by Brian Moore
And, with that thought, back came my uneasiness. ‘But won’t it be too big, I mean this apartment?’
He smiled as the deaf smile and twiddled the stem of his sherry glass.
‘So,’ I said. ‘Then you want to, I mean do you want to take this place?’
‘Haar.’ Very carefully he placed his sherry glass on the coffee table. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘to be fair, yes, to be fair, there’s one other apartment on my list I’d like to have a look at before coming to a final decision. Haar. Is that all right?’
‘Of course.’
‘Good. Well, let me see, I’ll look at this other place at once. If you don’t hear from me, haar, say within two hours, then that means I’ll have decided on the, haar, the other place. Fair?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I may be out to lunch. But you can leave a message with my cleaning woman.’
‘Cleaning woman.’ He nodded, felt his beard, then stood, his hand searching for and finding his malacca cane. ‘Very good, Mrs Lavery. All clear then. Good.’
And moved towards the hall, leaning a little on his cane, stopping near the drinks tray, to peer at the old Waterford glass pitcher. ‘Beautiful,’ he said.
So I told him it was the old Waterford glass. I said the Waterford factories had been closed down for seventy years and only started up again in the forties. I told him this jug predated the modern glass and all the time while I was telling it I was aware how pretentious and vulgar I sounded. The only reason I know about Waterford glass is because Terence’s mother’s people originally came from there. Old Mr Peters listened, his fingers twiddling absentmindedly with the silver and blue tassel they put on the neck of each Wisdom & Warter sherry bottle, smiling at me all the while as though he expected me to order a drink from him, a sherry or a Bloody Mary perhaps, and, in that moment, my mulish memory gave up its secret, supplying as background commentary Tom Brooks’s Eastern prep school bray, ‘Look, look, there’s the old bird I told you about. Nancy’s find. Over there at the bar.’
Surreal as an early Buñuel film, I saw myself, Tom Brooks, and Hat, the three of us walking in bright morning sunlight across a grassy dune, going towards the ocean while, coming at us, bearing trays of scrambled eggs, toast, rolls, and coffee were four waiters, totally incongruous in that seascape, dressed in dark dinner jackets and white cotton gloves. And behind them, snapping pictures of advancing waiters advancing on Beautiful People, were the fashion magazine photographers, for it was a Sunday brunch at Nancy’s place, a pseudo-event ostensibly in aid of some charity, but actually a ruse to promote our season of summer plays, or perhaps, come to think of it, to promote Nancy herself. In any case it was like most of the social events you read about nowadays. No one can be sure of anything. Were the photographers there because of our elaborate breakfast by the sea, or were we there because of the photographers? Of course, poor Hat, avoiding the photographers and trying not to see the waiters with their trays of food, was looking around desperately for a Bloody Mary and so when Tom Brooks said bar, Hat wheeled and said, ‘Where?’ and it was then, following Tom Brooks’s pointing finger, that we saw this odd, old bearded waiter, standing off to one side behind a trestle table with bottles and set-ups: Mr Karl Dieter Peters.
And when I remembered, I remembered completely. I even remembered the parties I’d seen him serving at later that summer. It was a summer when it was ‘in’ to employ Mr Peters just as, the year before, it had been ‘in’ to employ a certain New York faggot who cooked Chinese breakfasts. I even remembered Nancy’s telling me that Mr Peters lived on Montauk Beach in a clam-digger’s shack and that he was a retired English butler who had started in service forty years ago, as a footman to the Duke of Montrose. And that Nancy said he was too old to be an efficient bartender. ‘At least,’ she said, ‘not at my parties, not the way some of my guests drink.’ Which put me on the defensive, making me wonder if she was talking about Hat. And, remembering all this, I remembered that we didn’t call him Peters, we called him Dieter –
‘But you’re Dieter,’ I said, and as soon as I said it his old face numbed as though I’d struck him. He withdrew his hand from the tasselled neck of the sherry bottle. ‘Haar?’ Now, it was a nanny-goat bleat of fear.
‘I mean, didn’t I see you in East Hampton?’ I heard my voice trail away, as though I were failing a viva voce examination.
‘Haar?’
