The Plot (2 page)

“Can you conceive what this means to Jamey? Never before—never before, Ethel! I could not lift the sheaves of praise I have had in my lifetime, but it meant nothing, except crassly, commercially, of course; good reviews mean good money, but this boy's words——” He touched the letter delicately. “These words are priceless, Ethel, beyond price. He is the one I have talked to all my life. He is why I have struggled—for him! You can't know what it means, Ethel, unless you have written all your long life and each time read your criticism, waded through your fan mail, listened to your admirers, seeking him, and never finding him. No, you can't possibly know, but enough of that.” He looked ashamed of himself, astonished that he should, for once, have spoken from the heart. More than enough of that, he thought, for he felt limp, prostrated. “Perhaps I wouldn't have lived to seventy-eight if I had gone on like this often, Ethel. Too, too enervating! Send the boy to me.”

It was perfectly safe to say, “Are you sure you should see him?”

“My spiritual son? Of course I must see him.”

She hesitated. “The thing is, Jamey, Maum Cloe doesn't think you should. Maum Cloe sent a message by Joseph Reas. Maum Cloe says send him away.”

Jamey said, “Ah?” He looked thoughtful.

Ethel laughed. “Oh, no, Jamey! You're not going to take Maum Cloe's psychic gifts as seriously as her son and grandson do?”

“Am I not?” He closed his eyes, opened them. His lids were wrinkled and brown-spotted, like winter leaves. “Am I not?” He gave Ethel the holder with the stub still burning in it. She took it, removed the stub, and squashed it into the ash tray. She watched herself squashing it into the ash tray. Jamey said, “Ask Joseph Reas to bring the young man to me.”

“Defying Maum Cloe's psyche?” She brushed her finger tips together. It was the only gesture she allowed herself to indicate that she had met the first obstacle and brushed it away. Almost negligently, for she was safe now, she said, “But you do know nothing about him. I suppose it could be asking for trouble.”

“Dear girl! Pooh!” The cigarette holder went back into the box, the lid went over the box with a snap, making a little finality. “Jamey knows all about everybody.” Ethel obediently started out of the room, but he stopped her. “First fetch my copy of the menu, Ethel. I must see if—uncannily, my dear, I ordered the fatted calf to be slaughtered today in honor of the prodigal son.”

She brought him the ivory holder with the day's menu on it in Jamey's own hand, for at ten-thirty each evening, sipping his one drink, Jamey always planned the next day's meals and wrote two copies, one for Maum Cloe, one for himself. It was now the only writing the old man did. Food was very important to him. (“What else has an old man, my dear girl?”) Indeed, Jamey insisted that the reason he had bought the plantation, when its owner, his friend, died, the reason he had spent a fortune in having the little house built a half mile behind the big house, was because of Charleston cooking, was because Maum Cloe and all her recipes went with the place, plus William Reas, her son, and Joseph Reas, her grandson. Now he bent his head close over the ivory menu holder, squinting. “Squab pelos today, Ethel dear. Do you think that would substitute for fatted calf? That's the dish Maum Cloe bastes with her mustard-pickle juice.” He watched for it, and, surely enough, Ethel's tongue flicked out the side of her mouth. Ethel, Jamey thought, was dreadfully greedy; if it needed something besides reverence for him and a fat salary to keep Ethel down on this lonely plantation, she was chained here more securely than any slave on a chain gang by Maum Cloe's superb cooking. He gave her the ivory holder and lay back on the chaise. “It will be three by the time William Reas brings the boy back here from the plantation house. He will bring three-o'clock dinner at the same time, and the young man may have his dinner with us.”

“Yes, Jamey, but I don't want to influence you about him. If you're sure——”

He bristled because he did not enjoy the inference that anyone could influence him. “I'm sure. As you go by, Ethel, turn on the air-conditioner, dear, first closing the louvers, of course. I would say set it for seventy-two degrees.” He held his hand in the air to test the heat of the room and watched its tremor sadly. “Yes, seventy-two degrees. My sun is a leetle too hot for Jamey, just now. Don't you admire the way I make it my sun?”

“Yes, Jamey.”

“My sun up there in the sky, my son waiting outside the big house gates. Oh, Oedipus, my son, my son! I am quite terribly
exalté
over this boy, dear girl, quite terribly
exalté
!”

Walking out with excitement trembling through her heavy limbs, Ethel thought that for once Jamey had used the wrong word. Foolish, she thought. Fatuous.
Asking
for it.

