“Oh, I don’t remember. I make so many calls. People have them. Ah, me,” I said, emitting a harassed breath, and turned back to my loaded desk. “Do you know that I made sixteen calls last week? Sixteen. Well, I believe I told Mrs. Comstock and her ladies twelve-thirty.”
Hester slipped out, closing the door quietly behind her. I drew a dictaphone toward me and resumed reading my next Sunday’s sermon into its mouthpiece. I was delivering a series on historical American legends, in which I showed how in deifying national figures we often draw them out of their human focus, to our loss. The new one was on Betsy Ross, whom I praised as possessing that large vision that enables man to rise above individual mischance.
“The seamstress lost her husband in the war of the Revolution, but she continued his upholstery business and married again in 1777—the following year,” I read into the dictaphone from notes. “Betsy’s second husband, Joseph Ashbourn, died in 1783 in an English prison, but did she despair? No! Again she remarried, and that right quickly, that fine and noble woman. We could all learn a lesson from her …”
I paused, hearing women’s voices raised in conversation in the outer office. I rolled the dictaphone away and stole over to the closed door. I put my ear to the crack and listened.
“It takes a while, but I’m getting onto the ropes,” Molly was saying.
“Of course it takes a while,” Hester chatted. “Beautiful skirt.”
“Oh, do you like it? Thank you. I wasn’t sure about the color.”
“It’s nice. I like that oatmeal weave.”
I squatted down on my heels to peer through the keyhole. I got my eye to it in time to see Hester, who had been standing beside Molly’s desk, come over and finger the material she was admiring.
“Tweed isn’t the most flattering thing in the world, but it’s practical,” Molly said. “It doesn’t show everything.”
“Somebody’s got a cat who’s shedding.”
“I’ll say. All of my coats look like fur coats. You can’t sit down anywhere in the house without picking it up.”
“Siamese?”
“Mm,” Molly nodded.
I rose and turned to my desk. I picked up my typewriter hood from it and hurled it across the room with all my might.
I was not surprised to hear what I heard at breakfast three mornings later.
Hester gazed out the window as she ate. “The air is like wine,” she said at last.
“How do you know?” I said.
“I’ve been out to burn that box of trash you’ve left on the porch since last Saturday. But it was too windy.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll get to it today sometime.”
I got behind the Avalon Globe. Turnbull was in the news this morning. There was a series of articles running entitled “Topsy Town,” which outlined the agonies of local merchants in finding sites on which to build the stores with which to reap the trade made possible by the city’s swelling population. There was no hope of obtaining such acreage to “improve” in the heart of town unless Turnbull was willing to sell a large tract he owned along the river. He refused. I admired his stubborn protection of the land in question, but the businessmen were up in arms. The Chamber of Commerce was at its wit’s end. Things were said to be in a state of crisis. “All the trade,” the mayor wailed, “is going to Chickenfoot.”
I set the paper aside and attacked my grapefruit with a will.
“I’m rather looking forward to the Harvest Supper,” I said. “Talk of a dance along with it this year. Excellent idea.”
“And so appropriate.”
“How do you mean?”
“It’s the way she’d have wanted it. Ida May.”
I wedged a grapefruit pip from between my teeth and laid it on my dish.
“What’s she got to do with it?” I asked.
“Oh, haven’t you heard? This year’s affair is to be in her honor.”
I finished the grapefruit and picked up my coffee. I held it in my two hands, regarding Hester over its rim as I blew on it.
“Oh, Andrew, don’t look at me like that. I know how you hate speeches but—”
“Speeches!”
“Yes. It’s to be a testimonial banquet, is what we thought we’d have, but the tributes are being limited to five minutes, and when you’re called on you don’t have to say more than a few words. It’s just five years since she began her fund-raising drive for the clinic, and this seemed like a natural way to commemorate it. And then off to the ball!”
My impulse when I had raised my napkin was to slam it down, but I checked myself with an effort, and made as if to be flicking crumbs energetically from my person.