I couldn’t bear his face, I rushed in and said no, perhaps I’d made a mistake, he reminded me of someone else, yes, a mistake, but all the time I was saying it I avoided looking at him and yet, at last, I had to look and when I did, I caught, as though it were a ball he threw back to me, the terrified little smile on his face, caught it and returned it and, for a moment, that old man and I were trapped in awful intimacy, each of us knowing that the other knew, that there was no sense in further politicking, that the results were in, Dieter is Dieter and retired butlers who take summer jobs as bartenders and live in clamdigger’s shacks on Montauk Beach don’t have three hundred a month to spend on East Side apartments, now do they?
And then came the Down Tilt, sickening, sure. For, of course, this old man, this old Dieter, what was he but a shill, a spy who entered people’s apartments under the guise of wanting to rent them, an ex-butler trained in antiques who knew what’s worth taking. And months from now when Terence and I are off on vacation the smooth customers will move in here, pick the locks, steal the stuff.
Caught in my smile, frightened stiff, the old spy waited my move. Should I pick up the phone?
‘I wonder,’ I said, ‘do you know Mrs Almond? Mrs Nancy Almond?’
‘Who?’ He put a trembly old hand up to his beard as though to reassure himself that this part of his disguise, at least, had not slipped. ‘Mrs Who?’
‘Almond. Weren’t you, I mean didn’t you serve drinks at her parties, oh, about four years ago?’
‘Haar,’ he cried triumphantly. ‘Almond on Egypt Lane. Mrs John Bidwell Almond. Yes, I did.’
And where did we go from there? He seemed to have trumped me.
He knew where he wanted to go. Out. ‘My coat?’ he said, moving towards the hall, picking up his overcoat, wrestling, stiff-armed, with the sleeves so that, unwittingly, I found myself helping him into it, helping him escape, helping this scout for a gang of thieves, this old spy who crept out of his clamdigger’s shack at dawn, took the Long Island railroad all the way from Montauk to Manhattan, took a bus uptown, politely consulted the doorman about my presence, came up in the elevator, was admitted by me, taken on a tour of the place, even given a sherry. And now he’d leave, he’d probably take the crosstown bus to Central Park and sit on a bench near the Metropolitan Museum, writing up an inventory, my fur coat, the armoire, the oriental rug, the hi-fi, the collection of miniatures, the antique copper pots, Terence’s cameras and tape recorders, the television set, a list which, later this afternoon, before taking the four fifty back to Montauk, he, in some sepulchral Cosa Nostra bar, would pass on to the smooth customers who move in, well-dressed (I read all about them in two articles in the New Yorker), spring the locks with the thin edge of a plastic Do Not Disturb sign, then proceed to gut the apartment with smooth efficiency, smiling at the doorman downstairs as they steal him blind.
‘All right then,’ said the old spy. ‘I’ll, haar, I’ll call you within the hour.’
‘Call?’ I said, stupidly, still lost in my Mafiosan dreams.
‘Yes, call if I want to take the place. All right?’
I am, always have been, a fool who rushes in, a blurter-out of awkward truths, a speaker-up at parties who, the morning after, filled with guilt, vows that never again, no matter what, but who, faced at the very next encounter with someone whose opinions strike me as unfair, rushes in again, blurting out, breaking all vows. And now, enraged by this old spy’s obvious lie about calling me back, the fool within me, the blurter-out, put the impossible into my mouth. ‘But you’re not going to call, are you?’ I said.
‘Haar?’
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It was too late to take it back. ‘I mean,’ I said, ‘I happen to know Mrs Almond and she told me, I remember she said, you live on the beach out there in a clamdigger’s shack.’
‘On the beach?’ he said. ‘Yes, I used to. But, not now. Now, I live here. In New York.’
Well, that was it, the Perry Mason point, and I became the triumphant prosecuting attorney, swivelling to face the jury, pointing at the true culprit. ‘So.’ (My voice almost cracked.) ‘So you live in New York, do you? Then why do you want this apartment, if you already live in New York? You were lying about living out on the Island, weren’t you?’
His fingers, touch-typing along the top of the captain’s chest, found at last what they sought. His hat. Pulling it towards him, he backed in the direction of the front door. ‘Yes, he said. ‘Yes, haar, I’ll let you know, Mrs Lavery.’
