Straight Pool

by JJ Partridge

  “I’ll send you a note with her name and particulars.”

  Silence for at least thirty seconds. The message had been delivered.

  “And I’ll speak to the Chief. Maybe he and Tuttle can straighten some of this crap between themselves so we don’t waste a lotta time.” He got up to leave and my eyes were drawn again to his hands. Somehow, I didn’t want to look at his face. He said, “I suppose it quiets down here in the summer.”

  That was meant to be insulting. “A-c-c-tually, it’s a very busy time,” I lied in that super-Wasp tone he found so irritating.

  His mouth pursed in disbelief. “Well, enjoy your Commencement. But, I gotta hear on the buildings. Monday,” he said and got up to leave.

  I smiled the widest smile I could, and surprised him by taking his elbow and ushering him out of the office, all the while chattering about my planned trip to Italy, which I said without thinking about it, included Verona.

  “Small world isn’t it,” he said, with a snort of latent suspicion at any coincidence involving me.

  I smiled at his back.

  * * *

  At four-thirty, I left College Hall and walked past the undergraduate dorms of the Old Quad on Carter Street where U-Haul vans, SUVs, and cars were being packed by kids in tee shirts and shorts in the shade of plane and dinko trees. At President’s House, I turned on to the cobblestones of Boone Lane, and quickly arrived at the high brownstone walls of Mary Street where the iron driveway gates to Temple House were closed. I unlocked a side gate and went up a sweeping gravel drive banked with flowering azaleas and lilacs into a cobblestone courtyard with a porte-cochere where I punched in the required five numbers into the alarm system’s key pad, wiped my feet on a cocoa mat, and unlocked the rear door to the mansion.

  The Thursday before graduation—today—until a few years ago, would have found Temple House bustling with graduating seniors, their guests, faculty, and members of the administration, for what had been known for over a hundred years as the ‘Senior Picnic.’ The enormous greenhouse and the two acres of landscaped grounds and formal gardens would be toured by hundreds; live chamber music would serenade those enjoying the shade of ancient copper beeches, elms, and chestnuts; tables would be laid with catered drink and food. But changes in the predilections of students and the University’s administration eventually took its toll, attendance lessened, and the event was ‘deinstitutionalized’ by Charles Danby’s predecessor as ‘redundant’ and not germane to the serious business of a Carter graduation—this, by the same reformer who invited a rap star as a DG! My mother, gracious as always, conceded. However, the decision had to have been costly to the University; she called the lawyer handling her estate plan the very next day.

  Because my mother and Sylvia Odum, her companion, were in Beauford, South Carolina attending the funeral of a girlhood friend of my mother, the house was dark and silent and didn’t welcome me. My steps echoed on the tile floors of the pantry and kitchen and in the central hall where a pile of mail was strewn on its oak floor by the front door. For a moment, sorting the mail on a salver under a seascape of the surf at Beavertail by William Trost Richards, feeling a world away from everyday concerns, I almost forgot my mission. But, of course, it was Nadie’s challenge. Were colonial captains Issac and Nathaniel Temple relatives? I was in a unique position to satisfy my curiosity because my grandfather had commissioned a family history, a dry-as-dust account by a Carter history professor of the rise to affluence and influence of the Temple family within and without Rhode Island.

  My father’s study is a spacious, seriously formal room with a Wedgewood blue ceiling, a granite fireplace, walnut floor to ceiling shelving, bookcases behind glass doors, beige draperies that were usually closed, and illuminated portraits of ancestors and overhead light fixtures that went on as the door opened. As I opened its door, memories were stimulated by the scents of old paper, leather, and glue. As a child, the study was a place to hide, or to make a path of books like flagstones in the garden, or to lay out a board game where it could be left to come back to undisturbed, or to pester my father at his writing desk, asking about the personages on the wall. Especially on hot summer days, pre air-conditioning, because it remained cool no matter what the outside temperature.

  The leather bound book was in a glass fronted cabinet under sepia photographs of Temple Bank in downtown Providence and the Temple wharves along the Providence River. I lay it on my father’s marble, Italianate desk, turned on a green shaded banker’s lamp, took off my glasses, and went to the volume’s index. ‘Issac Temple-Nathaniel Temple. Pages 38-40.’

