by Irwin Shaw
Boylan walked across the thick carpet, the smoke from his cigarette trailing over his shoulder, out into the hall. He called up the stairs. “Gretchen, do you want your drink up there or do you want to come down for it?” He listened. Tom couldn’t hear the answer. Boylan nodded and came back into the room and picked up the two glasses. Then, carrying the whiskey, he went out of the room and up the stairs.
“Jesus, what a sight,” Claude said. “He’s built like a chicken. I guess if you’re rich you can be built like the Hunchback of Notre Dame and the broads still come running.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Tom said thickly.
“What the hell for?” Claude looked up at him in surprise, the light that came through the parted curtains reflecting damply on his eyeglasses. “The action is just beginning.”
Tom reached down and grabbed Claude by the hair and jerked him savagely to his feet.
“Hey, for Christ’s sake, watch what you’re doing,” Claude said.
“I said let’s get out of here.” Tom held Claude roughly by his necktie. “And you keep quiet about what you saw tonight.”
“I didn’t see anything,” Claude whined. “What the hell did I see! A skinny crock with a dick on him like an old rubber hose. What’s there to keep quiet about?”
“Just keep quiet, that’s all,” Tom said, his face close to Claude’s. “If I ever hear a word from anyone, you’ll get a beating you’ll never forget. Got it?”
“Jesus, Tom,” Claude said reproachfully, rubbing his sore scalp, “I’m your friend.”
“Got it?” Tom said fiercely.
“Sure, sure. Anything you say. I don’t know what there’s to get so excited about.”
Tom let him go and wheeled and strode across the lawn away from the house. Claude followed him, grumbling. “Guys tell me you’re crazy,” he said, as he caught up to Tom, “and I always tell them they’re nuts, but now I’m beginning to see what they mean, I swear to God I do. Boy, are you temperamental.”
Tom didn’t answer. He was almost running as they neared the gate house. Claude wheeled out the bike and Tom swung on behind him. They drove into town without talking to each other.
II
Replete and drowsy, Gretchen lay in the wide soft bed, her hands behind her head, staring up at the ceiling. The ceiling reflected the fire that Boylan had lit before he had undressed her. The arrangements for seduction were planned meticulously and smoothly practiced up here on the hill. The house was hushed and luxurious, the servants were never in evidence, the telephone never rang, there was never any fumbling or hurrying. Nothing clumsy or unforeseen was allowed to intrude on their evening ritual.
Downstairs, a clock chimed softly. Ten o’clock. It was the hour the common room in the hospital emptied and the wounded men made their way, on crutches and in wheelchairs, back to the wards. These days Gretchen only went to the hospital two or three times a week. Her life was centered, with a single urgency, on the bed in which she lay. The days were passed in expectation of it, the nights away from it in its memory. She would make restitution to the wounded some other time.
Even when she had opened the envelope and seen the eight one-hundred-dollar bills, she had known she would return to this bed. If it was one of Boylan’s peculiarities that he had to humiliate her, she accepted it. She would make the man pay for it later.
Neither Boylan nor she had ever spoken of the envelope on her desk. On Tuesday, as she was coming out of the office after work, the Buick was there, with Boylan at the wheel. He had opened the car door without a word and she had gotten in and he had driven to his house. They had made love and after that gone to The Farmer’s Inn for dinner and after that had driven home and made love again. When he took her into town, toward midnight, he had dropped her off two blocks from her home and she had walked the rest of the way.
Teddy did everything perfectly. He was discreet—secrecy was to his taste; it was a necessity for her. Nobody knew anything about them. Knowledgeable, he had taken her to a doctor in New York to be fitted for a diaphragm, so that she didn’t have to worry about that. He had bought her the red dress, as promised, on the same trip to New York. The red dress hung in Teddy’s wardrobe. There would come a time when she would wear it.
Teddy did everything perfectly, but she had little affection for him and certainly didn’t love him. His body was flimsy and unprepossessing; only when he was dressed in his elegant clothes could he be considered in any way attractive. He was a man without enthusiasms, self-indulgent and cynical, a confessed failure, friendless and shunted off by a mighty family to a crumbling shipwreck of a Victorian castle in which most of the rooms were permanently closed off. An empty man in a half-empty house. It was easy to understand why the beautiful woman whose photograph still stood on the piano downstairs had divorced him and run away with another man.
He was not a lovable or admirable man, but he had other uses. Having renounced the ordinary activities of the men of his class, work, war, games, friendship, he dedicated himself to one thing: he copulated with all his hoarded force and cunning. He demanded nothing of her except to be there, the material of his craft. His triumph was in his own performance. The battles he had declined elsewhere, he won in the face below his on the pillow. The fanfares of victory were her sighs of pleasure. For her part, Gretchen was not concerned with Boylan’s profits and losses. She lay passively under him, not even putting her arms around the unimportant body, accepting, accepting. He was anonymous, nobody, the male principle, an abstract, unconnected priapus, for which she had been waiting, unknowing, all her life. He was a servant to her pleasures, holding a door open to a palace of marvels.
She was not even grateful.
