Mrs. Ransom sat for a moment. She saw him glance at the papers on his desk and knew it to be her cue. She thought about saying good-bye and driving to Newport, then she pulled her bag up over her shoulder. She had never taken off her sunglasses. Now she realized the office looked like a dim photograph. "All right," she said. "I seem to be outbid. What time shall I say?"
"I don't know what you mean by 'outbid.'"
"Seven?"
"Fine," he said.
"Good," she said.
Mr. Ransom's secretary looked enviously at his wife's clothing as Priss walked briskly past the tellers' cages and out the doors of her husband's bank.
"Here. Just a second, Irene. Wait. You can send these out."
Ransom walked with her back into the office, where he floated a hieroglyph of his name across the bottom of six sheets of paper at which he no more than glanced. Busy men must be able to trust those who work for them. Had she been so inclined, Irene could have led Ernest Ransom's signature, like a blind man's hand, to sheets of libelous slanders, vast philanthropic bequests, foreclosures, interestless loans to the indigent unemployed in Madder. However, as she was neither an ironist nor a revolutionary, none of this had ever occurred to her. "On that call?" she said. "There is no Mr. Palter with the Interior. There was a Mr. W. Derek Palter who worked there many, many years ago. But he transferred to the Central Intelligence Agency back in the sixties. I've been trying them all day, and finally somebody told me Mr. Palter had died overseas, I'm afraid. Should I try someone else with Interior? Sir, I'm sorry, should I try—"
"No. No, thanks, Irene. I had a question concerning this Mr. Palter in particular. It doesn't matter. Now, I think Carl Marco wanted to see me. Call and invite him to meet me for lunch at the Dingley Club, will you?"
She smiled. "He is going to get his loan then?"
Ransom smiled. "I think it would be hard not to admire a man like Mr. Marco. Coming so far, all on his own."
Irene thought it would be hard not to admire a man like Ernest Ransom. She thought him, in fact, perfectly wonderful, and often, when she returned home to her apartment in Argyle, she told her upstairs neighbor, Sally Rideout, that the bank president ought to run for the Senate or something. Ms. Rideout (Luke and Polly's stuttering history teacher at Dixwell High) agreed, saying businessmen ought to run America since the business of America was, and always had been, business. Irene (sadly enough, like so many of Ms. Rideout's students) failed to appreciate the teacher's ironic tone and took the remark as validation of her secret aspirations for her employer.
Mr. Ransom sat at his desk. He considered taking the roll of film to be developed at the Argyle Camera Shop, where he was, however, a frequent customer. Of course, he was certain (he was nearly certain) that there were no missiles on that property, but he was also certain (nearly certain) that whatever the compound did hold, it was best not photographed without permission. He put the film in his desk drawer. Then he took it back out and considered telling Walter Saar that he wished to make use of the academy's darkroom. Finally, Ransom walked to his window, from which he looked down at Dingley Falls. Across the green, where a large black German shepherd lay at the feet of Elijah Dingley's stone chair, the banker saw his wife. She stood in front of the broken window of the Dingley Day, where she seemed to be laughing at some remark being made to her by A.A. Hayes, who looked from a distance to be staggering drunk.
Ransom did not care for the editor, but if Hayes could amuse Priss, all to the good. He did not like to see his wife unhappy.
He watched Ramona Dingley, followed by her housekeeper, motor her wheelchair through the door of the Tea Shoppe. Did Ramona plan to tell anyone about the roll of film? So what if she did?
After all, he had not lied to her. His words had been carefully chosen, but there had been no direct lie. At the worst, at the very worst, thought Ransom, they had tested small arms, experimental conventional weapons out there. There was nothing nuclear going on. And even small arms was unlikely. The armed forces didn't hide in a swamp. Defense was nothing to be ashamed of. Even if it were (though it wasn't) a missile site of some sort, wasn't it the government's prerogative to protect national security, however it saw fit?
That's what the government was there for. He stared at the green.