  “Ugh!”

  Issac and Nathaniel Temple were the sons of Pardon Temple and Priscilla Atwood, second generation colonists. The brothers were born on their parents’ farm, a large tract of land in what was now Swansea, Massachusetts. Issac married and left Swansea for Aquidneck Island in the 1660’s where he farmed in what would now be Portsmouth, Rhode Island. In 1675, King Philip and his followers torched most of Swansea, killing men, women and children, including Pardon and Priscilla, and Nathaniel’s wife and daughter; Nathaniel had been with the militia in Plymouth and rushed home too late to defend his family. The following winter, Nathaniel joined Issac and the colonists and their native allies who converged on the Narragansett’s fort in The Great Swamp. After the savage battle, they made their way back to Portsmouth where Nathaniel remained with Issac. As men of property and natural leaders, they formed a company of militia that was part of the troop under Captain Benjamin Church that found and killed King Philip at Mount Hope. Nathaniel married again, raised a family of seven sons and two daughters, moved up the Bay to the new settlement of Warren, and eventually to Providence where he turned to coastal trading. He died in 1697 in Providence.

  I turned to the front of the book where the family tree was contained on a fold-out section on vellum. With it spread before me, I easily traced the hereditary line that showed I was a direct descendant of Nathaniel Temple, 1636-1697.

  My fingers went to the circle of light on the shiny desk top. Was I supposed to feel something? Anything? Those were ferocious times, I mused, both sides were in a fight to the death, barbaric in their cruelties. Could it have been avoided? Is it really so different today? Terrorism and trauma are everywhere, with revenge and sadism melded too often with religion, ethnic fears, and tribal hatreds. Maybe Nadie’s militant passion about people and the avoidance of cruelty is really all that matters.

  Anyway, it was over three hundred years ago. I’m not responsible for those tragic events.

  Right?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Charlie Fessenden was to be prepared by the ‘team’—the accountants, Flanaghan, and me—at various times on Thursday, a scheduled day off for the Office of University Counsel. According to our play book, I was the designated mentor. Flanaghan would work with Charlie and the accountants in the morning, developing questions and answers that Charlie would, not to put too fine a point on it, memorize. I would arrive before noon, encourage Charlie’s diligence to the task at hand, and pick a few softball questions to toss at Charlie when and if appropriate. He had requested that our session be held in the privacy of his home rather than in his real estate office or downtown at Flanaghan’s; I could appreciate his desire for privacy.

  Flanaghan told me that Benno Bacigalupi was still ‘investigating’—exactly what was unclear—and would contact us if there was anything we had to know. So far, the enigmatic Benno had remained so.

  With a high seventies temperature under a bright sky, it was a Carter ‘Cats’ baseball cap, RayBans, ‘top down’ day and I soon had my Mini Cooper convertible in the sparse mid-morning traffic on Route 95 south. I figured on forty-five minutes to Westerly by way of the South County Trail and was soon clicking along, thinking I’d be there in forty, when a turf farmer’s lumbering eighteen wheeler brought me to a crawl at the URI exit. Damn!

  Coming in from Charlestown on Route 1, the first left past Haversham Golf Club was posted ‘
Private,’ more of a blacktopped country lane than a private way. Bordered by walls that spoke of tedious field clearing, of stones hauled, wedged, and wrestled into place by colonial farmers, it was shaded by mature trees appropriately spaced among rhododendrons in bloom and mountain laurels bursting with blossoms. Occasional gaps showed glimpses of verdant fairways and the grasses of the Club’s Scottish Links. At the lane’s end, marked by an oversized mailbox reading ‘Pond House,’ was a pea stone driveway leading to an oversized cape with salt-silvered shingles, chimneys at either end, dormers on the second floor, and an awkward looking glassed-in, octagon-shaped tower over one wing. At the rear of the house was a three stall garage and behind that, a freshly painted, dark red barn. I left my car in the driveway and walked by a modest clapboard boathouse on Wynomet Pond which guarded a dock where a gleaming sports fisherman with powerful looking Yamaha engines was secured by lines and protected by blue and white buffers. A horse whinnied in the distance and the gulls patrolling the pond sounded their angry hunger; to the north, there was a space that in my mind’s eye filled by Haversham Golf Club’s clubhouse. Maybe I could barely make out its forlorn chimney.

