by Matthew Head
Tony Crew was one of the quietest people around The Flea Club and he tolerated Freddy with a patience anyone else would have been hard put to it to equal, since Freddy kept him continuously under assault. Tony was not only Nicole’s accompanist, he also wrote some of her songs. I liked him, as everybody did. With his face and figure and natural attraction he could have gone into René’s business and made a million, but nobody ever got very close to Tony. He was as quiet and retiring as Freddy was yappy and gregarious. For that matter, I liked Freddy all right too, but when I came to The Flea Club the night I’m telling about, I didn’t feel like joining him and Tony because I didn’t feel like talking to anybody who was always in quite as much of a dither about everything as Freddy always was. I looked around for Professor Johnson, who had turned into a regular as the unexpected result of his excavations in the cellar, but if he was around, he was downstairs, so I had a long quiet drink alone at the bar—alone meaning that I didn’t know anybody there who was shouldering me, as the time for Nicole’s next turn approached and the room began to fill up.
Tony got up and left to join Nicole; Freddy followed him out of the room with his eyes, and then, turning back, caught sight of me, and jumped up from his table and came blithering over.
“Helloooo, Hoop!” he began babbling. “You’re back! How was Italy? You must tell me all about it. But not now, not now! My dear, what you’ve missed!” Freddy’s ‘my dear’ was for everybody. I once heard him use it on a cop who stopped him at an intersection, and there were a couple of difficult moments.
“Such goings on,” he was saying now. “You’ve missed simply everything. You wouldn’t believe! Too exciting! “
Talking was a compulsion with Freddy. I’ve seen him really try to stop, when he knew he was sounding like an ass, and I’ve seen him unable to dam up the torrent of prattle that kept coming out in spite of himself. “Why do I do it?” he once wailed to me. “Why can’t I help it? I know how I sound.” He spoke in a fairly high but not abnormally high voice, at approximately the speed of light, except that he would hit one in every ten or so syllables and accent it and draw it out so that his talk went forward in a series of lurches, further deformed by the honkings and squawkings of a fake British accent which had become second nature.
“Simply everything has happened,” he chattered. “Something has happened to everybody. Except me, of course. Nothing ever happens to me! Isn’t it sad? Poor Freddy. But it doesn’t, it simply doesn’t. I can’t understand it. Professor Johnson’s found himself a new buttress. Have you been downstairs, Hoopy?”
“Nope.”
“Well do go! I mean the place is simply fantastic, these utterly tremendous holes, right in the middle of the clubroom, and the most tremendous piles of dirt. Really quite picturesque and too too archaeological! So intellectual, is the way I feel about it, so un-Flea Club! But good, you know, really good. The Institute’s been taking pictures, if you can imagine. I mean it—the Institute! Ninth century if it’s a day, Professor Johnson says. Can you imagine?”
“Hot stuff,” I said.
“Isn’t it?” Freddy agreed enthusiastically. The syllables kept spilling out, and I stood watching him and wondering about him. When you first saw Freddy Fayerweather you thought he was a good-looking boy. Then as soon as he moved or opened his mouth, it was gone. He had a freshness of tint and a nice regularity of feature, with heavy straight glossy blond hair, cut a little long but always neatly combed and trimmed, and he had a naturally pleasant and masculine proportion as to general width and height which looked even better by the time his tailor dressed him. But he moved wrong. When he described himself as ‘all cartilage and blubber’ as against Tony’s fine-boned tautly sinewed build, he was selling himself short but it was true that he had an over-flexible and slightly soft look. You might have taken him for anything from a second-string saxophone player to an Oxford undergraduate, if he had been dressed exactly like either one, but he was always tailored with that absolute perfection attainable only by the rich American imitating the well-dressed Britisher. In the matter of accessories, Freddy was passionate. Everything was impeccable, quiet, and incredibly expensive. He was the most fanatically clean-looking individual I’ve ever known, and the most juvenile in appearance for his age. He was probably around twenty-five, and if he lived another fifty years he was going to look like other septuagenarians of his type—like an adolescent prematurely withered by some corrosive ailment.
