by Amanda Cross
“And how are you, Kate?” Max asked, guessing at her thoughts. “Not growing old and cranky like me?”
“I’m fine,” Kate said, pulling herself together. “Except for a nagging curiosity about the Hutchins papers. What happened in the end, to the papers and the portrait and the house?”
“I take all those questions to mean that you really want an answer, and are prepared to have me hold forth at inordinate length, even for me. Cecily’s remains, literary and other, have not been without adventures.”
“You’re not referring to her body, also?”
“Am I not? It turned out she wanted to be buried in the nearby cemetery in Maine, the town cemetery. She’d bought a plot, of course, when Ricardo died, so her body had to be brought back to be buried next to his. Her children, and the lawyer who is executor, and I all realized that fuss was the last thing Cecily wanted. She expected to die in her bed, and not in England, but, having died there, would no doubt have wanted to be buried with the rest of her family with the least possible derrydo. But—a will is a will, so back Cecily came, by plane to the Boston airport and thence by hearse to her burial place. We all rode along behind, but only days later, after the airport released the body. Customs officials, it transpires, are very suspicious of bodies. Anyway, Cecily is now safe in the earth. Her other remains were no less complicated. Are you certain you want to hear it all?”
“Utterly. Shall we go in to lunch? I’ve reserved a window table.”
“Considerate as ever,” Max said when they were seated. “Cecily once made a speech in the library here. Years ago. One of her rare public appearances, before she became all that famous. Remind me to tell you about it someday. Well, to make a long story short, as an exceedingly long-winded friend of mine used to say, I sold the papers to the Wallingford for a handsome sum; handsome. Her children thanked me, and with reason. You asked about the portrait. That crossed the ocean at more or less the same time as Cecily, going, of course, in the opposite direction. She left it to the Tate. It, too, would have brought a handsome price, no doubt, if auctioned at Sotheby’s, but the lawyer saved her heirs from any unseemly regret by pointing out that the taxes on so large an estate as the one they inherited plus the portrait would have been downright confiscatory. As it was, I believe there was some tax diddling because of the gift, but I don’t understand it and don’t want to. One hires lawyers as one hires plumbers, because one wants to keep one’s hands off the beastly drains. Plumbers, of course, are harder to find than lawyers, but we needn’t go into that. Dorothy Whitmore is now in London, being viewed by hundreds every day, or so I am told. The house has been purchased for a stately sum, and the whole matter has resolved itself with perfect ease and graciousness, except that the children started interfering into my part of the business and stirring up trouble. They didn’t understand Cecily, that’s why she chose me as literary executor, a fact both the lawyer and I pointed out with some vigor and more than a little redundancy, but the trouble was the children came down on the side of some other library. Sheer greed, of course. Not on the part of the other library, which is above reproach; the children. Ah, I’m glad to see the roast pork is as good as ever.”
“Go on,” Kate said. “Don’t stop just at the exciting part. I know it’s rude of me to invite you to lunch and then not let you eat, but I must hear all.”
“Which I am longing to tell, as you well know. You might respond from time to time, to allow me another mouthful. The problem, you see, was whether to cash in immediately on Cecily’s growing reputation, greatly helped by what I resolutely refuse to call ‘women’s lib.’ ”
“I expected as much,” Kate said. “All those women writers who’ve been ignored or forgotten for years are suddenly being rediscovered. I, for one, am glad. Apart from everything else, they provide new and exciting subjects for dissertations; one can have just so many studies of Tennyson’s later imagery, and the closet dramas of Swinburne. And you feel Cecily would have wanted to be protected from peering eyes?”
“Not really, no. If she’d wanted her papers sealed, she would have said so. Of course, I would gladly have sealed them if it had been up to me, or burned them if it came to that—as we have discussed already. But as her literary executor, I had to abide by her wishes, which I interpreted as eventual publication and use of the, papers, but not with unseemly haste or slipshod editorial work.”
“Surely no library would allow slipshod editorial work.”
