Bread Upon the Waters

by Irwin Shaw

  At dinner, Hazen sat at the head of the table, with Leslie on his right, her hair swept up, and Caroline on his left. Next to Caroline was one of the young men she had played tennis with three weeks before. Strand noticed with some amusement that it wasn’t the good-looking one, Brad or Chad, whom Hazen had warned him about. Next to him was a lady named Caldwell, who had one of the houses down the dunes and who had come with her husband and daughter. The daughter sat next to Jimmy and looked about Jimmy’s age, although Strand was never sure about how old girls really were. In his classes he had girls he knew were sixteen who looked twenty-five. A big, jovial man by the name of Solomon, with long straight gray hair that made him look like George Washington, sat next to the girl. Then came Linda Roberts, on Strand’s right, who was not dressed in her traveling rags, as she had described them, but in a long, flouncy mauve-colored gown that left her rather bony shoulders bare. Mrs. Solomon, a sharp-faced but pretty woman with a boyish haircut and a deep tan, sat on Strand’s left and Caldwell, who had been introduced as Dr. Caldwell, a middle-aged man with the mournful diplomatic face of an ambassador who has just been ordered to deliver a nasty note to a volatile government, completed the table, sitting between Mrs. Solomon and Leslie. Conroy, Strand saw, although he lived on the grounds, was not on his employer’s social list.

  The conversation was lively and Strand was pleased to see that Leslie and Caroline were obviously enjoying themselves and that the Caldwell girl who had been invited for Jimmy seemed deeply interested in what Jimmy was telling her. But it was difficult for Strand to hear more than snatches of what people were saying because Linda Roberts kept talking to him in a high, piercing voice. “I’ll be terrible company tonight,” she had warned him as she sat down. “I’m exhausted. Jet lag.” She had just come back from France, where, she said, besides the work at the gallery in Paris, there had been a wedding that she just couldn’t avoid attending. “Four hundred guests,” she said. “Luckily it didn’t rain so the reception in the garden didn’t turn into a marine disaster. I’ve been flooded out of one June wedding after another and you always feel that when a marriage starts with everybody cowering for shelter, there’ll be a divorce in a year or two. Russell has told me all about you and your lovely family and how much you’ve done for him. You must be proud of your daughter. If it had been me I’d have just screamed and fallen into a dead faint. I don’t know what’s ever going to become of dear old New York. Nobody dares wear jewelry anymore. It’s all in vaults in banks. The insurance.” She sighed, heaving her bony shoulders. “Russell says you’re a history teacher. What fun that must be. It was one of my best subjects in the University of Michigan, but I don’t read the newspapers anymore—just the society page and the movie reviews—everything else is so pessimistic. You must forgive me. I can hardly speak, I’m so exhausted. Airports are hell, anyway. The worst is Fiumicino. I’ve almost stopped going to Rome because of it. Everybody travels so much these days, you see the strangest people in first class. My husband was on the verge of buying a Lear jet, but then he died. I always like to arrive at Nice. The airport’s just along the sea and it’s a little like the good old days when you could take one of those glorious plush ships to Europe, with bouillon served at eleven by those smart stewards going along the deck chairs. And now they’ve even taken those beautiful Italian boats out of service. Heavenly pasta. I don’t like to sound like an old fuddy-duddy, but there’s such a thing as carrying progress too far. They’ve ruined the Côte d’Azur, of course, it might just as well be Miami Beach, but I just rush from the airport to my little nest, it’s in the hills above Mougins and never put my foot out of it except to walk around my garden. You know Mougins, don’t you, Mr. Strand?”

  “Allen,” Strand said gallantly, wondering how fast and how long Mrs. Roberts could talk when she wasn’t suffering from jet lag.

  “Allen,” she said. “I had a beau by that name. Lovely young man. Divine looking. People were always asking him if he wanted to go into the movies. But he was a serious horseman. He absolutely wilted when I married my husband and he immediately married a woman who’d been divorced four times. Stupendous alimony. He came with his wife to visit me and my husband, and Allen sulked for three days and we had to pretend we were packing to go to Ischia to get them out of the house. Vulgar little thing, the wife, I mean, she sunbathes with her breasts bare. She was inordinately proud of them, her breasts, I mean. She came up from being a cheerleader at the University of Texas and her first husband played football and beat her all the time. I couldn’t find it in my heart to blame him. You and your beautiful wife—my heavens, she is stunning—must come and visit me in Mougins. Do you get to France often?”