“—and René’s got a new woman,” he was saying. “And has he worked fast on this on! My dear, I’m sure he’s already given her the free sample, and now she’s simply sitting up and begging. Too too nymph over him, really. Somebody ought to warn her. I hate René, don’t you?”
I made an ambiguous sound. I disliked René, but Freddy was a compulsive gossip, and anything you told him would be babbled all over the place by the end of the evening.
“Well, I do, and I’m not afraid to admit it,” he said. “I mean, if I do, why not be frank about it? Don’t you think so? I mean I simply can not stand him. So why shouldn’t—”
“How’s Mrs. Jones taking all this?” I asked.
Freddy rolled his eyes upward in an expression of combined awe and malice. “My dear!” he said. “Fit to be tied! What I’d really like, I’d like to see the two girls get together, both of them, and turn on René. Really, I don’t know why some of these women don’t simply dismember him some time.” He snickered parenthetically and said, “Can’t you just see them afterward, fighting over the choicer parts?” and then went on, “You know, I was sure Mrs. Jones was going to be it. Honestly, didn’t you think he’d marry her? After all, anybody could! Practically everybody has! And she’s still rich. Really, René should. You know he’s getting on. Really quite pouchy under the eyes lately. Just notice some time. I mean he’s really not going to have his looks forever, and there’s always a new generation rising to compete with, and—” but he stopped abruptly and said, “I refuse to talk about him. I simply refuse to occupy myself with him. Tell me about you, Hoopy. I do hope Italy was good, so you’ll have something, because you have missed simply everything here. Was it good, Hoop? Italy?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m so glad. Did you go to Capri?”
“Huh-uh.”
“Well, why in the world not? Everybody goes to Capri now. Everybody always has! Then where in the world did you go?”
“Siena.”
“But how medieval! Really, Hoop, you should have been a schoolteacher! A professor or something. You’d have been divine at it.”
“Thanks.”
“But I guess it’s too late now, isn’t it? What a shame.”
“Yep.”
“I can just see you in the schoolroom, all those eager little faces. Too medieval. I think our education’s in a dreadful state, don’t you? You simply don’t belong in the modern world, Hoop, not going to Capri! And missing simply everything here. Tony’s written a divine new song for Nicole.”
“Simply?”
“What?”
“Don’t you mean simply divine?”
“Well! Hoop! Really! That’s unkind! I didn’t expect it from you, I must say. Everybody thinks I’m such a fool, but I didn’t think you did! I mean to say, you make me feel too too et tu Brute about it. Do you think I’m a fool, Hoopy?”
“Nope.”
“Well, I’m so glad. Because I’m not, really. I know how I sound, and I know how I act. I know the impression I make. I know what everybody thinks! But it isn’t true, I swear it isn’t, and I thought you knew better. Just because I go around trying to keep on the bright side of things all the time. But what I mean is, why not? Why be dreary in public, is what I mean. Show a bright face to the world, at least, is the way I feel about it. Honestly, Hoop, when I’m alone I go through hell—absolute hell! I do, really. But I never get a bit of credit for it. Not a bit!”
So I told Freddy again, as I had told him many times before, that I didn’t think he was a fool,
because I didn’t, even if he acted like one, and I told him I was certain that he went through hell, absolute hell, which I was, except that I was certain he went through it only in the upper brackets. He told me that he was so glad, that sometimes he thought I was the only person around who really understood him.
