Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (11 page)

“I bought this from a friend, sight unseen. I was a little teed off, but it wasn’t his fault. I just took it for granted that it would be a studio-sized job.”

He shrugged. “You don’t turn down a bargain, though, and it’s nice to stretch out, though I’m practically touching the walls when I do. It’s not much of a room, but it
is
a bedroom and you can close it off if it looks too messy.”

“I doubt you’re a particularly messy guy.”

“If I’m in a hurry I can be slipshod about things. The closet is crammed, but anyway it has shelf space.” He showed her. “See? Not all that bad.”

He shut the door and faced her. “Christ, I’m a drag. You must think I’m a jerk. Giving you the grand tour like it was Schonbrünn.”

“I asked for the grand tour.”

“There will be a small fee for the guide.”

“Pay you later, my handbag’s inside.”

“Listen, I made Planter’s Punch, I hope you have nothing against rum?”

“Planter’s Punch? How festive. You went to some trouble, Jack.”

“Are you kidding? This is big doings for me, it means a little something. Jack Allerton is giving a party. Some party. Christine, I’m not much of a socializer, at least these days. Lots of reasons for that. I need friends, I’m on my own and no responsibilities. For some reason I was lucky enough to meet you. Obviously you have another kind of life.”

“Not all that much.”

“When you’re lonely yourself you’re prone to think you spot it in others. No no, delete that, for God’s sake. What a half-assed thing to say.”

She gave him a cordial smile. “Not so half-assed. Who isn’t lonely sometimes? Come on, let’s get out that Planter’s Punch. Rodney will think we’ve fallen out a window. I’ll see the bathroom later, before I leave. I love this apartment, Jack. I hope I’ll be asked here again. This whole place reminds me so much of Ninety-second Street, an apartment I had there. Gee, I was happy fixing it up. I must tell you about it sometime. Remind me.”

“I will.”

In the kitchen he opened the refrigerator door. “There’s a tray on the floor, Christine. Yeah, behind the table. You want to put it down on the table and I’ll set the pitcher on it.”

Then he began pulling things out of the icebox.
“Caviar,”
Christine murmured. “Aha.”

“Poor man’s caviar. Lumpfish, Romanoff’s best. Are you insulted?”

“I didn’t expect Beluga, my dear. What do you think I serve? What can I do to help?”

“You could open the crackers.” He handed her the box. “You’ll find a plate for them in the overhead cabinet, the one on the left.”

She circled the crackers on the plate, reached for the cream cheese he had taken from the fridge. “All right if I put this in the center of the plate?”

“Great. Silver in the drawer under the counter, ditto napkins.”

“Serving plates?”

“Ah, yes. Also in the overhead cabinet. This seems to be it.”

“I’ll take this in, you can bring in the drink tray.”

“What did I ever do without you?”

They carried things inside. Rodney lay, hands folded under his head, on the sofa. He looked very much at home. “Get up,” Christine ordered. “Three of us have to sit here.”

“I’ll bring over the desk chair.”

“No, this is cozier. Sit down, Jack, there’s loads of room. Just shove over a bit, Rodney.”

“What is this we’re to drink?” he asked interestedly. “It looks smashing.”

“It’s a punch, called Planter’s,” Jack explained. “Lime juice, Angostura bitters, sugar and a good, heavy-bodied rum. Like it?”

“Super. Super indeed, Jack.”

“Anyone want more sugar? I generally err on the tart side.”

Nobody wanted more sugar. Rodney commented on the crackers. “I see these are English biscuits.”

“Carr’s — they’re popular here.”

“And caviar — I say, I shouldn’t have had lunch.”

“You’ll manage to eat your share,” Christine said. “No, that wasn’t a crack, Rodney. You’re a growing boy, you’re expected to eat up. Jack, the punch really is superb. I have a feeling you do Tom and Jerrys in the cold weather. Or Irish coffee.”

“Sometimes. I go for cold weather drinks, though, you’re right about that. Toddys and hot punches. Mead, negus, things like that.”

“I gave a wassail party one Christmastime. It was a great success.”

“I wish this was a working fireplace. We’d have a ball, drink our oldtime quaffs in front of a roaring fire. Applewood. Maybe I’d send to Santa Fe for piñon. Ever smell piñon burning?”

“I don’t think so.”

“There’s no other aroma like it. You feel like eating its smell, I find it almost hallucinogenic.”

“You’ve been to Santa Fe?”

