History of a Pleasure Seeker (14 page)

“Saddle them for us after lunch,” Louisa told the groom. “Mr. Barol shall have Sultan.”

But Piet was ready for her. “Your father gave me this suit,” he said regretfully. “He’d be offended if I ruined it.”

“Oh, you can change.” Louisa smiled. “Our cousin Jurgens left his riding things when he stayed last year, and we’ve never remembered to send them on. He’s about your size. Bit fatter perhaps. I’ve brought them for you.”

J
acobina Vermeulen-Sickerts, in a white dress by Poiret, did not address a word to her son’s tutor all day. But as she entertained her husband’s guests, aware that many eyes were on her, she found herself seeking him out and rejoicing in his beauty. She remembered last year’s fête very well—it had rained; she had worn a wonderful Worth gown, now completely ruined—but already the woman she had been seemed a different, less vital creature.

Regular pleasure had restored the glow of Jacobina’s youth more effectively than any of the painful treatments her friends endured in fashionable spa towns. She was aware, as she shook hands with her husband’s staff, that she made him proud. This pleased her and made her go out of her way to charm the chambermaids and laundresses, the shriveled little wives of the porters, and to listen to their dull, awestruck conversation as if she had never been more amused by anything in her life.

She had chosen Piet’s suit carefully from among her husband’s cast-offs and was entirely satisfied with the figure he cut. Her eyes kept flitting to him and her mind to the delights of the following Monday afternoon; but after lunch she found that he had disappeared, and this alarmed her. Had he sneaked off with a kitchen maid? The possibility was enraging and she began to roam restlessly between clusters of guests. She was at first relieved to see him walking with her daughters towards the stables, in jodhpurs and a smart riding coat. But when she saw Piet clamber onto her horse she faltered in midsentence. It was clear he had never ridden in his life.

This fact was also obvious to Constance and Louisa; and this time Constance did not at all feel like laughing at her sister’s trap. “Perhaps it’s unfriendly of us to make off like this,” she said, as the color drained from Piet’s cheeks. “Why don’t we—”

“Nonsense, darling! It’s perfect weather for a gallop. We mustn’t waste it, especially since Mr. Barol enjoys riding so.”

On the lawn far away, Jacobina saw at once what had happened, and understood that she alone could save Piet from laying his life on the altar of his pride. With a word of apology she left a group of waiters’ wives and hurried towards the party on horseback. When it became clear that they were making for the woods she started to run as fast as her high-heeled shoes and constricting skirts permitted. Jacobina had been an athlete twenty years before and panic restored her powers. She reached them as the groom was opening the gate but was so out of breath she could barely speak. “Mr.—Barol—I—I’m worried about Egbert. I—would like you to return to—Amsterdam.”

But Louisa, in her friendliest voice, said, “Let us have our half hour’s pleasure, Mama. Egbert mustn’t monopolize Mr. Barol.” And with a wicked smile she spurred her horse into a trot, and there was nothing Piet could do to prevent his from following.

T
o the uninitiated human, the trot of a horse is a profoundly unnatural movement. Piet made the error of leaning forward as he had seen jockeys do, but this revelation of inexperience only confirmed Sultan’s suspicion that a novice had mounted him. Sultan was part Friesian, part Arab, and had an extremely high opinion of himself. He felt for Jacobina Vermeulen-Sickerts a devotion so total he would gladly have died for her in a cavalry charge, as his ancestors had been bred to do. What he would not stomach was the insult of an untrained rider, and he determined to make this plain.

Beside the graceful, straight-backed Vermeulen-Sickerts girls, Piet Barol felt like a fool and knew that he looked like one. He was not often at such a disadvantage and found it irksome. To be asked pleasantly by Louisa how he liked his horse was almost as shaming as the look of anxious sympathy on Constance’s face. He made a valiant effort but could not agree on a rhythm with the beast beneath him; and when Piet whispered Sultan’s name, hoping to soothe him, this presumption of intimacy caused further offense.

As they passed beyond sight of the house, his testicles slamming against the saddle with every step Sultan took, a pain worse than embarrassment began to rise through Piet Barol. Its severity clarified his priorities, and he was on the verge of admitting his lie and apologizing for it when Louisa began to canter.

