The Last Bastion

by Peter C. Wensberg

  “What about my buns?”

  “You don’t have any, as far as I can see.”

  “That’s because I grew up on a horse.”

  “I’m afraid of horses.”

  “I can fix that.”

  She looked down at him. “I doubt it.”

  “Can I call you?”

  “Yes. Good-bye.” She ran up the steps of the building, a townhouse whose ornate windows blazed with light. Owen knew the bliss of a patient who thinks he may have been cured of a terminal disease.

  “Did you get her number?” asked the cabbie with interest.

  “God damn,” said Owen.

  Chapter 7

  “She’s a stunner, isn’t she, I told you, I know, I’ve had experience in these things, my lad, I recognize a real beauty when I spot one, not the face you’d find on the cover of a fashion magazine, mind you, but a great deal of power, sexual power, that’s what that face radiates, sheer, raw, unadulterated, mind-warping, mouth-watering …”

  “Be quiet, Seymour. Have a piece of cheese.” Owen cut some pieces off the wedge and passed the platter to his friend. Gland sat in the largest chair in the library, a solid scotch clutched in one fist, leaning forward, spitting for emphasis, his soft, handsome face composed into a charming mask of boyish lust. Light from the windows behind him filled the room with the glow of dusty wood, reflections from the spines of books, the cheerful colors of the better of the Sargents.

  “Well, wretch, don’t say that I have never done you a favor. First, I rescue you from the gutter …”

  “Thank you again for the job, Seymour. I know you are too smart to hire me unless you think I am going to make a lot of money for you.”

  “… then I install you in one of the better clubs in the city …”

  “The Charles is not the best club?”

  “Of course not. The Somerset is the best club. Everyone knows that. You have to be put up for the Somerset at birth. It sometimes takes twenty years for your name to come up. I’m sure, by the way, that no one belongs to the Somerset who was born wherever it was you were born. Most of the members I know are from the Hill or the North Shore.”

  “Are you a member?”

  “No, actually not. I belong to the Club of Odd Volumes, the Charles, of course, the Harvard Club, and I’m a Proprietor of the Atheneum.”

  “Why aren’t you a member of the Somerset? Did someone blackball you? Or were you never put up?”

  “And then I introduce you to an authentic ethnic beauty, and what is the thanks I get? Carping, disparagement, complaints, ironic shafts hurled my way, barbed darts, cynicism, ugly irony, and that sort of Gary Cooper bullshit you always pull on me, looking sorrowful and talking with that dreadful Western twang.”

  “Blackballed from the Somerset, who would have believed it of a Gland of the Pride’s Crossing Glands?”

  “Not blackballed, damn it. Never blackballed in my life, ever. Just never put up. I can’t be a member of every club in Boston. I’m a member of the Lotos in New York too, by the way, did I mention that, and I was invited to join a London club as well, but it isn’t as good as White’s or one of those, so I put it on hold. I’ll have to make a decision when I’m over there in April.”

  “Where did you meet Demetria?”

  “You know I don’t have much time to spend outside the business sphere. And my social obligations are very demanding. It takes a man at some considerable leisure to do the right thing by one club, let alone, what is it—Charles, Odd Volumes, Harvard, Lotos, the Atheneum, which isn’t a club, of course, but it might as well be. That’s five clubs. Good God, man, what do you expect of me? I’m not made of iron, you know.”

  “I know, Seymour. You’re made of several hundredweight of suet, encased in pink elastic. Where did you meet Demetria?”

  “In court. Press the bell, will you, that’s a good man.”

  “What court?” The Jamaican barman came into the library, a dignified presence, who despite his rather severe expression, suggested a wellspring of good humor somewhere within his comfortably padded, bottle-shaped exterior. At a signal from Gland, he returned to the bar without a word. “You know, I really don’t need a second drink, Seymour. I’ve got a lot of work to do this afternoon. Let’s go in to lunch.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, one more drink won’t hurt you, although you have never had much of a head for it, to be sure. Let that silly bunch finish first who are arguing about aid to education, or whatever it is. I could actually hear them as I walked in the front door. It’s grotesque to have members shouting at each other in the clubhouse, over lunch, at that. There is a rule, you know, that requires decorum at meals, not that most of those relics know the meaning of the word.”

