Collected Novels and Plays (11 page)

“That will have been Fern,” he said. “My mother is Vinnie.”

It turned out to have been Harriet. She had driven over from Sag Harbor to have lunch with Enid and buy something for the people she was staying with. Place mats, Mrs. Gresham believed.

Matilda snorted. “You think my friends on Christopher Street have mixed-up lives.”

“Darling, I want you and Francis to see each other this winter. Remember what fun you had when you were little!”

Matilda remembered having pushed Francis, fully clothed, into the pool. He remembered having entreated her to do so.

“Call that fun?” said Ginny Drinkwater.

Mrs. Gresham’s eyes misted over. “I never had fun till I was fifteen,” she sighed.

“Are you going to work for your father, Francis?” a dark girl asked.

“No, I think actually …” But they were all gazing at him with pretty interest, and he had no further ideas.

“Now why not, Francis?” demanded Mrs. Gresham. “It would please him so.”

“Well, doesn’t his own example,” said Francis flippantly, “show us that we must first of all please ourselves?”

Did he imagine the exchange of glances provoked by this? “Please ourselves, Boopsie?” the young women appeared to wonder. “We do it constantly, but do we ever
say
so?” And Mrs. Gresham, mistress of herself, flashed wordlessly back, “That is right.” Once she had been something of an arbiter in the community; even now her presence did much for the tone of any gathering. Irene was smart to have made a friend of her.

“Isn’t it good to see Benjamin looking so well?” said a blue-haired lady with her arm in a sling. “Irene told me he was coming, so I’m carrying the bag he sent me last Christmas. Isn’t it swanky, Boopsie? It’s from Tiffany’s.”

“I know,” said Mrs. Gresham. “I got one, too. Mine’s suede.”

The ladies smiled guardedly—were they rivals or accomplices? From far off, Mr. Tanning, his head bent, a handkerchief to his mouth, had the air of a Parsifal caught by the scent and twitter of aging doxies. As Francis himself was.

“Tell me,” whispered the newcomer, “is
that
the Englishwoman, talking to Charlie Cheek?”

“Lady Good?” Mrs. Gresham gave an apologetic laugh for Francis’s benefit. “I can’t say I’ve really met her ….”

“You could say you haven’t,” Matilda put in.

“True, darling. But,” her mother suavely pursued, “Irene’s been singing her praises—”

“Has she really? Why, I thought—”

“Singing
her praises, Nell.” Then, while the blue-haired lady’s face slowly emptied itself of malice: “You like her very much, too, don’t you, Francis?”

“Oh, this is Francis!” drawled the other, understanding her mistake. “I’d never have known you! How naughty of Boopsie!” She revealed herself as the Mrs. Sturdevant who had run off with her brother-in-law and never been asked anywhere till after his death, when Mrs. Gresham, deciding that she had suffered long enough, championed her at a quiet dinner.

It was that kind of party. Irene had summoned all her allies. You felt even Mr. Bishop had been used, to procure Benji’s attendance at the spectacle of her popularity.

An extra man of many summers’ standing was admiring her jeweled tennis racket. “You never seen that?” she laughed, tossing her hair. “Why, it’s from my favorite fella! Charlie Cheek gave it to me on our tenth anniversary.” Though Francis didn’t doubt her word—the thing was too ugly to be a gift from anyone but her husband—an unlucky falseness in her tone caused some to glance, involuntarily, at Mr.
Tanning.

Francis gritted his teeth. “Irene,” he said,
“Did
you leave Daddy’s bridge winnings in the ocean room? Because they weren’t there when he looked, and one hates to accuse a servant—”

“Oh dear!” she cried with a look of loathing. “I understood I was to keep the money! How embarrassing! I’ll speak to him now!”

He had gone too far. “There’s no hurry, is there?” Smiling casually, Francis tried to lead her out of earshot. “The poor man forgets so much. He just didn’t remember—though I do, of course—that part of it. It was all so vague, perhaps he
would
remember now.”

“Well,” she glared, “it’s something we ought to clear up, Francis, don’t you agree?” Irene was really forcing his hand. He saw her ready to carry her grievance to Mr. Tanning, and get for herself some public commitment from the old man.