  “No,” Strand said, trying to pay attention to the delicious rare slice of lamb on his plate. “Not often.”

  “You’d love Mougins. It’s a haven of peace tucked away in the hills. My husband bought it for me as a wedding present. He was the most thoughtful of men. He dealt internationally. Companies everywhere. In a multitude of countries. You name it, the country I mean, and he had a company there. Of course it meant being away an awful lot of the time.”

  I can understand why he was away a lot of time, Strand thought, meanly.

  “That’s what turned me on to good works,” Linda Roberts said. “Being alone so much of the time. In those conditions other women take lovers.” She laughed again, breathily, hysterically. “But my husband was not a complaisant man, no, not at all, you couldn’t describe him as being complaisant. Charity fills a great gap in my life, Mr. Strand, I mean Allen. I mustn’t monopolize you anymore. Nellie Solomon is just dying to talk to you, I can tell, and I’ll just sit here and fall into a stupor.”

  Mrs. Solomon was seated on his left and he turned gratefully to her. Once or twice Leslie had looked down the table during Linda Roberts’s monologue and had given him an ironic, pitying smile.

  Mrs. Solomon was eating heartily and silently, her eyes on her plate. Dr. Caldwell, on her left, was talking in a low, confidential tone to Leslie, as Strand had noticed he’d been doing almost all through dinner. Later on Leslie told Strand that Caldwell had moved to the Hamptons to practice because, he said, he could never find a place to park his car when he made calls in the city. He was also deeply interested in music, and she said that he knew a great deal about it and didn’t talk nonsense. She said he didn’t look like a diplomat to her, but a doctor whose patients were always dying on him.

  “Are you here for the summer?” Strand said to Mrs. Solomon, because you had to start somewhere.

  “We rent,” Mrs. Solomon said. “This is the second summer.” She had a soft southern accent. Alabama, Strand thought. “Herb wants to buy a house here.”

  “It is a beautiful part of the world,” Strand said.

  “If you don’t play golf,” Mrs. Solomon said.

  “What?” Strand asked, puzzled.

  “If your name is Solomon,” she said, “the club is pretty clubby, if you know what I mean.”

  “I see,” Strand said, embarrassed.

  “Oh, it’s not too bad,” Mrs. Solomon said airily, smiling. She had perfect sharp little white teeth and the smile softened her face. “I haven’t noticed any pogroms yet. I guess we’ll buy the house. It’s only at the club that it makes any difference. Everyplace else you can be a Zulu and you’ll still be invited to all the parties. And I guess in fifty years the club’ll burn down or everybody will be dead or have a Jewish daughter-in-law.” Suddenly, she looked at him strangely. “You’re Jewish, aren’t you?”

  “No.” He had been asked that question many times, almost always by Jews. His beak of a nose.

  “I’m sorry,” Mrs. Solomon said. “Neither am I. Née Ferguson. Nellie Ferguson. I don’t know why I thought you were.”

  “I do.”

  They grinned at each other.

  “I wouldn’t have given you my little speech if I thought you were a goy. As I said, in fifty years it probably won’t make a smidgen of difference. Fifty years
ago, they wouldn’t let the Irish into the club. That’s why the rich Irish set themselves up in Southampton. Fifty years isn’t a long time to wait for a game of golf, is it?” She smiled again.

  Strand decided she was a very pretty woman. If Hazen had to have a mistress, he would have done a lot better with Nellie Solomon than with Linda Roberts.

  “Actually,” Mrs. Solomon said, “I love it here. The beach is glorious, Russell lets me use his court whenever I want to—I’m due to play with your daughter tomorrow, I hear she’s somethin’—and it’s near enough to New York so that Herb can dash in when the office calls him. He loves bein’ a Jew. And it helps in the business he’s in.”

  “What business is that?”

  “Didn’t Russell tell you?”

  “No, he merely said there were some nice people coming to dinner.”

  “He said he especially wanted us to come tonight and meet you. We broke another date to come.”

  “I’m glad you did.”

  “You are polite. Russell said as much.” She smiled again. “My Herbert books bands, arranges concerts, rock, country, jazz, spirituals, schmaltz, you name it, he does it. You ought to see some of the people who pour through our house.”

  “I see,” Strand said. He shook his head. Good old Hazen, something for everyone. He had asked Jimmy to bring his guitar with a purpose. Perhaps Hazen had thought that one of the family looked sick, anemic or in the first stages of some dreadful disease and had invited Dr. Caldwell to give him a secret diagnosis.

  “That’s how I met Herbert,” Mrs. Solomon said. “I thought I was a singer.”

  “How did it turn out?”

  She shrugged. “He disabused me. You can’t fool ole Herb when it comes to talent. ‘Poor girl,’ he said, after he’d heard me, ‘I will have to marry you.’” She chuckled and looked across at her husband fondly. Then she returned seriously to her food. “I do love to get invited to Russell’s parties here. They’re so—so un-East-Hamptonish. He collects oddities—like Herb and me…”

  “And us,” Strand said.

  Mrs. Solomon gave him a little childish, conspiratorial smile. “I wasn’t goin’ to say so.”

  Strand liked the pretty, frank young woman, with her round, appealing figure, which, if she always ate the way she was eating tonight, would not be so appealing in later years. “He’s a most thoughtful host,” Strand said, “Russell.”

  “Marvelous.” It came out mahhhvelous. “Have you ever been to his place in New York?”

  “No.”

  “It’s just campin’ out heah compared to that,” Mrs. Solomon said. “It’s funny, the feasts he puts out and he hardly takes an insignificant little bite of nourishment himself…. Have you noticed that?”

  “I have.”

  “And Herb says that if he had Russell’s wine cellar he wouldn’t draw a sober breath till the end of his days.”

  “Everything all right down at your end, Nellie?” Hazen called to Mrs. Solomon.

  “Delightful,” Mrs. Solomon said. “We were just praisin’ you.”

  “Continue,” Hazen said and raised his glass to her, then turned back to talk to Leslie.

  “These little green beans are somethin’, aren’t they?” Mrs. Solomon said, chewing delicately but definitely on a mouthful of food.

  “Flageolets, that’s what they’re called,” Mrs. Roberts said across Strand. She had not fallen into her promised stupor. “Traditionally,” Mrs. Roberts said, “they’re always served with gigot in France.”

  “Thank you, Linda,” Mrs. Solomon said. “In Alabama we traditionally serve yams with our gigot.” Under the table she pinched Strand’s leg, lightly.

  Strand tried not to smile too openly.

  After dinner, Strand smoked his second cigar. Jimmy, he saw, did not take one when Mr. Ketley passed the box around. They all went out on the terrace to look at the moon over the ocean. Leslie stood next to Strand and he put his arm around her waist. “Having a good time?” he asked.

  “Wonderful,” she said. “Will you ever be satisfied to eat my cooking again?”

  “I’m putting an ad in the Times on Monday for a Cordon Bleu cook.”

  Leslie laughed. “Russell’s a fascinating man. He seems to know everything. Politics, art, finance, whatever. It makes me feel as though my education has been sadly neglected. And he’s been everywhere.”

  “So have we,” Strand said. “The Museum of Modern Art, Chinatown, The Bronx…”

  “Oh, hush, Allen,” Leslie said, gently. “I wasn’t complaining. But seriously, I do think we ought to do some traveling. We could save on other things…”

  “On what?”

  “Oh…just other things,” Leslie said vaguely. “Russell said I ought to do more with my painting. It’s amazing, he’s only been in our house twice really and the first time doesn’t even count, and he remembers every detail of the two paintings of mine in the living room. He said they were bold and original. Imagine that. My little scratches. I told him I only painted when I was lonesome and he said I ought to arrange to be lonesome more of the time. Do you think he was just being polite and trying to flatter me?”

  “No,” Strand said. “He doesn’t flatter. I’ve always told you I liked your paintings.”

  “That’s different. You’re my husband, what could you say, poor man? Do I look all right tonight?” She sounded anxious.

  “The lady on my right said you were stunning.”

  “Stunning how? Stunning stunning or stunning horrendous?”

  “Stunning stunning.”

  “What a nice group of people,” Leslie said. “And Jimmy and Caroline are behaving so well.”

  “Are you surprised?”

  Leslie squeezed his arm. “No,” she said. “I’ve had enough of the moon. I’m getting a little cold. Let’s go inside.”

  The others followed them in and Hazen asked Jimmy if he would oblige them with a little music. Jimmy looked doubtfully at his parents. Strand didn’t say anything, but Leslie said, firmly, “By all means, Jimmy,” and Jimmy went upstairs to get his guitar. Caroline made a little grimace, but Leslie caught it and whispered, “None of that, young lady.”

  Strand didn’t tell Leslie about Herbert Solomon and his position in the music world. It would only make her nervous if she knew that Jimmy was, in a sense, on trial. Jimmy didn’t seem nervous at all as he played a few chords to warm up, then started to sing, accompanying himself, in an almost conversational, undramatic voice, songs that Strand had heard on the radio. To Strand’s ears, at least, Jimmy sounded no better and no worse than the performers whose records he was told were on all the best seller charts. Solomon seemed to be listening with interest and began suggesting songs for Jimmy to play. Strand noticed that each time Solomon chose a song in a different style from the one before it, so that Jimmy had the chance to show his versatility and range, as well as his knowledge of what songs had been popular in the last five years or so.

  “Very nice,” Solomon said, when Jimmy finished, on a last, small, diminishing note, and Mrs. Solomon applauded and Mrs. Roberts said, “Bravo! Bravo!” Leslie was smiling, obviously pleased, and even Caroline seemed impressed.

  “Thank you very much, Jimmy,” Hazen said. “The next time I’ll invite a bigger audience.”

  The party broke up soon after, with Jimmy holding on to his guitar and taking the Caldwell girl off in the station wagon to the bar in Bridgehampton and Caroline going up to bed, after making a date to play some singles early in the morning with the young man who had sat beside her at dinner.

  As the Solomons prepared to leave with Dr. Caldwell and his wife, he said to Strand, “The boy is serious about his music, isn’t he?”

  “It seems so,” Strand said.

  Solomon nodded. “Russell has my office phone number. If Jimmy is interested, tell him to call me during the week sometime.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” Strand said.

  Solomon shrugged. “It may come to nothing. There’re thousa
nds of kids who own guitars and have a good ear. Anyway, let him call.”

  Tactfully, Strand went upstairs with Leslie, leaving Mrs. Roberts, who had said she wanted a nightcap, alone in the living room with Hazen.

  “Why did Mr. Solomon say that about telephoning?” Leslie asked when Strand had closed the bedroom door behind them.

  “He’s in the music business,” Strand said, and repeated what Mrs. Solomon had told him about her husband.

  “Wasn’t it thoughtful of Russell to have him over tonight to hear Jimmy?” Leslie said.

  “Very.”

  “Do you think he and that Mrs. Roberts are…?” She didn’t finish the sentence and Strand grinned. “You know what I mean,” Leslie said.

  “Yes.”

  “Well?”

  “At a guess, I would say not,” Strand said. “I don’t think she would take the time off from talking to do any mistressing.”

  Leslie laughed. “You mean she’s not to your taste.”

  “No. But I know somebody who is.”

  “That pretty little Mrs. Solomon. You two seemed to get along awfully well together.”

  “We did, indeed,” Strand said. “But that wasn’t whom I meant.”

  “Faithful, dear man,” Leslie said and kissed him. “I’ll be in bed in a jiffy.”

  He was awakened by the sound of moaning. Leslie was asleep in his arms. They had made love slowly and for a long time and the moans brought him up from profound, satisfied depths. It was dark in the room and just before he woke the moans blended in his sleep with the steady rumble of the sea. Gently, he took his arm away from under Leslie’s head and got out of bed. The moans were coming from the next room, where Caroline was sleeping. He put on a robe and went into the hallway, where a lamp burned. Barefoot and silent, he went to Caroline’s door. The moans were clearer now. The rooms of Hazen and Mrs. Roberts were in the other wing of the house and Strand was thankful that whatever was bothering Caroline would not disturb them. He opened her door. In the light from the hallway he could see she was twisting about convulsively in her bed and moving her arms in front of her face as if to ward off an attacker. Swiftly, he went over to the bed and took her in his arms. “There, there,” he whispered. “It’s all right. You’re all right.”