“Ida May loved dancing, as you remember,” Hester said. “We were always alike in that respect.”
I was digesting the implication of this turn of events, particularly as to its bearing on my own plans for the evening in question. They would have to be canceled, of course. You couldn’t take a prospective second wife to a do in honor of your first.
“Hester, are you behind this?” I demanded.
“Well, the women all thought—”
“Oh, the women! Do you have a date for it?”
“Not as yet,” she said, lowering her eyes.
“Not as yet,” I repeated, as though to emphasize both her sexual isolation and the conversational style to which it was leading. “Why haven’t you, if you’re so fond of dancing? Why haven’t you ever, if it comes to that? Hester, you’ve got to come out of your shell—be a woman. Live your own natural life.”
“I intend to do that.”
“When? When you wake up some morning and find you’re like fifty-five, and it’s too late? Why not start now? Why don’t you go out with men? Do you know what I’ve heard said about you? I didn’t intend to go this far but it’s for your own good that I do. Remember that in these days gossip is often inverted, and people tend to suspect virtue as they once did its opposite. Especially in women,” I added ominously.
“I’ll take that risk,” said Hester of the parted hair, not turning or raising her eyes. “What do they say about me?”
“That you’re a prude. I actually heard someone say that, my dear.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said: ‘He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.’”
“That was very nice of you, Andrew.” Hester rose and walked with her characteristic prim grace to the stove for the coffee pot. “Thank you very much. I’m glad to know I have someone defending me. A little like having a knight, almost.”
When I got to the office Molly greeted me with, “You’re late. The printer phoned twice already this morning. He wants to know the text for Sunday’s sermon. The bulletin’s all ready except for that. What’s the matter with you?”
“Molly, I’m afraid the date’s off,” I said. I explained what was afoot.
She reached for a cigarette she had smoking in an ashtray on her desk, drew on it and twisted it out.
“So it’s Chickenfoot for us again.”
“We still have this office,” I said grimly.
“I was hoping I could quit work and get married.”
“Oh, my dearest.”
She rose and walked slowly to the window. She stood looking out, nursing her elbows. The spirals of gold at the back of her neck made me ill, and I went over and wrapped my arms around her from behind. I cupped her breasts in my hands, the breasts I had never felt naked. I stroked their full tops with my two thumbs. I smothered her shoulders in kisses till I had to gasp for breath.
“Here comes the paper towel man,” she said, drawing away.
It was about ten minutes later that the phone rang and she answered it.
“It’s the printer again,” she said, holding her hand over the transmitter. “Have you got your text yet?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“‘How long, O Lord, how long?’”
Chapter Six
“DEARLY beloved,
” I said, my lips close to the mouth of the dictaphone and speaking eagerly, as I would when actually delivering my message at morning worship, “the Bible is at worst a hodgepodge of myths, superstitions and theologies so repugnant to a man of taste and sensibility, let alone a true Christian, that its culmination in the latter ethic is perhaps the greatest miracle we know.”
I continued for some minutes, and then paused to play back what I had done. From beyond the closed door could be heard the soft, steady clatter of Mrs. Calico running off something for the Ladies Auxiliary on the mimeograph machine. When she finished with that, perhaps she would help out with a little of the office work. Molly had a cold and was staying in bed. It was highly doubtful that she would be in today, or the next day, or even perhaps the next. She would go see Doc Chaucer at the clinic, free, as all church employees might, and he would tell her (and let him) that her cold was psychosomatic. He was one of those doctors who run their practice on the firm theory that ninety-nine per cent of their patients are quacks. It was also highly doubtful, meanwhile, that Mrs. Calico could help out much in the way of actual stenography, which meant that I would now be retyping the sermons that I dictated too. I didn’t mind in this case. This was one of those sermons of which a good chunk could go into a book I was slowly and surely, over the years, getting together. Maturity Comes of Age was a study of the myths in which all human systems are steeped, and a plea for their adult recognition as such, a recognition which need in no wise diminish their psychological value for the individual or their potency as a source of order for society. Indeed, the more void the universe may be of meaning, the more precious the lanterns by which man picks his little way through it. As to the book itself, the more work I had to do on it the better; let it ripen slowly, with its author. I was personally quite excited about it. Knopf had expressed interest, without even having seen any of the manuscript.