“By all means. I know as well as you,” his confidential manner deepened,
“how trivial the issue is”—a loud burst of laughter from her husband prevented Irene’s taking exception to this—“but so
many
little details strike me as wrong at the Cottage. One gets a sense of things going to seed. Is it the servants? Mysterious accidents happen. Take that business of Enid’s
portrait.” His eyes sociably met her own, but she brazened it out. Cousin Irene wasn’t to be trapped that easily. His hope now lay, Francis divined, in making her see him no longer as an enemy by letting her see him, more vividly yet, as a fool. “I’ve already noticed,” he went on, “how disgraceful the food is! Haven’t you? Why, the meal last night …”

He realized gratefully that he could speak the truth. The food
was
bad. Cooked for false teeth, served without wine, of an almost studied pallor (jellied broth, fish in a bland sauce, boiled potatoes, big yellowish beans), and cooled by its journey up from the kitchen in the basement, their dinner had had a quality of disinvolvement, like dishes served on the stage. An illusion of food. At the end had come a custard, pale, frightened, a virtual Mélisande
of a custard, proving to Francis that Mrs. McBride must have planned the meal. Or worse, that nobody had planned it, that it represented some languid daydream of Loretta’s, fat and black, over her sunless ovens. It wasn’t a meal, he told Irene, that Fern would have let pass. But Mr. Tanning had eaten it; no food tasted right to him, he said.

“… and not only the food, Irene,” Francis was warming to his subject, “but you know perfectly well it’s the kind of house that
must
be kept up. Last night I didn’t notice, but in daylight”—this also was true—“I saw cobwebs! The piano keys are filthy! The next we know there’ll be chewing-gum on the underside of tables! Now that Fern’s gone,” he bravely drained his glass,
“well, more than anything, he needs a woman in the house! I’m serious!”

That did it.
“A
woman!” Irene stared at him as if he were mad. “Excuse me,” she said mechanically, “I must get back to my guests.”

They had wandered into a neighboring room which by now was
beginning to receive some of the overflow. Francis made his way back through the crowd. “I deserve another drink,” he said under his breath.

What tickled him first was to have put these things to Irene, beside whose house the Cottage fairly glistened. Everywhere at the Cheeks’ were signs of squalor and neglect. Francis had noticed, even during the early stages of the party, filled ashtrays, fallen petals, surfaces streaked with dust. His impression now, after a second drink, was of some allegorical dwelling of Sloth. Irene must have reasoned that only the first ten or twelve guests would blame her for
the filth; whoever got there after would hold those early arrivals responsible.

But the need for a woman at the Cottage—
that
had been the delicious touch! All by himself Francis began to laugh. And when Lady Good put her hand, still gloved, upon his arm, he led her into a corner and made much of the whole conversation. “I mean,” he finished, “what we now see at the Cottage is the result of a relatively short spell of celibacy. Unless, of course, it’s to be felt as the first trace of Irene’s
influence—
‘She comes, she comes! the sable Throne behold Of Night primeval and of Chaos old!’
Just think what the years will bring?” He treated her to a comic vision of Mr. Tanning left to the mercy of servants well-intentioned but forgetful, every month or so, of yet another minor chore, until a time when the sight of mop or dustcloth should arouse in them, like an object in a dream, only some puzzled inkling of its original purpose.

“When you come to Jamaica,” Lady Good said mildly, handing him her empty sherry glass, “you will see—put that down somewhere, will you, dear?—that we live in quite a shabby old house, Ned and I.”

Francis turned red. “At least now you know,” he flung out a hand, “what becomes of me among these people! I take their tone, I’m not myself! As if I cared about cleanliness, or houses, or who sleeps with whom!”

“Don’t you, Francis?” asked Lady Good, interested.

“No I don’t!” he retorted. “It bores me. In Rome I lived for a year in
a big bare cheap room with no heat, and I loved it. I had mice, what’s more.” He could have gone on arrogantly to admit that he hadn’t, either, slept with anybody while in Rome—but here he checked himself. He didn’t want to appear
too
eccentric in Lady Good’s eyes.

“Ah Francis,” she breathed, “you’re very young. The way one lives, externally, doesn’t matter …”

His eyebrows went up; had he said otherwise?

“… though, to be sure, in Benjamin’s circle—oh
why”
she broke off, “am I at this silly party? Benjamin’s talking business, he has
no
need of me! Neither do you, so run away, leave me! Talk to that pretty red-haired girl.”

It was as though she had been chilled by the thing Francis hadn’t said, a moment before. She gazed wearily over the crush. The sun, fallen behind trees, no longer did its best for colors and shapes; these blurred into something like the dusk of sensibility itself.

Just then, however, she brightened. “I meant to say, I had such a jolly talk with Charlie Cheek! I’d never credited the man with that much charm. Look at him now, will you—laughing, chattering away!”