“Naturally not. Nonetheless, with all sorts of people rushing in to get out editions, there is not only a danger but a likelihood of errors. Cecily would have wanted all that to await my biography and perhaps my edition of the letters.”
“So you are doing a biography. Max, how exciting.”
“Well, when you come right down to it, who is more qualified than I?”
“Do her children disagree?”
“Not as to my qualifications, no. At least, not to my face. But they want all of Cecily’s books reissued with snappy introductions; they want anything that will increase the royalties. I point out that they will have the royalties in time, but they are afraid the demand for the work will pass. I accuse them of having little faith in their mother’s work, and they accuse me of wanting to keep it all to myself. Needless to say, the whole matter is further complicated by the ambiguities inherent in the nebulous concept of the literary executor. But Cecily’s will was clarity itself, and the papers have gone to the Wallingford. I have applied for leave from the university, and the Wallingford has offered me working space. Ah, I am pleased to see caramel custard.”
“Naturally,” Kate said, “I think of Gerry Marston. Suppose she had wanted to look at the papers for a study of Dorothy Whitmore. Wouldn’t you have let her?”
“Eventually. But I would rather keep everything under control until the biography and a decent edition of the letters. Perhaps the manuscripts will be made available to qualified scholars, but not the papers generally. I know it sounds selfish and beastly, but believe me, my dear, it’s the only way to handle these matters. Look at the James family. They gave Leon Edel complete domain until he finished the biography, and never regretted it. No doubt other scholars did, but what decision has ever made everyone happy?”
“It strikes me as odd,” Kate said, looking around the Cosmopolitan Club. “Here we sit, in a women’s club, discussing a woman writer whose work is certainly getting more attention because of the women’s movement, and you have sold her papers to a stuffy male club that admits women only on occasional evenings and by special invitation.”
“The exhibition hall and the library are open to women scholars, even if the lectures and the membership are not. My dear, they have to admit women to the building; they are a tax-free institution.”
Max sat back a moment. “I am not, you know, as insensitive as you think. Cecily did know me, and did choose me because she wanted not only discretion but, if you will forgive the expression, guts. The simple ability to say no and stick by it, particularly in the face of the outraged young, seems to be a lost or vestigial skill. Cecily counted on my hard heart and stem demeanor. Which is not to say I shall never, if, for example, a personal request is made by you, allow some use of the papers. But it is best to begin with a reputation for intransigence. You are also, how could you not be, thinking of that unfortunate child killed on the rocks. You cannot quite rid your mind, can you, Kate, of the horrible thought that I might somehow have willed her death in order not to have to show her the papers, if any, which allude to Dorothy Whitmore. She has doubtless risen in your mind as a martyr to scholarship, just the sort I am doing my best to discourage. But I would like gently to remind you that my passion for civilization and culture in the truest sense makes me loathe any sort of violent solution to a problem. What you suspect me of I cannot imagine, but ought we not to get your grisly thoughts out in the open?”
“I’m sorry, Max. I’ve been harboring not suspicions, of course,
but certain feelings of uneasiness. Somehow your attitude toward the papers is inextricably connected in my mind with her death.”
“That’s not surprising. It would be surprising if they weren’t connected. But do let me point out, my adorably feminine and therefore basically irrational creature, however brilliant, that she didn’t know I was literary executor or had the smallest connection with the papers. There was no connection between us. While she was up there, whatever she was doing, I was being my particularly busy self at your university and mine.”
“You shame me. Max. But I’m glad it’s out in the open. It wasn’t really suspicion, you must see that. Just uneasiness. By the way, were Cecily’s children in England the week Gerry died?”
“Yes, they were, if you insist on seeking out all possible suspects. Dear Kate, I hope you haven’t picked more tiring investigative habits from your husband. My hope was that he would not encourage you in these matters. The children stayed on with Cecily to visit old friends.”
“We keep referring to the childen; they must be as old as I.”
“They are, my dear; no allowances for gallantry. Hold on and let me get the dates clear in my head.”