“But you’re right,” he went on, “you’re absolutely right, about Tony’s song. It’s not only divine, it is simply divine. Hoop, why don’t you speak to Tony? I mean just put in a word or two for me? He’s so much too good for this. He’s got such a tremendous talent—genius, really. I’ve tried again and again, I’ve argued with him till I’m blue in the face—actually blue!—but it doesn’t do a bit of good. He ought to quit all this and really study. You know, do serious things. I’d be happy to keep him. I really would! Here I am with all this money and no talent—really—and there he is with all that talent and no money. You see how it dovetails. It couldn’t be neater! I mean it would make so much sense. And here he is, writing songs for a cheap singer—”
“Objection.”
“Oh, all right, I know Nicole’s good, she’s terribly good, I admire her, and we all love her, especially you—and incidentally Hoopy there’s quite a bit of gossip, did you know? People saying you’re absolutely gone on Nicole, really sunk, I mean in a while you’re going to be nothing but an attachment of hers in people’s thinking, I’d watch it if I were you, Hoopy, I really would, gossip can be so vicious—but what I was saying, I’m as fond of Nicole as the next person, but she’s simply devouring Tony, that’s all there is to it, and it isn’t fair. You can’t abuse your talent indefinitely without cheapening it, is what I mean, and that’s what’s he’s doing. Sometimes when I think about it I think I must, I simply must do something really drastic about Tony, anything to get him away from Nicole and really doing something important. Like Menotti or something. I can just see it, we could set up an apartment together and he could have his own workroom, a piano and everything. I mean the money wouldn’t be anything to me, nothing at all. Quite the reverse. I always say, why shouldn’t all this money made the way my father made it go to doing some real good for a change? I mean if a perfect upstart like my father makes all this money, it’s perfectly meaningless unless somebody else does something with it. Don’t you think? We could have this apartment and I could sort of nurture Tony. Do you see what I mean?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Now really, Hoop! I think you’re being very unsympathetic. That’s twice in ten minutes. I don’t think Siena agreed with you at all. I mean if you’re in a mood like this I guess you wouldn’t think of saying anything to Tony for me, would you?”
“Nope.”
“Well I’m not going to argue about it! I simply don’t have the energy. But it’s a rotten deal, it really is, Tony wasting himself around a place like this.”
“You spend a lot of time around here yourself.”
Freddy said, with one of those lapses into normal speech and comparatively straight thinking which kept occurring in the middle of his phrenetic chatter, “It’s different with me, as of course you know. It doesn’t make any difference what happens to me, any more than it makes any difference what happens to practically everybody else in the world. I’m nothing. Just nobody. I just happen to have all this money. Only one person in ten thousand is worth saving, and that’s the person with talent. I mean real talent. I don’t mean all these expatriate phonies.”
He waited to see if I was really listening, and I looked at his silly attractive face and thought what a good face it might have been if the circumstances of Freddy’s life had forced him towards strength and decision instead of all the bright vapid fluttering from which, I thought, it was too late for him to save himself. I said, “O.K., no objection.”
Freddy said, “My mother goes around endowing all these orphans’ homes and everything. But I always say, what difference do all those people make?”
“There’s a theory that anybody with something to give the world will find a way to give it, without help.”
“Hoop!” he cried out. “That’s ridiculous! Don’t say that! You can’t say that! How do you know how much has been lost to the world because people like Tony have to do things like Tony’s doing to stay alive? Look,” he said, returning now to the refuge of his fluttering, “I’d strangle all those orphans, I mean with my own hands, if I thought it would help Tony. I really mean it! I’d strangle—”
“Now you’re jabbering, Freddy.”
“Honestly! You’re impossible tonight. You really are! I simply won’t—” but whatever he was going to say, he never said it, because the lights went down and the spot went on for Nicole and Tony.
“She’s nearly twenty minutes late,” I said to Freddy. “I’ve never known her to be late before.”
“You just don’t know,” he murmured. “She’s not herself at all. She’s been quite distracted these last few days,” he said, sounding pleased. “If it weren’t for Tony…”
After I had finished telling her all this, Dr. Finney had very little to say about Bibi. “What’s the best Bibi can hope for?” she asked, and I said that at the very best, Bibi might hope for a job as a charwoman.
