,” he had said in one of his interviews, but the same editors now no longer sought his opinions. “He is stale, finished, out of date, no longer invited,” said Dolly De Longpre, the doyenne of society columnists, and her dictum prevailed.

However, as Harrison Burns knew, people on the skids often had scores to settle. People on the skids often knew where the body was buried. Harrison was surprised that such a grand fellow as Rupert du Pithon answered his own telephone. He expected a butler. Or a maid. Or, at the very least, an answering service to monitor the calls. But the voice was unmistakably that of Rupert du Pithon. He had by then heard it imitated by several people, high, nasal, and bogusly aristocratic. Harrison identified himself. He said he was writing an article. He said he would like to meet Mr. du Pithon.

“Oh, you’d like to meet me?” asked Rupert, chuckling. “I’d like to meet me, too, if I didn’t know me. But, unfortunately, there’s not enough time in life to meet everybody. Or, maybe, fortunately.”

Harrison had had experience with reluctant interviewees. He knew instantly when the reluctance was an affectation. He knew not to press. He understood the power of withdrawal. “Well, fine, thank you very much, Mr. du Pithon. I’m sorry if I’ve taken up your time.”

“What did you say your name was?” asked Rupert quickly. He missed reading his name in the papers and magazines.

“Harrison Burns.”

“Harrison Burns. Harrison Burns. Is it a name that I am supposed to recognize?”

“No, no, of course not.”

“Wait a moment. Let me turn down Maria Callas on the stereo. Now I can hear better. Are you still there? There are so many people writing these days, it’s hard to keep track of them all. So many magazines. So many books. One can’t keep up. I always skip the first third of every biography. I’m not really interested in reading about people before they become famous or rich. I don’t much care about humble beginnings. Don’t you think I’m right? I never want to read another word about any of the Mitfords, thank you very much. Or Sylvia Plath, spare me, please. And I’m sick, sick, sick to
death
of Vita Sackville-West and that nasty business with Violet Trefusis.”

“Good-bye, Mr. du Pithon,” said Harrison.

“Oh, yes, of course. I know who you are,” said Rupert. “Didn’t you write
Candles at Lunch
?”

“No. That was Basil Plant.”

“Oh, Basil Plant, yes. He used to be everywhere—you couldn’t go to a party where you wouldn’t see Basil—before he was dropped, with a giant thud, as he damn well should have been. It was so bad what he wrote. So naughty. He caused Ann Grenville’s suicide, you know. Oh, yes he did, just as surely as if he’d pushed those pills right down her throat. Ann may have killed Billy, but she didn’t fuck all those jockeys, like Basil said she did, believe you me. And what he wrote about poor Annabelle Mosley’s husband! Annabelle never forgave him, you know, and they’d been such close friends, glued at the hip for years. Basil was desperate to see her before she died—she was riddled with cancer—to beg her forgiveness for what he’d written, but she wouldn’t see him. Divine woman, Annabelle. But unforgiving.”

Harrison knew he had a talker on his hands. “Basil Plant’s dead,” he said.

“Oh, yes, I know. Drink. Drugs. They all go like that, don’t they?” said Rupert. “You know, the last time I saw Basil was at a brothel in Bangkok. I really shouldn’t be telling you this. I don’t even know you. Don’t even know what you look like. Well, anyway, I had been thinking at last, finally, I could be myself, do all the things I’ve always wanted to without a care in the world of meeting anyone I knew, and then I heard someone through the mist, calling out, ‘Yoo-hoo, fancy seeing you here,’ and there was Basil Plant. Can you imagine? I was
furious
. Simply furious. If you knew the position I was in at the moment, a different Oriental at each orifice. It was the most embarrassing moment. This is all off the record, of course.”

Harrison didn’t reply.

“Don’t tell me what you wrote. I’ll think of it myself.”

“Good-bye, Mr. du Pithon.”

“Friday!” said Rupert, jumping in before Harrison Burns could hang up. He spoke very quickly, all his words running together. “Perhaps you should come Friday. The phone won’t bother us. Everyone will be on his way to the country. Have a cup of tea. My Chinese lady who cleans for me comes Friday. Doesn’t speak a word of English. I call her Cleanie Cleanie. About four? Four-thirty?”

Harrison Burns had failed to mention, not by accident, that the topic of conversation on Friday at four-thirty was to be Esme Bland, not Rupert du Pithon.

The telephone call from Harrison Burns interested Rupert du Pithon greatly. Excited him even. He was sure something would come of it. He was sure it would open new doors for him. Seeing his name in a magazine would remind old friends that he was still there. Yes, of course, he would
be happy to see him. He knew exactly who Harrison Burns was, just as he knew what the titles of his books were. All about law and order, that sort of thing. But, he would have explained to anybody, if there had been anybody to explain it to, that it didn’t do to let them think you were eager. The only people with whom he had daily contact were his Chinese maid, Cleanie Cleanie, who couldn’t speak English, and Eloise Brazen, the real-estate woman, in whose hands he had placed the sale of his apartment, and Czarina, his Norwich terrier, to whom he told everything.

The very thought of having to sell his apartment, where he had lived for so many years, was almost too much for him to bear, but his money had run out. There was none left. Nothing. What had seemed like so much thirty years ago, when his mother, Sybil du Pithon, died, had dwindled to near nothingness. Mr. Mendenhall at the bank, boring, boring, boring Mr. Mendenhall, had called and written and begged him to take stock of his situation, but he had ignored Mr. Mendenhall, had made jokes about Mr. Mendenhall, had even imitated Mr. Mendenhall. He had not paid the maintenance on his apartment for nine months, and the board of directors of the building, many of whom he had snubbed over the years, had informed him that the services of the building would no longer be available to him. He would have to take his own trash down in the service elevator to the basement, as the staff of the building would no longer perform that service for him. He cringed in shame at the thought of himself carrying trash bags secretly, late at night, when everyone was asleep, down the service elevator. The elevator hallway outside his front door would no longer be cleaned by the staff. The lightbulbs would no longer be replaced in the outer hall. If the plumbing went awry, he would have to make his own arrangements. On and on. He was desperate to sell and fearful of selling. The market was
down. He had no place to move to. He owed money everywhere. He was frozen with fear.

Then Eloise Brazen entered his life. She was, he was told, highly regarded in the real-estate world. She had once been, years before, the mistress of Gerald Bradley, and never stopped talking about it. “He was a pretty good fuck for an old guy,” she had said to Rupert on the first day they met. Bradley had set her up in business. He had given her a mink coat from Revillon Frères that, even now, years later, had a rather distinguished look to it. “The only distinguished thing about her,” said Rupert.

He loathed Eloise Brazen from the moment he met her. “Quite the most appalling person ever,” he said about her to Cleanie Cleanie, who couldn’t understand, but who didn’t like her either. He hated the way she didn’t seem to know who he was. He hated the way she walked through his apartment, without even bothering to take off her mink coat, peering at this, peering at that, flushing toilets, turning on switches, running water, opening windows, negative about everything. “This doesn’t work, that doesn’t work,” she kept saying. And Czarina loathed her and barked ferociously at her whenever she came to the apartment to show it to a prospective buyer.