“Patrick, my son!” exclaimed his mother. She stretched out her arms as Patrick rose awkwardly to his feet. He threw his cigarette into a large brass ashtray and nursed his arm, which was back in a sling. The sling came between them during the embrace, and he winced, then laughed reassuringly. Their lips met, and he was engulfed once more in his mother’s bewitchment. Ever since he had first opened his eyes to reveal hazel irises identical to his mother’s, instead of the overwhelming family blue of his father and siblings, their relationship had been a conspiracy. There was never anything final about this woman, which paved her way with devoted male admirers and jealous females.
“Let me look at you. My dear, you are so thin!” She embraced him once more as the chief purser announced passport inspection would take place in the music lounge. Patrick’s cabinmate of the voyage glanced appreciatively at his mother.
“Take care, kid,” he said out of the corner of his mouth. He left with the two men from the American consulate.
“You’ve grown,” said his mother as they mounted the stairs under the portrait of Admiral Hawkins. “Your father wrote that your arm is healing—does it hurt? His letter was cut to ribbons by the censors here, but one of them is a friend and mentioned something about the Surcouf? It was here and only left a few days ago…such lovely boys, those sailors! All of the young ladies in Somerset fell in love!”
“All of that is secret, mother,” protested Patrick MacQueen. “I’ve been warned not to talk about it.” He placed his passport on the table to be stamped. The customs official rose and proffered his hand to Mrs. MacQueen with a bow.
“We won’t hold you up, madame,” he said, knocking his white sun helmet off the table. His face turned red. One look from her hazel eyes and he would have let her pass with a satchel of cocaine.
“Thank you, Captain,” she answered. Eva MacQueen was totally unaware of gradations in rank but unconsciously promoted everyone, which left a wake of warm memories behind her.
“I see you’ve met Bill Cyples, mother?” said Patrick. He pointed out his cabin luggage to an officer; it was immediately chalked O.K.
“Met him? Dear boy, your father sent him to me!” his mother replied. Patrick gasped. “They talked on the telephone after your accident and your father arranged it with Jack in Ottawa. He just shuffled some papers or something.”
MacQueen gave the pageboy five dollars and received a wide grin in return.
“My dear boy,” whispered his mother. “You are ruining the help. I hope your father sent something for me!” They were about to mount the steps onto the gangway when she hesitated, then took Patrick’s arm and led him back into the crowded purser’s square.
“I have Vivienne with me,” she said earnestly. “She has reverted to the title of countess, which isn’t bad for a girl from Texas. She is living with us at Moville, and proving to be something of a problem.” Countess Vivienne had agreed to move into Moville’s former slave cottage, now newly renovated, so that Mrs. MacQueen could accommodate Patrick with her in the side apartment attached to the big house. The big house was being rented to the wife of an Australian author. “Keep away from her, darling—she’s too rich, and rather coarse. That Grenadier friend of yours would be ideal for her, but they circle one another like panthers. I’ve lined up a job for you at your old school. As always, I am broke. Did your father send anything?”
All of this was a lot for Patrick MacQueen to digest in one breathless moment. He reached into his pocket and passed an envelope to his mother. She immediately tore it open, ignored the letter with a second’s irritation, and looked at the cheque.
“It isn’t much,” she said cheerlessly, “but it will buy us some drinks at the Twenty-One Club across the street. Come along, and remember your manners. You were Vivienne’s guest for a summer, so don’t spend all of your time listening to Bill Cyples’ dirty stories.”
The captain of the Lady Hawkins emerged onto the purser’s square, the four stripes of gold braid glinting on the shoulder boards of his white uniform. MacQueen handed the captain a letter, in which he fulfilled his promise to Lieutenant Barney. Captain Griffith accepted the letter and assured MacQueen it would be passed up the chain. He then personally cleared their path to the gangway, the bosun’s mate saluted, and the MacQueens left the ship in a flurry of goodwill.
The Lady Hawkins was torpedoed and sunk a few months later.