Winslow Abernathy was coming out of his office; shading his eyes with his hand, he turned toward the post office. Ransom felt sorry for his old roommate. Life had treated Winslow shabbily: good family, but one that had lost its money in the Crash. Poor guy, never had had any funds for clothes or clubs, or even a good meal and a show their freshman year in New Haven. Always made up some excuse like the library when the other fellows started throwing out ideas for the evening. Never would take a little loan. Then after they enlisted, shunted off to float around in the Pacific for a few years. Now this, deserted by his wife, never really suited each other. Never would listen to reason about marrying Beanie. Must feel so humiliated now.
And having a son like Lance. An irresponsible boor. The banker shook his head at the lawyer's stooped-over walk, his hunched shoulders. Never would listen about regular exercise. Ought to take up golf. It wasn't too late.
As Ransom watched Abernathy tug open the post office doors, he frowned at the sight of a fat, middle-aged couple (obviously from Madder; they looked like Puerto Ricans) coming out of the building.
Probably went in there to pick up government checks that he had paid for in outrageous taxes. He supported, after all, his own family, and a dozen of theirs, of those too indigent to find jobs. Yet, of course, they all wanted houses and furniture and cars and everything else they could get. Where were they all coming from? They could flood Dingley Falls like a polluted tide. They should be sent back to Bridgeport or Springfield or wherever they came from. There was no room for them here. Yes, Uncle William was right. All the order was gone now.
Irene tapped at the door. "I'm going to lunch now. Mr. Marco will be there at one. I ordered the flowers. I spoke with Mr. Strummer. He asked me to tell you he's very grateful for all you've done. But he says he'll be able to manage, thank you anyway."
At the Tea Shoppe, where Chin Lam Henry served them clam chowder, Irene told her friend Sally Rideout that Mr. Ransom had offered to pay all the Strummer funeral costs just because the tragedy had happened to occur in his house. How many men would think of being so considerate? She wanted to know why there weren't more people like Ernest Ransom in the world.
It was time for him to drive to the Club. Ransom looked at the thin gold watch his grandfather had given him. The office was quiet.
He could hear the tick of time passed along through generations increasingly penurious of its expense. "There're only so many hours in a day," his father had warned him. "Stop wasting time," he now warned his children. Maybe it was silly to keep a pocket watch these days. No one wore them anymore. Ransom let it fall into the pocket of his gray trousers. He rapped the yellow Kodak tube against the windowpane. Suppose Priss, standing at the door of the Saab station wagon, looked up and assumed he was surreptitiously watching her.
Instinctively he stepped back, though he knew she could not see him. He waited until her car was gone. Then he took the corner of the film and pulled, stretching out his arms until the black strip reached across the width of the sunny window.
chapter 48
Amber gleamed in wood grain as sun splintered in the old glass. "Keep your wrist loose. Right. Right. Ah, too bad. Close though." In the billiards room of the Dingley Club, old William Bredforet was delighted to have someone to play with. Even a novice like Ruth Deeds, who confessed that she hadn't practiced once since he'd first taught her how as a child. There was rarely anyone to join him in a game these days. Place was practically deserted. Gloomy as the Tombs. He had particularly wished that somebody would be there today to register shock at his arrival with a young black woman, perhaps even to precipitate a scene in which Bredforet could display his chivalrous disdain of sexual or racial or generational bigotry. He f
elt this way even though he himself was on a membership committee whose entire principle of selection was bigotry, and even though he himself had blackballed Carl Marco (whom Ernie had put up, no doubt because Marco had at least a half a million in Ransom Bank) on the unspoken charge that Marco was, in his view, a loud-mouthed, ill-bred, ill-dressed dago. But no one had come into the billiards room to challenge Bredforet over Ruth Deeds. Everybody, he told his guest, seemed to have something else to do.
"Work for a living?" suggested Dr. Deeds.
"I suppose so," her host agreed. "Looks like it's come to that practically everywhere. Old British war chum of mine in Kent, Teddie Pratt-Read, last time I saw him he was slopping rubbish to a herd of giraffes out behind his family estate. Mary and I went over on some boring tour for the decrepit, and we escaped and dropped in on him.