  “I think they’re discussing AIDS. In what court did you find Miss Constantine?”

  “The Federal District Court in Post Office Square. Ah, yes, there we are. Good boy. No, the scotch is mine. Right. I was appearing as a witness for the Iguana Computer people in a class action suit. You know, Owen,” as he glanced at the bartender’s departing back, “you’ve got to cultivate a warmer attitude toward the help. We have a devil of a time holding on to these people. A cheerful word now and again does much more than a raise in pay. You’re in here a lot; you’ve got to do your part.”

  “I know Abel and he knows me. I’m sure a health insurance plan would do more to ensure his loyalty than cheerful words from the members.”

  “We’re discussing that. Far more expensive than you imagine, and these people, many of them, couldn’t pass a rudimentary physical examination. They live in terrible neighborhoods. Not brought up with vitamins, good diet, exercise. No real understanding of sanitation.

  “Let’s skip lunch.”

  “Well, of course, Anton keeps the kitchen spotless.”

  “What was that item in the current budget, the one headed ‘pest control’?”

  “Nilson, the custodian, has a morbid fear of rats. He’s been after us to get an exterminator down in the cellar.”

  “And drive them upstairs? How did you meet Demetria?”

  “No, no. They have this new little pellet that is irresistible, but causes pathological diarrhea. They die in their holes like, like …”

  “Why doesn’t the club just get another cat from the Animal Rescue League, instead of paying a crew to fill the cellar with rats expiring in their own excrement? I’m quite sure, as a matter of fact, I don’t want lunch.” Owen rang the bell. “It’s your company, Seymour. If you find me asleep on my desk this afternoon, you have no one but yourself to blame. Abel, could we have another round?”

  “Directly, Mr. Lawrence.”

  “As I said, it was one of those silly suits in which a crooked lawyer gets a couple of avaricious shareholders to sue about insider trading, or lack of proper disclosure, or some such garbage. I was appearing for the defendant, of course, since I’m on the Iguana board. I don’t know what she was doing there. We both sat waiting all day long. It transpires that her brother and I went to Harvard Law together. She is a lawyer too, you know, but she wasn’t altogether up front, although,” Gland began to giggle, his large balding head wobbling on its invisible pivot in alarming fashion, “she is very up front, if you know what I mean. Oh, very up front.” He lapsed into a fit of damply suppressed mirth.

  “I’m surprised she would talk to such an obvious chauvinist.”

  “I am not, not, I repeat, in the least chauvinistic to women or other minorities.”

  “The last I heard, women constitute the majority. Even in Boston.”

  “Well, of course, if you are talking about sheer head-count or, if you prefer,” he sputtered, “tailcount. But they are always representing themselves as being as downtrodden as the blacks, and, and, and …”

  “Seymour, you have always trod with a heavy tread. You know it, I know it, the world knows it. It’s one of your endearing traits, perhaps the only one: you are uncompromisingly, unashamedly rotten to anyone below what you consider to
be your station.”

  “Well, thank you, Gary Cooper! Why don’t you go to Washington and make speeches about democracy, like you did in that movie?”

  “That was Jimmy Stewart.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t be so holier-than-thou if you knew what I know is about to happen unless a few men of principle can find the courage to get up on their hind legs and fight for their rights.”

  “Rights to what, Seymour? What rights are we fighting for now?”

  Gland smiled slyly and held up his glass. The tumbler caught the light and flooded the room with amber. “The right to this stuff, dear boy. The right to drink. Does that hit home?”