“Like this old Bijou of Nicole’s?”
“Not that good. Bijou’s a housekeeper and almost a companion for Nicole at the club. Bibi couldn’t ever take any responsibility.”
“What makes you so sure Freddy’s not a fool?”
I managed to make the jump from Bijou to Freddy, and said, “Because he’s always having these lapses into good sense. A man with good sense can make a fool of himself now and then but a real fool can’t lapse into good sense except maybe very occasionally by accident or imitation. And Freddy does it too frequently for it to be either.”
Dr. Finney accepted this idea with a nod of her head, said she was getting hungry and wanted some more nourishment pretty soon, then asked, “What does he do in his spare time—besides nurture Tony? Does he have a whole stable of Tonys, or is Tony his only?”
“Tony’s his only. And I’ve tried to tell you I’m not at all sure Freddy’s what he appears to be. Spare time? He collects modern painting.”
“Oh, my God!” said Dr. Finney. On the way into my room we had to go through the gallery, and it had taken only a glance at her face when she looked at my merchandise to know what she thought of it, outside of the fetishes.
“I know what you mean,” I admitted, “but the hard fact is that Freddy’s painting collection is the best reason I know to believe he’s not a fool. Also, he’s got a good heart under that fla-fla. Look. Half the paintings he buys are terrible, but he knows it. Half of them he buys because some poor devil is starving and Freddy’s too sensitive to give a simple hand-out. But even so, he won’t buy even these bad pictures from anybody unless he thinks there’s some kind of talent there that’s potentially worth saving. Like he said about all those orphans—he’s not interested in anybody unless he’s got talent. He’d watch them starve with complete indifference.”
“If I want to keep Freddy on my list of suspects,” Dr. Finney mused, “I have to balance his affection for Tony and his admiration for Tony’s talent against his admiration for Nicole’s talent. I suppose he’d admit, in the end, that she’s pretty good?”
“Actually he thought as I thought, no matter what he said about her devouring Tony, that Nicole at her best has been damn near great. But anyway Freddy couldn’t kill anybody. No matter what he said about strangling orphans. He could imagine it, but that’s all.”
“These Freddys can get pretty excited all of a sudden. They can be direct and vicious on the spur of the moment in a way they never could by premeditation. Suppose he came to see Nicole to try to talk her into releasing Tony, or something of the kind. Suppose she refused. Suppose she went on and told him what she thought of his probable private life. Suppose she relayed to him some comment or supposed comment from Tony as to what a nuisance Freddy was, always hanging around with intent to nurture. Can’t you
imagine Freddy beginning to scream and picking up a shovel and knocking Nicole out with it? I can.”
“So can I. But I can’t imagine Nicole doing all that.”
Dr. Finney got up suddenly from the chair and began to pace uncomfortably up and down the room. “Dammit, I don’t want to discuss all this,” she said. “When all this stuff’s only half formulated, it crystallises it to talk possibilities, and I’m not ready for it to crystallise yet. It closes things. Now what about the other half of Freddy’s paintings?”
“They’re good. He’s got a real eye for a comer. He buys cheap at first exhibitions or even before the man’s had a show, and he could probably double his investment already. And in the art racket, that’s really something.”
She kept pacing back and forth. I said, “What’s wrong?”
“Freddy is,” she said. “Also Audrey. Also Marie Louise. Also Tony. Also all these pictures. Also Nicole, not to mention René and Mrs. Jones. All these people. Bibi. Bijou. I feel out of my depth. No—it’s worse. I’ve been out of my depth plenty of times, but now I feel out of my habitat. The Flea Club! Those other times, when I tried to figure things out this same way, I could feel it. And I could visualise it. Here, I can’t. I don’t know the places and I don’t know this kind of life or these people. I’m such an outsider. All this Paris stuff. Boy,” she said wryly, “am I ever a foreigner.”