The Friend of Women and Other Stories (15 page)

He supposed that Mr. Simpson would be thoroughly disgusted with him for even raising the question and that the great banker would berate him for picking a left-wing Jew as an acquaintance, let alone a friend. He might even threaten to discontinue his financial support. But mightn't that be the ultimate test of Frederick Coates as a man? And didn't a man have to meet it squarely? There were times when he reminded himself that he was, after all, the son of a brave army officer.

What he faced, however, when he went down to Mr. Simpson's great Wall Street office, was a very different kind of test.

“I'm glad you came to me, my boy. A bright young man like yourself is bound to have doubts sooner or later about the way his world is run. He is something of a dope if he doesn't. And that is the time when the bad men who are dedicated to overthrowing our republican form of government get to you. It so happens that I know this Nathan Levy's father. He is a fine man and an excellent newspaper editor. We are not friends, for I do not happen to choose my friends from Jewish circles. But I respect him, and he respects me. We have cooperated on some financial reports. And he confided in me once, when we were discussing the youth at a lunch, that his son was flirting with communism. He was deeply upset.”

Fred's discussion with Alistair's father lasted for an hour. When he took his leave, he asked for news about his former roommate. Mr. Simpson looked very grave.

“Fred, I am appalled to say that Alistair is in the deepest kind of trouble. He was arrested last week for soliciting a boy in a public urinal. My lawyers are trying to get the wretched business quashed. No, don't say anything. Don't even try to see him. I have him out on bail in the country. Go now, please, my boy, and remember what I've told you.”

He gripped Fred's shoulder, but then turned abruptly away and returned to his office, leaving his young friend to take his dismayed and thoughtful departure.

Some weeks later, on Tap Day, Fred stood in Branford Courtyard with others of the Yale junior class, as members of the senior societies circled among them looking for their nominees. At last he felt an impact on his shoulder like Mr. Simpson's final touch, and heard a voice behind him bellow, “Go to your room!”

And he went.

***

Fred entered Yale Law School, still supported by his Wall Street backer, and with him went many of the earnest and ambitious members of his prep school crowd. Nathan Levy had made up with his own father, at least enough to be given a job on the latter's paper, and he disappeared from Fred's life. There had not been much left of their friendship in their final year; Nathan had assumed that Fred's inclusion in a senior society had cooled his interest in a person so removed from campus enthusiasms. Fred worked industriously as a law student and was elected an editor of the
Law Journal
, which virtually assured him upon graduation of being employed by any of the great Wall Street firms that he chose.

He knew that Mr. Simpson was ready to offer him a fine job and a rosy future in his bank, but he was keen on practicing law, and he decided, correctly as it proved, that the latter would accept his choice so long as he agreed to become an associate in the firm that represented the Simpson interests. As this firm, Shepard & Bates, was one of the most prestigious, Fred, his mother, and his angel were all content. Alistair Simpson, who had been somehow extricated from his jam, had been sent abroad indefinitely, and Fred was more than ever in his place.

Fred had now put together precisely the kind of career for which he meant to devote his mind, energy, and heart. He had never quite forgotten the concept of a life devoted to a cause as opposed to personal success, and he had combined it with the more worldly but still sufficiently noble image of the great public servant espoused by his other Yale group. The career of the senior partner of a notable corporate law firm who, now possessed of ample riches, took his proper place in national affairs as an ambassador or a cabinet officer, seemed to offer just this—an Elihu Root, a William Maxwell Evarts, a John W. Davis. Such a man would not have to soil his hands, in Disraeli's horrid phrase, by shimmying up “the greasy pole” of elective politics; he would be appointed by a president and approved by an admiring senate.

There was first, of course, for Fred and for his generation, a war to be won. He chose the navy as the cleaner and more picturesque service, became an ensign, and served creditably on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific, where he had the luck to be mildly wounded in an air attack on his vessel and awarded the Purple Heart. He had dissuaded Mr. Simpson from using his influence to obtain a safe shore job for him in the navy department where, as the latter coaxingly put it, his “expertise in the law would be more useful to the war effort.” He had sensed that a combat record would account for more kudos when peace returned. That he might be killed was a matter of indifference to him. Once a career had been decided on, one had to pursue it regardless of risk. If one was to be a great man, one would probably survive. Napoleon, in all his battles, was wounded only once, and Theodore Roosevelt escaped a rain of bullets on San Juan Hill.

After the peace of 1945, Fred's career swept forward as if on wings. He rapidly became an expert in securities law and the right-hand man of the senior partner, Phineas Bates, who was the very prototype of the great man he sought to become: a big, bluff, cheerful, dominating figure with tousled gray locks and cool gray eyes. He was a wily and imaginative attorney, a compelling orator, and the father of three bright, chirping, idealistic daughters who worshipped him and among whom the handsome Fred wondered if he could not find the mate he needed. Naturally, he would have to become a partner, but this rank was accorded him at the early age of twenty-nine.

He spent many weekends as a guest of the Bateses in Westchester County, for his boss liked to work on Saturdays and even on some Sundays away from the city, but he was careful to see that the tasks of his assistant were varied with strenuous tennis matches and dinner parties attended by his lively wife and daughters.

Anita was the oldest of the latter and perhaps her father's favorite. She was not outstandingly pretty, and her figure, if compact and well-shaped, was a bit on the sturdy side, but there was an exuberance in her manner and a candor in her laughing blue eyes that charmed all but the sourest misogynist. Anita loved the world and wanted it to love her. But she was far from dumb and even able to be shrewdly critical; she might give you more credit than you deserved for living up to her own high moral standards, but if you fell too obviously below them, she could manifest a sharp and articulate indignation.