  “To drink? You mean like Prohibition?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. That and the right to privacy, the right to have a men’s club, the right to limit the membership to those with whom we want to drink, or lose the right to drink at all. If the Charles Club does not vote to change its bylaws to admit women as members before the end of the winter, they’re going to shut us down. Dry us up. It’s the same thing, you know. Take away our liquor license. Oh, the bastards,” he hissed, his lips fibrillating wetly. “It’s the Massachusetts goddamned Licensing Board.” Gland’s suffused head seemed about to burst like a squeezed pustule. “Of course, it’s the women who are behind it all.”

  Owen, who had been a member of the Charles Club for all of two months, listened to this outburst in some surprise. None of the members had mentioned it either during the period when Gland was introducing him as a candidate or since. Thomas Appleyard, a rather stiff corporation lawyer, had been Owen’s other sponsor. Appleyard had said nothing about a threat to the Club. Seymour had a history of vivid paranoia. This was likely just the latest episode. “Calm down, Seymour. It’ll never happen,” Owen said. They did not go in to lunch after all.

  Chapter 8

  Along Commonwealth corner houses hold pride of place. Larger, more ornate, grander in concept and materials, like giant bookends they keep the discipline of the block. Because of their privileged position they enjoy light on three sides and, as is often the case, four sides in the upper stories. The lesser brownstones have sunlight only in the morning and the late afternoon from street and alley windows. Hallways and middle rooms are often dark in the daytime.

  The Charles Club wore its privilege gracefully. A four-story Georgian house of brick and granite, its slate roof and virile chimneys crowned the corner of Hereford Street and Commonwealth Avenue. By no means the largest, it was often named among the handsomest houses on the Avenue. It was constructed in 1879 for a young man from Marshfield who had achieved his success building ships in the North River for others to risk at venture. By taking a small share of each of his vessels, in addition to enough cash to cover his costs and show a profit, he became a wealthy man at an early age. Realizing his talents lay in arranging for others to earn money for him, he commissioned a house in the new neighborhood of Back Bay, recently created by dumping trainloads of gravel from far-away Needham into a noxious tidal swamp. He chose an architect who had finished his studies only the year before and was eager to establish his name in the town. The shipwright struck a sharp bargain, then oversaw the construction with his eye for good workmanship. The result was a house with the uncommon virtues of taste and quality. The shipwright and the architect eventually built three more houses whose inhabitants had reason to bless them. The Charles Club, recently evicted from their rented quarters on Charles Street where the building had been pulled down around their ears, was the eager purchaser of the Commonwealth Avenue house when it came on the market again in 1881. It stood for forty-four more years with little or no change. Then in 1925 the mechanics of the building were brought into the modern age. Fortunately nothing of the exterior with its generous windows, simple ornament, and elegant proportions was touched. Once a day the door knocker, a huge hand whose extended forefinger touched a brass plate, was polished until it gleamed in the center of the front door like a beacon. Around the corner a small door gave access from the side street, a doorbell set like a dimple in the doorframe.

  Celia and Ann Dormant, arms encumbered, stepped quickly out of the cab. Grimacing against the rain whipping along Hereford Street, they dashed under the little green awning into the Ladies’ Entrance of the Charles Club. They were late, but not too late.

  “Foul, foul, foul,” laughed Celia in her smokey voice as she dumped parcels and shopping bags decorated with bunches of violets on the faded silk of the couch in the anteroom. Shedding her red Burberry, she glanced at her reflection in the oval mirror over the fireplace, blurted “Oh, God,” and bolted for the Ladies’ Room. Her daughter followed without comment. “How late are we?” asked Celia, as she jabbed at her dark blonde hair with discouragement.

  “One drink,” said Ann.

  “Then hurry. One of the things that drives me crazy about this club is the service. It is so fast. Roger will be half in the bag by the time we sit down.”

  “Are you going to join?” asked Ann.

  “Whatever do you mean?” Celia turned and looked at her twenty-three-year-old Smith College dropout leaning ungracefully against the doorway. As usual these days, the sight saddened her.

  “When they have to admit women.”

