History of a Pleasure Seeker

by Richard Mason

  “No time for lunch. I’m famished.”

  “Would madam like a little bouillon before dinner to keep her strength up?”

  “No, no. Just attend to my hair.” Jacobina was thinking about what she would wear. Her evening dresses suddenly seemed matronly. “Is the blue flowers on gold in a state to be seen?”

  “All madam’s dresses are kept ready, for whenever madam wishes them.” Agneta was responsible, among many other things, for the maintenance of Jacobina’s wardrobe. She was aware that the garment in question no longer fitted its owner. “Madam might be cold in that dress! What about the green velvet with the embroidered leaves? That’s very becoming for winter.”

  But Jacobina had her mind set on the blue flowers.

  “Of course, madam.” Agneta finished Jacobina’s hair, refusing to draw any connection between the arrival of a young man and her mistress’ choice of a low-cut dress. She went into the dressing room next door and returned with a silk garment bag, from which she removed the gown Jacobina had asked for.

  “You’d better bring a corset.” Like her elder daughter, Constance, Jacobina Vermeulen-Sickerts was an enthusiastic champion of form-enhancing undergarments and had absolutely refused Louisa’s request that they be banished from the house on grounds of health and female self-respect.

  “Which one would madam like?” Ten years in service had taught Agneta Hemels that when the vanity of fine ladies is wounded, it is their servants who suffer. She did not wish to be responsible for selecting a corset that failed to squeeze Jacobina into the dress she had chosen.

  “The blue one, with the red ribbons. It’s the tightest, isn’t it?”

  “What a memory madam has.” Agneta fetched it and took the silk dressing gown from Jacobina’s shoulders, helped her into her drawers, knelt at her feet, rolled the stockings up her legs and fixed them to the garter belt. Then, making one last effort, she said, “Is madam sure she wouldn’t prefer—”

  “I’m wearing the blue flowers. Lace me up.”

  Agneta did her best. She was a delicately made woman in her early thirties with pale hair and freckles, not overly strong. She tugged as hard as she could while Jacobina blew all the air from her lungs; then she laced up her employer, hoping she wouldn’t pass out, and arranged the dress on the floor. Jacobina stepped into it and succeeded in getting her arms through the correct holes, but only by bending almost double. The narrow waist required several violent tugs to fit over her thighs and there remained inches of corset visible between the back buttons, which would not fasten. Even Jacobina could see it was impossible. For a moment she was gripped by a wild fury, but with an effort of will she laughed off the attempt and gave Agneta the dress, which she never wanted to see again.

  Agneta Hemels was not invited anywhere where the wearing of such a thing would be appropriate. Nevertheless, she knew precisely what she could get for the fabric if she sold it to a cushion maker and her gratitude was real enough.

  “Perhaps I will wear the green velvet,” said Jacobina, to silence her maid’s effusiveness. “It is chilly tonight, after all.”

  Maarten led Piet to the dining room himself. The ladies had not yet come down and he used the interval before they did to tell Piet, at some length, about the objects it contained. The table was Georgian, bought at an auction in London; the chairs were Louis XVI, resprung and upholstered in olive green and white. The gilt salt cellars came from Hamburg, the clock on the mantelpiece from Geneva, the figures beside it from the Imperial Porcelain Factory in St. Petersburg. None of this detail was lost on Piet, who had a fine and instinctive appreciation of beauty. He showed this by judicious questioning that began to ease his employer’s mistrust of good-looking young men.

  The arrival of Constance Vermeulen-Sickerts was preceded by a clattering of high heels and a potent aroma of lilies of the valley. She was twenty-one years old, short and blond and confident, and her glance took in the cut of Piet’s suit and the elegance of his shoes—his only pair, bought like everything else he owned from a cash-strapped undergraduate of means. She was a kindhearted person, though apt, like Louisa, to make snap judgments; and she felt rather sorry for Piet that her sister should have chosen the evening’s menu with the aim of testing the new tutor’s table manners. “Do sit down, Mr. Barol. We are not ceremonial in this house.” She took a chair next to the fire as her mother and sister entered the room.