CHAPTER TWO

“Dear boy,” Jamey said, moving languidly across the dining room in his suède sandals, his white wool monk's robe falling in classic folds. “I have heard your letter. Welcome, dear boy!” Jamey was five foot six; holding out his right hand to be grasped, he glanced up at the tall young man, clapping his left hand hastily to the back of his neck, as thought it hurt him to tilt his head on it. “The spiritual son has outgrown his father.” He winced delightedly at the strength of the handclasp.

“Physically? What's that? What's physically?”

“Dear boy, if Cleopatra's nose had been an inch longer——The history of the world would have been changed if Cleopatra's nose had been longer. If Jamey Vaughn had been a foot taller, the history of literature——What a
very
picturesque costume, dear boy!”

The young man was wearing navy-blue jeans that, thin from many washings, were tight across his flat belly, outlining the narrow loins, accenting the length of his superb legs. He wore a striped blue and white basque shirt that had also become skin-tight through laundering; his black hair was damp and curled from the heat. He wore no socks, and his left moccasin was torn and held to his foot by a broad rubber band. He held out his left foot and shook it so that the shoe flapped. “In a bag out in the front hall there, I have a change of underwear and a couple of pair of socks. I didn't choose this outfit because it's picturesque.”

“Nevertheless.
Comme il est beau
, Ethel!
Comme il est magnifique!
”

The young man's dark skin reddened, his mouth tightened, then he shrugged and made a caricature bow, very low, very deferential, and his face, coming into view again, the smiling lips showing the white even teeth, the short nose with the lifting, rising upper lip, the rich brown of his sunburned skin, was startlingly beautiful. He said, “
Mille mercies
.”

Jamey made a moue. “Your accent, dear boy! Let us be seated. We take dinner at three, you see. It is a good old Charleston custom which suits Jamey.” He motioned to the oval table, which was laid for three, set in the curved window. William Reas, in a white jacket, drew out Jamey's chair and waited for him to seat himself. The young man made no move to draw out Ethel's chair, and Jamey frowned. The young man saw the frown, saw that he had done something or omitted to do something, and blushed again, angrily.

“My accent is pretty lousy, isn't it? It's bad literary French. There are other unfortunate things about me; for example, I don't know what you're frowning about.” His lip drew back again, showing the white teeth. “I have never sat down to this kind of table—except in books.” He glanced around the beautiful room. “I've never been in a place like this—except in books.” Then he quieted himself. “Also, I haven't eaten since yesterday noon.”

Jamey clapped his hands together. “Were you writing furiously, dear boy? Did you forget your poor tummy?”

“I was broke. I forgot my wallet.” He saw Ethel's smile of comprehension.

“I see, yes.”

You see, no, the young man thought.

“We were waiting for you to pull out Ethel's chair.”

The young man pulled out the chair and then sat on the remaining seat. He looked angry. There was a silence. Jamey picked up his spoon and put it down.

“I don't know your name, dear boy.”

“Louis Daignot.”

Jamey repeated it several times, making it liquid, making it musical. He chuckled and held up one finger. “And along with that change of linen in your luggage, dear boy, do you have what will be—Dot-dot-dash—a best-selling novel by Louis Daignot, brilliant young author? It has a fine ring to it. Um. Yes.”

“I have some scorched, browned, crumpled, dirty chapters by a nonselling author, by a bum, you could say if you wanted to be literal, Mr. Vaughn; by a tramp. I thumbed my way here, you know.”

“I do know and I am so touched, so touched! And now that you have—er—thumbed your way to us, how do you find us? Or, at least, how do you find our shrine?” He nodded, and William Reas came to his side and extended the silver platter of squab pelos. “Is it fitting?”

“It's swell. Am I romantic? I would have thought that the big house with the gate was more——”

“Faded elegance? Cultured ghosts? Reminiscences of a more gracious period? No, dear boy, no!” He tapped his forehead. “I have all that safe in my memory; for my body 1950 is kinder. It is a perfect arrangement here, Louis, although you may have to be seventy-eight to appreciate it. If Ethel should whisper that I am seventy-nine, it is a calumny! This is perfection; the completely modern house where I control the sun, master the cold, yet need have no noise, no fuss, no strangers to do it for me. Joseph Reas chars, valets, and vanishes for us. William Reas, as you see, brings our meals in the car, which is fitted with a steam compartment, a refrigerator. He serves us. He clears for us in four minutes flat. He disappears for us.”