  Dani Fessenden greeted me on a front lawn dimpled by lumps of rounded ledge; to my surprise, she was accompanied by the friendly border collie who chummed with us at the ruined clubhouse on Sunday. In a pink shirt and designer jeans, Dani was as slim and comely as ever. Her curly hair, a glistening black, was tied back with a silver barrette. I received a polite kiss on the cheek and noticed that her makeup didn’t disguise her tired brown eyes. The collie wanted my attention and Dani pulled the dog from me by its collar as she said that the accountants had left and ‘Mr. Flanaghan’ was working with Charlie in his second floor office. Keeping the dog outside, she led me inside to a generously-sized tile foyer where I had a glimpse of rooms that had the airy freshness, colors, and furnishings of a Crate and Barrel summer catalogue, then I followed her up a flight of curving stairs through a gallery and into a room with beadboard wainscoting, comfortably furnished, and full of sunlight. Charlie, in casual clothes, his head propped up by his palms under his chin, faced Tom Flanaghan in white shirt, loosened red tie, and suspenders at a long table covered by neat piles of manila folders. Charlie, with obvious relief, greeted me with, “Algy! Great! Now we can have lunch.”

  Dani’s expression slipped to one of dismay, either because of the dismissiveness in Charlie’s manner or because I was earlier than planned. She murmured, “Another twenty minutes or so,” and excused herself.

  I could see Flanaghan was on the brink of exasperation. “We could use a break,” he said. “Maybe I can stretch my legs with Alger if he’d like. Meanwhile, go through the purchase orders one more time. Concentrate on the Grille Room….”

  Charlie, whose face drooped at the prospect, reluctantly agreed and we left him at the table. Flanaghan straightened his tie, put on a suit jacket, and followed me down the stairs and out the front door. I headed for my car and retrieved my cap and sunglasses for some protection from the sun’s glare. “The accountants put him through the ringer. Had to,” he said, squinting in the bright light. But, he added, they seemed confident, given enough time and expensive effort, and in spite of the ‘informality’ of some purchases and invoicing, they could build a solid insurance claim. “This committee Charlie was on, the Building Committee, had the ultimate say on the purchases, but the invoices didn’t get booked on a current basis. That administrative duty was squarely on Charlie’s shoulders and he relied on a part-time bookkeeper who didn’t keep up. Not that Charlie would know. The accountants say it should take another week to get numbers together from the general contractor, the architect, the interior designer, all the suppliers, and check on what got delivered, but they should come up in the ninety-five percent range, maybe better. Charlie, and the Building Committee, are goddamn lucky, if you ask me.”

  While that was good news, I said that I presumed there would still be plenty to negotiate with the insurance company, particularly issues relating to what the insurance binder actually covered. Flanaghan agreed. “The broker should be sweating since it’s his binder and he’s connected to board members. He says he’s committed to a fair shake for the Club. He better be!”

  We had a number of choices for our walk since Charlie’s land stretched a good way around the pond’s boulder-strewn shoreline. However, Flanaghan turned away from the sun and led me by the barn where open carriage-sized doors emitted the damp smells of hay and animal. Behind the barn, a corral with a rickety split rail fence, its posts riddled by woodpeckers and rot, encircled a smallish sorrel horse. It looked up from its grazing, flicked its tail, and resumed its solitary occupation. Like old country boys, we each put a shoe on the bottom rail and spread our elbows over the top rail facing the horse.

