by Louis Begley
He paused and looked at me inquisitively. I nodded—sheepishly as I later realized—and said that she’d mentioned him once or twice.
That’s what I figured, Alex said, laughing. The first thing, though, to keep in mind is that my parents, my sister, my brother, the nephews and nieces, and of course I all loved Thomas since he was a junior in high school and were all rooting for him when he got into Harvard and was offered the scholarship that made it possible for him to attend. The garage business wasn’t then what it became, say, ten years later, when old Ben Snow made a bundle. Between you and me—I’m not sure that Lucy knows it—my father helped out a little too. Fast-forward to Thomas’s senior year at college. To please Father, at the advanced age of thirty I condemned myself to the two-year course at the busy school. There I was, grinding away, and it occurred to me that for rest and recuperation, R and R is what we called it in the marines in my time, few activities could equal a roll in the hay with my old pal Lucy, with whom I’d been making sweet music—very discreetly—ever since she was in her last year at Miss Porter’s. What a little hellion! She was in Bristol, you see, back from Paris, her heart broken by someone or other, at the time I had no idea who, her brother John told her I was in Cambridge, and she’d looked me up. Arranging to have her around was a dicey proposition because of Priscilla, whom I was seeing in New York and whom I’d decided I’d marry. I hadn’t informed her of that plan but still … You say you remember Lucy from your Paris days as funny and, what else did you say, “devil-may-care”? Exactly right, but you should have known her at school and afterward at Radcliffe. Dynamite. Was the game worth the candle? I decided it was, and that is one gamble I’ve never regretted. I’d have her come down to a little apartment I’d taken in Boston and, my dear Philip, if those walls could speak! But all good things end. Once again between you and me, over Christmas Priscilla applied gentle pressure, I proposed, and my suit was accepted. My parents were thrilled, the Baldwin family being very much our kind of people. We’ve been together ever since, and that too is a gamble I’ve never regretted. But I had to tell Miss Lucy. She did not take the news well. Somehow she’d gotten the idea that she and I would tie the knot! Nothing could have been more foolish because, at the mere hint of such a match, Mother and Father would have gone up in smoke. Not because of the De Bourghs—who entre nous looked down their noses at the Baldwins—but because Lucy had acquired a certain reputation. It didn’t help in managing the situation that Priscilla had never been able to stand her, not since school days, and that Lucy knew it. I succeeded in calming Lucy down, the R and R continued, my gratitude knew no bounds, and I began to consider seriously helping her relocate. That’s when I thought of Thomas, who told me the last time I had seen him that a Radcliffe girl he’d been seeing had dumped him. I swung into action and gave a little cocktail party at my busy school digs to which I invited some of my more amusing classmates—rest assured that’s not saying much—and the future lovebirds. I said nothing about my intentions to Thomas, but I explained to Lucy why he was, as she put it after she’d heard me out, a bonne affaire. To say that they hit it off is an understatement. I don’t know whether they ended up in the sack that very evening, but the following week I offered them the use of my apartment in Boston. I wondered whether Lucy would be spooked by memories of her times there with me. I needn’t have worried. She was a real trouper.
I’ve heard about the party from both of them, I murmured, scandalized by Alex’s role as a full-service panderer and trying not to show it. But not about the apartment.