‘No, please, listen to me,’ I began. ‘I don’t want any trouble, no trouble, but listen to me, if anything is stolen from this apartment in the next few months, the police will question you about it. You can be traced, you know.’
Even while I was saying this I knew how lunatic it sounded, but that’s it, you see, pre-menstrual tension produces this dichotomy, for, while part of me feels lunatic, another me stands by appalled at what the pre-menstrual self is doing and saying. Or screaming, in this case, anyway, talking in such a loud demented voice that he, of course, was afraid and, as if to calm me, reached out and patted my arm in such a damn theatrical manner that I struck his hand away and then he began to say something, make some apology, but, wouldn’t you know, at that very moment Ella Mae threw the switch on the vacuum cleaner in Terence’s study, rendering all speech impossible so, signalling the old man to wait, I turned and ran into the study. Ella Mae switched off the machine. ‘Yes, Mrs Lavery?’
‘Hold it a moment, do something else, will you?’
Then I ran back into the hall but, of course, he was gone. And part of me, the normal, ordinary, shamed me said let him go, you warned him, that’s plenty, that’s enough. But the normal, shamed me can talk all she wants for, in the pre-menstrual mood, her Mad Twin does not listen, and it was Mad Twin who ran to the apartment door, ran up the corridor, catching up with old Mr Peters as he hobbled away towards the elevator, Mad Twin calling out, ‘Just a moment, just a moment, there.’
He stopped. He looked at me. He took off his hat and stood there, holding his hat like a beggar. ‘Please, Mrs Lavery, don’t worry. Didn’t mean any harm, don’t worry, all right?’
‘No, it’s not all right,’ cried Mad Twin and suddenly, oh God, it wasn’t all right, suddenly I was trembling again, he was going to slip away and warn the smooth customers, I was a woman, how could I stop him? ‘Oh, please,’ I said. ‘The things in this apartment, it’s not just the money, they have a sentimental value, I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to them.’
‘But I’m not going to steal them,’ he said. ‘What a silly thing to say, haar, I’m going to steal, I’ve no intention, no, no, no, no.’
‘You mean, you do want, you are interested in the apartment? But then why did you lie, I’m sorry, perhaps I misunderstood you, I thought you said – well – never mind.’ (Mad Twin babbling on, unable to stop.)
‘I like to look at other people’s apartments. Haar. That’s all. I like to meet people. You wouldn’t understand.’
‘No, but I’m trying to understand. Why did you come to look at this apartment?’
‘Because,’ he said, his hand reaching up to stroke his little white beard, ‘because, you see, I haven’t much to do. I get The Times and read the Furnished To Let. Then, sometimes, if I feel like it, I, haar, I go and have a look at some of the places.’
‘But why, what for?’
‘Because,’ he said, ‘well, I like looking at apartments. And new people, you meet new people.’
As he said this, his voice carried in it a hint of his anger and humiliation at being forced to explain: implied what he could not say, which was that he was lonely, he probably lived alone in some awful little room and had to find ways to pass the time. His clothes, I’d guess, were the elegant cast-offs of former employers. And now, as he talked, Mad Twin stood in shame, knowing that he was no one to be afraid of, on the contrary, and suddenly (for that’s the way in my shaky state) I felt like weeping, hugging him, asking him back in to have another sherry. While he, caught out, waiting to escape me, repeated, at the end of his sad little confession, that he had no intention of stealing, no, no, no, no, and please forgive him for wasting my time.
I said no, it was me should apologize, I was sorry, but I’d been upset today, and wasn’t feeling well, whereupon, as though afraid I would turn mad again, he hastily fumbled off his glove and shook hands with me, saying, ‘Well, goodbye then, goodbye. God bless. Yes, God bless.’ And turned from me, gripping his malacca cane, its steel tip striking loud taps on the terrazzo floor, as, humbled, he went towards the elevator which waited for him, its doors open, went in, its doors shut, went down, an old man I shall never see again, an old man who has already become an anecdote, a story I will tell in years to come. Years ago the Mary Dunne of my schooldays would have written it as a story and sent it out with a stamped, addressed return envelope to one of the magazines she admired. ‘The Apartment Hunter’. That would be a title for it, yes, but where is that me who once wrote stories? That Mary Dunne is dead.
