The Loved One (8 page)

“You should regard it as being like acting or singing or playing an instrument.”

“Yes, I do. But nowadays they can make a permanent record of them, too, can’t they?”

“Is that what you brood about when you come here alone?”

“Only lately. At first I used just to lie and think how lucky I was to be here.”

“Don’t you think that anymore?”

“Yes, of course I do really. Every morning and all day while I am at work. It’s just in the evenings that something comes over me. A lot of artists are like that. I expect poets are, too, sometimes, aren’t they?”

“I wish you’d tell me about your work,” said Dennis.

“But you’ve seen it yesterday.”

“I mean about yourself and your work. What made you take it up? Where did you learn? Were you interested in that sort of thing as a child? I’d really be awfully interested to know.”

“I’ve always been Artistic,” she said. “I took Art at College as my second subject one semester. I’d have majored in it only Dad lost his money in religion so I had to learn a trade.”

“He lost his money in religion?”

“Yes, the Four Square Gospel. That’s why I’m called Aimée, after Aimée Macpherson. Dad wanted to change the name after he lost his money. I wanted to change it too but it kinda stuck. Mother always kept forgetting what we’d changed it to and then she’d find a new one. Once you start changing a name, you see, there’s no reason ever to stop. One always hears one that sounds better. Besides you see poor Mother was an alcoholic. But we always came back to Aimée between fancy names and in the end it was Aimée won through.”

“And what else did you take at College?”

“Just Psychology and Chinese. I didn’t get on so well with Chinese. But, of course, they were secondary subjects, too; for Cultural background.”

“Yes. And what was your main subject?”

“Beauticraft.”

“Oh.”

“You know—permanents, facials, wax—everything you get in a beauty parlor. Only, of course, we went in for history and theory too. I wrote my thesis on ‘Hairstyling in the Orient.’ That was why I took Chinese. I thought it would help, but it didn’t. But I got my diploma with special mention for Psychology and Art.”

“And all this time between psychology and art and Chinese, you had the mortuary in view?”

“Not at all. Do you really want to hear? I’ll tell you because it’s really rather a poetic story. You see I graduated in ’43 and lots of the girls of my class went to war work but I was never at all interested in that. It’s not that I’m unpatriotic. Wars simply don’t interest me. Everyone’s like that now. Well, I was like that in ’43. So I went to the Beverly-Waldorf and worked in the beauty parlor, but you couldn’t really get away from the war even there. The ladies didn’t seem to have a mind for anything higher than pattern-bombing. There was one lady who was worse than any of them, called Mrs. Komstock. She came every Saturday morning for a blue rinse and set and I seemed to take her fancy; she always asked for me; no one else would do, but she never tipped me more than a quarter. Mrs. Komstock had one son in Washington and one in Delhi, a grand-daughter in Italy and a nephew who was high in indoctrination and I had to hear everything about them all until it got so I dreaded Saturday mornings more than any day in the week. Then after a time Mrs. Komstock took sick but that wasn’t the end of her. She used to send for me to come up to her apartment every week and she still only gave me a quarter and she still talked about the war just as much only not so sensibly. Then imagine my surprise when one day Mr. Jebb, who was the manager, called me over and said: ‘Miss Thanatogenos, there’s a thing I hardly like to ask you. I don’t know exactly
how you’ll feel about it, but it’s Mrs. Komstock who’s dead and her son from Washington is here and he’s very anxious to have you fix Mrs. Komstock’s hair just as it used to be. It seems there aren’t any recent photographs and no one at Whispering Glades knows the style and Colonel Komstock can’t exactly describe it. So, Miss Thanatogenos, I was wondering, would you mind very much to oblige Colonel Komstock going over to Whispering Glades and fix Mrs. Komstock like Colonel Komstock remembers?’

“Well, I didn’t know quite what to think. I’d never seen a dead person before because Dad left Mother before he died, if he is dead, and Mother went East to look for him when I left college, and died there. And I had never been inside Whispering Glades as after we lost our money Mother took to New Thought and wouldn’t have it that there was such a thing as death. So I felt quite nervous coming here the first time. And then everything was so different from what I expected. Well, you’ve seen it and you know. Colonel Komstock shook hands and said: ‘Young lady, you are doing a truly fine and beautiful action’ and gave me fifty bucks.

“Then they took me to the embalming-rooms and there was Mrs. Komstock lying on the table in her wedding dress. I shall never forget the sight of her. She was transfigured. That’s the only word for it. Since then I’ve had the pleasure of showing their Loved Ones to more people than I can count and more than half of them say: ‘Why, they’re quite transfigured.’
Of course there was no color in her yet and her hair was kinda wispy; she was pure white like wax, and so cool and silent. I hardly dared touch her at first. Then I gave her a shampoo and her blue rinse and a set just as she always had it, curly all over and kinda fluffed up where it was thin. Then while she was drying the cosmetician put the color on. She let me watch and I got talking with her and she told me how there was a vacancy for a novice cosmetician right at the moment so I went straight back and gave Mr. Jebb my notice. That was nearly two years ago and I’ve been here ever since.”

“And you don’t regret it?”

“Ah, never, never for a moment. What I said just now about being ephemeral every artist thinks sometimes of his work, doesn’t he? Don’t you yourself?”

“And they pay you more than in the beauty parlor, I hope?”

“Yes, a little. But then you see Loved Ones can’t tip so that it works out nearly the same. But it isn’t for the money I work. I’d gladly come for nothing only one has to eat and the Dreamer insists on our being turned out nicely. It’s only in the last year that I’ve come really to love the work. Before that I was just glad to serve people that couldn’t talk. Then I began to realize what a work of consolation it was. It’s a wonderful thing to start every day knowing that you are going to bring back joy into one aching heart. Of course mine is only a tiny part of it. I’m just a handmaid to the morticians but I have the
satisfaction of showing the final result and seeing the reaction. I saw it with you, yesterday. You’re British and sort of inexpressive but I knew just what you were feeling.”