I rose after an hour’s work and knocked off for a breather. I walked around my office, rubbing my fists into my back, which was sore and stiff from sitting in one position. I drifted to the window, where I stood a moment gazing out.
The Jesus Saves sign was gone. My own part in the protests had been unnecessary. The Episcopalians, who had shuddered, and the more influential Presbyterians—the more desirable element generally in Mobile Bay—had between them pulled enough weight to have the eyesore removed. Now, looking through the gap left among the trees where it had stood, I felt a pang of regret for old Turnbull. I liked him more than I’d known. I liked him better the more he got in my hair, it seemed. But it was no use trying to explain to him that this sort of thing gave the church a bad name. What about Stevie?
It was one of those instances of mental telepathy. As I turned back, the phone rang, and it was Turnbull. His voice sounded pleased. In fact, ecstatic.
“Guess what,” he said. “Stevie’s coming home for the holidays, and guess what. He’s bringing a girl.”
“Oh, how wonderful.”
“He seems anxious to have me meet her right away, so I don’t know. He may even have her in trouble.”
“I’m so happy for you.”
“Yes … Well, with that off my mind I’ve been able to think about the memorial, and I think I’ve come up with something. I don’t want to tell you over the phone, but I have a hunch you’ll like it. Of course the problem has been to hit on something appropriate.”
“Always remembering her dislike of monuments as such. For her, life was the thing, and must go on. ‘Forget me,’ she often said. ‘I don’t count.’”
“Right. So something big, that will take the public’s fancy and keep her alive among us for a long time to come. I’d like to talk this over with you privately. Can you have lunch with me tomorrow at my club?”
“I think so.”
“Swell. How’s twelve-thirty then, at the Stilton?”
“Twelve-thirty will be fine. And as you say, don’t breathe a word of this till you’ve talked to me,” I said. “Mrs. Mackerel was a woman of very strong opinions, and who is in a better position to know that than I?”
The Stilton’s being one of the few clubs in the suburbs does not mean it was suburban. It was metropolitan in the old-fashioned sense, with mostly old men comprising its roster. Such an air of antiquity pervaded the club, which was housed in a pleasantly decaying graystone, that even its younger members, partly in the general wish to belong, partly in an unwitting adoption of its mood, affected the stance and gait of senility and scuffled about as though they were old men too. Chaps of thirty-five and forty, wearing Ivy League suits and button-down shirts, were seen pottering from chair to chair with newspapers in their hands or shuffling into the dining room beside their sponsors. The quality reached out even to its visitors. I myself, after yielding my wraps to a mummy at the door named Luke, availed myself of a copy of the New York Times from an assortment on the lobby table and made in a bent fashion for one of the chairs, where, instead of reading it, I sat awaiting my host.
Everything was dead as a doornail. Several relics occupied mates to the leather chair into which I had sunk. Most of them dozed, but one or two slumped behind open periodicals. Occasionally a withered hand crept from behind a newspaper to reach for a glass of sherry. From behind one paper issued a continuous throat-clearing which identified Joseph Meesum, dean of the club, a man of epic riches obtained by selling parcel by parcel a thousand acres of inherited land. Rival genealogical societies, independently retained for speed and certainty, had traced his ancestry to conflicting sources—Geoffrey of Anjou and feudal Holland—and he had never been the same since. His sixty-two-year-old son Arthur was mayor of Avalon, and part of the club’s new blood. I spotted a pair of Argyll socks under one outspread newspaper and wondered who belonged to them.