37
Preceded by the slim figure of his mother, Patrick MacQueen walked down the gangway of the ship and into the radiant heat of Hamilton, Bermuda. The heavy smell of horse manure mixed with the intoxicating aroma of Barbados rum, and Lieutenant William Cyples stood grinning widely with his arms in the air. Patrick slowly shook his head in incredulity. “Jesus Christ, I still can’t believe it!” MacQueen exclaimed.
An uneasy guard sergeant did not quite know what to do as his officer embraced the young man with his arm in a sling. The two ladies were talking, and other passengers were lining up to claim their baggage. Bill Cyples shook Patrick’s shoulders gently, and they looked deeply into one another’s eyes. His face was already sunburned, and he looked more like a pirate than ever, despite the officer’s uniform.
“Pat, my boy,” he said, “for once, everything has turned up trumps. From here on we don’t look back….”
“That’s enough, you two,” said Eva MacQueen. “Patrick, come and meet my dearest friend, Vivienne. Countess, at long last may I present my son, Patrick.”
The countess was a little too blonde and a shade too heavy for Patrick’s taste. However, when she swept off her sunglasses he saw the vivid violet of her eyes. Those eyes had made Vivienne’s fortune—she knew how to use them. They were so unexpected that his breath left him in a gasp. Vivienne’s Pekinese dog ran around in a fury of yelps. Vivienne dropped the leash, and the guard standing by involuntarily kicked at the dog as it circled his ankles, and pandemonium reigned at the foot of the gangway. Mrs. Eva MacQueen was quietly furious at all of this upstaging, but she knew who was paying the rent. Lieutenant Cyples rescued the irate guard and delivered the yapping dog back to its mistress. The sailors on the ship cheered, and the lieutenant waved at them with an appreciative grin.
“For heaven’s sake, let’s go and have a drink!” said the exasperated Eva MacQueen.
The dog continued to emit piercing yelps as they paraded through the terminus. Lieutenant Cyples was dutifully opening doors and returning the salutes of sentries. Main Street was a blaze of light reflected from the pastel-washed, limestone buildings facing the harbour. Frith’s, the wholesalers of West Indian rum, was so fragrant that it intoxicated the senses like a drink of planter’s punch. Carriages were lined alongside the quay, and two yellow railway coaches were halted in the middle of the street. Many of the stevedores were still barefoot, and a member of the Bermuda constabulary stood on a kiosk, waving bicycle and carriage traffic into the flow.
“Call Perichief’s and have your baggage picked up in Somerset,” ordered Eva MacQueen. “I told them to put it on the train. I am going to Butterfield’s Bank, and will meet you at the Twenty-One.”
The dog was left with the headwaiter of the 21 Club, who shut it in a closet. Bill Cyples stood behind the countess’ chair on the balcony, which overlooked the harbour. An orange and blue umbrella protected her from the sun. MacQueen removed his jacket but was told very politely to put it back on by the headwaiter waiter, which he did. Vivienne fanned the air and ordered a double Rum Collins. Her fingernails were long and painted ruby red. She extracted a powder puff and powdered her armpits with a small tin of talcum. The two men ordered rum and ginger ale.
“Your darling mother is letting me stay with you for a while,” said the countess, daubing the powder puff onto her upper lip. “She is such a dear. My late husband’s estate still isn’t finalized, so I have to rough it—it’s all in sterling! The money I got for the island hardly pays for my farm in Connecticut, to say nothing of my apartment on Eighty-Sixth Street—you know, near Fifth Av
enue.”
MacQueen glanced at Bill Cyples, who steadfastly refused to meet his gaze. The waiter delivered the drinks, and Lieutenant Cyples opened a cigarette case full of Dunhills. Patrick MacQueen glanced at the bony hand holding the engraved gold case. He took a cigarette and put the cork tip between his lips. The British Empire hasn’t collapsed yet, he thought idly. The countess’ voice would shatter glass…and he thought the price of empire to be rather high.
“Have you been here long?” MacQueen directed the question to Bill Cyples.
“Hardly!” replied the lieutenant, with a sardonic drawl. “Your father told me not to tell you before it happened in case it didn’t work. There was no fuss at all—I was simply shipped out and given the acting rank of second lieutenant. It’s incredible how smoothly it all goes when the right buttons are pushed.”