  Louisa Vermeulen-Sickerts was dark and grave and looked older than her nineteen years. She was wrapped in a twist of pale gray muslin that made her mother’s green velvet look fussy and uncomfortable. “Good evening,” she said, with neutral friendliness.

  Jacobina rang a bell, and Didier Loubat appeared, carrying a silver stand of oysters on crushed ice. They all sat down. Piet took in the handwritten menu in front of him, the four crystal vases of orange roses that decorated the table, the two silver dishes piled high with blood oranges on the sideboard, and felt wonderfully proud of himself. If Louisa had expected him to be confounded by the oysters or the langoustines or the quail à la minute, she was disappointed—because Nina Barol had foreseen just this eventuality and twice a year had served Piet the delicacies of her youth so that he might dine in sophisticated company one day, without shame.

  They were waited on by Agneta Hemels and Hilde Wilken, who handed the dishes while Didier Loubat poured the wine and Mr. Blok carved the beef that followed the quail. Piet fielded the girls’ questions about his life in Leiden truthfully but without revealing that indoor plumbing was a novelty for him. When he ate the pickled asparagus with his fingers, as he knew from his mother was proper, he detected a silent exchange between them and felt that he had passed a further test. He noticed that both girls were offered the Château Margaux and that they spoke to their parents without formality. Constance was the voluble one, but Louisa appeared to appreciate her talkativeness and not resent it. She laughed with everyone else at her sister’s wicked account of a young man’s tumble on the van Sproncks’ ballroom floor the night before and only joined the talk when it turned to the guests’ clothes.

  “Louisa is in revolt against impractical female fashions,” said Constance, “and abhors killing animals to embellish them. She intends to open a shop.”

  “She’ll have crowned heads for clients one day, mark me.” Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts spoke in the genial tone of a man who applauds his child’s spirited imaginings, without remotely believing in them. He loved having two rich daughters. Watching Constance and Louisa converse with Piet across the table, he felt enormously blessed. That two such soft young women, whose sole labor was to dance and dine with their friends; to wear pretty clothes and flirt and enjoy themselves; who spent money with such innocent disregard for its value and were capable of being moved to tears by something as insignificant as a rabbit skinned for its pelt; that they should be his; that they should live in this house that was his, with its distinctions and taste, its furniture and china and carpets and clocks and exquisitely trained staff, the best-paid servants on the Herengracht—all this was a source of deep satisfaction to him.

  Such achievements might have led to the sin of pride, had it not been for Egbert. But as he looked at the young man who was now his tutor, who asked such intelligent questions and whose manners were commendably amiable and discreet, he began to feel optimistic about his son’s chances. Surely he must look up to a fellow like this, he thought; and he felt a twinge of relief that responsibility for Egbert’s developing masculinity was no longer his alone.

  They took coffee in the private salon on the first floor. It was a cozy room with a piano and piles of illustrated magazines and an Aubusson carpet that caught the colors of the ceiling, which showed heaven glimpsed through parted clouds.

  “Jacob de Wit. Dawn Banishing the Figures of Night,” said Maarten, when Piet admired it. He had bought the canvas three years before and paid a fair price although its owners were bankrupt and would have settled for less. He had altered the whole room to accommodate it. “Rather
fine, don’t you think?”

  “Very fine, sir.”

  Constance and Louisa sat together on a cushioned daybed between the bookcases. Once Hilde Wilken had handed round the petit fours and deposited the tray of Meissen cups and steaming pots before Jacobina, Constance said, with a note of friendly challenge in her voice, “Entertain us, Mr. Barol.”

  Piet could play bridge and discuss with authority the paintings of several “Living Masters.” He read very well, with a deep sonorous voice equally suited to Scripture and fiction. He also had a number of well-turned anecdotes, refined by repetition; such a range, in fact, that the introduction of one to the general conversation rarely seemed forced. Tonight he sensed instinctively that music was required, not words. With a little bow he rose and went to the piano.