Alex laughed and said one or the other or both must have judged that detail too racy. The real question, one I’ve asked myself often, is what was I up to. So far as Lucy was concerned, the answer is relatively clear. I wanted her off my hands, with another interest to occupy her, and I knew that Thomas would be nice to her. But Thomas, did I think I was doing him a good turn? In retrospect, it wouldn’t seem so, but at the time the outlook was different. I thought she’d civilize him—teach him better manners, show him how to dress, introduce him to a better sort of people—and give him lots of great sex. I suspected that his experience in that last department was sadly limited. I must say she did all that, just as I had imagined it, even the sex. Why else would he have become so besotted? Of course, it never occurred to me that there were any possible long-term consequences. Marriage—I would have said it was unthinkable. But as Henry Kissinger would have us believe, the unthinkable is always possible. I’ll tell you what I believe really went wrong, why the marriage didn’t work, perhaps couldn’t work. It wasn’t her being a little older or her having had too many rich and spicy experiences he didn’t know about and probably wouldn’t have understood or accepted or their coming from such wildly different backgrounds. All of that could have been accommodated, absorbed. No, the one thing I didn’t take into account—and I don’t understand how she could have failed to realize it and, if she did realize it, how she could have gone on to marry him—is that fundamentally she didn’t like him. That’s a problem that can’t be fixed. Without simple affection, not sex but affection, a marriage can’t work. Take Priscilla’s and my marriage. We’ve had differences, I haven’t been a model husband, but we genuinely like each other. We do the same things in order to be together. Nothing extraordinary that will surprise you. Our sailing days are over, I’ve sold the ketch, but we still play tennis, and Priscilla has even gotten me into a reading group. Not hers, of course, that’s all ladies, but a sort of men’s annex, so I can keep up!
Alex must have noticed the impatience I thought I had managed to repress and said, Hold on! Don’t lose hope! We’re almost at the end of the Ancient Testament presentation, with only one crucial fact to be added. It is my conviction that for all his intelligence and sensitivity either Thomas never figured out where Lucy and I stood when I introduced him to her, or if he had a glimpse of the truth he quickly buried it so deep that he never had to look at it again. The other side of the coin is that Lucy never told him, any more than she told him about the Swiss fellow.
I thought it best to raise my eyebrows and look puzzled.
Right, you haven’t heard about him yet, he answered. You will. But to go back to what I was saying, I truly believe she never told him, however much she would have liked to stick the knife into him and into me. She realized that if she did there was a big risk that Thomas would be out the door. By the way, subsequent events prove I was right to think that would be his likely reaction if Hubert—that’s the Swiss hero—ever surfaced. Certainly throwing Thomas out was something she daydreamed about. But putting herself in the wrong, and having him walk, that was not on the program. As a result, Thomas and I remained very close. If he didn’t think of me as an elder brother—he might have considered that presumptuous—I was like a young uncle, someone who understands you and whom you trust. You see what I mean.
I assured him I did, and that was the truth.
Thank you, he replied. Time out now for a pit stop. Do you want to use the facilities?
I shook my head.
It’s also time for a whiskey. Scotch and soda?
I said I’d love one.
All right, he said upon returning, the radiation I’ve had for my little prostate trouble keeps me running to the loo. Ah, here is the whiskey just when I need it. Fast-forward again, to the year of the breakup. It was early May, a Tuesday. Priscilla and I had taken a long weekend in Newport, and I had decided to skip coming here for lunch and to have a sandwich at my desk instead. That was before we were bought by the Germans, and Father was looking to me to keep us on an even keel in some heavy headwinds. Just between you and me, I’ve never worked so hard before or since. My secretary had left for her lunch after bringing me mine, and I answered the phone myself. It was Thomas. I could tell he was very upset, and when he asked when he could see me I told him to come right over. In my office he went straight to the point. I’m going to tell you, he said, why I think I have to leave Lucy, leave her today, and, yes, leave Jam
ie, and I want you to tell me whether I’m insane. I said, Let’s talk, but first I’ll give you a drink. I always kept some whiskey in my office and poured him a stiff one. He drank it down and gave me an account that was so coherent I think I remember it word for word. I will repeat it for you now. Make believe that it’s Thomas speaking, except when I interject a comment.
So here is what Thomas told me:
There is a man, he said, I’ve known since business school, he was my best friend there, Will Reading. You may have met him; he inherited the title while at the school and is now called Lord Reading. We also do a good deal of business together. He runs the family bank and happens to be in New York. We were going to have dinner tomorrow, with Lucy, but around ten this morning he called me and said he had to talk to me right away and suggested I come to his suite at the Carlyle.