“Lieutenant Cyples is based out at the dockyard,” contributed Vivienne, tinkling her ice cubes and taking a long sip. “He has been such a help in organizing the dances for the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire. I don’t belong, myself.” She looked far off, to the distant islands lying towards the Great Sound. She couldn’t actually see them, as she was very short-sighted and had been known to blunder into a wall. She perched her glasses onto her nose and focused her violet eyes. “Of course, your mother is president, or something—she’s such a dear!”
“Every time I see a bank manager,” sighed Eva MacQueen as she joined the party, “I lose ten years of life.” She settled into a chair dutifully held by Lieutenant Cyples and fanned her face with documents held like a hand of playing cards. Perspiration dappled her sculptured nose, and she took off the large white hat. She gave Patrick’s arm a quick squeeze and ordered a rum cocktail. “It’s so nice to have you home again,” she said with instantaneous sincerity. She smiled a brave smile, as though she had just been rescued from a firing squad, and accepted one of the lieutenant’s cigarettes, which she poked into an ivory holder. Her vein of determination had never been more evident. Patrick felt it tug at his heart.
“What kind of job have you got for me?” he asked.
Vivienne thought that these family affairs were an utter bore. And she couldn’t make up her mind about Lieutenant Cyples. Was he a rough diamond…or a scoundrel? The boy Patrick seemed pleasant enough, but she had really expected more than this thin youth. His mother had been altogether too extravagant with her praise. Being very rich, she was naturally apprehensive of everyone and never carried any money, just to prove it. Money is so crass, she thought.
At the humble beginnings of her career, the countess had not regarded money as all that crass. In fact, she had recognized it as the key to power and influence, and she had been ruthless about it. Her tomboy approach had a strange effect on some sorts of men. She married a commercial traveller to get out of Texas and divorced him as soon as possible. She had then headed for the source of all goodies, Washington, D.C.
The escapades of Vivienne in Woodrow Wilson’s capital city would be too embarrassing to recount; however, she did manage to get herself onto the “embassy circuit”, where she met, seduced, and married the German ambassador. This worthy gentleman had been handed his walking-ticket and told to get out of the country in 1917, as Washington went to war with Germany. The ambassador took his American wife back to Germany and isolated her in a castle while he went to Constantinople. His taste in wallpaper—a floral pansy pattern—had confirmed her worst fears. She emerged at the end of the war with a comfortable bank account and a title. These she took to London, where she was an immediate sensation and married the richest and least eligible man that she could find. It was his death in 1939 that had caused her departure from the island—and assured young Patrick MacQueen of an ideal summer vacation.
“I was a child bride,” claimed the countess on every possible occasion. She later altered the pedigree to show that her husband had really been the ambassador’s son.
“That poor man, the Reverend Mr. Stalker,” replied MacQueen’s mother, savouring the first sip of her cocktail. “He is trying to run a boy’s school with all of these refugee children landing on the islands, and a young master from England cannot even get here.”
MacQueen could hardly believe the words. “He wants me to teach boys in a private school?” he asked.
“That’s public school here, old boy,” corrected Lieutenant Cyples. Patrick glanced at him, hoping that this remark was intended as drollery. The lieutenant was quite sincere.
“I know that your education is a bit…spotty,” answered his mother. “Surely you can think of something to teach them?”
“I only know how to be a soldier,” explained Patrick.
“Pretty important, these days,” added Lieutenant Cyples.
“Start a cadet corps,” said Vivienne, with a languid wave of her hand, dismissing the problem as too mundane for her attention.
“Vivienne, you are brilliant!” said Eva MacQueen, in a wave of relief. She had not been entirely truthful in assessing her son’s abilities to the headmaster, but surely a cadet corps was the answer. What subject could possibly be more important in 1941? And her son was even a wounded soldier. She would arrange a dance to benefit the corps, her son could give himself a rank, and he might even contribute to her sadly depleted war chest. There were many avenues of employment that were ruled out by her social position, but this was certainly not one of them.
