Old Acquaintance (16 page)

He was appalled. He was used to the eternal young woman. He didn’t want to see the old woman show through, like velvet gone thin with use. In all the years he’d seen her she’d always been the same. And here she was, showing feeling. It nearly broke his heart.

He waited a while, stepped over the door on his side, and
went after her. He didn’t know what on earth to do, but he knew he had to do something. He
wanted
to do something.

She was sitting on the torso of a fallen marble satyr, not even smoking a cigarette. She didn’t say anything. She wouldn’t look at him. Her hands were shaking.

Companionably, he sat down on the rump, which, since the statue had been large, was a convenient distance away. Together they watched a large but disagreeable hydrangea, ghost green in the bud, a shade most unlike a color, when you came to think of it.

“Do you think I like it? Do you think I like being shut up with Campendonck and all the rest of them?” she said.

No, he didn’t think so.

*

“Perhaps I should tell you about one of my bathtub friends,” he said, after a while. “Bathtub friends are imaginary people one thinks about in the bathtub. They are very real, though they don’t hold up well in England: the water isn’t warm long enough. But here I’ve been seeing a lot of Mr. Farnaby these days. He’s an American, of course, filthy rich in a nice clean apologetic sort of a way, and rather a sad man. He’s a descendant of Farnaby, the composer, you know. One thing about Farnaby, he may be an American, but he has the best credentials, he’s related to everybody. He had the College of Heralds searching for years. ‘Just give me something small enough to put up on the mantelpiece and explain to guests,’ he said. ‘No lozenges. No bend sinister. Something
plain.
Not too much gold on the curlicues. And some quarterings, of course.’

“He didn’t have any trouble getting it, either. Everybody liked Farnaby.

“The thing that makes him sad is that all his life he’s wanted to make a joke. What he really likes is puns. He has an awful daughter, her name is Marge. Marge married a
quite ordinary man, an ex-football player from Notre Dame, who’s a physicist now, a humorless type, but friendly. Or maybe, come to think of it, he’s an ex-M.I.T. graduate who went into football. At last, thinks Mr. Farnaby, who’s quite alone in the world otherwise, Marge has had the sense to marry someone I can tell a pun to. He never gets the chance to find out. Marge clears her throat. ‘Dr. Johnson said a man who could make so vile a pun would not scruple to pick a pocket,’ she says. ‘Come along, Herbert, or we’ll be late for the P.T.A. meeting.’

“‘It wasn’t Johnson,’ says Farnaby, who knows the literature. ‘It was John Dennis, 1657–1734. And besides, you don’t even have any kids yet, why the P.T.A. meeting?’”

“‘Herbert and I believe in prenatal conditioning,’ says Marge. ‘We hadn’t meant to tell you yet, because it hasn’t happened, but when it has, we will.’ She takes Herbert by the scruff of his football togs and drags him out of there, never giving the matter another thought. When it comes to henpecking, Marge’s a champ. Her mother taught her how.

“At long last, after thirty years of marriage and twenty-three years of planned parenthood, Mr. Farnaby’s dander is up. His wife is dead. Marge has a house of her own, or will have, as soon as he buys it for her. He has retired from the management of his Truss Company. So why, at last, in these evening years of his life, should he not indulge his secret dream?

“So he does.

“His first entry is quite modest. Ever since childhood Mr. Farnaby has hoarded his stamp collection. It is only a boy’s collection, but now he has decided to put childhood things behind him, Mr. Farnaby decides to make a clean sweep. He takes it round to his friendly neighborhood philatelist. It is a grubby shop, but has atmosphere. The proprietor is out in back, indulging in a coughing fit, and engaged in screwing
down the press on which he has just inked twenty-four Cape of Good Hope Triangles, in the half-penny denomination. He is a forger in a small way, steady and dependable.

“‘By Jove,’ says a fusty stranger standing with one knee bent on an R. H. Gibbings Grecian love seat, with an amazed ejaculation. ‘See here, Farnaby. Is this not an extraordinary treasure to unearth from the pounds and paddocks of a mere apothecary’s shop?’ And he holds up an envelope (addressed to Paul Elmore More), on which there is a veritable Cape of Good Hope Triangle, in the green, half-penny denomination, franked with an address in the Hebrides, but of that, no matter. ‘Do you suppose the fella knows what he’s got, eh?’