A hundred years before, a wide avenue had been cut through the ancient woods, but the estate had been derelict before Maarten’s purchase and the forest had seized its chance to recolonize lost ground. Straplings already four feet high were spreading their roots through the gravel and established trees stretched across the clearing for lost friends.

Piet was liable to be decapitated by branches his mistress’ daughters missed by a foot, and Sultan decreed that this should be his fate. He began to go at a tremendous pace. Now terror combined with physical agony to silence Piet emphatically. He had strong thighs and gripped with them for his life, crouching low over the brute’s neck. Several times Sultan swerved abruptly and almost threw him. Piet had never known such fear. As they leaped a narrow stream, the knowledge that he might die rose in his throat. It made him furious—with himself, but more directly with Louisa Vermeulen-Sickerts, because it was clear she would not stop until she had seen him fail.

W
hen they reached the stables, having galloped through the wood and come back over the fields, Piet Barol was aching and bruised and incandescent with rage. He got off his horse, his inner thighs in agony, and without a word strode off towards the house. The fête was ending. The speeches had been made and the band was playing its last march. If he had had a match and a barrel of gasoline he would have torched the place. The idea of going back to the city in the company of the women who had orchestrated his humiliation was insupportable. He tried for a place on the workers’ omnibus—but every seat was taken. I’ll walk then, he decided; but the walk would take the better part of the afternoon and night, and with each step the pain in his groin and buttocks grew worse.

In the end there was nothing for it and he took his place in the Rolls in thundering silence. Constance was the first to follow him. The tenderness in her glance annoyed him enormously. He did not reply when she ventured that it had been a lovely day. Louisa got in. In painful silence they endured the journey to the city, the girls responding to Monsieur Loubat’s cheery queries from the driver’s seat while Piet sat in the furnace of his own thoughts.

Outside Herengracht 605 a crowd had gathered. Servants were unpacking china and glasses from a goods cart; street urchins had congregated, hoping for tips and a glimpse of the ladies in their finery. Piet knew that Didier would laugh when told his story; also that he was not ready to be laughed at. The Rolls-Royce stopped at the foot of the stairs. Monsieur Loubat got out, opened the passenger door on Piet’s side, and bowed.

Louisa had been steadfastly ignoring her sister’s wordless hints ever since entering the vehicle, but now she steeled herself to do what must be done. She leaned towards Piet and touched his knee. “Mr. Barol. Forgive me.”

This was the final provocation.

Piet would have shouted, had Monsieur Loubat not been present to hear. “Are you satisfied now?” The words came out in a strangled compromise between fury and discretion. “I am not as rich as you and I don’t mind admitting it. I have not had so many advantages.” Without waiting for a reply, he jumped to the ground and went up the stairs and into the house. Maarten was in the entrance hall with the manager of the Amstel Hotel. Piet allowed himself to be introduced and agreed that it had, indeed, been a marvelous day. Then he excused himself and went to see to Egbert.

In the house next door, his charge was locked in the depths of the C Minor Prelude. He was just finishing his ninth repetition when Piet entered the room. Because the Shadowers had demanded twenty-one and the presto run towards the end was fiendish, he ignored his tutor as best he could to preserve his concentration.

Egbert played the prelude twice while Piet watched him, fuming. But his next repetition, compounding the day’s earlier indignities, pushed his tutor beyond the limits of his self-control.

Piet picked up the child and slung him over his shoulder. At first Egbert was too astonished to protest but when Piet opened the drawing room door, he began to whimper “No, Mr. Barol. Please, no!” to no avail. At the moment Piet entered the hall, he had no fear of any consequence; was consumed only by a determination to take a stand against this pampered family.

He saw that Jacobina had joined her husband and the manager of his hotel. He did not care. He carried the child through the front door, down the steps and into the crowd. In an act of defiance directed at the whole order of things, he set Egbert down on the cobblestones.