“You would have your own army!” laughed Lieutenant Cyples. “I’ll help you in any way possible—might even get the officer’s mess to adopt you all!”
“It sounds fine,” said MacQueen, “but the reverend hasn’t agreed yet. All I remember about him was that he had a bad temper and served lousy food.”
“Patrick!” scolded Mrs. MacQueen. “You are no diplomat, and please watch those vulgarisms of speech. There is a cocktail party at Somerset Bridge on Saturday. He will be there, and you can finalize arrangements then. Don’t expect large pay—look on it as a war job, as I do the IODE. But don’t work for free, of course—those refugee boys are all rich and must pay him a great deal.”
“We must get on our way,” gasped Vivienne. The shadow was edging towards the other side of the table. “If someone would pay for the drinks, I will stand treat to a nice carriage ride back to Somerset. I can’t stand those trains, and the ferry is crowded.”
That was the nicest suggestion that Patrick MacQueen had heard for ages. The roads were shaded with cedar and oleander, the lilies were just beginning to burst from their stems, and a ten-mile drive by a two-horse landau was just the answer to calm everyone’s nerves. If they could have left the dog in the cupboard his joy would have been complete.
He would make himself a captain—the rank that his father had held in the Canadian army. He wondered if the reverend still caned his pupils. It was an unnecessary thought. Fathers might condone caning, but these boys were in Bermuda with their mothers. That part of the curriculum had been dropped.
38
The carriage drive from Hamilton to Somerset was a long journey into Patrick MacQueen’s boyhood, and a hundred memories returned to him with every mile. The coral road was alternately lined with oleanders and low stone walls, mossy and grey with age. The vivid panorama of the Great Sound revealed itself on their right, sweeping in a great arc towards Ireland Island and the distant horizon that blended unnoticeably with the sky. Private islands were scattered nearer the shore, one of which—Vivienne’s—was a white scar of limestone where the US Marines were building an airstrip. I’ll bet she didn’t donate that to the war effort, reflected Patrick with a touch of bitterness.
The carriage itself was painted black and had shiny brass fixtures, and their seats were surrounded with wicker. Driving on the left side, the coachman was proud of his rig and sat on his box in immaculate white, with a white sun helmet on his head. He wielded a long whip very sparingly, and the horses glistened with sweat under the straps of the glossy harness.
MacQueen realized that, as a boy, he had st
epped into the full twilight of a passing age. Jeeps were making occasional forays out of the military bases, and would soon be a familiar sight. Trucks and other obnoxious vehicles would follow, and the horses would retreat in importance and become obsolete. It had happened everywhere else, and nothing could prevent it here.
These poignant ruminations were carried on against the backdrop of continual social chatter from the countess and insufferable yelps from her Pekinese. The carriage swayed as the horses broke into a trot on level ground and then slowed to a walk on the hills. The two men sat riding backwards, facing towards the ladies. Over their heads was a large parasol hanging from an iron hood and secured with fishing line.
“We’ll stop at the Waterlot Inn for a bite,” said the countess to the coachman. She turned to her neighbour. “You know Claudia, my dear. She is very down-to-earth but serves a good lunch.” The Waterlot Inn was located in Southampton Parish, on the shore of the Little Sound and just below the towering lighthouse on Gibb’s Hill.
“Well goddamn it,” greeted Claudia, sweeping her arms wide and stumbling dazedly into the sunshine of the driveway. “How the hell are you? You haven’t forsaken ol’ Claudia, eh?” She was wearing a Hawaiian muumuu that covered every swell and mound of her great body. She was trailed by two black servants in white jackets; a number of people peeked around the oleanders to see who deserved such a regal greeting from Claudia. The countess, with the yapping dog in her arms, descended carefully, assisted by the lieutenant.
“Claudia, darling,” said the countess. “Have you anything to give my poor Mathilde? She is simply starving and is losing her sang froid.”
Claudia gazed with open disdain at the dog’s crumpled and defiant little face. MacQueen sensed that an explosion of expletives was imminent and glanced at his mother. She rolled her eyes to the sky then charged into the fray to defuse the looming crisis.
The Broken Sword Page 17