“Remember when I called you from London soon after you and Lucy decided to get married,” Will said practically as soon as I walked in, “and told you I’d come upon Lucy at the Savoy Grill having lunch with some fellow who said he was her cousin? She’d been holding hands with him and was none too pleased to see me. I called you because I thought I must. You decided to treat it as though it were nothing, and over the years I’ve thought that perhaps you were right. Lucy is quite a girl, and you’ve got Jamie.” Reading was referring to a time right after our engagement when Lucy unexpectedly went to Paris, telling me that she had to make the trip in order to settle various things concerning her apartment and car. I was devastated by what Reading told me and wanted to break off the engagement. But Lucy swore up and down that it was nothing, that this fellow, a Swiss journalist, she said, with whom she was having lunch, was someone she had known years ago, and she had gone to London to let him know nicely and in person that she was getting married. I had a hard time believing her. We went over her story I don’t know how many times, and in the end I decided to accept it as true. “By the way,” Reading continued, “I have since met this fellow I called you about back then. I met him at a dinner in Geneva. His name is Hubert something or other, he is a very well-known journalist, and there is no question that he recognized me right away. My face must be fixed in his mind just as his is in mine. You remember that she told you that this fellow was working in London at the time of that lunch? That was pure twaddle. I made a discreet inquiry about his career, and he’d never been based there. More likely he and Lucy arranged to meet there. But that’s not why I asked you to come here. Here is the reason. When I got back to the hotel yesterday afternoon, I’d say shortly after six, and was fiddling with the key trying to open the door to this suite, I heard French spoken behind me. Banal curiosity made me turn around, and what do you suppose I saw? In the door on the other side of the corridor stood Hubert kissing your own Lucy. She was barefoot, wearing one of those hotel peignoirs, and, I haven’t a doubt, naked as a jay under it. Whether I made a noise, or they felt my presence for some other reason, he too turned around, so that he was no longer blocking her view, and all three of us stood there for a moment staring. The comic aspect got the better of me, and I said, Cheers, Lucy! I’m looking forward to dining with you and Thomas the day after tomorrow. Hubert is a big fellow and took a couple of steps in my direction. I thought he was going to slug me, but she screamed and, instead, he pushed her inside, went in himself, and slammed the door. I took a deep breath and went down to have a word with my friend the concierge and asked him whether Miss De Bourgh was staying at the hotel. Somehow I didn’t think she’d use the name Snow. De Bourgh, he answered, of course Miss Lucy De Bourgh, she owns an apartment here. Ah yes, my lord, on your floor. You understand, the chap is a Brit. Used to be at Claridge’s and knows me well. And Monsieur Brillard? His name had come back to me. Oh yes, my lord, he’s here quite often. He is Miss De Bourgh’s cousin and uses her apartment.”
Alex, Thomas continued, I listened to Will, thinking I was locked inside a bad dream. But no, I was in my friend Reading’s hotel suite, listening to his beautifully tuned voice, all those posh vowels, the slight stammer that doesn’t interfere at all—indeed, makes him more eloquent—and he was offering me a scotch although it was before eleven. As I drank, the rich voice went on talking. “Thomas, old friend,” it said, “I know I’m wounding you, but how could I keep this outrage from you?” You couldn’t, I told him, you’ve done the right thing.
So that’s the end of what Thomas told me that afternoon, Alex said. Now it’s back to me, Alex.
What should I do? Thomas asked me, after he’d ended his story. Pretend I don’t know? Let Reading come to dinner tomorrow—if he is willing to—and have him at most give Lucy a wink while I’m getting her another scotch? Or shall I leave her, which is what I want to do? If I leave, I think I have to leave today. I don’t want to spend the night with her.
I told Thomas these were questions only he could answer. However, I said that, if he chose to stay and pretend the conversation with Reading had not taken place, he might as well assume that Lucy would see through him. She’d know that he knew. Why would Reading decide not to tell you? I said. You’re still close.
Yes, Thomas answered, and not just because of business. We see each other whenever he’s here or I’m in London. And yes, I’ve put that same question to myself. She might think Reading decided not to say anything because that other time the warning he gave me had no effect except that it almost destroyed our friendship. I know that ever since he has felt awkward when Lucy is around. He could have said to himself, I won’t interfere again, it can only get me in trouble.