E
gbert’s screech made even Agneta Hemels put her hands over her ears. The boy began to hop from one foot to another, as if the street were made of molten steel. He wailed and ripped his hair out in clumps. The servants stood back, aghast. Only Monsieur Loubat took action. He approached, making the solicitous
click-click
sound he used to calm nervous horses, but at his touch Egbert lunged at him, kicking and biting with the strength of a man twice his age.

It took three adults, including Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts, to subdue Egbert and carry him into the house, away from the prying glances of the street. All Piet heard as he followed them was Jacobina’s shrill instruction: “To his bedroom! At once!”

He went there too, overcome by a contrition as sincere as it was practical; but Mr. Blok was playing sentry and would not let him pass. When he reached his own room he was thoroughly frightened. Perhaps he had sabotaged his future irreparably. How unbelievably maladroit. He rarely lost control, and as his anger drained it exposed the knowledge that his own vanity had brought about his downfall. His mother watched him from the bedside table. She had never shouted at him but expressed her displeasure with a regretful silence that now seemed to fill the room. He saw himself sent back to Leiden with no references, no hope of alternative employment in Amsterdam—for he could not bear the shame of encountering Constance and Louisa in another house, where he was another family’s servant. It would be better to leave the country altogether—but with what funds?

He ignored Didier’s knock and was relieved to be spared the embarrassment of consolation, but it took him a long time to fall asleep; and when he did, his dreams were full of taunting young women in elegant dresses.

E
gbert did not calm down until he had submerged himself sixty-three times in a bath full of water and crushed ice. His mother held his hand while he did this and ordered more ice when he demanded it. Jacobina had helped Egbert through similar ordeals before and understood that intervention made things worse. She had never shared the details of these scenes with Maarten. Nor did she tonight when she placed their child’s freezing body in the soft sheets of their own bed, kissed him tenderly, and told him that he was safe and should sleep. Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts had too much experience of rising to an occasion to look leniently on prolonged lapses of will. The knowledge that every one of the day’s guests would spend the next in rapt discussion of his family’s eccentricities inspired a searing shame, closely succeeded by the terror of the righteous man who knows he has offended his god.

The entertainment at Willemshoven had gone off so well that for several hours Maarten’s self-confidence had regained its customary solidity. Now he was reminded that life is full of unexpected humiliations. This knowledge, cut with a sympathy he did not think he should feel for the boy, much less display, ensured that the rising sun found him in an explosive temper.

So did the fact that Egbert, beset by writhing dreams, kicked like a mule all night.

G
ert Blok opened Piet’s door the next morning, immediately after knocking, and was gratified to find his quarry still dressing for church. It was the first time he had seen Piet’s naked chest and he drank in every detail to enjoy at his leisure. He had not imagined that the young man’s arms bulged in quite the way they did when he reached for his shirt. He informed Piet, with extreme frostiness, that his presence was required in the study.

“Is he angry?”

“Beside himself.” As Gert Blok spoke, it came to him that this might be his last opportunity to catch Piet Barol half naked; indeed, it might be the last time he spoke to him at all. He knew his master in this mood. Blok’s desire for the young man disturbed him, almost made him hate him. But the prospect of never seeing Piet again was insupportable. “The important thing,” he said, “is that you should not attempt to justify yourself. I’ve known him more than twenty years. You acted very wrongly yesterday. Don’t pretend otherwise. It’s your only chance.”

F
or the next forty-five minutes, Piet followed the butler’s advice. He made no attempt to justify his actions, showed only the most passionate and rueful contrition, and endured Maarten’s torrent of damning accusation with the commitment of a flagellant. It worked. He left Maarten’s office, cheeks flaming but still employed; and as he climbed the stairs he reminded himself that he was not yet an equal of the family he served.

He had been barred from church and told to say his prayers with Egbert. He knocked at the boy’s door but received no answer. He closed his eyes, gathered himself, and went in. Egbert was sitting in his pajamas by the window. At his tutor’s appearance he assumed the expression Louisa reserved for errant milliners. Piet knew the boy deserved an apology; also that his own future in the household depended on winning his forgiveness—because Jacobina would never side with him against her son. Nevertheless, he found the prospect galling.