Yet, in those days I wanted to become a writer. To become a writer you must want to write. I wanted the condition, not the result. And wasn’t that, in some way, true of all my careers, weren’t they just roles I acted out? Even acting itself. Who remembers Mary Dunne, the actress, who even in the business remembers me? It must be three years since I was in to see them at Ashley-Famous and they’re still waiting for the new photographs and resumé I promised them then. Or are they? Of course not, they’ve thrown out my file and forgotten all about me long ago. Mary Dunne, the actress?
Hamlin’s fat, sweating face across from me in Barbetta’s. ‘But that’s a character role. You’re an ingénue type.’ It was my acting epitaph, although I did not know it at the time. And in real life it’s no different. I play an ingénue role, with special shadings demanded by each suitor. For Jimmy I had to be a tomboy; for Hat, I must look like a model: he admired elegance. Terence wants to see me as Irish: sulky, laughing, wild. And me, how do I see me, who is that me I create in mirrors, the dressing-table me, the self I cannot put a name to in the Golden Door Beauty Salon?
When I think of that I hate being a woman, I hate this sickening female role playing. I mean the silly degradation of playing pander and whore in the presentation of my face and figure in a man’s world. I sweat with shame when I think of the uncounted hours of poking about in dress shops, the Narcissus hours in front of mirrors, the bovine hours under hair driers and for what? So that men will say in the street, ‘I want to fuck you, baby,’ so that men will marry me and keep me and let’s not go into that if I don’t want the dooms in spades.
The truth is I did not succeed as an actress, not because I was typed as an ingénue, but because I lacked the drive, the hard-as-nails self-love it takes. Acting is something I did once, did well, I think, but again, it was a role. And when success came, the limited success of that season at East Hampton, followed by the offer of an off-Broadway play in the fall, it came too late. I was mixed up with Hat by then. His career took precedence.
The party at Molly Lupowitz’s place was last month, the fourteenth, it was, and the Life writer (funny, I don’t remember his face) and what if I’d never asked him if he knew Hat Bell? But I did. ‘Hat? Of course,’ he said. ‘What a character.’ And I can see myself standing there, feeling guilty because Terence was only a few feet away, but knowing the man would now tell a Mad Hatter story and, in some way, still wanting to talk to someone about Hat. ‘Poor guy,’ was what the man said next and I remember I blew up and said what do you mean, poor guy, who are you, I’ll bet drunk or sober he’s six times the reporte
r you are and the man looked at me strangely and said, ‘I’m sorry, didn’t you know? Hat’s dead.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, he’s not, no,’ said it so loud that people turned and looked at me and Terence came over at once. ‘How?’ I said. And the man said it was sudden, he died one night in his sleep and I still didn’t believe it, but then the man said, ‘Yes, it happened about six months ago up in Montreal, Canada,’ and when I heard Montreal, I knew it was true. He had been dead six months and I didn’t know it. When I cried, all the times I cried since, that seemed the worst part: his being dead six months and I not even knowing it.
Hatfield Kent Bell. He used to say he was the perfect English-Canadian stereotype: born of Scots-English parents in Kingston, Ontario, a son of the manse. But, like most of the things he said about himself, it was only a part of the truth. His father was an Anglican minister with a living in Kingston. But his mother was a Hatfield, one of the meat-packing Hatfields. How many Canadian sons of the manse go to exclusive private schools, have vacations in England and Nassau, and take over a whole floor of the Royal York Hotel in Toronto for their twenty-first birthday bash?
Hat Bell. He sat in the library room at Canada’s Own Magazine, looking at microfilm through a viewer. I brought the microfilm rolls, part of the research Mackie and I had prepared for him. I thought he’d be older I’d read that he was a war correspondent with the First Canadian Division in Italy. I was six when the war started. It was my father’s war. Besides, in the one-column cut on the standing head over his columns, HATFIELD BELL IN OTTAWA, he looked like a British barrister, greyish, an eminence. He was not grey, he was blond, no eminence, but one of those long-legged untidy men who remain boyish all their lives. Yet, like everything about Hat, that wasn’t the whole truth. He did look distinguished in a careless way, he had been a law student at the University of Toronto before shipping overseas to become Canada’s youngest war correspondent. And drunk, broke, no matter, one thing you guessed about Hat: his people had been rich.