There he was, surrounded by zebras, and tourists riding up and down in golf carts snapping pictures of his dad's arboretum. His dad was Marquis of Thingamabob, I forget. Teddie came to the States back in the twenties and damned if I didn't catch him trying to get Mary to run off with him. There she'd be now, shoveling up giraffe dung into a pushcart. At least I don't have to worry that twenty tourists in bermuda shorts are going to open my bathroom door while I'm sitting in the tub." He reached for his Bloody Mary. "Your shot."
Ruth Deeds was looking at the empty leather chairs, the unread magazines, the vacant lush grass outside the window. "Why don't you open this club up? Look at all the nice things you've got just going to waste. There're a lot of people up at the lake all summer that would love to use the golf course and the bar and restaurant. You could take their money and set up facilities for local kids who can't afford things like tennis lessons or swimming. I bet you'd get a crowd in here."
"Expect we would." The old man smiled as he sipped his Bloody Mary.
"Well, why not?"
"It's a thought." (But it wasn't, really.) "Your go. Save my soul later. Try the five ball in the side pocket. There! Now the six."
"Damn it. I jerked."
"Now, you haven't told me, why did you leave Chicago? Get away from your folks? You know, I used to take the Santa Fe line out of there when my parents packed me off west in the summer. They claimed it was for my asthma, but the truth is they disliked all their children. Why'd you leave? Not a happy place to live?"
"No large city is a very happy place to live these days."
"True. Never could stand them myself. Except Paris, naturally.
Most beautiful place in the whole damn world. Knows it, too.
Multiplies itself with mirrors. Mirrors all over the place. Even in the subways. Everywhere you look, people admiring themselves in pieces of glass. Whole city's one great big dazzling reflection of itself. All the people in it blind as Cupid! City of lovers. Everywhere you look, couples going at it. You notice that?"
"Never laid eyes on the place. Oh, hell, I missed. Your turn."
"Never saw Paris?! I tell you what. I'll divorce Mary tomorrow. I don't think she'll notice. We'll fly to Paris together." Below his neatly combed white hair, Bredforet's eyes twinkled like blue gas flames on a stove. He spun his moustache. "Doctor can always find work in Paris. Half the women are pregnant, half the men have gonorrhea, all the rest have dyspepsia. You could support me, or I could support you, whichever makes you more comfortable."
Dr. Deeds pointed her cue stick at the man. "No, sir." She grinned. "I'm not going to be seen walking around Paris with you.
Because when the revolution comes, you are going to end up with your head under the guillotine, irresistible as you think you are, because you are nothing but the decadent flowering of the whole capitalistic, imperialistic, chauvinistic system. And I'm going to be holding the basket when the heads fall....Now, I mean that. That's the truth, I'll be on the barricades. Well, you win this round."
Bredforet had neatly pocketed the six, seven, eight, and nine balls as she spoke.
"Child, have a heart. Don't be so blood-thirsty. I'm tottering on the edge of the grave with Death booting me in the behind as it is.
You'll win, sooner or later you'll win. Wait your turn." He unscrewed his pool cue and slid it into its leather case.
Behind the locked door of the cheerful blue rain shelter near the eighth green of the Club's golf course, Kate Ransom knelt between the legs of Sidney Blossom, who sat on a bench unhappily. His belt was unbuckled and his pants unzipped, and Kate's hand was inside his shorts where his penis shriveled away from her touch. "What's the matter?" she asked.
"I'm worried somebody's going to come."
"Oh, for crap's sake. It's a lot safer here than in the library."
He tried to smile. "Not very reassuring, considering what happened to us there," he pointed out.
She ran her fingers lightly down the organ's underside, then pulled the head out through his fly. "There's nobody on the whole front nine," she promised. "I checked the registration book."
"How do you know for sure?" He felt his penis stir on its own in the opening of his shorts as she stood now and, lifting off her white shirt, rubbed the nipples of her breasts. "How do you know someone won't, your dad won't, just decide on the spur of the moment to start out on the second round?"
"Daddy never does anything on the spur of the moment except fall asleep." Kate tugged now at his pants, pulling them down to his feet. "There, you see, it's chosen," she said and pointed down. She tossed back the unruly black curls that her mother continually told her to comb and lowered her head. After a few minutes, Blossom stopped her.