Fred had never questioned the tradition that a good wife was a vital element in any successful American career, and he had every intention of finding one for himself. He might be cool, certainly, but not cold, in his way of going about it. His consort would not have to be rich, as he expected to be an adequate provider, but neither should she come from impoverished or lower-class parents. It was incumbent that her background and upbringing not be a cause of awkwardness in any social circle to which they might aspire. It was also desirable that she be in love with him, or at least enthusiastically cooperative in sexual matters. He was not such a fool as to underestimate the havoc that a discontented spouse might reap in a man's life. She must be made happy, or at least contented, and he supposed with some reason that he could count on his own nature to be a faithful and considerate husband. Was it so difficult? And were not his standards common to many sensible and intelligent men, however little expressed?

Anita came to know him as well as any girl had on the weekends when he was her father's working guest, and from the beginning he enjoyed the advantage of having the latter's total approval. Indeed, he was almost thrown at her, which is not always the best way of improving a relationship. But his good looks and seemingly modest yet self-assured good manners, his easy competence on the tennis court and in the swimming pool, his flattering interest in her accounts of her job at
Vogue
began to stir a deeper feeling in her heart. And when she at last perceived that she had won his friendship without capturing anything stronger from him, that he might even be a man whose passion she might never be able to arouse, she of course fell in love with him.

Even when he started to take her out, on nights when he was not working late, he did not change his ways. He talked always interestingly about his job, his future hopes, asked about her life and friends and plans, even discussed current events and the darkening cloud the cold war was casting over Europe. But he rarely spoke of his family, his boyhood; he seemed to exist only in the present. He never made a pass at her, and he never even sought a good night kiss when he took her home to the family brownstone. He did not even seem to suspect that she might have liked it.

And of course she loved him more and more.

And then, one night, dining at a restaurant, he asked her to marry him. Just like that. As if he were suggesting that they go to the theater rather than to the cinema. And she accepted him. Just like that. He signaled to the waiter and asked him to bring them a bottle of champagne. When it came, and their glasses were filled, she found the courage to ask, “Do you know something, Fred? I have this crazy idea that you're acting a part.”

He took this calmly enough. “In a play? What sort of a play? I hope at least that I'm the hero.”

“Oh, you're the hero all right. But it's not so much a performance as a rehearsal. There seems to be a director sitting out there in the orchestra. In a front row seat. But it's dark, and I can't see him. Oh, I know it sounds silly, but you're going to have to get used to my being silly at times.”

He frowned, and she observed that it was a new kind of frown, or at least one that she had not noted before. “And what does the director do?”

“Well, he's ready to supply you with a line. That is, if you forget one.”

“What line have I forgot?”

“Well, you haven't even told me that you love me.”

He became grave at this. “I love you, Anita.”

And she believed him. She had to believe him. But she also had to add something. “I love you too, Fred. Very much. Very, very much. But maybe I'm just a tiny bit afraid of you.”

He shook his head as if she had raised a more important issue than she knew. “If you're afraid of me, my dear, you had better not marry me.”

“Oh, I'm not
that
afraid of you!” she cried in sudden excitement. “Don't think you can get out of this that easily!”

***

The first year of marriage was, on the whole, eminently satisfactory to both husband and wife. Fred continued to be the same pleasant and even-tempered companion that he had been as a beau, with the all-important added attraction of being an ardent lover at night. One of Anita's pals assured her that this was often true of young lawyers who had been monastically devoted to their work too long. Anyway, it came as something of a surprise to her and helped smother the little misgivings that she had felt about what she was almost hesitant to call his occasional detachment. She even joked to herself about being an Elsa in
Lohengrin,
too wise and too happy to ask her lover's name and see him sail away in a swan-propelled boat.

***

A few years into their union, Anita's father had been appointed an assistant secretary of state by President Eisenhower, and he had asked his son-in-law to head up the important branch of their firm in the capital. Bates might have been motivated in part by the desire to have his daughter near him, but Fred saw it as a promotion that would bring him closer to the post of heir to the senior partner that he coveted. So all was well, or so it seemed. He and Anita had a charming little house in Georgetown, and she was expecting their third child.

One day, passing through a corridor of the State Department, where he had been calling on his father-in-law, Fred encountered his old friend Nathan Levy. The latter informed him that he was now a special assistant to the secretary of commerce, and suggested that they have lunch. Fred, interested in catching up with this once stimulating acquaintance, took him to the Cosmos Club, which he had recently joined, and quizzed him about the apparent switch in political views that his current job implied. But Nathan seemed more anxious to quiz his host.

“You've really made it, Fred, haven't you? But then there was never much question that you would.”

“How do you mean?”

“You always set yourself in a beeline for the top spot—that was clear enough. And what's wrong with that? So long as you get there, and you have, my friend. In your job, in your marriage, in your future. I'm not criticizing you. I think I may even envy you.”

“What about yourself?” Fred queried with more than a touch of resentment. “Haven't you done pretty well, too? You don't look to me like someone who's sharing the crust of the poor.”

“No, I live well enough. But that's dough I inherited.”

“And your job in Commerce. Isn't that something?”

“It might have been.” Nathan's tone changed from his old ironic note; he suddenly seemed human. It was evident that he wanted a more candid discussion. “But you know, Fred, we're living in a reign of terror. At least those of us in government are.”

“You mean this McCarthy business. That's odious, of course, but isn't it bound to go away? It's so obviously a red herring, and the guy's such a phony. Won't it be a case of not being able to fool all of the people all of the time?”

“Maybe. But will there be anything left when it's over?”

“Surely you're exaggerating, Nate.”

“Am I? Who's going to stop McCarthy? Will Ike? Will Dulles? Will your esteemed father-in-law? Have any of them lifted a finger to defend loyal government employees maliciously accused of treason? And whom they know, or should know, to be innocent?”