A World Elsewhere

by Wayne Johnston

  “What if I tell the truth, make it known that Godwin is not your child but his? Would you like to be thought of as the Vanderluyden who finds men more—inspiring?”

  “I would simply deny that our marriage was unconsummated. Who would take your word for anything at this point? I would divorce you and keep Godwin. You’d be lucky if you set eyes on her again.”

  Landish raised his hand, intending to wipe the sweat from his forehead, and struck the underside of a lamp that was fastened to the wall. Van and Gertrude stopped talking. Landish turned to hurry away but realized that Gertrude would reach the doorway of the library in time to see him, to recognize him as, his back to her, he made an inglorious, ridiculous bid to escape. He was unable to think of any facial expression he could assume that was appropriate to the occasion of being caught by Gertrude Vanderluyden in the act of eavesdropping on her and her husband.

  “Is there someone out there?” Gertrude said. “What are you up to, Van? What would you stoop to?”

  “That’s what people will soon be saying of me instead of what they’re saying now. Padgett Godfrey Vanderluyden will stop at nothing.”

  There was the sound of Gertrude’s hurrying footsteps. One of the library doors opened inward and Gertrude stood half hidden by it, looking out, surveying the gallery. Landish thought the door might be blocking her view of him but she let go of the door and slowly walked towards him. She shook her head and covered her mouth with her hand to suppress what he took to be a laugh until he saw that her eyes had welled up with tears that would have spilled out had she blinked.

  “I wouldn’t have thought that even you would be capable of this,” she whispered.

  “I’m sorry,” Landish said. “I—”

  “It will be something worse next time, Mr. Druken. And something still worse after that. He can’t have you here and not know the limits of your affection for him. Your fear of him.”

  She struck him hard on the chest with the heel of her fist and pointed back into the library behind her.

  “Four years I’ve spent in this place. Shackled to him for my daughter’s sake. You have been here just over a year and already you’re creeping about in the dark eavesdropping on me because he told you to.”

  Landish made to step away but she put herself in front of him.

  “The mere fact of your being here under his roof emboldens him. He brought you and the boy here for a reason. He may not even know yet what it is. I don’t. Do you?”

  Landish shook his head.

  “Yet here you are, you and the boy, brought here by a man who does nothing but think of ways to improve this house. He loved you. Perhaps he still does, or will again.”

  “We were merely friends.”

  “No. Something more. To his mind at least. Look, Mr. Druken. I have not always been as I am. Of the woman I was, however, there is only enough left for Godwin. Until just now there was enough for her and her real father. His abandonment of me was inevitable, don’t you think?”

  “I’m sorry to have made it that much worse.”

  “You know, I would not speak of you and the boy as I do if I did not sense that your being here will somehow destroy us all. I see that you think I’m being melodramatic. Perhaps I am. I hardly sleep, can’t bring myself to eat. From now on, I will be under what amounts to house arrest. My undoing has begun. One thing will never change. I spoke of your limits. I have none where the good of my daughter is concerned. None. So if my husband sets you a task that in any way concerns her, tell him no.”

  She brushed past him and walked off into the darkness of the tapestry gallery, from which he soon heard the opening and closing of a door.

  “Come in, Landish,” Van shouted.

  Landish went into the library, where Van was seated before the fire, smoking a cigarette.

  “You gave the game away,” Van said, chuckling.

  “I feel sorry for her,” Landish said. “Why did you want me to hear all that?”

  Van motioned with his hand to the chair beside him, but Landish shook his head.

  “This is not the sort of thing that a gentleman should gloat about. But I got them both, by God, I got them both. She will confine herself to Vanderland from now on. She will leave it only when accompanied by me.”

  Landish looked at Van until Van could no longer meet his gaze and looked away.

  “She has a different explanation than you do for why your marriage has not been consummated.”

  “You know that I am not like that. I have not done all this for you. She exaggerates. It’s true that I spoke almost constantly of you. But not for the reason she implied. I missed the way things were at Princeton. I was never happier. Nor were you, I believe. We could have brought that happiness to Vanderland. I often told her so. But I did not mean that.”