  Nina Barol had taught Piet not only to accompany her students but to sing with them, too. As a little boy he had taken the soprano role in duets with aspiring tenors and when his voice broke had continued to sing these parts in a sweet falsetto. This facility had developed into a party trick of proven impact. Piet knew that the spectacle of a man like him singing in the high, true voice of a boy was alluring, that it delighted women and pacified the competitive instincts of other men. He sat down on the piano stool and told the touching anecdote of how his adored mother, now dead, had taught him to sing the female parts of the great operas.

  “Why don’t you give us something from Carmen, Mr. Barol?” said Jacobina, hardly looking up from her embroidery.

  “Oh do!” cried Constance. “I adore Bizet.”

  Nina Barol had seen the premiere of Carmen and been conquered for life. She had sung Piet to sleep after childhood nightmares with Micaëla’s song of a mother who loves her child and sends him money and forgiveness and a kiss. But it was not maternal affection the situation called for. Piet looked at his new employer, beaming by the fireplace as Didier Loubat poured him a brandy, and felt a pulse of thrilling, compulsive guilt. He liked Mr. Vermeulen-Sickerts. He felt instinctively that they could be friends, but the inspiration sparked by Jacobina’s sly suggestion was too brilliant to ignore.

  He sat down at the piano, paused once to pacify his conscience, and began the aria Carmen sings to Don José, in which she promises to take him carousing on the ramparts of Seville if he risks prison for her sake. “Yes, but it’s dull to be alone,” he sang, devilishly. “True pleasure requires a pair.”

  Didier Loubat replaced the decanter of brandy on the cocktail tray and stood silently by the door, his face absolutely expressionless. Hilde Wilken took an empty coffee cup from Constance’s hand and curtsied. She looked at Didier, whom she loved desperately; to whom she had rendered her carefully preserved virginity. She did not speak French and did not understand the words Piet sang. But she caught the erotic charge of the music and when Didier did not return her glance, as he so easily might have done, she knew suddenly that he did not love her back; that he was bored of her. It was a certainty that had been creeping up on her, stealthily, for some time. As it sunk its claws into her back she thought she might faint. Instead she picked up the tray and left the room, digging her nails into the flesh of her palms to guard against tears.

  On the other side of the door, Piet was singing, “My poor heart, so easily consoled, my heart is as free as the air.” He was giving it beautifully and he knew it. “I have admirers by the dozen, but none of them are to my taste.”

  It was a devastating choice, because the words gave form to feelings within Jacobina of which she had been quite unaware even six hours before. Her heart was poor and worthy of consolation. She longed to feel as free as air. She thought of the dozens of suitors who had adorned her youth and glanced at her husband. Then she looked at Piet, a young galent entirely to her taste; and though she knew that she should be ashamed of herself for inviting this peacock into her nest, in fact she felt as though life had taken an exciting turn.

  Maarten coughed. The sound brought echoes of his snoring and reminded her that he had done no more than kiss her—and that all too rarely—since Egbert’s birth. For ten years she had submitted to this denial of affection and after one explicit rejection on the night of their eighteenth wedding anniversary had not again sought to arouse her husband’s interest. What Jacobina Vermeulen-Sickerts did not know was that Maarten had woken on many nights to find himself stiff with dreaming of her and feasted his eyes on her warm body beside him. It was not because he did not wish to touch his wife that he did not touch her.

  It was because of a promise he had made to God.

  Maarten Vermeulen was twelve years old when he found in the ruins of a burnt-out farmhouse a charred section of beam in the shape of a cross and took this as divine confirmation of that morning’s sermon. It was a winter’s day of uncompromising harshness and the flames of hell had been vividly evoked by the charismatic young vicar of the Johanneskerk. This gentleman had read every word John Calvin ever wrote and had no time for spineless modernists who softened his teachings. Walking home from church, Maarten said nothing to his parents; but as soon as they had eaten he set out across the dunes of Drenthe to look for a sign.

  He was at first reluctant to believe that God had decided, long before his birth, whether he was to be saved or damned; but the burned beam convinced him that the vicar was right. God had decided. Moreover, His decision was final and irrevocable. This begged the further question: what was the Almighty’s judgment in his, Maarten Vermeulen’s, specific case? When he pressed for an answer the following Sunday he was informed that such mysteries are not revealed before the End but that clues might be deduced from his behavior through life.