I noticed on the table copies of the Manchester Guardian, New Statesman, and Punch, and missed the pair of members for whom these were regularly taken. They were the Arbuckle cousins, two Anglophiles who read only British periodicals, ate only British sherry biscuits, and concerned themselves solely with British politics. No American political campaign ever drew more than moderate interest from them, but they argued heatedly over forthcoming British elections. My last visit here had been at the time of the crisis resulting from Eden’s resignation as prime minister, and I remembered the intensity with which they had sat in their corner debating the relative merits of his possible successors. Needless to say the Arbuckle cousins came of the best old New England family stock hereabouts and were regarded with special awe as an exclusive little group of their own at the Stilton, whose members would never dream of addressing either of them unless first spoken to.
I rarely drank in those days, but I signaled to a waiter wearing carpet slippers, who limped over to take my order. “I’m waiting for Mr. Turnbull,” I said. “Could you bring me a Manhattan, please? Dry.”
The paper above the Argyll socks came down and a grinning face appeared.
“Andrew Mackerel!”
“Charlie Comstock,” I said, recognizing one of my parishioners. His greeting had made a sleeper sit bolt upright and comment angrily on the disturbance. Another head came into view from behind the wings of a chair, and its owner glared at us with a Harvard accent. “Come on over,” I said, patting a chair near mine. “I don’t see you except in church.”
“You see me there all right.” Comstock came over, carrying a glass of tomato juice. “But I miss you at the mid-week Bible study group. Why haven’t I seen you there lately, Andrew?”
I murmured some apology about being busy, and promised to try to be more faithful in attendance in future. I was fond of Charlie, but he had the one characteristic I always find it hard to cope with, piety. I tried to understand the experience that had laid its hand on Charlie, and to bear with him in that light.
Charlie Comstock was a reformed alcoholic. While not having touch a drop in eight years, he nevertheless retained the manner and attitude of the drunk. In fact, a casual observer not familiar with him would have thoug
ht he was stewed to the gills as he rose and wobbled over to join me. He slung his arm around me as though we were tavern cronies, and spoke in the slurred accents which his speech had never lost. He habitually ran his tongue from one corner of his mouth to the other, and his eyelids hung in a perpetual smiling good will. In the mounting excitement of parties, his foot always kept feeling for something, and eventually would come to rest on a chair rung. Holding a Coke, he made any group of men appear to be about to burst into the strains of “Sweet Adeline.” The marks of past indulgence on his face increased the illusion that he was three sheets to the wind, an illusion no doubt valuable to Comstock. In his drinking days he had been literally picked up out of the gutter, and there were those who thought he might very well be again out of sheer autosuggestion. From behind, he seemed to walk down the street with an unsteady, even staggering gait. Religion had straightened him out, as it has many another drinker, but more than merely salvation-tipsy, he was a practical egg whose business head was an asset to any church or community project. He was co-publisher of the local Globe, for which he also wrote. Needless to say he struck a divergent note in the Stilton.
“Been enjoying your articles on the state of our fair city,” I said.
“Oh, thanks. State is right. Hope Meesum doesn’t get ap’plexy when he shees old Turnbull walk in here. Turnbull’s villain piece. Downtown boys certainly making it hot for him. Ah, speak of the devil.” Comstock rose, tomato juice in hand, and threw an arm around the newcomer. “Glad see you, you old coot.”
Comstock remained for the exchange of greetings, then withdrew to buttonhole Meesum, with a view to picking his brains for an article about our “Topsy Town.” I saw Meesum, whose paper had at last come down, shoot a glare at my host. Meesum was honorary chairman of the Chamber of Commerce.
Turnbull ordered a highball for himself and another Manhattan for me, though my first had no more than arrived. He set fire to a long cigar and settled back in his chair. I saw it would be a while before he came to the point for which we were supposedly meeting. Turnbull was quite himself again.
The Mackerel Plaza: A Novel Page 7