  “So why did you want me to hear the two of you?” Landish said.

  “I told you. So that you would see that I am far from being the boy that I was at Princeton. I have been nothing like that boy for quite some time. It’s only fair that you know whom you’re dealing with.”

  “Dealing with?”

  “Good night, Landish.”

  Landish went back to The Blokes, to the empty Smoker with its dying fire. He poured himself a glass of brandy. He could not stop thinking of how Gertrude had sounded when she spoke of him to Van. Jealous. Exasperated. Humiliated. As if she had not grown used to the notion that Van had never loved her and never would—and all, she seemed to think, because of Landish. And what to make of the new Van? Not so new, given what he had done at Princeton. But that had been for other reasons. For love? Perhaps. Yet now he saw himself as someone whom Landish was “dealing” with. He knew now that he and Deacon should leave. But how would they make a go of it? Landish thought that he might somehow get by, but Deacon …

  He felt sorry for Gertrude, but even more so for Goddie. One day she would find out everything. Who her father was. Where he was and how he came to be there. How Van had dealt with him. With them. The day would come when Gertrude would have to tell her lest she find out some other way.

  He wondered how Thorpe really felt about Gertrude. Landish suspected that the alternative to accepting the money and leaving the country would not have been a pleasant one.

  But now Mrs. Vanderluyden stopped going to New York on the 630 Express or elsewhere alone. Landish heard from Gough that there was talk among the servants that Mr. Vanderluyden must at last have taken her in hand, and of her long-overdue “comeuppance.”

  She made it clear that she still longed for Manhattan, her family, her social peers, the place of her childhood, the excitement of the ever-growing, ever-changing city of New York about which several letters written by what she called her “never-to-be-exiled friends” arrived each day. Goddie showed Landish and Deacon the newly finished portrait of her mother painted by Giovanni Boldini, hanging beside a newly finished portrait of her darkly ascetic-looking father by J.A.M. Whistler. Against a dark background, she wore a black hat the size and shape of an umbrella, a floor-length black dress from which protruded the dagger-sharp toes of black leather shoes, a shroud-like sash of white silk entwined about the dress that she held in place, one hand at her throat, the other at her waist, her arms sheathed to above the elbows in beige silk gloves. Goddie looked convinced that the very process of being depicted had transformed her mother, transported her into some realm from which Goddie would forever be excluded.

  “I don’t like it,” she wailed. “I wouldn’t let that Joe van Boldi paint my picture. Mother is sweet. Not mean and selfish like the woman in that picture.”

  In spite of what they were fed by Mrs. Bruce, Landish maintained the massive, heavily muscled physique of the Drukens. He would not, his father used to say, have looked out of place fastened to the prow of a sealing ship.

  “I’m a Druken,” he said, looking at his large-knuckled hands. “There’s nothing I can do about it. It is a fact that no amount of sitting on my backside reading and writing books can c
hange.”

  Whereas Deacon, despite being descended from what Landish called “the tough stock of the Carsons,” seemed fated to be thin and puny-looking and forever ravenous, no matter what his diet. Landish would give him half of what the Bruces put in front of him, and all the Blokes but Sedgewick would give him something from their plates. Deacon ate everything but neither gained an ounce nor lost the sickly, pallid complexion at every sight of which Gough would shake his head and try to disguise a look of startled dismay.

  “He looks like he’s been eating nothing but gruel since he was born,” Sedgewick said. “I doubt that a bite of my dinner is all that stands between him and his Maker.”

  Landish was more concerned about Deacon’s remaining so short and thin than he let on to him. It seemed the boy was even hungrier than before, feeling hungry even after some special-occasion dinner with his belly full of food. On Palmer’s birthday, he ate not only his dinner but half of Palmer’s birthday cake, stopping at half only because Landish said that if he ate any more he would get sick.