“Perhaps
we
must start drinking ginger-ale.”

Lady Good considered his empty glass, “I think that Charlie Cheek is grateful to me,” she said a bit smugly, “for taking up Benjamin’s time. I’ve sent Irene back to her own hearth.”

“Except that for that to be the case,” smiled Francis, “Charlie’d have to be fond of Irene. Is he? Now, I can see him fond of
you
and grateful to
her
for not standing in his way.” In Francis’s mind this kind of perception, facile but forced, often passed for a subtle view of things. It didn’t impress his companion.

“Don’t talk nonsense.” She raised her voice above the incessant din. “Unless I’m greatly mistaken Charlie worships Irene. Why shouldn’t he? She’s most attractive.”

“You see,” he cried, shaking his head, “already they’ve corrupted you! Must you call her ‘attractive’?”

“Well, she’s far more so than I, to a certain type of man.” Missing his
point, Lady Good grew more and more distant. “It’s true I don’t see her beauty, but then I expect I’m not a certain type of man ….” She trailed off inaudibly before getting a grip on herself. “As for a woman at the Cottage,” she then declared, “it seems to me, Francis, that the Cottage
crawls
with women. Besides, there are a dozen right in this room who’d do anything to keep house for him. I met a Mrs. Sturdevant—”

“Precisely! Something between a vampire and a meringue—”

“I thought her rather pathetic and sweet—”

“—the last kind of person he wants! Believe me, Prudence—may I call you Prudence?—he needs a woman—”

“Goodbye, Francis,” said Ginny Drinkwater as she edged past them. “Divine seeing you. Call me.”

“—with some reality, some nature of her own!”

Lady Good grew cheerful. “Well, what about Natalie? I asked Benjamin the other day why he didn’t marry her. Natalie’d be ideal for him.”

“What did he say to it?”

“I can’t remember now,” said Lady Good, and turned pink.

Francis stated his objections to Natalie. The main one was that Mr. Tanning didn’t want her. Oh, she was amazing; art had kept no less inviting what time had rendered no more satisfying. But their friendship dated from too long ago; he had had with it, presumably, a too close knowledge of her pretty face and her pretty ways. Natalie would always have
that
advantage over Irene and Nell and Boopsie and the rest. Benjamin had loved her at a time when they
were both strong, lively, able to enjoy completely. Some such intelligence lay behind the twinkling with which their eyes met twenty years later. Nothing conceivable was left them to ask of one another.

Lady Good nodded. “Well,
I’m
not available for the job, if that’s in your mind.”

“What job? Really, Francis,” Irene, vexed afresh, interrupted them, “I invite that charming gal just for you, and you haven’t a word to say to her! Don’t look around for her now, she’s left!”

Ginny? Had she? His bewilderment was sincere. And on his account?

“Don’t be silly,” laughed Irene, “I’m just teasing you.” Whereupon she slipped across the room, lit a lamp above Mr. Tanning, and effaced herself.

“I wonder if Benjamin’s ready to go,” said Lady Good.

Hard to believe, Mr. Tanning had been sitting in one place for two hours, talking. Whenever Francis looked he had seen the old man’s head bent, all earnest concentration, towards his associate. There was no limit to the pains he would take where business was the issue. Even at a party, thought Francis impatiently, forgetting that his father, whose health varied from day to day now, had no choice but to seize opportunities as they arose. Also, Mr. Bishop was
returning, Monday, to Alberta.

In comparative seclusion they sat, nodding, frowning. Mr. Bishop made notes. Technology, Management, Capital Expenditures, Venezuelan Interests, the Consumer—these were a few of the topics that filtered past a silken but purposeful cordon of adventuresses to lose themselves in the general hubbub. You didn’t need to watch very long to question whether they were being protected, the two men, or frankly imprisoned. With what casual sign from Boopsie or Nell,
Cissy or Thelma, bound for the peanuts or the powder room, did Irene each time appear, ready to stand guard and smiling the very smile of Management itself? She knew better than to interrupt her captive; it was enough to take credit for the privacy he enjoyed. “See,” she and her cohorts conveyed, “see how we care for our splendid sick old lion! Without us he’d be at the mercy of you others!”—thus accounting for the presence of about thirty
people, nonentities whose names you intuitively failed to catch on first hearing. They had been invited, some still naively thought, in order to meet Mr. Tanning? No. In order to experience directly the clear-eyed scorn with which Irene kept them from that. She didn’t mind being called rude if it would make the right people call her discriminating.