  “Don’t be silly, Ann. Roger has been a member for years. I have signing privileges as his wife. I can use the club whenever I want, which isn’t, I’ll admit, very often.” She turned back to the mirror over the rickety vanity table to redefine her mouth. “Why would I want to be a member?”

  “When Constantine makes them admit women, spouses may have to become members.”

  “Why would that be?”

  “If they just continue the ‘spouse tradition’—isn’t that a choice phrase, I heard Daddy using it on the phone the other evening—it would mean that the husband of a woman member could automatically use the club. The men wouldn’t like that.”

  “Well, I’m not sure I would, either.”

  “Or a significant other. They couldn’t keep a boyfriend out. A marriage license doesn’t mean anything now.”

  “Not to you, anyway.”

  “I suppose that’s a crack about Ahmed,” said Ann. “The fact that he’s married is quite irrelevant.”

  “Perhaps not to his wife.” Celia sighed. “You mean that if you became a member of the Charles Club, what’s-his-name would be able to use the Club also, is that it? How about his wife? Could she use it too?”

  “I would never join this stupid club. I can’t imagine why any woman would want to.”

  “Frankly, I can’t either. All of this controversy is really rather puzzling. If it wasn’t so silly, it would be a little sad. I suppose the poor old Charles is just another trophy. One of the last white elephants. Someone is going to gun it down sooner or later. Do you really think I’d have to become a member to continue to use the Club? It is convenient to take one of those little rooms upstairs if you want a late evening in town.”

  “I just realized you can’t become a member, Mother.”

  “Why not?”

  “Seymour Gland would blackball you. I’m sure he hasn’t forgotten what you said to him at the Monet opening.”

  Celia smiled at the memory. “Thank you, darling,” she said, rising and walking past her lanky child into the hall to the lobby.

  “For what?”

  “You’ve just given me a reason to want to be a member of the Charles Club.”

  “Roger, is it true that wives will have to become members if this club admits women?” They were seated in the Other Dining Room in a cozy alcove whose bay window looked out on a courtyard, barren and wet. An alley tree of the species that no city indignity can discourage lounged in the shadows. The alley beyond was empty except for a large trash truck, whose driver stared impassively at the Dormant family who looked as though they were eating lunch together. The usual clamor from the Long Table in the next room was unexpectedly muted.

  “It’s a very complex subject, dear. I’m not sure I
can explain it to you. Would you like another drink?”

  “No. Try.”

  “Well, as you know, wives and widows of members have the use of the club.”

  “Yes, I do know.”

  “They can sign for meals and drinks. They can stay in the guest rooms.”

  “Yes, yes, yes.”

  “They can do just about everything the men can, except vote.”

  “They can’t come in the front door,” said Ann, “or drink in the Library, or sit at the Long Table, or use the Baths of Caracalla off the lobby.”

  “What do you know about the Men’s Lavatory?”

  “I popped in there one afternoon when we were here for brunch. I’ve always wanted to have a peek, ever since you first brought me here when I was, what, nine, I think. It’s positively decadent.”

  “I hope to God no one saw you.”

  “I was weighing myself on that old balance scale when someone came in. He ran away.”

  Dormant looked at his daughter and then his wife. Celia smiled at him. “Roger, please go on explaining. You’re doing very well.”

  “Yes. Well, there has been a lot of debate, as you might guess. Of course, one element won’t even consider the idea of women members. But some of us have been, well, exploring it a little.”

  “And?”

  Dormant shifted in his chair. “There seem to be three alternatives, all of them a little sticky. If we were to admit women as voting members, we could continue to extend the current privileges to spouses, including the spouses of the women members.”

  “What is a spouse?” asked Ann.

  “Why, a husband or wife, of course.”

  “How can you tell? If I brought Ahmed, for example, would he be my spouse?”

  “Of course not. You’re not married.”

  “He is,” smiled Celia.

  “You mean people will have to register the way they do at a hotel? You’ll ask if they’re married like they do in old movies? Even hotels have given that up, Daddy. That is prehistoric. It’s positively fifties. I can’t believe what you’re telling me.”