  “It’s not what the Vanderluydens are having for dinner tonight, is it, Deacon?” Landish said. And Deacon couldn’t help but think of Goddie sitting at the table he had once got a glimpse of when he made a wrong turn on his way to the Academy—a round table in the Lesser Banquet Hall lit by candelabras and spread with gleaming crystal, china, silverware, huge tureens of steaming soup and stew, lavish platters of roast beef, a servant standing discreetly behind Goddie who, but for Miss Esse, was eating alone. The servant was silently and unobtrusively refilling a glass with ice water, removing a plate after each course and replacing it with another.

  Deacon dreamt that all the Blokes, Gough, Palmer, Sedgewick, Stavely and Landish, were gathered round his bed to witness his last breath. “He’s paler than Palmer,” he heard Gough say sadly.

  At last Landish decided he must beg another favour of Van. “Please have Deacon examined by your doctor. I wouldn’t ask if not for the boy.”

  Van replied, “Begging favours rather becomes you.”

  “If you never do another thing for me, do this,” Landish said. “Don’t punish Deacon just because of how things are between you and me.”

  But the doctor pronounced that he could find nothing wrong with Deacon “per se.”

  That night Van sent notice that he would be coming to the Smoker to visit Landish, and that he expected Deacon to join them. The Blokes, uncertain of what they were meant to do, gathered in the Smoker, nervously silent before and throughout the visit except when, upon his arrival, they stood to say hello and shake his hand. Deacon had dressed in his school clothes.

  “Van,” Landish said, nodding to Van who, saying “Landish,” nodded back. As always, they did not shake hands. Landish remained standing in spite of Van’s suggestion that he pull up a chair beside his.

  Van had Deacon stand in front of him. He put his hands on his slight shoulders. “Even in clothes that fit, he looks so thin,” he said, flexing Deacon’s shoulders with his hands. “Nothing much but skin and bone. Like me, but worse.”

  “He says he doesn’t feel sick or tired,” Landish said. “Just hungry all the time.”

  “I dare say he’s always felt the way he feels. He probably doesn’t know what feeling well is like. Mark my words, any child who looks like this is sick.”

  “I took him to a puniatrist in St. John’s,” Landish said. “That’s a doctor who specializes in making boys less puny. No improvement. So we took him to a cheerupodist, who has been of some help. He’s terribly expensive, but Deacon has been smiling more.”

  Van ignored him. “How would you like to have a proper lunch every evening, Deacon? Lunch is the proper name for what Godwin has in the evening before she goes to bed.”

  Deacon turned to Landish, who nodded slightly. “What do you mean, sir? A proper lunch?”

  “The sort of lunch Godwin has. In fact, one exactly like she has, every evening. You could eat as much as you like. We could call it dinner.”

  Deacon looked again at Landish, who this time raised his eyebrows to indicate that the choice was Deacon’s.

  “I suppose that would be nice, sir,” he said.

  Van laughed. “Of course it would. You’ll be Godwin’s guest, her dinnermate. And have dinner with her friends when they come to visit. As it is now, when Mrs. Vanderluyden and I have visitors, Godwin has to have dinner with a lot of grown-ups, or with a governess. I always take dinner in my room unless we are entertaining guests. Godwin enjoys your company very much. She says that if not for you, school would be unbearably dreary. No offence, gentlemen.” The Blokes laughed.

  “Where would we have dinner?” Deacon said.

  “In the Lesser Banquet Hall. You’ll like it very much.”

  “Not here? Not with Landish and the Blokes?”

  Van smiled. “The Bachelors’ Wing is no place for a girl. So it’s settled then? At six-thirty tomorrow, someone will come for you to take you to the banquet hall. Tomorrow, it will be just you and Godwin.”

  Deacon looked to Landish and back at Van. “All right, sir,” he said.

  “Good lad. Godwin will be glad to hear it.”

  He stood and, saying a single good night, made his way from The Blokes before Landish had a chance to speak.