“Shall we have coffee in the lounge?”
“An excellent suggestion.” In was obvious that as they rose from the table Max, as he pulled out her chair, was doing figures in his head. “I may have been too gallant,” he said, when Kate had ordered coffee, “but I don’t know when you were born and don’t intend to ask. Cecily’s children were born in the early thirties. Roger is the oldest, then Thad, then Claudia. They all have children, but perhaps you’ll spare me the arithmetic of that.”
“As a matter of fact,” Kate said, “no. I’ve just met one of those children. A boy in my nephew’s class at St. Anthony’s, about to graduate and go to Harvard.”
“Is he indeed? Well, Harvard had better standards in former years. Still, the young do change, and it’s a while since I saw him. He’s Roger’s son. I can’t say I’ve ever cared for Roger. He married a wealthy woman from some banking house, and went to work for them. Apparently his response to an artistic household was to become as bourgeois as possible; not hard to understand, I dare say. He’s overindulged his children, who strut a bit too much, as does he.”
“I’m off now to see him play baseball in Central Park. Would you care to come?”
“Kate, I fear for your immortal soul, not to mention your sanity.”
“I know, but Leo likes me to come, heaven knows why. Why are you so surprised that Roger’s son got into Harvard?”
“I thought they had better taste, put simply. It’s not as though he’s one of those with double seven hundreds in the College Boards, or any talent. Nor that good an athlete, I should think. Can he be then: token wasp?”
“From all I’ve heard. Harvard is as male and as wasp as ever; it can’t be that. Who was the nephew whose wedding Cecily and children attended, and you didn’t.”
“Ah. That’s personal history and more easily and accurately explained. My mother and Cecily were always close friends, as I told you. Ever since Oxford. Naturally they kept in touch with each other, as did their children in time. My sister, Muriel, married an Englishman, who is, in fact, master of a college at Cambridge. It was her son whose nuptials called from afar.”
“And you, the only living uncle, didn’t appear.”
“I’m not the only living uncle. I have a brother named Herbert, who, like me, came to America and is an academician, in science, however, but who happens to be spending part of this year in Oxford. So the nephew was not uncleless at all.”
“Max, forgive me my feverish and unclear thoughts.”
“There is nothing to forgive, my dear. What’s more, I invite you at any time to come and look at anything you like at the Wallingford. Can I say handsomer than that? I shall tell the librarian, a delightful young man by the name of Sparrow, that under no circumstances are you to be eschewed for your sex or for any other reason. Perhaps a glance through the papers and a count of the boxes of papers will calm the most feverish imaginings.”
“Good,” Kate said. “I shall take you and the Wallingford up on your offer. But there is one other question nagging at me. Max. Why did you feel trepidations about going up to Maine by yourself when the prowler had been seen or whatever it was?”
“Ghosts, my dear. I have never disbelieved in ghosts, only in their more dramatic physical manifestations. Somehow I did not want to go back to that house alone, without someone to exchange impressions with; I wanted to talk about Cecily, preparing myself for the appraiser. He duly came, which I neglected to tell you, and was notably impressed. His appraisal took three days and exceeded all our expectations. But that first day, even the most confirmed bachelor, as the cliché has it, perhaps especially he, wants to have his hand held occasionally. Usually there are women hovering, about, simply aching to help. I went in search of you across fields of hay because I thought you would be the one to talk to about Cecily. Very vague, I’m afraid, and unreassuring. If it hadn’t been for the coincidence of that beastly girl—well, forgive me, my dear, but I didn’t know her and can scarcely applaud her demise upon Cecily’s rocky coast—I think our whole trip would have been a human and enlightening experience.”
“Well,” Kate said, “if I had a glass, I would raise it in a toast to you and the biography.”