“Sir Francis was transfigured certainly.”

“It was when Mr. Joyboy came he sort of made me realize what an institution Whispering Glades really is. Mr. Joyboy’s kinda holy. From the day he came the whole tone of the mortuary became greatly elevated. I shall never forget how one morning Mr. Joyboy said to one of the younger morticians: ‘Mr. Parks, I must ask you to remember you are not at the Happier Hunting Ground.’ ”

Dennis betrayed no recognition of that name but he felt a hypodermic stab of thankfulness that he had kept silence when, earlier in their acquaintance, he had considered forming a bond between them by lightly mentioning his trade. It would not have gone down. He merely looked blank and Aimée said: “I don’t suppose you’d ever have heard of that. It’s a dreadful place here where they bury animals.”

“
Not
poetic?”

“I was never there myself but I’ve heard about it. They try and do everything the same as us. It seems kinda blasphemous.”

“And what do you think about when you come here alone in the evenings?”

“Just Death and Art,” said Aimée Thanatogenos simply.

“Half in love with easeful death.”

“What was that you said?”

“I was quoting a poem.

“… For many a time

I have been half in love with easeful death,

Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

To cease upon the midnight with no pain…”

“Did you write that?”

Dennis hesitated. “You like it?”

“Why, it’s beautiful. It’s just what I’ve thought so often and haven’t been able to express. ‘To make it rich to die’ and ‘To cease upon the midnight
with no pain
.’ That’s exactly what Whispering Glades exists for, isn’t it? I think it’s wonderful to be able to write like that. Did you write it after you came here first?”

“It was written long before.”

“Well, it couldn’t be more lovely if you’d written it in Whispering Glades—on the Lake Island itself. Was it something like that you were writing when I came along?”

“Not exactly.”

Across the water the carillon in the Belfry Beautiful musically announced the hour.

“That’s six o’clock. I have to go early today.”

“And I have a poem to finish.”

“Will you stay and do it here?”

“No. At home. I’ll come with you.”

“I’d love to see the poem when it’s done.”

“I’ll send it to you.”

“Aimée Thanatogenos is my name. I live quite close but send it here, to Whispering Glades. This is my true home.”

When they reached the ferry the waterman looked at Dennis with complicity. “So she turned up all right, bud,” he said.

M
r. Joyboy was debonair in all his professional actions. He peeled off his rubber gloves like a hero of Ouida returning from stables, tossed them into a kidney bowl and assumed the clean pair which his assistant held ready for him. Next he took a visiting-card—one of a box of blanks supplied to the florist below—and a pair of surgical scissors. In one continuous movement he cut an ellipse, then snicked half an inch at either end along the greater axis. He bent over the corpse, tested the jaw and found it firm set; he drew back the lips and laid his card along the teeth and gums. Now was the moment; his assistant watched with never-failing admiration the deft flick of the thumbs with which he turned the upper corners of the card, the caress of the rubber fingertips with which he drew the dry and colorless lips into place. And, behold! where before had been a grim line of
endurance, there was now a smile. It was masterly. It needed no other touch. Mr. Joyboy stood back from his work, removed the gloves and said: “For Miss Thanatogenos.”

Of recent weeks the expressions that greeted Aimée from the trolley had waxed from serenity to jubilance. Other girls had to work on faces that were stern or resigned or plumb vacant; there was always a nice bright smile for Aimée.

These attentions were noted with sourness in the cosmetic rooms where love of Mr. Joyboy illumined the working hours of all the staff. In the evenings each had her consort or suitor; none seriously aspired to be Mr. Joyboy’s mate. As he passed among them, like an art-master among his students, with a word of correction here or commendation there, sometimes laying his gentle hand on a living shoulder or a dead haunch, he was a figure of romance, a cult shared by all in common, not a prize to be appropriated by any one of them.

Nor was Aimée entirely at ease in her unique position. That morning in particular she met the corpse’s greeting with impaired frankness for she had taken a step which she knew Mr. Joyboy could not possibly approve.

There was a spiritual director, an oracle, in these parts who daily filled a famous column in one of the local newspapers. Once, in days of family piety, it bore the title
Aunt Lydia’s Post Bag;
now it was
The Wisdom of the Guru Brahmin
, adorned with the photograph of a bearded and almost naked sage. To this exotic source resorted all who were in doubt or distress.

It might be thought that at this extremity of the New World unceremonious manners and frank speech occasioned no doubt; the universal good humor no distress. But it was not so—etiquette, child-psychology, aesthetics and sex reared their questioning heads in this Eden too and to all readers the Guru Brahmin offered solace and solution.

To him Aimée had applied some time ago when the smiles had first become unequivocal. Her problem was not about Mr. Joyboy’s intentions but about her own. The answer had not been quite satisfactory:

No, A.T., I do not consider that you are in love—yet. Esteem for a man’s character and admiration of his business ability may form the basis of an improving friendship but they are not Love. What you describe of your feelings in his presence does not incline us to believe that there is a physical affinity between you—yet. But remember love comes late to many. We know cases who have only experienced real love after several years of marriage and the arrival of Junior. See plenty of your friend. Love may come.

That had been before Dennis Barlow brought a further perplexity to her conscience. It was now six weeks since she met him on the Lake Island, and that morning on the way to work she had posted a letter which had occupied half her night in writing. It was indeed the longest letter she had ever written: