by Irwin Shaw
“How do you do that? Will you go out and arrange a match for me and sign a marriage contract? Is that the way it’s done in the Principality of Lowell these days?”
“Make your jokes if you want to,” Fabian said placidly. “I know they come out of a sense of embarrassment and I forgive them.”
“Don’t be so goddamn superior, Miles,” I warned him.
“The key word, I repeat, is control.” He ignored my little outburst.
“You married for money, if I remember correctly,” I said, “and it didn’t turn out to be so god-awful wonderful.”
“I was young and greedy,” he said, “and I didn’t have a wiser, older man to guide me. I married a shrew and a fool because she was rich and available. I would do everything in my power to prevent you from making the same mistake. The world is full of lovely, lovable girls with rich, indulgent fathers, who want nothing better in life than to marry a handsome, well-mannered, and well-educated young man who is obviously wealthy enough not to be after their money. In a word, you. Good grief, Douglas, you know the old saw—it’s just as easy to love a rich girl as a poor one.
“If I’m going to be as rich as you say,” I insisted, “what do I have to bother with the whole thing for?”
“Insurance,” Fabian said. “I am not infallible. True, we have what seems to you like a substantial sum to dabble with at the moment. But in the eyes of men of real wealth, we’re paupers. Paupers, Douglas, playing in a penny-ante poker game.”
“I have faith in you,” I said, with just a little irony. “You’ll keep us both out of the poorhouse.”
“Devoutly to be wished,” he said. “But there are no guarantees. Fortunes come and go. We live in an age of upheaval. Just in my own lifetime …” Contemplating his lifetime in the speeding car, he shook his head sorrowfully. “We are caught in cycles of catastrophe. Perhaps right now we are in the lull before the storm. It is best to take what small precautions we can. And without wishing to harp on ugly matters, you’re more vulnerable than most. There’s no way of being sure that you’ll be able to go forever unrecognized. At any moment, some extremely unpleasant chap may present you with a bill for one hundred thousand dollars. It would be cozier if you could pay it promptly, wouldn’t it?”
“Cozier,” I said.
“A wealthy, pretty wife from a good family would be an excellent disguise. It would take a leap of imagination on anyone’s part to guess that the well-mannered young man, moving easily in the cream of international society and married to solid old English money got his start by swiping a packet of hundred-dollar bills from a dead man in a sleazy hotel in New York. Do I make sense?”
“You make sense,” I said reluctantly. “Still—you were talking about mutual interests. What’d be in it for you? You wouldn’t expect me to pay an agent’s commission on my imaginary wife’s dowry, would you?”
“Nothing as crass as that, old man,” Fabian said. “All I’d expect would be that our partnership wouldn’t be allowed to lapse. The most natural thing in the world would be that your wife would be pleased if you would relieve her of the burden of handling her money. And if I know women, and I believe I do, she’d much prefer to have you do it than the usual gaggle of brokers and trustees and hard-eyed bankers women usually have to depend on.”
“Is that where you come in?”
“Exactly.” He beamed, as though he had just presented me with a gift of great value. “Our partnership would continue as before. Whatever new capital you brought in would of course still be reserved to you. The profits would be shared. As simple and as equitable as that. I hope I’ve proved to your satisfaction that I am of some use in the field of investments.”
“I won’t even comment on that,” I said.
“The workman is worthy of his hire,” he said sententiously. “I don’t think you’d have any trouble explaining that to your wife.”
“That would depend on the wife.”
“It would depend on you, Douglas. I would expect you to choose a wise girl who trusted you and loved you and was anxious to give you substantial proof of her devotion to you.”
I thought back over my history with women. “Miles,” I said, “I think you have an exaggerated notion of my charms.”
“As I told you once before, old man,” he said, “you’re much too modest. Dangerously modest.”
“I once took out a pretty waitress in Columbus, Ohio, for three months,” I said, “and all she ever let me do was hold her hand in the movies.”
“You’re moving up in class now, Douglas,” Fabian said. “The women you’re going to meet from now on are attracted by the rich, so inevitably they are surrounded by older men, men who are engaged almost twenty-four hours a day in great affairs, who have very little time for women. Along with them there are the men who do have time for women but whose masculinity very often is ambiguous, to say the least. Or whose interests are transparently pecuniary. Your waitress in Columbus wouldn’t even enter a movie house with any of them. In the circles in which you’re going to move now, any man under forty with an obvious income of his own and who shows the slightest evidence of virility and who has the leisure to have a three-hour lunch with a lady is greeted with piteous gratitude. Believe me, old man, just by being your normal, boyish self, you will be a smashing success. Not the least of the benefits I mean to shower on you is a new conception of your worth. I trust you will ask me to be the best man at your wedding.”
“You’re a calculating bastard, aren’t you?” I said.
“I calculate,” he said calmly, “and I intend to teach you to calculate, too. It’s absurd that the perfectly good verb, to calculate, should have a bad reputation in the modern world. Let schoolgirls and soldiers wallow in romance, Douglas. You calculate.”
“It all seems so—so immoral,” I said.
“I had hoped you would never use that word,” he said. “Was it moral to abscond with all that money from the St. Augustine Hotel?”
“No.”
“Was it moral for me to hold onto your suitcase when I saw what was in it?”
“I should say not.”
“Morality is indivisible, my boy. You can’t select certain chunks of it, as though it were a pie waiting on a table to be cut up and served. Let’s face it, Douglas, you and I are no longer permitted the luxury of morality. Let’s understand each other, Douglas; it wasn’t morality that made you run from Herr Steubel—it was a huge reluctance to share a cell with him.”
“You’ve got a fucking argument for everything,” I said.
“I’m happy you think that,” he said, smiling. “Let me present some further arguments. Forgive me if I repeat myself in assuring you that whatever I suggest is in your best interests. I haven’t hidden from you that your best interests are my best interests. I am thinking of the quality of life that you and I are eventually going to lead. You agree, I imagine, that, no matter what we do, we will have to do it together—that we will always have to be close together. Just like partners in any enterprise, we will have to be in constant communication. Practically on a day-to-day basis. You do agree, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“For the moment, except for the little disagreement in Lugano, it has been quite pleasant to wander about as we’ve been doing.”
“Very pleasant.” I hadn’t told him about the Alka-Seltzers and the tightness around my waist.
“Eventually, though, it will begin to pall. Going from hotel to hotel, even the best ones in the world, and living out of a suitcase is finally dreary. Traveling is only amusing when you have a home to return to. Even at your age …”
“Please don’t make me sound as though I’m ten years old,” I said.
He laughed. “Don’t be so sensitive. Naturally, to me, you seem enviably young.” He became more serious. “Actually, our differences in age are an asset. I doubt if we would be able to continue for long if we were both fifty or both thirty-three. Rivalries would develop, differences in temperament would arise. Th
is way you can be impatient with me and I can be patient with you. We achieve a useful working balance.”
“I’m not impatient with you,” I said. “Just scared shitless from time to time.”
He laughed again. “I take that as a compliment. By the way, has either Lily or Eunice asked you about what you do for a living?”
“No.”
“Good girls,” he said. “Real ladies. Has anybody asked you? I mean, since the happening in the hotel?”
“One lady. In Washington.” Good old Evelyn Coates.
“What did you answer?”
“I said my family had money.”
“Not bad. At least for the time being. If the question arises in Gstaad, I suggest you tell the same story. Later on, we can invent a new one. Perhaps you can say you’re a managerial consultant. It covers a multitude of murky activities. It’s a favorite cover for CIA agents in Europe. It won’t do you any harm in most circles if that’s what people believe. You have such an honest face, no one will be inclined to doubt anything you say.”
“How about your face?” I asked. “After all, people will be seeing us together all the time. Finally, we’ll be held responsible for each other’s faces.”
“My face,” he said reflectively. “Quite often I study it for hours on end in a mirror. Not out of vanity, I assure you. Out of curiosity. Frankly, I’m not quite sure I know what I look like. Moderately honest, perhaps. What’s your opinion?”
“Aging playboy, maybe,” I said cruelly.
He sighed. “Sometimes, Douglas,” he said, “frankness is not the virtue it’s cracked up to be.”
“You asked me.”
“So I did. I asked you,” he said. “I’ll remember not to ask you again.” He was silent for a moment. “I’ve made a conscious effort through the years in a certain direction.”
“What direction?”
“I have tried to make myself look like a semi-retired, English gentleman farmer. Obviously, at least as far as you’re concerned, I haven’t succeeded.”
“I don’t know any retired, English gentlemen farmers. We got very few of them at the Hotel St. Augustine.”
“Still, you didn’t guess that I was an American by birth?”
“No.”
“A step in the right direction.” He smoothed his moustache gently. “Have you ever thought of living in England?”
“No. Actually, I haven’t thought of living anyplace. If my eyes hadn’t gone wrong, I suppose I’d have been happy staying in Vermont. Why England?”
“Many Americans find it attractive. Especially in the country, perhaps an hour or so away from London. A polite, uninquiring race of people. No hustle or bustle. Hospitable to eccentrics. First-class theater. If you like horses or salmon fishing …”
“I like horses all right. Especially since Rêve de Minuit.”
“Brave animal. Although I wasn’t thinking in exactly those terms. Eunice’s father, for example, rides to the hounds three times a week.”
“So?”
“He has a handsome estate which happens to be just about one hour from London …”
“I’m beginning to catch on,” I said flatly.
“Eunice is quite independent in her own right.”
“What a surprise.”
“For myself,” he said, “I find her extraordinarily pretty. And when she isn’t under the dominating influence of her sister, a lively and intelligent girl. …”
“She’s barely looked at me since she arrived,” I said.
“She’ll look at you,” he said. “Never fear.”
I didn’t tell him about the lascivious thoughts that had crossed my mind, with Eunice as target, as we drove steadily through the neat countryside. “So,” I said, “that’s why you asked Lily if she thought Eunice would join us?”
“The notion might have flickered through my subconscious,” he said. “At the time.”
“And now?”
“And now I would advise you to consider it,” he said. “There’s no great hurry. You can weigh the pros and cons.”
“What would Lily have to say about it?”
“From what she’s let drop here and there, I would say that on the whole Lily would react favorably.” He slapped his hands briskly together. We were approaching the outskirts of Bern. “Let’s say no more about it. For the time being. Let us say we’ll allow matters to take their natural course.” He reached forward and took the automobile map out of the glove compartment and studied it for a moment, although wherever we went he seemed to know every turn in the road, every street corner. “Oh, by the way,” he said offhandedly, “did Priscilla Dean slip you her telephone number that night, too?”
“What do you mean, too?” I nearly stuttered.
“She did to me. I’m not vain enough to suppose she was all that choosy. After all she’s an American. Unfailingly democratic.”
“Yes, she did,” I admitted.
“Did you use it?”
I remembered the busy signal. “No,” I said, “I didn’t.”
“Lucky man,” Fabian said. “She gave the Moroccan the clap. You turn right at the next corner. We’ll be at the restaurant in five minutes. They make excellent martinis. I think you can indulge yourself in one or two. And have wine with lunch. I’ll drive the rest of the afternoon.”
17
WE ARRIVED IN GSTAAD IN the early dusk. It had begun to snow. The lights were just being lit in the chalets scattered along the hills, their glow behind curtained windows cozy and warm in the twilight. In this weather and at this time of day, the town looked magical. There was an instant of nostalgia for the harsher slopes of Vermont, for store signs in English rather than German. I wondered what Pat was doing at this moment.
Fabian had not brought up the subject of Eunice again on the trip from Bern, and I was grateful to him for it. It was a problem I was not yet ready to face. The lunch in Bern had been as good as he had promised, and I had had the two martinis and half a bottle of wine and had felt that my defenses were weakened and I could too easily have been persuaded to take a course of action I might later regret.
We had to slow down on the main street for a group of boys and girls, all in jeans and brightly colored parkas, who were streaming out of a confiserie, their laughter ringing bell-like in the icy air. It was easy to imagine the heaps of chocolate cakes and mounds of whipped cream they had just consumed in preparation for dinner.
“That’s the nice thing about this place,” Fabian said, as he maneuvered around them. “The kids. There’re three or four international schools here. A ski resort needs young people. It gives an atmosphere of innocence to the sport. And the clothes are designed for youthful bottoms and the climate for adolescent complexions. You’ll see them all over the hills tomorrow and you’ll mourn that you had to go to school in Scranton.”
The car climbed a twisting hill, the wheels spinning erratically in the new snow. On top of the hill, dominating the town, was the huge fake castle of the hotel. Inside and out, the hotel gave no impression of innocence. “The standard joke runs,” Fabian said, “that Gstaad is trying to be St. Moritz and will never make it.”
“That’s okay with me,” I said. I had no desire ever to see St. Moritz again.
We signed in. As usual, everybody at the reception and behind the concierge’s desk knew Fabian and seemed deeply pleased to see him. He moved from place to place in waves of welcome.
“The ladies,” the concierge said, “left a message. They are in the bar.”
“What a surprise,” Fabian said.
The bar was a large dark room, but not so dark that I couldn’t see Lily and Eunice at the other end. They were still in ski clothes and they were seated at a table with five men. There was a magnum of champagne on the table and Lily was telling a story which I couldn’t hear, but which ended with a loud burst of laughter that made the other people in the bar turn and look at their table.
I stopped at the door. I doubted that either Fabian or I would be greete
d with pleasure. “They haven’t been wasting their time, have they?” I said.
“I didn’t doubt that they would.” He was undisturbed as usual.
“I think I’ll go up to my room and take a bath,” I said. “Call me when you’re ready for dinner.”
Fabian smiled slightly. “Faint heart,” he said.
“Up yours,” I said. As I left the bar, there was another burst of male laughter. Fabian strolled toward the table.
As I went up to the concierge’s desk, a group of youngsters came out into the hall from a doorway that led to a bowling alley. They were a mixed bunch of girls and boys, the boys with long hair, some of them with beards, although the oldest couldn’t have been more than seventeen. There was a high-pitched gabble of conversation in French and English. I remembered what Fabian had just said about going to school in Scranton. I felt the wrong age, in the wrong place. One of the girls, the prettiest of the lot, stared at me. She had long, uncared-for blonde hair that almost hid a tiny pink face, and she was wearing skintight jeans with flowers embroidered in pastel colors over babyish full hips. She pushed her hair back from her eyes in a languid, womanly gesture. She wore green eye shadow, but no lipstick. Her gaze made me uneasy, and I turned my back to ask for the key.
“Mr. Grimes …” The voice was hesitant, high-pitched, childish.
I looked around. She had let the other boys and girls in her group go out the front door and was alone now. “You are Douglas Grimes, aren’t you?” she said.
“Yes.”
“You’re the pilot.”
“Yes.” I didn’t see the need of correcting the tense.
“You don’t remember me, I suppose?”
“I’m afraid not, miss.”
“I’m Didi Wales. Dorothea. Of course it was ages ago. Three years. I had buckteeth and had braces that I wore at night.” She shook her head and the long blonde hair obscured her face. “I wouldn’t expect. Nobody remembers a thirteen-year-old brat.” She threw her hair back and smiled, showing that she no longer needed braces. Her teeth were nice, white, young-American teeth. “Stowe,” she said. “You used to ski once in a while with my mother and father.”