“Yes, it’s another world. Getting too arty, of course, but still a kind of fantasia, with the luminarios during the year-end holidays, it’s bewitching.”

“I used to read Sigrid Undset.
Kristin Lavransdatter
. I was fascinated with the food and drink passages. There was plenty of it too. They were eating so much all the time. Boars’ heads and great haunches of meat, birds hot off the spit, and flagons of wine.”

“I love visiting the chateaux in the Loire Valley,” Rodney said. “You want so much to have been part of it. Rowdy communal meals at tables set for a hundred, you can imagine the din. Dogs snatching at table scraps and tossed bones. Serving wenches hurrying to and fro, bottoms being pinched. So bloody colorful.”

“And no bathtubs.”

“Oh, yes, those funny little measly tin things, of course very fancy for the gentry. I can imagine the plight of the lower echelons. Bloody lot of privation, frightfully sad. Still, no dreary telly.”

“Don’t knock television,” Jack protested. “I don’t know what I’d do without it. After sweating it all day at my Olympia electric I’m glad to sit in a bleary-eyed stupor in front of the tube.”

“Some things are worth watching, you have to admit. Your Masterpiece Theatre, for one thing, Rodney.”

“Polished soap opera. Still, yes, it’s awfully good.”

“It certainly makes Sundays special,” Jack agreed. “I think it’s one of the big things in my life. I’m not kidding. I doubt I could be fond of anyone who wasn’t as hooked as I am. I don’t know about you, but I find myself going off into Cockney at the drop of a hat. My frozen entrees call for a preheat of 400°, or the bulk of them do. I light the match, turn on the oven and mutter, Tour ‘undred.’ Even as Hudson. Or Rose.”

“Louisa’s my girl,” Rodney said dreamily. “Louisa Trotter, Duchess of Duke Street. I’d give a lot for a go with Louisa.”

“I guess lots of men had a go with Louisa in her time. That series got me to reading Evelyn Waugh again. She was Lottie Crump in
Decline and Fall
. And
Vile Bodies
.”

“I was a big Waugh reader,” Jack said. “It was the early books, though, then he got religion and began to get solemn-serious. That’s my opinion, anyway.”

“Graham Greene got religion and he didn’t get solemn-serious.”

“My favorite Waugh is
A Handful of Dust
,” Rodney said enthusiastically. “That’s a book.”

“No arguments about that, Rodney. But can we stop talking about writers? It makes me squirm, out of — well, fear. I try to stack myself up with popular writers, people whose work doesn’t throw me for a loop. If I start thinking of all the good ones, I’m inclined to feel like going to stand in a corner. One reason I don’t read the book sections when I’m working on something. I just get sick. Dazzling encomiums, and here you are just trying to do a workmanlike job.”

“Which means that you care very much about excellence and are probably a born and scrupulous craftsman.”

“Excellence and craftsmanship don’t always bring in the checks.”

“But since we know it can — ”

“It would be nice to toss off a flashy bestseller and then get down to brass tacks.”

“I guess lots of people had that idea, only it didn’t pan out that way. I haven’t met him, but my friend Clover is on
intime
terms with a writer. Or a former writer. I guess he doesn’t do much of it these days. He was a journalist in Europe, where he was born, but apparently hasn’t had much success at authoring here. An old story, he was a Jew in Nazi Austria, the usual horrors. Clover never married, but then she met Anton, and it’s just as if she
were
married to him. She can’t be, because he’s already married and it seems there’s been no talk of divorce. It’s interesting, though. More than once she’s referred to him as her husband, and I could tell she didn’t even realize what she’d said.”

“Is she happy?”

“She certainly seems lighthearted. I don’t know about happy. Somehow the word doesn’t trip lightly off the tongue. I don’t mean just for Clover, I mean for anyone.”

“Obviously that’s because we overwork it so heartlessly. The English language isn’t too rich in nuances. But I think it’s because we’re leery about overreaching. Or oversimplifying. The trouble is, we’re inclined to equate it with happy forever, like the fairy tales. And they lived happily ever after. Well, you know damned well they didn’t live in a state of uninterrupted bliss for every day of their lives. You know damned well they piled up a list of grievances against each other, thought of breaking each other’s necks at odd and sundry times.”

He broke off, grinned. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to pontificate. I could have said right off, yes, happy’s a word I’ll stand by, I think it’s what gets us out of bed in the morning, looking for it. Christine, you were telling us about your friend when I preempted the floor.”