The eight hundred dollars lay folded into the leaves of her copy of the works of Shakespeare, between Acts II and III of As You Like It.
A clock chimed somewhere and his voice floated into the room from downstairs. “Gretchen, do you want your drink up there or do you want to come down for it?”
“Up here,” she called. Her voice was lower, huskier. She was conscious of new, subtler tonalities in it; if her mother’s ear for such things had not been deafened by her own disaster, she would have known with one sentence that her daughter was sunnily sailing that dangerous sea in which she herself had foundered and drowned.
Boylan came into the room, naked in the firelight, bearing the two glasses. Gretchen propped herself up and took the glass from his hand. He sat on the edge of the bed, flicking ashes from his cigarette into the ash tray on the bed table.
They drank. She was developing a liking for Scotch. He leaned over and kissed her breast. “I want to see how it tastes with whiskey on it,” he said. He kissed the other breast. She took another sip from her glass.
“I don’t have you,” he said. “I don’t have you. There’s only one time when I can make myself believe I have you—when I’m in you and you’re coming. All the rest of the time, even when you’re lying right beside me naked and I have my hand on you, you’ve escaped. Do I have you?”
“No,” she said.
“Christ,” he said. “Nineteen years old. What are you going to be like at thirty?”
She smiled. He would be forgotten by that year. Perhaps before. Much before.
“What were you thinking about up here while I was down getting the drinks?” he asked.
“Fornication,” she-said.
“Do you have to talk like that?” His own language was strangely prissy, some hangover fear of a domineering nanny quick with the kitchen soap to wash out the mouths of little boys who used naughty words.
“I never talked like that until I met you.” She took a satisfying gulp of whiskey.
“I don’t talk like that,” he said.
“You’re a hypocrite,” she said. “What I can do, I can name.”
“You don’t do so damn much,” he said, stung.
“I’m a poor little, inexperienced, small-town girl,” she said. “If the nice man in the Buick hadn’t come
along that day and got me drunk and taken advantage, I probably would have lived and died a withered, dried-up old maid.”
“I bet,” he said. “You’d have been down there with those two niggers.”
She smiled ambiguously. “We’ll never know, now, will we?”
He looked at her thoughtfully. “You could stand some education,” he said. Then he stubbed out his cigarette, as though he had come to a decision. “Excuse me.” He stood up. “I have to make a telephone call.” He put on a robe this time and went downstairs.
Gretchen sat, propped against the pillows, slowly finishing her drink. She had paid him off. For the moment earlier in the evening when she had delivered herself so absolutely to him. She would pay him off every time.
He came back into the room. “Get dressed,” he said. She was surprised. Usually they stayed until midnight. But she said nothing. She got out of bed and put on her clothes. “Are we going somewhere?” she asked. “How should I look?”
“Look anyway you want,” he said. Dressed, he was important and privileged again, a man to whom other men deferred. She felt diminished in her clothes. He criticized the things she wore, not harshly, but knowingly, sure of himself. If she weren’t afraid of her mother’s questions, she would have taken the eight hundred dollars out from between Acts II and III of As You Like It and bought herself a new wardrobe.
They went through the silent house and into the car and drove off. She asked no more questions. They drove through Port Philip and sped on down south. They didn’t speak. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of asking where they were going. There was a scorecard in her head in which she kept track of the points they gained against each other.
They went all the way to New York. Even if they turned back promptly, she wouldn’t get home much before dawn. There probably would be hysterics from her mother. But she didn’t remonstrate. She refused to show him that she allowed herself to be worried by things like that.
They stopped in front of a darkened four-story house on a street lined with similar houses on both sides of it. Gretchen had only come down to New York a few times in her life, twice with Boylan in the last three weeks, and she had no idea of what neighborhood they were in. Boylan came over to her side of the car, as usual, and opened the door for her. They went down three steps into a little cement courtyard behind an iron fence and Boylan rang a doorbell. There was a long wait. She had the feeling that they were being inspected. The door opened. A big woman in a white evening gown stood there, her dyed red hair piled heavily on her head. “Good evening, honey,” she said. Her voice was hoarse. She closed the door behind them. The lights in the entrance hall were low and the house was hushed, as thought it was heavily carpeted throughout and its walls hung with muffling cloth. There was a sense of people moving about it softly and carefully.
“Good evening, Nellie,” Boylan said.
“I haven’t seen you in a dog’s age,” the woman said, as she led them up a flight of steps and into a small pinkly lit living room on the first floor.
“I’ve been busy,” Boylan said.
“So I see,” the woman said, looking at Gretchen, appraising, then admiring. “How old are you, darling?”
“A hundred and eight,” Boylan said.
He and the woman laughed. Gretchen stood soberly in the small, draped room hung with oil paintings of nudes. She was determined to show nothing, respond to nothing. She was frightened, but tried not to feel it or show it. In numbness there was safety. She noticed that all the lamps in the room were tasseled. The woman’s white dress had fringes at the bosom and at the hem of the skirt. Was there a connection there? Gretchen made herself speculate on these matters to keep from turning and fleeing from the hushed house with its malevolent sense of a hidden population moving stealthily between rooms on the floors above her head. She had no notion of what would be expected of her, what she might see, what would be done with her. Boylan looked debonair, at ease.