  “A proper dinner,” Sedgewick said. “Right in front of us, he as good as says that we lot can go on making do with improper dinners.”

  “I thought he meant I’d be eating here,” Deacon said. “I thought just the dinner would be different.”

  “It looks like you’ve been picked again,” Landish said, but Deacon shook his head and coming back to his side hugged him around the leg.

  “That’s all right,” Landish said. “You’ll still have lunch and breakfast with us.”

  Deacon turned to Sedgewick. “I’ll bring you back some proper food,” he said.

  “No, thank you. I won’t be fed proper scraps off some boy’s plate night after night.”

  Later, pretending to be asleep in the Smoker, Deacon listened to the Blokes.

  “I should have told Van I would talk it over with Deacon and get back to him about it.” Landish’s voice was raised. “Instead of just standing there like a fence post.”

  “You call him Van”—that was Sedgewick—“but when he says hop to it, you hop to it just like the rest of us.”

  “You did the right thing,” Gough said. “Sometimes even boys like Deacon aren’t the best judge of what’s best for them. He should be twice the weight he is and six inches taller. A common cold could mean the end of him.”

  Deacon’s first dinner with Goddie was delayed. Mrs. Vanderluyden said that, as she had no intention of letting her daughter witness the table manners of the ill-bred, nor of teaching Deacon table manners, and was doubtful that Landish’s knowledge of them exceeded the boy’s, he would be instructed by Godwin’s governess, Miss Esse, who would decide when he was “ready.”

  Deacon learned table etiquette as quickly as he did most things and was declared “ready” by Miss Esse in two days. The next day, a butler arrived at The Blokes at six-thirty and escorted Deacon, scrubbed and pomaded, to the Lesser Banquet Hall. Goddie was sitting at a large round table, facing the door.

  “Hello, Deacon,” she said. “Isn’t this nice?”

  Miss Esse sat at the table, several chairs away from Goddie.

  Deacon looked around the room, whose walls, though brown, weren’t made of wood but what he thought was leather. There were portraits of women in large hats and long dresses who all looked rather like Goddie’s mother. The table was draped in a white cloth that reached the floor. The chairs weren’t red but something like orange, which meant that Mr. Vanderluyden didn’t consider this to be one of his rooms. Deacon sat down nervously on one of them, certain he would stain the tablecloth or break one of the dishes that were red and gold around the rims. Beams of sunlight slanted through the windows whose shapes were traced out on the floor beyond the table, the dust mote–swarming l
ight passing just above their heads in a shaft that Deacon thought of interrupting with his hand. But he kept still.

  He recalled what the Greater Banquet Hall was like and tried to think of the lesser one as being inferior to it. But the table in the lesser one was round and had thirty chairs. The ceiling was so high that everything echoed, voices, footsteps, silverware. They sat at opposite poles of the circle, twenty feet apart. All the empty chairs and all the empty space between the table and the walls reminded Deacon of the days when he and Landish went to church but almost no one else did because it was so stormy. The late sun shone through the windows, red and blue and green depending on the colour of the glass.

  “Mother says Father pushed you round the house in the wheelchair,” Goddie said when Deacon was seated. “She says you’re so lazy you find it too much of a bother to lift a knife and fork.”

  Deacon decided that the faster he ate, the less time he would have to spend with Goddie and the sooner he could go back to The Blokes. It also occurred to him that the faster he gained weight, the sooner he’d be back having dinner with the Blokes. He ate three of every course and was still ready for the next course when Goddie was. He was able to speak only between courses, his mouth otherwise so stuffed with food, his cheeks bulging so that it looked like he was holding his breath.

  “Don’t choke yourself, Deacon,” Miss Esse said.

  But though he ate each course as quickly as he could, he realized that the length of dinnertime would depend on how fast Goddie ate, which was very slowly. She deliberated over every forkful, staring at it as she paused with it raised halfway to her mouth as if she thought there was something in it that shouldn’t be there. And when she noticed his stuffed cheeks she laughed so much at the sight that she left her food untouched.