“No, just that her man is, or was, a writer. And yes, I think she’s happy, there, I’ve said it. Certainly Anton must be an interesting companion, with his European ways, and his anecdotes and stories that give her a new look at like. Like the Schnorrer business.”

“The what?” Rodney demanded.

“Schnorrer, that’s a man who cadges, a down and outer, failed in his profession or else a victim of bad luck for some reason. A Schnorrer isn’t able to earn a living, so he exists through the bounty of relatives and friends, managing to keep afloat on their largesse. It’s not like a Bowery bum, we’re talking about a man with creases in his trousers and a homburg on his head, maybe. A faded gentleman. Anyway, Clover tells us about these things and we’re all fascinated. Sometimes I’m almost envious of her, of this thing she has. That she’s part of another world, that she has this glimpse into another culture, and that she’s
assuaging
this Third Reich survivor, Anton, giving him her strength and her love and her young prettiness when I’m sure he thought there would be nothing forevermore but bleakness. And now Clover, just one day running into someone like her, and he not young anymore.”

She gestured. “The rest of us are living static lives, stuck in a time warp, American provincials, supermarket types, but Clover knows about something else, sees it at first hand. In that way yes, I do envy her. And yes, I will have some more punch, apparently I’ve decided to stop counting glasses. More caviar too, Rodney, that is if you can spare some.”

“Oh, was I pigging it? Frightfully sorry.”

“Nobody minds, so don’t look so dashed.”

“By the way,” Jack said, “I’m no stranger to the term Schnorrer. My mother’s Czech, or at least by ancestry. It was called Bohemia in her grandmother’s time, and it was all part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, as I’m sure you’re very much aware. I’ve heard my own stories. As a matter of fact I was raised on just such fancifications —
Wind in the Willows
— just like any other child but also Schnorrer stories, and yarns about Baron Munchausen.”

“It sounds like an interesting childhood, Jack. Imagine you knowing about Schnorrers!”

“Imagine you knowing about them.”

“It’s only because of Clover Martinson. Do you have a liking for lieder? And the Viennese schmaltz? Kaiman and Lehar and Stolz — of course Strauss too?”

“Unabashedly. You?”

“Sure do.”

“As for Strauss,
both
Strausses. Johann and Richard. Ah, yes. I think I could even do without books if it came down to a choice. I know I couldn’t live without music.”

“You don’t have a stereo, though.”

“I don’t need a stereo. It’s a lot of fuss and bother. I get all the music I could ask for, music is part of all my waking hours, except when I plant myself at night in front of the TV set. QXR, it’s an old friend. That’s an old Zenith radio near my desk, but it has an exceptionally good tone, it’s my old familiar. I’m always afraid it will conk out, I think I’d consider tearing all my hair out.”

“So you have music on while you’re working.”

“Certainly. Oh, I know some people demand utter quiet when they’re concentrating, but not me. God, not me. There’s that to keep me company, and the window view, seeing people moving around on the street; it’s like having friends around. I couldn’t work in a place where I wasn’t able to see other people.”

“Yes, it must be horrid not to have a window in your office.”

“I worked in an office without a window once,” Jack said. “Two of us, this young kid and I. He was a character, I liked him very much. He came from a very moneyed family and he had the job through connections, right after he graduated from college, it was noblesse oblige. He was incensed at being closed off that way, so he hunted through magazines and came up with a full page color photo of the New York skyline seen through a window frame. I came in one morning and there he was, sitting at his desk looking pleased as punch, with the photo tacked up on the wall next to him.”

He chuckled. “Funny thing was, it was very effective. It made you feel there really was a window, quite remarkable. His name was Richard, I’ve never forgotten him. Rodney, I meant to ask you, how do you British feel about your new Prime Minister?”

“Thatcher? Mixed feelings, but on the whole no riots in the streets. She’s very pretty.”

“Yes, she is,” Christine agreed. “She certainly dresses better than the Royal Family. I never saw such frumps.”

“They seem to consider it de rigeur to look dowdy. Is there a reason for that, Rodney?”

“English women are tweedy types, that’s all. Stumping along in layers of clothing, it’s a cold country, you know.”

“That’s no excuse for those awful hats. Your mother doesn’t stump along in layers of clothing. Peggy has incredible style. You’d think people in public life would want to — They all look like dressmaker’s dummies. But oh, I do love England, with its misty moors and lovely leas and its thatched roofs in the provinces. Creamed teas and pubs and all that clipped speech.”