Chapter Six
Later, seated in Central Park in the blazing sun, Kate wished for a glass from thirst, rather than the desire to toast anything. True, a pushwagon was dispensing to the young Coca-Cola or an imitation thereof, but Kate had long since decided that while three weeks spent, waterless, on the desert might render Coca-Cola attractive, she doubted it. St. Anthony’s was playing against a Catholic prep school; it was clear that baseball was not their game. St. Anthony’s, on the other hand, played with what seemed to Kate sinister competence. That one was supposed to slide into base with one’s spikes aimed at the baseman Kate had already heard, to her horror. That one could jeer at the pitcher to upset him and run into players for no other reason than to do them injury, appalled her further. She said as much to Leo as he joined her on the outside bench, when his team was up at bat and Leo had been replaced, since St. Anthony’s was so far ahead.
“Oh, what the hell,” Leo said. “That’s the game. In spring training, the Texas Rangers were throwing bean balls at the Yankees, and there was a real rumble.”
“Bean balls?”
“Really, Kate, don’t you ever read the paper? The pitcher was throwing them at the batter, trying to injure their best men. Billy Martin’s idea.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Naturally the other team doesn’t like that.”
“Naturally. Or I guess naturally. Leo, whatever happened to the old idea about, it doesn’t matter if you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.”
“Victorian, I suppose.”
“Yes, silly of me. As Joseph Kennedy said to his sons, get in there and win. As Vince Lombardi said to Nixon or somebody, winning isn’t important, it’s just everything. The connection with Watergate shall go unremarked upon. Are you sure you want to sit here with an aging aunt? Is anything wrong, Leo?”
“Some schools at basketball games hold back the clock on the home court. We never do that.”
“Obviously you’re all in line for the Nobel Prize. I always promised myself when young that I would never say, when old, what is the world coming to? Please notice that I haven’t said it. Leo, is everything quite all right? You don’t usually sit with me, do you? You usually sit on the bench.” This was a fine distinction, since the “bench” within the playing field and the one just outside the fence on which Kate sat were indistinguishable.
“Really, Kate, you don’t have to go on acting as though no male ever talked to an older woman. Some of my friends said they’d like to meet you when they heard you
were a professor. Of course, they’d rather meet Reed and hear about the district attorney’s office.”
“Have you suggested such a meeting to him?”
“It just has to happen. Well, see you.”
Kate watched him drop back onto the bench where sat the team. What could be wrong? she asked herself. He’s just chosen Swarthmore over Harvard, scarcely a cause for depression. I must be getting fanciful, the price, no doubt, of associating with the young. At this point the coach yelled: “O.K., Ricardo, out. Back to the showers.”
This last, in the wilds of Central Park, she took to be a humorous remark. “Good game,” the coach said. “Yeah, man,” was echoed from the team. Kate watched Ricardo as he strolled (strutted, lurched, shambled) back to the bench. She tried to see, somewhere, in his countenance, a painter from Europe, a woman writer of infinite sensibility. She saw him sit next to Leo, and Leo greeted him, but, after a moment, Leo moved away. A movement, Kate sternly told herself, without significance. Leo seemed in search of a bat. Catching his eye Kate waved goodbye and strolled homeward across the park.
Once home, she turned to her accumulated correspondence—accumulated in the sense that dust accumulates under a bed. Lunch and baseball must be paid for by hours with the typewriter. It seemed improbable that a mere professor of literature (as opposed, for example, to a famous author like Cecily) could receive so much mail. Reed, in his practical way, had suggested ignoring it, hiring a secretary, using a dictaphone. Kate found none of these satisfactory. She did not even make use of the secretaries in the office, but typed out her own letters and hoped that by the end of a long evening’s work syntax, spelling, and sanity had been maintained.
The National Endowment for the Humanities, youth grant division, wondered if she would serve as a consultant, and had suggested to the young man in question that he write her. He began his letter: “Kate,” and concluded it: “Your friend Andy,” though she had, of course, never heard of him until this moment. She tried hard not to let what was, after all, merely another and probably no less noble code of behavior influence her response to his proposal. Reading it, she discovered she was not the proper person to serve as consultant, but thought she knew who was. This involved a letter to that person, one to the young man, one to the NEH, and a generous distribution of carbons all around.