  From that day, the question of whether or not he was predestined for salvation consumed a significant portion of Maarten’s time and energies, and though he searched for a sign and detected many, none was ever as unequivocal as the charred cross he had found.

  His career and the good works he went to great lengths to perform gave him some cause for comfort—as did the delectable Jacobina Sickerts’ decision to marry him, though she had grander suitors. God had smiled on his idea of transporting ice great distances to slow the decay of perishable food. The fledgling concern had often come close to failure, but each time God had intervened and rescued it. Once he was reliably prosperous, Maarten had given 12 percent of his profits away each year: 20 percent more than the Bible instructed. He hoped his generosity was a sign that he was destined for heaven, but to make sure he went further than passive philanthropy. He threw his considerable energies into improving the lot of the less fortunate. He built bread factories and founded societies for land reclamation. He extended the city beyond the Singelgracht and built safe, watertight houses for the poor. He gave his workers a week’s annual holiday and paid for their care when they fell sick and was rewarded by God with two healthy girls—but no son. When he still had no male heir after fifteen years of marriage he began to take this as evidence of heavenly disfavor, and when Jacobina fell pregnant for the third time he fasted for three days and made a bargain with God.

  If the child were a boy, he would abstain forever from the pleasures of the flesh.

  The child was a boy, and for a time Maarten felt serenely secure. But he was soon punished for this presumption. His boy did not behave as other boys did. Egbert did not like to run and play. As he grew bigger he slipped further into a world others could not see. When he began to refuse to venture beyond the house, Maarten took this to mean that the future of his own soul hung in the balance. He continued to fight against his sexual desires, with no thought for the impact his self-restraint would have on his wife. But though his business prospered greatly, his heir’s behavior grew more, not less, odd; and sometimes he woke in the night from lurid dreams of hell and its eternal fires.

  In many respects Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts was a rational man, but the doctrine of predestination, once absorbed, proved impossible to shake; and because he shared his fears with no one, he was compelled to face them alone. Piet’s polished performance
, superior in every way to the embarrassed awkwardness of Egbert’s previous tutors, was deeply reassuring. After the party had broken up and he had said his prayers, he went to sleep feeling calmer than he had in years.

  Piet took off his tie and began to unbutton his shirt, standing in front of the mirror in his comfortable new bedroom. He felt giddy with relief.

  There was a knock at the door. Didier Loubat put his head round it. “Did you survive?”

  “I think so.”

  “You did much better than the last man at his first dinner. It’s important not to cross the girls. D’you want a drink?”

  “I thought it wasn’t allowed.”

  “Blok’s in bed, and the witch doesn’t come up here after lights out. I’ve got Chartreuse.”

  “I’m in, then.” Piet spoke nonchalantly, but in fact he had never tasted Chartreuse and was eager to try it.

  “I’ll get it. I suppose you’ll need nightclothes, too.”

  Didier disappeared and returned with two chipped tumblers and a bottle containing five inches of emerald liquid. He had taken his tie off and opened two buttons on his shirt. “Borrow these till yours arrive.” He handed Piet a pair of blue-and-white-striped pajamas, sat on the edge of the bed and poured the drinks. “I’m glad you’ve come. The last few tutors have been stuck up beyond belief.”

  Though Didier Loubat was a footman, he was a good footman and did not consider himself beneath anyone else who earned an honest wage. When he saw that there was no condescension in Piet’s manner, he decided to reward the beauty of his face by giving him the benefit of an insider’s experience. “You’ll enjoy yourself here if you’re sensible.” He handed Piet his cup. “It’s much the best house in Amsterdam and the family’s all right once you know how to handle them. The one to watch out for is Constance. She expects every man to fall in love with her.” He raised his glass in a silent toast. “But you mustn’t. If Vermeulen catches you with one of his daughters you’ll finish at the bottom of the Herengracht with lead weights tied to your balls.”