  “I’ve also learned a lot more from Charlie,” he began, “about the negotiations between the Board and Calibrese. Brutal! After months of haggling, with Calibrese not budging on his price, getting a free membership and other concessions, at the last minute, Calibrese takes two hundred acres or so off the table!” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that. Claimed he needed to protect himself in case the golf course didn’t move forward.” Flanaghan shook his head, either in disgust or as a comment on Calibrese’s negotiation skills. “They must have been apoplectic but they wanted his land so they compromised with a deal under which the Club would lease the two hundred acres for twenty years from the closing date, with an option to buy at a reasonable price after ten. Then, the day before the closing, Calibrese demanded that if the course isn’t up and running in four years from the date of the agreement—that would be July third of this year by the way—the Club has to buy the leased land for a couple of million, or pay an enormous increase in rent for the balance of the term, or the lease terminates and Calibrese gets the land back. That demand almost croaked the deal, the Board members all say, but Charlie convinced them to close because they might need the land for expansion, the annual rental on the leased land was relatively cheap, and four years would be plenty of time to be up and running. That last concession is referred to by the Board, and everyone else familiar with the negotiation, as ‘Charlie’s deal.’ ”

  He found a handkerchief in his jacket pocket and unfolded it to wipe his face, then shook it at a swarm of midges sensing our presence, which led us to walk up a narrow dirt trail with deep tire ruts. High above us, a pair of red-tailed hawks wheeled on vigil for anything that might make a meal; the breeze off the water brought the dank smell of woods. Two foraging rabbits scampered into the briars as we approached a new cedar fence which marked the boundary of Charlie’s land with the golf course. I assumed we would turn back but Flanaghan took off his jacket and put it over his arm, his thumbs went under his suspenders, and with his back against the fence, his eyes closed.

  “Did you ever hear of Windmere Country Club or American Golf Company?” Flanaghan asked.

  I hadn’t and realized he was about to tell me a Westerly story.

  His right arm swept toward the golf course. “In the early twenties, some Masonic lodges from New York City acquired four hundred acres back there, mostly pasture and hay fields, rocky as hell, along with a patch of barrier beach across Wynomet Pond. The idea was to build a shoreline retreat for lodge members, a golf course, along with a bathing beach across the Pond, lots of open space for hiking and outdoor activities, a boy’s camp, too. They were going to drive up here or take the train, tramp around the trails, swim, sail, hit the golf course. There was a ramshackle inn off Route 1 that they renovated into forty guest rooms and a dining room, and had the premier golf architect of the day, Donald Ross, who designed Misquamicut and Winnapaug, design their course. Had flower gardens next to the inn that were so elaborate, tourists made it a regular stop between New York and Boston. They built a dock at the Pond, used a little steam launch to ferry folks across to their private beach on the Sound. In 1929 or so, in addition to the golf course, they began construction of a new club
house at the Pond, about where Charlie’s boathouse is now.”

  He opened his eyes. “Love the sun but my wife says that skin cancer will get me. Keeps giving me tubes of sun block which I always forget to put on. Better head back.” He flung his suit coat over his shoulder and we left the fence for the trail, with the raconteur still into his story. “Well, good things come to an end, don’t they. The Depression came on, and for the Masons, even handshakes couldn’t stave off disaster. They had a friendly bank mortgage loan but the friendly bank went under. They couldn’t afford to keep it going and, eventually, the place was virtually abandoned. Their clubhouse never got much beyond the exterior structure and roof.”

  I was a half step behind Flanaghan, and he turned to check if I was listening, which I was. “A fellow by the name of Mayo, an Irish guy from Philly, started buying up bankrupt private golf clubs for pennies on the dollar. Had one outside of New Haven, one near Bridgeport, and another on Long Island, and he bought the Mason’s retreat. His idea was to have a string of golf courses, all close to the water, a highway, and a railroad, from New England down to Florida. Join one, you join them all, private but not too exclusive or too expensive, more like family resorts than fancy golf clubs. So, like here, a guy could drive down from Providence, in those days maybe ninety minutes, and put mom and the kids on the shuttle boat to the beach, while he and his friends played golf. Add a few attractions that people liked in those days, a clambake shed, picnic grove, shuffleboard, tennis, croquet, miniature golf, horseshoes, …, give’em a decent, plain restaurant, and you get the idea. He named this course the ‘Windmere Country Club.’ But there was a kicker. If you joined, you also had to buy stock in his company, American Golf Company. ‘Golf for Americans’ was the slogan. Floated stock everywhere he had a course, including here. He was a great salesman, and people liked his idea.”