The colossal nerve of him, Louis thought. He glanced at the Negro, but the expression on his face didn't change while he was being discussed. It was as if he really weren't there. Servitor, Louis thought. Servitor. Poor guy.

“When the necessary work is done, I am left to my solitude, knowing that in the background, unseen, like the old witch she really is, Maum Cloe is cooking up her nourishing and delicious spells.”

Louis stared at the gold and olive-green design on his plate so that no one could guess his expression. “So you're really here all alone, then, most of the time?”

“I am, dear boy, blessedly alone.”

“Aren't you afraid? Isn't your splendid isolation—uh—tempting the gods?”

“Dear boy, the reason the gods are gods is that they are not to be tempted. What will be will be. I shall send a message to Maum Cloe to that effect.”

“Oh, Jamey!” Ethel said.

“Maum Cloe definitely warned me against you, Louis.”

“Warned you against me? Why?” He could not help blushing. He cursed the dark blood burning his cheeks, his ears, his forehead.

“Maum Cloe has second sight. She says you will do me evil.”

“I assure you, Mr. Vaughn, I have no intention of harming you!”

“Intention? We are not speaking of intention here. Maum Cloe was not referring to your intention but to your fate.”

Ethel said, “Oh, nonsense, Jamey!”

He paid no attention to her. “It may be your fate to harm me, dear boy, but in that case it is my fate to be your victim, is it not?”

Ethel said to Louis, “Don't mind him, Mr. Daignot. He makes a
thing
of pretending to believe in Maum Cloe. Maum Cloe is—” She remembered Maum Cloe's son. “Now you don't really believe that she sees things, William Reas?”

The wings of the bat brushed his skin; he shivered. “Yes, Miss Ethel.”

“Anyhow,” Ethel said, “Jamey's not alone, Mr. Daignot; I'm here. I can see things, too. I have a perfectly good pair of eyes—and iron lungs!”

“Dear Ethel is here, of course. She plans for me, writes for me, she is my darling watchdog. It will be necessary to get past Ethel to get at me, dear boy, and nobody gets past Ethel.”

She looked at Louis. “No one.”

William Reas came around with the platter again, and stopped at Louis' left. “Go on, dear boy, do have another helping all round.” Jamey smirked at Ethel. “It does my heart good, my dear, to see Louis eat so ravenously. A lady, of course, should never be greedy.” He turned to Louis, discreetly. “I would have the ladies eat in privacy, and, in company, pretend to subsist on one pea, a crumb of bread, and flower scents.”

Louis saw Ethel blush, saw how her hand trembled. “Oh, come on now, Mr. Vaughn!”

Ethel blinked. “I don't mind Jamey, Mr. Daignot.”

“Ethel adores Jamey, dear boy! She is one of those women who must be raped, subjugated, in order to love. All women, do you think, Louis? At any rate, Jamey—in a purely literary sense of course, Ethel dear, you need not bridle—has raped and subjugated his female. Ethel's critical faculties force her to call Jamey master where she would call no man master, and she adores it! Isn't that so, Ethel dear?” He didn't wait for her answer. “If I were foolish enough to write anything further, I would first submit it to dear Ethel, here. I would know then whether my hand had lost its cunning.” He giggled. “I assure you, dear boy, her
literary
taste is perfect!” Jamey emphasized “literary,” which he pronounced in the English way, lit'ry, staring at Ethel's dress, which was all wrong, at the neckline that should have been higher or lower but not where it was, at the unfortunate forthright blueness of it, at the opulence of the design that screamed at her solid bulk, at the tired ruffles, the insistent gathers. Jamey giggled again. “I am a monster of ingratitude, a master of rudeness. Forgive me, Ethel.”

“I don't mind,” she repeated absent-mindedly. She would not look at Louis' profile, the tumbling dark hair falling over his forehead, the straight, short upper lip. Now was that a dimple in his cheek, she wondered, seeing him anyhow, as she bent her head over the table. She was talking to herself. “I am not a sex-starved female. I am not an unfulfilled old maid.” She was trying to block out Louis' image with the more powerful, bigger body of Budder Green. “I must see Budder soon. Tonight? Better see him soon,” she told herself, forcing herself to think of Budder, of his body, of the way his arms pressed her, the feel of his teeth against her lips. Rough. Budder.