“It is a palpable forgery. Mr. Farnaby’s heart gives a leap. It gives two leaps. It plays leapfrog. ‘I shouldn’t imagine so,’ he says carelessly.

“‘What do you want for this piece of dubious and badly canceled rubbish, my man?’ asks the stranger cannily, masking his real motives as the proprietor shambles back.

“‘Oh, that’s just one of an old letter batch I bought on spec.,’ says the proprietor, his eyes gleaming. ‘I imagine 2.80 would cover it.’

“‘How fortunate,’ says the stranger. ‘As it happens, I have just canoed down from Winnipeg, after a sojourn with English cousins, erstwhile black sheep but enormous rich these days from the cattle fields of Manitoba. In currency, all I have is a pound note. Would you accept that, eh, fella, in lieu of the local specie, or must I return with a bank draft posthaste?’

“It is too good to be true. Mr. Farnaby is quivering with excitement. At last his chance has come. Hastily he leaves the shop, returning almost instantly, accompanied by a constable.

“‘Officer, I unmask that man as a palpable forger.’

“‘I don’t see any palps. I don’t even see warts,’ says the
constable, a slow-witted rural peace officer from the Agatha Christie country.

“‘I mean the stamp this foreign, though English, gentleman has just been induced to purchase,’ explains Farnaby. The constable, himself an amateur philatelist, takes out an eyeglass and examines the stock. ‘’Tis true, ’tis pity, ’tis pity, but ’tis true,’ he exclaims. ‘I fear I must impound your purchase, sir.’

“The stranger whips out a card. ‘Grimsby,’ he says. ‘Horace Grimsby of St. Louis de Ha-Ha, Quebec Province, and the Belvedere, Worthing, a house I inherited from my mother’s side. Oh, dash it! Dash it! And I suppose my modest deposit is also confiscate?’

“‘I fear so, sir, yes,’admits the constable, touching his helmet respectful-like. He recognizes a younger son when he sees one.

“It is Farnaby’s chance.

“‘Ah well, Grimsby,’ says Farnaby. ‘Penny wise, pound foolish, eh, my man?’

“And he leaves the shop. From this simple beginning comes the single-minded hobby on which he squanders his entire fortune. For instance, there is the business about Dr. Clittering.”

“Clittering is harder. He’s the famous Egyptologist. He lives next door to Farnaby, and Farnaby can’t stand him. Clittering is a mother’s boy and a bachelor. Always was, even as a child. Always will be.

“Now it just happens that Farnaby has inherited a complete set of the Dr. Fu Manchu boooks and a few little
Eighteenth Dynasty odds and ends from his grandmother, an intimate friend of the late Sir Flinders Petrie. They’re supposed to be quite good, though Farnaby never cared for them himself. But Clittering is downright rude about them, and this makes Farnaby mad, because he was fond of his grandmother, you know. I don’t blame him, either. I met her once. She was a fine woman. She and Farnaby had some wonderful times together.

“Well, Farnaby decides to get even. This was back in ’26, when they found all that cheap costume jewelry and stage furniture in Tutankhamen’s tomb. One of Farnaby’s school-day chums is Maspero’s nephew, so Farnaby flies to Egypt in a hand-tooled biplane and has a chat. It turns out Maspero can’t stand Clittering either. Never could. Never will. So together they cook up a little plot.

“Next year, when Clittering comes tippytoes out to his hush-hush digs, who does he find in the concession alongside but Farnaby, in a solar topee, surrounded by great strapping blacks, digging away at an excavation no bigger than a rabbit-hole.

“‘A remarkable discovery being made here,’ says Farnaby. ‘Maspero’s coming up tomorrow for the opening. A pity there isn’t anything in yours,’ and he nods amiably toward Clittering’s exploratory trench.

“Clittering has had one hell of a trip up the Nile.

“‘Tell that to your grandmother!’ he shouts.

“‘I shall remember that, sir,’ says Farnaby, tight-lipped as ever, his eyeglasses rimmed with sweat.