"It's just not going to work," he said. "It's not just that somebody might come in. I feel funny about doing it now." He explained that for them to make love the morning after someone had died, even if they had only known the girl by sight, seemed wrong. Sid was not a sophisticated man. Such an act struck him as disrespectful. He thought it likely that his feelings were stronger because he had felt so much hostility to Bobby Strummer when, two days ago, Kate had told him that Bobby Strummer had taken her virginity. He had taken an irrational dislike to Joy, when, at the pool, Kate had told him that Bobby had looked like a male version of his sister. And now Joy was dead. He told Kate he felt ashamed.
Kate, who had been last night far more upset by the news than Sid, felt differently. She had never known Joy; for that matter, she had never really known Bobby, but had simply chosen him as the most likely available candidate for the function he had been elected to serve. Yet the act done gave him (and his) a very real if mythic importance in her life. His being missing, his sister being dead, her own knowledge of that death when he had none and might be himself dead—she felt because of such things she had a responsibility to these two that she could not fulfill. "Please, Sid," she said. "Let's be close. I want to, because of what happened. I want things to be living, sort of to make up, you know, and sex with you makes me feel alive. Okay, please?" They looked at each other, the longest look they had ever shared. Then he kissed her.
Stepping back, she slid out of her white shorts and underpants. He took her hands and kissed the palms. Straddled over the bench, she sat pressed against his chest, and when he unbuttoned his shirt, she rubbed her breasts in the hair between his nipples. His penis rose between them, pressing against her stomach. He bent and took her nipple in his mouth and moved his hands on her buttocks. She felt to him buttery soft and rich and smooth. Where her hands touched him he had goose bumps; everywhere her flesh touched his was tingling. He held his hands in her hair and kissed into her mouth with his tongue while she helped him inside her. He wanted to thrust into every opening, through her, into her heart. He was coming too fast to try to wait. And then suddenly she came, too, her neck arched back. He thought how much like grief the look of her ecstasy was.
Almost at once she lit a cigarette.
"These post-coital light-ups." He grinned. "They showed you too many foreign films at Vassar." He re-dressed himself quickly. "You better hurry up before somebody opens that door."
"Crap, you are
such a small-town librarian!" she told him. To his horror and delight, she ran outside, waving her arms over her head, then rushed back and slammed the door. "See." She grinned. "Did the state totter?"
"Yes," he said, "yes," and pulled her toward him, kissing her hair and neck. "Yes, it did. And the earth shook." The lovers laughed across the empty green, their silliness ignored by squirrels and birds, who had already mated and now had families to raise.
Sidney Blossom's lunch hour was at an end without his having eaten lunch. At the door of his chipped, rusted Volkswagen bug, the librarian waited until he was certain of his voice. "Kate? You said our making love makes you feel alive. Does it by any chance make you feel like getting married?"
She laughed. "Oh, Sid. Nobody gets married anymore!" She slapped his buttocks with her tennis racquet. "See you tonight at your place. Tell you what. We'll pretend we're married!" Laughing, he watched her scuffle away through the smooth white gravel. Her hair looked like clusters of wild blackberries. He was only thirty-two. He could wait forever.
A deathly presentiment had seized Priscilla Hancock Ransom and had grown, like a tumor, throughout the week, until now she felt the pain everywhere and unremittingly. Her life had slid away from her into the abyss. She had reached la fin des bons vieux temps.
Accustomed since a precocious childhood to regard herself as a patrician of modernity, she felt today stripped of her titles and ignominiously drummed from her station. Anonymous letters, her daughter, magazines—all accused her of superannuation. She, belle of the beau monde of Dingley Falls's bon ton, was no more than a parvenu as a modern woman. What she thought risque was passé, her chicness was senectitude. She couldn't even masturbate, and even that shameful failure had been witnessed by God knows who.
At the kaffeeklatsch of the women's movement, she (upper crust of the upper class of Mount Holyoke wits) was simply, glaringly, an arriviste. Even here in the mental hinterlands she was blackballed by revolutionaries. Here were Tracy and Beanie merrily reveling in sororal bachelorhood like wassailing maenads and showing her the door! And why? Because she had espoused the marriage vow, and the duty of proper child-rearing. Life was ironic, as she'd always said. And that g.d.
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