That’s possible, I said.
Thomas shook his head. It doesn’t matter. I can’t pretend I don’t know. I can’t live with her as though it hadn’t happened. And I wouldn’t be able to believe her if we had it out and she promised never to do it again. Really, it comes down to Jamie. How can I leave him with her? How can I live without him?
This is when I asked Thomas: Will you be really leaving him? Won’t he be leaving you, going away to school? Don’t you think that she’ll agree to some reasonable arrangement about visits and that sort of thing?
Thomas said that if he could be objective about the situation he’d reason just as I had: Jamie was graduating from Buckley; a young master from St. Bernard’s who’d been a combination tutor and babysitter, taking him after school for the last three years, had agreed to be with him this summer in Little Compton, since Lucy had declared she’d only be there for three weeks in August and he wasn’t sure of being able to take all of July; and, indeed, starting in the fall, Jamie would be at Exeter. And then he asked me whether I thought he could—or should—simply go to the apartment after he’d left me, pack his stuff, say goodbye to Jamie, and go to a hotel. He’d thought of the Harvard Club or the Paddock, but he didn’t want to be where he’d run into people he knew.
I told him he was in for a bad time, but he had better get on with it. Then, as I was imagining what the scene over there at their apartment would be like, it occurred to me that he shouldn’t be alone that evening, and I asked him to have dinner with us. Drinks at the apartment, we’ll go somewhere or other afterward. Can you imagine it? Thomas got very emotional, and he said he would like that, that he had always known he could count on me to protect him. This is how I got the story of what happened when he went home that very evening.
Lucy was there, Thomas told Priscilla and me, as were Jamie and the St. Bernard’s fellow, his name has just come back to me, Hugh Cowles, entre nous someone we’d met any number of times, good family and all that, who has the looks and manner of a fairy but in fact is a rather active ladies’ man who’d been briefly married to one of the Phipps girls. Lucy put down the receiver—she’d been on the telephone in the library when Thomas arrived—and said, My my, you’re home early, or something like that. Are you sick? He didn’t reply, got his bag out of a hall closet, and went into the bedroom to pack. But he found he really couldn’t. He was in a coffin made of glass, dead although perfectly conscious and capable of speech, and consc
ious of the pointlessness of every action. Nevertheless, he threw in the suitcase his toilet kit, with sleeping pills in it, a couple of shirts and pairs of underpants and socks, and one suit. He added the photographs of Jamie from the dresser. All the while Lucy was screaming, Don’t do it, Thomas, you’re making a dreadful mistake, what that bastard Reading told you is nothing, it will never happen again, and he could hear and understand what she was saying but couldn’t answer. She was far away and he in his coffin. Still in the coffin, he went to Jamie’s room, waited until Cowles had left, told Jamie, and tried to comfort him. The kid cried and cried. And still in his coffin, he pushed Lucy aside when she tried to block the front door. I really wanted to hit her, he said, and not just once, but I didn’t. So he got into the elevator, had the doorman hail a taxi, and drove to the Hilton on Sixth Avenue.
What a ghastly business, I said.
Alex nodded. Awful. One moment of comedy: when Thomas told me that evening as we were having drinks that he was down to two suits, the one he was wearing and the one waiting in the hotel, I said that was all for the best. It was time he stopped wearing those Brooks Brothers standard-issue numbers and let my tailor make him some grown-up clothes. But that will never do, he replied, Lucy has always said I’m not white enough for Anderson and Sheppard and never will be.
Alex and I had another whiskey and left the club together. It was the hour when taxi drivers turn on the OFF DUTY sign and head for meeting places somewhere near the Queensboro Bridge and switch with drivers working the next shift. It’s hopeless, said Alex, I’ll toddle off. I asked whether he still lived at the River House. Indeed, he told me, whereupon I offered to walk him home. It took us longer than I had expected. The arthritis in his right knee was getting worse, and he leaned heavily on his cane. He planned to have the knee replaced after the summer. Priscilla and I play tennis all winter, he told me. I’ll be rushing the net again in no time.