“Sure enough, they get down to the entrance, and Maspero arrives in time to break the seals on the inner door to the tomb chamber. ‘Fabulous,’ he says. Then they go back to Farnaby’s tent and break the inner seals on a bottle of Vat 69. After a while Clittering comes nosing over.

“‘Surprised to see you here, Maspero,’ says Clittering,
‘frittering away the best season we’ve had since ’26 on a mere amateur.’

“‘This mere amateur,’ says Maspero, ‘has discovered the mummy of Tutatankatenamenasenapaa’tenatonamon. She’s the missing daughter. It appeares she didn’t die at Aketaten after all. To judge by her name she must have lived through at least three successive reigns. For one thing, it must have taken her at least that long to learn how to pronounce it.’

“‘Egad!’ says Clittering. ‘If this be true, you may ask your own price, Farnaby. That’s the one I need to complete my set.’

“‘I will have to examine it at Cairo,’ says Maspero, ‘but I assure you I believe it genuine. Of course the Egyptian government will have first nibs.’

“Clittering snatches up a lantern and rushes into the excavation. The ushabtis are the real thing. The funeral furniture is the real thing. It is a virgin tomb. There isn’t even so much as a postdynastic dead mouse in there. Later that night, Farnaby is aware of a heavy body wriggling through his tent flap. For a moment, for he has been dreaming, he thinks it is his grandmother. Sir Flinders Petrie was quite a charmer, after all. But no. It is only Clittering.

“‘I’ll need that mummy, Farnaby,’ says Clittering. ‘It would be wasted in Egypt. Think of it where it belongs, in suburban Connecticut, with the rest of the family, surrounded by cut leaf philodendron and stagshorn moss in the solarium.’ There are tears in his eyes. ‘I know we’ve never seen eye to eye, Farnaby, but for mercy’s sake, pity the predilections of an old man, and ask any price you want.’

“Farnaby toys with him for a while for the sake of verisimilitude, but at last gives way. No sooner said than done. Clittering makes his escape in the night, with five porters sworn to secrecy, boats downstream, shoots the porters in the
delta, and absconds, disguised as a coal barge, from the Rosetta Mouth.

“In the sequel we are in Connecticut. ‘To think it is mine, all mine, for a mere 250,000 cash, the hunting lodge in Wisconsin, and a few paltry shares of Bethlehem Steel,’ says Clittering. He has asked a distinguished group of rival archaeologists for the official reception. It is the crowning moment of his life. In fact the crown, a modest seven-foot diadem containing a cake, will be served at the buffet, later.

“Farnaby steps forward. ‘You are a fool, Clittering, an arrant fool,’ he says. ‘My grandmother always said so. Anyone could tell at a glance that that is not Tutatankatenamenasenapaa’tenatonamon at all, but a mere court hanger-on and cousin german, a nobody really, from an Outer Nome.’

“‘Maspero says it is Tutatankatenamenasenapaa’tenatonamon,’ sneers Clittering. ‘
I
say so. And who are you to question Maspero?’

“‘I forgot to add that, taking advantage of the courtesy extended on the engraved announcement card, I have been so bold as to bring along with me a distinguished guest,’ says Farnaby, and produces Maspero. ‘Maspero, is that Tutatankatenamenasenapaa’tenatonamon?’

“Maspero strolls over, parts the staghorn moss, and adjusts his monocle. ‘Oh, dear me, no,’ he says. ‘I fear this is the reliquary of a mere commoner, though we shall have to confiscate it, of course, all the same. May I ask what you paid for it, my dear sir?’

“Clittering groans. ‘250,000 cash, the hunting lodge in Wisconsin, and a few paltry, though invaluable, shares of Bethlehem Steel. Would I had not parted with them. They were an inheritance from my dear father, and had a sentimental value.’

“Farnaby’s long-laid plans have eventuated, a word I can’t
stand myself, in total success. ‘Ah, a fool and his mummy are soon parted, eh, Clittering?’ he says, and strides away.”

Charlie paused.

*

“The point of the game, you see, is that they aren’t very good puns. And he has to go to all that trouble.”

“I was beginning to get the point. How long have you known this man?”

“Oh, about ten years. There are more, you know. That’s only the beginning.”