“Everything is just about ready, I think, honey,” the woman said. “Just a few more minutes. Would you like something to drink, while waiting?”
“Pet?” Boylan turned toward Gretchen.
“Whatever you say.” She spoke with difficulty.
“I think a glass of champagne might be in order,” Boylan said.
“I’ll send a bottle up to you,” the woman said. “It’s cold. I have it on ice. Just follow me.” She led the way out into the hall and Gretchen and Boylan climbed the carpeted stairs behind her up to a dim hallway on the second floor. The stiff rustling of the woman’s dress sounded alarmingly loud as she walked. Boylan was carrying his coat. Gretchen hadn’t taken off her coat.
The woman opened a door off the hallway and switched on a small lamp. They went into the room. There was a large bed with a silk canopy over it, an oversized maroon velvet easy chair, and three small gilt chairs. A large bouquet of tulips made a brilliant splash of yellow on a table in the center of the room. The curtains were drawn and the sound of a car passing on the street below was muffled. A wide mirror covered one wall. It was like a room in a slightly old-fashioned, once-luxurious hotel, now just a little bit déclassé.
“The maid will bring you your wine in a minute,” the woman said. She rustled out, closing the door softly but firmly behind her.
“Good old Nellie,” Boylan said, throwing his coat down on an upholstered bench near the door. “Always dependable. She’s famous.” He didn’t say what she was famous for. “Don’t you want to take your coat off, pet?”
“Am I supposed to?”
Boylan shrugged. “You’re not supposed to do anything.”
Gretchen kept her coat on, although it was warm in the room. She went over and sat on the edge of the bed and waited. Boylan lit a cigarette and sat comfortably in the easy chair, crossing his legs. He looked over at her, smiling slightly, amused. “This is a brothel,” he said matter-of-factly. “In case you haven’t guessed. Have you ever been in one before, pet?”
She knew he was teasing her. She didn’t answer. She didn’t trust herself to speak.
“No, I suppose not,” he said. “Every lady should visit one. At least once. See what the competition is doing.”
There was a low knock on the door. Boylan went over to it and opened it. A frail middle-aged maid in a white apron over a short, black dress came in carrying a silver tray. On the tray there was a bucket of ice with a champagne bottle sticking out of it. There were two champagne glasses on the tray. The maid set the tray down on the table next to the tulips without speaking. There was no expression on her face. Her function was to appear not to be present. She began to pry open the cork. She was wearing felt slippers, Gretchen noticed.
She struggled with the cork, her face becoming flushed with the effort, and a strand of graying hair fell over her eyes. It made her look like the aging, slow-moving women with varicose veins, to be seen at early Mass, before the working day begins.
“Here,” Boylan said, “I’ll do that.” He took the bottle from her hands.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the maid said. She had betrayed her function. She was there, made noticeable by her failure.
Boylan couldn’t get the bottle open, either. He pulled, he pushed at the cork with his thumbs, holding the bottle between his legs. He, too, began to get red in the face, as the maid watched him apologetically. Boylan’s hands were slender and soft, useful only for gentler work.
Gretchen stood up and took the bottle. “I’ll do it,” she said.
“Do you open many bottles of champagne at the brick works?” Boylan asked.
Gretchen paid no attention to him. She grasped the cork firmly. Her hands were quick and strong. She twisted the cork. It popped and flew out of her hands and hit the ceiling. The champagne bubbled out and soaked her hands. She handed the bottle to Boylan. One more mark on the scorecard. He laughed. “The working classes have their uses,” he said. He poured the champagne as the maid gave Gretchen a towel to dry her hands. The maid left in her felt slippers.
Soft, mouselike traffic in the hallways.
Boylan gave Gretchen the glass of champagne. “The shipments are now steady from France, although they tell me the Germans made important inroads,” he said. “Last year, I understand, was a mediocre one for the vintage.” He was plainly angered by his fiasco with the bottle and Gretchen’s success.
They sipped the champagne. There was a diagonal red line on the label. Boylan made an approving face. “One can always be assured of the best in Nellie’s place,” he said. “She would be hurt if she knew that I called her establishment a brothel. I think she thinks of it as a kind of salon where she can exercise her limitless sense of hospitality for the benefit of her many gentlemen friends. Don’t think all whore houses are like this, pet. You’ll only be in for a disappointment.” He was still smarting from the tussle over the bottle and he was getting his own back. “Nellie’s is one of the last hangovers from a more gracious era, before the Century of the Common Man and Common Sex engulfed us all. If you develop a taste for bordellos ask me for the proper addresses, pet. You might find yourself in terribly sordid places otherwise, and we wouldn’t want that, would we? Do you like the champagne?”
“It’s all right,” Gretchen said. She seated herself once more on the bed, holding herself together rigidly.
Without warning, the mirror lit up. Somebody had turned on a switch in the next room. The mirror was revealed as a one-way window through which Boylan and Gretchen could see what was going on next door to them. The light in the next room came from a lamp hanging from the ceiling, its brightness subdued by a thick silk shade.