“I feel better now, Charlie.”

“I could tell you about bringing new castles to the Coles. That’s a good one. It involves finding a well-to-do family in Florida called Cole, who live in a Mizner house, but don’t like it much. And then the wife, who has been staying in the Scots border country with cousins, meets this architect, such a nice man, and she tells him about the Mizner house, and he says, he’s a terrible scrounge, you know…. No?”

“I feel
much
better, Charlie,” said Lotte. “You are an absolutely abominable man, but sometimes you can be very, very nice. But definitely no, and let’s go home.”

*

On the way back she began to sing again.

That pleased Charlie. Charlie was a man who liked things the way they were before, and they so very seldom were.

AS
he did sometimes, just to make a change, Charlie went up to his room thinking about Lotte’s probable troubles instead of his own.

It could not be denied: they were difficult to deal with. This is because though they ask to be understood, what they really want to be is believed. If you merely understand them, they always get contemptuous. It was his own belief that he understood them only too well. He had all those supernumerary wives (like the nipples on a warlock) to prove it. The trouble was that he had been backstage, and once you’ve done that, the illusion doesn’t work any more. That it doesn’t, gives you a comparative freedom to observe. They aren’t going to forgive you for that, either.

But Lotte was different. He cared about Lotte. He thought he would have to screw his courage up and deliver his lecture. The lecture, which was one of his set pieces, went as follows:

Romance? Who wants romance? Romance is for the young. Romance is something women invented about the time veils came in. Of these Ishtar had seven. When she discarded the last of these, from a romantic point of view, you could perceive that the truth was nothing but a naked lie, a threadbare theme by César Franck. And sex is a damn bore five minutes afterwards, and everybody stays too long. Friends are better. Besides, as the Analects inform us, a passion is not the conduct of a gentleman. What
we
want is company. So why pretend that the one will lead to the other?

And yet he always did pretend, each time he fell in love,
not that he ever did fall in love, of course. It was just that he wanted company.

He had once written a play with Lotte in mind. He was always trying to get her on a stage that way. Sometimes she said yes, but she always shied at the last moment, when you tried to ease her into the starting gate. She preferred movies. In movies you can control everything, and besides, since the scenes come out of sequence, they don’t matter. A stage made her shy. On stage you have to go right through the damn thing, night after night, you can’t correct your mistakes, and the audience is watching you every minute. That’s too much like life. Lotte could only face an audience afterwards, when the thing was done and no longer had anything to do with her, if it ever had. She couldn’t bear to have anyone watch her doing anything. In a night club it was different. In a night club all she had to do was sing, not feel. In a night club nobody can tell how anybody really looks, the lighting sees to that, so all they have to feel is entertained or, at the most, entertaining, which is sometimes easier.

It was probably just as well. It wasn’t a very good play. But there was one scene in it he had liked. The actress is seated at her dressing table. Her young man is leaving her. He is being rude, and she has been so kind to him. She has been so patient. And he has been such a lot of trouble, such a lot of bother, a distraction and an increasingly unwelcome one.

She is making up before her glass.

“You’re too
old
,” he says, with the awful puerile arrogance of the young.

“Perhaps,” she says. “But did it ever occur to you that you’re too damn
young?
”

She doesn’t care. And she means it every word.

Yes, it was a good scene.

From below him, through his window, as he washed his hands to tie his tie, there came the most entrancing music,
riding lushly on its orchestration like a bunch of artificially bedewed moss roses on a springy bed of fern, from the best, from the most expensive, from the old familiar specious shop.

Tonight was award night. All have won, and all must have prizes. But the music, a medley from
No
No
Nanette,
or some such thing, suddenly reminded him of an actress named Anna Neagle. He had never cared for her much, but in her film musical she had had the most touching way of raising her rather thin arms, so you could see the shaved armpits clearly. There is something so moving when women raise their arms like that, to reach for an apple, or for a prize. It is rather like a groin gone wrong, the armpit. Now where had he had that image before?

He was looking forward to being a judge, and to presenting prizes in the caucus race. In proper clothes, at the proper time, we really can feel as joyous as this sort of tune is designed to make us, for an hour or so. Following the sound, he trekked downstairs to trace the waters to their source.